Saturday's UFC 104 card features two bouts pitting Top 10 fighters against each other. One of them, of course, is the main event, Lyoto Machida vs. Shogun Rua. The other one won't even be televised.Yushin Okami vs. Chael Sonnen is Saturday night's second-best fight, at least if you judge the quality of the fight based on how highly ranked the competitors are. In Bloody Elbow's consensus rankings, Okami is the fourth-best middleweight in the world and Sonnen is 10th. No other fight on the card even features one Top 10 fighter, let alone two Top 10 fighters against each other.
And yet the UFC, which is showing seven live fights on Saturday night between pay-per-view and Spike TV, for some reason isn't showing Okami vs. Sonnen. It makes no sense.
I've never understood why the UFC doesn't promote Okami, who has won seven of his eight UFC bouts and was the last fighter to beat middleweight champion Anderson Silva, when Silva was disqualified in their 2006 fight for an illegal kick. I also think Sonnen, who's smart and articulate, is an easy fighter to promote. Okami vs. Sonnen should be one of the marquee fights on this card.
Instead it's the No. 8 fight on an 11-fight card, and if the fans at home are lucky maybe they'll get to see it on tape delay. That's some consolation, but not enough: UFC fans should be able to see this fight live.
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