In making case for title shot, Rory MacDonald asks a question he hopes we can't answer

Rory MacDonald began the night at UFC Fight Night 54 standing motionless in his corner, looking not unlike a lifelike robot that had been trained to do nothing more than blink and breathe.

It was creepy, but that’s kind of MacDonald’s thing. When you’re the fighter voted Most Likely to Wear Someone Else’s Skin (spoiler alert: not a real vote), you do stuff like that. Whether you do it on purpose, to serve some greater end, or whether you do it just because you really, truly are a creepy dude, well, that’s the big question.

The point is, after two and a half rounds of picking away at the seams of Tarec Saffiedine (15-4 MMA, 1-1 UFC) on Saturday, Robot Rory (18-2 MMA, 9-2 UFC) finally found the thread that unraveled him the rest of the way, which is when he became just human enough to stand over his vanquished foe and shout at him.

It was a win as efficient as it was decisive. MacDonald may come off as the disturbed child that all the parents try to keep their kids away from, but the dude can fight. He can fight so well, in fact, that he’s pretty sure he ought to be next in line for the UFC welterweight title.

“I really don’t see anyone else,” MacDonald told reporters at the post-fight press conference.

I don’t either, at least for the moment. Then again, that doesn’t exactly put you on the firmest of ground as a UFC title contender, especially in this division. The next 170-pound title fight is already booked, but it’s not for a few more months. That means MacDonald will have to wait for champion Johny Hendricks (16-2 MMA, 11-2 UFC) and challenger Robbie Lawler (24-10 MMA, 9-4 UFC) to do their thing (again) at UFC 181 in December, then hope that whoever emerges with the title is healthy enough to defend the belt within a reasonable time frame.

Even if that plan goes absolutely perfectly, MacDonald could be looking at six months before he can get in the cage with the champ. And how often do these kinds of plans go perfectly in the world of professional cage fighting, a world where a certain amount of chaos is considered the default state, and where there’s always the threat that someone else will skip you in line just by demanding his turn loudly enough?

The good news for MacDonald is that there isn’t anyone else, not really. Certainly not anyone with the charisma to slip past him unimpeded, and that’s really saying something, because you don’t need to be all that likable to be more charming than a guy who’s essentially a terrifying android.

But look around. Who else is there?

Who, Tyron Woodley? MacDonald beat him already. Matt Brown? After his loss to Lawler, he has some rebuilding to do. Carlos Condit’s hurt. Hector Lombard has another fight booked. Gunnar Nelson just got beat by… what’s that guy’s name again? Oh, right. Rick Story.

As in, the same Rick Story who is thus far the only fighter not named Georges St-Pierre to notch a win over Hendricks. As in, the same Rick Story to go all the way to Sweden just to upset the local favorite with a surprisingly un-Rick Story-like performance. So how about him?

On paper, sure, MacDonald has the edge. He has bigger wins, more noble losses. He’s ranked higher. He’s been that way for some time now. He’s the guy who gets to stay home in Canada (well, Nova Scotia, but still) to headline an actual TV event – assuming you can locate the right channel. The UFC would never send him to Stockholm as a sacrifice to the gods of UFC Fight Pass.

Sorry, Rick. Keep on trucking, buddy.

The good news is, that seems more or less fine with Story, who followed up his victory by suggesting that his in-cage interviewer go talk to the other guy. It’s MacDonald who’s getting a tad impatient.

And why shouldn’t he? Didn’t he just knock out Saffiedine? Didn’t he just become the linear Strikeforce welterweight champ, for whatever that’s worth? Hasn’t he hung around the top of the welterweight division long enough, waiting his turn, beating people up and acting weird enough about it to be noteworthy, yet not quite weird enough to be interesting? If not him, who? Who else is there?

It’s a question that MacDonald hopes will stump us all, which is probably a safe bet. It’s just that, if you’re making your case for a title shot in the UFC, that’s not the ideal strategy. Better to be the guy people are arguing for, rather than just the one they can no longer convincingly argue against. But then, that’s the ideal scenario, the plan executed to perfection. If you can’t be the first choice, you can still get pretty far by not being the worst one.

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 54, check out the UFC Events section of the site.