Mailbag: On Bella Mir, household affect in combating, and Dana White’s $11 million boast

How concerned should fighters’ households be in their careers, in or out of the cage? And what did Bella Mir’s loss in Dana White’s Contender Series inform us about her future prospects?

Plus, White says one DWCS fighter has made $11 million in the UFC. What’s that about? All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a query of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA on X or @Ben_Fowlkes on Threads.

@BiasedBrazilian: What’s your take on having a close relative or a partner as your head coach? It would appear natural if your father is a former UFC champion but is not it sophisticated? Before you know, your mother is speaking trash to your former opponents on instagram or something.

I think it’s like having yard chickens: Seems like a great concept at first and you surprise why everyone does not do it — then you discover out. I keep in mind the late, great Robert Follis telling me about a time when he tried explaining to former UFC champ Miesha Tate why her then-boyfriend Brian Caraway should not also be her coach, as he had been for years by that level.

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To be her companion at home and her coach in the health club? It’s like holding a cup of water, Follis said. You can maintain it for 5, 10 minutes, no drawback. It’s nothing. But strive holding it all day, every day. It’ll put on anyone out. When you look at fighters who are or have been coached by mother and father, I think you usually see conditions where either the growth finally stopped or the familial relationship itself was destroyed. (Embarrassing your little one on social media after a loss by getting all Dance Mom on it is one means to pressure that relationship.)

It’s a lot of stress to put on yourselves and most people can only maintain that in a productive means for so long.

But for all those people claiming Bella Mir got “fraud-checked” in her DWCS struggle. She’s 23, 5 fights into her professional profession, and she lost a close resolution. That’s it. That’s how fighters study and grow. She regarded to me like she thought she’d steamroll Alex Apodaca and when that did not occur she failed to transfer rapidly enough toward a plan B, so she lost. That’s inexperience as much as anything else.

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If she were just another fighter with a last title that meant nothing in this sport, you’d think 4-1 was a good begin. Of course, she’s not. She does not get to develop in relative anonymity the means others do. There are execs and cons to that, but let’s not act like this was a closing judgment on her potential. It wasn’t. It was just one struggle, very early into a younger fighter’s profession. Now let’s wait and see what she takes from it.

@sbf_combat: In your last column, you said that Khabib BARELY edges Islam’s profession legacy, which is baffling to me. Islam is miles forward of Khabib now in phrases of accomplishments, longevity and high quality of opponents. I do not see how people rank him above Izzy, Usman, Volk, Couture, and DC?

Nobody’s saying that Islam Makhachev is not in the GOAT dialog. But what’s his best general win? Just going by who he beat, how, when in their careers he beat them, and what it meant, who’s his prize pelt on the wall?

I might say it’s Charles Oliveira, whom Makhachev completely smoked in order to claim the title. That’s a good win, but does it high the stretch where Khabib Nurmagomedov completed Conor McGregor, Dustin Poirier (whom Makhachev also beat, though in less dominant fashion), and present light-weight champ Justin Gaethje? I’m not sure.

Nurmagomedov did not just win all his fights; he won all his rounds. He was dominant in a means Makhachev hasn’t been. Granted, Makhachev moved up a weight class and Nurmagomedov did not. But Makhachev proper now does not really feel like he’s as far forward of everyone else as his coach was. Though there’s still time for him to make more of a case, and I suspect he will.

@ewillcock: Is there a DWCS fighter you suspect has made $11 million? Or is Dana #JustSayingStuff?

There completely could be one. But if there is, and if you need to inform us about it in order to make some level about the success of the Contender Series or whatever, why not just inform us who it is? Why be all cryptic about it? Why say anything at all if you don’t need to inform us the entire story? Throwing out these decontextualized numbers with no names connected is weirdly more suspicious than just maintaining quiet about fighter pay altogether.

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But at this level I also have to take challenge with some of my colleagues in the MMA media. This week I saw a couple headlines saying White had “revealed” what one DWCS fighter had made over the course of his UFC profession. No, my pals. The phrase you’re trying for is “claimed.” He claimed there was an unnamed fighter (Kevin Holland says it’s not him) who’s made this. He provided you zero proof. He gave you no means to fact-check him. He just threw out a quantity and trusted that you’d run with it. Nothing at all was revealed.

