Vitor Belfort will fight a young, rising talent in 25 year-old Kelvin Gastelum this weekend at UFC Fight Night 106 in his native Brazil, but ‘The Phenom’ is also pushing for the promotion to start a new ‘legends league’ for older fighters like himself that still want to compete.
“I have even one idea I want to present for the UFC: It’s creating a new league inside the UFC,” the 39 year-old Belfort told MMAJunkie. “We need something new – I can see now. These new owners, they want to create something new. There is a lot of changing. What I want to propose to them is creating a league inside the UFC, the Legend League, so we can bring back these retired people – bring them back to the game and sell more tickets – give more opportunities so they can make more revenue.
“I can lead that. We can make a title fight between me and one of the legends, and that can be a new program in the UFC.”
Belfort further expanded on the idea by suggesting that the new league should have a different rule set, with long rest periods, larger gloves and no knees / elbow strikes allowed.
“I have brains; I still have some left. I want to be able to make the fans happy and give them what they need. Not just entertain them, but give them the pleasure to see legends. I think that’s what they love to do. Why just retire them? Bring them back.”
The main problem with that plan is that most of the legends he’s talking about retired because of the fact that they had sustained to many injuries and / or too many concussions in their careers.
While they don’t have a ‘league of legends’ as such, Bellator has embraced having older stars headline some of their marquee shows, and while their name value has helped boost the company’s ratings, the quality on show and the credibility of the promotion has often suffered as a result, and as such that’s likely to be something the UFC may prefer to distance themselves from.
