Author: Dave Meltzer

Saturday’s UFC show at the O2 Arena was the first time in Europe that an American viewer would notice that this isn’t the same UFC. Instead of being an American television show that takes place in Europe, this was a European-based show viewed by Americans.

Dana White is fond of saying how you can’t judge a card until after it takes place.

Well, yes and no.

The reality is before every UFC event, every consumer will decide, based on the lineup, whether the show is worth their time to either pay for, or watch for free. But a lineup that doesn’t look interesting can, and often is, a better show that a lineup that going in looks like it can’t miss.

On one end of the spectrum, you have the Strikeforce show on April 17, 2010 that aired on CBS from Nashville. It had three title matches and was a night that would catapult Strikeforce into a much stronger position as the No. 2 promotion on the horizon.

I can recall my thoughts the night before thinking how all three matches looked like can’t miss, Jake Shields vs. Dan Henderson, Gegard Mousasi vs. King Mo Lawal and Gilbert Melendez vs. Shinya Aoki. Now, there’s no such thing as can’t miss, but it would take lightning striking three times in the same location for all three of those matches to be boring. But they were. Shields took a tired Henderson down at will and mostly kept him there for four of five rounds. Mo took Mousasi down at will and mostly kept him there for five of five rounds. Aoki decided his plan of attack against Melendez was to take as little punishment as possible before losing a one-sided decision.

To cap off that night was a near-riot in the ring, and CBS decided never to air MMA on network television again. So much for a can’t-miss show. In hindsight, that night was one of many factors why Strikeforce ended up being sold to the UFC.

At the other end of the spectrum was Saturday’s UFC show from The Venetian in Macau, China. The show was filled with unknown debuting fighters, including names only familiar to those who watched TUF China. Given that the show didn’t air anywhere in North America, and even those who were able to find it on the Internet had to watch a show mostly in Chinese, there wasn’t exactly a ground swell of interest in whether Wang Sai or Zhang Lipeng would win a UFC contract, let alone people salivating at the prospect of Kazuki Tokudome and Yui Chul Nam.

It ended up being UFC’s most entertaining show of a year that has had its share of lackluster nights. There were only eight fights, the least of any UFC show in recent memory. But there was nothing remotely close to a bad fight, and the presentation on Fight Pass, with no commercials except for UFC events and shows between fights, seemed to almost breeze by. And even the commercials were highlights on this night, in particular a lengthy preview to the upcoming TUF Brazil featuring Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva. An edited version of that commercial on YouTube was at just under 1.3 million views over the next 48 hours.

The show was largely a success as far as streaming went. There were momentary issues, always rectified in seconds, in a medium that over the past week has had its share of high-profile technological disasters.
The bookend bouts were significant for different reasons.

The first thing notable when the show started was the crowd going wild for Filipino fighter Mark Eddiva (6-0). Eddiva, who hadn’t fought in three years, and never in the UFC, had something about him even before the match started, where you could sense he could be a star. But while the look of movie star action figure is great, in UFC, you have to back it up with being able to fight.

His foe, Jumabieke Tuerxun, came in at 17-0 on the Chinese MMA scene. The Chinese scene is in its infancy, and is a good decade behind the world scene, so that number doesn’t mean what it would if somebody came out of North America, Europe or Brazil with that kind of a record.

Eddiva showed flashy striking, with kicks from all angles and quickness at both defending and attacking with takedowns coming from his Wu Shu background. In some ways, he felt like a cross between a young Cung Le and 90s Muay Thai world champion, the late Alex Gong.

While not as explosive when it came to finishing, in many ways his debut was reminiscent of Conor McGregor, in the sense you could see from his style, look and how the crowd took to him, that, provided he could compete at a high level, he could be a national star in his home country.

The last thing on the show was a spinning elbow to the left side of the face by South Korea’s Dong Hyun Kim (19-2-1, 1 no contest), turning the lights out on John Hathaway (17-2) at 1:02 of the third round. This bout would have garnered the best fight bonus on 80 percent of UFC shows. The two underrated welterweights went back-and-forth. Kim, whose game formerly consisted of using judo to take guys off their feet, garnered more confidence in his stand-up after his knockout of Erick Silva on Oct. 9, which was both good and bad.

He was landing big punches, but his wild swinging left him open for counters, and also started tiring him out. Plus, after the first round, which he had clearly won, and his corner was giving him instructions, he turned his back to get into a conversation with a woman, presumably his girlfriend, in the front row.
Hathaway started to take Kim apart for much of the second round, although Kim remained in the game because some of his big shots connected. But Kim seemed on the verge of being done as Hathaway unloaded with punches, elbows and knees at the start of the third round. But then Kim’s elbow connected out of nowhere, a split-second that will be on highlight reels for Best-of-2014 knockouts.

Kim hopped over the cage, hugged his girlfriend, then realized he wasn’t supposed to be doing that. He hopped back over the cage into the octagon and started doing all kinds of flips.

