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SCRAPP! FIGHT MAGAZINE
January - 2015
31
He was close to doing this and
probably would have in 2013
when he won his second fight
in 2013 in August by defeating
Benson Henderson again for
the UFC lightweight champi-
onship, if it hadn’t been for in-
juries sidelining him for the rest
of that year and most of 2014
as well.
I say he fights in April, August
and December. He’d have plen-
ty of time to rest and have full
fight camps in between those
dates and I don’t really see any-
body in the mix who I’d favor
to beat Pettis.
Demetrious Johnson becomes
the first two-division champion
since B.J. Penn:
Only Randy Couture and B.J.
Penn have held championships
in different weight classes dur-
ing their UFC careers, but I
think there will be a third fight-
er to have the honor in 2015 or
at least by 2016.
I look at each division, see how
deep they are and how close
the champion is to cleaning out
whichever division it is and the
most likely cases for a cham-
pion to move up are Demetri-
ous “Mighty Mouse” Johnson
moving back up to bantam-
weight and Jose Aldo moving
up to lightweight.
With the recent news of inju-
ries suffered by bantamweight
contenders Dominick Cruz and
Raphael Assuncao, the list of
challengers for T.J. Dillashaw
shrunk to basically one guy:
Renan Barao. Now you can’t
assume that Dillashaw is going
to beat Barao; Barao was once
considered a top 5 pound-for-
pound fighter on the planet for
a reason. But if Dillashaw does
beat him again (and Urijah Fa-
ber doesn’t want to fight his
teammate), then who would
be next? Iuri Alcantara?
Johnson has almost cleaned
out the flyweight division and
his only losses at bantamweight
came against Brad Pickett in
his WEC debut and a healthy
Cruz. Johnson is a completely
different fighter now and I
would favor him against a ma-
jority of the top 10 at bantam-
weight. A fight between him
and Dillashaw would generate
a ton of buzz among fans and
is easily sellable with the whole
“Champion vs. Champion”
promotion it would carry.
I, admittedly, am a fan of Dil-
lashaw, but it would be hard
not to pick Johnson winning
the hypothetical fight and thus
becoming the UFC’s next mul-
tiple division champion.
Brock Lesnar wins an MMA bout
in 2015:
I know, this one isn’t as bold
as the others. The rumor of Le-
snar’s return to MMA isn’t real-
ly anything new, but I’m going
to go a step further and say he
actually wins in his return.
If he is coming back to the
UFC, I’d expect them to match
him up with somebody he
could definitely beat, but also
someone who they know will
sell the fight. Enter: Frank Mir.
Lesnar vs. Mir III at UFC 189,
which is slated to be in Las Ve-
gas on July 11th would prob-
ably do well pay-per-view num-
bers and be a huge event for
the UFC during the summer.
Floyd Mayweather and Manny
Pacquiao actually fight:
You may be asking what this
fight would have to do with
MMA or the UFC.
I’ll tell you.
If this fight happens, the pay-
per-view numbers are going to
be huge. I’m no expert on PPV
sales predictions, but I’d expect
this to be one of the highest, if
not the highest selling fights of
all time.
Maybe a cross-promotional
fight of this magnitude would
push Dana White and Joe Silva
to create more super fights or
even create the framework to
do something crazy such as
cross-promotional fight with
a Bellator champion (strongly
doubt that would ever hap-
pen).
Who knows. I won’t believe
this fight is going to happen
until they actually meet in the
center of the ring, just like I
won’t believe Dr. Dre is going
to release another album until I
actually hear it.