A Perfect MMA World – It Will Never Happen But If It Did It Would Be Awesome

A Perfect MMA World – It Will Never Happen But If It Did It Would Be Awesome

Published on February 15, 2012 by The Editor in Opinion

I was pondering the perfect future for MMA. Here’s my plan for a perfect MMA world.

As we have seen this past weekend in Asian MMA, there are some great fights to be had when ‘top quality’ fighters from various regional organisations come together to fight each other, We saw some very good fights from ONE FC and Legend featuring fighters from the area, fighters from the Philippines URCC and Australia CFC for instance certainly made an impression.

In an ideal world there would be ONE organisation that would be the pinnacle of the sport in Asia and the rest would be mini championships feeding it with the best fighters.

What we saw for instance at ONE FC is that using fighters who are unproven, maybe fighters who have only fought in smaller regional events, or have not fought competitively for many years, really don’t belong on the card of such a prestigious MMA organisation and also fighters who are well past there sell by date should not be allowed to just take the money and run giving nothing to the event except for a nasty taste in the mouth that they have taken some more deserving fighters places.

Even Eddie Goldman said of Bob Sapp “I don’t know why people are still booking him” and who can disagree?

In my ideal world there would be a real path for Fighters from Local Gyms, to Local Events, to Regional Events to Regional Championships and then those Champions would get a chance to face each other to prove who was the best and would be Austral-Asia’s best fighter at that Weight.

It’s an opportunity to build up some great excitement and also provide a path through to the biggest stage, UFC. And, ensuring that fighters who make it to UFC truly are deserving. And UFC should only use these champions from Austral-Asia and Europe, South America etc for their main cards finally having One World champion, who, IS the best in their weight class in the whole sport.

It won’t happen because their are too many petty politics and difficult decisions to make and too many issues but if it could……

Take Asia for example because as that’s where the majority of our readers and listeners are, although the same idea would need to be done  worldwide.

Certain organisations are partnered with each other while others are either left out in the cold or have to set up competing partnerships leading to lots of dissipation of energy and pointless claims of who or  which is the best without anyway to prove the fact.

Here’s an example. In Singapore there are many fine MMA gyms and some are partnered with ONE FC and others aren’t. This might mean for example that certain fighters will not get a chance at ONE FC unless they leave their gym and go to a ‘partner’ gym. This is both bad for the sport and bad for the gyms business as it could lead to a few super gyms having all the best fighters and coaches, while smaller independent Gyms will die. That could then lead to rising gym prices keeping beginners out of the sport due to cost and killing the grass roots of the sport.

So my path would be something like Regional Championships where ALL local MMA gyms could send their best fighter at each weight class to compete.  These would not be in the form of one night tournaments, they would have to be held over a period of time, So, each fighter is at his best.

For instance at event one – 8 gyms have sent welterweights. These would not be pre-matched. They after all are the best that the gym could provide and they are happy to have that fighter represent their gym. Of course in countries bigger than Singapore, we would need local champions first, then they go to a regional championship and then the nations best would compete to be a national champion.

There will be NO matchmaking, the fighters names are drawn out of a hat to match them six weeks before the event, well, they are the best aren’t they?

Of course that means four welterweight fights, the next event would be a semi final as the four winning fighters face each other and then at the third event we have the final. The winner of which is the Welterweight Champion for Singapore.

Next step for that fighter would be to fight on a regional organisations card. Now at this stage Singapore does not have a regional organisation so this fighter would have to be placed to fight with an organisation closes to Singapore. Which in this case lets say for this story, would be DARE in Thailand.

At a future DARE event this fighter would fight for the right to be crowned DARE Welterweight Champion, this would also necessitate him winning the same style of tournament with fighters from Thai Gyms and others that don’t have a fight organisation locally of a sufficient level.

And than at a future  ONE FC event the winner of this event would be pitted against a welterweight champion from another Austral-Asian regional organisation. Let’s say for instance the winner from Australia.

NOW, this is where we start to see the issues – Australia has many different competing organisations and I am sure they won’t all agree on who would be the best organisation, This where ONE FC’s Undercard comes in – So, let’s say there are again eight Welterweight Champions in Australia from eight different organisations. ONE FC, would hold a championship to find the Number One Australian Welterweight Fighter from these eight champions.

This would be held as part of the undercard  and would ensure that the ONE FC undercard features decent quality fighters, So, of course this Championship would be held over three ONE FC events.

Finally, a winner would emerge as an Australian champion. And then ONE FC would hold Main card fights featuring the regional champions from all weight classes, This firstly, would probably mean that eventually every event would have at least one fight for a ONE FC Championship Belt.

This would also ensure that ONE FC had top quality Undercard fights which it would be impossible for publications to criticise as every fighter on that card would have earned his place, and there would always be a tip top quality Main Card filled with fighters who the  fans have been able to follow as they progress through to a championship fight.

This is an ongoing affair and would ensure that only the best quality fighters in Austral-Asia get a chance to represent their gyms and organisations.

Of course smaller gyms could still hold their own events and inter gym events, but these would have a purpose to finds the  best fighter to put forward. And as the next step is against a fighter who is not hand picked but literally picked out of a hat, well, then the cream will rise to the top.

And of course the next step for all these ONE FC champions would be UFC where they compete against champions from other world regions to find THE WORLDS BEST.

As I said at the beginning it will never happen, but hey we can all dream.