Matches to Make After UFC 274

A night full of bizarre outcomes makes the question “what’s next?” more complicated than usual after UFC 274.

A title change of some sort was guaranteed even before the main event began on Saturday at the Footprint Arena in Phoenix, Ariz., since lightweight champion Charles Oliveira had missed weight the day before. That unprecedented fiasco meant that his scheduled matchup with Justin Gaethje was a title fight for the challenger only: Gaethje could win the belt by defeating Oliveira, but the title would be vacated if Oliveira won. The latter case held true, as “do Bronx” got the best of a wild three minutes, getting knocked down twice before coming back to rock “The Highlight” with a salvo of his own, then taking things to the ground. Once there, it was mostly academic for the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s all-time leader in submissions; Gaethje survived for a few moments, forcing Oliveira to chain techniques until he found the fight-ending choke at 3 minutes, 22 seconds of Round 1.

The question of what happens now in the 155-pound division is complicated, but helped somewhat by UFC President Dana White’s verbal assertion that Oliveira would be the No. 1 challenger for his own vacated title, a statement backed up by UFC social media posts that called him “the best LW in the world.” However, between the technically champ-less lightweight division and the utterly bizarre strawweight title fight between Rose Namajunas and Carla Esparza in the co-main event, there is plenty to pick through. In the wake of UFC 274, here are some matches that ought to be made for the main card winners.

Charles Oliveira vs. Michael Chandler 2

After Chandler’s sensational starching of Tony Ferguson in the feature bout of UFC 274 — seriously, go check it out if you haven’t seen it yet; it’s the knockout of the year — he called out the winner of Oliveira-Gaethje, with a little side wish for a Conor McGregor payday. After Oliveira beat Gaethje in the main event, he verbally asserted his position as the top lightweight in the world…and mentioned McGregor. No surprise there: For any winning fighter between 145 and 170 pounds, calling out the Irish superstar is the equivalent of a Super Bowl-winning quarterback saying “I’m going to Disneyland.”

Let’s dismiss a McGregor fight as a possibility for either man at the moment; it’s like standing around and hoping for rain. Normally, I’m of the mind that a sitting champ should get a certain amount of say in choosing his next challenger, within reason. Oliveira forfeited that privilege by missing weight; the UFC appears set to give him a chance to regain his title in his next fight, but any right to choose his opponent is gone. If that sounds punitive, consider that if Oliveira had made weight before defeating Gaethje, Islam Makhachev would have been my recommendation for his next challenger. Instead, this call becomes less about what Oliveira deserves and more about what Chandler deserves. All “Iron Mike” has done since crossing over as a Bellator MMA legend is go 2-2 against the most brutal slate of opposition imaginable and earn either a vicious finish, a “Fight of the Night” worthy performance or both, each time out. Chandler came at least as close to dethroning Oliveira in their first meeting as Gaethje did on Saturday. Do you feel comfortable that Chandler-Oliveira 1 laid the blueprint for how any meeting between the two would play out? Me neither. Book it.

Carla Esparza vs. Weili Zhang-Joanna Jedrzejczyk winner

No need to mince words: If Esparza’s win over Namajunas in the co-main event wasn’t the worst UFC title fight of all time, it’s at least in the team photo. For five rounds, the strawweight standouts barely touched one another, especially in the early rounds. In the end, “The Ultimate Fighter 20” winner and inaugural strawweight champ regained her title by split decision, completing the longest hiatus between title reigns of any champ in UFC history and going 2-0 against “Thug Rose.”

If the heavily favored Namajunas had won, the call would have been for her to take a rubber match against Jessica Andrade, the former champ who proclaimed her return to the division with a win over contender Amanda Lemos two weeks ago. Instead, the Zhang-Jedrzejczyk rematch on June 11 is suddenly a much more interesting fight. The former champs’ first match in March of 2020 was an all-time classic fight, but since both women are 0-2 against Namajunas, it was close to irrelevant in terms of current title implications. Instead, that fight now features a woman who beat Esparza badly in “Joanna Champion,” and one who has not yet faced her in Zhang — a rarity in the five-woman round robin that has defined the division since its inception in 2014. While Marina Rodriguez should rightly howl for her delayed title shot, denying either Zhang or Jedrzejczyk a shot at the title they once held would be at least as unjust.

Ovince St. Preux vs. Johnny Walker

“OSP” outpointed Mauricio Rua on two out of three judges’ scorecards in their light heavyweight feature bout on Saturday, moving to 2-0 against the Brazilian legend and righting his own ship after back-to-back losses against Tanner Boser and Jamahal Hill. By the eyeball test, the 39-year-old Tennessean is in clear decline, his victory at UFC 274 due to 40-year-old “Shogun” being even more dilapidated. However, if you look past his unsuccessful and uninspired-looking two-fight foray at heavyweight, St. Preux is 4-3 at light heavyweight over the last four years, and the three losses were all to Top 10 fighters in Hill, Nikita Krylov and Dominick Reyes. As such, it’s a little early to begin shoveling dirt on the man, no matter how much he may have slowed over that time. By winning yet again, St. Preux has shown himself to still be an effective gatekeeper to the light heavyweight Top 10, and has earned a matchup with someone who is looking to pass that gate. Walker dazzled the division just a few years ago, winning his first three UFC fights by first-round knockout and briefly entering the aforementioned Top 10, but has lost four of five since. Like St. Preux, however, those losses have come against solid-to-stellar opposition. Given Walker’s ridiculous physical tools, goofy charisma and penchant for eye-popping finishes, he will be given every opportunity to reestablish himself. Let it begin with a matchup against “OSP.”

Randy Brown vs. Michel Pereira-Santiago Ponzinibbio winner

There was no brutal knockout for the sizzle reel, but Brown’s win over Kalinn Williams in the main card opener might have quietly been the most impressive showing of his career to date. Faced with a truly terrifying knockout artist in “Khaos,” Brown weathered some early adversity, then made adjustments between rounds that his foe was unable to keep up with. The result is that Brown made things look increasingly easy on his way to a victory that might not have been as close as the split scorecards made it sound. For Brown, an obviously skilled fighter with a penchant for defensive lapses that have left him on the wrong end of a couple of highlight-reel finishes, it was an enormously encouraging performance. Those same lapses have thus far kept “Rude Boy” from stringing together enough wins to break through in the ultra-competitive welterweight division; two men who might know a little something about that situation are Pereira and Ponzinibbio, who meet at UFC Fight Night 206 on May 21. Pereira entered the UFC as a complete wild man, a 170-pound Walker, but has managed to tone things down to the point that he is on the cusp of contention. Ponzinibbio racked up seven straight wins from 2015-2018, entering the Top 10 and marking himself as a possible future title challenger, but is just 1-2 since returning last year from a string of injuries and illnesses. Both men have plenty to prove, and the winner would make a fine foil for the surging Brown.