they’re a cheap way to build somebody up. Look what the HW one did.

SF should definitely do it if they can find 4 heavyweights, and depending on GSP’s groin, the UFC should definitely put one together for WW. The injury should determine whether it’s 4 or 8 man. The one problem with that I think would be all the AKA guys, so just let them figure it out and they can agree to fight each other, or they can only put one guy in.

GSP vs. Sexyama at 178, while the WW division sorts itself out.

Imagine the female draw that fight would bring!
It’s almost TOO much sexiness!!!

there is no one single clear cut contender. i also like the idea of gsp going up and fighting at mw, (sexyama above me would suffice) until the gpx is settled. this would bring alot of excitement back to the ww division, while being stacked, seems pretty stale with gsp at the top.

Pride style GP’s dont work because Zuffa drug tests… so the suggestion is not to have more than one fight per night but the logistics are still hard to cope with.

At this level of competition you really cant fight more than once every 3 months… so if you have a roster of 8 in the tourney that means you eliminate 7 potential contenders tp produce ONE in about a year (assuming no one gets injured, and if someone does the entire year has been wasted). So GSP should fight once a year?

Tourneys wont work in the UFC at the higher levels.

Tourneys are good pre-ufc. I am proposing WEC to use round robin style or GP tourneys in all weight classes to qualify talent before they get into the UFC and add more value to WEC’s league or incorporate it in a weekly “UFC Fight Night”. (I prefer round robin style versus GP)

This structure produces compelling content for a weekly show (mid week – tuesday night fights type) and creates contenders and stars for the Numbered UFC shows perfectly.

The problem is not having fighters like dan henderson, nate, or vitor in a tourney… the problem is producing a steady line of those "guys"and then they can fight for the title or in a title eliminator.

My point is the top 5 have no business in a tourney… the guys who want to get into the top 5 should be produced by a tourney and then have to fight one of the top 5 to get ranked there and then possibly get a title shot.

A lot of posts and I skimmed though looking to see if this was covered, but what would GSP do during this time?

An 8 man tourney would take a minimum of 6 months and that is if every fight was on the same card and they fought every 2 months.

Do you keep someone like Swick out and let him fight GSP and then Kos, Fitch, Alves, Condit, Hughes, Almeida, Hazelett, and Hardy in a tourney?

I’ve never been a fan of tourneys for this reason. It takes too much time.

Would make for a great season of TUF. They really seem to hit a nice one with this season, but will they do next season? i think lining up something like this would certainly bring in a lot of viewers. Obviously would be tough to do (who wants to be in the house for 30 days if they dont need to, would have to go 3 rounds, and would be a lot more expensive for UFC to do wasting good fights like that), but one can hope

I love the idea of a sixteen man Grand Prix in the welterweight division, that just like in PrideFC the Champion could compete in along with the challengers alla Wanderlei Siva. The Grand Prix could be spread over a series of UFC PPV’s. But unlike Pride the semi- finals and finals would not take place on the same night but different events.

Competitors

1. George St. Pierre
2. Jon Fitch
3. Josh Koscheck
4. Mike Swick
5. Thiago Alves
6. Paulo Thaigo
7. Dustin Hazelett
8. Karo Parisyan
9.Carlos Condit
10. Yoshiyuki Yoshida
11. Anthony Johnson
12. Matt Brown
13. James Wilks
14. Dan Hardy
15. Marcus Davis
16. Chris Lytle

But I’m sure if the UFC wanted to do this they would have years ago, so for now it’s just fun dream about.

even if a gp meant a short term solution, at least we would have that, right now there is no solution. i do hear that alves is fighting on dec 5th, the free show i believe. would love to see him rematch koscheck ,given the fact that kos took the last fight with alves on very short notice, and came awau unscathed vs trigg and would have ample time to come up with a better fightplan. if kos were able to pull off the victory, he would be sellable as a solid contender, b/c of the fact that he gave gsp his toughest test since the gsp/serra 1 debacle. they need to fast track guys like anothony johnson, daley and mclovin. so what if they get beat? gsp got beat by hughes in 1 round and it was seen as a learning experience.

A brilliant idea that will, however, in all likelihood never happen. Honestly, you could put Brad Blackburn and John Howard in there – if either one makes it through the bracket, they would deserve the title shot. In addition to creating a viable title contender, these matches would also give UFC quite a few matches that would at least be co-main events.

Round One:
Fitch – Parisyan
Alves – Hardy
Kampmann – Thiago
Swick – Condit

Alternate bout:
Hughes – Larson

You guys are over anal-yzinng this…

here are the 2 problems:

1) fight for GSP in FEB.

2) Clear Contenders for GSP after that.

 A tourney DOES NOT SOLVE THE FIRST PROBLEM.

So the suggestion is some freak fight at 185 which is inconsequential…

Solution for problem #1: Mike Swick… if it makes you feel better Swick used to be a 185lber so pretend this is a “185lb fight”.

Problem number 1 is solved. Mike Swick is a better fight for GSP than any 185lber possibility. ( to those that are still whining… ask yourself who GSP would fight at 185? the answer is probably someone at swicks caliber when was at 185!!!)

now to problem number 2:

A TOURNEY AT THIS LEVEL DOES NOT SOLVE THE FUTURE CONTENDER PROBLEM IT ONLY MAKES IT WORSE.

You do Koscheck vs winner of Johnson/kim. If Koshceck or Johnson wins you have a contender who can havve wrestling and ko power. If you want to qualify this even more you do Koscheck vs Daley before the Johnson fight.

