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COOLING: Chad Mendes should not be fighting Conor McGregor at UFC 189
Jul 2, 2015 - 7:20:59 PM
COOLING: Chad Mendes should not be fighting Conor McGregor at UFC 189
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By Will Cooling, MMATorch Contributor

On Monday I argued that if Jose Aldo could somehow manage to fight Conor McGregor then his rib injury would prove to be a positive for all parties involved in UFC 189's eagerly anticipated main-event. The next day news broke that Aldo would not be competing after all. This now means that everyone moves from a "can't lose" situation to a significantly riskier scenario. In an unprecedented move, the UFC had already announced what they would do if Aldo couldn't fight, and they followed through as Chad Mendes is now facing McGregor for an Interim Championship.

One has to be think that part of the UFC's motivation for delving into hypotheticals was to put pressure on Aldo to compete next Saturday by threatening him with the very real prospect of a Mendes victory. Despite having trained far less than McGregor, he's already been installed as the betting favourite, largely due to a belief that he'll be able to impose his wrestling on a fighter who has never fought a wrestler inside the Octagon, nor demonstrated much in the way of ground skills; he also comes from a country that has no great grappling history or infrastructure.

I don't know who will become interim champion on July 11, but other than Frankie Edgar or Aldo himself, Mendes has the best shot of derailing the McGregor hype train. And that would be a commercial disaster. Whereas McGregor set Fox Sports 1 viewing records back in January, and his fight with Dustin Poirier somehow managed to convince approximately a quarter of a million North American households to pay for a show headlined by Demetrious Johnson, Mendes' last fight against Jose Aldo barely broke 150,000 pay-per-view buys. Indeed, his two fights against Aldo combined did less than a third of the pay per view business that UFC 189 was expected to do. If Mendes wins the Interim Featherweight Championship there will be a lot of people who will lose a lot of money.

Let's not forget that Mendes has already had a second chance to win the championship less than a year ago, and people have hardly been clamouring for him to get a rematch since. While defeating him will be the most impressive victory on McGregor's resume, it is not as if he has the name value where victory will make the Irishman a bigger star. Nor is he a big enough name that he would do more business against McGregor than any other featherweight picked at random.

But the reality is that McGregor isn't fighting due to a concern over what UFC 189 will do on pay-per-view; even Dana White accepts that the dream of UFC 189 outdrawing Jones-Cormier is in tatters. Zuffa are in damage limitation mode, solely focused on keeping as much of that bumper $7 million gate as possible. That's why they couldn't simply delay Aldo-McGregor; the reported 5,000 Irish fans who have already bought tickets would either wait for the rescheduled fight or demand their money back. They had to keep McGregor on the card even if that means risking him losing before finally getting to face Aldo.

Worse, the mentality of the European fight scene means the fight has to be for an Interim Title. Europe is a combat sports market that still cares about titles, with journalists and broadcasters indulging irrelevances in boxing such as the Irish, Commonwealth, and even WBO World Championships in the belief that they make the matches more meaningful. UFC 189 had been sold to those in Ireland and across the continent as the culmination of McGregor's quest for the world title.

The UFC seems to believe that they couldn't credibly have an Interim Title Fight not involving Edgar or Mendes, picking the latter due to the (correct) belief that the former Lightweight Champion would be the tougher opponent for McGregor. But there's a clear rationale for overlooking both men, as well the fourth ranked contender, Ricardo Lamas. Yes these men are the best contenders in the division, but they've all already lost to Aldo. Just simply have Dana White say that they wanted a fresh challenger to face McGregor for the interim title.

Luckily the men ranked fifth and sixth in the UFC's featherweight rankings actually fought each other back in March, with Max Holloway defeating Cub Swanson. Unluckily, Holloway has already lost to McGregor, so pairing them together again would probably raise hackles even from those who accepted Mendes or Edgar being overlooked.

That then brings us to the man ranked seventh, Charles Oliveira. And he would be perfect. He's just coming off a sensational win, and is on a four fight winning streak. As a non-wrestler he would be a good stylistic match-up for McGregor and with eight performance bonuses it'd almost certainly be a great fight. Best of all he's Brazilian! Just as keeping McGregor on the card gives the Irish fans a reason to still come over to Vegas, having Oliveira be Aldo's substitute keeps the Brazilian traveling fans and the viewers watching at home on Globo interested.

You may say that Oliveira fighting for the interim title over Edgar or Mendes isn't credible. Well, it's a lot more credible than what's going on at light heavyweight, where a man who, in his last match, was knocked out in less two minutes in front of his home fans, is getting a title shot against a man who won a belt vacated by the man who defeated him soundly five months before. And this is the crucial point: part of me wants to praise the UFC for putting McGregor up against one of the two best contenders in the division, but the rest of me knows that, should Mendes win, they'll do their best to ignore the result.

With so much money on the table for Aldo vs. McGregor, and McGregor fighting for the interim title out of obligation rather than opportunity, for once the UFC needed to think a few steps ahead. Instead Dana White will be sitting at cageside, fingers crossed, hoping that his blind gamble pays off whilst preparing to pretend otherwise if it doesn't. This is no way to run a promotion!

Will Cooling is a regular contributor to Fighting Spirit Magazine, the UK's biggest and best pro-wrestling monthly, available worldwide through its Apple and Android App. Read this month's issue for his take on Fabricio Werdum's sensational victory over Cain Velasquez.. FSM is available in all good British newsagents and internationally. He also blogs on politics and sports at It Could Be Said. You can get in touch with him via email at w.cooling@gmail.com or follow him on twitter @willcooling.


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