ESPN Mixed Martial Arts

If your first thought after learning that Dominick Cruz tore an anterior cruciate ligament was anything like mine, then you've wondered whether or not a fighter who made his name off speed and movement is in danger of stumbling back to the pack.

It will be a year before we know the answer to that important question. In the meantime, Cruz's division apparently must march forward, which means Zuffa booked an interim bantamweight title fight between Urijah Faber and a to-be-determined opponent.

As is usually the case, the creation of a belt and a stand-in champion isn't needed. It's especially less so considering Faber fights on July 7, when most of the prefight coverage is expected to zero in on Silva-Sonnen 2. A healthy Cruz against his rival Faber, both off the reality show, wouldn't have generated a ton of interest considering the circumstances. So why push a fake belt? I don't get it.

At best, Faber versus TBD is a worthy No. 1 contender fight. And that's not so terrible. There are bouts at 135 pounds for Faber that line up to be terrific contests.

Renan Barao, ranked third at 135, is the obvious choice. Zuffa can break up his match against Ivan Menjivar, serendipitously scheduled for July 7, and it wouldn't upset too many people. If not the Brazilian, then an argument can be made to slot in 21-year-old Michael McDonald. I think that's the wrong way to go for the youngster, but it would be a fight with intriguing possibilities.

No matter how it pans out, hopefully Cruz makes a full recovery. It would be a shame to see someone who’s worked so hard, has so much potential, and hasn’t yet cashed in, take a knock that permanently changed the way he fights.

Is Koch ready?

Two weeks after what promises to be an epic UFC event in Las Vegas, Erik Koch’s title challenge July 21 in Calgary against featherweight champion Jose Aldo will feel small; maybe like it’s not even happening.

Depending on the outcome, of course, the 23-year-old Koch may wish it hadn’t. Then again, he wouldn’t be the first kid to come out of nowhere and pull off something many of us felt was impossible. And let’s be real here, there are few things in MMA more difficult to do than defeating Jose Aldo.

I thought it interesting that Hatsu Hioki, who based on his résumé is as ready to fight Aldo as any fighter in the world, has decided to take his time. Rather than jump at the chance to fight Aldo, Hioki meets Ricardo Lamas in a preliminary bout in June. The decision confused me, and it left the door open for Koch.

The first thing to notice when looking at Koch’s record, which is nowhere as good as Hioki’s, is his level of competition. He’s fought scrappy guys that helped make him look good. That’s not Aldo. Aldo is an offensive machine. I have the feeling Koch is in big trouble here.

Ratings ebb and flow

Somewhere between a heavyweight championship attraction and a card filled with scrappers is the truth when it comes to UFC ratings on Fox.

The number of households that tuned into Saturday’s network event, headlined by Nate Diaz and Jim Miller, plummeted compared to the previous two fight nights, but attempting to extrapolate what that means for future cards is risky business.

The May 5 card averaged 2.4 million viewers, a drop off of more than 50 percent from the first offering in November (5.7 million viewers), and this January (4.7 million). There were plenty of things to do Saturday, including a bevy of sports-watching options, not the least of which was Floyd Mayweather fighting Miguel Cotto on pay-per-view.

The UFC should regard the 2.4 million number as a baseline, the minimum number of viewers that will tune in to a Fox card. Considering the disappointment (and some have called it that) of Junior dos Santos’s early knockout against Cain Velasquez, and the decision-heavy second offering headlined by a five-round snoozer between Rashad Evans and Phil Davis, if people tuned in to watch a card without any star power and/or title fights they’re likely the most passionate watchers out of the casual group.

UFC’s third event on Fox was its most typical: just a solid lineup of action and good MMA. Had the evening gone another way, then there might be something to really worry about for Zuffa. But the bottom line is fighters performed and viewers likely felt as if the experience was worth doing again on Aug. 4.

Weekend viewing options

Zuffa is off until a Tuesday night fight card featuring Dustin Poirier and Chan Sung Jung, but that only opens the space up for multiple promoters. (By the way, with Hioki bowing out, the winner of this fight would have been my pick to face Aldo at UFC 149.)

May 10: Former Bellator featherweight champion Joe Soto has dropped to 135 and will fight for a respected regional title when he takes on Chad George at Tachi Palace Fights 13. The card streams on Sherdog.com

May 11: Speaking of ratings, Bellator and MTV2 earned an increase with the return of Michael Chandler on Friday. That’s a great sign for the lightweight titleholder. This week, Bellator heads to Atlantic City. Featherweights Marlon Sandro and Daniel Straus fight for the fight to get next crack at the 145-pound title after Patricio Freire. Should be a competitive fight.

On HDNet, Legacy Fighting Championship 11 from Houston features a mix of prospects and veterans. If you caught my podcast this week, you heard the interview with Chad Robichaux. The decorated special forces veteran, making his flyweight debut against Joseph Sandoval, has formed a non-profit -- Mighty Oaks Foundation -- to aid military personal stricken with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Since we’re in the business of musing over the clay perceptions of casual fans, you have to wonder how lay viewers took in the Demian Maia/Chris Weidman fight that opened a national television broadcast on Saturday night.

For instance, if you’d tuned in and saw Maia gassing though parts of the second round and the entirety of the third, you might have thought it was he who had to cut 31 pounds in 11 days to make weight. You might have also suspected that Maia’s only chance of beating Weidman was a simple puncher’s. After all, he was winging that left with hopes of a homerun.

Maia looked like a one-dimensional fighter, whose single dimension wasn’t all that imposing.

Now, if you are anything more than the casual fan, the performance against Weidman begged the question that’s been looming since the 21-second knockout at the hands of Nate Marquardt in 2009 -- what happened to the Maia of old? Who is this imposter that walks out to “Vida Bandida?” Wasn’t Maia the best Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner in the game, who for a while there people began referring to as Royce Gracie 2.0?

