Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on Teixeira's title shot, Pettis-Aldo superfight

Another Wednesday offering from the UFC leaves us with plenty to discuss in this week’s Twitter Mailbag. Plus you know we’re still working through our UFC 164 hangovers, mostly because we are old and frail and can’t party like we used to.

Got a question for the TMB? Fire it off to @BenFowlkesMMA on Twitter.

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@benfowlkesMMA Glover Teixeira; can a title shot be justified, despite him not facing any current top 10 LHWs? #tmb

— BOMB Fitness (@bombfitness) September 5, 2013

Depends what you mean by “justified.” Also depends who’s doing the justifying. As we’ve seen, the UFC has a vast array of ridiculous arguments it will not hesitate to employ in order to end up with a pay-per-view headliner it likes. Remember Chael Sonnen‘s light heavyweight title shot? You know, the one he totally deserved simply because he said yes to it? UFC President Dana White might have come away from that little episode convinced that he’d successfully justified the hell out of that title fight. But just because you offer up an explanation doesn’t mean people bought it.

It’s the same with Glover Teixeira. Could the UFC reach into its twisted logic supply and come up with some explanation that, if shouted at the correct volume enough times, might “justify” a Teixeira title shot? Sure, I guess. I doubt that justification could adequately explain why a TKO of Ryan Bader gets Teixeira a shot while a decision win over Lyoto Machida doesn’t even get Phil Davis into the conversation, but that doesn’t mean the UFC couldn’t or wouldn’t do it. Personally? I’d like to see Teixeira in a fight with someone higher up the food chain first. Give him the chance to advance, and to really prove what he can do against someone who matters. Then, if we discover that the hype is still justified, we can start to think about a title shot. But then, the slow and patient approach is easy for me to adopt. I don’t have to sell tickets and pay-per-views.

@benfowlkesMMA Was tonight’s card the definitive example of a top-heavy card? Cuz to be honest, I fell asleep during it… #tmb

— Baltasar Shepard (@BaltasarShepard) September 5, 2013

The UFC Fight Night 28 card was, to an almost shocking degree, exactly what it looked like on paper. You look at that lineup and see three good fights at the top, then it falls off a cliff after that. With the exception of the awesome fight between Rafael Natal and Tor Troeng (seriously, if you missed that one, go back and watch it), that was exactly what we got on Wednesday night. The prelims were mostly awful. The largely unknown Brazilian fighters reminded us why they’re largely unknown. Somehow the first few fights made it seem like a bad idea to slip out of work early and spend the afternoon watching sports on TV. Thankfully Ronaldo Souza (who looked fantastic, even without the post-fight “Jacare” alligator crawl) and Joseph Benavidez ripped it into pieces, while Teixeira forced Bader to face the pain.

So what did we learn from one night of violence in Belo Horizante? Maybe that there’s a difference between UFC-caliber fighters and fighters who happen to be in the UFC. You can sign some local guys and throw them in the cage, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the kind of fighters people want to spend the afternoon watching. Just don’t tell that to Edimilson Souza, who reacted to a split decision win on the prelims as if he’d just been named President of the Universe.

@benfowlkesMMA 5000 in attendance in the hotbed that is brazil? How can that not be a concern?

— joe mosqueda (@joedaddy85) September 5, 2013

Low attendance should be a concern. It’s just a question of what the UFC should get concerned about. Here it went into a not-so-great venue with a not-so-great fight card in the middle of the week, and got a not-so-great turnout in response. If anyone’s surprised by that, maybe it’s because our expectations are skewed. Brazil, as you point out, is a hotbed for MMA. But that doesn’t mean they’ll pay for absolutely anything, anywhere, at any time. They do have some standards. They’re not Canadians, for crying out loud.

@benfowlkesMMA Do you think The Muscle Shark will be inducted into the UFC HoF? I know he’s been out for awhile, but he is a former champ.

— Jared (@ruralmurder) September 3, 2013

I feel like you might have asked this question just to see if I would go off on my usual rant about the glorified employee of the month club that is the UFC Hall of Fame. Well, I won’t (but if you really, truly want that, here it is). Instead I’ll pretend that what you’re really asking me is, does Sean Sherk belong among the all-time MMA greats? To that, I have to say no. Sherk’s legacy includes a stint as UFC lightweight champ that lasted less than a year and ended with him being stripped of the title for steroid use. Then he came back and got tuned up by B.J. Penn, who clearly does belong among the greats. After that, Sherk did the old win-one-lose-one thing for a little while, then he stopped fighting and faded into the scenery. Then, about three years after his last bout, he officially retired. I don’t want to stomp all over the man’s career at a time like this, but I’m not going to call him a great fighter just to be polite. He was good. He beat some other good guys. He also beat a whole bunch of guys you’ve never heard of. And he got popped for steroids. I’m doing the math on all that and … let’s see … carry the one … divide by the remainder of the square root … nope, doesn’t equal a hall of fame career.

