6 burning questions heading into UFC on ESPN 6
In three weeks, the UFC will visit the place that is pretentious enough to refer to itself as “The” Garden — New York’s Madison Square Garden — for UFC 244.
Friday night, however, the UFC heads to the Garden that is actually synonymous with winning. Unlike MSG, where the Knicks have not secured an NBA title since 1973 and the Rangers have won just one Stanley Cup in the past 79 years, TD Garden in Boston has a glorious championship history with 23 Celtics and Bruins title banners hanging from the rafters.
Under that championship lineage, there will be a more interesting-than-usual weekly UFC offering in the form of UFC on ESPN 6.
This includes both the main event, in which former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman makes his light heavyweight debut against undefeated Dominick Reyes; and the co-feature bout, a hot featherweight grudge match between Yair Rodriguez and Jeremy Stephens in a re-do of their aborted UFC Mexico City main event from September.
UFC on ESPN 6 takes place Friday at TD Garden in Boston. The card airs on ESPN2.
Without further ado, then, on to six burning questions for UFC on ESPN 6.
How will Chris Weidman fare at light heavyweight?
On one hand, we’ve seen ample evidence in recent years that going up in weight class, rather than dieting down to the absolute lowest point your body can possibly tolerate, can pay fighters big dividends.
Robert Whittaker went on a tear and won the middleweight belt after going up from welterweight. Anthony Smith became a light heavyweight title contender after being a middle-of-the-pack middleweight. Ditto for Thiago Santos. Bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes had the power to end Cris Cyborg’s win streak when she went up to featherweight. Daniel Cormier, who had a previous long run at heavyweight, went back up at age 40 after his light heavyweight run and held the title there.
So why does Chris Weidman’s move up to light heavyweight seem to have more question marks than the rest? Well, for one thing, the fighters listed above didn’t have to sort of run Weidman had before making a move up. He’s been knocked out four times at middleweight in his last five fights. One of those was by Luke Rockhold, who himself got knocked out when he tried to make the move up just this summer.
Still, though, if you’re a gamer like Weidman (14-4 MMA, 10-4 UFC), what other options are there? If Weidman can channel the same spirit he found when he wasn’t fazed by Silva back in 2013, maybe his second act can in fact be something special.