Maybe the hackers who have plagued the UFC all week have greater reach than we know. Maybe they have the ability to hack into UFC fighters now, and redirect them from world-class jiu-jitsu players into vague kickboxers. Or maybe Maia was hurt, or sick, or confused. It’s possible he was disenchanted that Michael Bisping became Chris Weidman. It must be something, but the former No. 1 contender has gone from being 5-0 in the UFC with five ridiculously fluid submissions to 9-4 in the UFC with five ridiculously fluid submissions.

It started by getting knocked out by Marquardt in Portland at UFC 102, and since then in seven fights he’s gone the distance seven times. In all of them we’ve been applauding the slow evolution of his stand-up. Somewhere along the way Maia took criticism of his stand-up to heart, and became obsessed with doing something about it. This seemed obvious. When he surprised Mark Munoz a couple of times at UFC 131, we began to think him more than capable on the feet. And he is.

But the problem is Maia has forgotten who he is. A timely reminder on Fox would have been a welcoming relief, but the nonpareil jitz master has changed focus.

It used to be that if you went to the floor with Maia it became a matter of time until you tapped. Chael Sonnen, Ed Herman, Jason MacDonald, Nate Quarry -- these guys caught hell for mistakes, for over-aggressiveness, for simply finding themselves on the ground. If Maia was on his back, he would sweep. He was mean in a scramble. He was quick to snatch limbs. If he got your back, it was a matter of time. Maia made guys feel paranoid about being on the ground. He wasn’t just good at triangles, he was a Bermuda triangle, where contenders -- wrestlers, boxers and otherwise -- disappeared.

Now Maia’s jiu-jitsu has gone AWOL, and it’s curious. Even the threat of it has vanished.

Against the wrestler Weidman, Maia was officially 0-7 on takedowns, but they all played out as half commitments. Truth is, it didn’t look like he really wanted to go to the ground. Weidman, also a solid BJJ player, wasn’t afraid to take it there, and did so a couple of times late in rounds. For a jiu-jitsu superior like Maia, who had uncanny Octagon control in his arsenal at one point in the career, it’s become OK to allow opponents to dictate terms. Which is not OK for sustaining a career.

Weidman did it. And so did Munoz. Against Jorge Santiago at UFC 136, Maia had things in his realm but settled on ground-and-pound. Maia at 34 looks less wise than the one who fought at 30. This is not an ideal trajectory.

What happened to the quiet contortionist that capitalized on every misstep? In those first five UFC fights, Maia took home "submission of the night" honors four times. That’s a lot of extra cash. Since then he has not been awarded a single end of the night bonus. If his stand-up has improved, that’s great; but all new elements should be working toward the one element that made him special -- his jiu-jitsu. Otherwise, the admission seems to be that either people have caught up to him, or that jiu-jitsu and Maia are no longer on speaking terms, or that he doesn’t trust jiu-jitsu to get the job done anymore.

Whatever the case with Maia is, it’s mysterious. And you get the feeling that if he doesn’t rediscover his roots soon, he’ll be done in the UFC.

CHICAGO -- A lot of people drew blanks when trying to come up with ways that Michael Bisping could defeat Chael Sonnen. In the end, a lot of people were drawing blanks as to how Bisping lost. Such is life in fighting.

The penultimate stage to the middleweight title ended up being closer than expected, but Sonnen prevailed on the judge’s scorecards (30-27, 29-28, 29-28), and it looks like he’s headed to Sao Paulo for his long-awaited rematch with Anderson Silva. But it wasn’t the same dominant Sonnen we’ve seen against Yushin Okami, Nate Marquardt, Brian Stann and through nine-tenths of the Silva fight. This time he was challenged against the game British fighter, who came in with near stumblebum odds as a 4-to-1 underdog.

Though the third round was clearly Sonnen’s, through much of the first two stanzas it was Bisping who outstruck Sonnen on the feet and took turns controlling the action against the fence. He thwarted many of Sonnen’s double-leg takedown attempts, and when he did get taken down, he was able to use the cage to get back up. He worked Sonnen well in the clinch and scored with dirty boxing. But Sonnen did enough with the takedowns in the eyes of the judges to nudge things his way. In fact, one judge even gave Sonnen the second round, which played out pretty convincingly in Bisping’s favor.

“The only round I knew I had was the third,” Sonnen said at the postfight news conference. “I thought I might have had one of the first two, but I didn’t know [for sure] I had it. I heard 30-27; I knew that went for me. But I didn’t hear unanimous decision. If I’d heard unanimous I would have breathed deep right then.

"I thought it was a split decision. And that was my goal -- to win a controversial split decision.”

That last part, of course, was a joke on his part. But when asked if he knew the fight was close going into the third and that prompted him to fight with a sense of urgency, Sonnen said he didn’t have his bearings enough to fully know.

“Yeah, I knew we were in the middle of a close fight,” he said. “I went in there to win the third round -- I had a sense of urgency for sure. I think we both did. I think we both knew we were in the middle of a hard fight. But you’ve got to understand, [Bisping] hit me so hard in the first round, I wasn’t positive when we were in the third. I was just glad when it was over.”

In the toil, Sonnen may have lost a little steam for a rematch that has been could go down as one of the biggest in UFC history. Had he walked through Bisping as he did Stann at UFC 136, the collision course with Silva would look like just that -- a collision course. But doubt will inevitably creep back into the equation with him looking more vulnerable than he has in a couple of years.

But the rematch with Silva seems destined to happen nearly two full years after the first went down at UFC 117 in Oakland. Instead of 17,425 people cheering him on, there will be 100,000 people expecting his comeuppance in Brazil. When asked about the fight in Sao Paulo, Sonnen made it clear he won’t balk at the opportunity.

“It sounds like you’re concerned for my safety,” he said. “But in fairness, ladies and gentleman, you might want to pick up your local newspaper. Chicago isn’t exactly a haven for civility at all times -- I don’t know if I’m completely safe on the streets around here. And secondly, if those blowhards with their blow darts want to come at me, they can send anybody they want -- but don’t send anybody you want back.”

Might have been harder than people expected, but he got the job done. Now get ready for an inundation of Sonnen in both hemispheres.

Dana White made a few things clear during Thursday's news conference in Chicago -- or, at least clearer -- about what's at stake on Saturday. The rest will have to be inferred.

