Zhang Weili dominated Tatiana Suarez at UFC 312, so is a transversal superfight now inevitable? (Reuters / Jeremy Piper)
(Reuters / Reuters)
What is the next step after the defense of the dominant title of Zhang Weili at the UFC 312? Will Dominick Cruz’s retirement be the one that really sticks? And how could friends at the top of the United States government shape the future of combat sports for the parent company of the UFC?
All this and more in this week’s postal bag. To ask your own question, hit @Benfowlkesmma Or @ benfowlkes.bsky.social.
@Jmprodus: Weili vs Valentina at 125 lb is the right movement?
This is certainly the case, and for the simple reason that nor any of them has nothing else to do at a distance to do for the moment.
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Seriously, who could fight Zhang Weili now? She beat four of the top five women in the current UFC straw weight ranking, with unbalanced victories on the two best combatants of her last two outings. As for Valentina Shevchenko? She recovered her Alexa Grasso belt and now looks at an area that is not very inspiring from the potential challengers. I mean, I guess you could do Shevchenko against Manon Fiorot then, and it would be very good. But it wouldn’t be better than well either.
A champion VS champion Superfight, on the other hand, is still a big problem. This is instantly a big problem, and there is really nothing else for one of them that we could say the same thing. Usually, the big challenge to make this type of fight is to convince the smallest fighter to leave behind a division that she dominated to take the risk against a larger champion. But here is Zhang, who seems pretty in the idea. So why not?
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It is a chance to make a very big fight in the divisions of women, and it is something that the UFC has not had much lately. It is time, so let’s hope it will happen.
@Needxtoseposts: Am I a bad person for
“Dom, take advantage of your retirement, but Aldo will be there when you are rested”
Speaking of Dom, I am convinced that Keith Peterson felt alcohol and cigarettes, but it was from the gel of disinfectant for the hands, because he begins the pandemic and he is due to supply problems !
It is a very generous interpretation of Dominick Cruz’s comments on referee Keith Peterson. I can’t say you are wrong. I can only say that Cruz was so crazy by the judgment (which was fully justifiable in the circumstances, by the way) that it was not necessarily limited to the olfactory facts at the moment.
As for your prediction that it will come out of retirement for a battle between the legends of the WEC of a certain age, I cannot exclude it. But when a guy retires because his body simply cannot go through a training camp and fight to fight at night in one room, it is not so much a decision that can be easily reversed because C ‘is an admission of cold and hard realities. The mind is arranged. We know it. The flesh is almost 40 years old – and as you remember, he had trouble staying healthy even in the Prime de Cruz.
@ nickj812: if you were Dana and you needed some favors (regulatory) of Big Don, what would you ask?
I suppose that the larger q is more than you expect changes in the power sales of boxing / MMA during this presidency?
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I can’t really think of much that the UFC could ask that it does not already have one. There are no government restrictions at all. Everything he requests from state sports commissions, she obtains roughly. Even when the National Council for Labor Relations seemed briefly willing to examine whether the UFC has misunderstood the fighters as independent entrepreneurs all these years, it was ultimately slow in anything.
This is the boxing where I expect Tko Group Holdings Inc. calls favors. We have just heard the CEO of TKO Ari emanuel suggest that something could “happen” to the Ali law, which currently protects professional boxers against at least certain operating business practices. He said that the Ali law had “harmed” in sport. I find it interesting, because boxing as a sport seems to prosper at the moment in many ways.
What I suspect that Emanuel means is that the Ali law has harmed the ability of a promoter to take control of the sport and keep all the money and the talent for himself. I would say that even with a friend in the White House, it would be difficult to cancel a federal law that has existed for almost 25 years now. But then I look around the current function of the American government and it is not much that I am ready to say could not arrive.
@ MMAFAN2019: What do you add to the presentation of the Apex to make it more interesting? A ramp?
Whatever WWE did when it appeared there and organized a professional struggle event that actually looked like an event, I would. We know it is possible now. We have seen it. The atmosphere between half -empty warehouses keeps energy from diffusion. It sends an instant visual message to the public that it is not fights that count.
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This fears for combatants. They deserve better. And if the UFC can ensure that an APEX event is more like a real event, it can only help interest and audience. So let’s put people in there and arrive in Hootin ‘and / or Hollerin’.
@ ryanlawless.bsky.social: Have we reached MMA’s point where to talk about it is more interesting than being about it? Namely, I listen to your podcast and I read your items, but I haven’t looked a full PPV for almost five years.
One thing that I removed from the UFC 300 is that the UFC is always very capable of setting up a complete event on the map of essential fights. There was not a little filling on this range. Each fight was significant in one way or another, and almost all were a ton of pleasure to look at.
It tells you that talent is there. It is just to spread quite slim by the events program, so loading a combat card means leaving the closet a little naked for the others.
Take UFC 312, for example. There was an event where you certainly didn’t need to look at the complete Pay-Per-View. The two best fights imported. A little dispersed on the subcarte ended up deserving the trouble to be checked. The rest was essentially UFC Fight Night: Sydney, but disguised as something else.
So no, you don’t need to sit there and look at each fight on each combat card. But there are still big fights that occur almost every weekend. It’s just that you have to sit down through a lot of filling to get there – or back on Sunday morning with a cup of coffee and jump to good things.
(Tagstotranslate) Zhang Weili
