Before Nate Diaz and Conor McGregor do their second dance at UFC 202, Anthony Johnson and Glover Teixeira will duke it out in a light heavyweight fight that will likely decide champion Daniel Cormier’s next challenger.
While their fight will be far from a dull affair and probably won’t make it to the scorecards, neither contender inspires much hope for a once highly competitive division that’s taken a back seat to the stacked, lighter weight classes.
For one thing, nearly all of 205’s fighters of note have fought each other already – in some cases, several times over – so it’s not like the matchmakers are dipping into a deep well. While wars between the division’s best are what made it the UFC’s most thrilling group, especially from 2007 to 2011 when the belt was a hot potato, there’s been a dearth of talent to bring in the new guard. As a result, light heavyweight is slowly spinning in place.
Already plagued by an uninspiring, has-been filled heavyweight group, the promotion’s next crop of light heavyweights offers little hope for the future. Nikita Krylov has been a highlight machine of late, but a knockout of Ed Herman does not an heir apparent make. Ryan Bader, destined to toil in the middle of the pack until retirement, hit his ceiling long ago, and Corey Anderson recently lost a decision to a borderline punch-drunk Mauricio Rua.
The first half of this year only confirms the sorry state of the heavyweight divisions. Of the UFC’s 23 events in 2016, the last eight have been headlined by a fight at welterweight or lighter (two at middleweight), 14 in all, with seven more already confirmed to go down before year’s end.
Now that every division from welterweight through bantamweight (women’s and men’s) is stacked with talent, their intrigue has skyrocketed as many of their respective elite have literally shunned the notion of weight class.
McGregor, the incumbent featherweight champ, is fighting at 170 pounds for the second straight time, the first coming after he was scheduled to fight Rafael dos Anjos for the lightweight strap. Even with Dana White’s recent claims of the superstar’s imminent return to 145 pounds, the Irishman has designs on two more world titles.
Bantamweight king Dominick Cruz not only wants to clean house in his own division, but has openly entertained a superfight at 145 pounds. Newly crowned welterweight champ Tyron Woodley wasted no time stirring the pot himself, calling out arguably the division’s two all-time biggest draws, Nick Diaz and Georges St-Pierre, minutes after winning the belt.
Not to be left out, lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez, who’s publicly dismissed rankings systems, issued a callout of his own, asking for the winner of Diaz-McGregor.
Woodley and Alvarez, 34 and 32, respectively, are understandably looking to cash in on what’s left of their primes, but they and their lighter, younger counterparts are rendering the age-old meritocracy null and void in doing so. Still, the resulting hullabaloo is undeniably exciting, and it’s filled the void left by an aging 205-pound and painfully thin heavyweight divisions.
Of the 12 announced upcoming cards (UFC 202 excluded), only two are scheduled to be headlined by a heavyweight fight.
