Author: Dave Meltzer

When UFC opened 2014 with Georges St-Pierre on a sabbatical and Anderson Silva’s career thought to be in jeopardy from a graphic broken leg, it was expected that it would be a tough year for the pay-per-view business.

The first two shows, UFC 169 and UFC 170, don’t really indicate much except a continuation of the pattern that has been the case in recent years for every pay-per-view promotion, a huge show does as good or better than ever. And anything less than a big show, fans are very willing to pass on and wait for a big one. But the idea that people are checking out on pay-per-view completely was contradicted in a big way by the success in September of Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Canelo Alvarez, and in December of UFC 168, with a double main event of Silva vs. Chris Weidman and Ronda Rousey vs. Miesha Tate.

Both shows this year performed well above what appears to be UFC’s bottom base in the 150,000 buy range.

UFC 169, which took place on Feb. 1, is currently estimated at doing 230,000 buys based on various sources. The show, held in Newark, N.J., on the eve of the Super Bowl, featured two lighter weight title matches held by two of the best fighters in the sport, Renan Barao and Jose Aldo. But neither has broken through as any kind of a significant draw.

Barao retained his bantamweight title against late replacement Urijah Faber, subbing for injured former champion Dominick Cruz. Faber is likely the strongest opponent from a drawing standpoint in the bantamweight division. It’s unlikely Barao could match those numbers on his own with anyone except possibly Cruz. Aldo retained his featherweight title beating Ricardo Lamas.

The number was almost identical to what a Barao vs. Faber headlined show, UFC 149, did, and above Aldo’s previous title defense against Chan Sung Jung at UFC 163. Aldo did significantly better with Frankie Edgar, a more established star, but that show also had strong undercard support. Aldo would likely do significantly better with lightweight champion Anthony Pettis, but talk of that superfight is out the window until 2015 at the earliest.

UFC 170, headlined by Ronda Rousey vs. Sara McMann, is estimated at doing 340,000 buys. That’s down from Rousey’s first main event, one year earlier, with Liz Carmouche. But the drop is hardly unexpected. The promotion of the Carmouche fight, the first women’s fight ever in the UFC, was among the best in company history. There was both among the most media coverage leading to a UFC fight in history, combined with a stirring Prime Time shows focusing on the two women leading to the fight.

This show had a lot going against it in comparison. It didn’t get anywhere near the media attention. Women’s fights are no longer a novelty, and the first-time attention wasn’t there. Rousey had just fought two months earlier, against Tate, in a match built up off the Ultimate Fighter as the biggest grudge match of the year. Rousey vs. McMann came nowhere close in garnering interest.

The McMann fight did have a hook, the first time two Olympic medal winners had ever faced off in a UFC fight. And it took place the week of the Olympics. But that didn’t get anywhere near the kind of media attention the fight a year earlier got. A lot had to do with Carmouche, who promoted the fight much harder than McMann. In the arena for both fights, Carmouche was clearly a far bigger “B side” star in the fight, regardless of McMann’s wrestling credentials and undefeated status coming in. In addition, there was no Prime Time vehicle the last three weeks for UFC 170, which led to the late surge in ticket buys for the first show, and momentum that wasn’t there this time.

Prior to that show, no pay-per-view event in any form of combat sports or entertainment, headlined by women, had ever topped 125,000 buys.

Still, it was as successful as any UFC pay-per-view that didn’t have either St-Pierre or Silva headlining, since the Jon Jones vs. Chael Sonnen fight. And McMann is not even in the same universe as Sonnen when it comes to talking people into buying fights.

It appears, at least for now, that there are a few categories of UFC on pay-per-view.

There is the somewhat rare sub-200,000 buy show, which are fights that, for whatever reason, a lot of the regular buyers are willing to skip. The 200,000 to 275,000 range are usually title fights with champions who have yet to establish themselves as major draws, fights significant to fans of the sport but the general public doesn’t really care about. The 275,000 to 375,000 range looks to be the major champions, Jones, Rousey and Cain Velasquez, when put in with opponents without major name value, although Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos was in that range. .

Chris Weidman may fall into that category, but since he’s never headlined without Anderson Silva, the jury is still out. The success of his May 24 fight with Lyoto Machida, who is not a big draw today, but has been a part of successful shows in the past, will tell the tale. Fights later this year will also establish which category new champions Johny Hendricks and Anthony Pettis fit into.

When the public feels there is a big fight or a can’t miss show, like UFC 168, the sky is still the limit. But even Alvarez, coming off the biggest grossing pay-per-view event of all-time, only hit 350,000 buys on March 8 when matched up with someone who was not considered a pay-per-view level star.

