The only reason he wasn't champion was because Dana fucked him over.
He did what a champion of LW should do-- clean out the division. RDA didn't do that, Alvarez never did that and Conor sure as fuck never did that.
Before Tony got life-altering damage from the Gaethje fight he would have given Khabib a very rough night.
He didn’t get fucked. He had bad luck and timing. The Brooklyn fight versus Khabib was gonna be one of the most highly anticipated title fights of all time. Dana tried to get that matchup made repeatedly. On that particular occasion it was entirely Tony’s fault FWIW, and frankly it’s just as well because Khabib probably would rolled him at that point.
Dana also gave him the interim title shot against Kevin Lee (who was much lower ranked) which made Tony interim champ.
Dana offered him a second interim shot against Dustin. Had he taken that fight and won, he would’ve gotten the shot at Khabib in Abu Dhabi, which DP ended up getting after defeating Holloway.
Then Dana gave Tony a THIRD interim title shot against Justin, and unfortunately he was a little old by then and Justin was at his all-time best, and Justin fucked him up. But that’s three times that he was booked for interim title shots and all three of the winners of those fights were put right in line for the next real title shot (Tony got injured when he was in line for his, and Dustin and Justin both got shots).
Really not sure what else the company could have done. In hindsight, maybe they could have allowed him to sit on his interim belt while injured (though he just would’ve ended up defending it or having to give it up) or they could have named him full champ when Conor failed to defend (although again, he would have still been booked for the same Khabib fight and nobody would’ve considered him full champ until he faced Khabib).
I agree that it’s sad that Tony was never crowned the official, undisputed champ, given the quality of his long winning streak compared to certain guys who did get the belt (Frankie, Benson, Pettis, RDA, Eddie, Conor — Tony had a better run than any of them IMO). BUT, if we are being fair, do we really believe that Tony was superior to Khabib at any point? I love Tony, and wish he’d had his moment, but he was always the junior partner during that strange era in which neither of the two best lightweights held the belt.
Just my two cents. I think we should remember Tony very fondly for what he was — a wild, unique, savage fighter who always set tactics and game theory aside and let the best man win, and managed to run up an incredible amount of success at the highest level nevertheless.
Belts provide a nice sense of structure and narrative for professional martial arts, in the same way that tournaments provide a nice sense of structure and narrative for team sports. But ultimately it’s about the performance of the arts, and Tony was a world class performer for a long time.
