Ennis' Take
ENNIS: Questions Raised by Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen via The Ultimate Fighter
Oct 16, 2012 - 8:45:36 PM ENNIS: Questions Raised by Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen via The Ultimate Fighter

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By: Shawn Ennis, MMATorch Senior Columnist

The announcement that Jon Jones will fight Chael Sonnen after the two coach against each other on the next season of The Ultimate Fighter is wrought with questions and potential ramifications. The state of TUF, the state of the light heavyweight division, and the UFC's booking philosophy are chief among them. Let's run down the list here and see what's on the table for the UFC's most important season of The Ultimate Fighter since the first season on Spike TV.

Chael Sonnen? Seriously?

In a perfect world, the UFC would have some idea of who is in line for a title shot before champions are scheduled for their next fights. They would publish rankings and base title shots on those rankings. But this has all been addressed before, and we don't live in a perfect world. At the same time, even in our imperfect situation, how does Chael Sonnen vault every potential light heavyweight contender to take a title shot in a division in which he has never fought, let alone won, a fight in the UFC?

If we take a look at the top ten (according to Ennis) fighters in the light heavyweight division, it's not exactly as though you have a surging contender who is being overlooked here. Evans, Machida, Rua, Bader, and Jackson have all lost to the champion within the past couple of years, and though most are still elite fighters, they have given no indication that a second fight with Jones would go any differently. Davis and Gustafsson are both close - especially if Gustafsson can beat Shogun in December - but they are also both young (though ironically older than the champion) and should stay toward the top of the division for a long time, especially in comparison to the older generation of fighters who have already fought Jones.

That only leaves Dan Henderson. He's the only one in the situation who has a legitimate claim to a title shot that could potentially evaporate, TRT be damned, should he have to wait another year or so from now to face Jones.

The problem with being an apologist for a Sonnen title shot is that it has to occur in a vacuum. The arguments above, sans Henderson, could be made for "Fighter X" to vault a bunch of contenders as a marketable opponent for Jon Jones, but Fighter X should at least have an outside shot to take the title. Some gameplan that could be laid out that would make one bit of sense. The thing is, Sonnen isn't Fighter X, and the analysis doesn't happen in a vacuum. Sonnen lost his last fight in devastating fashion to Anderson Silva, who is of course the greatest fighter ever. But Sonnen's chance against Silva was singular – he needed to take Silva down and grind him out. He couldn't do that. That same idea will be true against Jones, and really it's true of whomever Sonnen faces. Sonnen isn't going to win a standup fight with a lot of guys. So if Sonnen's shot against Jones requires him to take Jon Jones down - which, by the way, no one has ever done - how are fans supposed to believe that there is any legitimate chance whatsoever at an upset? In short, they're not. This is strictly a spectacle move, which we'll get to in a minute. Sonnen can talk a blue streak, and people like seeing it. Jones's trash talking is as terrible as his fighting is great, so the buildup will definitely be something to see.

Sport vs. Entertainment vs. Spectacle

Ah, the age-old question that is completely without merit. We won't spend much time on this one, but it seems to come up every time the UFC books a fight that doesn't completely jive with the "best fighting the best" narrative. In short: sports are entertainment. There is no separation. Sports are spectacle. That's fact. If sports were not entertainment, people wouldn't watch. I don't watch sports to further my intellectual conquests in life. I watch because they entertain me. And so do you. So does this fight make sense in any way other than a cash grab? Absolutely not. Does it need to? Nope. The only time cash grab fights are a problem is if they are the norm. And despite recent trends and late replacements, I don't see that becoming the case any time soon.

The State of TUF

The season of Jones vs. Sonnen will be the 17th iteration of the Ultimate Fighter franchise. That 16 seasons will have happened in seven years is positively mind-blowing. That's an average of more than two seasons per year. No seasonal television show runs that many seasons. It's a basic principle of running a TV show that too much will burn out an audience. And yet, here we are. So what does this say about the state of TUF?

For one, it says that this buildup playing out over a season of the UFC's flagship show is strictly for the show's benefit. Jones and Sonnen do not, in any way, shape, or form, need TUF as a vehicle to promote their fight. It will do big numbers regardless of whether the season happens or not. This is an indicator that Dana White and company realize, as has been pointed out by people who know a lot more than I do about the television industry, that TUF is on life-support. The ratings have been in decline since season 12, and they have shown no sign of rebounding. Even with a live fight lead-in this season when the FX card ran prior to TUF, the show gained a significant number of viewers that week, only to lose all of them and more the next week. There is no buzz surrounding the show other than fans being fatigued by it. The fights and fighters don't matter, and the dynamic between coaches either non-existent or irrelevant, or both.

So will a season of Jones and Sonnen throwing verbal barbs at each other reverse the trend? Well, I feel very confident in saying unequivocally that it will not. In fact, it won't come close. Getting big name coaches for one season of TUF is like running for a band-aid when you've got a severed artery. The entire format of TUF is stale. The tournaments don't matter because the fighters are unknown and the winners have been mediocre at best for the last several seasons (Jon Dodson notwithstanding). The drama in the house is childish and overwrought. The storylines for the fighters are largely inconsequential and most of them blend together. Putting Jones and Sonnen on the show isn't going to change any of this, and you can only go to that well one time.

What I see happening is that the debut will do big numbers, followed by a steady decline as people who went away from the show and are coming back realize that Jones and Sonnen will trade trash talk as a kind of background noise for the same thing we've seen for sixteen seasons now. It will get old again, and it won't take long.

Why Middleweights?

This is more of a side note for the state of TUF, but it makes no sense to do a middleweight season of the show at this point. Recent seasons of The Ultimate Fighter at welterweight and heavier (and even lightweight to a certain extent) have served as little more than adding superficial depth to the UFC's divisions. No one is going to remember anyone from another middleweight season. So if you're going to do a season where you are expecting big numbers, why not showcase a division that could actually use some depth? The UFC currently has 48 fighters on the middleweight roster. The flyweight roster has 14. Would the size difference between the coaches and the fighters be pronounced if they did flyweights? Absolutely. But people already know that flyweights are little guys. And if they didn't already know, they heard it from Michael Bisping. I don't understand the logic behind running another middleweight season, especially since they just ran one on the Brazilian version of TUF.

Long-Term Implications

What we're left with here are a bunch of questions to which we probably won't have concrete answers for a long time. Will Dan Henderson get a title shot if he gets past Lyoto Machida? Will that as-yet-unannounced fight even happen? How well does this season of The Ultimate Fighter have to perform in order to save the series? If it doesn't save the series, what happens then? Is the recent trend of main event mismatches going to continue, and if so, how long will it take until the masses don't care? (Competitive title fights in November and December should take care of this one as long as injuries don't ruin them) Jones-Sonnen isn't built on competitive intrigue, so will the weekly shows burn out the audience with trash talk before the fight arrives?

Time will tell the answer to the above questions, and the UFC may not like many of them.

Questions? Comments? Hit me up on Twitter - @shawnennis, shoot me an email – ennistorch(at)gmail.com, or leave a comment below.