Tra, seriously?
Piece by piece:
I didn't say he needs to be stripped because he's dominant. I'm saying he needs to be stripped because he should A) move up or down a class, permanently
Yeah, because, when you're the most dominant fighter in the history of a weight class, that's the time to change it up and start cutting a ton of weight or go up and put yourself in a division where you're not going to fight for the title because the current champion is a friend.
B) Because of the unsportsmanlike horseshit he's been pulling. Martial Arts is about ******* respect. I don't care if you're miles ahead of your opponent and every aspect of the game, you just do NOT do that. It is NOT the way a martial artist behaves and it's most certainly not the way a champion in the biggest organization of a burgeoning sport that a whole ******* TON of people still think is either faked, fixed, a joke with no skill involved, barbaric, human cock fighting, a blood sport or all of the above. You do NOT ******* behave like that.
Remember Jesse Taylor? How about Junie Browning? Babalu? Sure their cases are all slightly different but it shows that the UFC cares about respect, character and the image of not only the UFC but the sport as a whole. What Anderson did today just took us back a step in a brand new market that MMA hasn't been in in this large of a scale and I FULLY believe he should be punished for his foolishness.
This is just wrong, Tra.
The UFC puts up with in the cage antics all the time, and they've put up with worse conduct issues than Anderson before. After all, no one even talked about them cutting Tito despite his constant antagonism, his t-shirts and his disrespect for opponents. He was the champ, you don't cut the champ.
Two of the three instances you mentioned were with respect to antics outside of the cage which included marginally significant fighters (Taylor was somewhat significant, as a TUF finalist, but Browning was not significant at all) committing acts that the UFC did not want associated with the brand. Those fighters were cut because they were going to damage the public image.
Is Anderson, the best fighter in his weightclass and, arguably, the history of the sport doing that? No. Not really.
Not more than Brock did when he came out and talked sh*t about a sponsor. (which is a much, much worse offense)
As far as Babalu's conduct during the David Heath fight, we've had similar instances of that kind of conduct throughout the history of the sport among fighters that would, at the time, never have been seen as potentially cutable. B.J. Penn was accused of holding the choke too long on Jens, but that's less of a big deal. If you want to talk about guys who cranked submissions after the tap, talk about Royce Gracie.
Babalu, it's worth pointing out, wasn't nearly the same kind of asset that Anderson is. Realistically, there are only a few guys who are even close to that kind of asset. Right now, it's Anderson Silva, Brock Lesnar and Georges St. Pierre who are truly the undisputed UFC champions.
Edgar is going to have controversy about that decision, and he needs to defend his belt once anyway, and Machida has to decisively beat Shogun.
You know what's most irritating about this, though. Anderson Silva set a record tonight for the most consecutive title defense in UFC history, and people are talking about stripping his belt. This is the winningest fighter in the history of the UFC.
You can dislike his sportsmanship all you want, but you don't strip the belt from the most dominant fighter ever to hold a strap in that organization, especially after he won a 50-45 decision over a guy who didn't deserve to be in the same ring he did. If Dana started talking about taking Anderson's belt away, he'd be mocked viciously and deservedly.
This win was not controversial. You may not have liked it, but it was not controversial. You don't take the belt away from a guy who won an obvious decision, because the fight, and his attitude, sucked.