It has never made more sense than right now to start the division. Ufc is making up fake titles to headline ppvs and forcing fighters to defend titles 3 months after last defense or threaten an interim title.
At this point the ufc is strictly a numbers game. History and lineage are irrelevant, it’s fuffiling obligated cards and headlining ppvs with title fights.
If you start the 165 and move 170 to 175 that potentially gives you 3 more title fights a calendar.
You could probably squeeze an interim or 2 in that as well.
More titles means not having to make up “most violent” division belt and “nicest mfer” belts and less headache for ufc brass.
It only makes sense. Dana stop being a stubborn prick and open your eyes
Mw would be affected but lw would barely feel it and quickly recover. The majority of the roster falls in the 145-175 range so it would fill back out. Small side effects to the better option
No one would care unless they were representing strong divisions, which both were in that case.
175 and under would all surely be strong in this scenario.
185 is already no man’s land even before losing half of its talent to the new 175. 205 is also atrocious. Honestly would love to see them combined at 199, which was an original UFC division. All big 185’ers would make it easy as would half of 205’ers, while the bigger 205’ers could inject some life into HW.
The casuals accept that Bellator, UFC and PFL all have WFW divisions and there are only like twenty full time women in all those divisions combined and some of them are blown up BW’s. They got three belts though.
Across UFC, Bellator, PFL, ONE, ACA, KSW, RIZIN, BRAVE, LFA etc…there are thousands of LW’s and WW’s.
There is for sure plenty of room for 55, 65 and 75. Problem is people are just used to it being like it is nothing changes.
Based on the amount of talent out there in the world, there was more of a need for 65 in the UFC than any of the WMMA classes being brought in but Dana doesn’t like it because he started in the UFC when the talent pools were 10% of what they are now and he is getting old so he is stuck in his ways on this.
I think Dana does a lot of things right but ignoring the need for 55 and 70 to become 55, 65, 75 is in my opinion one of Dana’s biggest mistakes.
Of course they would care after the divisions are built, promoted, fought in, title changes etc. It wouldn’t happen immediately but it would be better for the sport IMO. Less of the drastic weight cutting, more drama / titles / multi-weight champions etc. The public would definitely get on board.
Yeah I have no doubt the 165-175 weight range would flourish because there’s enough talent there. But every 10 lbs just to have more champions would also mean 195, maybe even 115, which wouldn’t be very popular.
I think they can leave 205. 185 to 205 is 11% and the jump between 125 and 135 is 8%. Bigger guys, bigger move up, or go 200 and then 220 and then 220-265.