Which of the heavyweight involved in the next two weeks’ main events is likely to step up in competition, and is one of them a candidate for brain damage? What’s it like to Twitter beef with a noted MMA referee? Can Strikeforce stick around?

In our latest installment of Twitter Mailbag, MMAjunkie.com’s Ben Fowlkes sounds off on those topics and many more, including 2012’s “Fight of the Year” and whether or not Anderson Silva vs. Stephan Bonnarr should really be happening.

Check out all the questions below, and submit your own at @BenFowlkesMMA.

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Alex @Alex_Newfie
@benfowlkesMMA IF Stefan Struve gets KTFO Sat., given the # of KOs he’s suffered, should we be concerned about his long-term health? #TMB

What an interesting, depressing question, Alex. Struve has suffered three knockouts that we know of, which isn’t an inordinate amount for a heavyweight. Then again, he is only 24, so he could have many years of brain-thumping still left in him. But yeah, seems like he’s taken more than three, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s that his knockouts just seem worse because of his size. When he goes down, there’s a real sniper-taking-out-a-giraffe quality to it. But I don’t know if we should be more concerned with his track record than, say, Roy Nelson’s. Sure, “Big Country” isn’t as knockout-prone, but sometimes that just means that he sticks around and takes three rounds worth of punishment rather than going down with one shot. Look at his fights with Fabricio Werdum or Junior dos Santos. He may have stayed awake, but that doesn’t mean those punches were doing his brain any favors.

In general, we can’t just look at the number of knockouts we’ve seen a fighter take and jump to the conclusion that he will or won’t suffer the long-term effects of brain trauma later in life. There are genetic components to why some people have a worse time of it than others. There are the sub-concussive blows as well as the obviously concussive ones. There’s the punishment a fighter takes in training – and trust me, some guys train smarter than others.

Should we be worried about Struve’s long-term health? Well, yeah. We should be worried about the long-term health of anyone who fights for a living. Getting punched in the head is dangerous. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that we can diagnose anyone from the couch. We can’t know what the future’s going to look like for Struve, and neither can he. The scary part about brain stuff is that by the time you realize you went too far, it’s already too late to turn back.

Trevor Durham @blackbirderTD
@benfowlkesMMA did you [poop] your pants when Vitor had Jon Jones in that arm bar? #TMB

I can honestly tell you that I did not. As for whether I shouted, to no one in particular, “Holy [poop]!” over and over again in those few seconds before Jones extracted his arm, well, no comment.

Scott Levesque @scottlevesque
@benfowlkesMMA Are you flattered or dumbfounded w/ the fact that you got under Yves Lavigne’s skin via tweet?

For those who don’t know what Scott’s referring to, this week referee Yves Lavigne took issue with a tweet I wrote during the flyweight title fight at UFC 152. After Joe Benavidez thought he’d been poked in the eye and looked to Lavigne for a little help, the longtime MMA ref replied, “I didn’t see it.” To which I replied, via Twitter: “If a tree falls in the forest and Yves Lavigne doesn’t hear it, does it really make a sound?” Then I sat back, sipped my beer, and said out loud, “Fowlkes, you clever old so-and-so, you’ve done it again.”

OK, not really. Point is, Lavigne saw this as an attempt to “discredit” him, which it wasn’t. It was an attempt to point out that I think he missed an eye poke, and that just because he missed it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I went back and watched the replay and I still think he missed that eye poke (side note: so does Benavidez, who told me via text this week that he really did get poked in the eye and it really did hurt). Does it “discredit” Lavigne as a referee to have missed it? Not at all. He made a mistake, in my opinion, but that’s going to happen to anyone from time to time. It doesn’t make him a bad ref.

The point Lavigne made was that, as a referee, he can’t assume there was an eye poke just because Benavidez acted like there was one. I agree. My point was not that he should have pretended to see an eye poke, but that he should have actually seen it. That’s why we have a referee in there, to see stuff and do something about it. Lavigne missed that one (in his defense, they were moving pretty freaking fast), but I don’t think it altered the outcome of the fight. The only reason I’m even writing about it now is because he made a thing out of it on Twitter, all just to make at least one point that we agree on: a ref shouldn’t be goaded into pausing the fight for a foul he didn’t see. Ideally though, he would see the fouls when they happen. Really ideally, he wouldn’t take it personally when someone points out one he missed.

Yves, for the record, I think you’re one of the better refs. No one is trying to discredit you. I realize it’s a hard job, and every ref is going to make mistakes. My tweet was not meant to do anything other than point out what I thought was one isolated mistake, and to do so in a way that was sort of, almost, maybe funny. That’s kind of my thing. If you want to see me taking criticism for it when I miss the mark, just read the comments below.

Andrew Lawrence @TheClownKid
@benfowlkesMMA #TMB If UFC had an NFL-like lock out situation, would you become a replacement referee? Would you do as good as current refs?

Are you kidding? Look at all the crap they take from people like me who only want to discredit them.

But seriously, I’m not sure what makes anyone want to be a referee of anything, ever. I once reffed a summer passing league game as a favor to my old high school football coach. It was awful, and those games don’t even count for anything. Being an MMA referee seems especially thankless, and not at all lucrative, and if you mess up you risk getting somebody seriously hurt or screwing them out of a bunch of money and a career opportunity they may never get back. I’ll stick to being a writer, where, as W.C. Heinz pointed out, our worst mistakes stay in the drawer.

Andy Anderson @AndyAndersonMMA
@benfowlkesMMA do you agree with me that both TUF and Strikeforce should die? If not why? #tmb

Strikeforce should die, and this recent cancellation was proof that its roster is too thin to merit our continued interest. TUF might be salvageable. Moving from Friday nights to the middle of the week would be a good start. I’d also love to see another comeback season, where they bring back former UFC fighters for one more shot at glory. There are very few things that might get me excited about the show again, but that’s one, even if it’s only a temporary fix.

If Vitor Belfort is bigger than Dan Henderson, it ain’t by much. Both hover right around six feet tall, both have fought at middleweight in the recent past, and both give up a lot in size and reach against Jon Jones. And, just to be clear, I’m not “ripping” Jones for fighting either one of them. I’m criticizing the UFC for taking a guy who spent the last several years fighting at middleweight and pretending that he’s a suitable replacement for a challenger who earned the spot fighting at light heavyweight.

That was my beef with the matchmaking at UFC 152. It’s not that I think Jones should only fight people who are exactly his size, it’s that I think the light heavyweight champ should defend his title against light heavyweights. Henderson’s been fighting at 205 pounds for the last two years, except for when he went up to heavyweight to fight Fedor Emelianenko. He earned the shot at Jones with a decision win over Mauricio “Shogun” Rua – the last man to hold the UFC light heavyweight title before Jones. Belfort, who acquitted himself well against Jones, hadn’t competed in the division for five full years. He was a former UFC light heavyweight champ in only the most technical sense, and his best days as a UFC heavyweight were spent fighting the likes of Tank Abbott.

That’s not to say Belfort didn’t surprise me (and a lot of other people) at UFC 152, or that he hasn’t had a good career. The longevity of it alone is impressive. Still, just because you’re big enough to fit into the same dinner jacket as Hendo, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can fill his shoes.

Richard Lopez @richardelopez
@benfowlkesMMA What’s the current contract status of Josh Barnett? Will we be seeing him fight anytime soon?

I texted your question to Barnett, who replied: “Contracts? I got a license to kill and the willingness to use it.” Seriously, that was his actual reply. He added that he’d “heard rumblings I could be in the ring this early January, but who knows for sure?”

As for how many fights are left on his “license to kill,” he said there was “at least one, but I’ve a long list.” Then he added that he may have just put my name on the list for asking so many questions, at which point I stopped. None of this is at all out of the ordinary for a text message exchange with Barnett, in my experience.

Dennis Sangler @dennissangler
@benfowlkesMMA Is the UFC “too american”? Can this be a problem for the international growth of mma? #Tmb

Current UFC champions include three Brazilians, one Canadian, and four Americans. When the UFC holds an event in Nottingham, England this Saturday, the main event features a Dutchman fighting an American, with fighters from the U.K., Sweden, and Iceland on the undercard. Next month the UFC goes to Rio de Janeiro, then Macau, then Montreal. The Montreal event includes fighters from the U.S., Canada, France, Denmark, Italy, Brazil, Russia, and Sweden. Again, that’s all on one fight card. I don’t know how you can look at all that and come to the conclusion that it’s too American, unless by too American you mean too awesome, in much the same way Hulk Hogan and Bruce Springsteen were too American. In that sense, yeah, definitely too American.

Arturo Clooney @turopere
@benfowlkesMMA Is Dan Hardy in ANY danger of getting released should he lose to Amir Sodallah?

I doubt it. Not unless he loses in a really boring performance, which seems unlikely, particularly with his hometown Nottingham crowd there to cheer him on. If the UFC was willing to stick with him through an 0-4 run, I don’t see why it would jettison him after going 1-1 in his last two. Especially not as long as he continues to “war,” even in defeat. We know Lorenzo Fertitta digs it.

A lot depends on how those clauses are used. Both Bellator and the UFC have them, and not without reason. It’s a useful tool for a fight promoter who wants to make sure that he doesn’t do all the work of hyping a fighter only to have someone else cash in. But, as my girl Ani DiFranco said, any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

If you’re legitimately interested in holding onto a fighter and intend to have him fight for you, that’s one thing. If you’re just holding up his career and wasting one of his prime money-making years in order to make things tougher on a competitor, that ain’t right. Fortunately, Tyson Nam seems to be out of his Bellator contract and on to other things now, but it doesn’t do Bellator any favors to get its name in the news this way. If you’re not going to be the biggest MMA organization, you need to rely on a little more goodwill from fans and fighters. Bad press like this makes it vanish in a hurry.

Jason Carey @jaycarey89
@benfowlkesMMA #tmb Will Anthony Johnson be out of his depth in the LHW Division if he gets back to the UFC?

I admit that it’s hard to imagine him competing with some of those monsters at light heavyweight, but then maybe he’ll be better off without hellish weight cuts in the days leading up to the most important nights in his professional life. I remember, after he beat Dan Hardy via decision at a UFC Fight Night event, he told a story about how he’d made the weight with the help of his coaches, who locked him in a sauna until he was delirious and threatening them with all manner of bodily harm if they didn’t let him out. That’s not exactly a sign of a healthy weight cut.

Who knows if he was ultimately giving up more than he gained by doing that before each fight in the UFC. I wouldn’t mind seeing him come back so we could find out, though.

Brandon G. Smith @brandongradelle
@benfowlkesMMA #tmb so what does @alanbelcherufc have to do to get in the 185 title discussion. Seems like all the good fights are given away

Step one: stay healthy. Step two: beat Yushin Okami at UFC 155. Step three: repeat step one. If he can do all that, I think he’ll at least be in the conversation, probably along with Chris Weidman and Michael Bisping, in 2013.

thePYEMAN @the_PYEMAN
@benfowlkesMMA Where does Strikeforce go from here? Continue the struggle with Showtime? New TV deal? Or my least favourite option, fold?

Fold is your least favorite option? Even if folding meant that all the poor souls in Strikeforce got to come over to the UFC, where they could frolic and be merry? You’d actually rather see them continue to stagger on as a zombie MMA promotion that draws meager crowds to see unhappy fighters? Why?!

Okay, sorry. Got a little carried away there. From what I’ve heard the Showtime deal will likely end in the first quarter of 2013, but the network has the option to renew. I can’t imagine why Showtime executives would want to continue paying for the increasingly toxic Strikeforce brand, but they’ve surprised me before. I think the best thing for the fighters would be to let Strikeforce slip into the MMA graveyard alongside PRIDE and the IFL and Affliction, then absorb the fighters into the UFC, which could use some new blood right about now.

Tough one. Let’s strike Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Dave Herman off the list right away, just to make things easier. Not that it’s not a fun fight – it is. But it seems fairly obvious that neither of those guys is going to be fighting for the heavyweight strap anytime soon, regardless of what happens on that one night. That leaves us with Stipe Miocic vs. Stefan Struve on Saturday, and Travis Browne vs. Antonio Silva next Friday. If you’re asking who I think will end up being the most relevant heavyweight out of the bunch once this two-week stretch is over, I’d have to go with Miocic, though Browne is a close second. What interests me most about Miocic is precisely what any heavyweight needs in order to stand a chance against Junior dos Santos: speed. Miocic isn’t just some big bruiser. That guy is an athlete, and it’s going to take an athlete to compete with JDS. If he can deal with Struve’s size and submissions, all while getting a little more cage time, it could be a very valuable weekend for Miocic in the long run.

Martin Cullen @Martincullen505
@benfowlkesMMA Why can’t a fun match up like Silva v Bonnar headline a ppv without scrutiny? Why must a fight “make sense” all the time?#TMB

Oh, Martin. I kind of hate you for making this argument, but I kind of love you for it too. Let me guess, you’re the kind of guy who gets annoyed with his friends for pointing out plot holes in movies, right? Like, you’re just trying to enjoy the loud noises and gigantic aliens in “Prometheus,” but your stupid friends have to ruin everything by being all, “If we all came from one alien’s DNA, why don’t all organisms on the planet have the same DNA? And why would they keep this killer goo in the spaceship where they’re all hanging out? And how are you going to put Stringer Bell in a movie and not give him a bigger role?” Then you get mad and threaten to make them all walk home from the theater, but they remind you that you took separate cars, so then you get really mad and you have to go punch a bathroom stall until you feel better. Just stop me if I’m hitting too close to home here, Martin.