The most up-to-date picture looks like this: The winner of Chael Sonnen and Michael Bisping will fight for the middleweight title in June (tentatively). That fight will happen in Sao Paulo -- even if Bisping pulls the upset, leaving British fans plenty of time to acquire their Brazilian visas. This will all happen unless the winner suffers a significant injury, or Anderson Silva doesn’t recover in time from the bursitis ailment that has sidelined him. Sonnen’s safety in Sao Paulo isn’t even an issue, whether it’s in front of 100,000 ticked off partisans or not. If things don’t go exactly as planned, Dan Henderson lurks in the same vague way he has been lurking for months now.

In the light heavyweight division, the winner of Phil Davis and Rashad Evans gets an immediate crack at Jon Jones. Unless it’s Davis, and Davis doesn’t win emphatically. Then it could be Henderson -- but, according to White, “we’ll see what happens.”

Davis’ wrestling style at Penn State belongs in a Hefty bag (according to Evans) and Evans is on drugs (according to Davis). It’s up in the air at which card the winner will challenge Jones, but Montreal might still be in the running. Or maybe Atlanta in April.

And that’s where things stand heading into the big UFC on Fox 2 event this weekend. A lot at stake, and a lot depends on a lot. In other words, things are exactly where things stood before the news conference. Three of the four guys are guaranteed title shots, while Davis -- who’s still green enough not to care -- will need to raise some eyebrows in victory to procure his. It’s up to him to outdo the one-armed Kimura that did in Tim Boetsch.

But in the re-emphasis of hypothetical outcomes, White did make it clear that Brazil is where Silva would be defending his title. There have been a lot of inquiries as to whether or not the UFC would consider holding the 185-pound title fight in England should Bisping win. It won’t. Whether it’s Bisping or Sonnen, they will be made into interlopers come June in a fight that’s expected to draw the biggest crowd ever assembled for a UFC event. They are fighting for the chance to become sacrifices, which is exhilarating.

Otherwise, it looks like this -- Evans is on drugs, Davis’ wrestling is trash, Bisping knows where Sonnen can stick that fake belt and, speaking of Sonnen, don’t believe a word that he says because, according to Dana White, “Chael is nuts.” That much he was perfectly clear on. And whatever all this tells us, whether it’s informative or new, it sets the table for a big night of fights with a lot of unfiltered characters.

That’s part of what makes this sport interesting, and why it bursting in on a million conservative homes is fun to think about. We just can’t predict how things will play out.

It’s been a long while since Michael Bisping was an underdog heading into a fight. In fact, the last time was back in 2009 when he fought Dan Henderson at UFC 100. On that occasion, with all the tensions of the “Ultimate Fighter 9” still playing in the shallows of public perception, the Brit showed up as a 2-to-1 dog. And even then there were a lot of people that thought Vegas was sleeping on Bisping a little bit. (By the time Henderson’s right hand sent Bisping into the twitches, the line was long forgotten).

Since then the “Count” has been the “Bully” in Joe Silva’s matchmaking. Jason Miller, Jorge Rivera, Yoshihiro Akiyama, Dan Miller and Denis Kang were all long shots to beat Bisping. Ditto Wanderlei Silva, who managed to spring the upset. For the last three years, Bisping has grown used to being the mark, not the marksman. He’s been batting down the grabbing hands of opportunists on his climb, rather than clutching at the ankles of the guys above him.

That changes in Chicago. Against Chael Sonnen -- who fell to Bisping when Mark Munoz had to pull out of his scheduled fight with bone spurs in his elbow -- he is a 4-to-1 underdog.

This is unusual terrain for Bisping. And it’s an incredible line for a guy who has won four in a row (finishing his last two). In fact, it’s the kind of line that says two things: 1) For the last three years Bisping has had a cushy schedule for a guy who considers himself “title ready,” and B) we now view Sonnen as a tyrant. In the time it’s taken Bisping to make his way up the rungs enough for a bigger challenge, Sonnen has transformed from a journeyman to a contender, from an afterthought to a showman, and from cusp prelimer to PPV headliner. He contradicts himself ruthlessly in the media, but he keeps beating guys (coldly, methodically) and came close to cashing in Silva, too. The Sonnen case is one for 18th century exorcists.

Or maybe Malcolm Gladwell.

But Bisping has always been Bisping. And to become something other than Bisping he’ll need to beat Sonnen, who also happens to be the guy he can take his cues from. Sonnen stood as a lofty underdog against Yushin Okami at UFC 104 and Nate Marquardt at UFC 109. Heading into that stretch he scored a workman-like decision over Dan Miller, and before then had lost to Demian Maia (triangle choke). So what did he do? The only thing he could. He laid the pestle down on top-ranked Okami in a fight many thought he didn’t deserve, then ransacked Marquardt for three straight rounds to the point that he suddenly looked like a real impediment for Anderson Silva.

Out of nowhere, Sonnen beat two top-end guys who were trying their damndest to get back to Silva. This time it’s Sonnen who is trying to get back to Silva (even if he says otherwise), and it’s Bisping’s chance to spoil that return trip. In other words, here’s Bisping’s chance to become Sonnen. Win it, and he’ll assuredly be an underdog in his next fight, too. That’s the goal -- Sao Paulo against longer odds still.

Yet lose, and it could be another three years before Bisping’s an underdog again, and that’s no kind of consolation.

It felt equal parts strange and obligatory, when the MMA world suffered a momentary conniption fit at the news that Chael Sonnen will have current WWE champion CM Punk escort him to the cage later this month during the UFC’s second live network television broadcast.

Strange, because on the surface it’s such a non-story: Minor celebrity walks attention-seeking MMA fighter to the Octagon for high-profile bout. Big deal. Makes sense.

After all, Punk (real name: Phil Brooks) is a noted MMA enthusiast and Sonnen’s Jan. 28 title eliminator against Mark Munoz will go down in the WWE star’s hometown of Chicago, where he enjoys enormous popularity. If involving Brooks in such a shoestring way brings a few more eyeballs to the UFC’s next show on Fox and by extension to Sonnen, then it’s pretty easy to see why both fight company and fighter would want him there.

