How seriously do we need to take the possibility that we might not get the UFC welterweight title fight that we’re planning on for UFC 228? And if it comes down to the proposed challenger or his backup, who’s the tougher test for the champ? Plus, whose side should we take in the “Cowboy” vs. The Coaches?

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

* * * *

It’s weird that we’re sitting here a little over a week out from the next welterweight title fight and we still don’t feel like we know for sure who will be in it.

Some of that is Darren Till’s fault. When you miss weight by a few pounds for the fight that gets you the title shot, people are bound to wonder whether you’ll make it when you don’t even get the extra pound allowance.

Then there’s Tyron Woodley, who’s just stubborn enough to follow through on his stated plan to turn down Kamaru Usman as a replacement if something happens to Till, and then where would that leave us?

The other piece of this puzzle is the UFC’s show-must-go-on mentality. Experienced observers know two things about how the UFC approaches last-minute withdrawals in headlining title fights: 1) It will dangle whatever carrots and sticks it needs to in order to get two willing participants in the cage, and 2) It will pull a gold belt out of thin air if it has to in order to give them some shiny prize to fight over.

So would the UFC create another interim belt immediately after cancelling the last interim belt? Absolutely it would. Is that what’s going to happen? At this point, it all depends on Till proving that he’s a real welterweight for at least a few brief moments on a Friday morning in September.

My main takeaway is that it makes me sad. Breakups are always unpleasant to watch, even from afar, and it’s the same when it’s a fighter and a coach splitting up and hurling years worth of secret injuries and built-up resentments at one another.

As for who’s right and who’s wrong, as with most breakups, I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. Donald Cerrone has always liked to do his own thing, and he hasn’t always played well with others. And while the Jackson-Wink MMA gym is one of the very best in the business, this also wouldn’t be the first time that one of their fighters felt slighted by coaches seemingly choosing the future over the past.

But does that mean the concept of an MMA “supercamp,” or even just a good, solid “team,” is over and done with at the top level? I’m skeptical of this conclusion.

Mostly the current gym structure in MMA is a result of financial necessity. Aside from a handful of top earners, few fighters in MMA can realistically afford to structure entire training camps around themselves the way boxers do. And the few who get to the point where they can do it that way usually had to get there by coming up through one of the major teams.

For the most part, I think it’s still tough to be successful long-term in this sport if you’re just hiring a group of mercenaries whenever you’ve got a fight coming up. Most fighters don’t make enough for that to even be an option. For the few who do, it hasn’t always worked out so well.

I say Till. Usman’s a smaller fighter who leans on his wrestling, which plays right into Woodley’s strengths. Till, on the other hand, is a big guy with the same frustrating patience as Woodley. He doesn’t need to take Woodley down but can also fight from the outer limits of the champ’s range.

That may very well be the recipe for another boring Woodley fight, but I don’t think it’s an easy night of work on either side.

Justin Gaethje has the good fortune to be in the deepest weight class in the sport, so there’s plenty you can do with him. He’s also one of the few guaranteed good times who doesn’t need a belt to be interesting to fans. You know what you’re getting with him, and it’s fun even when he doesn’t win.

As for what you do with him, at this point it’s pretty much whatever you want. I’d still pay to watch him against potential contenders. I’d also sit through hours of commercials to see him in there against a fellow action fighter just for the hell of it.

If he stacks up a couple more wins, we’ll absolutely be talking about him as a title contender. And if he has to knock out a couple would-be contenders to get there, it’s no problem, since he can easily take their place.

This question, plus some name recognition and a healthy dose of late-2000s nostalgia, are the only things selling this fight. Back in their primes, Chuck Liddell clearly had Tito Ortiz’s number. Everybody but Ortiz seemed to know it. But now they’re both in their 40s and it’s hard not to wonder if Ortiz’s style might have aged better than Liddell’s.

There’s some evidence to support this hypothesis. Just look at how Ortiz continued to win fights here and there as he entered his MMA golden years, whereas Liddell seemed to fall off a cliff all at once. Could Ortiz get an assist from Father Time and finally get one back against his old rival?

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me. If they actually do the kind of numbers they think they will on pay-per-view, however, that would.

First of all, it’s worth examining how much of that old “best fight the best” narrative was just marketing hype to begin with. UFC President Dana White used to trot that one out a lot back when half the sport’s best were over in PRIDE, and he did it as a way to try to set the UFC apart. At the same time, White was over on this side of the Pacific promoting fights like Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock, part infinity, and it wasn’t because it was the most competitive match-up he could make.

My point is, the mechanisms and motivations in the fight game haven’t changed all that much. That’s as true for the UFC and MMA as it is for boxing and kickboxing and every other iteration of combat sports. If you feel like something’s changed in recent years, maybe it’s just that some of the subtleties have disappeared – or that the artifice has worn thin.

Fight promoters make money by keeping sales high and costs low. If they think they can sell the most by promoting the best, that’s what they’ll try to do. But if one of the best is too costly, they’ll try to convince us that he’s not really that good (see also: the saga of Fedor Emelianenko and the UFC).

If, on the other hand, we display a greater appetite for seeing less skilled but more famous people fight? Then fine, that’s what we’ll get. If the UFC’s approach seems to have changed, maybe it’s because the tastes of the audience changed. Or maybe it just sees less and less reason to hide its true motivations, especially now that it has a fanbase it can mostly take for granted.

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