If you follow me on Twitter—and let’s be honest with each other, you have no reason not to—you’ve no doubt seen me trumpeting my excitement for Saturday’s UFC 178 card.
For months.
Ever since this card started taking shape, it was clear it would be the answer to any of our ongoing concerns about pay-per-view events not measuring up to the expectations we build up within ourselves. Back then, of course, the main event was going to be Jon Jones defending the light heavyweight title against Daniel Cormier, and it was going to be grand.
That went up in smoke, however—or at least in a cloud of Albuquerque dust—when Alistair Overeem injured the champ’s knee while training.
Even without that promised and anticipated main event, UFC 178 is one of the best cards I can remember. It is filled with fights I can’t wait to see. Folks, this is the fight card where Eddie Alvarez makes his UFC debut, and he’s doing it against Donald Cerrone! It’s like Joe Silva was sitting in his home office, thinking of me and me alone, when he decided to make this fight happen.
That’s not all, of course.
Conor McGregor makes the leap from Fight Pass to pay-per-view. He might be one of the UFC’s biggest stars already, and he has just two fights in the promotion and has yet to appear on pay-per-view. He’s fighting Dustin Poirier, and that sounds like a recipe for amazing and violent things.
Then there’s Dominick Cruz, returning from 82 years in the hospital to see if he can get his career going again. Tim Kennedy vs. Yoel Romero in a battle of two manly men. Cat Zingano trying to pick up where she left off and battle her way back to Ronda Rousey.
This is a spectacular card, and I am more excited to watch it unfold than I have been for a UFC event in a long time.
All of it, that is…but the main event.
And it’s not that I don’t enjoy seeing Demetrious Johnson do his thing. I do. He is one of the best fighters in the world, regardless of weight class, and he is as unique as they come. He’s a joy to watch in the Octagon.
But Chris Cariaso? That’s not an opponent I can get all that jazzed up about. He has three wins in a row, and I suppose he’s as good of an opponent as any in a division that Johnson has effectively wiped out. But I just can’t summon the same kind of excitement as I can for, say, Alvarez vs. Cerrone or McGregor vs. Poirier. Or anything else on the card, for that matter.
I don’t mind Johnson headlining pay-per-view events. He has done his time on television, and he has earned the opportunity.
He’s not a draw, but that’s OK. At some point, you have to take the Fox training wheels off the bicycle and let the kid pass or fail on his own merits. This is that opportunity for Johnson.
But unfortunately, he’s saddled with an opponent fans just don’t believe in. Neither do the oddsmakers; at the time of this writing, Johnson is a 13-1 favorite. Anything can happen in mixed martial arts (as T.J. Dillashaw might tell you a little something about), but the notion of Cariaso doing much of anything with Johnson is far-fetched at best.
This time, it’s OK. The rest of UFC 178 more than holds up the sagging main event. Nearly everyone who buys this event on pay-per-view will do so because they are intrigued by the strength of the rest of the card.
But Johnson vs. Cariaso isn’t the kind of main event that can be relied on to draw pay-per-view events going forward. If the UFC intends on Johnson headlining stacked events like this one, it’s OK. We can give this one a pass, and I suspect most of you will.
But booking fights like Johnson vs. Cariaso on pay-per-views that are far less adequate than this one? That’s where the UFC will run into trouble, and it’s something they should concentrate on avoiding.
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