The Doggy Bag: The Injury Edition

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Forgive my rudeness, but is Brandon Vera seriously fighting Mauricio Rua in a headlining fight on Fox? People complained that Jim Miller-Nate Diaz wasn't a good enough fight to main event a Fox show, and that was a great fight on paper and in the cage. Where does that put a lopsided fight like this? The UFC is between a rock and a hard place with all of these injuries that keep on happening, but for crying out loud. This fight sucks, and I really feel like "Shogun" deserves some of the blame for not wanting to fight Glover Teixeira, which could actually be a competitive fight. -- Fred from Brandon

Tristen Critchfield, associate editor: That’s actually pretty polite compared to a lot of reactions regarding this bout. I agree with you that Teixeira would appear to be a much more compelling matchup for "Shogun," but intriguing as that fight may be, it probably would have been less main-event worthy -- at least in the eyes of Fox -- than Rua-Vera.

Ratings aren’t generated based on the potential for a competitive fight -- otherwise, Miller and Diaz would have put up much larger numbers. Instead, they come from star power. While Shogun-Vera probably isn’t exactly what the network execs were hoping for, Vera is currently a much more recognizable commodity than Teixeira. Despite the fact that he peaked in 2006, “The Truth” has stepped into the Octagon with the likes of Frank Mir, Randy Couture and Jon Jones -- and there are still plenty of casual fans who remember him as that type of headlining talent. Meanwhile, the majority of Teixeira’s bouts have come in Brazil, and his UFC debut was on Facebook.

Considering the limited options the promotion had thanks to a myriad of injuries, this was probably the best the UFC could do. Personally, I think that the light heavyweight clash between Lyoto Machida and Ryan Bader makes more sense as the main event now. Does Shogun deserve blame for not wanting to face a dangerous opponent with little-to-no name recognition outside of the hardcore set? Absolutely, but he isn’t the first fighter to make such a decision.

Don’t expect to see a heavy promotional push from Fox for this card. If the network couldn’t get behind Diaz-Miller, the support figures to be tepid at best for a main event that was thrown together out of necessity and misfortune. That said, there will be plenty of loyal Rua backers who are excited about the prospect of their Pride Fighting Championships hero administering a one-sided beatdown in front of a national television audience. That ought to be worth a few ratings points by itself.

I imagine that the UFC and Fox are going to have a serious talk at some point regarding what type of fights are featured on the national TV cards. Finding the perfect balance between star power and action can sometimes be difficult to achieve. Injuries only serve to make the situation worse.

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