UFC Moscow Competitors and Bellator Welterweights

  Right, my own rankings are going to take a lot more time and effort than I'm willing to put into them at the moment so any rankings I talk about after today's blog post will be official rankings until I actually make real progress with the task of coming up with my own system. I did read bleacher report's take on the latest rankings and it seems to me that it's done on the whim of the voting panel. Daniel Cormier has dropped down one place in the pound for pound rankings despite not fighting since his loss to Stipe Miocic. Michelle Waterson has dropped a place after the weekend's Boston card even though she wasn't on it. Her position was static immediately after losing to Joanna. It's things like this that prompted me to try and come up with my own system.
  Junior dos Santos v Alexander Volkov at Moscow has been cancelled and Zabit Magomedsharipov has been bumped up to a three round main event. Greg Hardy has been lined up to fight Volkov. I don't know why they didn't choose Francis Ngannou to replace Dos Santos and keep the fight as a five round main event. I can only theorize that the UFC have seen Francis filming for the Fast & Furious film franchise and assume he isn't as committed to fighting as he should be. I also think that after losing to Stipe and a terrible contest (you could hardly call it a fight) with Derrick Lewis, the UFC aren't as willing to promote and market him in a title fight so don't want to invest in him. They probably see Hardy as either a potential big name if he beats Volkov or, if he loses, an excuse to phase him out of the promotion because of the controversy he generates. I assume Francis would have taken the short notice fight given his tweet with the thinking emoji and stating in interviews of his frustration with the UFC tying up the title with a third Stipe v Daniel fight. Francis is anxious to get back on a run at the title. This would have provided him the opportunity.
  I'm a bit of a Weasle fanboy. I watched his video on his thoughts on the Volkov v Hardy fight and that's what inspired this segment. I knew Volkov had to be good to be ranked in the UFC and that Hardy doesn't have much MMA experience but I didn't realise how much more experienced Volkov is. Hardy is learning as fast as Francis Ngannou did (albeit with less experience than Francis had coming in) and is naturally athletic given that he's coming from American football, but is he ready for a former world champion? Volkov was a Bellator world champ. He has years of experience of fight camps, sparring, game planning etc. Anything can Happen in MMA and Hardy hasn't been beaten inside the octagon, but they were all unranked opponents, so there is a high probability that it's a "gimme" win for Volkov to please the Russian crowd.
  The mention of Bellator reminded me that the welterweight tournament final between Rory McDonald and Douglas Lima is coming up. That should be an interesting rematch. Rory has looked, to the untrained eye like myself at least, that he hasn't been firing on all cylinders since his loss to Gegard Mousasi even though he's been grinding out wins, but I think he has come out and said that he is very motivated for this fight. Lima has looked very driven and trying to make a statement of intent in his run to the final. I think Rory's experience will grind out a victory but it wouldn't shock me if Lima wins given how the first fight went.