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By: Jason Bent, MMATorch Columnist WEC 36 was scheduled to have taken place on September 10, 2008 but was postponed due to the threat of Hurricane Ike and was rescheduled for November 4. This is a card I have been looking forward to as Urijah Faber is set to defend his WEC Featherweight Championship against the potentially dangerous Mike Brown. To say Faber is the favorite is to also tell you that the sky is blue but this has all the makings of an entertaining fight; if for only to watch Faber exhibit his dominance in spectacular fashion.
Jens Pulver is also in action along with Rob McCullough and this has the makings of a really solid card and quite the showpiece for the WEC organization. Also scheduled and set to take place just prior to the main event is a WEC Middleweight Championship bout pitting the current champion, Paulo Filho against Chael Sonnen in a much anticipated rematch of their bout from last year. This bout was significant in that Filho won by verbal submission which then was disputed by Sonnen and later accepted as a proper stoppage. At any rate I was looking forward to this bout as the WEC will be eliminating the middleweight weight class by the end of this year, and one if not both of these fighters would essentially be auditioning for a spot in the UFC's Octagon. But now Paulo Filho has failed to make weight and this fight is as meaningless as the belt that was set to be defended.
By no means am I suggesting that this fight mattered because of a belt being on the line as this championship shall no longer exist in another month or so. However, Sonnen deserved a chance to at least wrest this championship from Filho and go out as the last WEC Middleweight Champion. In all honesty this belt is about half as important as the Employee of the Month award is at your local Kinko's; but it isn't so much the prestige of this particular belt instead what a championship means to the fighters and how Sonnen is being deprived of this opportunity that has left a foul taste in my mouth.
In this sport it is a must that you come in at or under the weight limit of your respective class and as a champion this should never be an issue at all. It matters not that this belt is the WEC belt but that as a professional fighter he has failed to do the one thing that should be an absolute given in making the contracted weight. This is made especially worse when you take into account that this rematch was scheduled once before, and was subsequently postponed due to Filho entering a substance abuse treatment program.
Paulo Filho vs. Chael Sonnen will still be taking place, but it shall be a three round non-title match. This is unfair to Sonnen as well as the organization and its fans. I firmly understand why their first rematch was postponed; and I accept that in much the same way that this card was postponed in September due to worries about the hurricane which was projected to cause major damage.
Paulo Filho had drug problems which were categorized as having been "depression and chemical dependency issues," and I have not a single detrimental word to say about this man in terms of his substance abuse problem. Filho has always been a tremendously skilled fighter but he is a human being and every man has some flaws in some way, shape or form, and this happened to be one of his. He took the necessary steps to address this and I have all of the respect in the world for him as a person; and at that moment in his life it was of more importance to deal with this than to attempt to fight. His head was clearly not in the game and he needed to take care of himself so that he could move forward not just inside of a cage but rather in life. It appeared that all things were moving forward in a positive manner and the fight was rescheduled for WEC 36.
By weighing in seven pounds over the limit it would appear to me that Filho is still not ready to continue his fighting career as this shows that his mind was not on the task at hand. He is a professional, and at this stage of the game it is unacceptable to come in so grossly overweight; and either he trained at an Old Country Buffet or his team failed him miserably. That is also not acceptable as the fighter should always be responsible for himself and aware of everything as it pertains to his body and this includes the tired excuses that fighters offer up when they test positive for a banned substance.
Never should a fighter urinate and have it burn through the bottom of the cup and then shrug it off by saying he simply took the vitamins his trainer handed him each day and is completely without responsibility. Same goes for issues of weight and this tells me that Filho did not care enough to train properly and arrive for this fight in his best possible shape or at least capably make the contracted weight.
Sonnen deserves a title fight and he should not be punished simply because the champion decided that he didn't care enough to arrive in shape. My solution to this would be that if the challenger agrees to take the fight after the champion fails to make weight that this would remain a championship bout. The champion should be summarily stripped and this belt should be on the line and up for grabs if the challenger happens to come out on top.
By Filho not making weight this means that Sonnen cannot win the belt and even if he is victorious in this fight, Filho will still be the champion when it is over. Championships should be won and lost in the ring, and I don't long to see them lost at the scales, but by no means should a champion be able to protect his belt by failing to make weight. Sonnen deserved the opportunity to challenge for the title and for the chance to fight in a championship fight at WEC 36, and now he misses out on this due to circumstances he could not control.
I am a huge fan of Paulo Filho as a fighter but I really think he needs to step away for a while and address the issues which clearly exist. Perhaps he is still battling depression and quite possibly he could still be waging war against his substance abuse problem but he needs to fight this fight first before stepping back inside any cage for the time being. I am glad that Sonnen has decided to go forward with this fight but this is a no-brainer that he agreed to do so.
It is a shame that in taking this fight even after Filho failed to make weight that Chael is again showing more dedication and desire than the current champion. Sonnen deserved a chance to showcase himself and possibly win the title and now he has to face a heavier opponent who may not even be prepared for this fight at all. This fight should have served as a great co-main event of sorts and a way for both men to audition for the UFC, in terms of showing the fans that one of these men deserves the chance to venture into Anderson Silva's territory at 185 lbs. in the UFC.
Filho is in my estimation head and shoulders above Sonnen in terms of who could best compete in the UFC Middleweight division but right now Filho's head suggests otherwise. Paulo owed it to himself to be in the best shape possible and he owed it to the organization as their champion to make the weight. I sincerely hope we are still going to witness what could potentially be a very good fight but more than this I hope that Filho addresses any and all issues he so clearly has at this point.
Not making the weight is simply just proof that he has not gotten over what has recently ailed him and his next fight should not take place in a cage or an octagon but rather outside of fighting altogether. It takes a lot to be a professional MMA fighter and even more to become a champion and Filho has not shown that he is driven enough at this moment to merit the opportunities which soon shall be afforded him.
Paulo Filho is a championship caliber fighter but in failing to make weight he has not conducted himself in the manner which should be expected from a champion and as such he should be stripped of the belt.
He doesn't need a belt to hold his pants up at the moment anyhow.
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