Last weekend, UFC fans were treated to a card on FOX that featured two fights with major title implications and a third bout that set up a future contender in the middleweight division.
While bouts with top talents such as Rashad Evans, Chael Sonnen and Michael Bisping seemed like a good idea to feature on network television, the card itself was a disappointment.
The abundance of star power was overshadowed by the fact that the fights themselves were, for lack of a better word, uneventful.
To some fans, this made no difference. Sure, the card didn’t feature any three-round wars or impressive finishes, but it was quality MMA featuring some of the best in their respective weight classes, and while the bouts seemed to be lacking in action, a knowledgeable fan realized how tough all the competitors in the cage were.
Chael Sonnen’s victory over Michael Bisping is a perfect example of this.
The fight won’t be earning any Fight of the Year honors when award season comes around, but it was a true battle of attrition with a ton of exhausting work against the cage and two of the best fighters at 185 lbs. stifling each other’s offense at every turn.
While the fans that watch every event and follow the sport religiously realized that it was an excellent fight, the casual viewer flipping through channels would have found the bout to be about as entertaining as watching paint dry.
The main event between Rashad Evans and Phil Davis was no better, as a clearly outclassed Davis looked lost and disoriented throughout the bout, which Evans dominated.
While the event was a success from a ratings standpoint and gained some hype for two of the biggest upcoming fights of 2012, it failed from an entertainment perspective, at least for casual fans.
There will be no such problems when the UFC returns to network television in May.
A bout between Jim Miller and Nate Diaz was announced late last month, but its position on the card was unknown until this week, when it was announced as the main event of the evening.
While neither Miller nor Diaz are as recognizable as Evans or Sonnen, the two are never in a boring fight, and fans are already preparing themselves for one of the best fights of the year.
And to be honest, unless the UFC decides to throw Georges St-Pierre, Anderson Silva or Jon Jones on FOX, no one in the organization has a big enough following to truly impact ratings anyway.
Throwing hard-hitting heavyweights Pat Barry and Lavar Johnson on the main card is furthering the UFC’s approach from important fights on FOX being substituted for entertaining ones.
Barry and Johnson are both middle-of-the-pack heavyweights at best and are more likely to end up on the prelims than headline a card anytime soon, but both men have no problem laying it on the line and putting on a show for the fans every time they step into the cage.
Barry seems to earn a fight night bonus every time he puts on his gloves, and Johnson showed off is tremendous power when he destroyed the previously iron-chinned Joey Beltran on the preliminary card last weekend.
In the long run, this bout is going to help the UFC far more than it will either of the fighters involved, as it has the potential to be one of those fights that forces people to pick up the phone and call their friends, a’la Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar in 2005.
The fights for the UFC’s second foray onto FOX weren’t boring, but what they lacked in entertainment is going to be more than made up for the next time the UFC shows up on prime-time.
Even with just two main card bouts announced, Zuffa has already made sure that UFC on FOX 3 will be a hell of a show.
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