By Chuck Mindenhall
ESPN.com
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When we talk about "superfights" it feels a little embarrassing. The idea is to match one champion versus another, preferably both long-standing, for the rare privilege of watching one of them lose.

For the last couple of years the UFC has toyed with the idea of welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre fighting middleweight champion Anderson Silva. Of late, we've begun to think that Silva against light middleweight champion Jon Jones is the better fight. Why? Because it's Silva challenging Jones, and Jones right now is the one with unfathomable depths.

But as of Saturday, April 27, there's a sneaking feeling that the most "competitive" interdivisional super-pairing might not be Silva-Jones, but Jones against heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez.

Why? The Chael Sonnen gauge. Sonnen gave us reason to doubt Silva in the first place by making him seem vulnerable. When Jones purposefully (and pridefully) outwrestled -- or more accurately, bulldozed -- Sonnen at UFC 159, it wasn't hard to imagine Jones taking Silva down and turning a long-anticipated piece of theater into a wash. You know who wouldn't get worked like that? Cain Velasquez. The big Arizona State wrestler. The dictator of space.

Notice the default in play here. "Super" keeps trending bigger. Welterweight (GSP) challenging the middleweight (Silva), to middleweight challenging the light heavyweight (Jones), to inevitably light heavyweight challenging the heavyweight (Velasquez). Heavyweights, who can smash anyone on the roster, still captivate the fight game's imagination.

I get that a "superfight" works best when the most unbeatable of the unbeatable takes on a guy who eats unbeatable for breakfast -- but unbeatable is always such a shifting plain. It wasn't long ago that Velasquez lost to Junior dos Santos in the most anticlimactic free fight ever to hit broadcast television (also the first to hit broadcast television in a long time, incidentally). As for Silva and Jones? They have been particularly unconquerable for a long, long time. Technically, Jones did lose against Matt Hamill because of some wicked (plus illegal) 12-to-6 elbows. But Hamill nearly lost consciousness long before that. Three years later, the disqualification sits on Jones' record like a Wikipedia typo.

For Silva, UFC 117 was as close as he's ever come to looking human. And even then, after absorbing Sonnen's elbows and hammerfists for 23 head-bouncing minutes, he won epically. Epic is one of the looser words in MMA vernacular. But Silva's victory over Sonnen that night was epic. The rematch wasn't competitive. Silva finally reduced Sonnen to the status of "just another opponent."

For my money, Silva-Jones is still the fight to make in this realm of "what's the most ridiculous fight that can be made right now?" Jones has the beastly wrestling and spinning elbows. Silva has grace and a Wachowskian ability to levitate. If "superfights" function on curiosity as to who's the more conquerable, this is the fight.

That is, unless Chris Weidman, who fights Silva in July, conquers the champion first.