Mailbag: Ilia Topuria vs. Charles Oliveira is nice, but did UFC miss its chance for an all-time great fight?

UFC 317 finally has a main event.

Its Ilia Topuria vs.

Charles Oliveira, which is ...

not exactly what the fans were asking for.How do we feel about this International Fight Week booking? And also about Islam Makhachevs move up to welterweight, which could put a damper on plans for some of that divisions top contenders?All that and more in this weeks mailbag.

To ask a question of your own, hit up @benfowlkesmma or @benfowlkes.bsky.social.Ben, I love Chucky Olives and hes exciting but this fight is a huge letdown and its weird to see people pretending its not, and wildly misusing the fire emoji.

Its fun but not dominant champ vs dominant champ.

They couldve had it all and they blew it.

Am I wrong? Kevin Seccia (@kevinseccia) May 14, 2025@KevinSeccia: Ben, I love Chucky Olives and hes exciting but this fight is a huge letdown and its weird to see people pretending its not, and wildly misusing the fire emoji.

Its fun but not dominant champ vs dominant champ.

They couldve had it all and they blew it.

Am I wrong?Kevin, youre not wrong.

Not about this fight and not about the rampant and frankly irresponsibly misuse of the fire emoji in our society.

(Im saying, too much fire emoji usage causes fire emoji inflation, which in turn decreases the value of the fire emojis I leave in the comments on Tina Feys Instagram page.)Just in terms of a stylistic matchup likely to produce a fun fight between two guys at or near the height of their powers, sure, Ilia Topuria vs.

Charles Oliveira is some fire emoji material.

But the stakes just arent there.

Topuria was the worlds best featherweight before deciding to go up and challenge the worlds best lightweight.

But then the worlds best lightweight bolted for welterweight, so now Topuria faces a former champ whos currently, according to the UFCs own rankings, the third-best lightweight.

And to make it seem more meaningful, well pull a belt out of the supply closet and say its for the vacant title.Again, its a fun fight.

I suspect itll be a great one to watch.

It just doesnt mean anything even close to what Topuria vs.

Islam Makhachev would have meant.

And we could have had that one.

We could have had everything.

It was right there.

Makhachev could have fought Topuria and then moved up in weight.

But no, we cant have nice things in this sport.

We prefer to make them needlessly complicated any chance we get.Where is the collective outrage about Islam fighting for a welterweight belt? Theres a heap of title challengers at 170 and Topuria could be the second Georgian to take out a Dagestani.

If I was Garry, Brady, or Shavkat Id be furious.

What is the rush with pushing Islam to 170? MMAbandwagon (@MMAbandwagon) May 14, 2025@MMAbandwagon: Where is the collective outrage about Islam fighting for a welterweight belt? Theres a heap of title challengers at 170 and Topuria could be the second Georgian to take out a Dagestani.

If I was Garry, Brady, or Shavkat Id be furious.

What is the rush with pushing Islam to 170?I know, I know.

Its silly.

Especially since Makhachev and his camp have argued that Topuria shouldnt get to move up a weight class and challenge for the title in his first fight there.

That, apparently, should be an honor reserved for Makhachev.At least Topuria has actually fought (once) at lightweight in the UFC.

Thats more than Makhachev has done in the welterweight division.

Plus, Topuria vs.

Makhachev would have been a meeting of pound-for-pound greats! A true superfight! A fight that would have made dollars and sense, both in large quantities! Gah!!!Sorry, I need to calm down.

Its just so frustrating.

And youre right, welterweight contenders like Shavkat Rakhmonov should absolutely be mad about this, since its basically Makhachev cutting in line while theres still work to do back home in his own division.

Its ridiculous.

But I guess thats MMA for you.I agree with you on Jones ducking Aspinall, but is not fighting Aspinall REALLY a stain on his career,? He just dismantled the best HW ever, but Tom is the capstone? Theres always another threat.No one looks at Mighty Mouse and says yea, but he didnt fight Brandon Moreno.

TopOfThe5th (@DP819) May 13, 2025@DP819: I agree with you on Jones ducking Aspinall, but is not fighting Aspinall REALLY a stain on his career,? He just dismantled the best HW ever, but Tom is the capstone? Theres always another threat.

No one looks at Mighty Mouse and says yea, but he didnt fight Brandon Moreno.Whooaaaa there.

First of all, Jon Jones dismantled the best heavyweight ever? He beat up a 42-year-old firefighter, is what he did.

He beat a guy who hadnt fought in more than three years and hadnt won a fight in more than four years.

