Felder sick of champs avoiding contenders: ‘That’s who you fight’

Paul Felder is getting sick and tired of all these champions refusing to fight number one contenders.

We’ve seen it a lot lately: tough fighters with less star power claw their way to the No. 1 spot in the rankings, only for the champion in the division to deny them a title shot. The latest example of this is Arman Tsarukyan, who is far and away the toughest possible opponent for new lightweight champion Ilia Topuria.

But Topuria isn’t interested in fighting Tsarukyan. In fact, he said he’d relinquish the title rather than fight him. That didn’t sit well with former UFC lightweight and current color commentator Felder.

“The guy’s the number one contender,” Felder said of Tsarukyan on Michael Bisping’s Believe You Me podcast. “And to say that you would rather relinquish the belt than fight him is … come on, man! We’re getting a little carried away. And we’ve talked about this before where these guys in this generation of fighters, when they get to this top position now, are so willing to jump around weight classes and and try to deny fighting guys. It’s like, that’s not how it f—king works, man.”

“If the guy’s number one and the UFC says, ‘This is the guy,’ you’re the champ,” he continued. “You’re holding that belt. That’s who you fight … If you’re the best and he’s not on your level and all that, then prove it. Just go out there and prove it. I hate that. And I’m not saying that I think that he doesn’t think he could beat him, but then why say that you would relinquish?”

“I was like, come on, man. Here we go. Here we go again. Now you got a champion who’s just looking for the biggest thing. Look, the UFC is not gonna try to put you in a position that’s not gonna be a big thing.”

There’s been a lot of differences of opinion when it comes to what the fighters see as big things versus what the UFC sees as big things. Jon Jones wanted to fight Alex Pereira. And now Ilia Topuria wants to fight Paddy Pimblett. Both of these are bigger (and easier) fights than Tom Aspinall and Arman Tsarukyan respectively.

You can’t have the inmates running the asylum because then you’d never see the best fight the best. But you also can’t blame fighters for trying to maximize their profits while minimizing their risk. You can count on your fingers the number of UFC fighters making seven figure paydays without a belt around their waist, so it’s honestly kind of surprising you don’t see more of this kind of attempted matchmaking from the champs.