(After 11 years in a sport marked by physical trauma, emotional turmoil, and financial misdealings, St-Pierre is beaten, but not broken. / Photo via Getty)
The key to understanding the way St-Pierre has conducted himself, both inside and outside the Octagon, goes back to his earliest origins growing up in the rural area of St. Isidore, Quebec, Canada:
“I went to a school where it was pretty rough — I’d get my clothes stolen, my cash. And at home life was pretty hard too. I had a difficult childhood,” said St-Pierre to an interviewer in 2006.
The upshot of these challenges translated into the single quality that defines GSP to this day — his relentless desire to please everybody around him. Not only was St-Pierre an absolute perfectionist with respect to his performance as a fighter, but he actively sought to cultivate positive relationships with all of the people he crossed paths with in life.
In a non-corporate environment, that character trait might have gone over better. In the shark tank of pimps, hustlers and thieves who infest the fight game, it made St-Pierre an easy mark for managers who felt entitled to take his money.
(After 11 years in a sport marked by physical trauma, emotional turmoil, and financial misdealings, St-Pierre is beaten, but not broken. / Photo via Getty)
The key to understanding the way St-Pierre has conducted himself, both inside and outside the Octagon, goes back to his earliest origins growing up in the rural area of St. Isidore, Quebec, Canada:
“I went to a school where it was pretty rough — I’d get my clothes stolen, my cash. And at home life was pretty hard too. I had a difficult childhood,” said St-Pierre to an interviewer in 2006.
The upshot of these challenges translated into the single quality that defines GSP to this day — his relentless desire to please everybody around him. Not only was St-Pierre an absolute perfectionist with respect to his performance as a fighter, but he actively sought to cultivate positive relationships with all of the people he crossed paths with in life.
In a non-corporate environment, that character trait might have gone over better. In the shark tank of pimps, hustlers and thieves who infest the fight game, it made St-Pierre an easy mark for managers who felt entitled to take his money.
TMZ.com broke the story of St-Pierre being forced to pay out $737,066.35 — and counting — to his former manager Shari Spencer. In a similar vein, GSP’s first manager, Stephane Patry, earned some hard cash after St-Pierre settled over Patry’s lawsuit with him.
“Georges St-Pierre has a lot of money, and he could walk away forever if that’s what he chose to do,” said UFC president Dana White during Friday’s conference call where GSP’s departure was announced to the media.
This statement begs the question — while GSP certainly never banked Mayweather money, how much of a hit did St-Pierre take from paying out 20 percent commissions to Patry and Spencer simultaneously? Will the courts mandate that Spencer gets to swallow up another 20 percent of his revenue for a portion of the time period since St-Pierre’s new co-managers, Rodolphe Beaulie and Philippe Lepage, took over in 2011?
Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, the UFC welterweight kingpin only seemed to discover just who he was dealing with by the time it was too late to do anything about it. Besides the transgressions from his managers, the UFC was happy to control many aspects of St-Pierre’s commercial deals from owning his video game likeness rights in perpetuity to refusing to allow St-Pierre to use UFC footage in the GSP documentary The Striking Truth. These were raw deals that will cost St-Pierre both in terms of his post-retirement earning potential and his reputation for decades to come.
It’s incredibly suspect that two days before GSP’s retirement announcement, Dana White told MMAFighting.com that St-Pierre was signing autographs at a mall. Was the financial hit the UFC would take from loss of pay-per-view, sponsors, and diminishment of the UFC brand in the eyes of television partners like Fox Sports incentive for the UFC to do everything in the organization’s power to retain GSP as champion? With Cain Velasquez out for a year, Chris Weidman as a new champion needing more build-up and lighter-weight champions not drawing big PPV numbers, St-Pierre’s exit couldn’t come at a worse time for the organization.
The most overlooked aspect of St-Pierre’s decision to retire comes down to risk of further traumatic brain injury (TBI). Tim Marchman of DeadSpin.com provided solid analysis that of the 875 strikes GSP has taken in his career, 412 have come in his last three fights. An athlete doesn’t need to be slurring their words or have a poor memory to be suffering the effects of repeated head trauma; depression, bouts of anger, and mood swings can be among the symptoms of TBI.
