Josh Barnett out of WAMMA title picture

by mattman73 on Dec 16, 2008 6:30 PM EST Comment 9 comments

Unfortunately Josh Barnett was caught up in the politics of MMA and is the latest causality of rankings manipulation.

Recently VP of Fighter and Promoter Relations Pat Miletich had this to say in an interview done by Dreamfighters.com:

DreamFighters.com: Why isn’t BJ Penn fighting for the WAMMA title? Isn’t he ranked #1?

Pat Miletich: Yes, BJ Penn is ranked #1 and nothing less than a superb fighter. But, BJ is moving up to fight GSP at Welterweight in January. Ideally, BJ should be fighting for a WAMMA title, be it in the UFC or by way of a cross-promoted fight within two organizations. However, given that BJ is moving up to Welterweight and the UFC will not cross promote fights, a fight with BJ as a participant is not possible at this time. At some point the question will arise as to how along a fighter can hold onto a #1 WAMMA Ranking in a weight division without fighting the top contenders in that division.

Under the recommendation of Pat Miletich WAMMA enacted the rule that to be eligible to be in the top 10 in a weight class you have to have fought a top 10 contender in the last 6 months.

So since BJ Penn had not fought a top 10 contender since 5/24/08 WAMMA voters can no longer vote for him in the WAMMA lightweight rankings.

As strictly the reporter I realize I shouldn't interject my opinion in this breaking story but I find 6 months to be an incredibly short amount of time to start considering such a move like that. Also this is just opinion as well but that move seems to be a move to manipulate the rankings to punish a UFC fighter. Which of course would contradict all of WAMMA's stated goals it wanted to accomplish for the sport.

Now back to the story at hand. As a result of WAMMA adopting that policy the voters couldn't vote for Josh Barnnett because he has not fought another top 10 Heavyweight since 12/31/06.

It is a very unforunate for Barnett that a rule seemingly meant to punish BJ Penn as a UFC fighter has dashed his chance at a WAMMA title shot. However under the advice of Pat Miletich WAMMA adopted that policy and if it should apply to BJ Penn then it has to apply to Josh Barnett.

Also another unforseen dilemma has come up. WAMMA has to decide if it's only previous WAMMA title fight should have ever happened because of this new rule they have adopted Fedor should have never been ranked in the WAMMA rankings because he had not fought another top 10 ranked opponent since 8/28/05.

On the Fedor issue WAMMA just basically has to decide if they want to be consistent in their policies and decide if this new policy should be applied retroactively. In which case if they wanted to be consistent in their policies and eliminate the politics of MMA they will have to strip Fedor of his WAMMA title and start over determining who should be awarded the WAMMA championships under this new set of rules.

I will try to stay on top of this breaking story to see how far I can go with this satire but ultimately this satire should point out a major problem with WAMMA's intergrity.

The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Bloody Elbow readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bloody Elbow editors or staff.

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and WAMMA continues to look like absolute fools.

by ChillMike on Dec 16, 2008 7:17 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

WAMMA shoots themselves in the foot

time and time again.

by Discman2 on Dec 16, 2008 8:06 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Wamma will never be relevant…

They Basically want the power that Zuffa has but without having to put on any shows, invest in MMA seriously and take a risk.

People get pissed at Zuffa for doing this but at least Zuffa actually produces some value for the consumer…

by mmalogic on Dec 16, 2008 8:11 PM EST reply actions 2 recs

Wamma are turning out to be a pathetic waste of time,if anyone pays any attention to their paper titles they need their heads read.Ring magazine they are not.
Always had great respect for pat,its a shame he’s getting tangled up in this bullshit.

by welshcardsfan on Dec 16, 2008 8:23 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I don’t think Militech was hit in the head too much against Denny, or was he?

by dropkick101 on Dec 16, 2008 8:30 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Just to make sure everyone reading this realizes I wrote this in satire form as somewhat comedy because I think WAMMA is a total joke.

Only to point out the hypocrisy in Pat’s statement and in WAMMA in general.

Also correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t it WAMMA’s intention and their goal to eliminate the politics from MMA rankings and to guarantee that the perceived and voted upon #1 contender would fight the perceived and voted upon #2 contender to eliminate the dispute of who is the best in any one weight class. Cause anything else isn’t any different than what we were getting before. I mean we were already getting the #1 vs. #5 sometimes. We were getting #2 vs. #4 sometimes. Someone please explain to me how WAMMA is changing that by wanting to sanction a fight between #2 and #3 ranked fighters. I thought their goal was to answer the question of who is the undisputed best fighter in any given weight class. To do that they should not be sanctioning any fight other than #1 vs #2. Because sanctioning any other fights doesn’t give us fans anything else we wasn’t getting before the great invention of WAMMA.

Plus they have not done anything what-so-ever in making a fight of any kind happen. The Fedor vs. Sylvia fight was already booked and paid for by Affliction and then WAMMA jumped on the bandwagon. But the problem is they should have never been on board because their stated goal was to give us fans a true undisputed heavyweight champion and unless that was a #1 vs. a #2 then they never should have sanctioned it as an undisputed WAMMA heavyweight championship fight.

Now they want to sanction a fight between a #2 and a #3 and make it for an undisputed WAMMA lightweight championship. But again they had nothing to do with making that fight happen. DREAM had this fight set up and they are trying to jump on the bandwagon again and ride DREAM’s coattails.

Please someone tell me what WAMMA has actually done for the sport of MMA by themselves to make the MMA landscape better. Let me save you the time of thinking about it because they have done nothing themselves to make the MMA landscape better. They are jumping on the coattails of already established promotions and the fights that they have made without any help from WAMMA to try and make themselves some money. Plain and simple.

by mattman73 on Dec 16, 2008 8:45 PM EST reply actions 0 recs