Things at the top of the UFC featherweight division are getting a little complicated. Further clarity should be provided this weekend after top-ranked talents Brian Ortega and Yair Rodriguez battle it out in the main event of the UFC’s return to Long Island and the ABC airwaves on Saturday.
A few weeks back, ahead of the critical clash between Josh Emmett and Calvin Kattar, which headlined the UFC’s June 18 show in Austin, Texas, I laid out the collection of fights on the docket that would impact how the division lined up heading into August and a bunch of key young talents currently ranked outside the Top 5 to keep close tabs on going forward.
As we head into this weekend’s event at UBS Arena at Belmont Park, two of the big fights in the featherweight division are in the books, with Saturday’s main event standing as the missing puzzle piece that will help determine the direction things will go in the division later this year, but it’s far from being a straightforward situation.
AN AMAZING MATCHUP WITH UNCERTAIN STAKES
Stripped of all possible ramifications and stakes, the matchup between Ortega and Rodriguez is a Fight of the Year contender on paper and an absolute must-see matchup that anyone with a television will be able to consume. Both are action-oriented competitors that are independently allergic to boring fights, and putting them together is a potentially combustible situation in the best way possible.
In addition to be a barnburner waiting to happen, this main event has a bit of a “pick your own adventure” book feel to it where one outcome results in things heading in one direction, and the other would take things down an entirely different path.
An Ortega victory is unlikely to result in the Los Angeles native receiving a title shot as this is his first bout since losing to current champ Alexander Volkanovski at UFC 266 last September. Outside of a couple deep submission attempts that the Australian titleholder managed to extricate himself from, Ortega had little to offer, landing on the wrong end of a one-sided drubbing in a championship fight for the second time in three appearances.
Even if he were to blow through Rodriguez, a single win isn’t going to be enough to merit another title opportunity, not after how dominant Volkanovski looked both in their first encounter and a couple weeks back in dispatching Max Holloway to close out his 3-0 sweep of their trilogy.
But a win for Rodriguez likely punches his ticket to a title opportunity. The Mexican standout has said that the UFC has made that promise to him, and as a fresh challenger for the current champion, it would make a great deal of sense to see Rodriguez welcome Volkanovski back to the Octagon whenever the pound-for-pound standout’s broken thumb heals and he’s cleared to compete.
The result of this bout doesn’t just impact the warring parties and potentially the champion though; how it plays out will send a ripple effect throughout the remainder of the division, and give the UFC brass a chance to plot a new course for the featherweight ranks regardless of who emerges victorious.
JOSH EMMETT: ROOTING FOR ORTEGA AND VOLKANOVSKI’S SPEEDY RECOVERY
After edging Kattar last month, Emmett called for a championship fight in his post-fight interview in the cage, and has continued publicly lobbying for the opportunity non-stop since.
He was annoyed that he wasn’t in the front row for Volkanovski-Holloway III and given the chance to confront the champion in the cage after his win, and is sure to be salty hearing all the talk about Rodriguez potentially leapfrogging him and landing a title shot with a victory this weekend.
As such, the streaking 37-year-old should be rooting for an Ortega win on Saturday night, because if that should happen, he’ll likely maintain pole position in the chase to challenge Volkanovski when he’s back to full health.
His case is solid — five straight victories, including three-in-a-row against ranked opponents, and a 7-1 record in the UFC’s 145-pound weight class — and getting him in there could be a way to allow things to behind him to work themselves out a little more, creating a little more clarity in the division heading into 2023.
But if Volkanovski is going to be out for an extended period of time — he had surgery a week ago and has a 12-week recovery timetable — it wouldn’t be surprising to see the UFC match Emmett up with another emerging contender (say, Arnold Allen?) in a No. 1 contender bout, with the winner facing the champion in the first quarter of next year.
TIME TO GET EVERYTHING ELSE MOVING — AND KEEP IT FRESH!
There are a handful of names that rightfully need to wait and see what happens this weekend in order to have a better sense of what their work schedule may look like in the back half of the year and into 2023. Pretty much everyone else in the division should be getting paired off and booked in the next few weeks, and the impetus for the UFC has to be to keep things fresh.
