Twitter Mailbag: GSP’s unanswered questions, UFC’s busy year ahead and more

We have a vast assortment of topics to discuss in this Thanksgiving edition of the Twitter Mailbag, but first, since this is the day when we mutter our gratitude of great, heaping platefuls of food before trampling our fellow man at the mall, let me take a second to say thanks to you, our readers.

Without you, this wouldn’t be a job. Which would mean that we’d all have to go out and find real jobs, which, trust me, wouldn’t be good for anybody. So thanks for reading (and watching and listening), Junkie Nation. Now put your bib on and let’s dig in here.

@benfowlkesMMA If it's not too late: If GSP retires, what questions are left unanswered? #tmb

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Evan Whitmore (@TheEvanWhitmore) November 25, 2013

Oh, just the usual ones. Could he have beaten Johny Hendricks in a rematch? Could he have beaten Anderson Silva in a superfight? What if he’d dropped down to lightweight and started over? And where exactly is his dark place in relation to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude? In other words, nothing too important. If GSP never fights again, he’s still the best welterweight who’s ever lived (you know, so far) and one of the most dominant champs in UFC history. Isn’t that enough?

@benfowlkesMMA only 2 of the men on TUF will fight at the finale. Should they have done women only season if they didn't need more men? #tmb

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Cole Grayston (@ColeGrayston) November 26, 2013

You don’t need to convince me that this should have been an all-female season of “TUF.” The women – both the ones competing and the ones coaching – were the real focus throughout the season. Seems like the UFC is most comfortable embracing the women’s division a little at a time, however, which was maybe a bad deal for the men on this season of the reality show, since they were doomed to be overlooked from the start. But then, should we really be surprised? For female fighters, this was “TUF 1.” This was a new beginning, and a chance to make a once impossible dream come true. For the men, it was just another “TUF” in a long, long line of them. When you think of it in those terms, seems like things panned out pretty much like you’d expect.

@benfowlkesMMA Nice defence of Askren. But let's say he lays on Condit in an main event. Would you be saying he's legit or a sport killer?

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Chris C (@christopher_kit) November 25, 2013

Oh, you mean how would I feel about Ben Askren if he took a fighter like Carlos Condit  down over and over again, working just enough ground-and-pound to keep him there but not quite enough to finish him? I guess I’d feel a lot like I did when GSP did more or less the same thing. Is it the most exciting kind of fight to watch? No. Is it a totally acceptable way to win a fight? Yes. So deal with it. If you don’t want Askren to take you down, stop him. If you can’t stop him, then you’d better get really good at sweeps and submissions off your back. If you can’t do that either, then it looks like you’re in for three rounds of having your head bounced off that mat. Welcome to mixed martial arts.

This infuriating argument that Askren is somehow too boring to be in the UFC no matter how good he might be, that’s the real sport-killer. It at least makes sense when it’s the UFC making that argument. The UFC is a business, so it is chiefly concerned with making a bunch of money. That’s why UFC President Dana White can, with a straight face, claim that Askren (who’s currently 12-0) needs more fights to prove himself, even though Brock Lesnar (who was 1-0 with a win over a guy who was 2-5) was totally ready for primetime. It’s an absurd position from a purely athletic standpoint. Only when you consider that one made the UFC a bunch of money and the other probably won’t does it start to make sense.

Again though, it only makes sense for the UFC’s bottom line, which shouldn’t be our concern. We are not here to make sure that the UFC’s super-rich owners become mega-rich. We are here because we like this sport, and in a sport the only thing that matters is how good you are at it. That’s one of the good things about sports. It’s not about who you know or what your dad does for a living. You can be a crappy person, a bad husband, a terrible father, an even worse citizen, but if you’re the best at your sport you’ll end up in a hall of fame somewhere when it’s all over. In that sense at least, it’s fair in the way few things are. So if we decide that Askren doesn’t even get a chance to compete in the top organization because we don’t like watching him or because he won’t bring in enough money for his employers, what have we just admitted about this sport? And, more importantly, will we really like where that leads?

@benfowlkesMMA What's your favorite method of turkey preparation? Is the deep fried version really that great? #tmb

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Daniel Downes (@dannyboydownes) November 25, 2013

Real talk, Mr. Downes? Forget turkey. Who wants to sit around all day eating some dry, stupid bird? I don’t care if it is a Thanksgiving tradition, I have never been about stuffing my face with turkey, only to then fall asleep in front of a Detroit Lions game. A couple years ago my wife made us a tenderloin wrapped entirely in bacon on Thanksgiving. I’ve never looked back. This year my family and I will be spending the holiday with my podcast co-host Chad Dundas and his family, where it is my understanding we will be dining on what Chad referred to as “a big-ass prime rib roast.” You think about that while you’re choking down bite after bite of a bird so dry it must be drenched in gravy to make it the least bit bit palatable.

