Twitter Mailbag: Does Lyoto Machida face do-or-die situation vs. Eryk Anders in Brazil?

Should “The Dragon” retire to his lair if he can’t come up with a win at UFC Fight Night 125? Will “DC’s” legacy always be tied to the one fighter he couldn’t beat, even if he becomes UFC heavyweight champ? And what can the UFC do to lure back the fading hardcore fans?

All that and more in this week’s Twitter Mailbag. To ask a question of your own, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

It’s tricky to tie that decision to the result of any single fight. It’s not like Eryk Anders sucks and therefore anyone who can’t beat “Ya Boi” should immediately consider retirement. Plus, we all know there are plenty of ways to be the better fighter and still lose, just like there are ways to win without necessarily proving that you’ve still got plenty of great years left.

What Lyoto Machida might want to consider, however, is what kind of match-ups he might be looking at if he continues to hang around in the UFC. This pairing feels like the classic fight promoter move of letting the young talent grow by feasting on the carcasses of the old. And if that’s how the UFC thinks of you at this point, you have to think that nothing good is in your near future.

I see your point, but maybe the better analogy is Matt Hughes and Georges St-Pierre.

Because see, before Hughes was supplanted by St-Pierre on the list of welterweight greats, then people did mention his two defeats to Dennis Hallman, mostly because they accounted for 50 percent of his total career losses. It was only later, when St-Pierre took two out of three against him and Hughes was no longer the dominant champ, that the other stuff faded into obscure trivia.

But the dynamic between Daniel Cormier and Jon Jones is more complex, and for a whole bunch of reasons. If Cormier can go up in weight and beat a historically dominant UFC heavyweight champion like Stipe Miocic, that has to make him one of the greatest fighters of all time. I’m just not sure it makes him the greatest, at least as long as he’s still 0-2 against Jones.

I don’t know about “should” go the other way, but it’s true that Brazilians are underdogs in the last three bouts of the night. It’s worth noting that the underdog status ranges from mild (Pedro Munhoz is only a +130 dog against John Dodson) to wild (Valentina Shevchenko is as high as a 10-1 favorite to beat Priscila Cachoeira), with the main event somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

But maybe this isn’t so unusual. Remember the last time the UFC went to Brazil for UFC Fight Night 119 in October? Machida was the headliner there, too. And he got crushed by Derek Brunson in the first round.

Matter of fact, the top three bouts in that one ended in losses for two of the three Brazilians involved. And the time before that saw Jose Aldo thumped by Max Holloway in the main event of UFC 212.

Point is, while we all know that Brazilian fans get behind their fighters, I doubt that means that they want to see nothing but pro-Brazilian squash matches. They want competitive fights featuring names they care about, just like other fight fans. And when you do that, sometimes it’s not going to go your way – especially when many of your country’s star fighters are on the down slope of their careers.

One possibility that I’m not even sure I totally believe? Maybe the UFC thinks it’ll be harder for FOX to criticize the sinking ratings if it tanks on purpose. In other words, if you throw your best stuff out there and the viewership numbers aren’t outstanding as a result, then that really hurts your negotiating position, since you tried your best and still failed. If, on the other hand, you don’t try at all …

But really, the actual answer is probably more nuanced and multi-faceted. Clearly, the UFC isn’t giving away any pay-per-view stars on network TV, especially now, when those stars are so hard to come by. On the other side, FOX isn’t exactly straining any muscles trying to promote these shows.

Both sides seem to have accepted low ratings as the reality of the moment. My guess is neither side will try too hard to break that pattern as long as the UFC’s future on TV is still undecided.

It at least tells us that FOX Sports is still willing to pay big bucks for more live sports content, since it’s paying a reported $650 million per year for those NFL TV rights. With that comes 11 games per season, and even if those games are usually some of the worst pro football on TV (making players go out there on four days rest still smacks of reckless greed on the NFL’s part), they still draw easily four times as many viewers as UFC on FOX events even on their worst weeks.

