The best and worst from UFC Fight Night 141: Blaydes vs. Ngannou II

#1 Worst: In hindsight, should the UFC have booked Ngannou vs. Blaydes?

With his loss to Francis Ngannou, the title talk for Curtis Blaydes will quiet down

Hindsight is 20/20 and all, but looking back, did the UFC really need to book a rematch between Ngannou and Blaydes this early?

Or could they have perhaps waited until Blaydes had taken a shot at the UFC Heavyweight title before putting the fight together? Granted, if Blaydes had won, we’d have been discussing his chances against the Cormier/Lesnar winner, but in the end, he didn’t.

Ngannou’s win clearly vaults him back towards the top of the division, but the issue is that he’s already lost to Stipe Miocic and Derrick Lewis – two men that Cormier dealt with comfortably.

Blaydes looked like a potentially tricky fight for the champion, but after seeing him knocked silly by Ngannou, will the fans look at him in the same way now?

This would all be fine if we knew that Cormier would be sticking around past 2019. But he’s already stated that he’s probably going to retire post-Lesnar, and so who picks up the slack for the division without looking second-rate?

Should the UFC just go with a Ngannou/Miocic rematch for the vacant title? Or look elsewhere and try to push someone like Lewis back into the picture?

In hindsight, the UFC may well have been better off keeping Blaydes away from a potentially tough fight like Ngannou and giving him a stylistically better fight – like Lewis, or even someone ageing like Andrei Arlovski.

That way at least we’d have had a major up-and-comer hunting for the likely vacant title in 2019. As it stands now, the division may well be considered a mess post-Cormier, which is more than a little worrying for the UFC.