I have tons of respect for everything Stipe Miocic did in his great career, but the version of him Jones fought wasnt the same guy.And you know what else? Jones knew that.

He intentionally targeted that version.

He could have gone up in weight and challenged Miocic five or six years earlier, back when Miocic was still that dude and Jones was eking out decisions over Thiago Santos and Dominick Reyes.

But he didnt.

He waited until he could drag a diminished version of Miocic out of semi-retirement because he wanted the name on his resume.

So lets be clear on that.But also, I see your point about how theres always going to be another challenge.

Thats very true.

Its just that, in this case that challenge also has a UFC heavyweight title around his waist.

And since Jones didnt beat a champ to become champ, if he were to retire without ever facing Tom Aspinall, I dont think we could really say that he was ever the undisputed heavyweight champ.Theres also just the optics of the thing.

Theres Aspinall, waiting for the shot hes earned, eager to fight and find out whos better.

And then theres Jones, counting his trophies and enjoying his travels, seemingly avoiding the fight on purpose after gaming the system a little bit to give himself a plausible though not terribly compelling claim to heavyweight greatness.

Its a bad look for him.

And if his career ends on that bad look, I dont think people will forget that.What MLB/NBA/NFL teams to Montana natives root for? Y'all ain't got shit over there, lol MJ Silverfang (@WorldsWorstHero) May 13, 2025@WorldsWorstHero: What MLB/NBA/NFL teams to Montana natives root for? Y'all ain't got s*** over there, lolFirst of all, how dare you.

What we have is the University of Montana Grizzlies football team.

Two-time national champions.

Won the Big Sky Conference title 19 times, including a record 12 consecutive conference titles.

Plus they have the best stadium in all of FCS football and everybody knows it.

Go Griz.Second, when it comes to pro teams we have a couple different options.

One is to choose a team thats reasonably geographically close and therefore more likely to broadcast games in our area.

Popular examples include the Seattle and Denver pro teams, but basically never Utah.

Another option is to trace some sort of family lineage back to, say, Texas or Boston, and root for a team from there on the grounds that it was your grandfathers team as a boy before he came west to escape a dark past.I think my favorite is when people go with a team that, in one way or another, captures the spirit of the part of Montana theyre from.

For instance, I know people from Butte who love the Pittsburgh Steelers or Philadelphia Flyers just because those teams seem to have Butte-ish identities.

Basically theyre going off vibes, geography be damned, and I respect it.I have two.

First one, is being bald the best base for MMA? Almost all the GOATs have been bald.

One of them, Jose Aldo, retired this past weekend.

(Secondly) How different is his legacy if the judges were giving him these close decisions? A lot different or not much? Hack Slack (@EyeofMihawk) May 13, 2025@EyeofMihawk: I have two.

First one, is being bald the best base for MMA? Almost all the GOATs have been bald.

One of them, Jose Aldo, retired this past weekend.

(Secondly) How different is his legacy if the judges were giving him these close decisions? A lot different or not much?Wow, Im going to need more time to process this theory about the intersection between baldness and greatness.

Especially since, as we found out after he retired, Georges St-Pierre was entirely capable of growing a solid head of hair.

His baldness was a choice.

Which, Larry David will tell you, does not make you part of the bald community.As for Jose Aldo, are there really that many close decisions that went against him? As in, the kind that could have meaningfully changed his place in the sport? Probably the Mario Bautista fight and definitely the Marlon Moraes fight.

But he got a title shot off that split decision loss to Moraes and the Bautista fight was essentially already in the post-credits scene of his already epic career.What Im saying is, Aldo had a great career even without giving him extra wins that the judges had decreed as losses.

What Ill always wonder about is, what if hed been a little more patient against Conor McGregor? Now theres one that could have changed a few different career trajectories with a different flap of the butterflys wings.Is Weili vs Valentina on the horizon? What are the components of that potential matchup, that you find most interesting? Now Boarding Flight 209 (@jmprobus) May 13, 2025@jmprobus: Is Weili vs Valentina on the horizon? What are the components of that potential matchup, that you find most interesting?It better be.

Theres really nothing else for Valentina Shevchenko to do that anyone would really get excited about at this point.

Even her win over Manon Fiorot at UFC 315 on Saturday, by Sunday morning it was like it never even happened.

Just zero interest from fans.What intrigues me about a fight with Zhang Weili is to see how Zhangs speed matches up against Shevchenkos size and strength.

We know that Shevchenko is capable of bullying smaller fighters, especially when she has a wrestling edge.

But we also know shes starting to slow down with age, while Zhang still appears to be getting better everywhere.

Thats the fight to make next, for sure..

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