Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on Condit, Cerrone, Bellator's pay-per-view, more

This week’s Twitter Mailbag comes sandwiched between UFC Fight Night 27 and UFC 164, so one problem we don’t have is a lack of potential topics.

Between Carlos Condit‘s TKO win over Martin Kampmann and the looming UFC lightweight title showdown between Benson Henderson and Anthony Pettis, there’s never been a better time to discuss entrance music. Wait, what?

Don’t think. Just go with it. Also direct a question of your own to @BenFowlkesMMA.

@benfowlkesMMA so, great win by Condit. Who’s next for him?

— Seán Sheehan (@SeanSheehanBA) August 28, 2013

Great win indeed, soothsayer. And one that makes you glad the UFC decided to make main event bouts into five-rounders. A few years ago we’d have called it good and gone to the judges’ scorecards after three, and look what we would have missed. For instance, we wouldn’t have seen just how well Carlos Condit can adapt on the fly. We also wouldn’t have witnessed his nose for the finish. Condit clearly had Kampmann hurt down the stretch, and he managed to press his advantage without freaking out in search of a fight-ending blow. Nice work by the NBK. So yes, what next?

The good news at welterweight is that, everywhere but at the very top, it’s wide open. You could match Condit up against the surging Matt Brown, or against the winner of the Robbie Lawler vs. Rory MacDonald bout. Hell, you could give him the loser of that fight and I’d still break into a TV store just to watch it. That’s a luxury the UFC has at welterweight right now. Trouble is, how does he make his case for a title shot as long as Georges St-Pierre is still holding the strap? It would take something special, maybe a couple something specials. It might even be easier for him to hold on and wait for GSP to seek his employment elsewhere. Then again, a fella waiting for an MMA fighter’s acting career to take off could find himself waiting a very long time.

@benfowlkesMMA Should Dana White publicly criticize UFC fighters’ game plans? It strikes me as pretty tasteless, not sure what it adds #TMB

— Ryan Walton (@RyanWaltonMPH) August 29, 2013

Ideally, no, UFC president Dana White should probably not jump on Twitter just so he can criticize the strategy of one of his fighters who came up short in a bloody, gutsy main event. He probably also shouldn’t tweet things like “ur an idiot” to UFC fans who make statements he disagrees with. But he did and he will and there’s probably not a whole lot that will change any of that. At least it proves he’s writing his own tweets. Still, I think it’s another example of White demonstrating the virtues of his faults, or vice versa. One of the things many fight fans like about White is how passionate he is about this sport. You listen to him talk (or yell), and it sounds a lot more like what you’d expect to hear from the guy on the next barstool at Buffalo Wild Wings than some robotic CEO who has to check with his lawyers before he can admit that he ate breakfast this morning. That’s a good thing in a lot of ways. The downside is, he sometimes fires off his opinions with the same forethought as the guy on the barstool, except that people actually listen to him. Some of those people might be his own fighters. And some of those fighters might feel understandably pissed if they happened to be getting their faces stitched up while hearing about how their boss would have totally fought that fight differently, bro.

@benfowlkesMMA Is Donald Cerrone going to slowly become one of those guys who was great in another promotion, but not so much in the UFC?

— Evan Destructo (@roarkyporky) August 29, 2013

What, no credit for Rafael dos Anjos? Granted, with a couple more rounds to work, Donald Cerrone might have gotten to him, but for a little more than 10 minutes, dos Anjos did a great job of executing a smart game plan against Cerrone. Does that make “Cowboy” a UFC bust? Not even close. If anything, he’s already been better in the UFC than he ever was in the WEC, where he had several chances to capture the belt and came away empty-handed each time. He started off with a four-fight win streak in the UFC, though never won more than two straight in the WEC. He’s also faced – and mostly beaten – better fighters in the UFC. Maybe (probably) he’ll never be a UFC champion, but he’s still an exciting fighter who can knock your head off your shoulders if you aren’t careful. On Wednesday night he just happened to run up against a solid opponent who knew when and how to engage, and when to stay away.