You may say: :“well this sounds like a 4 man tourney” no because if Kim or Daley win they aren’t guaranteed a shot and the johnson/kim fight is already scheduled proving my point that matchmaking control is more important and fluid than setting up tourneys at this level.

Fitch vs Shields for the title shot (assuming fitch beats almeda)

Akiyama if he decides to drop down and wins 2 fights (vs. hughes, Kim/stungun, etc…).

So here we have potentially 4 fights for GSP in the top 6 of the WW division… and you can mix and match these title fight eliminators at your convenience.

Problem 2 solved.

IF you put these guys in a tourney you eliminate 3 contenders to create 1. HOW DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?

The champ needs to fight the top 5 in his division to test his abilities against the best in a variety of skill sets and styles…

Tourneys at this level of competitiondoes not work.

It’s a shit situation, with no good answers. One flaw I’m seeing in a ton of logic is bashing something as bad and then not proposing something better. Everything proposed is going to be bad, the question is how bad? And how can they set something up so this problem goes away?

As far as I can tell, the goal of any solution should be to have a legitimate class of contenders for GSP by January 2011. How do we get there while keeping GSP busy/interested?

The other thing is realistically, Alves and Fitch are going to dominate almost everyone at 170 besides GSP. We’ll see in NOvember, but I expect Fitch to cruise to a 30-27 over Almeida.

Basically, I think you do Swick/Daley in the UK at 105, both want to fight again quick, and give the winner a shot at GSP. If Daley beats Kampmann and Swick, then fine, give him the shot. Both guys will get smoked, but it’s the best you can do right now.

At the same time, you do Koscheck vs. Hughes toward the end of this year or the beginning of next year. If he knocks out Hughes you can sell the rematch. Again, this is not something I really want to see, but it’s a decent way to go.

Finally you set up Alves vs. Fitch for the fall, assuming both keep winning, and give the winner their rematch with GSP at the end of the year.

To me, after reading this whole thread, it is obvious that all the solutions suck. They all give us GSP vs. guys he should handily beat, and the only real suspense is waiting to see if GSP slips up and loses his focus. Maybe the purists are into that, but I think it’s boring.

The real problem is guys like Anthony Johnson are really a year or two away from the peak of their skills, putting them in against GSP early is an unnecessary setback.

If they were to do a one-off 185 fight, the right pick is Michael Bisping. Big UK star, would give the London fans a big main event next year. Maia or Akiyama are retarded choices from a matchmaking perspective, just like James Irvin was, you don’t risk your star against someone that won’t become a superstar if they get the upset. At least for Bisping it would bring him back from the dead and re-establish his stardom. I think St. Pierre would kill Bisping, by the way, but it would be interesting to see it.

And I am definitely on Logic’s side that using GP’s among top stars is bonehead matchmaking and makes no sense business wise. It makes sense to use among the lower tier guys trying to make a name. Otherwise you end up with shit like Wand losing his four year streak in a fight that doesn’t mean that much, and giving away huge fights without proper build. There’s a fine line between knowing what’s best for business and just being a mark for Pride style tournaments.

Another upside of Swick-Daley at 105: if Daley knocks Swick out, you have a big UK main event for early next year. I think they return to the UK in late Feb, GSP vs. Daley in London with Daley coming off two top 10 wins would be good stuff to appease the UK fans.

This is how I might do the next four title shots. The second one would be determined by a five-man tournament, the third would be determined by an eight-man tournament, the one after that would be determined by a sixteen-man tournament. Every match that’s already been scheduled for the participants involved has been incorporated into it.

I’m sure if could use some refining and injuries would occur to mess it up, and finding 32 people total, but the idea is that whoever gets through all of the other competitors four all four title shots will have probably earned it.

Anyway, here’s what I came up with. An asterisk follows any already scheduled match. Feel free to tell me how flawed this is:

WINNER GETS NEXT TITLE SHOT
Swick vs. winner of Hardy vs Stun Gun*

WINNER GETS NEXT TITLE SHOT AFTER THAT
Daley vs. Koscheck
vs.
Hughes vs. winner of Parisyan vs. Hazelett*

WINNER GETS NEXT TITLE SHOT AFTER THAT
Fitch vs. Ricardo Almeida*
vs.
Anthony Johnson vs. Yoshiyuki Yoshida*
   VS.
Alves vs. Paulo Thiago*
vs.
Carlos Condit vs. Martin Kampmann

WINNER GETS NEXT TITLE SHOT AFTER THAT
Serra vs. Chris Lytle
vs.
Story vs. Brad Blackburn
   VS.
John Howard vs. Dennis Hallman*
vs.
Brock Larson vs. Jonathan Goulet
           VS.
Mike Pierce vs. Johny Hendricks
vs.
Mike Pyle vs. Matt Riddle
   VS.
Davis vs. Saunders*
vs.
John Hathaway vs. Paul Taylor*

As far as tournaments on TV go, it only works with names. People care about the NCAA tournament because they have someone to care about and root for. There are tons of televised tournaments in sports nobody gives a shit about. It doesn’t have to be the top names, but I think some kind of TV tournament among a group of prospects in a weight class would be a good thing for the UFC. Some tournament with rookies? Meaningless.

every time someone asks dana white about a tournament, he answer that UFC will absolutely never do another one. So speculating about this is kind of a waste

Yes it is GP’s are a no go in the UFC, besides the WW is the deepest and most stacked division in mma there is no need to revive something that good. Swick winning his next match up would set him up for a fight against GSP and the next couple of fights will determine the next possible contenders it’s simple as that.