Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration
* * *
On Saturday, Ciryl Gane picked up the biggest win of his young mixed martial arts career, confounding Alexander Volkov for most of five rounds at UFC Fight Night 190. It is difficult to overstate just how impressive it was to see the 31-year-old Frenchman’s speed, intelligence and poise, as he thoroughly outfought a prime Top 5 heavyweight who had already won Bellator MMA and M-1 Global titles by the time Gane even started training.
In the immediate aftermath of the “UFC Vegas 30” headliner, the main question on the minds of many observers was whether “Bon Gamin” had done enough to earn a shot at the heavyweight title held by his countryman and onetime training partner, Francis Ngannou. Again, that we were even asking this about a 9-0 fighter was remarkable. You would have to go back well over a decade, to the rise of Brock Lesnar, for the last instance of a fighter with so little professional MMA experience being in the title discussion, and Lesnar of course benefitted from a twofold head start in the form of his high-level amateur wrestling background and preexisting stardom.
Personally, I was of the opinion that Gane had earned his shot, but might as well take another fight while he waited the six months or more it would take for the title picture to settle. Some of my friends and peers disagreed. It was shaping up to be a good debate to carry us over the nearly fight-free Independence Day weekend — that is, until the stunning news came Monday that the UFC had booked Gane and Derrick Lewis in an interim title fight on Aug. 7, six weeks after the Volkov fight.
As an example of the UFC’s overuse of interim belts, and its practice of using those pseudo-titles as a way to punish or coerce recalcitrant fighters, it would be difficult to top this announcement. It is almost impressive in the way that it manages to display contempt for just about everyone involved in the situation. It’s as if the promotion loaded a shotgun with “f*** you,” then proceeded to blast a half-dozen of its best fighters with a single pull of the trigger. Let us examine the carnage, going from the least severely injured to the most.
Gane and Lewis: You know it’s bad when the two people who are supposedly making out the best from this situation are getting more or less a nothing sandwich. Yes, Gane and Lewis will be headliners, with the attendant bump in pay and prestige; and yes, one of them will leave with an interim belt. However, considering that Lewis was already rumored to be fighting for the real belt in September, and that many people seemed to think that Gane should be up next, what did they truly gain? Meanwhile, Lewis now gets to face a different opponent on a truncated fight camp, while Gane gets to fight the biggest fight of his life on six weeks’ turnaround from the previous biggest fight of his life. We, the audience, get something less than this fight could have been a year from now, perhaps with the real title on the line and after full training camps.
Jon Jones: While the shotgun metaphor applies pretty well to everyone else under discussion here, for the former light heavyweight champion, it’s more like he’s been strafed with belt-fed machine guns full of “f*** you” for the last year or so. His insistence on a higher purse for a title fight with Ngannou has led to a long stalemate; the Ngannou-Lewis fight was booked only when the promotion couldn’t come to an agreement with Jones, and “Bones” is now being pushed even further out. Along the way there have been surprising turns, including Jones changing management, and extremely unsurprising ones, such as UFC President Dana White going to his usual playbook for stars who want more money: namely, accusing them of not wanting to fight. The promotion has always been about keeping its brand bigger than any one star, but if Jones joins the ranks of those who “just don’t want to fight” with the likes of Nick Diaz and Henry Cejudo while White claims the company is bringing in record amounts of money, that would be a sad loss to everyone other than the UFC’s stockholders.
Amanda Nunes: There’s no need to add a qualifier based on gender; the “Lioness” is the most dominant champion in the sport. Yet she is somehow unworthy to headline a pay-per-view? That seems to be the message here, since the impetus behind this interim title fight, according to Ngannou and his management, is that the heavyweight champ was unwilling to move up his title defense against Lewis. We’ll discuss in a moment just how insulting that is to Ngannou, but reflect for a moment on the fact that the UFC has one of the best fighters in the world on roster, but was so disinclined to let her headline UFC 265 that it conjured a completely unnecessary interim belt in order to avoid doing so. She isn’t a draw, you say? I disagree, but even if it were true, that isn’t her fault and shouldn’t be her problem. She’s a fighter; the UFC is a promoter. The job descriptions are baked right into the titles.
Ngannou: I’m gratified that the vast majority of the initial reactions to the Gane-Lewis announcement were indignant on behalf of the heavyweight champion and critical of his promoter. (It seemed obvious, but I’ve learned over the years that there is a segment of fans out there whose love of the UFC is so unconditional that they will bend over backward to justify its every move, no matter how reprehensible.) Ngannou had been in negotiations to defend his title six months after winning it — a blink of an eye, by heavyweight standards — but because he was unwilling to move up the date of that defense in order to headline over Nunes, the promotion will crown an interim champion barely four months after its lineal title changed hands. That’s faster than when Frank Mir had the 2004 motorcycle accident that threatened to leave him crippled, and which ended up knocking him out of the sport for a year and a half.
Ngannou is not injured. Neither does he lack for healthy, qualified challengers: Lewis, Jones and Gane are all right there and any of them could presumably fight him in September. Even by the capricious and vindictive standards of the UFC’s use of interim titles — remember Colby Covington’s two-month reign? — this is a transparent attempt to strong-arm one of its top fighters into doing something he is personally and professionally uncomfortable with. While there’s plenty of shot in the shell to go around, it is absolutely “The Predator” who bears the brunt of the UFC’s shotgun blast. That it is being done to one of its best fighters; a humanitarian; a genial giant with an inspirational story who clearly figured prominently in its marketing plans going forward, shows just how abruptly the promotion can turn on athletes who dare to say no.