However, the uproar the news caused among some fans also seemed totally fitting -- and, honestly, a little tired at this point -- since hating professional wrestling remains one of the American MMA community’s favorite pastimes.

In truth, this kind of celebrity intrusion is actually commonplace in our sport and Brooks’ part in Sonnen’s entrance would be a complete nonissue, were he anything other than a pro wrestler.

Nobody cared when actor Kevin James cornered Jason Miller during his bout at the TUF 14 finale in December. Few even blink anymore when a 39-year-old Shaquille O’Neal routinely implies he wants to fight in the Octagon. One of MMA’s most beloved and most respected analysts is a stand-up comedian and former sitcom actor, yet many fans have come to take Joe Rogan’s word as gospel.

But professional wrestling’s current “it” performer plans to walk from the locker room with an MMA fighter? My, how typically controversial.

If the well-documented online consensus is anything to go on, most MMA fans either despise pro wrestling’s “fakeness” or care so little about “sports entertainment” that they feel compelled to remind the rest of us about it every single time the topic comes up. As everyone knows, the best way to prove you don’t care about something is to take the time to type out a message about it and then hit “Post” in order to share that indifference with the world.

Exactly why some MMA fans harbor such disdain for pro wrestling, and why they delight so much in shouting it to the world is another matter entirely. Certainly, there is a fair amount of crossover between the two fan bases. A good chunk of current MMA fans were likely once pro wrestling fans and perhaps now they’re embarrassed about it -- though I’m not sure why.

Additionally, many fans keep MMA close to their hearts and have come to feel protective of it after years of defending it against mainstream ignorance. Those people would now be loath to see MMA lumped in with anything the larger population considers “fake.” On the other hand, it’s been so long since pro wrestling held itself up as anything resembling unscripted competition that it’s hard to see how the two would ever be confused, or how wrestling could be any kind of impediment to MMA’s growing popularity. Certainly the biggest threats to MMA's continued march toward acceptance come from within, not from WWE.

In any case, none of that fully explains the intensity of the dislike, which at this point occasionally borders on neurosis. It's weird, it’s ugly and most everybody would probably be better off if we could all agree that the world is big enough for both real fighting and the scripted variety.

By now we should know that the sky will not fall if the occasional pro wrestler like Brock Lesnar, Bobby Lashley or Dave Bautista tries his hand at MMA. Nor will the world come to a screeching halt if a professional wrestler wants to lead an MMA fighter to the cage later this month.

So long as Brooks stays on the outside of the chain link, his presence will likely do more good than harm.

If the teaser trailers can be believed, Chael Sonnen’s second recent appearance on a Canadian television show went better than his first, though this week’s offering from MMA’s best self promoter is still likely to fetch its fair share of headlines.

In November, Sonnen quite purposefully made a stir when he walked off the set of TSN’s “Off the Record” after a contentious (and possibly staged, at least on the fighter’s part) interview with host Michael Landsberg. From the looks of the outtakes from Sonnen’s upcoming do-over on the show, he and Landsberg get along fine this time, but the middleweight contender doesn’t miss out on the opportunity to make any number of outlandish statements on his own.

Chief among them: that he’s “done” chasing a rematch with 185-pound kingpin Anderson Silva and that, if he defeats Mark Munoz next month in their title eliminator, he’ll ask UFC brass for a bout with champions like Junior dos Santos, Jon Jones or Georges St. Pierre instead.

“I’m going to become the No. 1 contender on Jan. 28, but despite what you might think, I’m not going to use that voucher to fight Anderson Silva,” Sonnen says. “I’ll be looking at dos Santos, Jones and possibly St. Pierre. I will take that voucher to Dana White and I will pick one of those three guys. My time with Anderson is done.”

Obviously this sounds like just more theater from Sonnen. If he defeats Munoz to once again become the middleweight division’s top contender, there is little possibility the UFC passes on the chance for a second big money bout with Silva. The company is reportedly already eyeing a June fight for the champion in Brazil and it just doesn’t make much sense to have that be against anyone other than Sonnen.

The idea of the former Oregon wrestler moving up (or, laughably, down) in weight to take on one of the UFC’s other champions is admittedly intriguing, but it remains unclear how that would fit into the UFC’s upcoming calendar, even if the organization would let him do it. Dos Santos is fresh off a knee injury and already scheduled to take on the winner of Brock Lesnar’s UFC 141 fight with Alistair Overeem, there is no shortage of 205-pound challenges afoot for Jones and St. Pierre’s own blown ACL could keep him out for the duration of 2012.

No, whether he likes it or not, it appears Sonnen’s path back to a middleweight title bout remains set if he can slip by another powerful wrestler in Munoz at the UFC’s second live broadcast on network television. It’s probably Silva or bust, so long as the 36-year-old champion can get his shoulder in working order in time.

Like any good performer, Sonnen just understands the importance of keeping his audience’s attention. And even if his way is less accurate, it's still a lot more fun.

“The bottom line is, I’m done with the guy,” Sonnen persists. “He and I have no business. He’s cold product. He’s like jheri curls and Pepsi Clear, OK? He’s yesterday’s news. I destroyed this guy back when he was tough [and] that was years ago. He’s so far over the hill and past his prime it’s not worth talking about.”

Just a couple of hours after throttling Brian Bowles at UFC 139, Urijah Faber had already turned his attention back to the real prize.

His win over Bowles had earned him another opportunity to become UFC bantamweight champion and the chance to settle a longstanding grudge with Dominick Cruz, but the most marketable and business savvy fighter in the company’s lightest weight class was thinking bigger.

“Let me and Dom coach ‘The Ultimate Fighter,’” Faber told Dana White at the postfight news conference, after the UFC president had finished answering a question about the significance of the reality show’s next season. “We need some fans.”

White -- who’d already been forced to reveal more than he probably planned while deflecting questions about the company’s future intentions for Anderson Silva, upcoming shows on Fox and various other fight bookings -- could only turn and give the gathered crowd of reporters a sort of exasperated, but knowing shrug.

