And so it has come down to this in MMA fandom: Many folks root for letters and numbers over actual people.
This is what we learned after the recent skirmish between Conor McGregor and the UFC, the one which saw the former challenge the latter in a public game of chicken only to be yanked out of the car before any collision.
It is a strange thing to see so many people call McGregor names for standing up for himself. He took fire from all sides. In the media, blowhard radio host Colin Cowherd (h/t SportsJoe.ie) called him “dumb.”
Among fellow fighters, flyweight Henry Cejudo was among those who offered the harshest criticism. “I think it’s good for the UFC. The UFC, they need to start stepping up and doing things like that,” he said, per MMA Fighting’s Shaun Al-Shatti. “If you think you’re higher than the UFC, if you think you’re higher than all of the other fighters, then maybe you should get pulled. So, I think it’s a good discipline.”
And of course, the Twitter echo chamber spoke.
The UFC has conditioned its followers and fighters so well that most of them don’t even know it. Fighters are generally expected to accept lightly negotiated contracts, short-notice fights, media obligations, fight kit (uniform) expectations and more with little room to maneuver.
Anyone who attempts to work outside the parameters of that system is often labeled an ingrate or a malcontent, as if those are the only options.
The fact of the matter is that this was a courageous action from McGregor. He has been gaining power and influence since the moment he first signed a UFC deal back in 2013, but this stand was always a gamble.
From the outside looking in, it doesn’t sound like he was asking for huge latitude. He wanted to limit his media obligations and concentrate on training. Coming on the heels of his first UFC defeat, it makes perfect sense. He wanted to return his focus to substance before style.
But the thing is, this isn’t even a new issue for him. Last July, in the afterglow of beating Chad Mendes for the interim featherweight belt, he reflected on the promotional load he had already been carrying for months, saying he was “absolutely sick” of doing media, that he had been home only 19 days all year while trying to manage injuries, cut weight and improve.
It was clear even then that it was starting to drive him crazy.
“You know, it’s damn hard work,” he said at the UFC 189 post-fight press conference. “But then every time I say, ‘You know what, f–k this, next time I’m not doing all this,’ and then I get handed the check and I’m like, ‘Alright then. I’ll do it one more time.’”
The man clearly reached a breaking point, but even after fighting four times in 14 months for the UFC, even after headlining three pay-per-views that did a collective total of over 3.5 million buys, according to Tapology, even after world tours, jumping weight classes and quick turnarounds, the UFC said no.
The UFC makes the schedule, and there is only a bit of wiggle room—even for the biggest name currently competing.
Now, you have to ask yourself, why? Why couldn’t it figure out another way to promote the show that didn’t demand as much of McGregor’s time this time around?
Because it’s never afraid to remind everyone that the show runs with or without them.
In the UFC, the show always comes first. That is woven into the company’s mythos. When telling the company’s history, chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta and president Dana White often note how the Fertitta brothers “spent $2 million on three letters, basically,” essentially disregarding the human competitors who had made those three letters mean something.
Fertitta also once told heavyweight Matt Mitrione the company sells the production and show ahead of the stars and storylines, as if the latter were all interchangeable parts.
While it should be said that the UFC brass has done an impressive job maneuvering its assets and manpower in often-complicated circumstances, the decision to cut McGregor out of UFC 200 was probably not one of the more difficult ones it’s had to make.
Essentially, it is betting that its three letters and No. 200 are meaningful enough to make up whatever financial ground was lost in McGregor’s removal.
While there have been all kinds of wild reports about how much the UFC was leaving on the table by taking McGregor off the card—ESPN.com’s Darren Rovell suggested around $45 million—those numbers are mostly nonsense.
If McGregor had actually retired, it would be losing money. But he always planned on returning, so the UFC always knew that payday would come back around.
Think of it this way: If the UFC had internal projections of 1.5 million buys for a McGregor-headlined UFC 200 and 400,000 buys for UFC 201, it would expect 1.9 million buys between the two.
Now, with McGregor off the former, it may lower its UFC 200 projections to around 1 million, but what happens to UFC 201 if it puts McGregor on it? It suddenly becomes a huge event that has the mainstream sporting world’s eyeballs on it due to his celebrity. It’s quite possible, maybe even likely, that it surpasses 1 million buys and bests UFC 200.
In all reality, it is actually a better business scenario for the UFC to continue its momentum with two strong-performing shows than putting all its efforts into one card. It simply pushes the sales somewhere else.
On the other hand, it is McGregor who actually stands to suffer. With Forbes.com’s Matt Connolly reporting that McGregor makes between $3-5 per PPV buy, the difference between headlining a show that sells 1.5 million units versus one that sells, say, 1.1 million is seven figures in bonus money.
The unfortunate part of this is that it reduces McGregor to a pawn in a game of control.
McGregor’s only real leverage is his fame. UFC contracts are fairly iron-clad, leaving the athletes to play by the UFC’s rules.
Yes, that is what they signed up for, but we all know that special exceptions get made for special people. If everyone played by the same rules, McGregor would be making the same money as everyone else.
He has done the tours and the media and built himself into a worldwide attraction. So he gambled and lost. So David failed to slay Goliath. There was a time when we prized that kind of audacity, the nerve to fight the unwinnable battle.
We shine a light on issues related to fighter pay and fighter treatment, and people wonder how the athletes are ever going to gain some ground. It’s not going to be by saying yes to every demand, by muting their voices and refusing to flex whatever power and leverage they may have.
McGregor lost this particular fight, but at least he tried.
Most everyone else sits there and silently stews, praying and hoping something will change. Both actions may have had the same results, but only one of them actually tried to do something.
The loudest and the brashest may have lost, but in this fight, at least he competed.
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