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.

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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.

That represents a significant drop from the previous WEC televised card in January, which was headlined by a Lightweight Title bout and the return of featherweight and perennial WEC drawing card Urijah Faber after a seven month lay-off. The only other card in the last two years to do worse numbers was last December’s WEC 45, which had no star power other than former Lightweight champion Donald Cerrone, a minor star in the promotion’s weakest weight class, who was just coming off a decision loss to Ben Henderson.

The sudden drop has had several folks speculating what this means for their initial foray into pay-per-view this April and if, in the grand scheme of things, this means the sky is falling on the promotion.

Former WEC Bantamweight champion Miguel Torres

The answer is no. Well, not yet at least. The WEC does have problems, but they extend far beyond a poor rating on Saturday night.

WEC 47 had a lot working against it. For one, most of the audience was largely unfamiliar with the two fighters competing for the Bantamweight title. Bowles had yet to prove that his knockout of Miguel Torres was anything more than a fluke. His challenger, Dominick Cruz, was a viable challenger statistically but had only fought on television once in the last three years. Anticipation and buzz for the fight was almost non-existent.

The WEC had also heralded the card behind fights featuring Jens Pulver and Miguel Torres, but they represented problems as well. Pulver had once been a draw for the promotion due to his association with the UFC and an exciting series of fights with Urijah Faber. He also went into the event coming off five consecutive losses, and most simply did not buy him as a viable challenger in a stacked featherweight division. The return of Miguel Torres did present some opportunity to bring in viewers, but despite his efforts he does not have the following or star power of someone like Faber.

Beyond the lack of star power, the card was also a victim of timing. It came on the heels of the aforementioned pay-per-view venture, which had both promoters and the viewing audience looking past the event and towards the showdown between Faber and Jose Aldo in April.

The real problems in the WEC lie in places other than the poor number they drew in Saturday, and the fallout from the events of the card itself should yield greater concern than its ratings: it resulted in the retirement of Jens Pulver, the demystification of Miguel Torres, and yet another brief Bantamweight title reign ended unexpectedly. Those three fights alone have placed the WEC in a conundrum: it now finds itself venturing into an uncertain pay-per-view market while it’s hemorrhaging star power.

In terms of its drawing power, the Bantamweight division is a relative no-man’s land. It’s seen a sudden surge in talent that has resulted in parity at the top of the weight class. What’s good for competition, however, can be bad for business.

Revenue in combat sports is made by and thrives on consistency. As an example, the UFC’s biggest draws at the moment are its most dominant champions: Brock Lesnar, Georges St. Pierre, and Anderson Silva. Fans need to believe that a challenger could potentially usurp the champion in order to maintain interest, but a title switching hands too often results in the perception (whether accurate or not) that it’s a wide open field and any number of fighters could become champion on any given night. As a result, the fighters in the division gain the respect of hardcore fans and analysts while the value of the title they’re vying for is diminished in the eyes of the casual viewer.

Featherweight Urijah Faber is still the WEC's most proven drawing card, but for how much longer?

That leaves the Featherweights, and in particular former champion Urijah Faber, to carry the weight of the promotion on their backs. Needless to say, if Faber wins the title he’ll re-establish himself as the flag-bearer of the division and the WEC as a whole. A loss against such a worthy opponent will not hurt his reputation as a fighter, but after two losses to Mike Brown will definitely hurt the WEC’s ability to push him as a major star.

In addition, WEC is going into its first pay-per-view while losing momentum as a promotion. Some place the blame for the significant drop in overall viewership over the last several events squarely on the Versus/DirecTV debacle. However, that argument requires we ignore the fact that WEC 46 in January drew 640,000 viewers. That matches (and in some cases even beats) the higher-profile cards WEC presented while still airing on DirecTV, while none of the previous three cards topped 420,000 viewers. The success of that particular event is directly attributable to the presence of Urijah Faber on the card and further evidence of his value.  If Faber were to lose to Aldo in convincing fasion, it’d be a disaster for the promotion.

New Bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz may be the future of the promotion.

The only potentially positive outcome would be Jose Aldo as the promotion’s version of Anderson Silva: a nigh-untouchable striker whose exciting knockouts make him worth watching no matter who he’s matched up against. WEC also has a charismatic and potentially bankable Bantamweight champion in Dominick Cruz, so long as he can string at least two successful title defenses. If he can do so, the WEC will have an even bigger star at 135 than it had with Miguel Torres.

I personally would like to see the WEC succeed, as I truly believe it’s provided the best fight cards of the last three years and is the most consistently entertaining promotion in the world. Unfortunately, they’re not going to be a priority for parent company Zuffa (which also owns The UFC) and as a result they have few options in terms of resources and fighters. It’s almost unfair to expect a promotion to succeed when it’s restricted to two relatively untested weight divisions and a third weight division with an already shallow talent pool subject to raiding by the UFC.