@benfowlkesMMA Legend match, 3 Title fights for Bellator PPV? What the monkey is Spike TV going to do the following months for ratings? #tmb

— Luke Whitaker (@LukeSmalls47) August 27, 2013

That’s a good point that several people brought up in this round of Twitter queries, and one I admit I hadn’t really considered. If Bellator throws its best champs and its biggest draws on this one pay-per-view – which, you have to think, is the only way this thing has even the faintest hope of putting up solid numbers – the well is going to be pretty dry for the next couple months. At the same time, not doing that would be like keeping your best pitchers in the bullpen while your team gives up an insurmountable lead in the first few innings. If you’re Bellator, what are you saving it for? Sure, you may weaken the next few months of ratings, but a) the TV people own a majority stake in the company, so presumably they’ll stick it out, and b) ratings (not to mention profits) might plummet anyway if you bomb on pay-per-view. This is a gamble to begin with. Might as well go at it with the strongest hand you can muster.

@benfowlkesMMA do u think Pettis/Henderson II goes the distance? is that answer influenced at all by who u think may win?

— Jack Palmeri, Esq. (@JackPalmeri) August 28, 2013

Yes to the first question, no to the second. If you forced me to pick right now, I’d take Anthony Pettis via decision. I think it’s going to be a close one either way though, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see Benson Henderson squeak out another one on the scorecards. I would, however, be shocked to see Henderson finish it. I’d be less surprised if Pettis put Henderson away, but I still can’t say I see it happening. I know we’ve all gotten caught up in Pettis’ flashy strikes and cage-jumping antics, but let’s not forget that even the “Showtime kick” was not a fight-ender. It just seems that way because that’s where the highlight ends, and recently we’ve been seeing that highlight more than we’ve seen our loved ones.

@benfowlkesMMA Has there ever been a better time than now for a 195lbs belt? #TMB

— Billy Young (@dynamiteBdog) August 28, 2013

Does never count as a time? Because that would be my preference for when we’d see a 195-pound division. Look, I realize stuff like this is fun to talk and hypothesize about, but you have to appreciate what adding a new weight class does to an organization like the UFC. It’s not just a matter of yanking another belt out of the supply closet. As UFC matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby pointed out when I interviewed them earlier this summer, there are unforeseen costs and unintended consequences to something like that.

For starters, more weight classes mean fewer fighters in each weight class, which means fewer options for potential matchups and more hiring and firing.

“If you only have two weight classes and you have an injury, half the roster could potentially be a replacement,” Silva said. “The more you divide up that pie, the much smaller [the replacement pool] gets. When we had five weight classes, we had about 40 guys in each weight class. That’s a nice, deep weight class. I don’t have to do many rematches, I can move guys around more. But once you expand to seven, eight weight classes, now you chop down to 28 class in each class. Now you have to cut people more. You’ve created more opportunity for guys of different sizes to get in, but you make it tougher to stay in a competitive weight class. You lose a couple times, you’ve got to go.”

Increasing the number of weight classes also makes it harder to showcase up-and-comers in any division, since there are only so fights per card and only so much TV time to show them all.

“You can give me 20 fights a show, but if only a certain amount of them are shown on TV, how do I make you care about guys you didn’t see fight?” Silva said. “A lot of these guys, because they’re not a name, get stuck in prelims. But how do they become a name if they’re always on the prelims?”

This is also something we have to think about with the women’s division. Right now, the UFC only has the women’s 135-pound class. There’s a lot of talent in the 125- and 115-pound women’s divisions, but adding them now might stretch the UFC roster to a breaking point. Of course, when we’re just sitting around talking about theoretical possibilities – as we do when we talk about a 195-pound class – we don’t think or care about stuff like that. We don’t have to, because it’s not our job.

@benfowlkesMMA who cares if we don’t get the biggst names on fn cards. Dont they serve xlnt purpose of siftin thru bottom halves of divs?

— John Oakes (@TheGeografist) August 28, 2013

That’s one potential purpose these Wednesday night fight cards can serve. They also give the UFC an opportunity to relentlessly hype upcoming pay-per-view cards, and give FOX Sports 1 some much-needed content that people will actually want to see live (no offense to Regis Philbin, but I don’t think too many people are canceling their plans and staying home to see him riff on sports with “celebrities”). A pretty solid UFC card, however, offered up for free in the middle of the week? Even though it conflicts with my Wednesday night jiu-jitsu, I can’t complain. It’s a fine way to break up the work week with a little bit of beautiful violence.

