Trading Shots: Is a 'Legends League' a good idea or a horrible one?

In this week’s Trading Shots, is a “Legends League” for aging fighters a terrible idea, or one whose time has finally come? MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes and retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes discuss.

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Fowlkes: Danny, I’m starting to think that Vitor Belfort isn’t kidding about this “Legends League” idea. “The Young Dinosaur” suffered a TKO loss to Kelvin Gastelum in Saturday night’s UFC Fight Night 106 headliner, and then immediately started talking like a man who was headed for retirement soon – or maybe not.

See, if the UFC likes his suggestion to create a modified rules format for old – sorry, I mean legendary – fighters, then he might stick around.

“With that, you’d be able to see a little more of Vitor Belfort,” he said.

I’m torn here. On one hand, Belfort has been in the sport for as long as most of us have been watching it. If you tell me we’ve seen the last of him, that’s not exactly horrible news. I feel like we’ve had our fill, and maybe so has he.

But then I look at the success Bellator is having with its own unofficial legends league (I assume we’re not calling it “League of Legends” just to avoid copyright issues), and I have to admit there’s a market for this.

Would you actually want to watch old guys doing the MMA version of a seniors tour? Is there a way to tweak the rules so that they’re less of a danger to themselves and others? Or should we continue to let nature take its course in the form of young fighters mauling older ones right into retirement?

Downes: First off, if you’d been paying attention to the real fastest growing sport in the world – eSports – you’d already know what’s up in the existing “League of Legends.” You thought Belfort looked out of his element? You should have seen Misfits flop around as H2K gaming took care of business in Berlin on Saturday.

I agree that there is a market for Belfort’s legends league, but sometimes the invisible hand is wrong. This isn’t like the Seniors Tour in the PGA, where guys who are already millionaires have to worry about pulling a hamstring. Even if you modified the rules (more on that in a minute), you’re still having fighters with a ton of miles on them going out there and receiving beatdowns. Ignoring the health risk associated with that, this legends league will only depress and hold back the current MMA landscape.

First off, what do you think promoters are going to pay for a legends fight? At UFC 204, Belfort reportedly received $300,000. That was to fight for three five-minute rounds. You think if they shorten the rounds and make it “old guy” friendly that he’ll receive the same amount? All this does is delay the inevitable. Instead of making MMA viable for the current lifespan of an athlete, we extend the retirement age and make the transition from fighter to retired fighter even more difficult.

I’m not usually a fan of the slippery slope argument, but I think it applies to rules changes here. If we modify the rules for legends (whether it be different gloves, round durations, whatever), then be prepared for a whole lot of other gimmick matches to come through. Maybe we’ll have a Taipei Deathmatch or a Flag on a Pole Match between American and Brazilian fighters. Better yet, once Conor McGregor vs. Floyd Mayweather is signed, we can have a set of hybrid rules made up. I bet there’s a market for that!

It’s important for us to remember why Belfort is advocating for this. It’s because his body can’t hold up anymore. Isn’t that a sign? Nostalgia is a powerful force. It’s why we have a “Full House” spinoff and why you want to see an MMA Legends League. But nostalgia is also the reason why you think you can still pull off your leather jacket from high school, and clearly that’s a bad idea.

Isn’t it in everyone’s best interest to leave well enough alone? We should find a way to help the aging stars of MMA past, but having them compete in MMA Lite isn’t the answer.

Fowlkes: It’s interesting to me that you see this legends league idea as a thing meant to “help” aging fighters, like it’s all a form of fighter welfare. I mean, yes, they get some money out of the deal, and doubtless that’s a big part of Belfort’s calculation as he’s looking at a future with far fewer fight-night paychecks in it.

But the pitch here isn’t that the UFC should create this thing to give the old guys something to do – it’s that people would actually watch it, which I think is true. The question is whether that is, in itself, a good enough reason to do it.

The modified rules don’t bother me. The rules exist to serve the sport, not the other way around, and I think we can experiment with them without ruining what we enjoy about MMA. Plus, if we end up not liking that in practice, then people will stop watching and promoters will axe it and we can go back to the old way, much to the delight of purists like yourself.

The physical costs, however? That’s trickier. If we’re monkeying with the rules so that old dudes can continue trading brain damage for profit and entertainment, things could get weird. Lots of guys who were knocked into retirement by the natural forces of the sport might consider trying to cobble together a few more years worth of paydays, which could increase the total human damage resulting from this sport.

Would that help the old guys? They’d get a little more money, but no real change in security or benefits (unless we also made that one of the modified rules). We’d get the questionable pleasure of watching our old favorites in a slightly less dangerous format, which I guess is supposed to make us feel less guilty about it.

I’d like to say that if it turned out to be a bad thing, we’d just stop doing it. My concern is that we wouldn’t know how bad it was until after we insisted on finding out for ourselves.

Downes: As the big homie Benjamin Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” I know you see this as some big, fun, trial-and-error experiment, but that’s irresponsible. Let’s take aging fighters, modify the rules and find a way to get regulatory on board just to “see what happens.”

We should be figuring out how to help aging fighters (whether they’re legends or not) to transition from the sport or be in a place to walk away responsibly. We shouldn’t be finding new ways to squeeze a few more fights out of them.

If you’re angling for another Royce Gracie vs. Ken Shamrock fight, there’s already an avenue for that to happen. Matchmakers in any of the organizations that already exist could make that happen. The only reason to create a legends league is to get those fighters in the ring for a cheaper price.

The UFC tried to give Ferguson less money to fight Michael Johnson because Khabib Nurmagamedov pulled out. You don’t think other promoters would use a modified rule set to argue that they should pay fighters less money?

There’s also an argument to make that bastardizing the sport to rationalize putting some former champs in the cage would have far-reaching negative effects. The proliferation of organizations, weight classes and titles ultimately hurt boxing. This would be a step down the same road.

We can have a legends league, a juniors league, a junior legends league and one for former pro wrestlers who want to get in on the game. Then each of them can have a champion and interim champion. There’s always a market for title fights, Ben!

I understand the appeal. The number of names/stars in MMA feels like it’s decreasing. The prospect of Belfort getting back into the octagon against another star of yesteryear seems more interesting than a main event fight between Jimi Manuwa and Corey Anderson.

At the end of the day, though, both fighters and fans have to learn to leave the past in the past. Nostalgia and this wistfulness for the MMA of yesteryear is backward looking and unhelpful. Even if you #wouldwatch.

For more on UFC Fight Night 106, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who has also written for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.