The move comes a little over a year after the UFC officially absorbed the WEC’s talent roster, establishing the UFC Bantamweight (135) and Featherweight (145) divisions in the process. Shortly after, Dana White started talking about the eventual Flyweight class.

BANTAMWEIGHTS BEWARE

Speculated to join the division are current Bantamweights Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson, Joseph Benavidez, and The Ultimate Fighter 14′s Bantamweight winner, John Dodson.

The overwhelming focus seems to be on which Bantamweights will make the jump down in weight, but I’m personally more intrigued by the new fighters this will bring into the promotion. And I predict that the promotion’s first star is likely one that is not currently under contract with Zuffa.

Who that may be remains a mystery. But what often gets overlooked is the fact that cutting down a weight class gets exponentially harder the lower you get. When Bantamweights and Featherweights were added last year, a lot of the talk was on which Lightweights (155) would make the cut down to Featherweight, with the speculation being that we would suddenly see a mass exodus. It didn’t quite happen that way, and thus far those that did make the jump – guys like Tyson Griffin and George Roop – have flamed out in their attempts to be the big dogs in the puppy kennel.

But cutting down to 145 pounds is a tough proposition when you’re already cutting weight to make 155, simply because you don’t have the extra expendable mass that bigger fighters have. In many ways, even though there’s a difference of fifteen pounds between Light Heavyweight and Middleweight, it’s easier to make that jump than to make it from 155 to 145. Which is also why the weight classes in MMA are set up the way they are.

Guys like Dodson and Johnson already walk around (and weigh in) below 135 for their fights, so the cut likely won’t be as tough for them. But anybody currently at Bantamweight and Featherweight who thinks they’re just going to make the cut to 125 and find immediate success is going to be in for a rude awakening…particularly in the coming months when the establishment of the division sees an infusion of international talent.

The announcement of Flyweights will make for great fights, but also some intriguing roster shifts. Stay tuned.

Dominick Cruz is a generation ahead of pretty much every other fighter at 135, but he faces a bias against good fighters who win by decision.

Judging by the results, it was exactly what I expected it to be: a woefully underlooked card that provided some of the more entertaining bouts in recent months.

I was disappointed, however, in the reaction I read online.

Part of the problem with MMA is that its fanbase has more overlap with professional wrestling than with boxing or any other legitimate sport. That’s not meant to browbeat professional wrestling fans as a whole, since I was one of them until the uglier aspects of the industry chased me away.

There comes a time, though, when one has to decide if they like sports or entertainment. While the terms aren’t mutually exclusive, it doesn’t follow that an athlete is required to entertain you, the fan, first and foremost.

This mindset is the same one that says Georges St-Pierre is a lesser fighter because he wins fights by decision. That bias and vitriol against strategy and technique is now being directed towards Dominick Cruz, who many fans have taken to calling “The Decisionater” (playing off his nickname “The Domin8r”). It doesn’t help either when fighters like Quinton Jackson talk about the glory days of Pride Fighting Championships in Japan and yearn for a return to days when fighters were more concerned with putting on a good show than actually winning the fight. If you took that attitude to a boxing fan, you’d be rightfully chastised.

Which leads me back to the problem at hand: a fanbase mired in a pro wrestling mindset.

This was certainly the case in Japan. While older fight fans wax poetic about the apex of the Japanese MMA scene, they ignore the fixed fights and fighters being offered bonuses if they happened to lose to native fighters via submission or knockout. The best fighters at Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight fought in Pride, but they rarely fought each other on a fair and level playing field. If they did meet, it was in a tournament spanning one or two evenings, which is indicative of toughness but not necessarily skill.

This sport is still evolving, and as a fan you have to either accept that or face the reality that what you’re looking for might not be here. Nobody with any reasonable level of intelligence or appreciation for the game and the sacrifices fighters make should call for anyone to sacrifice their championship or their career for the sake of a quick moment of elation for the chubby guy sitting at the bar.

If you can’t watch someone like Dominick Cruz put on the performances he’s had while the WEC and UFC Bantamweight Champion and appreciate his talent, then you’re not a fan of MMA. You’re a fan of flash knockouts, blood, and freak shows. And for that, you could save yourself a lot of time and money and just surf YouTube.