The changes from a few years back, where any UFC event was seemingly guaranteed to hit 300,000 buys, is a natural evolution coming from the proliferation of free content on television.

Ultimately, the economic future is going to be driven by television rights worldwide, and new technological advances. It will be less reliant on pay-per-view, the revenue stream that allowed UFC to have its huge growth from 2005 to 2010.

However, we are nowhere close to the day when a television network will outlay $30 million or a super event in MMA, or $75 million for a gigantic boxing show. Until that day comes, the pay-per-view model is going to remain in place for the biggest shows. And all the evidence still points to more people than ever willing to pay larger amounts of money than ever when it’s a show that they really want to see.

Back on December 6, 2008, it was pretty clear the career of Oscar De La Hoya was over after his fight with Manny Pacquiao ended after the eighth round.

Suddenly, there was a moment of truth. For years people said boxing was a sport on life support, and what was keeping it alive was the mainstream popularity of De La Hoya. Insiders knew De La Hoya was past his physical peak, but he was still the biggest drawing card in the sport.

Bob Arum was directly asked it about that same thing about an hour after the fight, and responded that now all those people who bought the show, far more than had ever bought a show to see Pacquiao, will now become Pacquiao fans.

In that specific case, Pacquiao’s mainstream appeal exploded with such a high-profile win. His fights with name opponents were suddenly doing three and four times what they were doing before, rendering Arum clairvoyant. But the reality is not so simple.

Boxing didn’t die with De La Hoya, and his two highest profile losses, to Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr., both created mega-drawing stars that have carried the sport in the U.S. the past four years.

UFC opened 2014 with the reality the two men who carried the box office for the past few years, Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva, were, at least for the time being, out of the picture.

The closest thing UFC has had to De La Hoya was St-Pierre, who could be have been nicknamed Canada’s Golden Boy if it wasn’t far too soon to give any fighter that kind of a nickname.

Nobody has gotten their hand raised against Georges St-Pierre who didn’t later pay the price of it being avenged in a most forceful of ways. Ever.

Even though there is daily speculation as to “What will Georges do?” and “Will he fight again,?” the show must go on. Johny Hendricks could have been Pacquiao, save for the fact he didn’t finish St-Pierre, and the judges on Nov. 16 weren’t being very cooperative.

Saturday night at the American Airlines Center in Dallas will be the first UFC welterweight championship fight that didn’t involve either St-Pierre or Matt Hughes since May 4, 2001. It’s an amazing statistic when you think about it, particularly when you consider how many different headliners there have been in other divisions, and how much the sport has changed.

On that day, Carlos Newton grabbed a bulldog choke on Pat Miletich, squeezed for all he was worth with biceps bulging, and became the guy who Hughes power bombed into unconsciousness to start his reign six months later. Hughes was the first big drawing star of the division, and after St-Pierre beat him twice, he became a man who set multiple box office records for the sport.

The question becomes, how big a star and how big a draw can Hendricks (15-2), the man who beat up St-Pierre even if he didn’t beat him on scorecards, become? It’s relevant because it’s a time when UFC badly needs a guy who can move the needle.

Even if Hendricks had beaten St-Pierre, Arum’s statement is false as often, if not more often, than it’s true.

While St-Pierre became a bigger star than Hughes ever was, he’s the exception. Frankie Edgar beat B.J. Penn twice, but never came close to replacing him as a drawing card. Cain Velasquez destroyed Brock Lesnar in the cage, but couldn’t touch him at the box office. Jose Aldo is one of the greatest fighters the sport has ever seen, but neither he nor Mike Brown ever garnered close to the popularity of Urijah Faber.

Hendricks has things going both for and against him. Going for him is his performance against St-Pierre, and all the photos and video clips of the two men behind the podium after the fight, one with his face looking like he walked out of a meat grinder, the other looking like he just finished a stroll in the park. It’s also his first fight since being the beneficiary of a level of fan outrage at a decision rarely seen, even if the nature of the ten-point must system is that it could have justifiably been scored either way.

He’s got sledge hammers for fists, and fans love a guy who can knock someone at any moment. He’s had some memorable knockouts, in particular a one punch 12-second lightning strike that ended Jon Fitch’s run as the division’s perennial bridesmaid. And he’s far from a one-trick pony, having some of the best wrestling credentials in the sport. There are power and wrestling similarities to Hughes, and the same type of American farm boy powerhouse appeal. Hendricks is physically superior to Hughes, but may not be as dominant since the level of competition is exponentially better these days.

