At this point, both Lyoto Machida and CB Dollaway must be like human Rubik’s Cubes for UFC matchmakers.
Twist them, turn them, spend all day fiddling, and it’s still hard to figure out exactly where either guy fits into the middleweight pecking order. When Machida and Dollaway fight on Saturday in the main event of UFC Fight Night 58, it will no doubt only further muddle an already puzzling picture.Contenders for Chris Weidman’s championship have been lining up three and four deep for a few months now. Luke Rockhold may lead the pack by a nose after he stopped Michael Bisping in the second round last month, but a February bout between Yoel Romero and Jacare Souza will also yield a deserving candidate.
Given that Weidman is scheduled to finally settle his business with Vitor Belfort at UFC 184 (on the same card as Romero-Souza), it won’t be long before we’ll need some clarity. And here come Dollaway and Machida, just trying to make things even more complicated.After a long but ultimately inconsistent tenure at light heavyweight, Machida cut to middleweight near the end of 2013 and found himself rocketed into a title fight after just two wins and nine months in the division.
He lost, which would be enough to leave any 36-year-old former champion at loose ends. Still, when this matchup was announced, it was as if you could hear the entire MMA community muttering to themselves, “CB Dollaway? Really?”That collective response only speaks to how confusing things are in this weight class right now.
Dollaway, after all, is one of those guys who has been around the 185-pound division so long that we tend to regard him as a known commodity. We think—perhaps mistakenly—that we know what he’s capable of. We’ve been there, done that and already judged him as somewhat less than championship material.
Source http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2304351-ufc-fight-night-58-preview-machida-dollaway-try-to-muddle-middleweight-puzzle
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