The Chinese crowd was loud, but clearly impatient. They were quick to explode when there was action, whether they knew the fighters or not. And they were quick to boo, showing their disapproval when the action slowed down, even if the two men had been giving delivering a great fight until seconds earlier.
The fighters, mostly inexperienced on the UFC stage, reacted to the crowd. Unlike veteran fighters who are going to fight their fight no matter how the crowd reacts, these fighters, for the most part, at the first sign of boos, started throwing wildly.

The can’t-miss fight ended up with Korean Nam (18-4-1) taking a split decision over Japanese fighter Tokudome (12-5-1).

Depending on how you score a blow that put Tokudome to a knee briefly, Tokudome either tied an auspicious UFC record, or broke one, in surviving three or four knockdowns in the first round, very much reminiscent of round one in the second Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard fight. You could have scored the round 10-7, although one judge actually only gave it a 10-9.

Tokudome had swelling under both eyes by the end of the round, growing like eggs, with the one under the left eye by the end of the fight looking like it was about to hatch. The crowd, sensing it was over from one close-up of Tokudome’s face, went crazy seeing him come out for the second round.

And they went even crazier when he took Nam down right away and spent the entire round beating on him in a round that could have been scored 10-8, although only one judge did so.

It came down to the third round. Nam scored another knockdown. Both traded takedowns. Both exhausted fighters threw punches. Tokudome took Nam down at the buzzer. The crowd exploded, giving both men a standing ovation. The third round was close enough that it could have gone either way, with Nam getting a split decision.

Those were hardly the only highlights.

Matt Mitrione (7-3) finished Shawn Jordan (15-6) in a battle of former college football players when the former Purdue star connected with punch after punch standing. Jordan was just about done, but the flurry started with only 15 seconds left in the first round. Herb Dean jumped in to stop it, a split second before the horn sounded to end the round. But there was no controversy here. Dean’s stoppage was perfectly timed and even if the horn had beat the stoppage, Jordan was done.

Mitrione finished with a tremendous and even touching post-match promo. In particular, instead of talking about himself, he brought up a 19-year-old training partner, Luis Guerra, whose parents and four siblings had passed away in a fire the day he left Indiana for China, and pushed for people to go to his Twitter account of @MattMitrione for information on donations.

If this was a decade earlier, when the sport was more about big men, and had Mitrione come up at a younger age, he could have been one of the most remembered characters with his kill-or-be-killed style, combined with some natural charisma, outspoken talking and being so light on his feet at 260 pounds. But his upside is limited by time, being almost 36 and still in the developing stages, less than five years after taking up the sport.

Even the TUF finale, featuring Chinese fighters with modest records, went back-and-forth for three rounds. Lipeng (8-7-1) took a split decision over Sai (7-5-1) in a fight that could have gone either way, that was reminiscent of some of the early TUF finales.

When the UFC was first purchased by the current ownership group, and it set its eyes on becoming a worldwide promotion, Dana White on several occasions has talked about how the United Kingdom was one of the first places targeted.

After more than a dozen years, the market has had its frustrations. One of them hasn’t been attracting a rabid hardcore fan base, as live shows have generally been very successful. This coming Saturday’s show, headlined by Alexander Gustafsson vs. Jimi Manuwa, held at the O2 Arena in London was almost sold out, with about 14,000 paid and nearly $2 million gate, as of two weeks ago. Those are impressive figures for a show with Michael Johnson vs. Melvin Guillard as the No. 2 fight.

But the television situation has been difficult to navigate, and due to that, building MMA as a major sport or as part of the culture has been a slow process.

There are a few issues at stake. One is there are so few free-to-air stations, with most being part of subscription packages, which are fine for serving an existing fan base, but due to limitations of exposure, not so great at capturing new fans. Another is most UFC major events from North America air in the middle of the night in Europe. Again, the most ardent UFC fans, and fans of American sports in general, like boxing, are used to that. But it’s difficult to expand the fan base.

There has also been the lack of a British world champion. Michael Bisping, Dan Hardy and Tom “Kong” Watson, the best known of the UFC fighters, all have native popularity, but there has never been that superstar fighter that breaks through like Georges St-Pierre in Canada or Anderson Silva in Brazil.

That’s why UFC’s new television deal in the market is so significant. Besides airing on BT Sports, the home of all UFC live events, Saturday’s show will air from 9-11 p.m. on Ch. 5, one of the five major free-to-air stations in the country. It would be equivalent in some ways to the FOX deal in the U.S.  Ch. 5 is the equivalent of a network station in the U.S., although it is No. 5 in the marketplace.

That means, instead of an audience measured in tens of thousands, there could be a million or more viewers, the most any UFC event in history has ever garnered in that part of the world. The station averages 1 million viewers in that time slot and there have been boxing matches with local heavyweight Tyson Fury that have doubled that number.

