Before his fight with Sokoudjou, I was among those that actively disliked watching Lyoto Machida fight. I was at UFC 76, and his fight with Nakamura almost completely killed the crowd. As we left the arena that night, a friend asked, “why don’t they just fire him?” At the time, I didn’t think that was the worst idea.
It would have been easy to get rid of Lyoto Machida. After boring performances at UFC 70 and UFC 76, they could have given him nothing but low end opponents and refused to re-sign him when his contract expired. Instead, they gave him the highly-touted Sokoudjou, and then Dana selected him to send Tito Ortiz packing with a loss.
Throughout his run in the UFC, when fans and reporters criticized Lyoto Machida’s style, Dana never jumped on board. He’s routinely argued that Machida is just getting comfortable and has the ability to be the best fighter in the world. They put the full weight of their marketing machine behind him to promote this fight, choosing to focus on him instead of Rashad. They are now supposedly going to put him on TUF, which is the UFC superstar seal of approval.
The UFC’s timing with Machida was near-perfect. Even if Rampage got the first shot, Lyoto would have been next in line in the fall. People act like he was so screwed by the UFC, but in reality he got opportunity after opportunity handed to him, and he delivered. He got to fight Sokoudjou in his UFC debut on a huge year-end card. He fought Tito in a very high profile match. He fought Thiago Silva in the co-main event of one of the biggest UFC shows ever. Is it such a tragedy that they wanted fans to actually get to know who Machida was before giving him a title shot?
I suppose Yushin Okami is now going to be the posterboy for the “UFC screws foreigners” whine train. In reality, he was scheduled for a title shot, only to injure himself and lose it. And before he was injured again recently, he was in line to get his shot if he won at UFC 98. He’s probably two wins away now.
Promoting foreign fighters is tricky when your business depends on convincing a mostly-white fan base to spend money on PPV shows. It takes a little more time building guys up before their shot, and they may have to win one or two more fights than an English-speaking, charismatic white guy. This is an unfortunate reality, but Machida proved that hard work and sacrifice can break those barriers.