Light Heavyweight Déjà Vu

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

It’s January. Jon Jones has a date with Daniel Cormier for a major pay-per-view bout with the light heavyweight championship as the prize. Later this month in the main event of the UFC on Fox, Anthony Johnson will fight for an opportunity to face the winner.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The UFC light heavyweight division is like a staircase with strikingly uneven steps. Just above the floor level rests the pack, a mixture of once elite veterans trying in vain to climb back up to the top (Rashad Evans, Mauricio Rua, and Rogerio Nogueira) and newer faces toiling away and trying to make an impact (Ovince Saint Preux, Jimi Manuwa, Patrick Cummins, Corey Anderson, etc.). One step – perhaps not a large one – above them stand Glover Teixeira and Ryan Bader. Teixeira, 36, still has enough left in him to finish most everyone in the pack, but only time is separating him from the crowd. Bader, 32, appears to be scraping his ceiling, but he has a major opportunity to break through. A sizeable step up is Alexander Gustafsson, an almost champion that probably isn’t done flirting with the belt. Above him is Anthony Johnson, whose power makes him a threat to any and all above or below him. Then, a big step up is Daniel Cormier, the champion, who largely dominated Johnson but only just beat Gustafsson. Above all sits the king of the mountain, Jon Jones, who was never beaten for his title and seems to have been reinvigorated coming out of personal issues.

This hierarchy has reigned for some time and created stagnancy in the division. In the past couple of years, only Johnson has risen from the pack into the elite. Daniel Cormier entered the elite immediately upon dropping down to the weight class. Bader, hardly a new face or fast-rising star, just recently went a step ahead of the pack, but he could just as easily get lost in the crowd again.

Gone for now are the days of 7-8 elite fighters aiming for the same goal and all, or at least the vast majority, with a real shot at achieving it – the days between the Chuck Liddell and Jones reigns, when five different fighters held the title; when Liddell, Wanderlei Silva, and Dan Henderson were aiming to relive lost glory; when Jones, Bader, and Thiago Silva were climbing the ranks. There was a chaos in the division that doesn’t show its face any longer.

And so we find the division in a situation eerily similar to a year ago. Jones and Cormier are targeted for UFC 198 on April 23, a showdown that may be made even more historic if it occurs as planned at Madison Square Garden. On paper, Cormier will go in as the champion, but in reality, he’s once again the challenger. He’s challenging for the #1 spot that Jones has held since he devastated Mauricio Rua five years ago, and looking to redeem himself for a performance that wasn’t quite good enough a year ago.

This Saturday on Fox, Anthony Johnson will fight Ryan Bader for the right to face the winner for the title. Last year, Johnson, in the same situation, knocked off Alexander Gustafsson in minutes. Bader’s best chance is to glue himself to Johnson and keep his opponent’s back to the fence or the mat. Outside of that, it seems likely that Johnson’s hands or feet will eventually find their target and put him in a title match once again.

The current repetitiveness of the light heavyweight division isn’t unexpected for a division where a small number of fighters separate themselves from the pack, but it does grow stale quickly. To this point, the staleness hasn’t set in. Jon Jones is the best light heavyweight that has ever competed and if Cormier wouldn’t be favored in hypothetical matchups against the best light heavyweights of any era, he certainly wouldn’t be a significant underdog. Seeing them compete again will be a treat, but if Cormier can’t at least close the distance that was between them in the last match, a third match won’t be met with enthusiasm. Johnson is a threat to any fighter so long as he’s fresh and vertical.

For now, light heavyweight is still interesting. There are still exciting matches to be made with the Jones-Cormier-Johnson trio and Gustafsson could be in line for another classic title fight after stringing a couple of wins together. However, the division will soon need to freshen up. There don’t appear to be any up-and-comers on the horizon that will be ready to challenge for the championship within the next couple of years. It’s a problem the UFC also faces in its heavyweight division, which suffers from a lack of exciting new blood striving for the top, and may be a sign that the UFC should alter its strategy in recruiting new talent for its heaviest divisions, where top athletes of such size are attracted to options other than pugilism.

Until such changes occur, we’ll sit waiting for someone to emerge from the pack to make a strong challenge at the title, and hoping that challengers already there don’t run dry in the meantime.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.