And, I'll take the new fulcrum which has an even better twr than the original, over the fat viper any day...
The 'fat' viper is 'fat' because in that configuration it is kitted for long range, heavy strike. No one has to carry those CFT's if they are deploying for a host of other missions. Want to do air-air, just use EFT's just like the US Vipers do on CAP. Other than the air-ground targeting pod, everything on the UAE's birds is integrated including the IRST, and Digital EW Suite so if they wanted to use the aircraft primarily for air-air, they can strip the air-ground pods, and CFT's and what they have is a viper that is significantly better given they have the more powerful engine compared to USAF's.
What a 'fat' viper allows its users to do however, is to operate a fairly low-maintaince, low LCC aircraft to deploy the widest, and most flexible range of PGM's on the planet. From more expensive stand-off munitions like the JASSM, to the cheaper PGM's that can now go from anywhere from a few nautical miles (range) to up to 80 km for the new JDAM-ER. In case of the UAE that is the only nation to currently operate a modern F-16, the air-air threat was practically absent and that allowed them to configure their F-16's for the mission they will encounter the most i.e. striking defended targets allowing them to invest in a significantly enhanced EW suite that could geolocate and target emitters much earlier than competing systems could for example. Same applies to their AESA radar - F-15C's and F-22s were the only western fighters that had an AESA before UAE and the raptor only beat them by a few months. They got in both air-air and air-ground, a significant enhancement when it came to range, resolution, survivability in jamming, SAR performance, reliability and effectiveness.
Contrary to what is often portrayed in discussion boards, any air-force has a much wider missions set than to just gain air-superiority and the Air-Superiority needs often dictates force structure that is dedicated to achieving this. What I am getting to is essentially that the Air-Superiority in the Pakistani or Chinese Context would be based on the collective work of the LCA, AMCA, Su-30, MMRCA, T-50 etc working closely with other assets. What a multi-role fighter must also conduct a plethora of other strike, and ISR missions and do so repeatedly. Here things like the mission-system capability, networked operations, PGM-delivery and PGM inventory (Type and quantity) matters as these things have been PROVEN to offer a competitive edge in terms of turning the equation from 'sorties per target to - targets per sorties'. You simply cannot focus on one mission since the aircraft being demanded has to have multi-role capability and this is where the quantity, capability, and choices available to an F-16 customer are exceptionally high and come from a host of nations that have over the years kept modernizing their weapons to support the platform.
Switching over to the Adv. Shornet, there is nothing stopping an end-user from going in with an EPE solution as opposed to an EDE solution and gaining significant performance improvement in acceleration that comes from a 20% increase in thrust without a corresponding increase in weight. You can shed the CFT's and carry bags on air-air missions. However, as stated earlier the Rhino comes with a more than decade worth of enhancements in things like sensor-fusion, computing and developing new waveforms to enhance multi-ship Situational Awareness. And this compares to a baseline, that started with a clean sheet AESA radar and Next Generation processors. One can obviously ignore these advantages as others have done and suggest AESA radars are overrated and an 'OEM's are pushing them down operators throats (despite no evidence to support it), and that everyone has the same level of 'sensor-fusion' but that would be contrary to facts and realities on the ground.
The Mig-35 offers a lot of enhancements over the Mig-29K but its still early days and the first operational aircraft has not even delivered to its first customer. We KNOW from the recent history that mission system upgrades, enhancements, and maturation is the single largest cost/investment driver in modern combat aircraft (Having gone through the development of the LCA and being in the design phase of the AMCA, those that follow these programs closely would vouch for that) and this wil remain true for decades given how fast technology is maturing, particularly in computing, semi-conductors, the resultants benefits in radars, communication, Electronic Warfare, and survivability enhancement. Given that is the case, someone would need to take control of the Mig-35 over the next couple of decades to make sure it is up to the task when it comes to the sort of threats the IAF is likely to go up against. In case of the Rhino, the USN has it and will continue to have it as its most numerous fighter till well beyond 2030, and to add the air-air threat faced by the USN is from Chinese advanced fourth, 4.5 and 5th generation aircraft. Hence the roadmap for the SH enhancements, and why they have been constantly investing in the program to keep it relevant and at pace to stay up to date. In addition to
EXISTING INVESTMENTS to make the Super Hornet significantly more effective for the 2020's, there are plenty of things lined up for the program going forward. Even if one disregards the significant lead in system-integration, maturity and capability of the block III+ Rhino to the Mig-29/35 the institutional support of the USN alone should give any perspective customer high confidence in the fact that their product would be enhanced (at someone else's R&D expense) to keep pace with the threat.
All the changes that make a Super Hornet an Advanced Hornet are available as kits to be upgraded at the depot level except the new cockpit which may be a totally non issue (from a risk perspective) if the rumors of the Saudi's adopting it for their F-15SA's are to be believed. Boeing's Wide Panel Display's were to leverage a common investment on the Adv./Int. Shornet as on the Silent Eagle.
even Western evaluatior of legacy 29s found them better dogfighters than F-16s
Contrary positions also exist, and have been provided to you that you have ignored. I have in the past pointed you to a pilot that has flown both against each other (flown the mig-29 vs the F-16 and Vice Versa). Air-Combat is a complicated thing and is not just one feature. A JHMCSII + 9XBlkII/ASRAAM kitted Rhino is as good as any when it comes to dogfight - survivability and it all comes down to TTP's and support. It won't be F-18 vs J-10 or J-20 alone and if you get into that then you are taking an approach that is completely dissociated with the reality of modern air-combat. Simple things such as being able to strike pin point targets from 300 km, has immense implications even in air-superiority especially if you have an inventory to support long range percission targeting even from stand-off ranges of say 60-100 km. SDBI, SDBII, JDAM-ER all allow for this, and this ability for TacAir assets to carry out strikes from such ranges without the expense of missiles has some serious force-structure implications for an opponent trying to maintain air-superiority over a theater. This is before I bring in things like JSOW-C, JASSM, JSM, and even AARGM.
(unbelievable). Now after this, US's interest in this deal makes perfect sense.
. This is confusing. Shouldn't it be the other way around that India lays the red carpet to ALL the manufacturers unconditionally under MII campaign and try to please them for the same without promising to actually buy them? 
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No offence meant...I realize the solah has considerably evolved over time, and offers some serious capability, but couple of questions nevertheless remain esp. Vis a vis the hornet and even the 35...