—————-

Other notes/controversies from the event:

• Lightweight TJ Grant was given a submission win in the third round when referee Fernando Yamasaki (Mario Yamasaki’s younger brother) mistook Shane Roller‘s aggressive yell for a verbal submission. In watching the replay, I could see how someone could misinterpret the situation. On the other hand, I worry it sets a bad precedent when you have fighters thinking that any sort of grunt of verbal expression can be taken as a submission.
• Later in the evening, Mario Yamasaki was taken to task by some for what they perceived to be an early stoppage after Anthony Johnson nearly took Charlie Brenneman‘s head off with a head kick following a vicious offensive flurry that had Brenneman effectively out on his feet. In this case, Mario was right to stop the fight and he had no shortage of people defending it. I hate to dismiss so many by saying they’re ignorant, but the referee’s job isn’t to wait until a fighter is knocked unconscious. Mario Yamasaki determined – rightly – that Brenneman was in danger of being knocked unconscious. Which he was. Despite his reaction when knocked on his back, Brenneman was being beatne like a pinata and was clearly out on his feet before Johnson’s head kick. Anything after that would have been unnecessary damage, and like Dana White said in the post-fight presser, it’s always better to see a fight stopped early than a fight stopped well after it should have been.
• Pat Barry‘s loss to Stefan Struve proves what I’ve been thinking for a while: Barry is a very nice guy who is not very good at the whole MMA thing. He needs to do nothing for the next few months except drill his submission and takedown defense. A fighter would be able to get away with only one or two tools in his box three years ago, but not in 2011 and certainly not in a field where there’s more parity seemingly by the week.

I’ve been signing the praises of Cruz to friends and fans going back to his days in the WEC. Boy, do I miss those cards, particularly the laters ones that featured almost exclusively Bantamweight and Featherweight fights. Since MMA is still a young sport, there are still divisions that are lacking for depth (in particular Heavyweight and Middleweight) and still experience growing pains while the sport continues to attract the attention of  higher caliber of athletes from around the globe. Yet in the WEC, there were two lower weight classes that at the time were not even in the UFC where the talent pool was not only exceptional, but nearly every fight was a barn-burner.

Cruz was the star of the WEC in its final days, becoming champion right at the precipice of the announcement of the UFC’s eventual aborption of the promotion. His year and a half long reign has seen him dominate the likes of Scott Jorgensen and former Featherweight champion Urijah Faber in performances that have shown him to be something far beyond the measuring stick for his weight class. Like Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, Cruz seems to be a generation ahead of every other fighter in his division, yet with a style that is unique and all his own. Anyone that appreciates footwork can only sit in awe as he darts and dances around his opponents. As MMAFighting.com’s Ben Fowlkes once said (in praise of Cruz’s unique style and baffling cardio), “how do you prepare for this weirdo?”

It’s my belief (as you’ll see when I release my rankings later this week) that Dominick Cruz is one of the top five pound-for-pound fighters in the world. It’s a shame that he’s not being showcased on pay-per-view and does not yet have the recognition and respect from casual fans to be a major draw, but the positive of course is that we get to see one of the greatest MMA fighters in the game hone his craft on free television. Lucky us.

“UFC Live: Cruz vs. Johnson” airs live on Versus this Saturday, October 1st starting at 9:00pm.

In addition to the main event, the rest of the card has the potential to be one of the more entertaining events of 2011. Pat Barry vs. Stefan Struve, Matt Wiman vs. Mac Danzig, and Anthony Johnson vs. Charlie Brenneman rounds out the live televised portion of the event.

You owe it to yourself as a fan to watch this Saturday. Mark my words: you won’t see a better fighter step in the cage the rest of this year.

In the meantime, here’s a video of Joe Warren being knocked out that same night over on the Bellator broadcast on MTV2. They’re in the midst of their Bantamweight tournament, and as a Warren booster I honestly thought he’d go all the way. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, since the last time I saw him he seemed to struggle quite a bit with stand-up.

It just goes to show that no matter how superbly athletic and talented you are, MMA is won with a skillset, not one skill.