The first two major main events announced for the UFC in 2026 have been met with confusion and criticism with Paddy Pimblett getting an interim lightweight title fight against Justin Gaethje, while Diego Lopes landed a rematch with featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski less than a year after he lost their first encounter.<\/p>\n
None of the fault falls on the fighters, but while Pimblett is preparing for a title shot, Arman Tsarukyan \u2014 currently ranked No. 1 at lightweight by the UFC \u2014 is just sitting on the sidelines after openly stating he would be happy to compete again in January after dismantling Dan Hooker in November. Meanwhile at featherweight, undefeated fighters Movsar Evloev and Lerone Murphy both make compelling arguments for a title shot yet they were ultimately passed over in favor of Lopes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of sad,\u201d UFC legend Matt Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cI hate how I get into this too much, but that\u2019s the definition of a monopoly. Where a single promoter owns the titles and the rankings. It\u2019s not a good thing for the sport, in my opinion. I have to question what it\u2019s going to do for the longevity of the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think in the short term, it\u2019s really going to make a big difference. It\u2019s going to sell the next fight. It\u2019s going to sell the next pay-per-view but trends tend to come and go. Fads tend to come and go. At some point to have staying power and lasting power, I think it requires a meritocracy based system.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tsarukyan undoubtedly has the best argument for a title shot considering he was booked to face then lightweight champion Islam Makhachev at UFC 311 until a last-second injury knocked him off the card. He finally returned in November where he scored a dominant submission win over Hooker to put himself back in position to fight for gold.<\/p>\n
Instead, Pimblett and Gaethje are battling for the interim title with the winner then expected to move on and face reigning UFC lightweight champion Ilia Topuria. Depending on the timeline for how that all unfolds, Tsarukyan could be looking at 2027 before he potentially gets his own opportunity at the title.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to feel for Arman more than anybody else,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThe guy\u2019s done all the right things except for one little mishap, which apparently if you do one little mishap you are screwed. It wasn\u2019t like a big mishap. He got injured. You get injured, you get injured. Boy is it biting him in the ass now, I guess.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen this situation multiple times. It\u2019s like what do you got to do to get a godd*mn title shot? When you\u2019ve earned it, you\u2019ve earned it \u2014 you\u2019re the No. 1 guy. Why do they even have rankings anymore? I don\u2019t really know. It just should just have popularity scale. Just get rid of the rankings. They should just list the most followers on Instagram. Here\u2019s who gets the next title shot, he\u2019s got 2 million followers!\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tough to argue against the idea that Pimblett is really jumping the line considering he doesn\u2019t hold a win over anyone currently ranked in the top 10 at lightweight in the UFC. While he remains undefeated in the octagon, Pimblett\u2019s three most recent wins came over opponents with a combined 3-12 record over their past 15 fights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t know that much about Paddy Pimblett still, is the biggest issue in the whole thing,\u201d Brown argued. \u201cI just saw a little meme picture on Twitter earlier today and his last three opponents are like 0-9 [recently] or something like that. That\u2019s f*cking ridiculous. He hasn\u2019t beat a guy that\u2019s on a winning streak in his career yet [in the UFC], in his prime on a winning streak, doing well.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven with Justin Gaethje, not a knock on him, but he\u2019s on a one-fight winning streak against a guy that came in on 10 days\u2019 notice. Justin Gaethje is clearly a very good fighter. He\u2019s got some really good wins on his record but to add to that, the last guy he beat [Rafael] Fiziev, he already beat him before. He doesn\u2019t have any impressive win streak to be earning a title shot either. What a wild choice of guys to compete for an interim title when you\u2019ve got so many good options out there. Arman is just the obvious one. It\u2019s just ridiculous that he didn\u2019t get the shot. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going through his head right now. I haven\u2019t heard anything from him but there\u2019s no way he\u2019s not fuming. I mean 2027 \u2014 there\u2019s a world where he doesn\u2019t get a title shot until 2027. I feel for the guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as Lopes getting a rematch against Volkanovksi and a second title shot in a 10-month span, Brown just doesn\u2019t understand the UFC\u2019s thinking, especially with Evloev and Murphy both waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n
An argument could easily be made for either of them getting a title shot right now but instead the UFC went with Lopes after he lost to Volkanovski and then scored a knockout win over Jean Silva back in September.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know where this came from,\u201d Brown said about the UFC 325 main event. \u201cWhy they are doing that? What the idea behind it is? I really don\u2019t get that one at all. It\u2019s not like we\u2019ve seen something out of Diego in that last fight with Jean Silva where we\u2019re like wow, he should definitely be back at a title shot. He\u2019s the guy! I think he\u2019s an amazing fighter, and he certainly has a shot against Volkanovski, but I don\u2019t think any more of a shot than he did the first fight. I haven\u2019t seen anything spectacularly changed up in his game since the first fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow Movsar has not got a title shot \u2014 again, it\u2019s the same situation as Arman. What do you have to do? Oh you have to go on the internet and get famous? That\u2019s not the way this sport is supposed to work. It\u2019s not cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown believes it speaks to a much bigger problem plaguing the UFC right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to bring in guys like Arman Tsarukyan or Movsar Evloev, you want to bring in these Olympic wrestling level guys, they don\u2019t want to have to go out there and put on some ridiculous show to become a champion,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to have to go on Instagram and start a podcast and make whatever kind of skits on social media and this silly kind of stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just want to be a world champion because they want to be the best athlete. That\u2019s what makes me wonder how the staying power is going to be. When you\u2019re dealing with guys who are legitimate athletes, who want to be legitimate athletes, and they\u2019re getting passed up by guys that are entertainers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first two major main events announced for the UFC in 2026 have been met with confusion and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,37036,329,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-320653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-mmaf-podcast-network","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc","17":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}