Dana White announces Zuffa Boxing will have its own belt and will NOT recognize the other bodies

I think they are going to use the Ring title to legitimize the promotion, so thats why they are keeping it separate. They can manipulate the ratings as they please, and guide someone in the Zuffa/TKO stable into a fight for the Ring championship. Then they will claim that the Zuffa/Ring champion is the best in the world, and the world champion, while keeping everyone locked out of the title and status.

Once they give one of their own fighters the Ring belt, then there will be no way for outsiders to contend for it. I do hope in that case that they get sued into oblivion.

 

Yes but his hate for Usyk drives him on

 

Opinions on the whole Jon Jones situation then please?

 

Once Dana starts paying boxers he will cap out after a few million each. The massive pay days in boxing will become merely 7 figures from d white

 

Plenty of people consider Ngannou to still be the best HW even now. A few years back there was occasional discussion over whether AJ McKee or Volk was the best FW, and whether Leon or Amosov was the best WW. It doesnt happen often sure, but thats because the UFC genuinely does have the best champion the overwhelming majority of the time.

As far as the Fedor thing, I would say in the last year or two before he finally lost people were starting to question his status more, because the UFCs HW division was improving. Also just look at the guys that beat him, Werdum had gotten KTFO in the first round by JDS in the UFC 18 months earlier, Hendo had recently been in the UFC too. The UFC then brought them both back soon after those wins, along with signing Reem, DC and Shields.

 

While I strongly dislike Power Slap and the Apex Center, just look at the UFCs schedule for this month compared to what any boxing promotion is putting out. Its not close.

 

Top Rank already has their own TR belt.
Its called the WBO!

 

Bingo. Yup the Ring is seen as the "neutral arbitrator" who decides who the "real" champ is among the alphabet bodies. That "neutral arbitrator" has been bought out by someone in business with a new sanctioning body.

 

Yes but he got that legitimacy by fighting in the UFC. He was the UFCs HW champion they let walk away. And he was a HW. MMA does not have enough good fighters over 205 to maintain a 2nd HW division. And any rival would barely be able to "use" Francis because they wouldn't have the opponents.

There was a point the UFC was everything they are claiming to be. Right after they took out their main competitors in Pride and Strikeforce. But as time passes the power of the UFC brand means they don't need to sign any one top fighter and any percentage of the best fighters in a weight class. Because now fighers need to enter the UFC to get the legitimacy and if the UFC only had 5/20 of the best guys in a weight class fans would automatically gravitate towards the UFCs 5 being better. And since the UFCs roster only fights each other theres nothing the other 15 could do about it except sign with the UFC who has all the leverage.

The way monopolys work is they win people over with quality and service on the front end destroy alternatives then cut back on what they were doing to get the monopoly.

Fedor was and is a bit overrated. But the UFC HW champs Randy, Brock and Mir really weren't on Fedors level either and people thought it was a joke they were pretending otherwise. Both JDS and Werdum were better then the UFCs champions or Fedor. This was a perfect example of how the UFC can get rid of top fighters. They had two of their best HWs fight to cull the roster and cut the loser. Now in this example Werdum went over to Strikeforce beat Fedor and ended up back in the UFC but nowadays most times one of the best fighters got eliminated you'd never know.

 

Is there any division where the UFC only has 25% of the 20 best fighters in that weight class though? I think its pretty clear that they have by far the best depth in every division, and I watch a lot of non-UFC MMA. You get guys here and there like Vartanyan, McKee, Nemkov etc who would be top 5-10 at their weight in the UFC, but the last time a whole DIVISION had a credible case for being better in a different promotion was probably back in the Strikeforce days at HW.

Randy would have gotten steamrolled, but Brock and Mir absolutely would have been credible challengers at that time.

They shouldnt have cut Werdum so quickly, but he wasnt viewed the same way back then as he came to be later on. And JDS was literally making his debut, he was a prospect.

But yeah, at that point HW wasnt consolidated into one promotion. Its a shame for Ngannou that things arent like that now.

 

And then there were five.

 

UFC claims the "best fight the best" but how do you determine that? by first entering the UFC

But what if UFC is doing DEI for Brazilians & Americans while keeping out Dagestanis, & non Dagestani Russians, Central Asians through hidden national quotas?

If you check the UFC fanbase comments whenever a Dagestani wrestler goes to a decision it is "inbr*d muslim h*mo crotch sniffer goat f**ker" & how we don't need these types in the sport

These guys don't speak English, are Muslim (or Slavic Russian with the current war going on) with hard to pronounce names, don't trash talk.

