Fortunes changed to five at UFC 236

After Israel Adesanya and Kelvin Gastelum had what was one of the biggest fights in the UFC history on Saturday night in Atlanta, moments later, when the day came to an end. fear disappeared, the immediate reaction was that we had yet another great fight to come.

Given the number of fights in a year, the probability that two fights of the same show will run consecutively ends 1-2 on the fight of the year 2019 is normally in the range of 500 to 1 or more .

But when the second fight involves Dustin Poirier, the chances of winning have dropped considerably.

Poirier and featherweight champion Max Holloway followed with a fight of the same caliber as the point of view of many opponents. In doing so, Saturday's UFC 236, which until Gastelum and Adesanya were installed in the cage, did not seem to be different from any other show on Saturday night, is now the favorite of the show's best show. year. This could very well be the best consecutive fights in the history of the UFC. If I asked this question before Saturday, I would leave with the duo Wanderlei Silva against Cung Le and Dan Henderson against Mauricio "Shogun" Rua at UFC 139 in 2011. I would have chosen the two best fights of UFC 236 now.

UFC President Dana White had every reason to celebrate at the end of the show. He argued that these fights justify the decision to create almost constantly acting championships. To a certain extent, there is something to that.

On the one hand, the titles were barely needed in the sense that current champions, middleweight champion Robert Whittaker and lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, both are expected to fight in a few months. Both fights could just as easily have called title-eliminating fights, what they were. But according to the UFC rules, this would mean that Gastelum against Adesanya would be a three-round fight, since Poirier vs. Holloway, title or not, would have been a five-round main event.

In hindsight, Adesanya and Gastelum were much better with two more laps. There are advantages to longer fights, although much harder to train and more difficult to conduct, have the ability to be much more dramatic.

The other key element is that UFC has created the hope that a pay-per-view program requires a fight for the title. And it was a show à la carte. And two "fake" titles are greater than one, at least for the night.

The reality has shown, with so many injuries and timing problems that even with 12 championships and the idea that fighters are fighting several times a year, there are big monthly shows where there's just no fight of Championship available.

This was not the case here. Holloway, the featherweight champion, was in the show. He could have defended his title against Alexander Volkanovski. But this is the marketing aspect of the game. As a rule, the title titles do not shoot well because the public does not take them for real. They are so exaggerated and often meaningless, since the acting champions do not even get the next title and are forgotten. But in this case, the history of the featherweight champion dominating the third-longest winning streak in the company's history (13 fights), facing Poirier was greater than a title defense against Volkanovski.

But instead of these intermediate belts coming and going, an idea might be to create secondary belts in the weight divisions. The downside is that the more championships there are, the less they mean, a lesson where this line was crossed a long time ago in the UFC. But the permanent secondary titles, regularly defended and used to create the best competitor in a weight class, whether you want to call them international, intercontinental or another term, would have at least one historical goal.

The good news is that in modern times you would have a plethora of titles and champions. Of course, it's a step toward boxing, where the alphabet soup championships usually have no meaning to the public and where it comes to the value of the name, not the belt. The second is that the secondary champion should be the main candidate for the main title. It's great from a sporting point of view, but combat sports have never been and never will be in this category. The promoters are trying to deliver fights that the public wants to see. Again, Colby Covington was the welterweight welterweight champion and Kamaru Usman still managed to beat Tyron Woodley.

But if there must be championships, they must be existing titles, with a history and a lineage, as opposed to what people joke are belts. At least the belts would not come and go, they have no historical significance, they are won but rarely, if ever, defended.

Saturday's show was also a problem during the Matt Frevola fight against Jalin Turner. In the second round, Frevola started an illegal upkick because Turner was a defeated opponent. No penalty point was called because the referee thought it was a hard blow. When you watched the broadcast, everyone could see that it was all but a glance.

Unfortunately, the current rules apply to two major gaps. In some states, if the referee has to watch a rehearsal, the match must be over. There was no reason to stop this fight, so the referee was not allowed to check and see what everyone was watching on TV could easily see and recognize that the referee's judgment was not correct.

