"oh but he hasn't fought at 205 in 6 years!" "he walks into the cage at 193 while he cuts from over 200 the week of the fight, he's just too huge he should fight at 205" "but he is gonna move up to heavyweight anyway he comes in at over 220 he is basically Alistair Overeem 3 years removed!"

Remember when this UFC thing started and you had to watch it scrambled because your pirate cable would only do so much and lenghty rabbit ears and precision positioning would have to do the rest? Back then men fought and wore whatever they wanted into the ring and I don't think they even bothered with scales because only women watched their weight back then.

The championship was amazing because a guy who was horribly outsized and outmuscled fought several times in a single night and came away victorious. Even after the single night tournament format was abolished we saw great fights where the tagline to any number of matches could be summed up as "listen I know ma's will wasn't split up the way we all wanted but you're still family" and we watched some real rednecks war. It was amazing.

15 years later we are no longer watching the Ultimate Fighting Championship. We have a couple guys who still fight, but for the most part, it's the ultimate dieting championship. It's the ultimate weight cutting championship. It's the ultimate point fighting championship. We've got these "pound for pound" lists which I don't think are really relevant because fighters on the Dolce Diet are basically cheating by reducing their poundage and thus increasing their "pound for pound" ranking.

Basically I could go on with bizarre calculations of who truly is the pound for pound best fighter (pro-tip, it is probably someone like Ivan Menjivar or Jens Pulver, losing so much weight and winning fights. truly hardest working pounds on any man) but really this whole system is just no longer making sense

Take away the weight classes, let's pretend Chael vs Jones makes sense and for the love of GOD just let Michael Bisping fight Urijah Faber (also a very highly ranked pound for pound fighter, title contender even after losing significant amounts of pounds)