Saturday’s show kicks off a new deal with the station that will air six shows in prime time in 2014, all live. The plan is to air shows in Europe, as well as the Middle East, as part of the deal. The shows will feature the new announcing team of John Gooden, who came from Cage Warriors, along with soccer host Andy Friedlander and U.K. MMA star Dan Hardy.

According to David Allen of the UFC, BT Sports, as part of its contract, will air the entire event live. Both channels will have the same fight feed, but each channel have their own separate in-studio coverage. The show will also be available live on Fight Pass, just as it is available in the U.S.

Testosterone replacement therapy had felt like a bad joke that plagued MMA over the past year, and Nevada’s ruling, which the UFC will abide by, on paper puts that era to rest. But in reality, the issue is far more complicated than the black and white viewing many have.

We have a complex set of issues here.

The first is that the Nevada Athletic Commission (NAC) made a complete ban on testosterone replacement therapy, which the UFC said they would also recognize for shows overseas that they self-regulate. The second is that hours later, the lightning rod over the last year in TRT discussions, Vitor Belfort, voluntarily pulled out of his middleweight title match on May 24 in Las Vegas, against Chris Weidman. And in doing so, put himself and his amazing high kick knockouts as the MMA equivalent to the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run battles in baseball.

Belfort arrived on the MMA scene as a 19-year-old boxing and jiu-jitsu prodigy of Carlson Gracie. At the time he was a heavyweight known as Victor Belfort Gracie, for marketing reasons, who looked like he just got out of a teenage bodybuilding contest. His fists were like Ronda Rousey’s armbars with his series of one minute finishes and he was destined to be the greatest fighter the sport would ever see. He had a good career, but he never reached that level. He garnered the reputation as a head case early, then became a sympathetic figure due to the kidnapping and murder of his sister. Then, before his fights, people would be teased with the idea the “Old Vitor” was back.

He went from being unbeatable and fiercely aggressive one day, and completely passive, much smaller and less muscular, and a reasonably good fighter who couldn’t hang with the top level fighters the next.

During what would be the athletic prime for most athletes, the ages between 27 and 29, the “phenom” as a teenager compiled a 2-5 record. In his last fight before turning 30, he testing positive an anabolic agent in his loss to Dan Henderson.

He then won five in a row, garnering and losing in a middleweight title shot at Anderson Silva. It was after that loss that he has said he went on testosterone replacement therapy. Since then, he’s fought six times.

His lone loss was to a much bigger Jon Jones, in a fight he took on short notice as a favor to UFC, which desperately needed someone at the time. Lyoto Machida turned the fight down due to lack of preparation time. On that day, and not his fault under the circumstances, he clearly had nowhere near the stamina necessary for a championship fight. But that became the M.O. He was one of the world’s greatest one-round fighters, but if you could take him to the third round, it was the equivalent of cutting Samson’s hair. Only now, with the exception of Jones, nobody could get to round three since 2007.

His other five post-Silva fights consisted of five wins, all by stoppage. Four were in the first round, pulverizing Henderson, Luke Rockhold, Anthony Johnson and Yoshihiro Akiyama. The other was an early second-round knockout of Michael Bisping. At 36, with three head kick knockouts in one year, he was in the conversation for the 2013 Fighter of the Year award. And he was clearly the top contender for Weidman’s crown.

Belfort’s being granted an exemption for testosterone use was controversial because of his failed test. All three of his fights last year were in Brazil. Before leaving his post as the Executive Director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, Keith Kizer, on several occasions had indicated it was unlikely Belfort would be given such an exemption in Nevada, the home base of the UFC, and where its biggest fights take place.

Thursday’s meeting, which ended with the ban of exemptions altogether, was likely triggered by the fact Belfort was going to apply for an exemption, and the commission wanted distinct rules in place to guide them. They couldn’t have spoken more loudly about what the answer was going to be to the request Belfort had said he was going to make for a TUE.

The armchair response is this was a great day for a sport filled with questions about the unusually high number of its athletes who had been granted exemptions. These exemptions were granted by several different athletic commissions, as well as the UFC itself when it did its self-regulated overseas shows.

Part of the reason is the unusual proportion of high profile fighters receiving these exemptions. Besides Belfort, the names included Chael Sonnen, Dan Henderson, Nate Marquardt, Forrest Griffin, Frank Mir, Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.

Keep in mind that such exemptions are allowed in other sports, but are rarely granted. There were none in all sports combined at the 2012 Olympics, and only a few over the last two decades in the NFL. But it’s not so simple.

The drug testing in combat sports is woefully inadequate since, with very few exceptions, drug testing occurs only on the day of the fight. The exception is for some high-profile main events in Nevada, which have had participants get tested unannounced in training camp.

Anyone else, with even the most basic of coaching can use PEDs all through camp, and wean off to clear their system enough to test negative.

The only fighters that doesn’t apply to are Belfort and his brethren, who were tested in most cases weekly throughout their camp. This was to make sure they remained within legal levels, and not spiking testosterone levels to what would be out of the realm of someone normal. In doing so, they would get competitive advantages during the toughest part of camp, due to the drugs speeding up recovery rates.

