The Doggy Bag: UFC 127 Edition

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Everybody always says that Jon Fitch is the second-best welterweight in the world and that he's beaten everybody but St. Pierre at 170. This has come up more and more lately with people talking about St. Pierre moving to 185 pounds to face Anderson Silva, as people speculate Fitch would definitely be champion without GSP around. Where does this idea come from? I don't think Fitch deserves all the flak he gets for being boring, but this guy hasn't exactly beat a murderer's row at 170. Other than Alves, Sanchez and Thiago, he hasn't taken out many top guys at 170, and I don't think it's crazy to imagine someone like Carlos Condit, Martin Kampmann or Jake Shields beating him head-to-head.
-- Eric from Knoxville

Jordan Breen, administrative editor: I think it's wholly appropriate people see Fitch as the second-best welterweight in the world. In prizefighting, you're nothing more than the sum of your accomplishments, and over the last three to four years, who has been better -- St. Pierre aside, of course -- than Fitch?

I'm sympathetic to the claim that Fitch hasn't beat every other elite welterweight on the planet. However, this fallacy comes up a lot: how many guys have really beat all their top-10 contemporaries? Guys like St. Pierre and Anderson Silva are anomalies. Frank Edgar is the top fighter in MMA's best division, and his resume is basically B.J. Penn twice, Sean Sherk and a draw with Gray Maynard as far as elite fighters go, unless we consider his win over Jim Miller over five years ago in their pre-UFC days.

Also, keep in mind that many of the non-marquee fighters that Fitch has bested are still quite good. Mike Pierce is a great example: people scoffed at this stocky Oregonian pummeling Fitch late in their fight, but since that moment, Pierce has looked like a bona fide contender himself. Furthermore, Zuffa hasn't wanted to throw big-time contenders at Fitch, either. They want guys like Condit, Kampmann, Shields and others working their way into the title picture, and offering new challengers to St. Pierre. That's why a Fitch-Alves rematch was so coveted: both of them lost to St. Pierre, and thus by fighting each other, they didn't jeopardize any potential new, interesting challengers.

On top of that, Fitch has beat Thiago Alves twice. The same Alves who absolutely thrashed Josh Koscheck, blew away Matt Hughes, Karo Parisyan, Chris Lytle and others. Beating a fighter like Alves twice is a major accomplishment in and of itself.

This is the same kind of reductionist nonsense that goes on when revision-minded people try to impeach Fedor Emelianenko, claiming his "only good wins" are Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and perhaps Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic. Because those are Emelianenko's best wins don't make them his only worthwhile wins. Even the greatest fighters of all time tend not to have tons and tons of epic names on their hitlists.

For Jon Fitch to have gone a gaudy 13-1 inside the UFC is a testament to skill and accomplishment. MMA -- especially at the highest level -- is a sport where the margin for error is itty-bitty-teeny-tiny. The fact that Fitch has managed to avoid screwing up -- apart from St. Pierre putting said screws to him -- in a really good weight class like 170 is darn impressive. That doesn't mean no one other than St. Pierre will beat him, but it means that Fitch has done a damn good job at accomplishing the most basic tenet of prizefighting: beating up other good fighters.

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