This weekend there was a bout between two heavyweight prospects: Francis Ngannou and Bojan Mihajlovic. Ngannou had two fights in the UFC prior to this one, while for Mihajlovic this was his Octagon debut. Both were coming off of impressive win streaks outside of the Octagon, but as we know the real test is when they come to the UFC.
So basically, the UFC paired two unknowns with impressive win streaks who are in their initial stages of their UFC careers against each other. This is not the first time UFC has done this; they actually tend to do that quite often.
I don’t understand why they do that. Of course, these fights have the potential of being fun fights, but that’s true for many fights. There is a lot of reason why not to do that, in my opinion. I am not addressing specifically the Ngannou – Mihajlovic fight, but the recurring match making of two UFC newcomers on winning streaks.
First of all, these kind of fights don’t really tell us a whole lot, at the end of the day. I mean, those are two fighters who were successful outside of the UFC against mediocre or weak competition. They come to the UFC, where they can fight better competition, fighters that are known to be good or decent, at least. Instead the UFC pits them against one another. Well, what do we learn when one fighter who beat nobodys beats another fighter who beat nobodys? Not much. We don’t really know what any of them is worth. They might be the two best guys in the world, so the fact that one of them lost to the other guy who will be champion one day, doesn’t mean he is not good. And vice versa, they might both be really weak compared to UFC caliber competition, so the fact that one of them beat the other doesn’t mean they deserve to stay in the UFC.
So basically, we don’t get to learn much about either of them, except that one of them is better than the other. For that reason these fights are not very interesting. They are pretty much two nobodys fighting each other, who would remain pretty much nobodys after the fight too, since the winner wouldn’t have beaten someone fans know.
Secondly, both fighters are on win streaks, and sometimes we are talking about undefeated fighters. They come to the UFC, sometimes with a lot of hype surrounding them. They are the perfect potential future stars. Their fights can potentially be very exciting because as long as they will continue to win they will maintain this star power. People will want to see these unknowns with a long impressive win streak, who have just arrived at the UFC out of nowhere and had yet to lose since. So this win streak status has the potential of turning into star power status, which means more interest in the sport, more excitement (and of course, more money for the UFC).
Instead, by matching them against each other, the UFC forces one of them to end this win streak, since one of the them will definitely have his first loss in a long time after this fight. Why do that? And the guy who will win the fight will not even get so much more approval after the fight because people will just mark this as a win against another unknown. So basically, by setting up this kind of matches they cut short one prospect’s win streak, and not gain a lot for the other.
Lastly, as I said both fighters are on win streaks. Their confidence, which, as we all know, is super important for the success of fighters, is at an all time high. They feel unbeatable and they aim higher and higher. By matching them against each other, the UFC is forcing one of them not only to lose their winning streak but potentially that confidence as well, since they might feel they doesn’t deserve to be in the UFC after losing the first fight there against someone who is not a UFC veteran. While the winner of the fight wouldn’t get such a big boost to his confidence since he didn’t beat a UFC veteran, but just some nobody on his first fight in the UFC.
So by setting up these matches, the UFC forces one fighter to lose his winning streak and potential star status (at least for a while), potentially lose the confidence that win streak has given him (and therefore diminish the possibility of becoming successful again in the future) and not telling us a whole lot about where each of these fighters stand in the UFC.
Instead I think that the UFC should match each of them against fighters who already fought and lost in the UFC. It doesn’t mean they should be bad fighters. Good fighters lose too, to better competition. The point is that as long as a fighter keeps winning, it’s difficult to know how good he is, and he should get better and better opponents until he loses (or becomes champion). But when a fighter loses then there is a sense of where they stand in the overall picture.
Therefore, when a new, successful fighter who comes from outside of the UFC arrives at the UFC they should fight against a UFC fighter who had already lost and so we know where they stand, more or less. First of all, it would just be a more compelling fight. It wouldn’t be nobody #1 against nobody#2, but a new prospect fighting a veteran we all know. So it would be interesting to see how the newcomer fares against the veteran. And secondly, it would be more interesting because after the fight we would have some idea about where the newcomer stands in the overall UFC picture.
Moreover, if the two newcomers would both win their fights against UFC veterans, they would both keep their win streak and their confidence going forward into their next bouts. And if they lose (everybody loses eventually) it wouldn’t be that bad because they’d know they lost to a UFC caliber opponent.
So for all these reasons, I think it’s quite clear that setting up these newcomer against newcomer fights is a bad idea, and they should be set up to fight UFC veterans (preferably who are not on win streaks of their own).
That’s why I don’t like the talk about maybe making a fight between Ngannou and Derrick Lewis. While it will probably be a fun fight, it will cut one of their win streaks short. Why do that? There are plenty of other options which will not necessarily end with one winning streak getting cut short.
Personally, I’d like to see Ngannou against Damian Grabowski. Grabowski is ranked higher than Ngannou, so that’s a fight in the right direction, he is coming off a loss, so it wouldn’t be a fight that would necessarily stop short someone’s winning streak, and he is not a guy that would definitely try to take the fight to the ground (like Marcin Tybura or Gabriel Gonzaga, who are also viable choices), so that would give Ngannou the opportunity to continue showcasing his skills and building his star power.