Featherweight is a perfect example of how as of late, the UFC has relied too heavily on making a fighter run navigate a series of increasingly more difficult tests in order to earn a championship opportunity, only to have them stumble in a matchup against an all-too-familiar name…. usually Max Holloway.
Kattar put together a couple quality wins in 2020 and then waspaired off with the former champion at the start of 2021, caught a serious beating, and spent the rest of the year on the sidelines.
Rodriguez shared the Octagon with “Blessed” in November, landing on the wrong side of a unanimous decision verdict in a fight that he didn’t feel was a close as the scorecards made it out to be.
Now he’s still got to get through Ortega to potentially land a title shot, and if he can’t, there will be two fighters that have been soundly beaten by the current champion standing as potential roadblocks to anyone else securing a title opportunity unless the UFC stops trying to force fresh contenders to beat every established name in the division before fighting for championship gold.
It’s beyond time to start rotating fresh names into the mix at the top of the weight class, and any suggestion that Volkanovski has cleaned out the division shows either a flagrant disregard for the talented, but unheralded set storming the gates or a obvious desire to only see big names face big names, lesser known talents be damned.
Allen shouldn’t be stuck calling out Kattar following his win over Dan Hooker in London earlier this year — he should have been put on the short list of potential title challengers, given that the win moved his record to 9-0 in the UFC and extended his overall winning streak to 11.
Bryce Mitchell and Movsar Evloev should either be pitted against one another in a bout where the winner needs just one more win before fighting for the title or put into individual matchups against tenured talents like Ortega and Kattar and “The Korean Zombie” so that a victory places them in line to challenge for gold in their next outing.
And further down the line, fighters like Ilia Topuria and Charles Jourdain, should he defeat ranked veteran Shane Burgos on Saturday, should be moving into the spaces previously occupied by Mitchell and Evloev, who defeated veterans Edson Barboza and Dan Ige respectively in their most recent outings.
NOT JUST A FEATHERWEIGHT ISSUE
This isn’t just a problem in the featherweight division, either.
Jorge Masvidal got a second opportunity to fight for the welterweight title without winning a fight, while his former BFF turned bitter rival Colby Covington defeated the ghost of Tyron Woodley to punch his ticket to a second fight with KamaruUsman, which ended in the unlikable talent suffering a second championship defeat.
Leon Edwards is finally getting his chance to face Usman next month, but only after having to watch Masvidal and Covington get their rematches and defend his spot in line in high-risk, no-reward fights with Belal Muhammad and Nathan Diaz, both of which came after being not once, not twice, but thrice scheduled against emerging monster Khamzat Chimaev in a bout that thankfully never came together.
The blueprint should be what recently transpired in the middleweight division at UFC 276, where unranked threat Alex Pereira was matched up with surging fifth-ranked contender Sean Strickland in what everyone agreed was a No. 1 contender fight.
Yes, Pereira’s history with reigning champ Israel Adesanya, who retained his title that evening, from their kickboxing days played a factor in his getting hustled into such a major opportunity. In knocking out Strickland, it created a fresh, intriguing matchup for a champion currently facing criticism for his dominant, but uneventful efforts of late.
The other option is to take the approach being utilized in the women’s flyweight division since Valentina Shevchenko ascended to the throne.
As much as fans clamor for familiar names and groan when someone they feel is unknown or doesn’t present much challenge is positioned in a championship bout, Taila Santos’ unexpected showing against the dominant champion earlier this year at UFC 275 illustrated why just giving the next person in line the next opportunity is usually a pretty good way of doing things.
Her stock rose in a losing effort, and fans weren’t subjected to a second bout between “Bullet” and perennial No. 1 contender Katlyn Chookagian, who just keeps turning back hopefuls to maintain her spot.
There are enough talented fighters in all of these divisions that the UFC doesn’t need to just keep rotating only a handful of names through these championship opportunities and running every emerging threat through a gauntlet of increasingly dangerous tests often produce nothing fresh.
Hopefully after Saturday’s main event, we get a clearer picture of how things line up in the featherweight division, and things can get moving in the right direction again.