@benfowlkesMMA Is the Nick Diaz strategy of "retiring" beneficial for fighters to get better pay/better opponents?

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  (@sonnysaggese) November 25, 2013

I’m not yet convinced that what Nick Diaz is doing is a strategy. Seems to me that he’s been talking about how much he hates MMA for a long time, and he seems to think we’re all crazy for insisting on seeing him fight “these hitters” several times a year. I can’t say I don’t at least sort of see his point. If he’s happy with the money he’s made and the things he’s accomplished, I say good for him for retiring on his own terms. At least for now. I’ll miss having him around, but hey, we still have Nate.

@benfowlkesMMA With 54 events announced next year, can you see the UFC's rapid development of content paving the way to a UFC TV network?

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MMA Musing (@MMAmusing) November 25, 2013

First of all, the 54-event promise has already been revised down to 40-something, but that’s still a lot. If the UFC intends to broadcast it all (and maybe it doesn’t?), you’re right to think that pretty soon it would be a sports network unto itself. A lot of people seemed to think that’s what the UFC was aiming for when its last deal with Spike TV ended. Instead, it opted to sign with FOX, where it gets a little of the network TV magic to rub off but no longer has the luxury of commandeering all 100 million homes of an established cable channel for full-day marathons of old fights. Instead, it has the newly created duo of FOX Sports 1 and 2, both of which are, let’s say, a work in progress.

The upside is, FOX Sports has all these legit-looking sports shows that regularly cover the UFC right alongside the major sports. So, theoretically at least, Joe P. Sportsfan tunes in to see Andy Roddick talking about hockey (or whatever it is they do over on FOX Sports 1) and then sees this human cockfighting stuff being treated just like the NFL or NBA. ‘Huh,’ thinks Joe P. ‘Maybe I’ll have to watch me some of that UFC.’ If it really works that way, that would be better than having your own channel, which only the existing hardcore fans would be likely to seek out. Even if it doesn’t, it’s not as if the big problem for MMA fans these days is that there aren’t enough fights on TV.

@benfowlkesMMA do you think Rory McDonald will fully recover from his defeat to Lawler and be considered a contender again?

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Haze (Red Mist) (@hazeredmist) November 25, 2013

I don’t see why not, assuming he learns the appropriate lessons from the loss. Rory MacDonald is only 24, and it’s not like Robbie Lawler steamrolled him at UFC 167. More than anything, that split-decision loss seems like a sign that the pendulum has swung too far for MacDonald in the wrong direction. His last loss was to Carlos Condit, who TKO’d him in the final seconds after MacDonald got overly aggressive in a fight he was winning. After that he started fighting more carefully, even cautiously in that snoozer of a win over Jake Ellenberger. He tried some of the same things against Lawler, who simply does not have the play-it-safe gene, and it cost him. No reason to think he can’t go back to the drawing board and start swinging in the other direction again.

@benfowlkesMMA do you think that essentially everything Hendricks has said post fight has tarnished his image? (I Still think he won though)

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bryan mills (@astroboy3000) November 25, 2013

Depends what you thought Johny Hendricks’ image was before that fight. It seems like people expect him to be this ‘aw shucks’ character who’s just happy to be on the TV box no matter what. Like he should be fine with taking it to the most dominant welterweight champ in UFC history and still coming up empty-handed. Call me crazy, but I think that would be a weird reaction. You don’t get as far as Hendricks has in sports like wrestling or fighting by being a really good loser. You get there by being a ruthless competitor. Are we really surprised that a man who felt (along with most of the MMA community) that he’d just been cheated out of a UFC championship – not to mention all the honors, privileges and monies that go along with it – was not terribly gracious in the immediate aftermath? Because I can forgive that. Dude wants that belt. If he said anything different, we’d all know he was lying.

Should @ufc should implement a long term savings & insurance plan for fighters with X amount of fights in the promotion? @benfowlkesMMA #tmb

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Ryan 2P (@MickstaDooDoo) November 25, 2013

That’s not a bad idea, even if it makes you wonder whether that would just give the UFC an incentive to release certain fighters right before they hit that X number of fights, but it’s also not an idea I can see the UFC adopting on its own. The NFL, which recently expanded the health insurance options for players after they retire, had to go through a lengthy and difficult negotiating process with the players association first. No organization exists that could engage in that sort of advocacy for MMA fighters, so why would the UFC voluntarily do what other sports organizations had to be forced to do?

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