At the moment UFC has two HW champs with belts and MMA has three HW champs who have not lost their belt in the cage with Ngannou, Jones and Aspinall. Its not likely any of the three men will fight each other in the future and they never did in the past either.
That is not a fan friendly situation.
Its like Pantoja, Mighty Mouse and Horiguchi all having belts and no chance of ever fighting in the future. Not fan friendly.
Does anyone want to see Jones vs Stipe, not really.
What about Bader vs Ferreira in a “superfight”? Nope.
Then you got Malykhin dropping down to MW in ONE in a rematch vs a guy he already beat for the LHW title before he even won the HW title.
KSW has De Fries vs who next and why does anyone care?
Everyone wants to see Ngannou and Aspinall fight but who and when is unknown.
ACA champ Goncharov has already fought Vakhaev 2x and Tony Johnson 3x as well so I’m not sure most fans are clamoring for a certain fight even if they know who he is.
To be honest once Francis left he is no longer in the race to be the best HW. If you wanna be the best, you need to beat the best guys in the UFC. I’m not really thinking about that guy.
The whole Jones-Aspinall-Stipe thing is stupid. Jones should be stripped because his rehab is gonna take a year and Aspinall should not be forced to sit around with an interim belt.
He for sure left the race but I’m just saying its absurd that the last three fighters to win the UFC HW title have not fought each other and never will fight each other. Just bad from the standpoint of a functioning division that fans can enjoy.
Agree on Jones. Its laughable.
Leading up to Fedor vs Crocop, those two had like twelve wins in the year before their big HW title fight.
Meanwhile Stipe and Jones will have zero wins and zero fights in that same amount of time.
Stipe will not have had a win in four years when he gets in there with Jones and the one time he has been in the cage since then he got KOed.
Getting a title shot with no wins in four years makes this the worst title shot in UFC history.
Hell, back in the SEG days, John Alessio got to come in a get a title shot vs Militech when he was 7-3 in MMA and 0-0 in the UFC but at least he had actually won two fights that year and five more in the two years leading up to that title fight.
Who gets the next shot, Werdum? Werdum’s last UFC win was only a month before Stipe’s last win and at least he tapped the current PFL HW champ in his next fight and he did fight this year.