There is only really one man who should stand opposite the winner of Edgar-Maynard 3 and that’s Melendez.
The three UFC fighters currently in competition for the spot – Anthony Pettis, Clay Guida and Jim Miller – have a combined zero wins over top 10 opponents; Melendez has three, including going back-to-back with Aoki and Kawajiri. To further cement things, the two-time Strikeforce lightweight champion first claimed the gold back in 2006, taking the belt from Guida.
In the 170-pound ranks, a win for Georges St. Pierre at UFC 129 will leave the division without anyone to challenge the Canadian champion. Since a move up to middleweight looks less likely with each passing day, “Rush” would have to embark on a victory lap through the division, something he started by beating Josh Koscheck for a second time last December.
While Diaz shouldn’t necessarily go from the outhouse to the penthouse in one quick step, he’d at least be someone new and exciting to add to the list of possibilities. The Strikeforce champion is unquestionably the best welterweight outside the UFC and a win over someone in the Jon Fitch/Thiago Alves/Josh Koscheck range would be enough of a regular house stopover to facilitate a fight with St. Pierre.
Even if Diaz’s teammate Jake Shields upsets St. Pierre later this month, it’s obvious that Diaz needs to be challenging the best in the UFC.
The same cyclical matchmaking that’s taking place in the Strikeforce light heavyweight and middleweight ranks is plaguing the UFC’s 185-pound division as well. A small group of competitors has separated themselves from the pack, standing out as the upper echelon of the division. The only problem is that none of them can wrest the title away from Anderson Silva, leaving the collection of Nate Marquardt, Yushin Okami, Demian Maia and perhaps Vitor Belfort to repeatedly jostle for the chance to get beaten up by Silva again.
Throwing guys like Souza, Kennedy and even Miller and Lawler into that group would at the very least give the fans some fresh match-ups to be excited about in the future. The same applies at light heavyweight; the more talented athletes you have in the division, the more compelling pairings you can make moving forward.
While no one is really interested in a second round of bouts between the four Strikeforce fighters to hold the belt over the last two years, bringing Mousasi, Lawal, Feijao and Henderson over would open up a plethora of bouts that would garner a great deal of interest from the audience.
Additionally, being on the big stage would give the underexposed Strikeforce fighters a chance to garner the recognition they deserve, and allow the UFC to cultivate some new stars in the process.
The idea makes perfect sense, which is probably why it won’t happen any time soon. Instead of seeing a confluence of talent under the UFC banner, both organizations will continue on under the guise of “business as usual,” even though business shifted south of usual as soon as the UFC added its sole competitor to the Zuffa family.
The Time is Right to Move Strikeforce Elite into UFC