Marquardt and Silva ended up busted for levels above normal due to the enhanced testing and scrutiny fighters granted exceptions receive. Marquardt ended up pulled from a main event fight a few days before it was to take place, and was then fired by UFC.

Marquardt has since returned, signing with Strikeforce and being absorbed back into UFC when Strikeforce closed down. Silva is currently serving a suspension, from being found with levels above normal which he said was from taking a late shot right before his classic brawl with Mark Hunt in December.

Marquardt and Silva were also like Belfort in the sense they were granted TUEs after having prior test failures. Marquardt, in 2005, tested positive for Nandrolone. Silva, in 2008, tested positive for boldenone. Both, like Belfort, claimed their innocence at the time, claiming they had unwittingly taken a tainted supplement.

The problem with the low testosterone is that in the vast majority of cases that athletes in their 20s and 30s develop this problem, it is due to taking anabolic steroids, which mess with your endocrine system and limit your ability to produce testosterone. There can be other reasons, but they are rare.

But it’s impossible to prove the cause of low testosterone, only diagnose that it’s a legitimate medical issue. Or doctors or athletes working together in a competitive sport can find ways to create such a diagnosis, such as creating an environment for a low reading by staying up late and drinking a lot of alcohol, or testing right after getting off a steroid cycle. The commissions can put in safeguards to see through the latter, and a number of athletes that have applied have been turned down. But ultimately, there is no way to know the cause of the issue. In a perfect world, those who had the problem from prior steroid use should be up a creek, while the small percentage who had a legitimate medical issue should be treated differently. The problem is, by being sympathetic to the latter you are risking rewarding the former.

Thus the door may have been opened to former steroid cheats who are able to use this loophole to get a career second wind.

In a nutshell, the whole TRT controversy was based on the idea that many of those applying had burned through their system by taking steroids. In doing so, were able to build more muscle mass than they could have naturally. In going on TRT, even in putting their body into normal levels, were able to regain that steroid-built mass due to muscle memory, and in a sense, cheat at the other end after the damage they had caused themselves from prior use. In addition, there are unanswered questions regarding the combination of using artificial testosterone combined with Growth Hormone, another illegal drug that is virtually impossible to detect and is used with impunity by high-level athletes, and the synergistic combination of the two drugs magnifying the effects of each.

TRT was supposed to be limited to those with medical need, not in the sense they couldn’t fight as well without it, but that it was a health risk to not be on it. And once you get on it, because it further shuts down the natural production by the body, the very thing that in theory forced you onto it in the first place, you have to remain on it for life.

Yet, Marquardt and Shane Roller both claimed to have given it up because of the controversy of their names being linked to it.

And now, Belfort is saying he will abide by the commission rules and get off it himself, but there isn’t enough time before May 24, so is pulling out of his title fight and not requesting a Nevada license. He has since changed his tune in a released statement. This comes three weeks after he was given a surprise test by the Nevada commission, the results of which have not been released.

There are two factors here. One is the physical. Belfort would have to wean himself off the therapy and wait for his body to normalize. The second is mental. In both boxing and MMA, there are whispers about fighters coming off steroids after being caught. Very often, in their next fight, besides a change in muscle tone, there is the deeper mental reaction, a loss of aggressiveness and confidence, a killer to a fighter in a championship situation. Thus, this may have been one of the least surprising championship pullouts in history.

If Belfort can get off the therapy and lead a normal life, let alone fight, he should have never been approved for it in the first place. In his case, with his prior test failure, it made no sense he was granted such an exemption to begin with.

The Nevada commission’s decision, based largely on the testimony of Dr. Timothy Trainor, followed the lead of The Association of Ringside Physicians, who recommended a similar policy of banning such exemptions from combat sports in January.

But there are key issues ignored in this outright banning.

If there were athletes who followed all protocols, had legitimate medical need, and been granted an exemption, their careers and health are being kicked to the curb by the same agencies that are supposed to be protecting those things from happening.

By now banning such exemptions, the fighters are put in a position to either retire from the sport, or both risk the health issues that come from low testosterone and the potential health risks of competing in a combat sport while having dangerously low levels in their system and with weak production.

As controversial as this would have been to most, it would have been a much fairer situation to have banned TUE’s from this point forward, but grandfather in those who have received exemptions in the past rather than put them in a position to either have to retire or face greatly enhance health risks both in and out of competition. If anyone had a legitimate need, the commissions, by allowing such therapy in the past, created a rule and a deal to, in theory, put them in a position of lifetime need. I would not advocate that include fighters who had prior positive steroid tests, so this grant would only apply to a few active fighters, Sonnen, Henderson, Jackson and Mir, all of whom are near the end of their careers anyway.

There is also the case of Silva, who suffers from acromegaly. It’s disease that, combined with the surgery to remove the tumor on his pituitary gland that caused his affliction, is medically proven to greatly lower testosterone. Because of his disease, it is a significant health risk for him to have low testosterone, having nothing to do with being a fighter.

