Author: Chad Dundas

UFC 168: Is Price Hike Justified for Anderson Silva vs. Chris Weidman?

It’s always unsettling to hear Dana White plead ignorance.
After more than a decade as one of the most opinionated and hands-on executives in sports, we’ve come to rely on him as the last word on most MMA-related topics—both for bette…

It’s always unsettling to hear Dana White plead ignorance.

After more than a decade as one of the most opinionated and hands-on executives in sports, we’ve come to rely on him as the last word on most MMA-related topics—both for better and for worse.

In an industry that somehow continues to operate largely without spokespeople, he’s not just the UFC president, but also its all-around point man. If White doesn’t know the answer to a question—or won’t at least say stuff to make it sound like he knows—chances are, nobody does.

Perhaps that’s why it was so jarring last weekend when, on the topic of why the fight company will add $5 to the price of its upcoming UFC 168 pay-per-view, the notoriously decisive White suddenly sounded shockingly out of the loop.

“Some guys got together at the office and decided to do that,” White said, during the post-fight media scrum for UFC on Fox 9. “I don’t know, I didn’t determine it.”

When asked why the organization would suddenly raise the PPV fee for one of its biggest shows of the year, White shrugged and said, “’Cause.”

Asked how the company determined exactly how much to inflate the charge, White admitted, “I have no idea.”

So there you have it. The man who is typically the authoritative source on all things UFC says he doesn’t know much about this one-time-only price hike and, what’s more, he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

Perhaps that fact alone tells us everything we need to know. Maybe White and the UFC are smart enough to realize some of what’s going on here is better left unsaid.

The truth is, we already know the answers to these questions, don’t we? Even if White wouldn’t come right out and say it, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the company might want to charge a few extra dollars for a PPV featuring Anderson Silva’s hotly anticipated rematch with Chris Weidman.

Because it can.

It knows most of us will grumble and mumble our complaints but then tune in anyway to watch one of the biggest fights in UFC history.

Granted, on the surface the decision appears to fly in the face of the promotion’s current talking points. Raising prices doesn’t jive with White’s continued assertion that the UFC’s numbers are down across the board and sponsorship money is scarce for fighters because the economy continues to slump. Nor does it bode well for an organization so vocal (and litigious) in its efforts to quell online piracy.

If White is right about the economy, and the UFC is justified in its fears regarding digital hijacking, then it’s hard to see how the company can defend asking fans to bear an added financial burden to enjoy the spoils of UFC 168. In fact, it’s pretty nakedly contradicting itself with a decision that will only exacerbate both factors.

Maybe that’s why White’s not even bothering trying to explain.

Because let’s also not kid ourselves. What’s going on here is entirely pragmatic.

Early estimates say this PPV could crest one million buys, and the president himself is on record saying he believes it’ll be the fight promotion’s biggest show ever.

Add to that the fact that the UFC’s biggest longstanding draw (Georges St-Pierre) just announced an indefinite leave of absence, that its heavyweight champion (Cain Velasquez) expects to miss most of 2014 with a shoulder injury and its lightweight champ (Anthony Pettis) just had knee surgery, and the picture is cast in even sharper relief.

If raising the price of UFC 168 is a boldfaced cash-grab, it’s a well-timed one.

It’s a decision fans might not like, but it’s also surely one they’ll understand. Hard to blame the UFC, actually, if right now it feels like it might want to sock away some cash for a rainy day. Or, you know, further retirements, economic collapses and schedule-shattering injuries.

While the implications here are a bit troubling—after the UFC raises prices once, it’ll be easier to do it for the next big fight and the next—it’s tough to be too mad, even if White admits he’s taking an uncharacteristically hands-off approach to how fans might be feeling.

“I haven’t heard any feedback,” he said. “I’m sure a lot of people aren’t thrilled about it but, what are you gonna do?”

Grit our teeth and take it, I guess. And hope it doesn’t become a habit.

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UFC on Fox 9: Urijah Faber Proves He Still Holds the Cards at Bantamweight

The road to the UFC bantamweight title still runs through Urijah Faber.
Just in case we forgot, we were reminded of that fact in emphatic fashion on Saturday night as Faber battered and tattered 22-year-old upstart Michael McDonald en route to a second…

The road to the UFC bantamweight title still runs through Urijah Faber.

Just in case we forgot, we were reminded of that fact in emphatic fashion on Saturday night as Faber battered and tattered 22-year-old upstart Michael McDonald en route to a second-round submission victory at UFC on Fox 9.

