Five ways of looking at UFC 168

Following Saturday’s UFC 168 event, MMAjunkie’s Ben Fowlkes shares five ways of looking at the pay-per-view card.

1. Weidman can’t catch a break, even when Silva suffers one.

It must be tough to know how to play it when your opponent breaks his leg trying to kick you. On one hand, hooray for victory and all that. On the other, it’s a little like winning an election only after the other guy got caught in a meth lab with a bunch of “interns.”

You can’t say Chris Weidman (11-0 MMA, 7-0 UFC) didn’t deserve to win the middleweight title fight at UFC 168, but did he really beat Anderson Silva (33-6 MMA, 16-2 UFC) this time?

Weidman certainly thinks so. The UFC middleweight champ resisted any attempt to frame this as an accidental injury or freak occurrence, taking full credit for Silva’s gruesome injury in the post-fight press conference.

“I don’t think it was accidental when you try to check and kick and it works,” Weidman said.

Which, technically true, but still. It’s not exactly the kind of win where you’re going to get carried out of the arena on your coaches’ shoulders afterward. It’s also the kind where, when you thank God in your post-fight interview, as Weidman did, it feels a little weird. Maybe it’s just me, but after seeing Silva’s broken leg flop to the mat I was suddenly far less inclined to believe that this was the work of a benevolent deity.

The whole thing is a raw deal for Weidman, who is now 2-0 against the greatest MMA fighter of all time, yet probably won’t get full credit for either of those wins in the eyes of most fans. That’s especially crazy when you consider that, in a little less than 13 minutes of total fight time against Silva, he dominated almost all of it. He deserves to be thought of as the middleweight champ, the man who dethroned the great Silva, and yet this feels less like a passing of the torch than a scavenging of it after the last torch-bearer twisted his ankle and fell down on the job.

Here’s where Vitor Belfort comes in. The Young Dinosaur showed up in the press room after UFC 168 to offer his condolences to Silva and to offer this preview of a fight with Weidman:

“If you study the animals in the jungle, some animals they hunt and all that, but the most dangerous animal, and that’s why they call him the king of the jungle, is the lion, because he’s unpredictable,” Belfort said. “That’s what … I’m unpredictable.”

First of all, no, that is not why the lion is the king of the jungle. It’s because he’s big and strong and fast and has huge teeth and claws. Second, as bizarre as Belfort can be, and as suspect as his animal metaphors are at times, no one needs him more than Weidman right now. A dominating win over Belfort might cast his Silva victories in a different light. It would also solidify his title reign in a way that a broken leg — whether it was Weidman’s doing or not — simply won’t.

Now all the UFC has to figure out is where the bout will take place, and what the regulatory environment will mean for Belfort’s controversial use of synthetic testosterone. But that’s a can of worms for another day.

2. Tate makes Rousey work for a win, even as a bad strategy puts her in harm’s way.

If you’d asked me before this fight how Miesha Tate (14-5 MMA, 0-2 UFC) might beat UFC women’s bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey (8-0 MMA, 2-0 UFC), I’d have said standing up, punching her in the face repeatedly. Now that it’s over I still think that was Tate’s best chance. I just can’t understand why she didn’t seem to think so.

You go for one takedown on an Olympic-caliber judoka and you get thrown, fine, lesson learned. You keep doing it over and over again, with the same results, then it just seems like you refuse to learn any lessons at all. Tate was having some success on the feet, especially when she kept the fight at boxing range. Yet the wrestler in her couldn’t resist the urge to close the distance in search of a clinch or a double-leg, which is when she inevitably went for a ride that ended with her on her back.

It’s easy to criticize someone’s game plan after the fact, but in this case it’s also tough to ignore the topic. Tate’s clearly a tough, resilient fighter. She proved that just by taking Rousey into the third round. I just can’t help but wonder what else she might have accomplished if only she had a different approach.

3. The end of the line for “The Crippler”?

Chris Leben (22-11 MMA, 12-10 UFC) has stuck around in the UFC in part because of his willingness to absorb punishment as he stalks opponents face-first around the cage, but on Saturday night even Leben proved to have some limitations in that department. After barely surviving the first round against Uriah Hall (8-4 MMA, 1-2 UFC), it was “no mas” time for Leben. That’s four losses in a row, and none of them (with the possible exception of his decision loss to Derek Brunson) particularly easy on the old brain. We don’t know yet if Leben is ready to call it quits, but it seems like he should. His style doesn’t lend itself to longevity, and the only thing waiting for him in the UFC’s middleweight division is more beatings. No one questions his heart, but here’s a situation where it’s better to be smart than tough.

4. So now we definitely know what not to do against Browne.

Twice now we’ve seen Travis Browne (16-1-1 MMA, 7-1-1 UFC) knock an opponent out cold with brutal downward elbows in response to a double-leg takedown attempt. If there was some question as to the legality of the blows when he did it to Gabriel Gonzaga, he removed that doubt against Josh Barnett (33-7 MMA, 5-2 UFC). All the elbows were perfectly legal — to the side of the head rather than the back, and just off the dreaded 12-to-6 angle that’s still in the rulebook for no good reason — and not a single one was wasted. Barnett seemed dazed by a knee going into the takedown attempt, and it only took a few more shots to put him all the way out.

What does it mean for Browne? Probably a date with his “sweetheart,” Fabricio Werdum (17-5 MMA, 5-2 UFC). Now there’s a heavyweight fight worth getting excited about while we wait for Cain Velasquez’s return. Whoever wins that one will have undoubtedly earned a title shot.

5. Brandao picked the wrong guy to threaten with knife-related violence.

After his one-sided TKO win over Diego Brandao (18-9 MMA, 4-2 UFC), featherweight contender Dustin Poirier (15-3 MMA, 7-2 UFC) revealed that while he was a little annoyed by Brandao missing weight badly, what really ticked him off was the Brazilian threatening to stab him in the neck before they went on stage. After seeing how the fight played out, it almost seems like giving Brandao a blade would have been the only way to make this one competitive.

There might be some guys in the UFC you can compete against with your body and mind in less than optimal condition, but Poirier ain’t one of them. True, he’s had a couple of setbacks of his own in the last couple years. He came up on the losing end in a great fight with Chan Sung Jung, and dropped a decision to Cub Swanson earlier this year. Still, if you want a featherweight worth keeping an eye on, the 24-year-old Poirier seems like he’s only getting better.

For complete coverage of UFC 168, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.

(Pictured: Chris Weidman and Anderson Silva)