JNPO Classic: Lamenting the UFC’s 205-pound division in 2011
On another edition of JNPO Classic, we head back to October 6, 2011, and found ourselves in a familiar position as today: groaning about the state of the UFC’s light heavyweight division.
If you’re new to this series, it’s a week-by-week look back at the short run of the WGAM MMA Show, a program that ran on ESPN NH for under a year, co-hosted by myself and producer PJ Huot.
There was no guest on this week’s show, so we did a lot of previewing and looking ahead. The big news of the week was Lyota Machida getting the nod to face then-light heavyweight champion Jon Jones at a December 2011 PPV in Toronto. We weren’t fans of that decision and spent a good amount of time trying to understand why UFC couldn’t just wait for Rashad Evans to heal up from injury.
We said, “The light heavyweight division needs help.” It’s a sentence that can still be used to describe the division nearly seven years later.
We also did a full preview of UFC 136: Edgar/Maynard III in Houston, co-main evented by then-featherweight champion Jose Aldo vs. Kenny Florian.
Enjoy this weekly look back at MMA history: