Twitter Mailbag: Does Michael Bisping feel like UFC champ yet? Conor McGregor co-promoter?

Does the UFC middleweight champion really feel like the division’s best fighter heading into UFC 217? Will the transitive property tell us which way the co-main event will go? And is the UFC ready to consider co-promotion now that its biggest star demands it?

All that and more in this week’s Twitter Mailbag. To ask a question of your own, tweet to @BenFowlkesMMA.

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Did you “believe” that Luke Rockhold was the champ? I’m guessing yes, since we all saw him finish Chris Weidman, who himself had knocked out the greatest middleweight of all time to claim the title in the first place. Then Michael Bisping knocked out Rockhold, so the line of succession is about as clear and unambiguous as it can be.

But I know what you mean. Bisping has been at this for so long, hovering in that good-but-not-great zone for years, so it’s hard for people to suddenly think of him, at 38, as the best middleweight in the world. It feels like we already made up our minds about where he fits in the division, and it’s not at the top.

That part is on us. As MMA fans, we’re sometimes too quick to form conclusions and too rigidly stubborn to revise them in the face of new information. If we weren’t, we might be willing to consider the explanation that Bisping himself favors: He was always the best clean middleweight, but it took the USADA anti-doping program to create the conditions under which he could prove it.

Still, Bisping hasn’t done much as champion to change our pre-conceived notions. At a time when the division is clogged with legit contenders, he’s defended his title against none of them.

You can understand why. The title means money, and he’s trying to get paid before this ride ends. But if he wants people to accept him as the true champ, he needs to defend his belt against a true challenger. Sadly, it’s not going to happen this Saturday night, even if he beats Georges St-Pierre.

It depends what co-promoting means to Conor McGregor. Does he just want to put his name on the canvas? Does he want to go down as a promoter of record for the event? Does he want an ownership stake in the UFC? Is there a clear, tangible goal here, or does he mostly want to make the UFC bend to his will and give him something no other fighter has ever gotten?

Some of those wishes are easier to fulfill than others, but now is the right time to make some big demands. The UFC needs McGregor. By every meaningful metric, he’s the biggest star in the history of the sport. If you want to sell pay-per-views (and the UFC needs to sell pay-per-views, especially right now), then you’d better do what it takes to get him back in the cage.

To make his negotiating position even stronger, McGregor is coming off a monster payday. If his fight with Floyd Mayweather really did top six million buys, as Dana White has claimed, he can afford to put his feet up for a long while. For once, time is on the fighter’s side – not the UFC’s.

If I’m McGregor right now, I start reeling off my list of demands in alphabetical order. And I don’t stop until every single one of them has been met.

An open disregard for merit-based matchmaking hasn’t historically been a major dealbreaker for fight fans, so I’m not sure that’s it. But you’re right that, with Bisping-GSP, demand originated with the fighters and not the fans, which doesn’t tend to create a ton of momentum.

We all know why St-Pierre wanted to make his comeback now, and why he wanted to do it at middleweight. He saw a champion who perceived as: a) very beatable, and b) very promotable.

We also know why Bisping liked the pairing more than he liked the idea of defending his belt against the top contender. It’s because he wanted the PPV riches that GSP used to carry with him wherever he went, and, to a lesser extent, he also liked the idea of being able to say he’d beaten the two greats of his era – GSP and Anderson Silva.

Those are the fighters’ reasons for wanting this bout. But that alone is not enough of a sales pitch for fans. It’s like telling people they should go see a movie because the studio and the actors all crunched the numbers and decided this film would make them richer without making them work too hard.

Which is not to say that fans won’t watch this event. It’s got three title fights on it, plenty of names people care about, and it’s the only thing even close to that big fight feel since Mayweather-McGregor.

But even while this will probably end up being at least a moderate success, it does highlight some of the shortcomings of the “money fight” approach to MMA matchmaking. Just because someone thinks it’ll result in a mountain of cash, that’s not always a good enough reason for us to want to contribute to it.

You’re seriously going to ask me that before a fight card that includes Johny Hendricks? I mean, really?

Anything, as they say, can happen. But I have to admit that I’m having a hard time picturing it.

Rose Namajunas is a game fighter and a good athlete, and her opportunistic submission game works well when she can put opponents where she wants them.

But how’s she going to do that against Joanna Jedrzejczyk? The champ is tough to take down, and even tougher to keep down. Meanwhile, every moment you’re standing up with her is another chance for her air out your face with punches, elbows and kicks.

I’m not saying Namajunas can’t solve the puzzle or even just catch Jedrzejczyk slipping. All I’m saying is that when I try to picture it in my mind, I draw a blank.

Noooooooo. The last thing we need is the UFC handing out scripts and acting coaches. If anything, the trend of MMA fighters borrowing pro wrestling schticks to hype fights just proves that it’s tougher than it looks.

Even Colby Covington isn’t particularly good at it. What saves him is that he’s just awkward enough, yet still somehow aggressively and supremely confident that he is absolutely killing it, so he comes off as unintentionally comedic in a way that we (or, well, some of us) can enjoy without having to take too seriously.

(And the thing about him calling Brazil “a dump” and its citizens “filthy animals,” it’s obviously not complimentary. But I ask myself: Would he have done the same thing if he’d fought GSP in Montreal? Or Nick Diaz in Stockton? Yeah, I think so.)

The people who don’t enjoy Covington’s gimmick? They mostly end up hating him for it. Which is, of course, exactly what he wants. So either way it (kind of) works. I just don’t think it’s something we’d want to see night after night. Or maybe I’m just speaking for myself.

Generally, the transitive property has a poor track record in MMA. But since there is some legitimate similarity between T.J. Dillashaw’s style and Dominick Cruz’s, you’re right that it’s worth asking if the same guy who styled on Cruz will go right back out there and breakdance all over Dillashaw’s face.

One added variable is that Dillashaw’s seen the same tape we have. He knows now how Cody Garbrandt approached and defeated that style. He doesn’t know if the UFC bantamweight champ will try to do it the exact same way this time, but he at least has more information to work with than Cruz had.

I still think the toughest thing for Dillashaw to account for is Garbrandt’s power. Afighter who can move and evade like that and still hit you back hard? That’s a tough person to game plan for. I’ll be interested to see how Dillashaw looks to solve that problem.

If the winner is St-Pierre, I doubt it. I think he wants to win the UFC middleweight title, but I don’t think he actually wants to be the UFC middleweight champion.

Plus, since he’s a natural welterweight he has something of a built-in escape pod. He says there’s a clause in his contract that says he has to defend the belt, but it’s not hard to picture him convincing the UFC that a fight with McGregor would be a smarter financial move for all involved.

If Bisping wins, however, I think the chances of a Robert Whittaker showdown improve. As tortured as his relationship with MMA fans might be at times, Bisping longs for respect. You can hear it as he’s reeling off his accomplishments, vowing to prove the haters wrong.

And you know Bisping’s never suffered for a lack of confidence. He believes he can beat “Bobby Knuckles,” even if he’s in the minority on that one. You really think he could bring himself to retire rather than try, willingly giving up the belt he’s spent years chasing, and all without a literal fight? I’m not so sure.

As for the second question: For me, the best fight on the card is Garbrandt-Dillashaw. After that, it’s a little bit of a struggle for second place.

You don’t think Donald Cerrone has enough sense to wait it out until Senator Rock runs for president and needs a VP pick who can carry the Western states? My friend, you underestimate this man.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.