“There you go,” White said. It wasn't quite a wink and a nudge, but it was good enough.

Truth is, this decision had probably been made long before Faber publicly put his boss on the spot. The former WEC featherweight champ’s coaching spot on TUF 15 was likely solidified the moment he wrapped his arms around the neck of the already battered and defeated Bowles early in the second round of their fight. It’d already been decided because, frankly, having Cruz and Faber coach the biggest and arguably most important season of “The Ultimate Fighter” is a no-brainer.

What you have here is synergy of the highest order. Two of the sport’s most compelling personalities involved in the 135-pound class’ first real blood feud just as TUF attempts to reshape and revitalize itself for a vastly increased audience on the FX Network? That decision makes itself.

“This is for the UFC title, but it’s a personal vendetta,” Faber said. “We’re 1-1 now; it’s a trilogy and it’s to find out who is the man for the rest of our lives. That’s important to me.”

There can be little doubt that Faber and Cruz are the two best fighters in the bantamweight division right now. Cruz has already defeated much of the top 10 and Faber erased any lingering questions about his fitness as a repeat challenger with the way he handled Bowles at 139. Faber has also proven totally incapable of making peace with his razor-thin decision loss to Cruz at UFC 132 and the two have real, organic beef that dates back to the salad days of the WEC.

Not to mention, Faber is absolutely right. These two do need some fans.

For years, featherweights and bantamweights have been the most consistently exciting fighters in the sport, but have yet to really make an impression on casual MMA viewers. If the company is looking for a duo to give armchair fans a crash course in what the lighter-weight classes are all about, you couldn’t ask for better than Faber and Cruz. You also couldn't ask for a better format than having them coach TUF.

Honestly, this is a decision that should have been made sooner, but now we should all be glad it wasn’t.

The two were rumored to be on the short list to coach the show last season, before the UFC went outside the box and tabbed Strikeforce’s Jason Miller to appear opposite Michael Bisping. Caught at the tail end of the fight company’s relationship with SpikeTV, the season didn’t get much promotion to speak of and netted decent ratings only because both Bisping and Miller came in a known commodities. Unfortunately, their fight -- which peaked at 3.4 million viewers -- was a flop after Miller gassed out midway through the second round.

Cruz and Faber won’t have that problem, nor will they likely have to worry about drawing a crowd as White himself estimated that each episode of TUF on FX could draw around three million viewers. If he’s right, that means great things for the resulting battle between the coaches and great exposure for the bantamweight class as a whole.

There is no telling how much TUF will benefit from its new “live” format, but from where I’m sitting, this kind of reboot could be exactly what the flagging franchise needs.

Now, it’ll also profit from having exactly the right coaches at exactly the right time.

At this point, the only thing standing between Phil Davis, Rashad Evans and an audience of millions might be the limitations of the human body.

As a flurry of fight bookings bring the UFC’s plans for early 2012 into focus this week, ESPN.com’s Brett Okamoto reports the highest profile slot of all will fall to Davis and Evans, who are expected to headline the fight company’s first “official” live show on network television on Jan. 28.

For a couple of guys who’ve recently seen their plans sidetracked by injury, this could be the big break they need.

Of course, to reap the benefits, they’ll have to show up at the United Center in Chicago in one piece. The way things have been going for Evans, Davis and for the 205-pound division at large, that may be the biggest trick of all.

The pair was originally supposed to meet as a stand-in main event at UFC 133 in August, after champion Jon Jones bowed out with an injured hand. Fewer than four weeks before the show was set to go on however, Davis also withdrew after hurting his knee. Evans then ran roughshod over late replacement Tito Ortiz and appeared to finally earn his second opportunity at the title, only to have it snatched away and given to Lyoto Machida when it was revealed he’d injured his thumb in the process.

Leading up to their previous bout, the 9-0 Davis had been insistent a win over Evans would make him the No. 1 contender, but while they’ve been out licking their wounds, things have gotten a lot less clear cut. Dan Henderson’s victory over Mauricio Rua at UFC 139 now has some looking at him as the next in line to face the winner of Jones versus Machida.

For either Evans or Davis to leapfrog Hendo in the constantly shifting light heavyweight queue, they’ll need to do something great. Luckily for them, a stellar performance in front of a worldwide television audience might just fit the bill.

After the promotion’s initial “teaser” show on the Fox network peaked at around 8.8 million viewers earlier this month -- over 10 once you consider DVRs and whatnot, the company says -- even more people are no doubt expected to tune in for the UFC’s first full-length show. That obviously means big things for Evans and Davis, who stand to benefit from a complete slate of televised fights leading into theirs, not to mention the fact their bout will likely go longer than 64 seconds.

Both guys have personalities that will be easy to promote and their stand-out collegiate backgrounds make them exactly the kind of fighters the UFC should be trying to spotlight for a mainstream audience. Put all of that together and it appears likely that Evans versus Davis ends up being one of the most-watched fights in UFC history.

With one good performance, Evans stands to bust out of the doghouse he's been in since sitting out 10 months during 2010-11, waiting for a title shot that never materialized. Meanwhile, Davis could go from under-the-radar rookie to household name and either fighter could earn a big money pay-per-view fight against Jones in the process.

The ball is teed up for a homerun here. These guys just have to show up healthy enough to swing the bat.

Heading into its network debut on its 18th birthday, guessing games as to how the UFC would fare tended toward the optimistic. Numbers like 8 million were very casually discussed (if loosely grasped). The 2008 Kimbo Slice/James Thompson high point number of 6.5 million on CBS became a sort of agreed-upon benchmark to how we’d view its success.

The whole thing had a "chasing the brass ring" feel, where the Nielson Ratings became as much the story as the heavyweight title fight between Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez. And many of the curiosities toward Saturday night’s card had less to do with the fight and its proportions as it did the simple translation of a niche sport into popular consciousness.

That was the tricky bit.

So how did it do? It would be easy to say pretty much as expected, but expectations heading in were all over the place.

The maiden UFC on Fox show drew in an average of 5.7 million viewers, and that’s a strangely modest number that supports all points of view. It was disappointing (Dan Henderson/Quinton Jackson on Spike did 5.5); it was a success (5.7 million is a great first step).

