Could we be in for the strangest UFC fight week of all time headed into the event on the White House lawn next Sunday? What’s the most likely scenario for Conor McGregor in these last two fights on his current UFC contract?<\/p>\n
All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA<\/a> on X or @Ben_Fowlkes<\/a> on Threads.<\/p>\n @safrimmons2: is freedom fights 250 going to be the most annoying fight week of all time<\/p>\n It’s going to be weird. It’s going to be different. It’s probably going to be totally unlike any other UFC fight week we’ve ever seen, because how could it not be? What I’m still wondering is, when are we finally going to get around to talking about the actual fighters on the card?<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Dana White has done a ton of media for this event<\/a>, and he has hardly even spoken the names of the fighters. Just today a new story came out in The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> detailing the preparations and plans for the event. Outside of one photo credit, it does not even mention the names of any fighters on the card.<\/p>\n I keep waiting for that to change, thinking that maybe as the event gets closer the UFC will shift into actually promoting the fights and not just the political-cultural spectacle of the event itself. It still hasn’t happened.<\/p>\n If I were Ilia Topuria or Alex Pereira or Ciryl Gane, I might be feeling like I was just the hired help for a party that had very little to do with me. They’re not American, so what do they care about a celebration of America’s 250th birthday (which just happens to take place not on America’s birthday but on Donald Trump’s)? No one has really been trying to tell their stories or hype them in any way. It’s like they’re just meat for the sausage factory.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n I’m hopeful that at least some of that vibe has to shift come fight week. Once we get into press conferences and photo ops, we simply cannot avoid seeing the fighters and hearing from them directly. All the other stuff that comes with it, though? Yeah, expect things to get weird.<\/p>\n @pmsdeadandalive: aw gsp tell mighty mouse he wanted to fight silva at 180. i’ve long thought let champions meet halfway. ilia\/islam at 162.5 lbs. and imagine some of the past match-up. sure it holds up the division, but just put two #1 contender fights on the same card. tell me why i’m wrong.<\/p>\n It makes sense until you consider that the bigger of the two champions may have already been competing in the lightest weight class he could reasonably get to. It’s easy for us to sit here and tell a guy like Anderson Silva to go ahead and cut five more pounds. But for all we know, getting to 185 pounds might have felt like he was nearly killing himself every single time.<\/p>\n It gets hypocritical at a certain point. We don’t like it when a fighter shows up looking like a trembling cadaver on weigh-in day. We get mad if their weight cut sends them to the hospital and messes up the fight card. But we also want them to find a few more pounds to trim off their already emaciated physique for the sake of our entertainment? Just so we can see him fight a guy who’s not in his division and doesn’t want to come to his division? I mean, I get it but I also kind of hate it.<\/p>\n @NoahSas23: With McGregor having two fights left on his deal, do you think the UFC will give him another fight after Max without unless he signs an extension?<\/p>\n The whole point of a contract is that it’s not supposed to be up to the UFC whether or not to give Conor McGregor a fight. You either offer him a fight or release him. But the thing is, you just have to offer him a fight \u2014 it doesn’t necessarily have to be a fight that he wants or even one that makes the tiniest amount of sense for him.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n I don’t know what’s in McGregor’s specific contract, but many UFC contracts of the past contained language that allowed the UFC to extend the contract if a fighter turned down a bout offer. That would allow matchmakers to go to some fighter every six months, offer him a fight they knew (or hoped) he’d decline, then tack another six months on the deal before they had to offer him another one.<\/p>\n It might all come down to how bad McGregor wants out of that contract \u2014 and how soon. And a lot of that might depend on how he looks against Max Holloway next month.<\/p>\n @cullenthecomic: The Coker news provoked the immediate thought of “wow, maybe some competition will push UFC to raise their game” and then I realized that the presence of AEW has somehow made WWE worse. Are we doomed to this TKO’ed UFC forever or is there anything that could make them try again?<\/p>\n TKO is a public company, answerable to shareholders. Stock value is the only language that company executives speak. If there’s competition that eats into the quarterly revenue pie, they’ll take notice and adjust. If not, then they won’t.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The most immediate potential impact I can see Scott Coker’s new company having on TKO is in competition for talent. If payouts from a new source \u2014 whether it’s Coker’s promotion or MVP MMA or someone else \u2014 entice fighters to test free agency, it could eventually drive up prices on name-brand talent. TKO would have to notice that sooner or later.<\/p>\n @ewillcock: So Colby called out Arman for his antics on the mat at RAF. Do you think Colby is capable of being less douchy in his sport of wrestling, and how do you see their match going?<\/p>\n It’s an interesting question because it presupposes that maybe Colby Covington was only being a jerk for promotional purposes and not because it’s his true self. Could he turn it off now? Would he turn it off, either because he’s tired of the gimmick or because he thinks it wouldn’t work (or would be entirely unnecessary) for the RAF wrestling audience?<\/p>\n I’m skeptical. It’s hard to see Covington suddenly becoming the good guy after so many years of trying so, so hard to be the Biff Tannen<\/a> of the combat sports world. I don’t know if it’s in him. And we already know that Arman Tsarukyan is always going to find some way to highlight his own tendency toward treacherous villainy.<\/p>\n @LCombatsports: What’s your best advice for getting over writer’s block?<\/p>\n I’ve heard it said that writer’s block is really a failure of the ego. In other words, there’s nothing stopping you from sitting down and writing something \u2014 anything \u2014 even if it’s trash. It’s only your own judgements and expectations for yourself getting in the way and shutting you down.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n So my advice is to give yourself a short exercise to complete. Something silly and stupid that means nothing to you. Just do it and then make a point of throwing it away right after. Don’t think about creating anything meaningful. Just think about creating momentum.<\/p>\n @mmayhew: What happens if a summer storm hits during the White House main card?<\/p>\n