What time is it? Depends on whom you ask.
There are those who will tell you the clock struck midnight on the UFC in 2014, and that the fight company’s bejeweled, Affliction Brand carriage abruptly turned back into a pumpkin. After a few scant boom years built on the backs of fading or absentee stars, the bust is upon us.
Others paint a decidedly less apocalyptic picture.
To some, it’s almost morning in mixed martial arts. After 12 months punctuated by injuries to the UFC’s biggest drawing champions, the organization is about to wake from a fretful nightmare and spring back to its feet, ready for an early-morning jog around the neighborhood.
Either way, it seems as though 2015 will be a pivotal year in UFC history.
By this time next year, one of the two above viewpoints may well be proved right.
You know things have been bad when even Lorenzo Fertitta goes slightly off message. The typically mild mannered UFC CEO did just that this month, basically admitting to the Sports Business Journal’s Bill King (subscription required) that this year was as rough for the fight company as we’ve all long speculated.
“This year has been the most challenging year we’ve ever had,” Fertitta said. “About 80 percent of the fights we wanted to put on got canceled for whatever reason. Injury, drug test, somebody had a baby, who knows. If it could happen, it happened in 2014. I can’t wait to get to next year.”
While hardly groundbreaking stuff, Fertitta’s words still qualify as a quasi-confession, given that UFC President Dana White spent the better part of 2014 steadfastly claiming that everything was great, and thank you very much for asking.
Turns out, maybe that’s not exactly true.
Even worse, the SBJ article—which laments the company’s slumping pay-per-view numbers and apparent difficulty forging new, bankable stars—comes immediately on the heels of a fairly disquieting flurry of other UFC news. During the last few weeks, MMA fans had already heard about office closings, departing executives and downgraded credit ratings.
If anything, the SBJ report merely confirmed that the sinking feeling we’ve had in our chests for much of this year wasn’t just our own imaginations, our own insecurities. Other people are noticing the MMA downturn too.
“While UFC executives won’t discuss specific pay-per-view figures,” King wrote, “they would look like ostriches if they didn’t concede that their numbers have slid in recent years, doing so precipitously in 2014.”
The most basic, perhaps unanswerable, question is: Why?
While all of the above obviously qualifies as bad news, nobody seems totally sure what it means, let alone exactly why it’s happening.
If we’re lucky, 2015 will finally provide some answers.
Both the SBJ and this month’s reduced credit report from Standard and Poor’s seemed to think injuries are the main culprit. Both duly noted that the UFC could be poised for a rebound next year, if it can just get its champions healthy.
At the tail end of 2013, the UFC simultaneously lost its two biggest, best-known titlists—Anderson Silva to gruesome injury and Georges St-Pierre to personal reasons. Together, their absence cast a long shadow over all of this year’s action. Jon Jones and Cain Velasquez also missed significant time, as did newer champs like Anthony Pettis, Johny Hendricks and Chris Weidman.
Getting as many of those fighters back and into the heavy rotation as soon as possible will no doubt make next year look rosy by comparison. If you follow the logic that injuries are the only thing holding the UFC back, then indeed a turnaround seems imminent.
In recent days, several of the company’s stars have already poked their heads out of their foxholes to remind us they’re coming back soon. Silva held a press conference to talk about his impending comeback bout against Nick Diaz, Ronda Rousey (now booked against Cat Zingano for early 2015) made a couple of media appearances and Conor McGregor took to Twitter to suddenly announce he likely won’t wait around for a title shot.
Fertitta and White also reportedly met with St-Pierre over dinner in Montreal last week and as of this writing, social media makes it appear as if the greatest welterweight fighter of all time is on the verge of returning.
In fairness, the next few months look pretty stellar. Velasquez is scheduled to return against Fabricio Werdum in November, while both Pettis vs. Gilbert Melendez and Hendricks vs. Robbie Lawler 2 are on the books for a month later. Next year is currently set to kick off with Rousey‘s return, Jones taking on Daniel Cormier and Silva vs. Diaz.
If those fights all come off as hoped, it’ll go a long way to making everything feel normal again. And by normal, we mean awesome.
Yet, some would say merely getting healthy will only be half the battle.
In 2015, the UFC will also have to prove it can handle the rigors of its own constantly ballooning schedule without making the product feel watered down. Arguably the most interesting thing about next year might be finding out if the fight company’s calendar of live events is sustainable, even with a full complement of stars to pack it out.
As MMAFighting.com’s Dave Meltzer noted in a follow-up piece to the SBJ story, it’s “all but a lock” that 2014 will be the UFC’s worst year on PPV since 2005. Yet King and Meltzer both pointed out that while PPV is still the UFC’s lifeblood, the company has opened up numerous new revenue streams in recent years.
These days the UFC is making big bucks from television deals in the U.S., Brazil and Mexico. That influx of cash—it gets $90 million annually from Fox, King says—has been great for the company but has been something of a mixed bag for fight fans.
Though neither the SBJ or S&P’s mentioned over-saturation as a potential factor, it’s tough to ignore it when you spend all year knee-deep in the UFC’s schedule. The overall feeling of 2014 was one of too many fight shows, with too few recognizable names to fill them up.
To see this phenomenon in action, one needn’t look any further than this Saturday’s UFC 179 card. A main event featuring a featherweight title rematch between Jose Aldo and Chad Mendes is worthy and so is Phil Davis’ co-main versus Glover Teixeira. Aside from that, though, it’s mostly filler.
Fabio Maldonado vs. Hans Stringer? Darren Elkins vs. Lucas Martins? Those just wouldn’t have been PPV fights a few years ago.
For fans, the real issue isn’t how much money the UFC is or isn’t making—we’re going to go ahead and assume Fertitta and White are doing just fine. It’s not really even who’s hurt and who’s healthy. It’s that this year the organization’s product actively became less fun to watch. Between PPV, Fox Sports 1 and the UFC’s new digital subscription service, it occasionally felt like a struggle just to keep up.
Perhaps 2015 will be different. If, as is being widely theorized, the UFC’s roster of new stars gets back to regular action and gets the chance to connect with fans, we will return to the halcyon days of appointment viewing and marquee events. Perhaps the UFC will get better at what Fertitta refers to as the “segmentation of the product,” and televised events will no longer feel like one good fight supported by three or four throwaways.
Perhaps concerns that the UFC is spreading itself too thin will fall by the wayside once everyone comes off the disabled list.
Or perhaps not.
It’s highly possible, after all, that the injury bug doesn’t know what year it is. It’s possible that 2015 provides no relief. It could be that injuries are just a part of life in MMA—remember 2012? Anyone? Anyone?—and that they will continue to cramp the UFC’s style.
Or, it’s possible that even with a fully functional roster, it will all continue to feel like too much MMA.
Either way, we’ll surely know more 12 months from now.
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