League of Extraordinary Journeymen: Middleweights of UFC Salt Lake City

Welcome back, friends, to the League of Extraordinary Journeymen. It’s been a few months since we last took an in-depth look at the middleweight division, and some remarkable things have occurred in the interim. Michael Bisping is the middleweight champion, Chris Camozzi is riding a three-fight winning streak, and Tom Watson is carefully plotting the regional dominance that will someday see him back in the UFC.

Before we talk about any upcoming middleweight action, let’s take a look at what went before.

RECAP

Phil: The first thing we have to address is our shameful lack of attention to the UFC’s most thrillingly middling division in the last few months. Admittedly the schedule has been beyond hectic, but we missed some beautiful moments. Ferreira- Bamgbose, Whittaker-Natal, Camozzi-Natal . . . but I think there are two fights which captured the joy of 185 more than any other.

Connor: The fact that you named Camozzi-Natal as a fight that happened “in the last few months” is either the most subtle joke ever crafted–and if so I apologize for stepping all over it–or the only evidence our doubters need to prove that this division ain’t worth squat. Either way, it’s perfect.

Phil: Dammit, I mean . . . Camozzi versus . . . whatsisface. You know. The guy! Fuck you.

Anyway, as we’ve mentioned before, this division is the delineator between the tough guys which largely populate the upper divisions and the more talented athletes at welter and below. We get to see what happens on the athletic and technical shoreline where the two meet.

No fights showed the possibilities of these more than Bisping-Rockhold and Kelly-Carlos Jr. Bisping-Rockhold was the big surprising victory: middleweight’s ultimate hard-working gatekeeper smashing one of its greatest athletes. Daniel Kelly’s win came on a much smaller scale, but it still felt significant. It reminded me of Vitor Belfort-Randy Couture, a kind of dialogue where one fighter came in with all the physical gifts and advantages and the older, more seasoned one convinced him that they didn’t exist, through sheer force of will.

For Antonio Carlos Junior, a loss to Daniel Kelly was bitter, like so much salt and vinegar. Photo by Matt Roberts | USA Today Sports

Someone once described and demonstrated a kick to me, one which he had seen an inebriated chap land to another drunk in one of London’s esteemed fast food establishments late one night. He described it reverently as The Ladbroke Grove Chip Shop Kick. It looked a lot like the majestic blow that Daniel Kelly used to start his final barrage.

Connor: Part of the reason I love doing this series is that it allows me the chance to understand why middleweight is the way it is. And I still don’t think I understand it. I don’t understand how Dan Kelly can be the guy who gets starched by Sam Alvey, and yet simultaneously be the one to halt one of the division’s best prospects.

I mean, prospect losses happen in every division. There are fighters more fully developed than Antonio Carlos Junior who suffer shocking, sudden defeats to older, more experienced, but less athletic fighters. I’m thinking, for example, of guys like Matt Lopez, who was choked out by Rani Yahya in his UFC debut just a few weeks ago.

But . . . like, Rani Yahya is pretty good. He only seems lackluster in comparison to his division, because bantamweight is a scary place with a disturbingly large volume of tiny knockout artists. And it makes sense that a fighter like Yahya, a limited but virtuosic grappler, would be the one to stop Lopez’s roll, considering that Lopez is himself an aggressive and far less experienced grappler.

Dan Kelly, though? Dan Kelly isn’t even an experienced MMA fighter. He’s a judoka with less than four years of consistent MMA experience. Yahya may have some well-known problems, but he has almost three times as many fights, and nearly four times as many years under his belt in this sport. And it wasn’t even like Kelly’s vaunted judo was the thing that really carried him against Carlos. He knocked him out, with the kind of kick that, as you said Phil, feels more at home on the greasy floor of a late-night chip shop than the hallowed canvas of the Octagon.

I mean, do you think that toughness just matters more at middleweight? Is there some secret reason that allows stiff old men to knock out superior athletes in this division, but nowhere else? I want to understand, Phil. Help me to understand.

Phil: I can’t explain magic. But I’ll try. Partly I feel it’s just variance in action- the margins of success between a good athlete and an average one don’t guarantee that the average guys lose all the time . . . but the chance of consistent survival drops dramatically the more good athletes there are in a population (say, welterweight) and athleticism becomes more of a necessity. With less good athletes the everymen in the division get more of a probabilistic crack at the occasional crazy upset. This is the “every dog has his day” type of theory- if, say, Bisping fights great athletes over and over, eventually he beats one. The margins aren’t that big.

Another big factor here though is just how much dog there is in the individual though. Like I said, I think that fight was a dialogue, one which went a bit like this:

Carlos Jr: “I am better than you.”Kelly: “No you’re not.”Carlos Jr: “Yes I am.”Kelly: “NO YOU’RE NOT.”Carlos Jr: ” . . . I’m not . . .?”*LGCS Kick*

. . . and that was that. Pure cussedness. In the right circumstances, better than athleticism.

Connor: Middleweight is the division of dogs. Wild dogs that roam the streets at night, fighting each other often enough that when a wolf comes around, they have a better chance than the other divisions’ dogs of taking him by the throat. That’s why I love this division so much, damnit. It’s a place where journeymen truly get to shine. Normally, you need a nuanced understanding of the fight game to truly appreciate a journeyman’s role in the sport. But at middleweight, the dogs get their days.

So let’s talk briefly about …

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