BJ Penn Dominates at UFC 107
UFC 107 has come and gone, finalizing a less than exciting year for the leading mixed martial arts promotion. Racked with injuries, fighter defections, controversial results and upstart promotional competition from Strikeforce and Bellator, the year couldn’t have ended sooner for Zuffa and its President Dana White. UFC enters 2010 in a very weird position and last night’s awful mismatch between BJ Penn and Diego Sanchez personifies the problem.
The UFC, outside of its Light Heavyweight division really doesn’t have one marketable championship fight any time in the near future. Its champions BJ Penn, George St. Pierre, Anderson Silva and Brock Lesnar really don’t have any competitive fights on the horizon. These are the headline fighters of the organization and the UFC basically has nobody of quality for them to fight.
BJ Penn’s destruction of Diego Sanchez last night was the prime example. Dana White gave us the Vince McMahon sale that Diego Sanchez was the unquestioned second best lightweight fighter in the world and that Penn was going to get his first real test. Sanchez told us he was going to storm across the cage, attack Penn like nobody has before and take him down to the mat for a beating.
None of this transpired.
Instead, Penn manhandled Sanchez like a rag doll and displayed just how weak the talent level is in the UFC at lightweight. Sanchez, the former TUF 1 Champion, displayed no real martial arts skills. His fighting approach that got his the championhsip fight invite was to bullrush, takedown and pound. Last night, the talented Penn nullified these basic skills, fended off every weak takedown attempt and handed out one of the most brutal beatings ever seen in the cage. So if Sanchez really was #2 as Dana White told us, Penn is out of competitors to fight under the UFC banner.
This leads us to the problem with the UFC…its refusal to cross promote. What killed boxing were promoters that overprotected their fighters, controlled the matchups and didn’t deliver the fights people demanded to see. Multiple title holders from different organizations that were not making the fights to protect and hold their crowns. Dana White is displaying his Napoleanistic complex and is dooming the sport in front of our eyes.
Fans are calling for the UFC to sign new top lightweight fighters. The bloom is off the rose. The fans will only drink so much kool-aid. People have figured out that they are not being served shinola now.
Every forum board last night online had discussion threads discussing what fight matchups would look like for Penn with all the great lightweights that are not fighting at UFC. Even commentator Joe Rogan called for it during the broadcast, something I am sure he will get admonished for by Zuffa. The UFC can make these matchups and they don’t have to sign anybody.
Penn is in the driver seat now to help take MMA mainstream. He can push UFC to start cross-promoting to make the biggest fights for him or threaten to bolt to another promotion that will do so. He has reached the point in his career where he controls his destiny, not the UFC.
The fights that matter for Penn which hold the greatest monetary take for him reside with fighters in other organizations. The fans don’t want to see him maul another second-rate UFC fighter. They want to see him fight Dream’s Shinya Aoki, Tatsuya Kawajiri or Joachim Hansen. They want to see him square off against Bellator’s Eddie Alvarez or Jorge Masvidal. Or perhaps throw him in the cage with Sengoku’s Mizuto Hirota. These are the fights that fans want to see, not matchups against an overrated 10 loss fighter like Joe Stevenson or a wrestler with no martial arts skills like Gray Maynard.
As this year comes to end, UFC needs to make some big decisions on how it runs its business and its impact on the sport as a whole. The WWE coattails that have been ridden thus far need to be cut and the UFC needs to recognize it is a promotion, not a league or “sports entertainment”. The sooner this happens the better.
