Rafael dos Anjos is an excellent fighter who has improved steadily over the years and deservedly wears the UFC’s lightweight title belt around his waist.
Wins over the likes of Benson Henderson, Nate Diaz, Anthony Pettis and Donald Cerrone in his last four fights legitimize dos Anjos as one of the world’s best more than any words could ever do.
Yet, dos Anjos’ value to UFC 196 was solely in the fact that he held the lightweight belt and featherweight champion Conor McGregor needed it in order to become the first athlete in UFC history to hold championships in two weight classes simultaneously.
That’s the kind of history-making effort that awakens the masses and brings in even the most casual of fans for a look.
Dos Anjos isn’t, however, nor will he ever be, a pay-per-view star. And given that the UFC is at its core a pay-per-view company, the lightweight champion is just another interchangeable part.
It’s the fighters who make the cash register ring, those who put butts in seats consistently, attract sponsors and sell on pay-per-view who are the vital cogs in the company.
When news broke Tuesday that dos Anjos had broken his foot and would be forced to pull out of his title defense against McGregor, the featherweight champion, it was seemingly a devastating blow. Losing the main event two weeks before the bout, after all the promotion has been done, would have been disastrous in most circumstances.
But the UFC just may have come out of this better than it went in. Late Tuesday, UFC president Dana White announced he’d chosen Diaz as dos Anjos’ replacement to face McGregor. It’s going to stay as the main event, even though it’s no longer a title fight.
But White said the match will be contested at welterweight, which adds an entirely new level of intrigue to it. The welterweight limit is 170, which is 25 pounds above the featherweight limit of 145.
Diaz is a more popular, well-known fighter than dos Anjos, and he’s one of the sport’s most prolific trash talkers. He and McGregor will put on a war of words the likes of which the UFC may never see again.
The best choice to replace dos Anjos from a fighting standpoint would have been Anthony Pettis, because Pettis’ style would have combined with McGregor’s to make the most entertaining fight.
Pettis has lost his last two fights, badly, to dos Anjos last year and Eddie Alvarez in January, both because he is poorly lacking in wrestling.
McGregor, though, is not a wrestler. A McGregor-Pettis match would have been a symphony of violence on the feet.
If dos Anjos’ injury had occurred five or six weeks before fight night, then Pettis wouldn’t have made as much sense, because there was time to find a more deserving opponent.
But on short notice, when there are many moving parts and not a lot of good choices available, there is a strong argument to be made that the UFC should have gone on with the fight that would be the most entertaining.
That would have been Pettis.
That having been said, McGregor-Diaz will undoubtedly draw better than McGregor-Pettis would have done, and it’s still a very intriguing fight.
McGregor is about a 3-1 favorite to defeat Diaz, but he’s no slam dunk. Diaz’s length, his jab and his strong chin will make him a more difficult opponent for McGregor than some may believe.
He’s going to be coming forward all the time, and he’s going to taunt as much or more than McGregor will. It’s something that McGregor will have to get used to.
The big loser in all of this is, of course, Frankie Edgar. He thought he’d earned the match in December when he knocked out Chad Mendes in Las Vegas, and White said unequivocally at the post-fight news conference that Edgar would be next.
White changed his mind, though, and opted to go with dos Anjos to give McGregor the chance to make history. Edgar was queued up to be next.
But when dos Anjos pulled out, the UFC offered the bout to Edgar, who is injured and hadn’t been training. He had to turn it down.
Edgar was unhappy when he didn’t get the first crack at McGregor after having been promised, but he at least knew he’d been promised next. But dos Anjos’ injury scuttles that.
Assuming he’s healthy enough to do so, McGregor will headline at UFC 200. Whereas it not that long ago looked like a fait accompli that it would be a featherweight title defense against Edgar, that’s only one of three potential options now.
Just assume for a second that the 170-pound version of McGregor dominates Diaz. That all of a sudden would make a welterweight title challenge against Robbie Lawler somewhat realistic.
McGregor and coach John Kavanagh have been hinting that they’d also like to chase a third belt, and if "Mystic Mac" shines against Diaz, that bout may start gaining traction.
Dos Anjos’ foot will be healed and he’ll be ready to put his belt up at UFC 200 against McGregor. And then, of course, there’s Edgar.
So there are plenty of options for McGregor’s summer fight.
But his current bout got a whole lot more interesting, despite the loss of the championship angle.
McGregor-Diaz is going to interest a large segment of the fan base that wasn’t as interested in dos Anjos-McGregor.
It looked bad for a long time on Tuesday, but McGregor may have won again just as it looked like he was losing out.
