Renan Barao must’ve thought he’d live forever.
After all, the young man had it all. He was the three-time defending UFC bantamweight champion. He had a nine-year, 34-fight unbeaten streak. At the tender age of 27, he had earned global fame and adoration in the combat sports-o-sphere.
It all hit its peak this past May. None other than UFC President Dana White threw all his considerable muscle behind Barao, calling the champ the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
But then? It all came crashing down. In 22 minutes and 26 seconds, it was all over.
That was all the time it took for T.J. Dillashaw to snatch Barao‘s belt and start Barao on a bit of a career tailspin. A pay-per-view headliner this spring, Barao will play second fiddle this Saturday to CB Dollaway on a deep-cut cable card five days before Christmas.
No offense meant to any party involved, but Barao‘s co-main event scrap with Mitch Gagnon at UFC Fight Night 58 is not exactly the place where we’re accustomed to seeing him.
How did we get here? And more importantly, why?
Losing the belt certainly takes some shine away, but it doesn’t fully explain such a precipitous drop-off. As most fans know, Barao‘s follow-up did not help his cause. He reduced UFC officials to a bunch of headless chickens after a nearly last-minute withdrawal from an August rematch with Dillashaw, which some people said Barao didn’t deserve in the first place. Barao, who pulled out after passing out and hitting his head during his weight cut, was replaced by relative unknown Joe Soto in the main event of UFC 177.
Hampered by this lineup change, the pay-per-view event only pulled in an estimated 125,000 buys, according to MMA business website MMA Payout. That’s the second-worst total of 2014.
But let’s talk more about pay-per-view buys for a moment.
Renan Barao is not exactly what you might call a ratings gold mine. In February, he topped UFC 169 by knocking out the immensely popular Urijah Faber in a rematch of their title fight 19 months before. Ths show only earned 230,000 buys, MMA Payout notes.
Interestingly, their original matchup at UFC 149 reportedly drew the same exact number. Not good. UFC 173, Barao‘s fight with Dillashaw, notched only 215,000. For comparison’s sake, the show with the highest number of pay-per-view buys in 2014 was UFC 175 with 545,000.
Maybe it’s the fact that, despite an exciting style, he fights in one of the smaller weight classes, which have historically had to really scrape for attention outside the hardcore fanbase. Maybe it’s the fact that Barao is not a fluent English speaker, which can be a barrier to marketing in the U.S. and Canada. Maybe it’s because Barao is one of many fighters who, language barrier or not, does not exactly exude great enthusiasm over the process of answering interview questions or promoting a fight.
Still, though, that UFC 177 number is dismal. None of this stuff is going to endear you to the people who promote your fights or the people who determine your opponents, not to mention media and fans.
In a rather convenient encapsulation of several of these problems, watch Barao‘s interview with longtime UFC broadcaster Joe Rogan, who takes Barao to task for his UFC 177 withdrawal.
Next, watch an interview around the same time with UFC President Dana White, who notes not only his own frustration with Barao but referenced the video above and how “fired up” Rogan was to “go after” Barao about the whole incident.
On the post-fight show, White says Rogan was “fired up” to “go after” Barao in that interview. How quickly you can become persona non grata.
— Ben Fowlkes (@benfowlkesMMA) August 31, 2014
Here’s the point: You don’t have to be good at hyping fights. You don’t have to be multilingual. You don’t have to ooze charisma. You don’t have to WAR each and every time you hit the cage. You don’t even necessarily have to win every time out.
But all these things provide a margin of error, a safety net, a reservoir of good will. If you don’t have such a safety net, you can fall pretty far pretty fast. Barao is clearly still a young, exciting and extremely talented fighter. He also appears to be an upstanding citizen who keeps out of trouble away from the cage; that’s no small thing these days.
But that’s exactly the point, and if Renan Barao didn’t know that before, hopefully he knows it now. Rock bottom isn’t defined by anything but the bottom line, baby.
Scott Harris writes about the serious and less-serious aspects of MMA for Bleacher Report. For more stuff like this, follow Scott on Twitter.
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