In a recent post, I was rather dismissive of Vitor Belfort’s League of Legends: a special league that he proposed the UFC to create, where older Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters past their physical prime can face each other under a modified rule set. While Belfort’s idea is not likely to ever come to fruition, the fact remains that as long as there are aging fighters who are still willing to step in the cage and fans who still want to see them compete, these fighters will continue to fight – despite the fact that accumulating additional traumatic brain injury is very detrimental to their future health.

When the UFC was owned by Zuffa and Dana White wielded much greater power in the company than he does under the current WME-IMG ownership, there were a few select fighters who were offered an executive position with the UFC, essentially as a way to force them to retire from active competition while at the same time preventing them from lending their name value to a rival promotion. To my knowledge, only four fighters have been offered this deal: former UFC champions Chuck Liddell, Matt Hughes, Forrest Griffin, and Antonio ‘Big Nog’ Nogueira. When the UFC was sold, Hughes and Liddell were soon released from their jobs in a cost-cutting measure. Griffin and Nogueira remained on board (rumor has it that these two actually took their new jobs seriously, whereas Liddell and Hughes did not do much to earn their paycheck besides an occassional promotional appearance). It’s clear that WME-IMG has no intentions of paying former fighters a lucrative salary to prevent them from fighting. Just a few months after Matt Hughes’ UFC executive job has been terminated, he is already talking about potentially returning to MMA competition. There are talks of a Hughes vs Royce Gracie rematch taking place in Bellator, while another UFC veteran Mike Swick is campaigning to be the one to welcome Matt back to the combat arena.

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We’ve recently published an article related to the weight cutting issues in MMA, which have become a lot common since the introduction of the early weigh-in and the ban on intravenous (IV) re-hydration. I don’t want to continue beating a dead horse (where’s the referee to stop this beating?), but this issue deserves additional discussion in the light of the current MMA climate.  Fighters missing weight (or suffering health issues during the weight cut process which are severe enough to cancel the fight altogether) happens so often these days, that fans should be able to use the price per head sportsbook for placing bets on which fights will be cancelled in the 24 hours before the event. The regulatory bodies involved with the sport are well aware of these issues, and Andy Foster – executive officer of the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) – recently proposed a set of changes to address extreme weight cutting in MMA.

Foster’s proposal includes 10 key points, and I am not going to go over each one individually – you can read them all here, under “Agenda Item #15”. Most of the proposed points make sense, are feasible to implement without undue burden on promoters or fighters, and might actually make the sport safer for its participants, as well as reduce the number of disappointing last-minute fight cancellations. Whether these rules will actually be implemented is anybody’s guess, and the fact that some fighters will still find a way to bend or break the rules in attempt to gain a competitive advantage (even at the risk of their own health) is pretty much a given. Overall this seems like a very solid plan, which is unusual for something produced by a state athletic commission. However there are two points that I do want to address specifically, as they seem to be the biggest gaps in the otherwise well-thought out design:

• Additional weight classes. 165, 175, 195, 225 with the removal of 170. This places each weight class below 205 at 10 pound increments. Along with licensing by weight class and ringside physician certification, the new weight classes· are essential so that each individual athlete has more options to choose a class that is suitable for them. (Authority-Association of Boxing Commissions) – Please see attached letter from the ABC Rules Committee and letter to the ABC Medical Committee

The proposal states nothing about 155 or below, heavyweights, or women’s weight divisions – so I am assuming these will be left intact. If the leading MMA promotions as well as state and international commissions all decide to adopt the new weight classes, this will lead to a major redistribution of talent. Lightweight, welterweight, and even middleweight as of late, are some of the deepest divisions in the sport, and have the talent pool to support the redistribution of fighters who currently perform between 155 and 185 lbs into five viable divisions spanning from 155 to 195. For light-heavyweight and heavyweight divisions, however, this doesn’t look promising.

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As internet users, we’re all familiar with the abbreviation “LOL”. It may be one of the most ubiquitous terms we encounter daily during informal, text-based communication: internet forums & message boards, social media, SMS and various other real-time text messaging apps. LOL stands for “laughing out loud”; of course people rarely actually laugh out loud while typing away at their computer or a phone. At most, they might crack a grin. Nonetheless, LOL has become the most common way of expressing amusement in a text chat. It can also be used sarcastically – to shoot down a blog post, comment, statement, or dismiss an opinion that one finds so ludicrous that it doesn’t deserve a proper response or counter-argument. When you see a simple “lol” in response to something you’ve stated that wasn’t meant to be funny, the other person is laughing at you, not with you. A three-letter retort which indicates that you’re worthy of ridicule, no more and no less.

Now, the abbreviation LOL could come to mean something very different in the context of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA): League of Legends. If you haven’t heard, Vitor Belfort is making a pitch to the UFC brass to create some type of a “masters” division in the UFC, where aging legends of the sport can face each other under a modified rule set. At first, the idea appeared so absurd to me that the abbreviation LOL seemed very fitting. However, I’ll try to be a bit more open-minded and list a few reasons why I think this is a terrible idea.

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Most promotions are just dying for name fighters and especially like it when they can make fights between two fighters with recognizable names, even if these fights are not warranted based on the fighters current rankings, or the fighters are not in the same weight division (like Rampage’s, King Mo’s and countless others fights at Heavyweight), or the fighters are long past their prime (like Ken Shamrock’s last few fights).

The UFC is obviously in no such need for name fighters and fights as other promotions, as its roster is full of name fighters. Still, it seems baffling sometimes how they go out of their way not to book name fighters against one another, opting instead to put the over-the-hill name fighter against some up-and-coming prospect, or sometimes not even that.

One glaring example is Anderson Silva who was put against Derek Brunson not long ago. Another is BJ Penn’s fight against Yair Rodriguez. And I think now we have seen an especially good example of that: Last week Rashad Evans made his middleweight debut against Daniel Kelly. Rashad Evans didn’t fight for 2 years and then didn’t look good in his fights since his return. If his transition to middleweight wasn’t a successful one, this would probably be the end for Evans’ career.

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