The potential problems arising post-UFC 314
Photo courtesy of James English / Wikimedia Commons
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) 314, which took place in Miami, Florida, this past Saturday, was a great event. The event was yet another fast-paced show, from exciting crowning moments to entertaining fights with high stakes. Even good shows can have consequences: many UFC fights on Saturday, Apr. 12, allude to worries in certain divisions.
Let us address the elephant in the room: Alexander Volkanoski is once again the champion of the featherweight division. Volkanovski is a tremendous fighter who is universally admired. Nevertheless, this is a huge problem for the featherweight division. With his win over Diego Lopes at the event, Volkanovski holds a win over all but one top-six-ranked featherweight.
Volkanovski will likely face number four-ranked Movsar Evloev in his next title defense, but who is there to face if he gets past Evloev? The UFC must go out of its way and put Volkanovski against a lower-ranked, inferior opponent. Volkanovski deserves to be the champion, but the UFC could face some problems soon when putting the champion up against legitimate contenders.
Another problem with UFC 314 is Paddy Pimblett’s win over Michael Chandler. The lightweight bout was another case of a thrilling fight that just so happened to bring problems with it. Pimblett is a superstar in the making for the UFC. With that being said, Paddy’s win over Michael Chandler probably won’t be enough for a title fight in a stacked lightweight division. Paddy is going to have to take on an even better opponent than Chandler, and a loss in that inevitable fight is putting Pimblett at risk of falling into no man's land in the lightweight division.
On the other side of this fight is Michael Chandler. The UFC had obvious high hopes for the entertaining lightweight when he arrived in 2020. Chandler was awarded a title fight in only his second fight in the UFC and was a coach on The Ultimate Fighter alongside Conor McGregor. A loss to a double-digit ranked fighter that now puts him at 1-5 in his last six fights is a far cry from the championship-caliber fighter Chandler was in 2021. The UFC may have lost a superstar in the lightweight division, and although they increased the credibility of a potential superstar, Pimblett is not quite there yet.
Although UFC 314 was not a completely problematic show, Jean Silva’s star-making performance showed he could be a future featherweight contender; Dominick Reyes is proving, fight by fight, that you can come back from any drought in the UFC; Virna Jandiroba dominated the top contender in the women's strawweight division; and Chase Hooper got a convincing win over a UFC legend in Jim Miller.
All of this is great, but the two main events of the show raise questions about the future faces of these two big-time divisions in the UFC. UFC 315 is scheduled for Saturday, May 15, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.