Full disclosure: I write features every month for the UFC website. Doing so has no influence on my opinions, but people like to suggest that it does all the time, which is why I make it known up-front before getting into a opinion piece like this.
Tamdan McCrory’s return to the UFC tells you everything you need to know about the current state of MMA.
While various fighters have migrated to Bellator after being released or fighting out their contracts with the UFC, everyone that has done so of late – Phil Davis, Josh Koscheck, Josh Thomson – did so off a loss (or successive losses) and all of them did so after having fallen out of contention in their respective divisions. On the flip side, McCrory, who inked a new deal with the UFC on Tuesday, moves the other way after a pair of impressive, swift stoppage wins that put him in line to challenge for the vacant middleweight. Instead, he bounced in order to return to the Octagon and try to work his way up the ladder in the far more competitive, far deeper UFC version of the weight class.
Do I think there will be more fighters that take the Thomson approach, fighting out their contract and listening to what Bellator has to say once they hit the free agent market? Absolutely I do, but until the fighters moving to Bellator are current contenders, none of these moves should be considered a big deal. They’re solid signing for Bellator as they add roster depth and provide new, recognizable options for main event assignments and potentially title fights in fairly short order, but that’s it.
They’re not game-changers or even additions that really move the needle to be honest. Few people were getting excited about Davis, Thomson or Koscheck during their last couple fights in the Octagon, so making their impending Bellator debuts into a big deal seems disingenuous, unless accompanied by the qualifier “as far as Bellator goes” because that’s what this is.
It’s a big deal for Bellator, sure, but it’s not a big deal overall.
McCrory going the other way, however, is something that Scott Coker should pay attention to.
Admittedly, the former Strikeforce and current Bellator boss man granted McCrory his release, so he’s not exactly unaware of the situation, but when guys would rather ask out of their contracts and pass up a title shot in order to fight somewhere else, that’s probably not a good thing.
In explaining his decision to defect, McCrory said, “I left a title shot in [my last promotion] to come to the UFC. If I wanted to win that belt I could have stayed and done it, but I wanted to be back in the sport of MMA, not the MMA entertainment business.”
As much as Bellator has been pulling solid ratings with its tent pole events anchored by long-in-the-tooth veterans and Pride-style entrances, one of the concerns some people had (myself included) about the way those cards were put together is that fighters that have been Bellator staples for years – including former champs like Michael Chandler and Daniel Straus, as well as current titleholders Patrico Freire and Will Brooks – might not be too psyched about getting slotted behind Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock or Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar.
And that seems to be part of what has prompted the 28-year-old “Barn Cat” to depart Bellator and return to the UFC.
Everyone seems to be in a rush to want to chip away at the foundation the UFC has built for itself, but it’s going to take a lot more than having a bunch of fighters that either got cut by the UFC or look to be on the downside of their careers switching brands for me to look at this as anything other than guys moving to the MLS after successful careers overseas. Do you think the heads of the EPL or La Liga or Serie A get worried when Didier Drogba or Thierry Henry or some other fading star move to the States to close out their careers with the Montreal Impact or New York Red Bull or whoever?
They’re nice additions for the MLS because they’re established names and guys that casual soccer fans are probably going to know, but they’re no longer among the world’s elite and that’s the same way I look at these guys going from the UFC to Bellator.
Are there some fighters that could be contenders in the UFC on the Bellator roster? Damn straight – all of the current champions would be solid additions to their respective divisions and there are several others across various weight classes that would be great depth adds to the UFC ranks as well, just as the Strikeforce fighters have proven since they came over and the WEC fighters did before them.
But the fact that Bellator has a bunch of guys that could migrate to the UFC and have success doesn’t do anything to diminish the reality that I would take the sixth- or seventh-ranked UFC fighter in every division – and unranked competitors in the case of some of the deeper weight classes – over the top of the food chain guys across the way every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Maybe a guy like Brooks gets a Top 5 win, but outside of that, I like the UFC fighters’ chances.
And McCrory trading in being one of the best middleweights in Bellator in order to see where he fits within that weight class in the UFC should bring any of those “Bellator’s gaining ground on the UFC” conversations to a close.