Georges St-Pierre’s tremendous desire for public validation of his talents was both his greatest strength as a fighter and his greatest weakness in terms of his personal health. He put it on the line for fans, media, and a promoter who were all just as likely to offer scathing criticism as they were to give him praise.
It’s possible that St-Pierre returns to MMA, just as so many other fighters have returned from retirement. In fact, it’s likely that GSP will go stir-crazy on the sidelines and want to restore his past status. St-Pierre will need a strong network of friends and family to pull him back from the brink — but no amount of external validation will overcome any internal dissonance within his soul.
We owe it to Georges St-Pierre to remember his life, career, and legacy as it happened, and not the revisionist or politically correct history that certain stakeholders in MMA might be selling. GSP needs to be remembered exactly as he the person he was: one of the greatest — if not the greatest — MMA fighter of all time.
GSP’s departure has come at a devastating time. The UFC is in a rut. TUF has long since stopped being the advertising vehicle/farm system it was years ago. Ratings are down. The worst part of all is that PPV—the UFC’s chief source of revenue—is lagging too. The culprit is a lack of stars, or rather the UFC’s apparent inability to replace the fading ones.
Now they’re short a Canadian superhero, a man who’s drawn an average of 800,000 buys over the last three years. And there are no young studs to pick up the slack. Jon Jones and Cain Velasquez are not fit to carry the company on their shoulders judging by the buyrates on their recent PPVs. The UFC’s young, great ethnic hopes—Tiequan Zhang, Erik Perez, and Erick Silva—haven’t developed as planned. Most importantly, the strategy of grooming Rory MacDonald to be GSP’s replacement has failed (or has at least been delayed).
The UFC’s future is still on the backs of aging warhorses whose knees are beginning to buckle.
GSP’s departure has come at a tumultuous time. The UFC is in a rut. TUF has long since stopped being the advertising vehicle/farm system it was years ago. Ratings are down. The worst part of all is that PPV—the UFC’s chief source of revenue—is lagging too. The culprit is a lack of stars, as well as the UFC’s apparent inability to replace the fading ones.
Now they’re short a Canadian superhero, a man who’s drawn an average of 800,000 buys over the last three years. And there are no young studs to pick up the slack. Jon Jones and Cain Velasquez are not fit to carry the company on their shoulders judging by the buyrates on their recent PPVs. The UFC’s young, great ethnic hopes—Tiequan Zhang, Erik Perez, and Erick Silva—haven’t developed as planned. Most importantly, the strategy of grooming Rory MacDonald to be GSP’s replacement has failed (or has at least been delayed).
The UFC is riding on the backs of aging warhorses whose knees are beginning to buckle.
Yet there is still hope.
GSP is leaving the welterweight division, true. But there are other men primed to take his spot at the top. Welterweight is now a division where anybody in the top 5 or even top 10 could win the belt. It’s a division that’s thrilling and unpredictable for the first time in years. The next champ will be either Johny Hendricks or Robbie Lawler since the two are facing off at UFC 171, but it’s not crazy to think that Carlos Condit, Matt Brown, or even Hector Lombard could hold the belt someday in the near future.
Nobody is saying “Who cares? Silva/GSP/Penn will just murder whoever wins the No.1 contender fight.” This is the benefit of old greats retiring. Belts are open for the taking again. There is no fate but what the fighters make for themselves.
If the UFC can somehow find a way to take advantage of this rather than picking one fighter to promote and hoping they win all their fights (Michael Bisping, Rory MacDonald, Ronda Rousey, etc), the future won’t be quite so bleak as we at CagePotato often make it out to be.
