Mailbag: What do we make of Henry Cejudo’s career?

This past weekend was a rare week off for the UFC, but we’re back with a vengeance on Saturday as UFC 323 goes down in Las Vegas, bringing with it the final pay-per-view, possibly ever, and the final fight of future Hall of Famer Henry Cejudo’s career. So let’s talk about Cejudo, the new TV deal, and some fantasy fights!

With UFC 323 seemingly being Henry Cejudo’s last fight, what are your thoughts on his career ? Olympic gold and UFC champ-champ is pretty good obviously, but he “retired” in his prime years ago.

Man, this is an excellent question, and one that I think a lot of people are going to hate my answer for: Henry Cejudo had an objectively solid career that is not nearly as good as it looks on paper, and will be mostly forgotten relatively soon.

First off, Cejudo’s greatest accomplishment is not in the UFC; it’s his Olympic gold medal. That’s an incredible achievement, particularly given the circumstances and his age. If Cejudo never did anything else, he could confidently say he had a great athletic career.

Then, Cejudo moved to MMA and continued to have success. By virtue of having a gold medal, he’s the best pure wrestler to ever seriously compete in MMA (Gable Steveson is obviously starting his MMA journey), but he adapted very well to all the constituent parts of the game, too. That’s how he won belts in multiple divisions, becoming the only person to win a gold medal and become a two-weight world champion (though, technically, Kayla Harrison could/has done the same).

But here’s the problem with Cejudo’s career — he cut it off. Just like he did in wrestling, once Cejudo got to the top of the mountain, he wasn’t interested in the difficult and less fulfilling process of holding his place. Athletes across all sports, throughout all of human history, will all tell you it’s easier to be the hunter than the hunted, and Cejudo never wanted to be hunted.

Instead, Cejudo retired from MMA in one of the all-time bluff failures. He tried to force the UFC’s hand to either pay him more money or move up to featherweight to challenge for another title shot, and instead Dana White made a vacant title fight in the post-fight press conference. Cejudo vastly overplayed his hand, resulting in him taking three years off before ending his “retirement” (he was tweeting almost weekly about a possible return), and once he came back, he’d lost a step. That’s what happened when you spend your prime years on the sidelines.

But the real travesty about Cejudo walking away is all the good fights he left on the table, the legacy he could have built. Because even at the time, Cejudo’s two-division champ status was not the best. Most people felt he lost his rematch to Demetrious Johnson (though the fight was competitive), and then he knocked out a T.J. Dillashaw who never should have been cutting to 125 in the first place. He then moved up to fight Marlon Moraes, and while that win was great at the time, it’s aged like milk, and he followed it up with a shambolic title defense against Dominick Cruz, who had not fought in four years, and lost that fight. Time is going to be cruel to that run.

Cejudo is a superb athlete and one of the 50 greatest fighters ever, but he’s closer to 50 than he is to 10, and a lot of that has to do with how he managed his career. But still, three world titles and a first-ballot entry into the Hall of Fame is nothing to sneeze at.

With the upcoming new broadcast deal changing the numbered events, the UFC has even less incentive to put on good cards than they did during the ESPN era, right? At what point will ‘doing no wrong’ turn south and numbers, general interest, ticket sales and etc begin dwindling?

Eh, about the same. The thing with the ESPN deal was that the UFC had pretty firmly established a floor for PPV buy numbers already, and so the incentives to really try were minimal, anyway. While another guaranteed cash deal will not help the slow decline the sport has been on, I’m not sure it will accelerate things, because at the end of the day, Paramount does want something watchable. That being said, Dana White’s declaration that they’re looking to double Contender Series output is not ideal!

As for when the chickens will come home to roost for the UFC, I don’t think anytime soon. When the UFC leaned into being a right-wing sport, that was not a mistake, and it wasn’t just because Dana White is friends with Donald Trump — it was a business decision. Despite what White often says, fighting is not universally enjoyed by people; in fact, most people don’t watch fights. As a result, there’s a cap on how many fans you can create, which makes customer retention important. By aligning itself with one political ideology, the UFC may have turned off some people who don’t share those views, but it has only become more firmly ingrained with those who do.

Now, every person who ever got mad about kneeling at NFL games has a sport they can watch and feel connected to. And given how firm ideological beliefs are held, that’s a pretty strong connection to the consumer for the UFC. My guess is they can continue to sell out arenas whenever they choose to, and the site fees they get are only going up.

Some matchups for you to predict the winner

Prime Matt Hughes vs Kevin Holland

Prime Chuck Liddell vs Jiri Prochazka

Prime BJ Penn v Lightweight Volkanovski

Prime TJ Dillashaw vs Merab Dvalishvili

Undefeated Diego Sanchez vs Carlos Prates

Prime Brock Lesnar vs Cyril Gane

Prime Rich Franklin vs Robocop (Gregory Rodrigues)

One of my very favorite things in life is pointless hypotheticals with no way to know the answer, where I can argue endlessly about anything. I love this.

1. Matt Hughes comfortably cooks Holland. Hughes has somehow gotten on the shortlist of most underrated fighters in the history of MMA, right alongside B.J. Penn (who ruined his own legacy by fighting on for too long), and Jose Aldo, who new fans think was basically Dave Menne. The idea that Kamaru Usman is the GOAT welterweight is laughable because, of course, Georges St-Pierre, but Usman isn’t even ahead of Hughes. Two of Usman’s title defenses were against Jorge Masvidal! Hughes was the best fighter in the world for a chunk of time, and while he’d struggle in modern MMA, Holland can’t wrestle, so Hughes walks.
2. Oh man, this would rock so hard. Jiri is a complete lunatic, but he does have a more diverse game than Chuck. That being said, Chuck had a great chin and could clock Jiri. I’ll go with Jiri, but I’m way less confident about this one.
3. Ah, the aforementioned Penn. Prime B.J. was the best fighter in the world, and lightyears ahead of his peers in a way that people who weren’t there can’t really understand. The short version is that when he moved up to fight the best P4P fighter in the world, he didn’t lose a competitive decision, but beat the hell out of Matt Hughes. Still, time rolls on, and the game gets more fierce. Penn’s jab would provide problems for Volk, but Volkanovski is so good at gameplanning, and his cardio is a huge edge; Volkanovski by decision.
4. Phil Mackenzie summed this up in a Tweet back in January: TJ is a better striker, has better footwork, hits harder, brilliant takedown defense, tremendous cardio, great scrambler, is better in almost every category, so the pick is Merab by making TJ tired. That being said, I do think Dillashaw is the “best” bantamweight I’ve ever seen, for whatever that’s worth.
5. Easiest one yet: Prates. Diego was hard-nosed and talented, but Prates is a modern welterweight, while Diego is probably a modern featherweight.
6. Lesnar? Always hard to be confident in Lesnar, who never got acclimated to getting hit (which makes it all the more impressive what he accomplished), but Gane is so limited as a grappler that Lesnar probably Hulk-smashes him.
7. Rich Franklin, for sure. The thing about Franklin is, he was really good. Don’t get me wrong, I like Robocop, but Franklin would be remembered in much more reverent tones if Anderson Silva didn’t exist. Franklin was never a technical wizard, but he was well-rounded enough that I think he’d do fine in the modern middleweight division.

That was fun. Send me more of these.

Thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone who sent in questions. Do you have any burning questions about things at least somewhat related to combat sports? Then you’re in luck, because you can send them to me. Every Sunday (sometimes I forget and it happens on Monday), I’ll put out a call for questions on The Feed. Doesn’t matter if they’re topical or insane; just drop your questions there, and I’ll answer the best ones. Thanks again, and see y’all next week.