On the flip side, Hendricks was not a major name until the St-Pierre fight. Estimates have Nick Diaz, coming off both a loss and a suspension, outdrawing Hendricks, the longtime logical No. 1 contender, by close to 350,000 buys in St-Pierre’s next-to-last title fight.

He’s had his big knockouts. But the “Big Rig,” as he’s known, hasn’t run over everyone. There was a win over Josh Koscheck on a split decision that could have gone another way. There was the night he was outwrestled by Rick Story for his other loss. There was even the win over Carlos Condit where Condit came back strong enough late to where people speculated it may have gone the other way had the fight been five rounds.

One good sign has been the ticket advance. UFC 171 was almost completely sold out the first weekend tickets were put on sale months back. Living in Dallas, Hendricks is clearly the star of Saturday’s show. We’ve seen of late with Gilbert Melendez in the San Francisco Bay Area, Joseph Benavidez in Sacramento, Calif., and Anthony Pettis in Milwaukee, that the quest of the local star to get the world championship is not a snap your fingers sellout.

Yet, that doesn’t often correlate to pay-per-view figures. Being Hughes or St-Pierre as far as a marketable top star takes time, timing and luck. It was five years and a coaching stint on The Ultimate Fighter before Hughes turned the corner. St-Pierre was the right guy in the right place. Besides being one of the greatest fighters the sport has ever seen, he was already the national fighting star of Canada by the time he challenged Hughes the second time.

It’s impossible to say what Hendricks would need to turn the corner. It could be a series of dominant wins or strong finishes that get replayed to death in the modern multimedia age. It could be finding that perfect rival, which could be St-Pierre if he does come back.

Or it could be that he doesn’t stand the test of time. Hendricks is 30 as the apparent heir to the throne. In Robbie Lawler (22-9), he’s facing a fighter with knockout power similar to his. Hendricks’ age can be a funny number, becomes it’s more the wear-and-tear than the number. He hasn’t taken any bad beatings, but he’s also been competing, without a break, and at a high level since he was a sophomore in high school.

Hughes was 27 when he won his title. St-Pierre was 25. Hughes was a first generation UFC television star, one of the original big five stars. St-Pierre was the rising star from day one, a headliner whose quest to topple Hughes came at a time when UFC’s was exploding in popularity.

Hendricks’ rise is coming at a time when a dozen fights are taking place every weekend, so making a lasting impression is far more difficult. But Hendricks did just that on Nov. 16. And in Lawler, he’s got an opponent that provides where the mix on paper sounds like fireworks. For those who watch UFC faithfully, they all know that and this has to be one of the most anticipated fights in some time. Outside of the group who follows it closely, how much of a lasting effect the St-Pierre fight has will tell the tale of how big a star Hendricks is today.

When Georges St-Pierre finally emerged from getting medical treatment after his controversial title defense of his long run as welterweight champion against Johny Hendricks at UFC 167, he noted that he had never felt that kind of power before.

“He hits like a truck,” St-Pierre said repeatedly.

Someone who has the kind of thunder in his left that Hendricks does is partially God-given. In his case, there were remnants of it early in his UFC career, such as in a 2009 win over Amir Sadollah at UFC 101. But the scary power of Hendricks really emerged in 2011, with devastating knockouts of T.J. Waldburger and Jon Fitch.

The game change can be attributed to better technique, from training with boxing coach Tony Cabello and Muay Thai coach Steven Wright, as well as more power and stamina from strength and conditioning coach Adrian Ramirez. Hendricks’ head coach is Marc Laimon, who is a jiu-jitsu master and his cutting to 170 pounds is overseen by Mike Dolce, who actually cut weight with him during the latter stages of camp.

In the case of Ramirez, the idea going into the St-Pierre fight was to do something no opponent had ever been able to do, which was physically overpower St-Pierre. Not just early, but for the duration of a five-round fight. That meant not just power, but the ability to still harness that power deep into a long fight.

Ramirez, who devised Hendricks’ conditioning program noted that a lot of it came from going back to a program Hendricks had thrived in years ago, long before he came into MMA.

“I can’t take credit for everything,” Ramirez said about the power that enabled Hendricks to physically thrown St-Pierre to the mat in the fourth round, and give him a beating on the ground like none he had ever taken in his career. “Johny came to me as an incredibly strong athlete.”

Hendricks had thrived as a college wrestler at Oklahoma State University, winning national titles at 165 pounds as both a sophomore and junior, in 2005 and 2006. He won 56 matches in a row in 2006 and 2007 before losing in the national finals as a senior. While training under the legendary John Smith, the wrestlers did heavy lifting during the off-season to get as strong as possible, with the idea of maintaining as much of the strength as possible while constantly cutting weight during the season.