The MMA industry is uncertain terrain for any promotion. Even the UFC – the most recognizable brand name in the sport’s history – finds itself serving at the whim of circumstance; the various injuries and re-shuffling of cards last Fall testify to that fact. In that sense, the WEC’s predicament isn’t unprecedented, nor is it hopeless.  But the events of the last several months have increased the pressure to perform well in its inaugural pay-per-view outing.

Dominic Cruz overwhelms Brian Bowles. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.

It was a chaotic scene coming out of the second round. The fight was stopped during a commercial break on Versus, which confused the audience at home and the announcers. We had left the two fighters going at it full-force, swiftly and valiantly, without seemingly any physical difficulty. We returned to a cold cut of boos and a victorious Dominic Cruz raising his hands in the air while color commentator Stephan Bonnar struggled to provide answers for the home audience.

At first it was assumed to be a cut, as most sudden and unexpected stoppages are. However, Bonnar quickly noted that the cut was barely visible, let alone a stoppable injury. Speculation then turned to a leg injury and finally that nagging hand possibly being broken, with the confirmation coming shortly after the official decision had been announced to an angry and disappointed live crowd.

Out of respect for both fighters, it should be noted that up until this point Cruz was handily winning the fight. His unorthodox fighting stance and foot movement had overcome and exasperated the outmatched Bowles for ten minutes. He bobbed in and out, popping Bowles with solid shots. Whenever Bowles attempted to move in with power punching he’d be counter-punched to all Hell. The only scares Bowles gave Cruz were fleeting and inconsequential.

In neither round did we see any indication that Bowles’s hand was broken or giving him any trouble. This is not to say that he did not legitimately break his hand. He most assuredly did, and photographic evidence provided by his Twitter page confirmed this (see right). The question, though, is whether Bowles truly could not under any circumstances continue with the fight, or if he allowed a nagging injury to excuse giving up on what was, up until that point, a losing and wholly frustrating effort.

Brian Bowles's badly broken hand. Photo courtesy his Twitter account.

As myself and many others half-jokingly pointed out, fellow WEC fighter Urijah Faber would have stayed in the fight. In his rematch with Mike Brown, Faber broke both hands and still fought through a grueling and – considering he literally had no use of his hands – highly competitive bout. Does that make Urijah Faber a tougher fighter than Brian Bowles?

Well, yes and no.

Bowles came into the sport of MMA with no athletic pedigree. He was not an athlete in school, and he did not come from a wrestling or jiu-jitsu background. In fact, he had very little in the way of traditional expertise when he made his professional debut on his twenty-sixth birthday. Much of his skill was adapted through the Mixed Martial Arts equivalent of on the job training. For that, he should be commended: he’s clearly a smart, well-conditioned fighter and a fast learner.

However, his fight on Saturday showed that there is such a thing as life preparation for the port. You don’t have to grow up the toughest kid on your block to be successful in Mixed Martial Arts. There is, however, a certain mental toughness that one gets from being a longtime athlete, martial artist, amateur wrestler, etcetera. Someone with that sort of background is prepared to push through that kind of an injury, even if the circumstances would seem insurmountable to the casual observer.

Let me make this clear: Brian Bowles is still a contender and a threat at 135 pounds. That I cannot and will not question. It still takes more guts than I, and most likely you, have to step into the cage and do what he does on a regular basis. But what was made clear on Saturday is that he’s still young and still an outsider in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. When all is said and done, hopefully this will be a learning experience for Bowles. You can have the proper amount of preparation for a fight, but there are always going to be factors, whether from another fighter or circumstance, for which nobody can prepare.

Additionally, both the depth of competition at Bantamweight and his nagging hand injury means that Bowles is going to have to expand his repertoire and become a more versatile fighter if he has any hope of retaining his position. Nobody can win at any weight on pure power alone, and in a division that has an incredible variety of styles, approaches, and speed, a lot of adjustments are going to need to be made.

It’s daunting, but not impossible. One boxer once found himself in the same exact predicament as Bowles. He got by early on by being a puncher for the most part, but a nagging hand injury not only threatened to leave him out of contention but out of boxing entirely. With the help of experienced trainers and his own gumption, the boxer relied on his footwork and modified his game to become more defensive. It not only made Floyd Mayweather a better fighter, it made him the best in the game.

Time will tell how and when Bowles will bounce back from this loss. It’s going to be a challenge, but it’s not an impossible feat. Brian Bowles will have to learn in a short amount of time what’s taken a lifetime to instill in the likes of Urijah Faber, Lyoto Machida, Anderson Silva, and all the other greats in the sport. It seems almost impossible, but so did the prospect of him becoming champion in the first place.