Koscheck Out, Swick In, AKA Suffers?

The internet has been abuzz the last few days with the news that Josh Koscheck has pulled out of UFC 109 with an injury and his American Kickboxing Academy teammate Mike Swick will be taking his place fighting Paulo Thiago. I figure I’d chime in.

American Kickboxing Academy is quickly making Paulo Thiago the Sisyphus of mixed martial arts. Instead of pushing a boulder uphill, he’s tasked with running through the San Jose, Calif. team’s roster of welterweights.

Even after Josh Koscheck on Monday pulled out of their scheduled rematch at UFC 109, Thiago will still face an AKA fighter on Super Bowl weekend. Within hours of Koscheck’s withdrawal, MMAFighting.com reported and MMAWeekly.com independently confirmed, teammate Mike Swick would step in to face the Brazilian.

This fight was supposed to be the follow up to the biggest upset of 2008, as Thiago knocked out the heavily favored Koscheck at UFC 95. It’s actually a little bit ironic that Josh has to pull out of this fight, as he has been the guy that the UFC has been going to when someone gets hurt. He has fought seven times in the last two years, including jumping into the UFC 106 despite fighting at UFC 103 just about 60 days earlier.

I have a quirky theory about the UFC’s plan for Koscheck. He is the most likely to receive a rematch against welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre. While Jon Fitch and Thiago Alves are coming off relatively recent losses, Koscheck has had two years to recover from his loss. In that time, he has gone 5-2, which is not spectacular. His losses have come to Thiago Alves, who was smashed by GSP, and Paulo Thiago, who he was slated for a shot at revenge against. Let’s assume for a second that Kos would have defeated Thiago, probably in violent fashion. The UFC could have set up some form of a number one contender fight for Josh and if he won, threw him into a late in the the year rematch with the Canadian wonder.

Instead, we get Swick against Thiago. Swick is coming off a loss in a number one contender fight against Dan Hardy. Hardy tagged Swick early and never seemed to get on track, eventually losing a decision. There are those who suggest that this is a terrible fight for him, because if he looses to another guy that most pundits don’t believe is a top-ten level guy, he could be in danger of fighting on undercards.

First of all, I don’t see Swick on undercards anytime soon. He’s too good and too big a name for that. Second, I think that Swick is looking at this one as a chance to get the taste of Dan Hardy out of his mouth quickly. Third, if Thiago beats Swick, is he a top-ten welterweight? Obviously. So, Swick is fighting a guy just out of the top 10.

The problem with that top ten is that it includes Swick, Koscheck, and fellow AKA’er Jon Fitch. With three of those guys in the top-10, it would only be logical that they would fight at some point. Well, they won’t fight one another. Since they train in the same gym, it would be tough for them to prepare. Would one have to leave the gym? Would they have to split the gym with a white line like that episode of the Brady Bunch?

Notice I didn’t even mention the “Who would want to fight their friend?” idea? That’s because I don’t think that these guys think like that. Are they friends? Absolutely. However, they know that it’s just business. The problems are more logistical than anything else.

It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. The only problem for these three guys is that there is a cost for not fighting one another. They are forced to take on guys like Thiago and Hardy who aren’t names. What happens to you when you lose to guys who aren’t names? You wind up falling very far, sometimes even off the rankings.

How will these whole thing go down? Swick should beat Thiago, and Kos should comeback and get his win. He’ll probably have to fight Thiago again. When he beats him, we’ll start hearing calls for Koscheck-GSP II.

But if none of that happens, we could be looking at the end of the AKA welterweight dynasty.

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