By insisting we 'join the team,' champ who has everything just told us what he lacks

Chris Weidman

It’s not often you hear a post-fight speech that sounds like something that the leader of an armed rebellion might say to the soldiers of the realm.

Chris Weidman’s remarks to fans following his first-round TKO victory over Vitor Belfort in this past Saturday’s UFC 187 pay-per-view co-headliner, however? That might be about as close as we’re going to get to a post-fight interview that becomes an almost threatening call to arms.

“Hey, stop doubting me,” Weidman (13-0 MMA, 9-0 UFC) said after his win against Belfort (24-11 MMA, 13-7 UFC). “It’s enough. Stop doubting me. You better join the team now. This is my last invitation. Join the team. I love you.”

Here’s where the thinking fan might have justifiably wondered: Wait, by “team,” does he just mean the informal confederacy of Chris Weidman fans? Do I really need an invitation from Weidman himself to “join” that team? And, hold on, did Chris Weidman just say that he loved me?

Fighters will say a lot of crazy things when they’re high off the fumes of victory. We know this. Then they sober up and realize, hey, they hardly even know you.

But the pleading, vaguely threatening invitation to “join the team”? That seems like it’s coming from somewhere real for Weidman. That sounds like a man who feels like the team is a little light on members right now, and he can’t fully understand why.

Chris Weidman and VItor Belfort

It’s hard to blame him for feeling that way, when you think about it. This is the man who dethroned the great Anderson Silva, who beat up Lyoto Machida before beating up Lyoto Machida was cool, who took Vitor Belfort’s best shot and then left him lying in a puddle on the mat (watch the Weidman vs. Belfort video highlights).

If you’re a Brazilian middleweight who can lay claim to any sort of legendary former UFC champion status right now, chances are pretty good that you’ve been pummeled by Weidman at least once.

That he wrapped himself in the American flag before and after these performances should, you’d think, only further endear him to fight fans here at home. If Weidman had been born and raised in Dublin instead of Long Island, he’d be a hero to his people by now. They’d throw him parades and hand him giant ceremonial keys. He’d wake up one day to discover he’d been elected to public office without even running.

Instead, Weidman is an American, which seems unremarkable to fellow Americans. It’s not so different for New Yorkers. There’s just so damn many of them. Wasn’t one of them bound to be UFC middleweight champ eventually? In a city where ignoring the constant presence of others is a skill you learn quickly, maybe you can’t expect people to be impressed with you so easily.

Chris Weidman

And it does, at least from a distance, all seem very easy for Weidman. He’s had his battles, certainly. He’s been knocked around just enough to prove he can take it, but not so much as to make us worried. It’s almost like he showed up in MMA fully formed and then began rolling toward his destiny with minimal fuss.

That’s what makes the “stop doubting me” part of his open invitation a little a strange. Looking around at betting odds and media predictions before this bout, I didn’t see a whole lot of people picking against him. We might have doubted Weidman before the first Silva fight, or even after the second one, but these days? Weidman is the guy who’s supposed to win all these fights. It’s all the people who want to pry that belt from his grasp who we don’t quite believe in yet.

But then, this isn’t really about doubt any more than it’s about being the betting favorite. For Weidman, you get the sense that it’s a little more ephemeral than that.

He doesn’t want to be favored so much as he wants to be embraced. He wants that affection other fighters get, that irrational fan devotion that’s been known to last through doping scandals and DUIs. He probably wants to be able to beat up a Brazilian in Las Vegas with something a little closer to unanimous fan support, which, honestly, doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

Those are all reasonable things to want, or even expect, especially as an unbeaten champion. They’re also the kind of things that you can’t always get just by asking for them.

As enticing as his limited-time offer to join the team might sound, you get the sneaking suspicion that we’re talking about more than reserving seats on the bandwagon here. Some people say they love you because they really, truly mean it. Others do it because they just want to hear you say it in return.

For complete coverage of UFC 187, check out the UFC Events section of the site.