This year’s International Fight Week may not have presented the ‘star’ factor the UFC wanted, and it may have included some less than thrilling action at times, but it was punctuated by two amazing main events and a lot of meaningful division sorting. Justin Gaethje made an immediate splash, Robert Whittaker laid his claim to being the best middleweight in the world, and Alistair Overeem kept his name in that hat for heavyweight title contenders. So, it’s time to figure out what fights the UFC has to book next.
To do that, I’ll be following the classic Silva/Shelby model of booking winners against winners, losers against losers, and similarly tenured opponents against one another.