But okay, I’ll bite. Why do fights have to mean anything? Why can’t we just watch one guy beat up another guy for the sheer violent joy of it?

My answer is: I guess we can…sometimes. But it comes down to why you enjoy watching MMA. Personally, I like it because I think fighting is the essence of sport and competition boiled down to its simplest, most basic aspects. Many other sports serve as living metaphors for combat — one football team marching down the field and taking territory from another, for example. But fighting is all literal. It has a kind of naked purity to it that everyone can understand, and that purity of competition is what I love. I’m not watching just because I’m a sadist who wants to see someone else’s blood, or watch another human being suffer. That would be weird.

But what’s a competition worth if there’s nothing on the line? If the winner doesn’t get closer to some goal and the loser doesn’t fall further from it, isn’t it basically just an exhibition? The good thing about fighting is that it’s never completely meaningless. You always have your face to worry about, and your bank account. But if you’re asking me to pay $60 to watch a sporting event between two people whose lives and careers won’t be seriously altered by either outcome, you’d better expect at least a little scrutiny coming back your way.

In the case of Anderson Silva vs. Stephan Bonnar, I get it. It’s the middleweight champ going up in weight on short notice in order to save a fight card. It’s just weird enough to be interesting, plus it’s better than nothing. That’s probably enough, at least for now. But in general I think it’s fair for fans to expect fights that make sense in some larger competitive context. Otherwise we’re just watching violence for the sake of violence. That might be enough for some people, but I suspect that they’re the same people who boo at the slightest lull in the action and don’t particularly care who wins or loses, as long as somebody gets hurt for their entertainment. I’m not saying we should run those fans out of town, but I’m also not saying we should court more of them with fights that have nothing at stake.

Joe Maurits @joemaurits
@benfowlkesMMA hey, so we’re a year since the UFC/Fox deal; do you think it’s going better or worse or as planned, and why? #tmb

That depends on where you thought we’d be by now. When the UFC and FOX first announced this deal, there was, understandably, a lot of enthusiasm. That led to a lot of optimistic speculation, which in turn led to a lot of just saying stuff. Is the UFC bigger than soccer now as a result of the FOX deal? Not quite. Is it better off than it was in the Spike TV days? Probably, even if a rough year, scheduling-wise, has obscured some of the success.

Now that we’re (almost) a year in, maybe it’s helpful to look at what we’ve learned so far. For instance, we’ve learned that the UFC can do huge numbers with a huge fight, such as a heavyweight championship bout, but mediocre numbers with contender fights. We’ve learned that there are downsides to being on a busy network like FX, which would rather push your reality show programming to Friday night than build the middle of its week around it. We’ve learned that signing on to do more events can sometimes lead to more headaches.

All in all, I think this year has had its share of growing pains, but that’s to be expected. Anyone who really thought the FOX deal would change the entire UFC landscape in a few months was kidding themselves, but we knew that. Or at least we should have.

Chris Powell @airforcewriter
@benfowlkesMMA What’s up with the MMA media’s obsession over the UFC TV ratings? Do people actually care about this?

Some people do, just like some people care about World Series ratings and NHL Finals ratings and Summer Olympics ratings and whatever that new show is called with the guy from “Friends” ratings. Other people don’t. You get to choose which camp to belong to, but know that if nobody clicked on the ratings stories, MMA websites would eventually stop running them.
Corey Martinez @NewfieMex
@benfowlkesMMA out of all the remaining matchups for 2012, which one do you want to see stay intact the most? You know, cause the injuries.

Yes, I do know about these injuries you mention. All too well. It’s getting to the point where the UFC’s fight bookings are more like vague wishes for the future than they are scheduled events that you can actually look forward to. But if I could choose one and only one remaining fight in 2012 to put a Sonic the Hedgehog-style protective bubble around, I think I’d choose Ben Henderson vs. Nate Diaz at UFC on FOX 5. Georges St-Pierre vs. Carlos Condit is a close second, but I think the lightweight title bout will beat it in the entertainment department, not to mention the public display of middle finger department. Now let’s just hope I haven’t cursed the whole thing by writing about it.

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

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