FanHouse JonFitch

Mike Swick had another impressive victory Saturday, beating Ben Saunders at UFC 99, and in my view solidifying his status as a Top 5 welterweight in MMA.

And that means that if Georges St Pierre beats Thiago Alves next month at UFC 100, Swick will hold the distinction of being the best welterweight in the UFC that St. Pierre hasn't already beaten. That means Swick could be very close to a title shot, even though I think he probably needs one more win over a Top 10 opponent, like maybe Matt Hughes or Dan Hardy, who entered my Top 10 after beating Marcus Davis Saturday.

My full list of the Top 10 welterweights in MMA is below.

A welterweight battle between Jon Fitch and Paulo Thiago is likely to be added to the undercard of UFC 100, the major Ultimate Fighting Championship event that will be headlined by a heavyweight title fight featuring Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir and a welterweight title fight featuring Georges St Pierre vs. Thiago Alves.

Fitch vs. Thiago is a fascinating fight. I consider Fitch the No. 2 welterweight in the world, behind only St. Pierre. I really don't know what to think about Thiago, who's 11-0 and coming off a stunning first-round knockout of Josh Koscheck. But we'll learn a lot about Thiago if we see him fight Fitch.

The biggest challenge for the UFC in the next couple of years may be finding legitimate challenges for welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre.

If he beats Thiago Alves this summer, St. Pierre will have defeated almost every real challenger the UFC could give him at 170 pounds: Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck, Matt Serra, Matt Hughes and even B.J. Penn have been defeated by GSP. I suppose it's possible that the UFC could sign Jake Shields, or throw Mike Swick or Carlos Condit at St. Pierre, but when you look at the list of the top 10 welterweights in the UFC, you see that if St. Pierre beats Alves, he'll have already beaten the best challengers the UFC could give him.

The full list of the top 10 welterweights in MMA is below.

Georges St. Pierre finds himself in what is, at once, both an enviable and unenviable position. On the plus side, he has the rare chance to face a top five pound-for-pound champion in BJ Penn at UFC 94. One can only imagine what beating Penn again would do for his reputation and legacy. On the other hand, he's faced with the prospect of fighting a more focused and better-conditioned Penn who has dominated all three of his opponents since dropping down to lightweight.

Jon Fitch is back in the UFC and preparing for his next fight. But Fitch's comments this week suggest that he still has some hard feelings toward UFC President Dana White, who fired him and then re-hired him in a dispute over the use of his name and likeness in a video game.

"It was just some personality conflicts," Fitch said this week on HDNet's Inside MMA, not mentioning White by name but clearly referring to him. "But we were able to talk to (UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta) and I have a good speaking relationship with Lorenzo, so we were able to work everything out. I'm back with the UFC. Everything's good and I can't wait to fight."

Fitch went on to say that he understands that agreeing to the UFC's contractual demands is part of doing business if you want to be an elite MMA fighter. He then added, "That's just the way it works. It's business. It doesn't mean that I'm completely happy with all the contractual stuff, but in order to fight the best fighters in the world, you've got to make sacrifices."

Here's the latest edition of ESPN's MMA Live:

They start by discussing Affliction's January 24 show, featuring Fedor Emelianenko vs. Andrei Arlovski, which is going head-to-head with the Antonio Margarito vs. Shane Mosley boxing match, a fight promoted by Golden Boy Promotions and airing on HBO.

After a turbulent 24 hours, Jon Fitch is back in the UFC.

Fitch confirmed to MMARated.com that he talked to UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta today and agreed to sign the company's video game licensing agreement. That means his previously scheduled fight with Akihiro Gono at UFC 94 will go on as planned.

"We're going to move ahead and I'll be back in the UFC," Fitch told MMA Rated. "We're going to sign off on the video game and I'm back. It was never even about the agreement or the contract. It was the approach that we felt (UFC President Dana White) was being a little bit hot-headed and was threatening us right off the bat. It didn't seem like a professional way of doing things."

Fitch was dropped by the UFC yesterday for refusing to sign over the rights to his name and likeness for use in the UFC's upcoming video game. That he capitulated a day later will teach the rest of the MMA world a valuable lesson: Fighters who cross the UFC quickly come to regret it.

Hours after he was fired by UFC, Jon Fitch talked to to radio host Gabriel Morency on Hardcore Sports Radio and said something interesting about his income as a UFC fighter (profanity warning):

"I'm leaving all that stuff up to my management," Fitch said when asked if he'd fight for another promotion. "I know I'm welcome in several places but we've got to talk prices and what kind of money we got there. That's where the big hit is, is the money on sponsorships, because those are probably at least -- at least -- 75 to 80 percent of the money you make."

The lesson that Jon Fitch learned when he lost his job with the UFC is a simple one: If you're a big enough draw to fight in the main event of a pay-per-view, you've got some leverage with UFC. If you're not, you don't.

In the case of Fitch, he had his chance when he was in the main event at UFC 87, where he lost to Georges St. Pierre. If he had won that fight, he'd be the UFC welterweight champion of the world, and the UFC wouldn't be so quick to cut him loose for refusing to sign over the rights to his name and likeness in a video game. By losing that fight, he lost any leverage. He's just not a big enough draw for the UFC to care all that much about losing him.

This isn't a judgment about who's right and who's wrong on the merits in the dispute between Fitch and the UFC. It's just the reality of the business: There are a handful of fighters who make enough money for the UFC that the UFC can't afford to cut them loose. Fitch is not in that handful.

I got to thinking about how many fighters who are so important to the promotion that they have real leverage with the UFC, and I could only come up with 14. My list is below. I'm curious to hear yours.

UFC President Dana White has confirmed that former No. 1 welterweight contender Jon Fitch is no longer with the organization, and his harsh criticism of the American Kickboxing Academy suggests that other fighters associated with the team -- including Josh Koscheck and Cain Velasquez -- could be out of UFC next.

White said the American Kickboxing Academy and its fighters are refusing to work with the UFC on issues including rights to names and likenesses for video games. He told Kevin Iole of Yahoo:

"We're looking for guys who want to work with us and not against us, and frankly I'm just so [expletive] sick of this [expletive] it's not even funny."

Koscheck is scheduled to fight in the main event of the December 10 Fight for the Troops, and it's not clear whether this dispute will affect that fight, or Koscheck's future with the UFC beyond that fight.