The Doggy Bag

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I am surprised that the UFC went ahead and made the Brian Stann-Chael Sonnen fight for UFC 136. After their last fights, everybody was predicting that Stann would face Mark Munoz. To me, that fight made more sense. I worry that Stann is going to get taken down and outwrestled for 15 minutes, and the UFC will lose a potential major contender.

Granted, a Sonnen rematch with Anderson Silva would still be great, but if they weren’t going head-to-head, we might get Silva-Sonnen 2 and Silva-Stann, which might be even better for the UFC. Thoughts? -- Matt from Cincinnati

Jason Probst, contributing writer: A lot of people were wondering how the UFC would match Stann after his two big wins over Chris Leben and Jorge Santiago, which produced a solid contender, to boot. At some point, though, the UFC’s got to throw everyone in Stann’s situation into the deepest waters, facing the worst style possible for him, outside of Silva, who is terrible for pretty much anyone. So, if they’re going to do that, it makes more sense to risk his burgeoning profile against a proven commodity in Sonnen than it does against Munoz.

He faces the chance of being wrestle-smashed against either guy, but there’s a less perceived public hit to his standing if it happens against Sonnen, who has basically wrestle-smashed many top guys in the division. Munoz would be a tough matchup for him, too, but Munoz isn’t a former title challenger who gave the game’s best fighter four and a half rounds of hell in August; Sonnen is.

The flip side of Stann-Sonnen is Stann has a puncher’s chance, and if he wins, that elevates him to definite title-shot status. Plus, he probably has the most promotable image stateside in the history of mixed martial arts.

He’s a walking American hero and all-around good guy. If he beats Sonnen, that’s huge. Plus, he’ll get fans from all the people Sonnen’s rubbed the wrong way; Brazil alone has 190 million people -- you get the point. I don’t think Stann is ready for Silva yet anyway, unless he can deal with the pressure and power of a Sonnen or a Munoz. Silva’s an entirely different kind of fighter, but Stann is definitely ready for the elite, Top 10- or maybe Top 5-level in competition.

Sonnen represents the best risk-reward to find out whether or not Stann can hang there. Also, if he loses to Sonnen, you always have plenty of time to rebuild him and set up Silva-Sonnen 2. Stann’s definitely going to be around for a while. How he’s matched will show that the UFC is thinking precisely toward keeping him in the fold.

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I hope they don’t do Dominick Cruz-Urijah Faber 3 immediately. It just seems too much like a Strikeforce move: “Oh, we don’t really have a challenger set up next. Hey, this fight was good; let’s do it again.” Either give Demetrious Johnson the next shot, or give him a fight with Brian Bowles to figure out a new No. 1 contender.

I had their UFC 132 fight 50-45 but could see it four rounds to one for Cruz. Faber just never got going beyond one-off power shots for the most part. With that said, they can’t just put up Bowles or Johnson in the main event and expect it to sell well. -- Mike from Riverside, Calif.

Jack Encarnacao, Sherdog Radio Network personality and contributing writer: Your last point, Mike, is an important one. Maybe the most important, because in a business that relies so heavily on pay-per-view revenue, a main event that is sellable and palatable will always win out over a main event that is logical and just.

A bantamweight fight without Faber simply can’t be expected to carry a pay-per-view in 2011. Faber is one of the select few genuine drawing cards in this sport; that is, a fighter who has a track record of bringing a demonstrably larger audience to his fights compared to cards without him.

This was most vividly illustrated by the ratings that Faber’s WEC fights put up for the Versus network. Faber averaged about 800,000 viewers for the live cards he headlined, including the two times WEC eclipsed one million viewers. No one else really came close, particularly Cruz, whose average was nearly half of Faber’s -- about 435,000 viewers. That included the lowest-rated WEC show ever in August, when Cruz closed WEC 50 with a successful title defense against Joseph Benavidez.

Unless we’re talking Cruz and someone who’s not Faber headlining a free card on Spike TV or Versus -- which actually would be a good way to up the champion’s profile -- he’s going to need to be on a double-title-fight bill if his next outing is on pay-per-view. Surely, the scrappy San Diego product got a boost fighting and beating Faber on one of the best shows in UFC history. In the pre- and post-fight histrionics, Cruz took ownership of his natural, smarmy swagger and developed a personality that could add appeal to his future fights, but he didn’t show the signs of life out of the gate that most career-long headliners do.

I think fans were too quick to assume that another fight between Cruz and Faber was being considered because their UFC 132 clash was close enough to warrant it. That’s not exactly it. It’s because it would be a rubber match, and rubber matches by their nature have a dynamic that allows a richer story to be told. This means a better chance at a good buy rate. Rubber matches give fans a much deeper sense of the characters of the fighters involved, because so much has already been revealed about them as characters and how one can beat the other.

At UFC 52, Chuck Liddell blitzed Randy Couture in two minutes. It didn’t even look competitive. Yet the UFC went almost immediately to a third fight between the two stars; Couture’s UFC 54 win over Mike Van Arsdale could hardly be considered a No. 1 contender’s fight. The trilogy fight is also a big attraction in boxing, as well as the mark of a successful movie franchise. We’ll be seeing another rubber match -- sort of, considering the second fight was a draw -- when the UFC again matches Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard this year. Consider, there are several fresh and compelling challengers out there for Edgar. The inherent allure of the trilogy again won out, it seems. The company is doing Edgar vs. Maynard 3 despite the fact that UFC 125 did an exceptionally low 270,000 pay-per-view buys. That’s compared to the 350,000 buys for UFC 132, a number that, no doubt, was boosted by Tito Ortiz and Wanderlei Silva, but still speaks to the enhanced appeal of a Faber main event.

Don’t get me wrong, I salivate at the promise of a warp-speed tussle between Cruz and Johnson. The Bowles rematch intrigues me less, but that’s just me. As for benching Cruz and staging Johnson vs. Bowles for a title shot, I don’t see it. Zuffa matchmakers, it seems, like to keep as many viable challengers at their disposal as possible and not have them pick each other off in overt No. 1 contender fights. This would box them into making one particular match, and we know how easily an MMA fight can be derailed due to injury. At that point, if the injury to a challenger requires lengthy rehab, you have a champion having to fight someone the fans have been conditioned to think is not the top contender.

In this case, I think there is a mitigating factor, one bantamweight you didn’t mention: Miguel Torres. Many scored him the winner in his UFC 130 fight with top contender Johnson, and a fight between Torres and Faber is one that could sell based on them being the top two stars in the WEC, Faber as featherweight titlist and Torres as bantamweight king. The match was actually bandied about as a blue cage dream fight two or three years ago. If marketed correctly, Faber vs. Torres could be a serviceable co-main event on a UFC pay-per-view and allow the UFC to take advantage of Faber’s box office spark without it having to be a title fight.

In the end, it almost always comes down to what the UFC needs from a scheduling standpoint. If it needs a main event for a free card on cable, Cruz-Johnson or Cruz-Bowles makes sense. If it needs to populate a PPV card, Cruz-Faber 3 is a lot more likely, especially when you consider the UFC is loath to put a title fight on a pay-per-view that isn’t viewed as the main event and the show’s main selling point.

Cruz looks, to me at least, to be the hardest-to-beat champion in the UFC right now, so if he’s going to reign for a long time, he’s got to be a draw or at least given chances to become one. What gets him closer to that -- a fight against a contender with a lesser name than his, or a justifiable trilogy fight against the biggest sub-155-pound star in the sport’s history? The scale seems decidedly weighted toward the latter.

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