The UFC is changing.
It’s not just the $4 billion purchase by the talent agency and burgeoning entertainment conglomerate WME-IMG. Stars are more important than they have ever been in the history of the UFC.
Promotional concerns have jumped to the front: Dan Henderson, 46 years old and 4-6 in his last 10 fights, is getting a title shot against Michael Bisping on the strength of a seven-year-old knockout. Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey are the linchpins of the UFC’s pay-per-view business, combining to sell 61 percent of the UFC’s total in 2015, compared to just under 40 percent for Georges St-Pierre and Brock Lesnar in 2010.
This business is increasingly driven by celebrity fighters with profiles that stretch beyond the niche boundaries of MMA, and the UFC is doing everything in its power to create more of them.
There’s no better representative of this trend than Paige VanZant, a 22-year-old whose endless aggression and rawhide toughness in the cage sharply contrast with the face of someone who gave up modeling to pursue fighting full time. VanZant faces Bec Rawlings, a well-known journeywoman with a substantial profile of her own, on August 27 in Vancouver in her fifth appearance in the Octagon.
Despite having only four fights in the UFC, VanZant has built a substantial following. She has nearly a million followers on Instagram and was the runner-up on season 22 of Dancing with the Stars, which put her in front of millions of viewers for 10 weeks. More than 12 million people, far more than have ever seen any UFC event on Fox, watched her final dance in May.
No matter how much criticism McGregor and Rousey have received for their idolization by the media—their hype, in the language of combat sports fandom—there’s no legitimate question that their performances in the cage earned that attention.
Rousey finished each of her first six UFC opponents, the best women’s bantamweights the UFC could throw at her, before losing to Holly Holm this past November. McGregor iced longtime featherweight champion Jose Aldo in 13 seconds and ended six of seven fights at 145 pounds by devastating knockout until falling to Nate Diaz at welterweight in March, a loss he avenged in their second meeting in August.
In VanZant‘s case, however, the attention has preceded her performances in the cage, long before anything like a real run at the 115-pound title that destroyer of worlds Joanna Jedrzejczyk holds.
That tension between celebrity and performance defines both VanZant and the UFC’s redoubled efforts at building stars as a whole.
“There are certain athletes that come into a sport with a lot of hype, a lot of crossover appeal, and they have a window to capitalize on that opportunity. When athletes ask about branding themselves, smart marketers will tell you that it’s not about whether they love you or hate you, it’s about whether they’ll separate from their hard-earned money to watch you,” said Dave Sholler, UFC vice president of public relations. “In this day and age, where we all have so many different entertainment options yet so little free time, media profile and exposure matter.”
UFC bantamweight contender Urijah Faber, who has acted as VanZant‘s coach and mentor for the last several years while also advising on the management side, believes his young charge could be that kind of star.
“She’s got all the makings—the heart, the conditioning, the athleticism—of a top-level, champion fighter, and she’s got nothing but time to add to that,” Faber said. “That’s been the hard part, juggling her as a promotional piece for the UFC and someone who’s getting these huge opportunities that are great for her career, and getting her daily in the gym on the grind.”
It’s not just that VanZant has yet to establish herself as an elite fighter. At only 22, with just over four years of professional experience, she’s still growing into herself as a competitor. Finding the balance between VanZant the marketable property and VanZant the fighter hasn’t been easy.
“Paige is in a very unique situation,” Faber continued. “She’s young in the sport. She’s been thrown into the limelight; she’s never been a celebrity before, she hasn’t been a lifetime combat athlete. She’s just a talented girl that believes in herself and is getting good quick.
“It’s that balance of someone who’s been thrown into the limelight, becoming a lead horse for a big organization, being in a bunch of new situations and opportunities like Dancing with the Stars and really stacking on the technique to be a top fighter in the world. The growth is monthly and the potential is through the roof, but she’s still at that phase where she has to stockpile.”
It’s easy to overemphasize the marketability side of things: VanZant‘s talent as a fighter is real. She’s athletic, quick on her feet, has the kind of relentlessly attacking style that’s hard to teach and fights with limitless energy.
Charging forward from the opening bell, she dives into the clinch, where she bullies her opponents like a much larger fighter. Slashing elbows and hard knees lead to takedowns and an endless stream of ground strikes from the top. It’s a kinetic, high-energy and entertaining style.
Plenty of fighters who have gone on to great success had shown less in the way of talent at the tender age of 22. Still, talent isn’t a professional accomplishment, and plenty of talented 22-year-old fighters have never broken through to the top.
VanZant‘s last fight, against former title contender Rose Namajunas, was a heavy-handed dose of reality. It was VanZant‘s first headlining bout, a step up in competition and exposure on the road to becoming a star.
Namajunas stifled VanZant‘s aggression with the combination of a long jab and footwork, took her down at will and dominated her on the mat before sinking in a choke in the fifth round. The technical gap between the two fighters was obvious, and VanZant‘s bruised, bloody face provided striking visual evidence of the sheer depth of that chasm in skill.
“It was a learning experience for me,” VanZant said. “I learned how tough I was. I didn’t know I had all that in me, I didn’t know I had that kind of heart. I knew I was tough and I knew I wouldn’t give up, but going back and watching the fight, I learned a lot about myself. I was proud of how I handled myself afterward and it’s a huge learning experience. I had to go back and re-evaluate my training and everything.”
A loss like that can be crushing for a young fighter, especially when the biggest positive to take from it is heart, but VanZant doesn’t sound defeated. “You have to try to grow between every fight, get back in the gym and keep working hard and find the areas that you need to work on. See what you did wrong and work on it.”
Still, the tension between the time in the gym that produces improvement in the cage and the other obligations of being a rising star are palpable and real. VanZant, however, doesn’t feel that way.
“It’s been easy,” she said. “Honestly, at times, I still get bored. Dancing with the Stars kept me busy and that’s what I like. When I first started fighting, I was working two jobs and I was still going to school at the same time while training. I’m meant to be a busy person. I like doing all the extra little things, it makes me feel special.”
Faber and the UFC itself are a little less sanguine. “It’s a constant struggle to get her reeled back in because of all her obligations,” Faber said. “She’s got big sponsors already, she’s got two national commercials out right now, and she was just on a show that was treating her like a queen, you know, having people walking around and doing her makeup and making sure she has her coffee when she needs it.”
Sholler was careful to emphasize the need for balance as well. “Patience and time management are key. Paige is in high demand from media, sponsors, TV shows, etc., but we work diligently to build schedules for her that complement her need to train. With young athletes, you have to be patient and let them develop and gain experience.”
And yet the pressure to push young fighters simultaneously as promotional pieces and in-cage talent remains.
“Paige has mainstream, crossover appeal, and it’s a big reason she’s garnered so much media attention this early in her fight career,” Sholler said. “She’s beautiful, has an incredible personality and fights with a certain tenacity that has earned her a lot of respect. It’s clear that she’s a fighter at heart and that comes through in all she does. When you talk about the “it” factor, you talk about people like Paige VanZant.”
“People want to be invested in an athlete’s story,” he continued. “Paige has done a really good job of branding herself. She’s sought opportunities to introduce herself to audiences outside of just the traditional sports landscape, and as a result, she’s seen her popularity skyrocket. It all comes together when fans tune in to watch her compete in this sport she loves.”
Here we see both sides of the coin: the need to emphasize the mainstream appeal without losing sight of her fighting credentials. If she hasn’t proven herself as a top-notch competitor, she’s exciting and fun to watch, which is true.
Still, it’s hard to make the argument that VanZant‘s game inside the cage is why people are tuning in, and she herself doesn’t seem to have any illusions about that.
“It’s pretty obvious the more followers you have, the more pay-per-view buys you’re going to get, the more people you’re going to get to tune in. Why would I limit myself to just one industry when there’s a world out there?”
Those other industries are a way of enhancing VanZant‘s appeal as a fighter, and VanZant‘s appeal as a fighter enhances her opportunities in other fields.
“You can’t forget that the reason why you get people looking at you is the skill set in life that you chose,” Faber said. “You’ve seen it before, where fighters lose focus on why people are looking at them and everything falls off. They didn’t put Rousey in movies because they thought she was the best actress ever; they put her in movies because she’s a charismatic girl and she’s one of the baddest people on the planet.”
Fighting is the root of that success, and the risk of putting the cart before the horse is always present. VanZant, though, is happy to embrace the idea of a dual career in entertainment and fighting.
“I’m very talented. I’m more than just talented in MMA. I’m talented in a lot of other areas, so I’m not going to fixate myself on one area and only get the attention from that industry. I’m going to go out there and do whatever opportunities come my way if they interest me.”
It’s hard to overstate just how new all of this is, both for VanZant and the UFC itself. They’re in uncharted territory in trying to create a media sensation at the same time as matchmakers are attempting to bring her up slowly but surely into the elite ranks of the division.
That newness comes through clearly, both in VanZant‘s shifting attempts to brand herself in particular directions and the UFC’s need to emphasize both sides of her appeal inside and outside the cage.
In her early interviews, for example, VanZant emphasized that she wanted to prove she was more than just a pretty face, but she has since changed her focus. “I feel like I have a completely different image that I want to portray now. I’ve kind of moved past that and now I’m ready to share the light with the world and share my faith and how God’s gotten me through so many obstacles in my life.”
Still, she says, “I’m not trying to emphasize certain things. I’m just going to be myself; there’s no reason for me to try and go out there and put a certain facade on or emphasize, ‘Hey, I’m this, you need to believe it.’ I just want to be the best that I can be, and if people like me, that’s great, and if they don’t, they don’t.”
