Quinton Jackson — After his unanimous decision win against Matt Hamill in UFC 130's main event, "Rampage" could move forward to challenge UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones for the championship, likely in the fall. This is a very interesting deal. After losing to Rashad Evans last May, Jackson won a questionable split decision over Lyoto Machida and now a mostly uninspired unanimous decision over Hamill. After watching Jackson is this fight, it's hardly the inspirational performance one would like to see before a title shot. To some extent, I still feel for Jackson never getting his title rematch in 2009 because of bad circumstances, but now that he had the chance to go out there and really seize it, he faltered. What happened to the Rampage everyone grew to know and love? A fight with Jones is going to force Jackson to step his game up or risk being another victim.
Frank Mir — Heavyweight is a pretty fluid division right now in the UFC with a lot of moving parts, so there's quite a few ways the UFC could go with this. With reports coming in that Mir suffered a broken jaw, he doesn't need to be matched with someone who is fighting in this current timeframe. It would be appropriate for Mir to fight the winner of the UFC 134 fight between Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Brendan Schaub. Obviously, Mir and Nogueira were slated to headline UFC 119 before Nogueira had to pull out and a fight between Mir and Schaub has been speculated about for months now. Either of those fights would be appropriate at this time.
Travis Browne — Despite Dana White saying Browne is in the famous (or notorious) "mix" at this point, I'm not quite ready to make that proclamation yet. Browne's win over Stefan Struve on Saturday was nice, no doubt, but it's not one that puts him into the mix, unless you consider the mix to be the entire fighting universe. At this point, theres two fighters I'd identify for Browne's next fight, and each will give us a good idea where he's at: Pat Barry or Matt Mitrione. Both have fights coming up at UFC on Versus 4. Or maybe a battle with Mike Russow. All attractive options.
Rick Story — After his upset of Thiago Alves, many are wondering exactly what is next for Story, who now is riding a six-fight win streak. This is interesting because of who already is booked by the UFC and how far you want to push him. If Josh Koscheck is able to come back anytime soon, I think a fight with Story would be a very good fight. If that's not going to happen, then it'd be interesting to see him face either the winner of the UFC on Versus 4 fight between Anthony Johnson and Nate Marquardt or the winner of the UFC 132 bout between Carlos Condit and Dong Hyun Kim. There's a lot of good options out there for him right now.
Brian Stann — For me, this one is really easy. We need to see where Stann truly stands. So far, his two biggest tests at middleweight have been strikers in Chris Leben and Jorge Santiago. So I'd really like to see him against a grappler and no fight better fits that bill than him facing the winner of the upcoming UFC 131 bout between Demian Maia and Mark Munoz. Both would be able to give him a test in that department and would give everyone a better indication of whether Stann is a contender or pretender. Right now the needle is leaning toward contender, but the jury's still out.
