I'm excited about UFC 300. This monumental milestone of an event has something crazy like 12 or more current or ex-world-champions fighting on the card and it is going to be one hell of a wild ride. It is the first UFC event that I will likely watch all of in a long time. Normally I will only watch the main card because otherwise the events is 5 hours long. I like UFC, but 5 hours is too long.
I am looking forward to seeing almost all of the fights but there is one fight that I can't help but "boo" a little bit and that is the stupid Baddest Mo Fo fight for the BMF belt that should have never been introduced to the sport to begin with.
Created as a sort of side show as far as championships is concerned so that the UFC would now have a reason to make people fight one another that normally wouldn't, the BMF belt is meant to be some sort of grudge match between guys who normally have exhibited a level of disdain for one another, normally online, and then create another reason for UFC to charge more for a pay per view. In reality, nobody, including most of the fighters, actually care about the BMF belt because let's be honest here, if the person with the BMF belt truly was the "baddest" wouldn't they be the champion of the division? None of the BMF belt holders have been champion at the time they were fighting, and quite a few of them guys never really were in the championship race. A notable person on this list it Nate Diaz who is one of my favorite fighters of all time but at the same time I recognize that he is not championship caliber and was never going to have a real belt.
He was the main reason why the BMF belt ever came into being because he declared himself the "baddest mother fucker" in the game and challenged Jorge Masvidal on a microphone after defeating Anthony Pettis at UFC 241. I normally consider Dana White a rather brilliant businessman and promoter, but for him to take this statement at face value and then create a fake championship specifically for this one statement, was really dumb.
Nate ended up not even being able to finish the fight because of doctor's stoppage and Jorge, who isn't even that good of a fighter and would get absolutely worked by a real champion, was crowned the first BMF champion.
Since then, things haven't really gotten any better. There have been several BMF bouts and the people who end up winning don't really seem to care about this trophy, but seem to not be allowed to badmouth the fact that they have the belt. There are some people out there that talk about how they take the belt home and keep it under their bed because it isn't a real championship and I couldn't agree more. This is basically a WWE "Money in the Bank" championship and it wouldn't surprise me if UFC were to take some sort of approach to the belt. Let the BMF fighter declare that he wants a shot at the real championship in any division, any time they feel like it, even if it is right after the current champion just finished fighting. Why not? If we are going to be absurd, let's go ahead and go full WWE retard.
At UFC 300, there are a lot of good fights but one of them stands out to me as being out of place. Lo' and behold, that particular fight just happens to be the BMF fight on the card where we see the current BMF guy Justin Gaetje, fighting against someone who was once good, but isn't anymore in Max Holloway.
After a string of losses to Volkanovski it appeared as though UFC had not much more use for Holloway and he wasn't going to be the champion again despite UFC clearly favoring him as exactly that. Sure, his last 2 fights are wins but they were non-issue fights against Korean Zombie who was set to retire after the match, win or lose, and prior to that he won a Fight Night decision victory over Arnold Allen and I wonder if most people even recognize that name.
Max also isn't much of a trash talker and seems to be a genuinely nice guy. Compare this to all of the other BMF fighters in the past and this just adds more credence to the BMF belt being a sham. Hell, Gaetje is a pretty nice guy as well compared to other fighters
Next we have to consider the fact that Holloway and Gaetje aren't even in the same weight category. What the hell is going on here?
To me, giving Holloway this fight is just another way for UFC to throw as many big prize-fights at Max as they possibly can. Sure he is in fact ranked number 2 in the featherweight division, but when you run down the list of names that are in that division it is a who's who of who the hell are these guys? The featherweight division is one of the most boring in all of UFC at the moment and to me these rankings seem to be just arbitrarily handed out. If we were to look at the featherweight division and ask ourselves who the "baddest" of all of them is, it would be Volkanovski and not Holloway. Volk has defeated Max twice so why isn't he in this fight? I think it is because UFC favors Holloway and desperately wants to put him in the limelight even though I don't think he belongs there anymore.
The above was probably the most friendly pre-fight "showdown" of all time. I think both of these guys has a sense of humor about the stupid BMF belt and I don't really think that the belt itself means anything to either of them. I suppose if I was to calm down I could admit that this fight does accomplish one thing: If one of them does extremely well it will create an opportunity for them to get a shot at the real championship in their respective divisions, but I really don't think we will see either of them get a great deal of enjoyment out of putting that belt on their shoulder at the end of it.
We're in for a slugfest here for sure, but honestly, that BMF belt needs to go away.