(Sanchez’s contract is officially for eight more fights, but the UFC reserves the right to take him out behind the shed at any time and put him out of his misery. / Photo via Getty)
MMA contracts are unique among professional sports, in the sense that long-term agreements aren’t necessarily beneficial to the athletes. The deals that Cormier and Sanchez signed with the UFC bear absolutely no resemblance to the 15-year, $67.5 million dollar “lottery ticket” that NHL goalie Rick DiPietro signed in 2006. After failing to live up to expectations, DiPietro’s contract was bought out in 2013, at $1.5 million a year for the next 16 years.
That’s what a contract is, after all — an employer’s obligation to pay a certain amount of money for services rendered. What the UFC offers its fighters is something different. It’s like a contract, but not exactly, and it results from the uniquely lopsided power structure in this sport, where there’s essentially one major-league team and no player’s union.
In MMA if you fail to live up to expectations and lose fights, your contract can simply be terminated at any time, and for a variety of reasons. When Eddie Alvarez‘s contract was made public, outsiders got a chance to see the long list of scenarios in which the UFC can cut an athlete loose. As the article’s author Jonathan Snowden notes “So, all those UFC contracts that claim to be for eight or 10 fights? That’s only true if you keep winning. Otherwise, the contract is only as long as the UFC wants it to be.”
A quote from that article, from Northwestern University labor law professor Zev Eigen, shows how imbalanced contracts are for UFC fighters:
(Sanchez’s contract is officially for eight more fights, but the UFC reserves the right to take him out behind the shed at any time and put him out of his misery. / Photo via Getty)
MMA contracts are unique among professional sports, in the sense that long-term agreements aren’t necessarily beneficial to the athletes. The deals that Cormier and Sanchez signed with the UFC bear absolutely no resemblance to the 15-year, $67.5 million dollar “lottery ticket” that NHL goalie Rick DiPietro signed in 2006. After failing to live up to expectations, DiPietro’s contract was bought out in 2013, at $1.5 million a year for the next 16 years.
That’s what a contract is, after all — an employer’s obligation to pay a certain amount of money for services rendered. What the UFC offers its fighters is something different. It’s like a contract, but not exactly, and it results from the uniquely lopsided power structure in this sport, where there’s essentially one major-league team and no player’s union.
In MMA if you fail to live up to expectations and lose fights, your contract can simply be terminated at any time, and for a variety of reasons. When Eddie Alvarez‘s contract was made public, outsiders got a chance to see the long list of scenarios in which the UFC can cut an athlete loose. As the article’s author Jonathan Snowden notes “So, all those UFC contracts that claim to be for eight or 10 fights? That’s only true if you keep winning. Otherwise, the contract is only as long as the UFC wants it to be.”
A quote from that article, from Northwestern University labor law professor Zev Eigen, shows how imbalanced contracts are for UFC fighters:
“The term unilaterally benefits the employer with no reciprocal benefit to the fighter. It’s completely one-sided, completely unfair and seems to suggest that any term is a material term for purposes of the employer. Every breach could be a material breach for the fighter, but nothing is for the UFC.”
So when 38-year-old ex-champ Anderson Silva signs a 10-fight contract after his first loss in the company, we shouldn’t interpret it as a show of good faith or support from his bosses. That’s just the UFC saying, “We’ve got you until you decide to retire, and if you try to work for a competing promotion after you leave, we’ll sue you just like we sued Randy.”
But what if you keep winning all your fights? In that case, you are locked into the pay scale that you agreed to at the beginning of your contract. Presumably your market value will go up as you win fights and challenge for titles, but if your market value exceeds what you are currently getting paid, you can’t really capitalize on it. You can try to re-negotiate your contract, and maybe the UFC will agree to it. Or maybe Dana White will tell everyone about your ridiculous request and publicly trash you during one of his media scrums.
The value of having another high-paying organization in the MMA landscape like Bellator (or OneFC, apparently) is that you can use their offer to leverage a higher paying contract out of the UFC. However, if you are tied to a long-term deal, you can’t take advantage of it. As Cage Potato writer Brian D’Souza pointed out, if UFC fighters are tied up to long-term deals, “No other promoter can enter the big leagues of MMA unless they build their own stars or wait 3-4 years.” Having fighters sign long-term contracts is really only a benefit to the UFC, and it’s a massive benefit.
An eight-fight contract for Daniel Cormier, Diego Sanchez, or any other UFC fighter is not job security, even though it may sound like that to people who don’t follow the business of the sport. We’ve racked our brains trying to think of another professional entity with a similar employer/employee dynamic, and the closest example that comes to mind is the military, where they can give you a dishonorable discharge if you screw up, but you can’t just leave any time you want like a normal “at will” job.
That’s just something to keep in mind for all you MMA fighters out there. If the UFC offers you a long term contract, you’re not being hired — you’re enlisting.
The purpose of the UFC is to make its owners money. The UFC does not exist to feed fighters’ families. There’s not much else to say on this front. Companies have to make money to be viable. Yeah, it sucks that some guys get paid an absurdly small amount of money for what they do, and it sucks that the UFC is upping the PPV price.
That’s just something we have to deal with though. If you don’t like it, vote with your dollar. If enough people tune out, Zuffa’s wallet will know and they’ll either change their tune accordingly or lose money.
2. The UFC is an international company.
There’s been talk about the UFC hiringunfit-for-television jobbers lately. It’s true but necessary. The UFC is headed to distant lands where MMA is in its most nascent stages. The talent pool in these places is more like a mud puddle. The UFC has to work with what it’s given in China and Singapore. Deepening foreign talent pools can only happen by growing the sport overseas, and growing the sport overseas can only happen when they have foreign (foreign to us, home grown to them) fighters on the card. And since there aren’t many great foreign fighters, the UFC has to scrape the bottom of a very empty barrel. This results in fighters getting a place in the “Super Bowl of MMA” who shouldn’t even be in the bleachers, let alone on the field.
(Just keep repeating to yourself, “Nobody’s making me watch this…nobody’s making me watch this…nobody’s making me watch this…”)
The purpose of the UFC is to make its owners money. The UFC does not exist to feed fighters’ families. There’s not much else to say on this front. Companies have to make money to be viable. Yeah, it sucks that some guys get paid an absurdly small amount of money for what they do, and it sucks that the UFC is upping the PPV price.
That’s just something we have to deal with though. If you don’t like it, vote with your dollar. If enough people tune out, Zuffa’s wallet will know and they’ll either change their tune accordingly or lose money.
2. The UFC is an international company.
There’s been talk about the UFC hiringunfit-for-television jobbers lately. It’s true but necessary. The UFC is headed to distant lands where MMA is in its most nascent stages. The talent pool in these places is more like a mud puddle. The UFC has to work with what it’s given in China and Singapore. Deepening foreign talent pools can only happen by growing the sport overseas, and growing the sport overseas can only happen when they have foreign (foreign to us, home grown to them) fighters on the card. And since there aren’t many great foreign fighters, the UFC has to scrape the bottom of a very empty barrel. This results in fighters getting a place in the “Super Bowl of MMA” who shouldn’t even be in the bleachers, let alone on the field.
Furthermore, these fighters — guys like Royston Wee — aren’t meant for us North Americans. The fights on the UFC’s digital network aren’t meant for us either. They’re meant for other markets. It’s fun to take potshots at the UFC for the terrible card quality on the digital network, but it’s a wanking contest. It’s like willfully eating someone else’s dinner and then complaining it wasn’t what you ordered. Zuffa knows we don’t give a fuck about low-level fighters in countries with a non-developed MMA ecosystem. That’s why they’re not airing events packed with those fighters in the US (unless you choose to watch them).
3. Nobody is forcing you to buy every PPV or watch every free card.
If you don’t like a PPV card, don’t buy it and check out the post-event GIFs on the UGr/MMA the next morning.
If you don’t like a Fight Night or TUF Finale card, don’t watch it and check out the post-event GIFs on r/MMA the next morning.
There’s no need to complain about card quality if you’re a fan. Dana White isn’t putting a gun to your head and making you slide out the credit card. Subjection to a watered-down, awful PPV is self-inflicted.
“But I want to watch ALL the fights!” Well, that’s your problem. Free MMA is not a right. Besides, I’m sure you’re the kind of person who’ll find another way to watch the PPV that’s of dubious legality. Ironically, you’re probably the kind of person who complains about fighter pay while stealing from fighters…
4. The UFC is sports entertainment.
There exists a sport that’s pure competition with no entertainment-enhancing aspects to it whatsoever. It’s called amateur wrestling and nobody watches it.
The UFC is not amateur wrestling. The UFC is not a sport; it’s sports entertainment.
There’s no competitive architecture (no, the laughable official UFC rankings — a gimmick to keep non-UFC fighters out of Internet arguments — don’t count). Skill is secondary to star power. The UFC has never been about pitting the two best fighters in the world against one another. It’s been about booking the fights that will draw the most money. This is hardly a novel concept yet so many MMA fans are in ridiculous, quite frankly embarrassing, denial of it. They think that if the UFC is sports entertainment then that somehow makes them as bad as a professional wrestling fan — a “loser” who watches a soap opera meant for prepubescent boys.
No amount of insecurity-fueled rejection can counteract the facts. If the UFC wasn’t sports entertainment, they’d have signed Ben Askren. They’d have never let James Toney, Brock Lesnar, or Kimbo Slice (dis)grace the Octagon. They’d have never given Chael Sonnen, Nick Diaz, or Frankie Edgar title shots coming off losses. They’d have let the fights and fighters shine over obnoxious figurehead Vince McMahon Dana White.
And, of course, there’s the manufactured hype in between fights: “We said all the trash talk just to sell the fight.”
We all watch real fighting with fake, pro-wrestling storylines. It’s called the UFC.
5. The UFC is only 20 years old, they’re not supposed to have their shit together yet.
Whenever the UFC is compared to boxing it’s usually cringeworthy—something like saying two Facebook prelim tomato cans are the MMA equivalents of legendary boxers. One aspect that makes sense to compare, however, is longevity.
Boxing has been a popular sport since time immemorial. The UFC has only been around for 20 years. Yes, MMA in the forms of Pankration and Vale Tudo have been around for a while, but the majority of people don’t know about that and don’t care either; Pankration might as well be a liver disease to them. All they know is “UFC” and boxing. The UFC is new and frightening and weird. People roll around on the floor and cut each other with elbows and knees. They bend each other’s arms the wrong way. Boxing is safe and traditional. Fighters only smash brains into shriveled sponges with punches, so it’s acceptable. This is how people think. Children were even banned from a UFC show in Germany! MMA is still outlawed in New York and use of the cage, MMA’s most recognizable symbol, is banned in parts of Australia.
The UFC, at only 20 years old, has tons of ground to cover, and many issues to sort out. Like an angsty college kid, the UFC is still mapping its future. The path will be littered with both successes and failures.
Let’s get one thing straight: Calling Holly Holm a “franchise” is ludicrously premature. Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva are MMA franchises. Beyond that, the list gets very thin. In fact, the concept of franchise players is fading in every sport as the Lebron Jameses and Jacoby Ellsburys of the sports world show that their loyalty only extends to the highest free market bidder.
The argument could be made that UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is a franchise athlete. After all, Dana White has admitted that the UFC only created the women’s division because of her. But Holly Holm is not on the same level of recognizability as Rousey. Sure she was a big boxing draw in New Mexico, but being a regional draw does not translate to franchise-level success with a global brand like the UFC.
Chances are, not many outside of the hardcore MMA and boxing fanbase have even heard of Holly Holm. The Holly Holm brand might bring a few new eyeballs from the boxing world but she is certainly not selling a PPV on her own.
However, just because Holly Holm is not a “franchise” does not mean she wouldn’t make a great investment for the UFC’s fledgling women’s division. Holm is a fantastic athlete. Once considered by many as the best female boxer on the planet, she was twice named Ring Magazine’s female Fighter of the Year. Training under Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, she not only has the physical ability and attributes, she also has the right team around her to be a world champion in MMA.
