The UFC has had to officially call off UFC 145, which was supposed to take place in Montreal. In an article by the Winnipeg Free Press, the UFC head of the Canadian division, Tom Wright, admitted it was because the card lacked championship-level quality.
This isn’t a devastating blow for the UFC. Montreal is a great fight town and when the company returns, they will generate a lot of revenue and interest.
It does tell fans something about the company itself. Namely that the UFC has been spreading their talent and names a bit thin in the past few years and that, without fighters like Georges St-Pierre to put at the top of the card, the projected income wasn’t worth the venture.
The card had already had fights announced for it, but not a main event. Without a marquee headline, the card wouldn’t do as well.
It was a smart business decision by the UFC to cut losses, but it shows that for all their expansion, they are having trouble finding enough talent to help sell events.
The UFC doesn’t necessarily need to sell a main event with a Canadian in it, though, it helps. They have done it before when Lyoto Machida and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua fought for the light heavyweight title at UFC 113.
The fact that no serious, top-level talent would be available for the event could take the UFC in several directions.
They could shrug their shoulders and continue to surge forward.
They could choose to slow down the growth of their company.
Or in a final step, they could choose to try and acquire more talent. The best way to do this would be to axe more divisions or fighters from Strikeforce.
The first two won’t happen and the last one isn’t likely with Strikeforce and Showtime moving forward to promote more fights in 2012, but moments like these will help shape the future of the company and help make decisions on where they go.
Matthew Hemphill writes for the boxing, MMA and professional wrestling portion of Bleacher Report. He also hosts a blog (elbaexiled.blogspot.com), which focuses on books, music, comic books, video games, film and generally anything that could be related to the realms of nerdom.
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