As for the content? People are equally split. Sixty-four seconds was anticlimactic; flash knockouts are exciting. The decision to make one fight a centerpiece was a bad one; the idea to showcase a free heavyweight title bout was a stroke of brilliance. Back and forth.

It’s all how you crook your head.

The truth is that UFC on Fox was pretty good and things played out fairly decently. There was hype that this was the greatest fight in MMA history, which plays roulette with expectations. There wasn’t time (or material) to contextualize how dos Santos/Velasquez coming together was akin to Ali/Frazier for the casual viewer in question, so loud comparisons were made to speed things along. It ended in 64 seconds, the way any MMA fight can. To that end, it was a true representation of the sport, and much different than boxing no matter which golden era we’re dealing in. Just as if the fight had went five rounds with Velasquez wrestling dos Santos to the canvas and pounding him until the scorecards were read. There are variables.

That’s part of the sport. It’s not boxing. This is a combat sports medley that dishes up its charms over time.

And with a seven-year partnership, that’s all that FOX and the UFC have is time. In the course of that partnership, people will either appreciate the intricacies of the sport, of they won’t. They’ll realize that champions in the UFC are made to be beaten, or they won’t. Things move very fast by design. Nobody that wears the belt is protected, which means there’s a level of vulnerability to the champions that can’t be found elsewhere. It makes sustained champions that much more of a marvel.

It’s a model like no other, and it takes time to form a healthy collective idea about a sport. Right now the UFC is still in the stage of opening minds.

And there are those that don’t believe it will succeed. The International Business Times ran an article after UFC on Fox that made the case that MMA was never meant to be a mainstream sport.

“The problem is that few people are interested enough to watch the intricacies of Greco-Roman wresting or Brazilian jiu-jitsu,” writer Michael Nunez wrote. “There are too many limbs, too many possibilities, and while the fighters struggle to position themselves for a submission maneuver, most fans are left bored by the stalemate.”

He went on to say, “It's not the management of the UFC that will prohibit the sport from moving forward. The UFC will continue to expand its brand name recognition, and people will continue to tune in and watch the big fights. [Mixed martial] arts isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and, therefore, UFC won't be going anywhere either. But as for UFC being part of a dinner conversation in most American homes, that will never, ever happen. The sport is too volatile on too many levels.”

There are plenty of people who feel this way. The counter argument could be that that’s the very reason it continues to succeed and grow. Variables, intangibles, constantly changing belts, style clashes, grappling intricacies, the dictation of wills, the potential for sudden finishes, and all the nuances therein. If fighting is innate to us, MMA seeks to connect the dots. The idea that it should be confined to something suited for simpler tastes is to miss the point. Possibility is the name of the game.

This weekend’s UFC was its first big television event. It didn’t tell us much more than we already knew, namely, that longtime fans of MMA, who’ve long been told theirs is a niche sport (and worse) for years, feel a personal stock in the brand. They came along the whole way to the sport’s transcendent moment, and if it didn’t take on first glance, that’s a familiar feeling.

It’s going to take a while for the broader range to see it mainstream anything. That the day will arrive is not a certainty, but when you think about how you came to love it, how you did away with the adjective “casual” in your own way, it probably feels inevitable.

And it can’t help but make you care about how MMA is perceived.

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Call it perhaps the best, least-watched fight ever.

Unless you were one of the comparatively few fans who tuned in online, or among the 14,000 who came out in person on Saturday night for the UFC on Fox, you might’ve missed Ben Henderson and Clay Guida steal the show.

If so, that’s a shame. Those lucky enough to lay eyes on it may have witnessed the fight of the year.

“The reason I fight is to put smiles on people’s faces and to get people cheering ...,” Guida said when it was over. “It was a stellar fight. We came out of the gates swinging. I’m not satisfied with my performance [but] we went out there and gave the crowd what they wanted.”

That they did, whipping the live audience at the Honda Center into a fury as their lightweight appetizer arguably outperformed the heavyweight main course. As their three-round battle built from its chaotic beginning to a frenzied conclusion in a clear-cut decision win for Henderson, you could almost feel the week-long whispers become a consensus.

This fight should have been on TV.

That it wasn’t, of course, was nobody’s fault. Time constraints of the UFC’s hour-long debut on network television made showing more than one fight impractical and the call was made some time ago that, no matter what, only Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez would see the light of national TV exposure.

Leading up to the fight, Guida and Henderson both did their best to downplay any disappointment about being relegated to the Internet streams. Both guys said the only thing that mattered was winning. For his part, Henderson said he’d get even by putting on a fight that would make the UFC wish it would’ve been on television.

From the outside looking in, it seemed he did that and more. Ever the fighter though, Henderson came away unmoved by a performance that made him the No.1 contender for the lightweight title.

“If a guy slips on a puddle of water and falls down and I get the W, I’ll take it,” he said. “But was I happy with my performance? To be honest, no. I can do a lot better than that. I can do a lot better than that. You guys haven’t seen anything yet.”

Hard not to see some irony in that last sentence.

While the heavyweights went out and did what heavyweights do -- finish up in 64 seconds -- in front of millions, the two 155-pounders once again underscored why the lighter-weight classes are MMA’s most dependably exciting. Albeit in front of a much smaller audience.

Their fight had wild flurries on the feet and near-miss submission attempts on the ground. Guida twice got dropped to the canvas with strikes, but later threatened Henderson with a tight guillotine. Guida landed a crazy spinning backfist and a few minutes afterward, Henderson tried an even crazier axe kick. At one point, Guida simply tumbled across the cage in a move that defies all description.

In short, their fight was just what Henderson wanted it to be -- the kind that might make Dana White think twice about leaving lightweights off the next network broadcast.

You know, just as soon as he gets the chance to watch it.

“I was on TV. I was working, I didn’t get to see it,” the UFC President said at the postfight media conference. “I kept turning around and looking at the fight. It sounded exciting.”

Take it from those who did watch: It was.

Anaheim, CALIF. -- It could have been better. It could have been worse.