White is a man with many followers and many detractors, but the truth is that he has lied to us before. I’m not saying he’s mendacity here. This claim may be completely correct. That doesn’t suggest we should immediately believe it just because the UFC boss said it.

@michal_sobak: What do you think the UFC’s plans are for the gentle heavyweight division, particularly regarding the title struggle? And when was the last time you keep in mind a division being in this much of a mess?

I really feel like the UFC gentle heavyweight division has discovered itself in these messes more than most. Going back many years now, the pattern has been one dominant champion (Chuck Liddell, Jon Jones) adopted by a chaotic sport of scorching potato with the belt once that champ is either dethroned or departs.

Personally, I hate interim titles. They just appear so … empty. If Carlos Ulberg can come back and defend the belt within a affordable time body, I say wait for him. It’s not like there is any particular struggle crying out to be made. We’d just be throwing collectively two 205-pounders and arbitrarily giving a hunk of leather-based and metallic to the winner. That’s not fooling anyone.

@BTM99_MMA: Elephant in the room: Womens title fights – last good one??

I was at MSG for Shev/Zhang – it killed the vitality.

Move these to ‘Prelim Main Events’?

Lose the ‘DEI co-main’ 5 spherical snooze fests

OK, first of all, before we go throwing around phrases like “DEI” to describe two people beating the hell out of each in a cage for money, let’s keep in mind that we’re speaking about the UFC. It’s arguably the most right-wing main sports activities group out there and very brazenly so. It also has a repute for only doing issues that make sense for the backside line. The concept that these people are doing ladies’s fights only to fulfill some imaginary quota requirement is laughable. They do it because it makes them money.

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As for why the ladies’s title fights are five-rounders, it’s because they’re MMA title fights. That’s how it works. Move them wherever you need on the card, but they’ve still got to be 5 rounds.

I agree that we’re seeing a lull in the ladies’s divisions proper now. I’ve even written about it very lately. But we’ve seen lulls in other divisions too and those weren’t everlasting circumstances. What we’re lacking proper now are the proper kinds and personalities, but there’s some hope on the horizon.

@Screenplaya: Is NOW the time to put an finish to weight-cutting? Change the courses, and just get on with it? The UFC will call fights “catch-weight” usually (as Bellator did) until fighters get their s*** collectively, if mandatory. Does the death of PPV make this potential?

There are two large obstacles to eliminating weight-cutting. One is the fighters themselves. They’re all in a bit of a prisoner’s dilemma. They know they’re only placing themselves through the torment of weight-cutting because, if they do not, their opponents will do it and gain a measurement benefit on them. If they could all mutually agree to just stop, they’d all finish up combating largely the same people, who are largely the same measurement of them, only without that added bit of struggle week distress. Trouble is, they do not trust each other to stick to that promise. So it continues.

The other impediment is the full lack of will to deal with it. The UFC could put a stop to it, or at least strongly disincentivize it. State athletic commissions could do the same, though only if they all did it collectively. (California has tried, but no one else seems keen to help.) The will to do any of that just is not there, possibly because these energy brokers do not feel like it impacts them enough. So it continues.

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@GulsethMichael: What are your ideas on NDSU’s transfer to FBS, and how do you think they will fare?

I do not get it. It’s the same factor I think whenever anyone floats the concept of my beloved Montana Grizzlies leaving the FCS and the Big Sky Conference in order to chase larger money and larger opponents in the FBS.

Why go be an afterthought in a greater division when you have a championship legacy in this one? You have zero probability to ever win the national championship again as long as you’re in the FBS. Is it value it? Because it does not sound like a good time to me.

@jaypettry: There’s a UFC card every Saturday until Thanksgiving, which will be possible off to conclude a 19-weekend run. How do you select to deal with a breakneck calendar like that?

In a means the busy calendar makes issues simpler on the MMA media. Every week, they know what they’re doing. It’s the standard struggle week carousel, resetting every week, over and over and over. It’s when we go a few weeks between occasions that people have to get inventive. If anything, infinite struggle weeks breed a certain kind of laziness.

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Still, there is a certain consolation in figuring out, without even needing to test, that there are fights every Saturday night time. I just do not know if soccer season is the best potential time for it.