“I think the best quote I have on that is that, ‘you can be the best and ripest and juiciest peach in the world, but there are still going to be some people who don’t like peaches,'” she continued.
There’s a bit of inconsistency in that. VanZant doesn’t have a particular image that she wants to portray, she says, but what she chooses to emphasize has in fact changed.
That same inconsistency comes through in her statements about the media, a sign of public relations training that’s still in the process of solidifying into the fully fledged star’s studied, measured approach.
“[Media obligations] can take a toll on you if you let it,” she said. “But at the same time, I have to remember what a blessing it is that people even want me to come around. Once the requests stop being there, then you have to worry…I can’t think of that as work. It’s an opportunity that a lot of people wish they could be in my shoes.”
That’s a practiced response, and it’s an appropriate one. But in a less formal setting, she had harsher words.
“Sometimes the media twists your words and they say things to get a headline and it’s not necessarily what came out of your mouth and they take things out of context, 90 percent of the time. But I guess any publicity is good publicity, I guess. But the negative side of it is they don’t really care about the fighters, they care about the story.”
That’s the essence of where the UFC stands with VanZant. She’s a blossoming star outside the cage, but she’s still in the process of developing the tools necessary to deal with constant exposure to the media. She’s a legitimate talent inside the cage, but she’s still learning what she needs to know to translate that talent into real, concrete accomplishments.
The latter especially isn’t a sure thing.
Faber is obviously aware of that risk, but the UFC is comfortable having him guiding VanZant‘s career. “She’s surrounded by a great team and she has a great mentor in Urijah Faber,” Sholler said.
“Having her mentored by Faber is like having a perennial Pro Bowl quarterback to mentor your quarterback of the future. Faber has been to the mountaintop in this sport, has had crossover success, and can help Paige navigate the path to stardom.”
Faber was one of the first fighters to get those kinds of mainstream opportunities, but he got his sponsorship deals with Amp Energy drinks and K-Swiss shoes well after he’d been a World Extreme Cagefighting champion.
“You eventually get to the point where people want you as the PR guy and you’re on TV and things like that, but I started out as a combat athlete who slowly built into that,” Faber said. “She’s getting thrown into a combat athlete situation and stardom and a whole new life change all at once.”
Combat sports are littered with blue-chip prospects who didn’t pan out, but when promoters invest serious resources in a fighter, the stakes grow ever larger. Not every fighter gets these kinds of opportunities, and there’s a legitimate risk of backlash from fans and damage to the UFC’s reputation when its handpicked favorites can’t back up the hype in the cage.
How, for example, did VanZant get on Dancing with the Stars? “They [the UFC] were a huge factor in getting me on Dancing with the Stars,” she said. “It came down to me and one other person, and the UFC made one phone call and said, ‘Hey, we support Paige 100 percent,’ and you have the whole UFC backing you.”
While VanZant‘s background in dance made her the right fit for a show like Dancing with the Stars, the UFC obviously isn’t making those kinds of calls for all 530 fighters on the roster; it’s picking and choosing the talent it wants to push from an increasingly early stage in its fighters’ careers.
Sage Northcutt, for example, got a big push after just one fight in the Octagon as a raw 19-year-old. Career gatekeeper Bryan Barberena beat him up and submitted him on national TV on Fox in his third UFC bout. Now 20, the weight of those expectations and that manufactured hype will hang over every one of Northcutt‘s performances in the future.
That’s not a critique of VanZant, or of the others the UFC has chosen or will choose to push in the future. Any fighter looking to make a sustainable career in MMA would be a fool to turn down the kinds of opportunities she has received, and she has the right people around her to maximize the value of those opportunities. “At the end of the day,” as VanZant put it, “this is still an individual sport.”
With WME-IMG—still, at its core, a talent agency—purchasing the UFC, this process of change toward a star-driven model is only likely to grow more intense. “I don’t think they’re trying to turn all their fighters into movie stars,” Faber said, “but they’re not going to hold back from making sure there’s crossover appeal so they can sell more pay-per-views and find a bunch of different ways to monetize the brand they own now.”
That’s sharp analysis from someone’s who helped to invent the personal branding side of MMA what feels like a lifetime ago. The landscape has changed since the heady days of Amp Energy and K-Swiss, and now he’s playing the mentor to a youthful fighter navigating the shifting waters of an increasingly mainstream sport.
Faber and the UFC believe in VanZant. The 990,000 people who follow her on Instagram and the millions more who watched her on Dancing with the Stars see a star in the making. Whether she can carry that momentum into full-fledged stardom and whether she can back up that newfound celebrity in the cage are questions that still need to be answered.
How does VanZant see it? “There’s only one Paige VanZant, and I have to create my own image and my own story that I want to tell.”
In the new-look UFC, a world of personal branding and crossover media exposure, that’s how stars are supposed to talk.
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