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Twitter Mailbag: Top 10 female featherweights, Anderson Silva's return, Bellator's future

With your friend and mine Ben Fowlkes on vacation, MMAjunkie editor-in-chief Dann Stupp steps in as a pinch hitter for this week’s Twitter Mailbag.

Is Fowlkes a problem employee? Who are the 10 best female featherweights in the sport? Is Bellator out of ideas? And what’s next for Conor McGregor, Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre?

All that and more in this week’s Twitter Mailbag. To ask a question of your own for next week’s installment, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

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I’d hate for him to get a big head, but Ben undoubtedly turns in super clean copy. You’d be hard-pressed to find a typo or error or any other issue in his stories. Ask any of the other editors, and they’ll tell you his columns and features are a joy to edit. They rarely take much editing at all.

Additionally, he’s creative, he searches out unique stories idea, he’s carved out his own niche and voice in the industry, and he knows how to push forward the biggest stories. Any aspiring or fledgling MMA journalists, especially those who hope to focus on features and opinion, should follow his lead.

But seriously, don’t tell him I said that.

That’s the good thing about MMA: There’s not one person screwing up the sport these days. No, instead we’ve got a small army of nitwits and knuckleheads who assure our beloved sport is a day-to-day disaster. No way Ben can pin it all on me.

His own custom Shake Weights.

OK, next time Ben is on vacation, Andrew gets to write this feature.

Important? Not so sure about that, but you did bring up a good point about the length and pacing of cards.

I know this may be beating dead horse, but when a fight card runs the length of a typical work shift, it can fee like, well, work.

As someone who first started watching the sport in 2002, who became a bonafide MMA junkie in 2005, and who loved it so much that he launched a whole website devoted to it in 2006, I never thought I’d complain about too much MMA. Then again, that’s back when the UFC hosted 20 or fewer events a year, the cards were at most nine fights deep, and you couldn’t even watch the prelims unless you were in the building. A three-hour time commitment wasn’t too much to ask.

There’s no doubt why so many jaded fans have lauded the Dana White’s Contender Series events or the latest PFL season and even AXS TV Fights’ offerings. We’re not forced to sit through endless commercials, the pacing is quick, and we’re not forced to block off a third of our day to watch fights.

With all the money the average MMA fan spends to follow the sport – cable packages, pay-per-view fees, multiple streaming services – having to sit through so many commercials feels like a real kick in the baby-maker.

Sure. This seems easy enough. Not sure why Ben wouldn’t address it.

  1. Cris Cyborg
  2. Amanda Nunes after a big meal
  3. Holly Holm holding a 10-pound weight
  4. Julia Budd
  5. Megan Anderson
  6. Uhhh
  7. Hmmm
  8. Max Holloway is definitely male, right?
  9. Did Ketlen Vieira move up?
  10. That girl Ruth who bullied me in third grade

Actually, I now see why Ben avoided this question.

You’re right, it seems this organization has reinvented itself a few times – with its initial tournament format, the ditching of its tournament format, slowly building talent, signing legit blue-chip prospects, seemingly endless rematches with its top fighters, luring away highly ranked UFC free agents, pulling former superstars out of the retirement home, returning to tournaments, adding women’s divisions, launching a kickboxing division, fights at NASCAR races, crossing the Atlantic for overseas events – I mean, they’re tried just about everything.

While ditching its West Coast tape-delayed broadcasts will help (thanks to that DAZN deal), and though signing even more free agents could help, there’s clearly no easy fix – or Bellator officials would’ve stumbled upon it by now. At least they get points for trying, which many fight promotions are too stubborn to do.

Anyone. Seriously, at this point, I’d watch Conor McGregor fight one of those Bas Rutten Body Action System contraptions if it meant he’d get back to a regular schedule of MMA fights.

Perhaps that’s the most infuriating part of all – that he’s got a whole smorgasbord of intriguing and marketable opponent possibilities. But until he meets the lightweight champ – currently Khabib Nurmagomedov – that division is always going to feel incomplete or that an asterisk should accompany it.

No way. I also want to see Israel Adesanya vs. Anderson Silva, and honestly, I don’t even feel bad about it.

I’ve spent enough time watching and covering this sport that it’s hard to feel guilty when considering the fallout or drawbacks or consequences of these fights. As a wise man once said…

As someone who still eagerly awaits that Fedor Emelianenko vs. Randy Couture fight, I’ll happily watch Silva vs. Georges St-Pierre. Speaking of, doesn’t it seem crazy it never happened? With the way the UFC is willing to throw together anything with even a glint of pay-per-view success these days (looking at you, Brock Lenar), not striking while the iron was hot for Silva-GSP during their heydays seems like such a waste.

But thankfully, this is MMA, where the sun never sets and where the ship never sails on an idea – even a decade later.

Dann Stupp is MMAjunkie’s editor-in-chief and co-founded the site in 2006. Follow him on Twitter at @DannStupp. Ben Fowlkes, MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist, returns to his Twitter Mailbag duties next week.

Be sure to visit the MMA Junkie Instagram page and YouTube channel to discuss this and more content with fans of mixed martial arts.

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