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By: Jason Amadi, MMATorch Columnist
After Michael Bisping absolutely thrashed Jason "Mayhem" Miller in the Ultimate Fighter 14 Finale main event, UFC President Dana White seemed to be noncommittal on Miller's future with the UFC.
Cutting Jason Miller from the UFC roster at this point would be understandable, but ultimately unwise. There is no getting around the fact that the middleweight division isn't exactly the UFC's most popular division. In other weight classes, fighters are often taken to the next level by getting wins or turning in gutsy performances against current or former champions. If you follow professional wrestling, you probably know this as "getting a rub."
We've seen what Chael Sonnen's campaign and near victory against UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva did for his career. We've also seen what happened to the career of Rashad Evans after a draw against former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Tito Ortiz and after he absolutely iced another former champion in Chuck Liddell.
Subconsciously, fans tend to associate having plenty of former champions with having a "stacked" division. If this is the metric by which you declare a weight class stacked, then interest levels in other weight classes make perfect sense. Counting only the UFC's other three most enduring divisions, there have been 16 Heavyweight Champions (16 official champions with two Interim Heavyweight Champions), 12 Light Heavyweight Champions, and eight Welterweight Champions.
With these numbers staring you in the face, it's not hard to see why 205 pounds has long been considered the UFC's glamour division; it simply has the most active champions. If you're an up and coming light heavyweight, you have eight active current or former UFC Light Heavyweight Champions to make your name on. Prior to the recent retirements of Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture, that number was in the double digits.
However, if you're a middleweight there aren't nearly as many former champions in the division to compete against. To date, there have been just five UFC Middleweight Champions in history, and other than a certain "American Gangster" from West Lynn, Oregon, no one has even come close to beating the reigning champion in six years.
What the UFC lacks in former UFC Middleweight Champions, they could easily make up in talent that fans actually care about. Unfortunately, the world's best mixed martial arts organization sees fit to chase quality middleweights out of their organizations as quickly as they can.
This year, the UFC brought former Sengoku Middleweight Champion Jorge Santiago back into the fold. Santiago, after having suffered back to back knockout losses during his first Octagon stint, won a Strikeforce middleweight tournament, the Sengoku Middleweight Grand Prix, the Sengoku Middleweight Championship, and had the best fight of 2010 against Kazuo Misaki. After dropping two straight losses in the UFC to top flight competition (again) Santiago was quickly released from his contract and presumably wished all the best in his future endeavors.
From the sounds of it, "Mayhem" Miller might suffer the same fate as Santiago.
What's particularly troubling about that is the fact that Santiago and Miller are markedly superior to most UFC middleweights. In fact, it's almost mind boggling how Zuffa has clung to fighters like Jorge Rivera, Alessio Sakara, Constantinos Philippous, Tim Credeur, and CB Dollaway but usually opts to release accomplished fighters like Miller and Santiago who are, if nothing else, infinitely far more pleasing to watch.
Bellator is absolutely killing the UFC on the prospect level, Zuffa makes a habit of tossing mid-tier middleweights out like yesterday's garbage, and the UFC Middleweight Champion is so good that he's already humiliated most of the upper tier of the division.
The UFC needs as much new blood in the middleweight division as they can get their hands on and releasing some of the most well known names they have under contract isn't going to solve their long term problems.
You can follow me on Twitter @JasonAmadi and send your "Ask the Torch" questions to mmatorch@gmail.com
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