What compounds the Silva dilemma is he’s got not just one, but two test failures on his record. But he’s left with a series of alternatives, none of which are good. He can either retire, he can cheat to avoid severe health problems, or he can continue his career and take very serious health risks in doing so.

Whatever ruling the Nevada commission would have made, or statement the ARP would have made, had they addressed the specific issues of Silva and the other fighters would be one thing. By making a blanket ruling that is absolutely valid in the majority of instances, but without considering the exceptions, or likely even giving a moment of thought to these issues, concerns me a lot.

Because of how high profile Belfort is, this seems like a huge step against PED use in MMA. In reality, it’s a ruling that affects very few fighters, and will lead to significant risks to at least some of those few in question.

A far more important discussion would be addressing the much more massive issue of fighters who use the lack of testing to cheat with almost impunity. But for commissions, that becomes a financial issue. This ruling costs nothing and actually saves the commission some money in not having to test the few applicants on a regular basis.

Essentially, they put a Band-Aid on a cancer. But it was a positive step, because approvals seemed like they were being issued with far too much leniency.

It makes everyone feel better, though, particularly those who felt Belfort never should have gotten his exemption due to his past. In his case, the feeling is, justice was served a little late, He was served up on a silver platter, publicly humbled, and had to walk out on his championship opportunity.

For others, it’s not quite so simple.

Thus far, people who have been waiting for Ronda Rousey to fall on her face, both as a fighter and as a drawing card, are on a big losing streak. But there are still business realities of a female star in a combat sport where it takes two people to make for a big bout.

All week long, the UFC was pushing the idea in its brave new world of 2014, where Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva are not around (at least for the foreseeable future) the company’s biggest star is Ronda Rousey.

Rousey is a heat magnet to begin with, between her antics on The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) reality show, and simply the very idea of a woman in a male-dominated sport being even under consideration as its biggest star, something that may have never been the case at any time in any combat sport.

But this heat wasn’t her doing. Thus far, if you bet against Rousey, either in her fights or against her success, whether it be in pay-per-view, ratings or ability to garner interest outside of MMA, you’re on a bad losing streak so far.

Still, the day will come. And when it comes to selling a fight, most of the time, it takes two to tango. With women’s fights, that may be even more true.

There are two truths the last year of Rousey have shown. The people who were crying WNBA last year about the UFC audience not wanting women to invade their sacred ground, forgetting that other organizations had success for years for women fights, ended up as wrong as wrong can be. And suddenly, after just two years in the spotlight and one year in UFC, by default, yes, she garners more attention than any fighter in the company.

But there is a second truth. While Rousey is the exception to this rule to a degree, it is much harder to get people to buy tickets or pay-per-views on a show headlined by women. Attempts to do so in boxing usually failed badly. In pro wrestling, the idea of women as regular headliners as opposed to attractions had a run during World War II, but that era was done more than 60 years ago.

For all the talk Dana White would say about how big Rousey is, and he’s not wrong, he’s also well aware of gender limitations that he won’t say publicly. The two major shows headlined by Rousey, with no strong male support, were priced lower than most pay-per-view shows would be in the same arena, and priced more like a FOX show. That’s why last year’s show at the Honda Center, which sold out, still generated a lower gate than non-sold out pay-per-view events in the same building. That’s why UFC 170, even though the Mandalay Bay Events Center was packed and tickets were selling at a normal level for a non-major show, did the lowest Las Vegas gate since UFC exploded in popularity from television.

When UFC returns to Las Vegas on May 24 for Chris Weidman vs. Vitor Belfort, while neither may be in Hollywood or get nearly the requests from non-MMA talk shows, you can bet ticket prices will be significantly higher.

There’s also another issue.

Provided Rousey keeps winning and headlining, she has one potential opponent that, with the right marketing, could be the company’s biggest fight of 2014. Everyone knows who that is.

Cris “Cyborg” Justino, whose name is always talked about in conjunction with Rousey, even though she has never fought in the UFC. Justino has remained, to most fans, either that jacked up girl who beat up Gina Carano on Showtime a few years ago, or the woman who beat up a bunch of women, tested positive and nobody has ever heard from again. Yes, some people saw her demolish Marloes Coenen in Invicta, but that number was tiny compared to her days on CBS and Showtime.

To make the fight come anywhere near its potential, Justino has to get back on the mainstream radar. Cutting weight is only a small part of it. She’s going to have to fight in the UFC, it would be best at least two times. If Justino was put on a major television show or pay-per-view, so the average fan who makes the difference between the 200,000 buy shows and the 750,000 buy shows sees her either for the first time, or the first time in years, in their minds, very quickly, they’ll be thinking about the fight with Rousey whether the UFC talks about it or not.

Of course, in MMA, the longer you wait to build someone, the greater the chances that something goes wrong, whether it be an upset loss, or a serious injury.