It’s possible that Holm may one day be a UFC franchise athlete. She certainly has the potential to dominate a women’s division that is severely lacking in high-quality strikers. She could also develop into a legitimate MMA star. She’s personable, good looking and professional. However, she’s not there yet.
(Fresquez and Holm field questions after her win over Angela Hayes on Friday. / Photo via Getty)
Let’s get one thing straight: Calling Holly Holm a “franchise” is ludicrously premature. Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva are MMA franchises. Beyond that, the list gets very thin. In fact, the concept of franchise players is fading in every sport as the Lebron Jameses and Jacoby Ellsburys of the sports world show that their loyalty only extends to the highest free market bidder.
The argument could be made that UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is a franchise athlete. After all, Dana White has admitted that the UFC only created the women’s division because of her. But Holly Holm is not on the same level of recognizability as Rousey. Sure she was a big boxing draw in New Mexico, but being a regional draw does not translate to franchise-level success with a global brand like the UFC.
Chances are, not many outside of the hardcore MMA and boxing fanbase have even heard of Holly Holm. The Holly Holm brand might bring a few new eyeballs from the boxing world but she is certainly not selling a PPV on her own.
However, just because Holly Holm is not a “franchise” does not mean she wouldn’t make a great investment for the UFC’s fledgling women’s division. Holm is a fantastic athlete. Once considered by many as the best female boxer on the planet, she was twice named Ring Magazine’s female Fighter of the Year. Training under Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, she not only has the physical ability and attributes, she also has the right team around her to be a world champion in MMA.
It’s possible that Holm may one day be a UFC franchise athlete. She certainly has the potential to dominate a women’s division that is severely lacking in high-quality strikers. She could also develop into a legitimate MMA star. She’s personable, good looking and professional. However, she’s not there yet.
Holm hasn’t fought anybody even near the top 10 in MMA and it’s yet to be seen what will happen once she gets taken down by a quality grappler. Her last fight was a forgettable unanimous decision win over 40-year old Angela Hayes, who has a losing record. Even during her successful boxing career, there were those in the boxing community who felt Holm was protected by not facing top competition, like Cecilia Braekhus, and mostly fighting in her hometown.
Though her early MMA career has intentionally followed the boxing model of record-padding en route to a title fight, Holm needs to fight high-quality competition in order to demand anything close to six-figures upon entry into the UFC. Fresquez claims that Holm makes more than 80% of UFC fighters. That may have been true in her boxing career — although even that seems doubtful — but she certainly didn’t make that much fighting for Bellator and Legacy FC.
The Holly Holm controversy will likely devolve into a debate about unfair UFC fighter pay in general. That debate has been going on for years and will continue to rage for years to come. However, this is about the worth of one particular fighter in the context of the current WMMA landscape, and Holm’s management needs to be careful not to price her out of a potentially lucrative long-term UFC career.
Zuffa has shown that they are willing to let free agents sign with other companies if the UFC feels the fighters are not worth what they could get on the free market. For every Hector Lombard who gets signed to an inflated UFC contract, there are the Ben Askrens of the world who the UFC decides aren’t worth it.
Dana White has called Holly Holm “the female Conor McGregor” because of the amount of MMA fans telling him to sign her. There’s no doubt the UFC wants Holm but they don’t exactly need her either. They have a long list of contenders waiting to challenge for Rousey’s belt with Miesha Tate, Cat Zingano, Alexis Davis, and Sara McMann waiting in the wings. Holm versus Rousey would certainly be a high-profile matchup. It would be a marketing dream — a pound-for-pound world champion boxer versus the Olympic judoka and undisputed MMA champion — if we ever get to see it happen. At this point it looks like a big if.
