What now, UFC flyweights?

You know a couple things for sure when you sit down to write a column about the UFC’s flyweight division. For starters, you know not many people will read it. (Not unless you can figure out a way to get Conor McGregor’s name in the headline, which, if you tried hard enough, you probably could.)

You also know that, sooner or later, you’re going to get around to discussing the same old questions. Such as, is UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson the best, least appreciated fighter on the planet? Also, is the 125-pound class itself a promotional dead end, some specialized genre appreciated by the hardcores and the fighting aficionados, but willfully ignored by everyone else?

And then there’s the big question: What does all that mean, and what are we supposed to do about it?

The UFC, to its credit, has tried just about everything. It’s courted the purists and the masses. It’s peddled both dominance and competitive rivalries. It’s sold us on Johnson as the pound-for-pound best (even if it also reserved the right to slap that label on someone else a few weeks later). It geared an entire season of a reality show around producing a champion of champions for the big (little) champ to fight.

And, at least inside the cage, it worked. Johnson’s (25-2-1 MMA, 13-1-1 UFC) title defense against “Ultimate Fighter” winner Tim Elliott (13-7-1 MMA, 2-5 UFC) at Saturday night’s TUF 24 Finale in Las Vegas was more competitive and more fun than we had any right to expect. Elliot threw some new wrinkles at the champ. Johnson was actually forced to search for answers to a few unexpected questions.

In the end the favorite won and the underdog lost, though he got an atta-boy and a pat on the back on his way out the door. The order was maintained, though threatened just enough to give you an appreciation for how it got that way in the first place. All in all, a fine way to spend a Saturday night, and that was after a breathless three-round sprint from Joseph Benavidez (25-4 MMA, 12-2 UFC) and Henry Cejudo (10-2 MMA, 4-2 UFC).

Add in the main-card opener between Brandon Moreno (13-3 MMA, 2-0 UFC) and Ryan Benoit (9-5 MMA, 2-3 UFC), and you have yourself a compelling argument for the UFC’s flyweights. Then you see that the UFC brass apparently didn’t think enough of their performances to award any of them with a post-fight “performance” bonus, and you can’t help but wonder if the company isn’t somehow hoping that its fans will appreciate en masse something that the UFC doesn’t appreciate itself.

On one hand, you don’t want to read too much into that. Especially on a fight card like this, where payouts are low and need is high, every fighter with a finish or a halfway decent performance is lobbying for that $50,000 bonus as soon as the mic flashes in front of his or her face. Someone’s got to go home disappointed.

Then again, when you tell us that the “Fight of the Night” was the one where two tiring light heavyweights put down their hands and flung themselves in the general direction of one another’s faces, and not any of the three flyweight fights where the violence stayed frantic and precise from the first minute to the last, you’re telling us something.

You’re telling us what you want, or what you think we want, or maybe just what you want the fighters to think we all want. And little guys fighting hard and smart and fast apparently isn’t it.

There’s an impulse to call that the problem, when really it may be a symptom. And, depending on your perspective, it may not be a problem at all. It might just be another one of life’s inevitable inequities, where skilled 125-pound men get a fraction of the credit given to lumbering heavyweights with power so abundant it comes sloshing out like water from a full bucket as they stagger toward one another.

And maybe that’s fine. I mean, it’s probably pretty annoying if you’re one of the flyweights. You keep giving us martial arts excellence. We keep wondering why, if you’re all so good, everyone’s usually still conscious at the end. We’re the Discovery Channel viewers who couldn’t care less about the cathedrals built by ants, and yet never miss a Shark Week.

You could see how that might get depressing, but it also doesn’t seem like anything that’s about to change any time soon. If you’re holding it down in the UFC’s littlest weight class, you might need to make your peace with that.

Either that, or figure out a new plan of attack. The UFC would probably be eager to hear it. You know it’s already tried everything else.

For more on The Ultimate Fighter 24 Finale, check out the UFC Events section of the site.