The first fight of the seven-year deal between the UFC and Fox Network lasted 64 seconds. It took just one hard right from Junior Dos Santos to spell the end of the night. The athletic wrestler, Velasquez, didn’t get to shoot a single takedown.

A highlight-reel finish is never a bad thing when you’re trying to introduce a sport to new fans, but how many saw it? Unless they watched one specific minute Saturday, they missed it.

“You always want a fight that’s going to be decisive and we certainly had that,” UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta told ESPN.com.

“From a ratings perspective, it will probably affect it in a negative way. People tune in to watch the fight and once it’s over, you tend to leave the channel. But overall, I think it’s going to be a success.”

Officials from both the UFC and Fox refrained from giving expectations on what ratings the show would pull. Most figured dipping below 5 million viewers would start to feel disappointing. None knew, however, the fight would end so fast.

Fox Sports chief executive David Hill admitted he and president Dana White discussed the “tactics” of booking a single, heavyweight fight in hindsight, but added he was overwhelmingly satisfied with the product.

“It absolutely delivered everything I hoped it would,” Hill told ESPN.com. “I spoke to Dana and maybe, tactically, Dana didn’t play it the right way. But this is what you get in this sport. This is world heavyweight champion action.”

The decision not to run any of the other nine fights on the card, specifically a lightweight bout between Ben Henderson and Clay Guida, was heavily questioned by fans and media alike. The fight aired, instead, on Facebook.com and FoxSports.com and was a 15-minute thriller.

At the postfight news conference, the UFC president was clearly sick of defending it.

“Just so everyone understands, we’re not in Fox yet. Our deal doesn’t start until January,” White said. “This was never part of the deal. After we signed, Fox said, ‘Why don’t we do a fight right away to kick it off?’

“For everybody to b---- about this fight and they didn’t get to see that fight -- shut up. You should have bought tickets if you wanted to watch all the fights and you don’t like to watch on Facebook. Shut up.”

The nature of combat sports makes it impossible to predict. The UFC has seen a seven-second knockout. Fans of professional boxing were outraged two months ago when an officiating error affected an expensive pay-per-view bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Victor Ortiz.

At the end of the day, the UFC and Fox both felt the show provided a genuine glimpse at the sport to those who have not yet seen it. Future UFC events on Fox are expected to air longer than 60 minutes and feature multiple fights.

The goal was to put MMA on network television. This is MMA.

“I once bought a night of boxing from legendary promoter Don King,” Hill said. “There were three bouts on that card and do you know how much boxing I got? Forty-seven seconds. I’ve been covering fights forever. It comes with the territory.

“If it had gone five rounds tonight, people would have gone, ‘It went so long, it was boring.’ This is genuine. This is real. It’s this generation’s boxing.”

When the lightweight title picture was in a knot early this summer, Benson Henderson was on the distant outside -- so far outside, in fact, he couldn’t even look in. Ahead of him were Jim Miller, Melvin Guillard, Anthony Pettis, Clay Guida and a theoretical wild card in Gilbert Melendez, who was actively lobbying to come over to the UFC from Strikeforce. Meanwhile, Gray Maynard and Frankie Edgar took nine long months to play out while all the back-breathing competition played musical chairs.

As we roll through fall, Henderson emerges as the No. 1 contender in the division by beating Guida in a purposefully downplayed eliminator. It’s an improbable scenario: his acceleration toward Edgar was as stealthy as it was impressive. And for as quiet as he made his way, he couldn’t have been louder in how he did it.

Henderson dominated Miller for three rounds to scramble the contenders back up, then methodically engaged a dervish-like Guida and showcased his entire range. Guida-Henderson was everything people suspected it would be -- back and forth, wire-to-wire action with shutter speed reversals of fortune and whiplashing hair.

It was the greatest fight to ever be as neglected. While millions tuned in for the network debut of the UFC on Fox, Guida-Henderson was relegated to Facebook and Fox Sports en Espanol. The promotion’s deepest division finally found clarity, while its most glamorous -- the heavyweights -- stole the spotlight.

In an early exchange, Henderson downed Guida, who looked to brawl from the get-go like he did with Diego Sanchez when the two met in June 2009. When Guida dug in to toil on the fence, grabbing the double-leg takedown that doomed Pettis -- defaulting to the wrestling that got him here -- Henderson turned into Plastic Man. At one point in the first round, Henderson did a full split to keep from going on his back. That’s a rubberband man component that changes leverage perceptions and maddens game plans.

In the rare times Guida got him down, Henderson was back on his feet in moments. When Guida went for his neck on a couple of occasions, guillotines that for brief moments looked dangerous, Henderson would end up in his own dominant position seconds later. Near the end of the second round, he went from his neck being hung to a body triangle and threatening a rear-naked choke of his own in a few dizzying moments. The whole fight passed in a such a way. Henderson just had too much in his arsenal for Guida to keep up.

After taking the fight unanimously -- 30-27 twice, 29-28 -- Henderson made his call out, saying, “Frankie Edgar, we’ve got a date -- let’s do it baby.” And that’s where we have arrived after a bottleneck 2011 at 155 pounds. The former WEC lightweight champion is making a play for the UFC strap. Not that long ago he was on the wrong end of a highlight reel to Pettis’ Showtime kick in the final WEC show; now he looks like the definitive challenger to Edgar.

And that’s something we haven’t been able to contemplate all year, just who would be the next to challenge for the lightweight belt. Now we know it’s Henderson, who has fought eight of his nine Zuffa battles on free television or on Internet feeds. Here’s guessing this becomes the end of an era, that the UFC will make a "Smooth" transition to pay-per-view from here on out.

LOS ANGELES -- Jaymz Jaime visited Nokia Plaza on Wednesday sporting the colors of Mexico on a well-worn black Tapout t-shirt. As such, the Los Angeleno didn't stand out in a crowd of about 50.

Some fans who attended the final prefight news conference for Saturday's UFC event down the road in Anaheim donned bright lime green jackets. Others draped Mexican flags over their shoulders. Regardless of the way it was expressed, the message was clear: People of Mexican descent -- "the Raza," as UFC champion Cain Velasquez calls them -- have begun to embrace an undefeated 29-year-old heavyweight who last year became the first fighter of their heritage to win a major heavyweight title in combat sports.