The MMA landscape is littered with managers who have screwed over their fighters by overvaluing their clients. So far, Lenny Fresquez has done an outstanding job promoting — and some would argue protecting — Holm’s career, both in boxing and MMA. However, his recent claim that Holm needs a six-figure contract in order to sign with the UFC is delusional. Holm has a bright future in MMA. She would be a great addition to the UFC’s roster and could pose a legitimate threat to Rousey’s belt. However, Fresquez needs to recognize that WMMA is still in its infancy and the market value is not the same as it is in boxing. He’s doing his job trying to get the most for his client but he needs to be careful not to play his client right out of the UFC picture altogether.
If Holm is worth it, she’ll establish herself as a top contender and get her six-figure contract in due time. However, that time is not now.
So then why am I writing yet another article about what a company that sells choreographed “fights” experiencing some of its lowest viewership numbers can teach the UFC? Because the WWE’s idea of “terrible numbers” involves only averaging 3.53 million viewers. To put that into perspective, the TUF 18 Finale main card drew 1.129 million viewers. That’s right, the WWE is in panic mode because their weekly Monday night show only attracted three times as many viewers as a UFC event.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to suggest that the UFC resort to ridiculous storylines, assigning character gimmicks to fighters, forcing celebrity guests into shows, forming an ill-advised partnership with a dying pro-wrestling promotion, or any of the other things that would make most MMA fans roll their eyes. Nor am I going to ignorantly blame the UFC for less than spectacular fights, controversial finishes, and other things that a legitimate sports league cannot possibly be expected to control. On the contrary, my first suggestion is something that the UFC actually used to do better than the WWE…
(On second thought, make that seven things. Photo via With Leather.)
So then why am I writing yet another article about what a company that sells choreographed “fights” experiencing some of its lowest viewership numbers can teach the UFC? Because the WWE’s idea of “terrible numbers” involves only averaging 3.53 million viewers. To put that into perspective, the TUF 18 Finale main card drew 1.129 million viewers. That’s right, the WWE is in panic mode because their weekly Monday night show only attracted three times as many viewers as a UFC event.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to suggest that the UFC resort to ridiculous storylines, assigning character gimmicks to fighters, forcing celebrity guests into shows, forming an ill-advised partnership with a dying pro-wrestling promotion, or any of the other things that would make most MMA fans roll their eyes. Nor am I going to ignorantly blame the UFC for less than spectacular fights, controversial finishes, and other things that a legitimate sports league cannot possibly be expected to control. On the contrary, my first suggestion is something that the UFC actually used to do better than the WWE…
Put Over Your Talent Instead of Expecting it to Just Happen
There was a time not too long ago when I would have told you with a straight face that the UFC was better at creating stars out of its roster than the WWE could ever dream of being, simply because they could turn even the most boring personalities like Georges St. Pierre and Matt Hughes into intriguing fighters. Yet these days, I honestly wouldn’t be able to pick Hyun Gyu Lim out of a line-up, despite the facts that he holds two brutal knockout victories in the organization and is about to headline an upcoming card. The UFC’s new formula for getting fans to invest themselves into a fighter is basically “let’s hope everyone magically decides to follow a winning fighter’s career,” despite how poorly that strategy has been working.
No matter how hard we try to pretend we’re above valuing emotional investment in a fighter’s personality over said fighter’s actual accomplishments, the numbers that Jon Jones, Renan Barao, Benson Henderson and Demetrious Johnson bring in don’t lie; you can’t just say “these guys are good fighters” and expect most fans to care. I’m in no way suggesting that the gimmicks that Vince McMahon uses to promote his wrestlers should be used by an MMA organization, but is it too much to ask for a little more than “these two are about to fight, try to remember who wins three months from now”? Get back to demonstrating why fans should be so excited about a debuting fighter, and give them a few details about his/her life outside of the cage that they might find interesting. If the UFC gets back to treating the new athletes like people the fans should care about, then who knows, maybe the fans will react accordingly.