@benfowlkesMMA Is it a mistake having pettis’ first title defense being against Grant, a guy who is really only known by hardcore fans?

— Mike V (@Money644) September 4, 2013

The mistake would have been doing anything else. T.J. Grant earned this title shot. It was his, until he got injured, and it’s only reasonable for it to be his once he’s healthy again. That’s not just fair, but sane. It gives us some glimmer of hope that the UFC hasn’t completely abandoned a merit-based system in favor of a “Whatever You Jerks Will Pay For” system. That’s reassuring to me. I don’t care how many fans Grant does or doesn’t have. He won the fights, put people away, and did what he had to do to get this shot. The only thing the UFC can do here is give it to him and let the punches fall where they may.

@benfowlkesMMA Re: Pettis-Aldo super fight and debate about vacating belts. Wouldn’t catch weight bout at 150 resolve issue? #TMB

— Yuri Wuensch (@heybudday) September 3, 2013

It would tell us how much they have to weigh on the Friday afternoon before the fight, but that’s about it. It wouldn’t tell us what, exactly, they’d be fighting for (other than money and bragging rights). It also wouldn’t tell us what we’d do with the loser (he’s still champion in his division, I guess? even though we know the other guy kind of should be?). Depending on your perspective, those might be nothing more than minor annoyances that shouldn’t stand in the way of a good fight. I wouldn’t argue with that. If the UFC makes Pettis-Aldo, I’ll gladly watch it. Just not yet.

@benfowlkesMMA so when Joe B wins this Wed, can we effectively call Team alpha male the top contender at 3 diff weight classes!? #tmb

— Derek Brown (@downtown204) September 3, 2013

Yes. Kind of. With another impressive finish under his belt, Benavidez definitely seems like the top contender at 125 pounds. And, after his starching of Clay Guida at UFC 164, Alpha Male’s Chad Mendes has done enough for me to want to see him get another shot at Jose Aldo‘s 145-pound title. It’s the 135-pound class that’s tricky. Alpha Male OG Urijah Faber is definitely up there at bantamweight, but he’s also definitely stuck behind champ Dominick Cruz and interim champ Renan Barao, both of whom have recent wins over him. Sure, Faber seems damn near unbeatable in non-title fights, but he seems equally consistent when it comes to losing title fights. With two belts currently floating around the weight class, and with the one true champ still on the sidelines, where does that leave Faber? My answer is, at the head of one of the best fight teams (at least for little guys) in all of MMA. Other than that, I’m not so sure.

@benfowlkesMMA Mir-Overeem, loser walks. Who you got?

— Max de Vries (@MaxWdeVries) September 4, 2013

I’ll take Alistair Overeem if the ref is inclined to jump in there and stop it once Frank Mir inevitably gets hit and falls down. I’ll take Mir if the ref is willing to let it go past that point, since that’s about when Overeem will start fading and stop defending his face. In the end, they both walk. It’s just a matter of who goes first.

@benfowlkesMMA Is the tragedy of Ben Henderson’s career that he will always be remembered as #2 to Anthony Pettis?

— Logan Smith (@LoganasaurusRex) September 4, 2013

Before we start throwing around phrases like “the tragedy of Ben Henderson’s career,” allow me to point out that the man is 29 years old. Trying to write the book on him now is pointless, because we don’t know what’s coming next for him. Could he go up to welterweight and make a run there? Possibly. Could he just come back stronger as a lightweight, and maybe even start finishing fights again? I wouldn’t rule it out. Right now, sure, it looks like he’s going to be stuck with that “Pettis stain” on his soul. But Henderson probably has plenty of fighting left in him, so let’s wait and see where it takes him.

@benfowlkesMMA Seriously though, after Cain/JDS 3, who’s next in line for the HW Belt? Is Travis Browne really that close to a shot?! #TMB

— Joseph Unger (@ungerjos) September 4, 2013

Maybe not yet, but everything could change in a hurry at that weight class. My ideal scenario with Travis Browne would be to throw him in there with Josh Barnett next. That’s a fight that’s almost guaranteed to result in some memorable violence, and it should give us a serious contender either way. That’s down the road, however. For me, after Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos finally sort out their trilogy – and after Daniel Cormier makes the drop to light heavyweight, which seems almost inevitable – the real top contender is Fabricio Werdum.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie.com and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.com.