But as for your question as to “who cares” about the weaker lineups for these Fight Night events, I’d say…maybe the people who are showing up to see the fights in person? When I talked to Chris Lytle for my story on his rematch with Matt Serra at the UFC’s first Indianapolis fight card, he mentioned that he thought the appeal of a UFC event in a place like Indy was its central location among other big Midwestern cities.

“A lot of people made the trip on a Saturday night,” Lytle said. “I’ll be interested to see if they come on a Wednesday.”

That could be an issue anywhere the UFC goes, especially if it continues to charge premium prices for mid-week fight cards that, almost by definition, feature less firepower than the Saturday night pay-per-views.

@benfowlkesMMA do you think Ryan Couture gets treated unfairly, both negatively and positively, because of who his dad is?

— Callum Leslie (@Callum_Leslie) August 28, 2013

Yes, and there’s really no way around it. If not for the Couture name, I doubt as many people would be interested in a 6-2 fighter who’s 0-1 in the UFC. But with the Couture name comes expectations, and maybe even unnecessary headaches like this one. Ryan Couture’s management and his father both seem to feel like he’s being treated unfairly because of his last name (or, more specifically, because of his father’s relationship with the UFC). The UFC would like to claim that it’s treating him like any other fighter, but the mere fact that he can’t have his father in his corner makes that seem obviously untrue. It’d be a shame if his father’s history with Dana White torpedoed Couture’s chances in the UFC. At the same time, if it’s going to be a bitter struggle over sponsor logos and cornermen every time he fights, maybe he’d be happier and better off over in Bellator.

@benfowlkesMMA Is it just me, or do Rampage and Tito spend more time complaining about their former boss than they do promoting their fight?

— J.D. Wells (@JD_Wells_) August 28, 2013

It’s not just you. It does seem like, no matter where they go or what they do, Tito Ortiz and Quentin “Rampage” Jackson are going to end up talking about the UFC, which in turn means they’ll end up talking about UFC president Dana White. It’s not entirely their fault. At this point, media outlets know that line of questioning will result in good content. I mean, just this week Ortiz went on SI.com’s “SI Now” and compared fighting in the UFC to slavery. Seriously, he really did that. And, if he’s going to do stuff like that, why wouldn’t you ask him about it at every opportunity? Who knows what will come out of his mouth next?!

The question is, does playing up a rivalry with the UFC detract from the promotion of Ortiz’s Bellator bout, or add to it? While his slavery remark was absurd even by Tito standards, it does serve to keep Ortiz in the news. Here we are talking about it, which means we also end up talking about his pretty meaningless bout with Jackson whether we want to or not. There’s some value in that brand of publicity. I’m just not sure how much, or whether it will result in pay-per-view buys come November.

@benfowlkesMMA How is walkout music chosen? Do fighters have full control over the song or does the UFC “urge” something specific? #TMB

— Suzanne Davis (@SoozieCuzie) August 29, 2013

If the UFC was in the habit of urging strongly for or against certain music choices, I’d like to think that Chael Sonnen would have some better tunes by now. And don’t even get me started on the handful of fighters who love nothing more than walking to the cage while some junior high school slow dance music puts the crowd to sleep. As long as we’re on the subject, I also hate that Three 6 Mafia song that Kampmann used. You know the one. I believe it’s called “It’s a Fight.” You’ll know when you hear it because it’s the one that repeats “it’s a fight, it’s a fight” over and over and over again. Just seems a little too on-the-nose to me. Dude, we know it’s a fight. That’s why we’re all here. There is literally no one within earshot who does not already know that it’s a fight. Playing that before an actual fight is like listening to a song about sex while you have sex. Just, why?

Back to your question, though. I’ve heard from a few fighters here and there who say the UFC has nixed certain choices, and even occasionally chosen something new for them, but it’s relatively rare. For the most part, fighters get their way. It’s only when their way is deemed too stupid or insufferable or just plain weird that the UFC steps in. The fact that we hear so many bad songs during UFC walkouts should tell us exactly how much thought and oversight is typically involved.

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.