Whatever Dana White will say publicly about the fight, he’s fully aware of its marketability. And its risks. Cyborg beat Carano. And interest in women’s MMA dwindled, until the first Rousey controversy. That’s the one from early 2012 when Rousey talked her way ahead of Sarah Kaufman into a title shot with Miesha Tate in Strikeforce. It was decried when she got it, because many were offended by the message that either her mouth or her face, or both, gave her an opportunity she otherwise would have had to have waited another year or two to get.

With the benefit of hindsight, anyone thinks that was bad for any woman in the sport in the big picture, including Kaufman, who rode Rousey’s wave of popularity to a much bigger main event with her, and to fighting on the UFC stage, was proven wrong.

The reality is one of Las Vegas’ big gamblers has to weigh the reward vs. the risk. And he also has to make the call at the right time to get maximum reward for the risk. The sooner Justino appears on UFC broadcasts, the sooner the fans who make the difference between an average show and a big show tell their friends about her, and it becomes likely the biggest women’s fight of this generation. The longer Justino fights elsewhere, the longer it will take to build that interest and the larger the risk that something happens for it to lose its luster before it becomes the superfight that got away.

And yes, history has already told us what the risk is. If Justino wins decisively, women’s MMA will be around, there will be fun fights and personalities on TV and pay-per-view. But you can also say goodbye to big money main events from women until the law of fighting evolution does what always happens, somebody gets old and somebody new charismatic shows up knocking on that person’s door.

Let’s look at how fortunes changed, in this case, for five UFC 170 winners.

RONDA ROUSEY – After winning her ninth straight fight, and eighth first-round stoppage, Rousey will film the movie “Entourage,” and then prepare to fight again. At the press conference, she targeted late summer, if not a little sooner. July 5 in Las Vegas is a traditional big show, and fighting on that date would allow her to be ready for the company’s other traditional big event over New Year’s weekend.

For the short-term, there is another issue. Sara McMann was supposed to be competitive, and give Rousey the toughest and most grueling fight of her career. This was supposed to be a battle of world-class judo vs. world-class wrestling, takedowns vs. throws, ground control vs. submission skill, and back-and-forth stand-up in between.

Instead, the fighter on the roster who had been talked about for a year as her ultimately toughest competitor, was done in 66 seconds. Yes, it was controversial as far as whether the stoppage was early. And we’ve seen plenty of people come back from a lot worse first minute predicaments to win fights. But that didn’t happen here.

After seeing Alexis Davis (16-5) take a decision earlier in the show over Jessica Eye that could have easily gone the other way, and seeing Rousey headline, I don’t think anyone’s imagination was working overtime about not being able to wait for Rousey vs. Davis. The most likely next opponent, Cat Zingano (8-0), earned the title shot that Miesha Tate got, but her life has been a nightmare since that time, with operations on both knees and her estranged husband committing suicide.

Past that, the division is filled with contenders either coming off losses like Tate, Kaufman, Liz Carmouche, McMann and Eye, or Julianna Pena, who had a knee injury so bad she’s not even in the discussion until late 2015.

DANIEL CORMIER – The quickness of Cormier’s first win at light heavyweight over Patrick Cummins only led to more questions than answers.

Cummins had never fought in the UFC, and took the fight with less than two weeks to spare, most of which was spent doing promotion. Cummins is a gifted athlete and a bad ass wrestler. But he was giving up far too much in MMA experience and was facing the worst style match-up possible for him, a better wrestler.

What Cormier proved more than anything was his ability to make weight with no issues. Obviously the goal is the light heavyweight title.

Cormier is now 14-0, and even more impressive, he is one of only two title contenders in UFC to have never lost a round in competition (Rousey being the other).

Jon Jones, the current champion, faces Glover Teixeira on Apr. 26 in Baltimore. The other key division fight is Alexander Gustafsson vs. Jimi Manuwa on Mar. 8 in London, England.

If Jones and Gustafsson win, they will almost surely face each other, leaving Cormier’s most logical next foe as the winner of the Apr. 26 fight with Phil Davis vs. Anthony Johnson, a fight Davis would be favored in. Like he was with Cummins, Cormier looks like the worst possible problem for Cummins former Penn State University wrestling teammate, a former NCAA champion in Davis whose rest of his game is still well behind his wrestling.

If Jones wins and Gustafsson loses, Cormier should get the next shot. If Teixeira and Gustafsson win, they should face off, and Cormier vs. Jones should take place without the title at stake. If Teixeira and Manuwa both win, Cormier could easily get the shot at Teixeira.

RORY MACDONALD – After his loss to Robbie Lawler on Nov. 16, there was some question where MacDonald (16-2) was the victim of over hype.

Sure, he beat a sleepwalking Jake Ellenberger, threw around a Nate Diaz who belonged in a lower weight class, and beat up on a much smaller B.J. Penn. But his biggest claims to fame was really that he came from the same gym as Georges St-Pierre, so he got asked whether he’d fight the champion so many times that people just figured he must be the next superstar of the division. That, and at the age of 20, he beat Carlos Condit for two rounds before being finished late in the third.

