What’s Left for Hughes, Rampage?

While a lot of people may see a “changing of the guard” narrative in recent UFC events and UFC 135 itself, that doesn’t hold up so well when you look closely at what happened on Saturday night.

First of all, though Matt Hughes and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson have both been elite fighters in their pasts, their career trajectories are much different. Hughes was the best fighter in his weight class for years before a steadily decreasing workrate and steadily improving competition forced him out of the top ten at 170 lbs.

Meanwhile, Rampage may never have been the top fighter at 205 lbs. at any point in his career (depending on who you ask), but he has remained around the top five at that weight for the better part of the last eight years or so. Though he never had the period of dominance that Hughes had in his prime, he also has never lost consecutive fights or dropped out of the top ten in his weight class once he entered it several years ago.

The winners of Saturday’s two biggest fights have little in common, as well. Koscheck is hardly a young gun; at 33 years of age, he also is looking to be a fighter who may never get to win a UFC title because his career has coincided with that of the great Georges St. Pierre.

You could make a case for Jones vs. Rampage being a “passing of the torch” fight, but even then, Jones arguably already took the torch from Mauricio “Shogun” Rua, himself once a young and ridiculously talented fighter who had immeasurable potential. Rampage has already lost to Rashad Evans in the last year and a half, who would have fought Jones this past weekend if not for an injury, so the torch, quite frankly, wasn’t Rampage’s to pass.

The story on Saturday night was something different, anyway. This was a story that has become all-too familiar in recent years: that of two fighters who can surely continue to compete at a high level, yet suddenly have a ceiling in place that will keep them from reaching the heights that they had ascended to earlier in their careers.

For Hughes, the question of whether to retire is unclear: though he has been knocked out a couple of times, I would argue that he doesn’t need to hang it up for health reasons. If he is content to fight just for competition’s sake, more power to him. The question is: is he content to do that?

With Rampage, no one in their right mind is suggesting he should retire. However, isn’t he looking at a situation where the balance of his career will be spent hanging around the top ten, always within reaching distance of the title but unable to grasp it? It’s hard to imagine Rampage, who says he was at his all-time best on Saturday, beating Jones under any circumstances after the fight we saw. Similarly, I certainly wouldn’t favor him to beat Rashad Evans, and it’s unclear whether the UFC would even be eager to make that fight again.

What do we do with all of these former champions, such as Rampage, Hughes, Rich Franklin and Forrest Griffin, who all have the will to continue competing and are physically able to do so, yet are nonetheless not going to be able to meet their own lofty standards of success?

I’m as much a fan of these guys as anyone, and I’m happy to watch them fight whether there’s a belt on the line or not. However, the situation not only makes for tricky matchmaking- why let someone like Rampage fight someone who could otherwise provide Jones with a fresh matchup- but also makes you wonder how content fighters like these will be to continue to fight simply for the sake of fighting.

Was Rampage right about Jones?

Rampage said after his shellacking at the hands of Jon Jones that he doesn’t see anyone beating Jones. I would tentatively agree, with one caveat: there are many times when we don’t see anyone beating someone, and it still happens. Remember a few years ago, when the champions looked like this:

Heavyweight: Brock Lesnar
Light Heavyweight: Lyoto Machida
Middleweight: Anderson Silva
Welterweight: Georges St. Pierre
Lightweight: BJ Penn

There was a lot of discussion about how that could have been the best group of champions ever. Just a couple of years later, though, only two of them still have their belts. Those two are indisputable all-time greats, by the way. In particular, Penn and Machida had looked unbeatable in their fights, with Machida being famous for not having lost a round in the UFC. Look what happened, though.

Jones needs to face a few more styles before we can buckle in for a Silva or GSP-like run of domination. We’ve seen him beat Shogun and Rampage, but what about a quick, dangerous athlete with great wrestling like Rashad Evans? I think Evans presents the most intriguing challenge left for Jones in the division (besides perhaps Machida; I’d love to see what Jones and Greg Jackson would cook up for him), and once Jones gets past Evans, we’ll talk. Which, by the way, was pretty much the same thing Rampage said.

Who should Hughes fight?

I was not a fan of the UFC’s decision to throw Koscheck in there with Hughes. The outcome was painfully obvious from the moment that the fight was announced, and even when watching Hughes do pretty well in the standup during the early going, I felt that Koscheck could decide at any point to make the bout his fight.

If the UFC is going to keep Hughes active, which I think is fine, some care needs to be taken when making his fights. I know the UFC is uncomfortable with the idea of hand-picking opponents for people, but if he’s not in the title picture, why not put him with opponents that will give him a competitive, yet winnable fight?

You can talk all day about concern for the fighters well-being, but it’s a little hard to buy when a guy who can’t seem to take the kind of shots he used to, like Wanderlei Silva, is getting thrown in there with a hard hitter like Chris Leben, followed by another dangerous striker in Cung Le.

It’s the same with Hughes. Why throw him out there against better wrestlers? If he’s not in the title picture and he just wants to compete for awhile longer, put him in matchups that are winnable for both competitors. How about Brian Ebersole? Another fight with Dennis Hallman? If you need a bigger name, the originally-scheduled bout with Diego Sanchez would have been a decent fight. How about the long-lost Mike Swick, or a bout to see how far Amir Sadollah’s takedown defense has come?

Just no more obvious mismatches like the one with Koscheck, please. That fight wasn’t fun for anyone but the most passionate Hughes haters.

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Tags: Jon Jones, Josh Koscheck, Lyoto Machida, Matt Hughes, Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson, UFC