It's no secret that the WW title picture has been taking time to move ahead, due to plenty of negotiations by the elites in the division. Usman VS Masvidal simply isn't being inked.
Colby has also made some noise about his pay. Nate Diaz has been holding out for big pay fights for a while now. If you consider Conor a WW fighter, then well- he's absolutely not fighting unless he's guaranteed 7 digits.
So, here enters a guy in Burns who seemingly doesn't care about the money, and only wants to get to the top of the mountain.
And that may be a good thing, but do you guys remember when you had to beat multiple top contenders to be a top contender?
Burns did great against Woodley - good, congratulations.
But this is the same Woodley who got utterly dominated by Usman. If Woodley fought closely with the champ, and Burns beat him... I understand the need for excitement.
I don't get why the UFC, especially DC, was trying to get fans excited over the thought of Burns fighting for the title. There are a lot more proven guys in the division at this point. The other commentators pointed it out too, but DC kept pushing Burns towards title talks. It seemed scripted.
Burns has 2 top10 wins... he just got KOd by Dan Hooker less than 2 years ago. This isn't some unstoppable force of nature. Let him gather up some more top 5 wins and then we can say for sure that Gilbert Burns deserves a title shot, right?
That's my opinion. The UFC was just pushing him to the top as negotiating leverage- to lowball the likes of Usman and Masvidal and all.
This is a known tactic used by the UFC. Remember when they sent Khabib a contract for a title shot just to leverage it against McGregor and Alvarez? Khabib's dad admitted that The Eagle got played by the UFC to reduce the price tag of those fighters.
Burns is serving that same purpose right now imo.
