It’s striking what low standards now exist for doing the right thing by one’s fellow fighters after
Conor McGregor held multiple divisions hostage for years on end. St. Pierre was congratulated in some circles for his decision to vacate the title right after winning it. Apparently, moving into a division in which you’ve never competed before, jumping everyone in line for a title shot and then vacating that championship without ever defending it is a classy thing to do so long as you do it in a timely manner. That way, other fighters can compete more quickly for a severely diminished title that just lost its direct lineage to the great champions of the past.
The breaking of the title lineage is particularly notable in the middleweight division. Not only did St. Pierre break the lineage of the championship he just won, but he broke the lineage of arguably the greatest championship run in the history of the UFC. The UFC middleweight title no longer ties directly back to Silva, just like the UFC welterweight title doesn’t tie back directly to St. Pierre’s historic run. No one can fairly fault St. Pierre for giving up that crown after defending it proudly and impressively for over five years. This middleweight title situation is something else entirely.
More important than that lineage is the message this whole episode sent to casual UFC fans. For those of us who follow the sport religiously, it’s not nearly such a big deal. We know how good Rockhold and
Robert Whittaker are at 185 pounds. The best are fighting the best, and the chaos of the past few years is over. Unfortunately, in the current environment, where the biggest UFC pay-per-views do over five times the business of the rank and file, recognition of greatness among hardcore fans doesn’t mean much when it comes to a fighter’s purse and a division’s credibility.
The fans who tuned in for UFC 217, far and away the biggest MMA event of the year, were provided quite the lesson about the middleweight title. How important can it be if the best fighters don’t get a shot at it for years on end and the biggest star to hit the division was content to give it up in a matter of weeks without defending it? The middleweight title was treated as a gimmick to sell a fight, and when the gimmick was used, the prop was tossed aside. That’s how boxers treat the alphabet soup titles in that sport, and now those titles are worthless.
UFC titles, once quite meaningful, have slowly and sadly traveled down that road through the handing of title shots to unworthy challengers, the frequent creation of interim titles as gimmicks and the proliferation of weight classes. The recent treatment of the middleweight division has been a microcosm of that broader trend. No matter how talented the elite of the middleweight division might be, it’s going to be a struggle for some time to convince casual fans of that, through no fault of their own. That’s a real shame.
