—The UFC has a plan and they’re sticking to it. So-called “money” fights are the top priority, entertainment is No. 2 and battles of actual merit come in a distinct third.
Rarely do the priorities align. However, three upcoming fights have it all because the UFC is trying to recreate Conor McGregor’s secret sauce while subtracting the Irishman from the equation. The UFC is doing this by replicating the context from McGregor’s last cage fight. At UFC 205, way back in 2016, McGregor was merely the featherweight champion stepping up a weight class to take on lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez. McGregor won and thus became the first man in UFC history to hold belts in two different weight classes at the same time. If all goes according to plan for the UFC, 2018 could see three more fighters match McGregor’s unprecedented achievement.
The first champ vs. champ fight is already booked. Having both won in convincing fashion at UFC 220 in January, heavyweight GOAT Stipe Miocic will take on perpetually-underrated light heavyweight king Daniel Cormier on July 6 as the culminating bout of International Fight Week, the UFC’s annual celebration of itself. The battle of titans makes sense on every level. Miocic has defended his title a record three times and doesn’t have any serious challengers in his division after he dispatched man-mountain Francis Ngannou. Miocic’s only real weakness is his lack of a motor mouth — which is where Cormier comes in. The 205-pounder, who competed at heavyweight earlier in his career, is a pro’s pro at press conferences and is also lacking in deserving challengers seeing as Jon Jones is in drug test limbo and Alexander Gustafsson is recovering from shoulder surgery.
The two other champion vs. champion fights aren’t official, but will probably be made because money talks and good storylines are even better.
Women’s featherweight champion Cris “Cyborg” Justino is the most terrifying woman in the world and literally has nobody to fight in her division because it doesn’t actually exist. The situation is so dire that tomato cans from other fight promotions are now routinely being brought in to fight Cyborg. The latest is Yana Kunitskaya, the former bantamweight champion in the all-female Invicta FC. Kunitskaya, who is 2-2 with one no contest in her last five fights, will fight Cyborg at UFC 222 on March 3. The fight got thrown together on Wednesday night in order to save the card because Max Holloway had to pull out of his featherweight title defense against Frankie Edgar due to injury. Cyborg is not expected to take much damage in her fight against Kunitskaya and should be ready to fight again within weeks.
Amanda Nunes, meanwhile, is in a similar position to Miocic and Cormier. On top of basically retiring both Miesha Tate and Ronda Rousey, Nunes has already beat No. 1 contender Valentina Shevchenko twice while Holly Holm and Julianna Pena, who occupy the second and third slots respectively, are both coming off losses. Someone needs to rise up to challenge Nunes’ crown, but that’s not going to happen for a while so a fight with Justino is the next best option. It’ll probably go down at UFC 224 in May.
Finally, there’s the best fight of the champ-against-champ bunch — at least when it comes to straight up technical quality. To say that Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world does not give justice to how dominant he is. Johnson’s 11 title defenses is the most in history. He has not lost since moving to 125 pounds, and makes his opponents look silly with just how easily he beats them. In his last fight, against Ray Borg, Johnson ended the fight with a suplex to jumping armbar submission that was straight out of a video game.
Given just how good Johnson is, the fight world has been yearning to see him tested against another world-class fighter. Take a step forward TJ Dillashaw. The bantamweight belt-holder is a controversial figure in a sport known for controversial figures. Dillashaw left Team Alpha Male, one of the best camps in the sport, under controversial circumstances but, for whatever reason, his former training partner Cody Garbrandt turned the breakup into a huge storyline for their fight at UFC 217. Dillashaw came out looking like the bad guy, but flipped the script when he landed a gorgeous second-round head kick which lead directly into a knockout.
The win makes Dillashaw 8-1 in the past four years with his only loss being an extremely close decision defeat at the hands of Dominick Cruz, who just happens to be the greatest bantamweight of all time. If it weren’t for the loss to the oft-injured Cruz, Dillashaw would be right at the top of the pound-for-pound list behind Johnson so having the pair face off is a hardcore fight fan’s dream.
Of course, there’s one last champion vs. champion fight looming in the future that the UFC has no control over. Whenever McGregor decides to return to the Octagon, he’ll get to call his shot. In the best-case scenario, from a meritocracy point of view, he’d fight the winner of the upcoming lightweight title fight between interim champ Tony Ferguson and 25-0 Khabib Nurmagomedov except there’s no guarantee that McGregor is willing will fight either of them. As always, he’ll do whatever he wants, whether that’s completing his trilogy with Nate Diaz or move up a division to fight Georges St-Pierre for the hell of it.
If McGregor vs. Ferguson/Nurmagomedov happens, the UFC has four super fights on its hands. It is an amazing scenario with the potential for amazing fights, but there is a downside. With so many champions tied up in just four fights, the UFC is left with just five belts to top pay-per-view events and even that number is misleading because two of the belts — the women’s flyweight and strawweight — aren’t big enough draws, in the UFC’s opinion, to top a pay-per-view card by themselves. That’s why current strawweight queen Rose Namajunas’ rematch against Joanna Jedrzejczyk is second billing at UFC 223 behind Ferguson vs. Nurmagomedov.
The lack of champions to top pay-per-view cards puts the UFC back in a place it never wanted to be: booking pay-per-view cards with only one championship fight. That creates a scenario like the one at UFC 222, which was nearly canceled after Holloway’s injury before Cyborg stepped in.
It’s the only negative of the champion vs. champion addiction UFC has embraced.