“We translated that philosophy over to my methods,” said Ramirez. “Before we even hear about a fight date, during the off-season, we’re in the gym lifting three times a week, pretty heavy. When we get close to the fight, six to weight weeks out, we transition to circuit training. That’s how he starts cutting (weight).”

Ramirez said that Hendricks is a quick gainer, which certainly has its advantages. But as an MMA fighter, there’s actually a problem involved in having that level of favorable muscle and strength building genetics that most would love to have. Hendricks’ optimum weight class is 170 pounds, and at 5-foot-9, he’s short even for that division. Naturally, Hendricks weighs about 210 pounds in the off-season. He’s not looking like a bodybuilder, but he packs a lot of muscle on, and they actually have to almost hold back his muscle mass gains because he can’t afford to gain too much new muscle and still be at his best when having to cut the day before a fight to 170.

“If Johny lifts for two weeks hard, he can add 10 to 15 pounds of muscle, so we have to be careful,” said Ramirez.

During the strength and power cycle in the off-season and early fight camp, Hendricks concentrates on increasing the weights he uses on heavy dead lifts, power cleans, clean and jerks, full snatches, shoulder shrugs and really heavy one-arm dumbbell presses for building power from the core that strengthens punching power. But aside from traditional weightlifting, they also utilize unique movements, that Ramirez culled from strongmen training.

Among those exercises is the farmer’s walk, which is essentially walking while carrying a bar filled with heavy weights, an exercise that is killer on the legs, the lower back and the all-important grip strength. It’s also beneficial because it’s not about just strength, but teaching the muscles to be able to maintain power under long periods of exertion and gets the athlete use to working through muscle pain and exhaustion. There is also a yolk bar that he puts on his shoulder almost like from a squat rack and walks with it while carrying 315 pounds of added weight. They constantly add more weight. Like St-Pierre is fond of, they even incorporate some gymnastics movements.

Another key to the training is to grapple in a gi. While on the surface, no gi grappling would seem to be more effective for an MMA fight, given that’s the circumstances you fight under, it’s the hand fighting and constant holding and tugging of the gi in long sessions that builds the necessary grip strength and grip stamina.

Ramirez felt the methods worked.

“Everything is done to transfer to MMA,” he said. “I think that was proven in the fight. In the majority of positions, he could out power St-Pierre.”

The training is heavily tailored toward the opponent. To earn the title shot, Hendricks had to get past Carlos Condit, who has very different strengths as St-Pierre, so it was an entirely different game plan.

“Condit was the more dangerous striker. You have to be more careful. On the ground, Condit’s guard is a lot more active than Georges’ was. That’s what you have to look at. Range plays a difference. Condit wasn’t going to try and take us down. I don’t think he tried one takedown in the fight. Against Georges, we had to prepare for the wrestling, and had to tighten up our wrestling as much as possible as well as let Johny work on his hands. His hands get better every fight. From the last fight, he striking looked better. His boxing has gotten stronger, his kicks and knees are stronger. His wrestling from the training at OSU really got him in the best shape of his life.”

Ramirez said they went to Stillwater, Okla. six times during the GSP camp, and got more priority instruction directly from Smith, one of the greatest U.S. wrestlers in history.

“Yes, he was taken down, but every time he was taken down, he got right back up. Those trips played a huge factor. I thought Johny looked good in his takedowns. They were very technical. Those are the things you need to work on. We’ll go back to OSU and bring the footage of the fight and he’ll learn from his mistakes. OSU is a huge part of Hendricks’ wrestling success, both in the past and the present and we still try to utilize them for our training camp as much as we can.”

In a season filled with many incidents and near confrontations, the TUF Brazil show with Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva, taped in Portuguese for Brazilian consumption, will have worldwide distribution on UFC’s new Fight Pass subscription service.

On Sunday, the road to Chael Sonnen’s fight with Wanderlei Silva begins in a unique place. The Sonnen-Silva season of The Ultimate Fighter, taped for Globo in Brazil, will air worldwide only on UFC Fight Pass, it’s new on-line paid subscription service.

A season that looked to be among the most anticipated in recent years is being used not only to promote a fight, but to jump start subscriptions to the service, which also includes a live fight card from England the day before.

After a promotional advertisement for the season, filed with Silva threats, Sonnen counters, and the beginning of a skirmish, aired on Fight Pass, an edited version on YouTube had 1.3 million viewers over the next 48 hours.

