The loudest complaint about UFC 335 is that a made-up belt is headlining a numbered pay-per-view instead of a real title fight. Everyone's aiming that anger at the wrong target.
Charles Oliveira defends the BMF title against Diego Lopes on December 12 at T-Mobile Arena, and right now that's the top of the card. It's a symbolic belt with no divisional meaning, and it sits above everything else on a numbered show. That would be fair criticism if the UFC had chosen a novelty belt over an actual championship fight. The real title fight collapsed first, and this main event filled the gap it left behind.
This main event exists because the real one fell apart. A Sean Strickland vs Nassourdine Imavov middleweight title rematch had been rumored for the card, and it's no longer on it. When the suggestion went around that money was behind Strickland's exit, Strickland himself replied, "Bingo lol." So the gimmick fans are screaming about is the wreckage of a pay dispute. The BMF fight caught the fall when the title bout walked out the door.
That's where the heat belongs: on a promotion that couldn't keep its own championship fight together, then reached for a novelty strap to paper over the hole and is selling the result as a title night. One columnist flat-out said he's not a fan of a BMF belt headlining a numbered card unless a true megastar is attached, and admitted the UFC simply didn't have a title fight it wanted at the head of this one. Dana White called the booking "Bat-Sh*t Crazy," which is the kind of thing you say when you need a crowd to forget what was supposed to be there.
The complainers are half-right about one thing. Oliveira-Lopes gets booed in advance because of the memory of his last BMF outing, the one-sided, underwhelming decision over Max Holloway at UFC 326. Nobody buys a BMF fight to watch a man grind out points on the fence. If Oliveira does that again, every "garbage main event" post will have been right, and the belt's reputation takes another beating it can't afford.
What the angry posts keep skipping past is that this is a good fight. Oliveira is the sharper technician, Lopes is the one who can take your head off, and that's exactly the collision a BMF belt is supposed to produce. Stack it with Alex Pereira coming back at heavyweight against Sergei Pavlovich and Bo Nickal against Joe Pyfer, and you have a card people will pay for whether or not they respect the strap on top. The loudest critics know it too. They'll buy it, and they'll complain through the whole thing.
The fight is legitimate. The marketing is a cover story. A real middleweight title fight evaporated over a paycheck, and rather than own that, the UFC marketed the replacement as a crowning event and dared you to notice. The con is the promotion that lost a title fight and wants you to clap for the substitute.
