OAC Makes a Stunningly Stupid Call

The Tim Sylvia of old no longer exists.

The Ohio Athletic Commission has decided that its matchmaking skills are superior to those of manager and promoter Monte Cox and refused to sanction a bout between two-time UFC heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia (25-6 MMA, 9-4 UFC) and UFC washout Wes Sims (22-13-1-2 MMA, 0-3 UFC). Executive Director Bernie Profato stated that the commission “felt the fight was not going to be competitive at this time.”

This, of course, is idiotic. If Sylvia were a fight removed from being the UFC heavyweight champion, coming straight out of his fight with Fedor, I’d understand that statement, and I’d understand keeping him out of a fight with Sims, as the two were separated by a full tier. However, Sylvia is far from the credible fighter he was during his UFC championship days. He’s 2-3 in his last three fights (Sims, for the record, is 3-2, though against much lower level competition), with a loss to Ray Mercer, a 48 year old with only one MMA exhibition to his credit (a submission loss to Kimbo Slice, in case people forgot). Sylvia is clearly a huge favorite going into a fight with Sims, but not bigger than he is against Branden Lee Hinkle (14-10-0-1 MMA, 1-2 UFC), another Hammer House fighter the commission has allowed to replace Sims.

And this is what makes the decision so pristinely idiotic.

Only in the minds of the morons who run the Ohio Athletic Commission would Hinkle (who’s 1-4 in his last five fights, and has only fought once since 2007) be more qualified than Wes Sims. I’m not saying Sims is a great opponent for Tim Sylvia. He’s clearly a throwaway opponent, but this notion that there’s some major difference between Hinkle and Simms is more than a little ridiculous.

In point of fact, Hinkle’s losses are less impressive than Sims’, if for no other reason than that Hinkle’s losses occurred outside of the heavyweight division, where he’ll be fighting the sluggish monolith of Sylvia. Hinkle’s last UFC loss was to Jason Lambert (23-11 MMA, 4-4 UFC) in the lightheavyweight division. He lost to Alexandre Ferreira (18-6 MMA) at lightheavyweight as well, and while there’s nothing wrong with being submitted by a world class submission fighter like Cacareco, it’s not exactly the kind of thing he should brag about.

In the early portion of his career, Hinkle had a solid run fighting decent fighters like Volk Han (20-8 MMA) and former UFC champion Maurice Smith (12-13 MMA, 4-3 UFC), but he’s not that fighter anymore, just as Sylvia isn’t the same fighter he was when he held the strap. It’s fair to say that even if Hinkle were at his best (which he’s not), his fighting Sylvia would be an embarrassment.

Sims is just as depressing an opponent for the champion who has fallen so far, but it is particularly strange that the Ohio Athletic Commission thinks it ought to intervene in a situation which has some personal value (Sylvia and Sims personally dislike each other). While Profato felt obliged to point out that Hinkle recently went four rounds with notable prospect Chris Tuchscherer (18-2-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC) and that Hinkle has a professional boxing background, he left out that the fight with Tuchscherer was almost a year ago and was Hinkle’s only fight since July of 2007. At least Sims’ year long hiatus (recently broken by his Strikeforce fight with Bobby Lashley) included a stint on the Ultimate Fighter, however short lived.

This is a bizarre situation, and it’s unclear why the Ohio Athletic Commission felt the need to step in. Whether its leadership suffers from the delusion that it is doing something reasonable is not entirely clear. It’s hard to imagine that someone could issue the statement Bernie Profato did with a straight face, but given the year that CSAC spent under the leadership of legendary incompetent Armando Garcia, its worth remembering that sometimes people are just that stupid.

We’ll see how this plays out. Sylvia will likely leveling whoever he ends up fighting in Ohio, but it’s unlikely that he’ll ever make a run at the top tier of MMA again, especially fighting low caliber competition like Hinkle and Sims.