When further pressed, Holmes admitted that while he takes nothing away from Franklin's performance, he believes that Hamill simply couldn't hurt his friend and mentor.

"Rich performed great and showed a lot of class in victory. All his guys, Matt Hume, Neil Rowe, and our buddies Rob Radford and Jorge Grugel all were very gracious and supportive. Matt loves those guys...you know, Matt has this nice guy image and it's well deserved. He is truly one of the nicest, most sincere, genuine people you'll ever meet. I think he got out there and found out that he couldn't fight his friend. Unfortunately, this information would have been much more useful to us months ago. We would have never taken the fight if we knew that to be the case."

So where does Hamill go from here. He's shown tremendous potential in his previous six victories (seven if you count "The Count"), but coming off of his first sub-par performance Holmes sees room for improvement.

"As it stands, Matt has too many outside distractions. If he wants to continue fighting and show what he's capable of, what he shows everyday in practice, the champion that I know he can be, then he needs to do some serious soul searching and see if this is what he really wants to do. Matt lost this fight because of his mentality and nothing else. It was all mental. He let the UFC down, he let his fans down, he let his camp and trainers down and, most importantly, he let himself down. We're planning on getting him in with a sports psychologist soon to figure this all out."

Despite Saturday's lackluster effort, Matt Hamill remains one of the UFC's brightest up-and-coming light heavyweights. His personal story is inspiring; literally the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of. His "Rocky-like" persona can go a long way toward building a huge fan base, but it's got to come with more "Rocky-like" performances such as his effort against Michael Bisping.

It's true that Hamill failed his first big test on the UFC's biggest stage, however, any man that can soundly defeat a very game Tim Boetsch and, let's be honest, the ultra-talented Michael Bisping (in a contest which Hamill fought on a badly injured knee), has all the talent needed to become a serious UFC contender.

There are other big tests in store for Hamill; the UFC's light heavyweight division is chalked full of them. Was Hamill outclassed or was he unable to fight someone who he admired and cared for? Only Hamill can say for sure, but his next fight will go a long way toward answering that question for the rest of us.