But Demian Maia as a welterweight was no joke. MacDonald was on his back against one of the most dangerous ground fighters in the world for almost the entire first round, and was never in serious trouble. From there, his sprawl-and-brawl, as well as a conditioning edge took over, as Maia has trouble keeping up and at times seemed like a punching bag.

Now 24, with GSP out of the picture, the win puts MacDonald in the hunt for his next title shot. The key fights are both on March 15 in Dallas, as Johny Hendricks faces Lawler for the vacant title, and Condit faces Tyron Woodley. If Hendricks and Condit win, given Hendricks has already beaten Condit, then MacDonald would likely be the next contender. The exception would be if Condit’s win next time is very impressive. If Lawler and Condit win, Condit would have the edge, unless his win was lackluster.

RAPHAEL ASSUNCAO – Assuncao (21-4), won all three rounds over previously unbeaten late replacement Pedro Munhoz (10-1) with quicker stand-up in a battle of high-level jiu-jitsu practitioners. Even though he was on FOX Sports 1 and not the pay-per-view, Assuncao should be in line for a bantamweight title shot at Renan Barao, and 35-fight unbeaten streak over nearly nine years.

Assuncao holds a win over T.J. Dillashaw, who along with Takeya Mizugaki are active top bantamweights left standing after Barao finished Michael McDonald, Eddie Wineland and Urijah Faber. But also in the decision making process would be Dominick Cruz, the champion who never lost, but has been out of action for more than two years with one injury after another.

Assuncao’s title aspirations really depend more on the mentality with Cruz. Do they have him do a tune-up fight after so long off, just to see if he can get through camp and get the ring rust out? Or do they go with Barao vs. Cruz, and perhaps keep Assuncao on stand-by?

ZACH MAKOVSKY – The former Bellator champion at bantamweight is now 4-0 since moving to flyweight, with UFC wins over Scott Jorgensen and Josh Sampo.

Makovsky (18-4) may be able to take advantage of a weight class with minimal depth and a champion, in Demetrious Johnson, who has run through everyone in short order.

Makovsky, the former captain of the Drexel wrestling team, was able to take Sampo down whenever he needed, to take the decision. The decision on the next challenger for Johnson should come down to either he or Ali Bagautinov (13-2), who defeated John Lineker via decision three weeks ago.

Bagautinov (13-2) has three UFC wins with quality of UFC opposition not all that different and no real popularity or marketability edge over Makovsky.

Campbell McLaren, the mastermind behind the first few years of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, returns to the sport he helped build for a third run, this time with a Hispanic-geared reality show designed to build to a live show promotion.

Over the last 20 years, Campbell McLaren has traveled an long and winding road, and now it’s led him back to the same door.

In 1993, McLaren, working for Semaphore Entertainment Group (SEG), which produced pay-per-view events, received a pitch from Art Davie and Rorion Gracie. He then green lit the concept and produced an event called the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), pitting fighters of different disciplines against each other.

McLaren came up with the marketing ideas to garner attention. The concept quickly became a hit. But it’s success may have led to its near demise. The attention getting promotional ideas he came up with, like claiming the fighters were battling with no rules, two men enter, one man leaves, and banned in 49 states got people to watch out of curiosity or check out videos of at their local Blockbuster. It riled up the media and politicians. He was moved from the helm a few years later and was long gone when Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta purchased the once-thriving company in 2001 in something of a fire sale, for $2 million.

On Sunday night, McLaren returns with a new MMA vehicle, Combate Americas, a reality show which, if everything goes well, will be the start of a new promotion aimed at the Hispanic audience. It airs on Mun2, a mostly Spanish language station geared toward younger viewers, which is part of the NBC Universal umbrella.

The concept is introducing a group of fighters, all Americans of Hispanic backgrounds, and tell back stories of their struggles. They compete for their families, or for some sort of redemption. The show consists of a series of physical challengers of strength, endurance and MMA skill. That leads to fights at the end of the season, with the idea that the winners get contracts with the Combate Americas promotion.

Ten one-hour episodes have been produced. The first airing each week, on Sunday nights, is aimed at the Spanish speaking audience. A Wednesday night replay, airing right after mun2’s replay of WWE Raw, being “Gringo night,” as McLaren puts it, is earmarked for English-language viewers.

“The network loves it,” said McLaren. “But if it doesn’t do well, we don’t come back. If it does well, the second season will start in September.”

The season ending fights were already taped at Casino Magic in Miami, near South Beach, where the season was shot. They fight in a circular cage, called “La Jaula,” Spanish for cage.

“La Jaula, it sounds so bad ass, it sounds so much better than `the cage,'” he said about the term already entrenched in the Mexican Lucha Libre culture regarding grudge matches “en La Jaula.”

There was a fighter who had his entire huge family there with his young daughter screaming, “Go papa.”

