Paul Felder: UFC lightweight tournament would keep everyone busy, prevent hand-picked fights

LAS VEGAS – Paul Felder sees numerous perks of a lightweight tournament.

After UFC 155-pound champion Khabib Nurmagomedov announced his retirement in October, Felder thinks it’s the perfect opportunity for all the division’s top contenders to battle it out for the title.

Although Nurmagomedov hasn’t officially vacated his belt, numerous fighters are vying for the top spot and Felder (17-5 MMA, 9-5 UFC) thinks a tournament to determine the rightful title contenders makes sense.

“I think that tournament idea is really cool, honestly, because it gets all of us busy and active right away and it kind of forces everybody to be like, ‘All right, there’s no hand-picking this,” Felder told said during Thursday’s UFC Fight Night 182 virtual media day. “We set it up, and there’s a bracket, and you fight, and we get there – and then once we get there, and there’s a champion, then that can be gone.

“But when you’ve had a champion like Khabib, and then he’s gone, you’ve got all these contenders who are all bouncing around wins and losses with each other and there are some guys that are really trying to squeeze into that mix – (Charles) Oliveira, (Dan) Hooker, myself, Michael Chandler in the mix now. I think it makes sense to make this big eight-man tournament or something like that and have us work our way up toward that belt. I like that idea.”

Felder, who has dabbled with the idea of retirement himself, faces former lightweight champ Rafael dos Anjos in Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 182 main event and will look to re-insert himself in the title contention mix.