Yes, this is a story about a Mexican-American fighter buoyed in truths we've learned over the years. Truths put into the universe by the likes of Salvador Sanchez and Julio Cesar Chavez. To be in this club, you must have heart. You must never quit. You must fight to the end. You must be willing to go out on your shield if that is required. This is that tale. But it's also something else because Velasquez, like the sport that provides him a platform to succeed, is just now gaining prominence.

"I represent hard-working people," answered the UFC champion when asked what it meant to be embraced by some of the most passionate fight fans on the planet. "That's what my family is. That's what I've grown up around. I'm happy that Mexicans are known as hard-working people. We have a lot of heart. I try to use that in my fighting, with a lot of heart and blood; always moving forward. That's what it means to me."

This alone is enough for most Mexican fight fans -- and, to be fair, fans of any stripe -- to take notice of him. Velasquez may not box, but that matters far less than it used to.

One onlooker, Rosendo Huerta, said after the news conference concluded that he feels as passionate about MMA today as he used to about boxing. And Velasquez is a significant reason.

The UFC champion is the son of a migrant worker. He is, as Dana White so ably noted, "a kid who didn't squander what he was given." What was that, exactly? A chance. His father came to this country looking for opportunity and he found one for his kids. Velasquez, said White, is the American dream. Perhaps. He's also no less the embodiment of a next-generation Mexican-American fighter. This is not someone in the mold of Sanchez or Chavez -- not in build and appearance, anyway.

Carlos Arias, a Mexican-American reporter who covers mixed martial arts and boxing for the Orange County Register, noted that Velasquez's "story is something that a lot of our families have gone through, and to see him rise up in the heavyweight division with that exciting style, I think that's something that's really appealing to Hispanic fans.

"If he was a lay-and-pray type fighter, that wouldn't translate right now. So the way he goes after people and tries to finish every time, I think that's a big part of" the growing relationship between Velasquez and his fans.

Keep in mind, Velasquez has fought nine times. Unlike boxing, MMA is a sport that allows stars to rise like a literal metaphor. In just his 10th bout, Velasquez, ranked No. 1 across the board in MMA media polls at heavyweight, has earned an enormous opportunity to fight on national television, free from a pay-per-view wall, in a venue that came out 13 months ago in strong support as he ran over Brock Lesnar to capture the UFC title.

"I was at the event when he won the championship against Brock," said Huerta, wearing green, white and red from head to toe. "Watching that, I was a fan. It was amazing. To me it felt like a soccer game. It felt like the World Cup."

Huerta won't attend the fight this time. He'll stay home with his girlfriend to watch on FOX. Many people will be in their living rooms Saturday evening. It's fight night. UFC on Fox leads into Manny Pacquiao's third contest against another Mexican warrior, Juan Manuel Marquez. On a night like that, Jaymz Jaime's father would be glued to the TV. Such is the appeal of Velasquez that, rather than watching his favorite sport featuring a top Mexican against perhaps the best pound-for-pound boxer on the planet, Jaime's immigrant father will be in the Honda Center to witness the first Mexican heavyweight champion of anything do his thing.

"For him to skip out on the Pacquiao fight is a big deal because he's a strict boxing fan," Jaime said.

It took little convincing. After watching "UFC Primetime," a "24/7" promotional clone, the elder Jaime's perception of MMA changed, in part because he strongly identified with Velasquez's father.

"Mexicans are big boxing fans," said Jaime, a first-generation Mexican-American who was born in Hollywood. "Mexican people are very traditional and very stubborn in their ways. Seeing Cain being the first Mexican-American combat sports champion in history would bring a lot of people in. My father started watching mixed martial arts because of Cain."

Velasquez's reach is obviously not on the level of a Chavez, Marquez or Marco Antonio Barrera -- fighters who reside in the pantheon of Mexican greats. Velasquez hasn't been around long enough to lay claim to that. The sport isn't familiar enough to an audience just starting to connect with him, either. But it is possible that Velasquez will represent the vessel through which Mexican fight fans will come to accept mixed martial arts into their lives.

"In the Mexican community we embrace the smaller fighters," Arias said. "But to see a heavyweight champ, that's something we never see."

After the media had their turn with Velasquez and dos Santos, fans were given a chance.

Some guy in the minority screamed that the 27-year-old Brazilian challenger was days away from winning the belt.

Many boos later he squealed "Cigano!” -- dos Santos' intrinsically Brazilian nickname.

"Chicano!" they replied.

This went on two or three times.

Not long after the good-natured skirmish subsided, Jaymz, 30, was handed a microphone. He had a request.

"You're an awesome role model for us Mexicans, man," he said. "I'm proud to be Mexican because of you. I was wondering if I can walk to the cage with you on Saturday night. It would be a dream come true."

Velasquez said he didn't know if that was possible, but would be "cool with it." The champ looked up at White, who shrugged and peered into the crowd: "Yeah, we'll do it dude." Half an hour later, after fighters were whisked away and the crowd had dispersed, Jaime’s email and phone number were in possession of White's assistant. He was in.

"I'm probably going to be emotional," he said, smiling. "I'm a really emotional person. To know that [Velasquez] is the reason why I do the things I do for the Mexican people is pretty awesome. I think it's going to be surreal."

Jaime, who said he put himself through college and works as a registered nurse, said over the last three years Velasquez inspired him to learn about their shared heritage and to feel proud when speaking about where his family is from. Jaime also volunteers at a local Mexican-American nonprofit, where he helps kids with tough backgrounds find jobs.

"Before, I wouldn't wear this shirt," he said. "Now I'm proud. I'm actually proud because of Cain. Seeing his story and seeing him live the American dream made me realize I shouldn't be ashamed of who I am."

There may be no official confirmation from the UFC, but it seems the winner of this weekend's lightweight clash between Ben Henderson and Clay Guida will book a ticket to Japan to fight Frankie Edgar. More »