Brazil & US are much bigger markets in comparison

Several people including Khabib have suggested this, that if MMA promoters recruited based on fighting talent then the Dagestani dominance would be even more pronounced

“There are so many organizations that won’t sign Dagestani fighters because they’re worried they’ll all become champions,” he told PFL Origins. It was direct, weighted, and came from someone who has already experienced it. Khabib Nurmagomedov sees Dagestan’s supremacy as an unavoidable truth.

https://www.essentiallysports.com/u...gomedov-exposes-dark-truth-of-mma-promotions/

"I've just signed a new contract with the PFL. When the previous one expired, there were negotiations with the UFC, but there were misunderstandings, plus the conditions were twice as bad as the PFL. If I were 20 or 25, I probably would have gone to the UFC, but as it is, they made it clear to me they weren't particularly interested in fighters from Russia. They said they didn't need fighters from Russia yet because there weren't any tournaments, there wasn't much money to be made from broadcasts, and there were already a lot of champions—Ankalaev, Islam, and Movsar Evloev and Petr Yan could all become champions. Khamzat Chimaev is also a candidate, but the situation there is a little different because he represents the United Arab Emirates," the Russian fighter said in an interview with the Ushataika channel.

https://fighttime.ru/news/item/39387-nemkov-o-peregovorakh-s-ufc-voznikli-nedoponimaniya.html

and UFC HW is weak too, still they didn't want this Vadim Nemkov

In an exclusive interview with MMA.Metaratings.ru , Fight Nights President Kamil Gadzhiev explained the reasons for the absence of Americans from the top 10 of the UFC P4P rankings.

"About ten years ago, the Caucasian expansion into the UFC began. Given the high level of wrestling and martial arts, what can we say? It was inevitable. Olympic martial arts, which are fundamental, have been dominated by Russia from the very beginning, and the Caucasus in particular. All of this spilled over into MMA. Initially, the Brazilians were competing because they had BJJ. But as soon as our guys took BJJ seriously, they started competing there too. There's nothing surprising about that. Yes, Americans know how to wrestle, and they have Olympic traditions. But globally, they're not as involved in martial arts. There's not that much competition there.

If we started signing everyone to the UFC today, there would be five Southerners in the top 10 in every weight class. This is no joke; it will happen. It seems paradoxical. But it's understandable. We have a very high level of martial arts in our country, especially in the Caucasus. When was the last time a European made a serious impact on the international stage? For example, in wrestling? And wrestling is the foundation," Gadzhiev said.

https://mma.metaratings.ru/news/gad...zhdom-vese-v-top-10-budet-pyat-yuzhan-513993/

Why risk it when you can sign Dana white contender slop on the cheap & your audience doesn't know any better?

In boxing too we have this problem but boxing has 4 routes to a world title, multiple promoters (so if Matchroom passes, go to Queensberry), & the concept of a mandatory (so if you are avoided because you are high risk low reward like Murtazaliev you can at least cash out through step aside money & after all that's why 99% of fighters are in this, for the money)

 

Because the UFC has the strongest overall level of competition in it and its not close, therefore its the ultimate proving ground. It isnt just a matter of marketing, it genuinely is the best. It wasnt always that way but it definitely is now, and the disparity between no1 and no2 is as big as its ever been, in fact nobody is even sure who no2 is anymore, which sucks because the sport could use a Pride or Strikeforce, but it is what it is.

They definitely oversign Americans nowadays, they're half of the roster with 0 male champs. And yes they undersign Russians and general Caucasus fighters relative to the average talent level in that part of the world, but even so its not like they dont still have tons of them.

They have made some baffling cuts at HW recently, Romanov, Rozenstruik, Buday, Williams etc. Even Despaigne although he wasnt great was a fun fighter to have around. They did bring in Delija and Kuniev though.

It would have been nice to have had Nemkov around to add more depth, but its not exactly a Fedor/UFC circa 2008 situation. He was mostly a LHW, has no real notable wins at HW and has a loss to Jiri, granted it was ages ago. I dont think theres any reason to believe hes better than Aspinall at the moment, he actually does have one way to change that without even being in the UFC though - fighting Ngannou.

A lot of those DWCS guys are good tbf. It is kind of weird that they make fighters go through that process but most of them are as skilled and experienced as most of the guys who got signed directly to the UFC back in the day, and a lot of the fights on there are high level fights by the standards of other promotions. The talent pool is just that much bigger now.

One thing I definitely dislike about DWCS is how arbitrarily contracts are given out though. How you can dominate your fight but still not get a contract while a guy who gets an early finish or gets into a war does. Its some BS.

 

Its circular

UFC has the best but UFC also gets to define who is the best because of their market dominance, so you in fact are not seeing the best fight the best if we are talking based on talent alone. What you are seeing is what UFC is presenting to you based on who will make them the most money based on factors outside the ring like nationality, english speaking ability etc

Because if its based on pure fighting merit, then the Russian & Stan dominance would skyrocket to another level while audience interest would tank because of their wrestling heavy style, inability to speak English, trash talk etc. Just go to the comments section on x (where people can give vent to their real feelings) whenever they go to a decision, typical comments are "inbr*d muslim h*mo crotch sniffer goat f**ker". Never seen that kinda vitriol from boxing fans

Nemkov thing isn't because he is going to best Aspinall, rather that in an already thin division, he would have been a useful addition

Boxing has the exact same problem when it comes to talent from former Soviet bloc but not to the same extent because of multiple promoters & multiple paths to a world title

 

Good luck getting anybody but undercarders to fight for you Dana.