The Bottom Line: Lightweight Division Long on Respect, Short on Love

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When MMA fans and media are asked to select the sport’s best division, the consensus answer for quite some time has been 155 pounds. There are a few other divisions that have staked their claims, with the welterweight division in particular giving the lightweights a run for their money, but more often than not in recent years the lightweights are perceived to be the best. While some divisions lack truly elite fighters at the top and other divisions don’t have much depth beyond the very best, the lightweight division is not only talented but deep.

Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov already have solid claims for Ultimate Fighting Championship title shots after Rafael dos Anjos and Eddie Alvarez fight for the crown on July 7. The competition is so fierce that rising top-notch fighters like Dustin Poirier, Beneil Dariush and Michael Chiesa struggle just to crack the top 10. Will Brooks (just signed) and Gilbert Melendez (drug failure) aren’t even in the rankings. Nate Diaz and Donald Cerrone are beating fighters from other weight classes because of the lightweight backlog. There’s plenty of talent in other organizations, too, from Justin Gaethje in World Series of Fighting to Michael Chandler and Marcin Held in Bellator MMA to Shinya Aoki in One Championship.

In spite of all this talent, there’s a funny thing about the lightweight division. It just hasn’t caught on with fans to anywhere near the level one would expect given all the elite fighters. In the history of the division, only B.J. Penn has demonstrated himself to be a drawing card. Frankie Edgar is a popular figure, but his title fights after Penn were box-office disappointments. None drew over 400,000 buys on pay-per-view. Benson Henderson did not catch on any better. Anthony Pettis appeared to be on the cusp of broader popularity, but three straight losses short-circuited that effort before it could truly get going.

It’s no accident that of the last 47 pay-per-views, the UFC has only headlined with lightweights twice. The UFC doesn’t make a habit of leaving fights it thinks will draw off pay-per-view. Next week, while the women’s bantamweight title, interim featherweight title and light heavyweight title are defended on pay-per-view on Saturday and the women’s strawweight title is defended on Fox Sports 1 on Friday, dos Anjos defends his lightweight title on UFC Fight Pass on Thursday. Partly that is a reflection of the UFC’s desire to build up its Fight Pass service, on the heels of putting Anderson Silva-Michael Bisping on the platform in February. However, it is also a reflection of a division that just doesn’t have the mojo that it should considering all that talent.

For a while, the argument could be made that the problem was size. It wasn’t a particularly good argument given how smaller fighters have been the biggest drawing cards in boxing for years. However, it was at least true that throughout UFC history the biggest drawing cards have almost always come from higher weight classes than lightweight. Penn was the lone exception, and he wasn’t an attraction at the level of Brock Lesnar, Chuck Liddell or Georges St. Pierre.

While the argument about size was always rather flimsy, it went up in flames over the past couple years when Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey emerged as two of the biggest drawing cards in the history of the sport. If 135- and 145-pound fights can do spectacular business, there’s no reason 155-pound fights can’t do the same. Yet, the last time lightweights headlined a big-business pay-per-view event, Randy Couture-James Toney was the co-feature. What gives?

A big part of any division’s success is finding the right star. As great a fighter as Jose Aldo is, his pay-per-view events attracted little attention until McGregor came along. Rousey drew nearly a million buys on pay-per-view against Bethe Correia of all people. With dos Anjos as champion, it’s going to be difficult to capture the public’s imagination in North America. Dos Anjos isn’t a big personality and doesn’t have a larger-than-life reputation as a fighter. His early UFC losses to the likes of Jeremy Stephens, Clay Guida and Gleison Tibau colored the perception of dos Anjos even among hardcore fight fans, and he has been doubted often ever since. Even if he keeps winning, it’s hard to imagine dos Anjos becoming a superstar.

Beyond dos Anjos, the depth of the lightweight division might actually work against it. Penn captured the public imagination in large part because he was perceived to be at a higher level than the rest of the division. Since then, the competition in the division has been stiff. Fights between top fighters are often decided by razor-thin margins, and there doesn’t appear to be a lot separating the top five fighters in the division from the next 15. It makes for great action but not necessarily great interest.

There has been a similar dynamic at play in the welterweight division since St. Pierre retired. Robbie Lawler, Johny Hendricks and Rory MacDonald have engaged in a phenomenal series of classic fights. The fights have been more exciting than most of the title fights when St. Pierre was champion, but the audiences have typically been half the size or smaller. St. Pierre’s dominance made him an attraction, while the current division’s competitiveness makes it hard for the emergence of a superstar to the larger audience. It’s ultimately their loss missing out on such great fights, but the ideal would be to create new fans through such terrific action.

Another problem for the lightweight division has been that its most marketable fighters have been crowded out. Arguably the three fighters in the division with the most marketing upside are Pettis, Cerrone and Diaz. Pettis’ dynamic style got him on a Wheaties box, but losses to the crowded division’s best have him moving to featherweight. Cerrone is one of the sport’s most popular fighters, but two decisive losses to the champion dos Anjos have him competing at welterweight. Diaz -- and his older brother -- always generates a lot of excitement, but he’s off settling a score with McGregor at 170 pounds. Another win at UFC 202 could have him competing for the welterweight title rather than the lightweight crown.

When Alvarez finally signed with the UFC, the thought was that he could be one of the division’s marquee stars. The gritty Philadelphia product captured the love of the fans with his electric battles outside the UFC, and now he’s challenging for the lightweight title. On paper, it would seem like an opportunity to reenergize the division. The problem is that the exciting pre-UFC Alvarez has been replaced by a cautious facsimile. Alvarez is relying pretty much entirely on his pre-UFC reputation and only a fraction of the people who saw his stalemates with Pettis and Melendez witnessed his wars with Tatsuya Kawajiri and Joachim Hansen.

Moving forward, the lightweight division remains chock-full of excellent fighters and intriguing matchups. The question is whether it can capture the attention and popular interest commensurate with its strength. One would figure casual fans will eventually catch on to the division’s greatness. Then again, that should have been the case a long time ago.