The plight of the UFC heavyweight

These are strange times to be a UFC heavyweight. Just consider the situation in which Ben Rothwell finds himself as he heads into Sunday’s main event opposite Junior dos Santos (17-4 MMA, 11-3 UFC) at UFC Fight Night 86 in Zagreb, Croatia.

For the better part of three years, Rothwell (36-9 MMA, 6-3 UFC) has done exactly what you’d recommend for any UFC fighter trying to climb up the ranks.

He’s won four fights in a row, all via stoppage, and with an even mix of two TKOs and two submissions. He’s beaten big names like Alistair Overeem and Josh Barnett. Thanks to the gogo choke he used on both Barnett and Matt Mitrione, he’s cultivated something resembling a signature finishing move. Despite the UFC’s refusal to allow him to wear his preferred cloak of doom in the Reebok era, he’s still managed to project a personality that stands out from the crowd, even when forced to wear the same bland gear as everyone else.

Finishes, style and personality. Check, check and check. Now imagine him beating Dos Santos in Sunday’s FOX Sports 1-televised headliner, and try to calculate the odds that even that would get him a title shot any time in the near future.

It’s possible, certainly. It’s just not terribly likely. Not when Stipe Miocic – who pulled out of a fight with Rothwell late last year – is slated to get the next crack at champion Fabricio Werdum. And after that’s settled, there’s the little matter of Cain Velasquez vs. Travis Browne at UFC 200, which makes for a much bigger stage than a Sunday in Zagreb.

Fabricio Werdum

Add in someone like Overeem, who’s on a two-fight winning streak of his own, and you have plenty of big men who could skip the line and end up ahead of Rothwell. And that’s if the champ – whoever he may be by then – can stay healthy enough to defend the title with any regularity, which has never, ever been anything you can count on in the heavyweight class.

All that is to say, if you’re looking for a path to the title as a UFC heavyweight in 2016, just quit. You’re not going to find one. The usual calculations don’t add up anymore, and the sure-fire strategies of five years ago are now, at best, general guidelines.

These are uncertain times in the most uncertain weight class there is. Somehow, in the division where no one has ever notched more than two consecutive UFC title defenses, even a lengthy winning streak offers no guarantees.

In that uncertainty, if you know how to look at it, lies simplicity. Even if you don’t know what, exactly, you have to do to get a title shot around here, you do know that losing never helps. And while making all the right moves hasn’t gotten Rothwell within sniffing distance of UFC gold yet, maybe that frees him up to stop worrying what the UFC brass is looking for.

Or, as he explained his strategy earlier this week, to “really give the UFC no choice” except to give him an eventual title shot.

In a lot of ways, this isn’t a great deal for a streaking heavyweight with a growing bandwagon. He’s fighting a still-dangerous former champ who’s coming off a loss, and he’s doing it on one of those strangely timed and oddly located fight cards that you could be forgiven for skipping out on. You can call it a lot of things, but you can’t call it much of a push.

Still, with a knockout here and a gogo choke there, Rothwell has been slowly eliminating all the other options. Even in uncertain times, there’s some sense of safety in being the one left standing at the end of the fight.

For more on UFC Fight Night 86, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.