But the NFL and the UFC offer very different things. The UFC isn’t going to draw 10 million viewers on a regular old weeknight, but it does provide a ton of overall content that FOX Sports can use to fill its schedule.

Is that worth the huge price increase that the UFC is reportedly seeking? Probably not on its own. That’s why whoever signs the next TV rights deal with the UFC is likely going to want a little more say in what goes where.

One of my favorite things we ever did back in the golden age of Cage Potato was a list of the worst excuses in MMA history. I remember when we were putting that one together (shoutout to Old Dad Ben Goldstein), how it really drove home the fact that post-loss excuses are kind of a fixture in the fight game.

It makes sense, when you think about it. You’re out there all alone. There’s so much that can go wrong. And you spend so much more time preparing than you do actually competing, with your career defined by shockingly few actual competitions, especially when compared with other pro sports.

If it doesn’t go your way, you have to tell yourself something. And if you want to feel mentally strong enough to step in that cage again some day, admitting that the other person was just better and will always be better probably doesn’t help.

That said, what Joanna Jedrzejczyk’s post-defeat excuse and denial tour reminds us is that, just because you think it? That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to say it out loud to a bunch of reporters.

I hear this from a lot of fans lately, people who used to never miss an event now only feel compelled to tune in for the really special ones.

Some of it, I suspect, is an oversaturation issue. The UFC created so many events of wildly varying quality that it practically forces you to pick and choose among them. And once your fans get accustomed to skipping some of your shows, it only gets easier to skip more of them, which results in a gradual drift away from that former total devotion.

It doesn’t help that UFC events can be a pain to watch sometimes. If you’re not paying $60 (oops, make that $65 now …) for a pay-per-view event, you can count on sitting through hours and hours of commercials. And if you’re on the East Coast – or, god help you, overseas – it’s a choice between staying up late to see the good stuff or else giving yourself over to the power of DVR technology.

One of the UFC’s greatest assets over the years has been the fervent, almost evangelical passion of its fans. That’s what allowed the UFC to jump from one cable channel to the next (Spike, Versus, FS1) without ever worrying about whether fans would follow. People who like this sport? They tend to absolutely love it.

But it’s possible to take that loyalty for granted. It’s possible to ask for too much while giving too little. If the UFC wants to win some of those hardcores back, it might help to see them more as a resource to be cultivated – not drained of every last cent of its value.

I wondered that myself recently, especially after Ronda Rousey got a little needlessly dramatic about it in an interview with ESPN. Maybe that was genuine. Maybe it was an attempt to further develop a character trait that her pro wrestling persona will hinge on.

Either way, it reminded me of something Chuck Klosterman once wrote regarding the various stories of Michael Jordan’s famous competitive drive:

Jordan’s diabolical competitiveness makes him more admirable, but this isn’t the case for most humans. Have you ever played golf with someone who sliced a drive and threw his club into a tree? If so, I suspect you did not find yourself thinking, “Man, I really respect Andy. He really wants this.” Have you ever been on a softball team with a dude who muttered to himself whenever he made an error and screamed at teammates if they happened to miss a cut-off man? Did you find this inspiring? Do you miss having beers with that guy? In fact, think about the most competitive, cutthroat, go-for-the-jugular person who currently works in your office. In all likelihood, this is someone you either (a) kind of hate, or (b) find embarrassing. A noncompetitive person can’t reasonably succeed, but a hypercompetitive person looks like a buffoon to everyone who’s reasonable.

Whether it’s real or not, at some point it just seems juvenile. Learning how to deal with defeat doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t mean you’re insufficiently committed to winning. It just means you’re an adult.

When I think about some of my favorite post-fight moments in this sport, a lot of them center on the losing fighter. Dominick Cruz offering an extremely detailed analysis of what Cody Garbrandt did to beat him. Miesha Tate answering questions about her UFC 200 loss with an ice pack on her nose. Even Conor McGregor showing up after his loss to Nate Diaz to calmly explain that defeat is a part of the game, not the end of it.

It’s the loser whose character is really revealed in the aftermath. Anyone can look cool winning.

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