“As far as the incident with Wanderlei, there were many incidents,” Sonnen said. “One of them has garnered more attention than the others. The guy was a complete struggle on a daily basis to work alongside.”

Dana White noted that putting together a video was more deciding what to leave out than put in.

“We have a treasure chest of s*** from this show,” said White via text message.

Ever the master at building a fight, Sonnen’s tact with Silva is to say his Japanese success wasn’t close to how it looked, and his UFC record is among the worst ever.

“Wanderlei’s record is the single worst in the history of the UFC,” he claimed. “That’s not just the Zuffa owned UFC, but the SEG UFC as well. He currently has five wins and eight losses. That is the record. He’s won his last two fights, so that means at one point he had three wins and eight losses. There’s never been a guy that terrible in UFC.”

Those stats aren’t quite accurate. Silva, a legend in the Pride Fighting Championships where he was middleweight (in Japan at the time, that was the 93 kilogram class, or 204.6-pound weight class) from 2001 to 2007, currently has a 5-7 UFC record, and has won two of his last three fights. He defeated Cung Le and Brian Stann, both via second-round finish, and in between, lost a five-round decision to Rich Franklin.

The bout is between two of the most experienced fighters in the promotion, with the 36-year-old Sonnen having debuted 17 years ago, although it’s been 12 years of fighting regularly. Silva, 37, in his 18th year of fighting professionally, first made a name for himself on the Brazilian circuit in a tournament in 1997.
In the Stann fight, one of the best of 2013, Silva came back from multiple first-round knockdowns, and Sonnen admits that was a good showing.

“I thought he looked very good and I think he’s a dangerous guy,” he said. “I’m not dismissing him. But he pulled the wool over people’s eyes in Japan with that fake crap. I’ll expose his real competitive history every opportunity I get. I outed him many years ago for those fights in Japan being fake. Time out, that referee’s wearing an ear piece, it looks like Earl Hebner and his twin brother (two well known pro wrestling referees). Those matches aren’t real. I had a teammates who told me the promoter comes in with $10,000 in cash and tells you how this match will go. After I outed him, I got support from (Gary) Goodridge, (Mark) Coleman and (Don) Frye saying Chael’s right.”

Fake probably isn’t the right word to use on Silva’s Pride career. After his first win over Kazushi Sakuraba, at the time a national sports hero, he had the right win at the right time to make a career. The Japanese mentality was that the fans there wanted a Japanese fighter, and preferably Sakuraba or another pro wrestler or famous name, to be the one to beat him on the big stage. The fact none of the chosen Japanese fighters were able to beat him led to his long period of domination.

Silva blew through mostly Japanese competition from 2001 to 2004, including facing Sakuraba two more times. But he also beat Rampage Jackson in two of the greatest fights of the era. His 18-fight undefeated streak, which included one draw and one no contest, ended against Mark Hunt, in a unlimited weight class fight that he gave up 76 pounds in.

“I was a struggling fighter sitting on my couch watching guys pretending to win and it p***ed me off,” Sonnen said.

Sonnen, who admitted not being fond of traveling in the first place, had a number of struggles going to Brazil,. It wasn’t just a foreign country where people spoke a different language and an entirely different culture, but it was a place where he was one of the most hated athletes alive a few years back when he used anti-Brazilian rhetoric to promote his two fights with Anderson Silva. Wanderlei Silva was playing off that on the show, telling Sonnen he needed to apologize for what he said, as shown in some previews.

“I saw the advertisement,” said Sonnen. “It was tweeted to me. I liked it, too. It looked pretty good.”
But it was a struggle at times being there.

“There were some challenges that came with that,” he said. “We were at a strategic and competitive disadvantage due to me not speaking Portuguese and being able to communicate. That was a reality. That was a struggle. It was like the game `Charades.’ You have to act it out. That’s what I was doing throughout this whole experience. We got pretty good at our form of sign language.”

He noted that despite what had been said previously, on the first day he got on the set with Jon Jones, he talked to him, using football as an analogy, since Jones has two brothers who play in the NFL.

“What would opposing coaches in football do? Do they play pranks? Do they vandalize? Do they harass each other? Or do they do the best job with their teams. He said, `I’m with you.'”

“With Wanderlei, that didn’t work. I tried to have that talk many times. It didn’t work.”

But as far as Sonnen knows, while he’s signed to fight Silva, the opposite is still not the case.

“I have no update, but I continue to poke him in the chest with the statement that he hasn’t signed,” said Sonnen. “I know he hadn’t signed the last we had an update.

“My assumption, psychology wise, is if he had signed, he would make that announcement.”