The win was important for Faber on at least three fronts. Not only did it secure probable No. 1 contender status and give him a big lift in his hometown of Sacramento, but it proved that at 34 years old, he’s still as good as anyone in the world at 135 pounds.

Well, almost anyone.

If there’s one thing that could keep Faber from claiming the next shot at the bantamweight strap, it’s that he’s already lost to both champion Dominick Cruz and interim champ Renan Barao. It would also take a bit of sitting on the sideline for Faber, since Cruz and Barao are scheduled to meet Feb. 1 in a title unification bout.

To hear him tell it, Faber wouldn’t mind the wait.

“I would love to fight either of those guys…,” he said at the post-fight news conference. “I’m ready to fight anyone at any time. Dana (White) knows that, everybody knows that. I’ll fight Godzilla, I’ll fight King Kong, I don’t care. I’m a little delusional about stuff (like that).”

Indeed, Faber has done everything he could to distance himself from those losses during 2013. His victory over McDonald capped a year that saw him go 4-0, including three impressive stoppages. In a bantamweight division not known for its depth, his popularity alone will make him a compelling option for UFC brass.

“Faber’s in this Vitor (Belfort) zone right now,” said White at the presser. “The older he gets, the better get gets. If you look at how good McDonald really is—and people were so excited for this fight—he literally shut Michael down for the entire fight.”

Anyone who’d written Faber off in recent years—he went 5-5 from 2008-12—got served another reminder that he’s more than just a pretty face as he drubbed McDonald, who came into the fight as a consensus top-five bantamweight.

Prior to the bout, McDonald said he expected to have the edge everywhere, but instead Faber proved to have the far better all-around game. His best weapon was a winging overhand right, which he landed with authority early and often.

He visibly hurt McDonald for the first time a minute and 13 seconds into the second round, sticking him with a right hand and a grazing front kick that momentarily put him on the run. As Faber pursued, McDonald blunted his attack with a right hook of his own and managed to recover.

Two minutes later he was not so lucky. Faber stumbled an advancing McDonald with another overhand to the temple, then unloaded with a series of rights as he pushed a dazed McDonald into the cage. When McDonald hit the ground, Faber caught him with a guillotine choke that elicited a tap.

The win over McDonald pushed him to 30-6 and preserved his bragging rights for having never lost a non-title fight. Dating back to Nov. 2008, however, he’s 0-5 in championship bouts.

If he gets a sixth, the former WEC featherweight king will have to approach it assuming it’s his last chance at UFC gold.

For now, though, Faber still holds more cards than any other contender in the bantamweight division.

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TUF 20: Can Strawweights Make the UFC’s Reality Show Relevant Again?

Don’t be fooled by the fact that it continues to stagger aimlessly through the barren fields of cable television—The Ultimate Fighter has been dead for years.
Once the primary vehicle of the UFC’s drive toward the mainstream, the real…

Don’t be fooled by the fact that it continues to stagger aimlessly through the barren fields of cable television—The Ultimate Fighter has been dead for years.

Once the primary vehicle of the UFC’s drive toward the mainstream, the reality show has become something less than itself during its last handful of seasons. These days, it’s merely a zombie, shuffling awkwardly in pursuit of its goals but without the brains or the soul to carry them out.

Limping along only because no one has had the good sense to put it out of its misery.

This week, however, we got a glimmer of hope for a cure. With the UFC’s announcement on Wednesday that it’ll use TUF’s upcoming 20th season to introduce strawweights to the Octagon, there’s a sudden and unexpected note of optimism surrounding the flagging series.

Perhaps—just for a little while—the sport’s smallest fighters can bring The Ultimate Fighter back to life.

TUF began as a way for the UFC to forge new stars, but more recently it’s succeeded only in producing stagnant ratings, largely middling talent and decidedly unflattering portraits of some of the promotion’s biggest draws (Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey).

Casting strawweights for TUF 20 immediately remedies several of the show’s biggest ills, raising the stakes while simultaneously guaranteeing an overall higher level of competition.

For the first time in the show’s history, an honest-to-goodness UFC title will be on the line, as the winner will reportedly emerge as the organization’s inaugural women’s strawweight champion. These fighters won’t simply be competing for a glass trophy and a nebulous “six-figure contract,” but for actual, recognizable hardware that won’t cease to be meaningful as soon as the season finale wraps.

Since producers are essentially buying out Invicta FC’s 115-pound division to cast the show, Season 20 may also be the most talent rich and competitive to date. After all, this marks the first time most of the top 10 fighters in a single weight class will live in the TUF McMansion and compete in its wacky two-round exhibition bouts.

While TUF 20 may not completely redress the show’s single greatest flaw—overall staleness—this season will be the first to feature an all-female cast, so it can’t exactly be considered more of the same, either. For Season 18, the UFC hedged its bets in casting both male and female fighters and obviously came away from the experience more invested and confident in women’s MMA in general.

To that end, Season 20 doesn’t figure to hurt for marketable personalities. Of the 11 names released so far, several—including but not limited to Felice Herrig, Bec Hyatt, Carla Esparza, Rose Namajunas and Tecia Torres—seem like natural fits for reality TV.

And with that uneven number of contestants on the docket so far, it’s not totally out of the question that there could be a few more surprise entrants before filming begins in May.

Likewise, coaches have not yet been announced, but they seem borderline irrelevant to this scenario. One of the particularly grating parts of TUF’s endless parade of past seasons was the insistence that fans treat every announced coaching combo like big, exciting news, when really it’s not. Not when we’ve seen it 19 times before.

For now, this story should be all about the strawweights.

Is this just a temporary fix? Sure. You can’t create a new division and have a tournament for the UFC title every time you need to cast a new season of TUF. After Season 20, perhaps the show will revert to the mindless, relentless plodding of the undead.

In the short term though, we’ll take it, as under the circumstances it seems like the best possible move.

To make TUF relevant again, even for just a season?

That seems like a miracle.

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UFC on Fox 9: Is It Do-or-Die for Urijah Faber Against Michael McDonald?

Perhaps, the most telling statement that Urijah Faber ever made about his own position in life came at WEC 26, as he prepared to fight a little known 21-year-old named Dominick Cruz.
“I’m not the type of person who’s ever been be…

Perhaps, the most telling statement that Urijah Faber ever made about his own position in life came at WEC 26, as he prepared to fight a little known 21-year-old named Dominick Cruz.

“I’m not the type of person who’s ever been beat up or picked on or—you know—the underdog,” Faber said during pre-fight interviews. “I’ve been the man since I was a little kid, and I’m still going to be the man.”

That confidence was well-earned. At the time, Faber was the undisputed king of MMA‘s lightest weight classes. He was the WEC’s featherweight champion who was undefeated for more than two years and was consistently capable of making the rest of the best fighters in his division appear decidedly less than.

For lack of better terminology, he was indeed the man.

Fast-forward six-and-a-half rocky years, and Faber can still lay claim to being among the best and most popular fighters under 155 pounds. That said, if he’s going to carry on being the man at 34 years old, this Saturday’s fight against Michael McDonald shapes up as an absolute must-win.

Since Nov. 2008, Faber has posted a middling 8-5 overall record in the WEC and UFC. The astounding fact that all five of those losses came in title fights stands as kind of a backhanded compliment to his own diminishing status.

If not for all those years spent being the man, Faber never would’ve been granted so many championship opportunities. Still, after losses to Mike Brown, Jose Aldo, Renan Barao and (most bitterly of all) Cruz, it’s getting tougher and tougher to tell where he stands among the little guy elite.

After each one of those defeats, he’s had to do some backtracking. He’s put together character-rehabilitating wins against a host of also-rans (Jens Pulver, Takeya Mizugaki, Iuri Alcantara) and a couple of top contenders (Eddie Wineland, Scott Jorgensen).

Right now, he’s riding a three-fight win streak, but “The California Kid” obviously isn’t a kid anymore. It’s unclear how many more times he can hike back up the same mountain before his perennial No. 1 contender status eludes him for good.

That’s why this weekend’s fight is so important.

At 22 years old and 16-2 overall, McDonald is more than an upstart. He’s already fought for the interim bantamweight title, losing to Barao via fourth-round submission 10 months ago.

He’s young and insanely talented, but he still doesn’t have much of a profile among UFC fans. In short, he’s exactly the kind of guy whom Faber used to slay on the regular, back when the business of being the man was still being good to him.

If he’s able to do what he’s always done and top McDonald, then he stands a very good chance of meeting the winner of February’s scheduled bantamweight title unification bout between Barao and Cruz.

If not—if McDonald becomes the first non-champion ever to defeat Faber—then it could amount to Faber’s most significant and unfortunate loss since Brown knocked him into his current flat spin five years ago.

Faber, after all, has nowhere to go now. He’s already been run out of the featherweight division and has already lost once to both Barao and Cruz. The idea of him trying to make flyweight seems ridiculous, and a guy can only get so many shots at the featherweight and bantamweight belts before he gets permanently crossed off the list, no matter who he was in the past.

In large part, Faber’s legacy is already secure. If his career ended today, he’d already be a Hall of Famer.

The thing at stake for him in this bout may well be the difference between being a contender and being a pioneer.

The former means he can still be the man.

The latter means he merely once was, until the new men got here.

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UFC on Fox 9: McDonald Expects to Beat Faber ‘Everywhere,’ Even His Hometown

Michael McDonald might drive himself to UFC on Fox 9.
From his home in Oakdale, Calif., it’ll take about 90 minutes—a straight shot north on I-5 to Sacramento, where on Saturday night McDonald will fight Urijah Faber in a bantamweight bout …

Michael McDonald might drive himself to UFC on Fox 9.

From his home in Oakdale, Calif., it’ll take about 90 minutes—a straight shot north on I-5 to Sacramento, where on Saturday night McDonald will fight Urijah Faber in a bantamweight bout steeped in title implications.

It’ll be a luxury to have access to his own vehicle, he admits, especially after the UFC shipped him off to Atlanta (2,400 miles), London (3,900 miles) and then Boston (3,080 miles) for his last three fights.

He drove to the event when he fought Alex Soto at UFC 139 in San Jose two years ago and it seemed to work. McDonald won by knockout in 56 seconds.

“Not to be on a plane was very nice,” he says.

Don’t let the light travel schedule fool you, though, this won’t be a home game for McDonald. Not when there are four fighters from Sacramento’s Team Alpha Male (including Faber) on the card this weekend.

Not when he’s fighting a borderline legend of MMA‘s lighter weight classes, a guy who actually bills himself as “The California Kid.”

“He’s probably going to have more fans,” McDonald says. “He has a bigger fanbase than me. It’s about an hour-and-a-half away from my home and it’s probably five minutes away from his.”

If he thought about it long enough, McDonald might come around to the idea that this is a pretty big deal for him—fighting Faber in the former champion’s hometown. At just 22 years old, though, he’s pretty much the epitome of the steady-eddy professional and until this bout is over, he’s not allowing himself to think about Faber as anything more than just another opponent.

Still, McDonald grew up in California and made the first 11 appearances of his pro career there from 2007-10. On some level, he knows there’s a little more at stake here than just possible pole position in the 135-pound division.

“If I had a dime for every time somebody asked me what I do for a job and I said, I’m a mixed martial artist, and they said ‘Oh, do you know Urijah Faber?’ I’d be freaking rich,” McDonald says. “So, that’d be pretty nice to say, ‘Oh yeah, I beat that guy.’ That’d be pretty cool.”

McDonald bears no more ill will toward his fellow Californian than is necessary during the week before two men fight at an event a stone’s throw from their homes, in front of a crowd likely stocked with friends and family.

He and Faber are “business friends,” he says, and then adds, “He’s a nice guy. I don’t have any animosity toward him at all.”

Not that this fight needed an extra storyline.

During the years immediately preceding McDonald’s arrival in the big show, Faber was regarded as the best, most popular fighter under 155 pounds. More recently, he’s scuffled, going just 8-5 since since his aura-shattering TKO defeat at the hands of Mike Brown in Nov. 2008.

Meanwhile, McDonald has sprinted to 16-2 overall, 5-1 in the Octagon.

Both guys have lost to current interim bantamweight champion Renan Barao but are still in the thick of the 135-pound title picture. If McDonald beats Faber and Barao should lose to returning champ Dominick Cruz during their unification bout in February, McDonald would be a shoo-in as the next challenger.

Faber? He likely stays in the mix no matter what. Because he’s Urijah Faber.

Despite the 34-year-old’s recent struggles, McDonald won’t say he’s lost a step. Instead, he compares Faber’s dominant run with the featherweight title to Anderson Silva’s time as middleweight champion and says a lot of the guys who fought Faber back then beat themselves before the cage door even opened.

“There’s an intimidation factor when you’re the champion or when you have a reign at the top,” McDonald says. “I think that was a factor when Urijah was the champion. People were a little bit intimidated by him, subconsciously. I think that’s the biggest difference between him now and then.”

By virtue of saying that, of course, McDonald implies that it won’t happen to him. He says he’s prepared for the strategies Faber will likely try to implement against him, but he hasn’t spent much time poring over video looking for the secret to how to beat him, either.

“In my mind I think I’m going to beat him everywhere, and I’m actually interested to see (if that’s true),” he says. “I think I’m going to beat him everywhere, so let’s see if I actually can. Let’s see how many of those things play out like I think they will …

“Other than one fight, everybody I’ve ever fought has been rocked or knocked out,” McDonald continues. “I don’t think this fight is any different. I think Urijah’s going to get hit and he’s going to be rocked. I think the question is just going to be about what happens after that.”

Faber has always been “on his radar,” says McDonald, who made his WEC debut the same night Faber announced himself in the bantamweight division by dispatching Takeya Mizugaki. Since then, they’ve fought on the same UFC card twice, so if a collision between them wasn’t exactly inevitable, McDonald always knew it was a good possibility.

Two top 135-pound contenders, both trying to get back to another title shot, their fight schedules more or less complementary—it was easy to do the math.

It’s also easy to bill this bout as something of an in-state rivalry match, though McDonald professes not to care about any of that.

He says he doesn’t care that he’s fighting Faber in his hometown or that—despite the fact he’ll only be an hour or so from his own front door—it’ll likely go down in hostile territory.

He says he’s content beat that same old fighter’s drum: It’s just another fight. Just another opponent.

Maybe the gravity of the situation won’t dawn on McDonald until the next time some fan asks him if he knows Urijah Faber.

Maybe then he’ll have a story to tell.

Chad Dundas is a lead writer for Bleacher Report. All quotes are obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise.

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UFC Fight Night 33 Results: ‘Shogun’ Rua Staves off Retirement with Te Huna KO

Even before Mauricio “Shogun” Rua took the cage on Friday night, the elegies for his storied career were already being written.
During the run-up to Rua’s fight against James Te Huna, we’d heard all about his knees (shot), his c…

Even before Mauricio “Shogun” Rua took the cage on Friday night, the elegies for his storied career were already being written.

During the run-up to Rua’s fight against James Te Huna, we’d heard all about his knees (shot), his cardio (suspect) and the intimidating aura he’d cultivated during his youth (now a distant memory).

The former light heavyweight champion was considered a slight underdog to the relatively unproven Te Huna. Dana White said they’d “probably” have the retirement talk if he didn’t perform well, via Fox Sports Live.

As it turned out, the only post-fight conversation Rua needed to have with the UFC president concerned the bonus check for knockout of the night. As in, it’s Mauricio—with two I’s.

His retirement speech was not needed at UFC Fight Night 33, as he struck down Te Huna with a pinpoint counter left hook just one minute and three seconds into the first round.

Newsflash: Rua’s not quite done.

Had Te Huna’s brain been capable of coherent thought, he could’ve testified to that fact at the moment his body dropped to the canvas and his head snapped back like he’d been in a car crash.

“I knew he would come out aggressive and trying to strike, but I also expected him to come clinching and trying to wrestle me,” Rua said through an interpreter while still in the cage. “I was timing his engagements. When he was moving forward I was timing his entrances so I could connect.”

This is where the hyperbole typically kicks in—the talk about Rua being “back,” the wistful columns about how he’s recaptured his old magic and the aw-shucks apologies about how we can’t believe we ever doubted him.

This time, let’s skip that part, since it’s not true and it’s actually pretty cynical.

The truth, as always, will be found somewhere in the middle.

Perhaps Rua is not as close to being done as we thought, but the old Shogun is not “back.” Rua’s time as one of the most feared 205-pound fighters on the planet is long past, and it’s not about to return.

His win over Te Huna was a good one, but in claiming it he stopped a fighter who himself came in off a loss and who had never beaten a top-10 opponent. Te Huna is a big, dangerous light heavyweight, but few were forecasting him as significant contender prior to this bout. Now maybe few ever will.

Rua’s victory simply means he’ll live to compete another day and perhaps get the chance to script his own denouement.

Where he goes next was a topic of conversation even before he dispatched Te Huna. It has been widely speculated—urged, perhaps—that he’ll think about cutting to middleweight, just like former light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida did earlier this year.

It’s probably the right move, if his body will allow it, though his questionable physical health will no doubt continue to dictate when, how and where he fights.

This weekend, we found out he still has the single-punch KO power that made him one of the most feared fighters in the world a half decade ago. That’s great, but let’s not make the mistake of inflating this win into something that it’s not.

The issues we saw in him before this bout—his busted knees, the mileage of 11 years and 30 fights, a 3-4 record since 2011—haven’t suddenly gone away. Can he still be a serviceable UFC fighter? Sure, but let’s not prop him up just so we can tear him down again later, when the facts come back around to meet our narrative.

Frankly, Rua deserves better than that.

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