In 2019, it feels like a late sport. Worse still, there are places where the referee can not even watch a tape even after the end of a fight to make a judgment.

Obviously, as sport evolves, two things are needed. We are the same rules in each state. The other is the rules that allow referees to make the right choice in situations where they may not have the best angle. Of course, as we saw in the rules, progress is very slow and sometimes changes are made that do not always progress.

Let's see how fortune has changed for the five stars of Saturday's show.

DUSTIN POIRIER – Poirier (25-5, 1 no contest) now has six sets of classic fights. Holloway's victory comes after two fights with Eddie Alvarez, and one with Justin Gaethje, Anthony Pettis and Jim Miller. In this series of named opponents, Poirier has five wins and no contests.

It is undeniable that he deserves a light title as title after. It is also undeniable that Tony Ferguson deserves the same. Ferguson has his personal problems to deal with. And there is also Conor McGregor, who does not deserve a title yet, but when it comes to business, it means so many dollars that he will have all the advantages to fight.

After that win, Poirier and Nurmagomedov (27-0) should be one of the biggest fights of 2019. But there are tens of millions of dollars for the reasons he might be forgotten and McGregor would get that shot. In this case, Poirier has no shortage of opponents to defend his title acting. The most important would be a rematch of Justin Gaethje (20-2) or the winner of the fight of May 4 with Donald Cerrone (35-11) against Al Iaquinta (15-4-1). If Ferguson (24-3) was ready, he would actually be the first name on this list.

MAX HOLLOWAY – Holloway (20-4) dominated the featherweight division. Poirier, his opponent, was also a featherweight who had a lot of success, moving to light weight. The difference is that Pear tree has a lot of muscle size on his body, whereas Holloway, even though he cut a lot to make featherweight, still had the physical appearance of a featherweight in the cage.

Holloway was faster and more skillful than Poirier. While the fight was competitive, it was clear from the first turn that Poirier's light blows hurt Holloway more than the light blows, and that his blows did not hurt Poirier as they had hurt his heavyweight opponents.

After the fight, the whites talked about Holloway's return to featherweight, a judgment that seemed obvious during the fight. Volkanovski (19-1) should get the next title if he can beat José Aldo (28-4) on May 11 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If Aldo wins, since Holloway has beaten Aldo decisively twice, the main contender should be Zabit Magomedsharipov (17-1). Frankie Edgar (23-6-1) would also be in the running, depending on how quickly he can come back from a ripped bicep in October.

ISRAEL ADESANYA – At 17-0, the Bender Style has one of the most impressive records of the sport among those who fought at the highest level. Gastelum showed that Adesanya was far from being unbeatable. But he also showed that Adesanya was also far from being a favorite, in that when the fight was in sight in the fifth round, it was Adesanya that shone.

His next fight is obvious, middleweight champion Robert Whittaker (20-4). Dana White spoke about the idea of ​​booking a stadium show in Australia for this.

KELVIN GASTELUM – Although Gastelum (15-4, 1 no contest) lost Saturday, this fight was the typical example of a fight where, for the public, there was no loser. Yes, Gastelum is injured because with a win, he will shoot the ball at Whittaker. But at the same time, he's made a fighter that the public has more interest in seeing again.

His next fight should be against Yoel Romero (13-3) or Paulo Costa (12-0), who will probably compete against each other. Much depends on the timing. He could face the winner in a fight to determine who will face the winner Whittaker vs. Adesanya. If Costa fights and beats Romero, then Costa against Gastelum makes perfect sense. If Romero fights Costa and wins, since Whittaker has two wins over Romero, Romero versus Gastelum makes sense. If Adesanya wins and Romero wins, Adesanya against Romero should be the direction to go.

NIKITA KRYLOV – Krylov (25-6) got a second round against Ovince Saint Preux (23-13), exhausted, Saturday. Krylov should then be used to determine whether upward fighters have the qualities required to figure in the light heavyweight title image.

The top three candidates for this position are Dominick Reyes (11-0), Jim Crute (10-0) or Johnny Walker (17-3). Krylov can place himself in a strong position with a win over any of these fighters, while they can all step up to the top with a win over Krylov.