Written May 20, 2009: "The UFC Needs an Official Minor League"

The UFC Needs an Official Minor League

by

Kevin Sampson

Correspondent Written on May 20, 2009

I was skimming through yet another article discussing the evils of Dana White and how he runs every competitor to the UFC out of business. He's a very smart tactician at taking on and destroying competing promotions. Love it or hate it, that's not going to change anytime soon.

But what the MMA world needs right now is a viable minor league. Currently, there is a long list of promotions that are continually stepping up to try to challenge the UFC for supremacy. It never goes well, of course. Even the strong promotions like PRIDE end up bringing lackluster fighters to the UFC, with a handful of good prospects.

I'm not going to tell you that the UFC is perfect. What I will say is that it represents the pinnacle of the sport of MMA. No MMA promotion has such an impressive list of top-rated fighters. And when the non-UFC greats come to the UFC, we are disappointed more often than not. Some small handful of fighters are impressive, but in the vast majority of cases, the non-UFC "top ten" fighter is a disappointment (Mirko Cro-Cop, Carols Condit). Even guys like Dan Henderson are doing well, but are not really living up to expectations.

What do MMA fans really want? Get the best fighters in the world to fight the best fighters in the world. We can create Fedor Emelianenko and Wanderlei Silva problems with “nobody knows who the greatest is because the top two fighters are not allowed to fight by contract.” My opinion is to forget that; stick with one top MMA promotion and be done with it.

It seems to me that you have to concede the obvious at some point. UFC is the major leagues of this sport. But the UFC is very unforgiving of any fighter that loses several fights in a row. They keep a short roster and that seems to work for the UFC. And an up-and-coming fighter is not always ready to fight in the UFC.

So, where does a struggling fighter go to regroup from a series of disappointing losses? How do you build it so that the goal of each fighter is to make it in the UFC, instead of leading into competing promotion?

With the purchase of the WEC, Dana White was handed exactly what he needed in order to make a "minor league" version of the UFC: An American-based promotion that already had fighters and weight classes—many that the UFC does not currently have. The logical thing is to convert the WEC weight classes that the UFC doesn't have directly into the UFC, champions, fighters and all. Their Bantamweight fighters and champions become the UFC's fighters and champions. Keep intact all of the WEC weight classes the UFC already has and use it as a proving grounds for up-and-coming fighters or proven fighters down on their luck. Recreate the Featherweight and Bantamweight divisions in the WEC with the same purpose in mind: a minor league to the UFC.