“I thought I was going to cry,” McLaren said about that scene. “I can’t imagine that in the UFC. This is such a family culture. It’s about fighting for the family, the neighborhood, the country and to make a living. The show is not gritty or down scale. We put them in the nicest places in South Beach, a beautiful home, they met world class Spanish language stars. This was the big time for these guys and they responded to it.”

Perhaps the fighting star of the cast is Level Martinez, who McLaren described as the Hispanic Kimbo Slice. He comes in to the show already somewhat well known in the culture for backyard street fights that aired on YouTube.

“It’s not a typical story,” McLaren said. “He spent four years in prison. He’s a bad, bad man. He found truth and MMA while in prison. He now works in anti-gang programs and has turned his life around through MMA. All the fighters have interesting stories..

“We have a guy from Arkansas, Illinois, Texas, California, New York, Florida, they are all Americans, they all speak English and Spanish. I was looking for anyone who considers themselves culturally Hispanic.”

McLaren said the show with be more story driven, character driven and plot driven than other MMA reality shows. The goal at the end is to win a contract to fight for Combate Americas, the fight league. The plan is after the reason, to run a live, two-hour fight special from Chicago in May, Miami in June, and San Jose and San Antonio in the fall.

Reality shows about fighters aren’t exactly knocking them dead these days. The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) struggles unless there is the right coaching mix. Bellator’s Fight Master lasted one season. Dana White’s boxing reality show, “The Fighters,” lasted roughly as long as it takes to wash and dry a load of laundry. Even McLaren, pairing back up with David Isaacs, who he ran UFC with in the early days, did a show called “The Iron Ring,” on BET, which lasted 14 episodes back in 2008.

That was a learning experience. The idea here was to not make the same mistakes twice.

“I tried to program this very differently from Iron Ring,” said McLaren. “Iron Ring was annoying to a lot of MMA fans. I don’t think this will be annoying.”

The concept of that show was celebrity coaches, like Ludacris, Nelly and Floyd Mayweather Jr. It opened to strong ratings, particularly in the 12-to-24 age group that UFC wasn’t hitting as well. But the show was heavily criticized, and it was clear the station lost interest.

“People were asking, what does Ludacris know about MMA,” he said. “I leaned a lot from that show. I know I had early ratings success, and then an implosion. T.I. got arrested. Nelly was arrested. It’ll hurt you show when your cast all goes to jail. A lot of things didn’t work.”

A couple of the cast members, Jamie Yager, Marcus Brimage and Mike Easton, wound up in UFC. Obongo Humphrey, the show’s heavyweight star, was briefly in Strikeforce. Brian Rogers now fights in Bellator.

“It’s every man for himself, and family story driven,” he said about the differences in the shows. “That and everybody didn’t get arrested. In Iron Ring, our commissioner got arrested and he wouldn’t answer his calls. He was gone. We didn’t her from him until three months after we wrapped.”

“If you’re building something to appeal to African-Americans, you’re very limited,” McLaren said. “The Hispanic demo is growing, and it’s a youth demo. In the year 2015, the majority of people under the age of 18 will be Hispanic. This is where America is going to be very quickly.”

What led to this show was McLaren started learning the Spanish media when he produced a bilingual television show called TuNit con Lorenzo Parro, on Telemundo, as well as an HBO special, called Comedy Salsa.

“I kept thinking, who is more passionate about fighting than Hispanic fighters and Hispanic fight fans,” he said. “Bob Arum said that Hispanic fight fans kept the sport of boxing alive.”

UFC, largely through Cain Velasquez, has garnered some interest in that audience, but for the most part, that crowd hasn’t taken to UFC the way one would have thought given how big boxing and pro wrestling are in the Mexican and Puerto Rican cultures.

“I’m talking about Americans, 55 million Americans, the majority speak English but culturally they are still Hispanic. I think I can bring in a whole new group of fans, people who have heard of mixed martial arts, but don’t know it. People who watch the UFC, I’m not after them. One of the big failings of Iron Ring was that T.I. and Ludacris knew nothing about this sport. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.”

Bunim-Murray, the creators of “Real World,” are putting the shows together.

“Bunim-Murray practically invented reality TV with Real World almost 30 years ago,” he noted. “I created the TV side of the UFC, the Octagon, I was the one who hired Joe Rogan and (matchmaker) Joe Silva. Those are my elements on the show.”

The cast of the show rubbed elbows with a number of celebrities. Daddy Yankee, the Puerto Rican Reggaeton recording artist, who was a boxer in his youth, serves as the commissioner. Piolin, the leading Spanish language radio host in the U.S., is one of the announcers. Also hosting are Venezuelan Grammy winning recording artists Chino y Nacho and MMA reporter Andrea Calle as the female host. Royce Gracie and Eddie Alvarez are regulars as MMA coaches.

“I want all MMA fans to watch, but I’ll be happy if it’s just an Hispanic audience because I think it’s an under served group.”