Establish An Official Minor League
The UFC faces an interesting dilemma: On one hand, they’re supposed to be the premier MMA organization, reserved for only the absolute best fighters. On the other hand, they’re also expanding internationally, and need warm bodies to fill all of the upcoming fight cards, regardless of whether or not these fighters even have Wikipedia pages. So far, the solution to this problem has been to make Fight Night cards the proverbial “one-fight cards” that Dana White said he’d never promote, and viewership has tanked to the point where a strong-ish World Series of Fighting show can outdraw a UFC Fight Night.
So if UFC Fight Night cards are already essentially minor league cards, then why not give the program the full WWE NXT treatment and designate Fight Night as the promotion’s official minor league? It can be the UFC’s way to continue its international expansion while also giving the locals being signed to fill the cards some extra time to develop their skills, the same way that the WWE makes even respected indie veterans like El Generico andSamuray del Sol prove themselves in NXT before getting a shot on the WWE’s main programs.
Sure, Fight Night will continue to draw relatively weak ratings – the same way that TNA Impact! Wrestling can actually compete against NXT – but is it really worth weakening the drawing power of the UFC brand just to continue to pretend these Fight Night cards feature UFC caliber fighters? It wasn’t too long ago when all I needed to do to convince my friends that a fight card was worth caring about was tell them that it was a UFC event. Those days are long gone, and that’s largely due to how weak these Fight Night events have become.
Pull the Plug on The Ultimate Fighter
When Tough Enough both lost the fans’ interest and failed to keep finding wrestlers the WWE could actually use, Vince McMahon pulled the plug. So, um, what exactly are you waiting for, guys?
Give PPVs a Proper Build-Up
The biggest gripe that my professional wrestling friends have against watching the UFC is that there is never any logical correlation between events. One day, they’ll catch a commercial for a heavyweight fight, then the next day it’s flyweights, and then the next day they’re being asked to pay for a rematch between Anderson Silva and Chris Weidman, with no explanation for how these fights are related except for the fact that they’re all UFC fights. Tempting as it may be to dismiss this as professional wrestling fanboy talk, all of them are NFL fans, because the season logically progresses to them: Sixteen games to determine which teams make the tournament for the championship, followed by said tournament and championship game.
What if the UFC instead booked shows so that the main events would have a clear featured weight class each month, with the monthly PPV featuring the title fight? Instead of booking Machida, Kennedy, and Belfort as the build-up for a fight between Georges St. Pierre and Johny Hendricks, why not book them as the build-up for Weidman vs. Silva II? Even the dimmest fans can then see how the free cards built up to the PPV: You’d have two free cards where Kennedy and Machida establish themselves in the middleweight division currently controlled by Chris Weidman – who will be defending his title on PPV against Anderson Silva, and it will be awesome – a free card featuring top middleweight Vitor Belfort keeping active while waiting for the Chris Weidman to defend his title on PPV against Anderson Silva, which will be awesome, and then the actual fight that pretty much everything that happened this month built up to.
Granted, injuries make this all but impossible to stick with, but when all goes according to plan, it’ll be easier to get the casual fans excited about dropping sixty bucks on a pay-per-view card. Of course…
One-Fight Cards – No Matter How Strong the Build-Up – Are Not Worth Paying For
I probably just launched one thousand “BUT THE FIGHTS ARE STILL GOOD JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THE FIGHTERS ARE SO WHY DOES IT MATTER?!” rants in the comments section – as well as another “Don’t say it sucks until after the event” rant from Dana White – but there is no way I’m wasting both my money and my Saturday on a card featuring one fight that I care about.
As with anything else, if all I want is “good,” then I’ll gladly accept the cheaper alternative. If I only want to watch a “good” football game, I’ll buy tickets to The New Orleans Bowl instead of The New Orleans Saints. If all I want is “good” food, I’ll buy fast food instead of fine dining. And if all I want to watch are “good” fights, I’ll spend twenty bucks on tickets to a local amateur MMA event, where I’ll get plenty of “good” fights between guys I vaguely recognize from local gyms. Vince McMahon understands that he can’t charge money for Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena if his supporting cast is Zach Ryder, Tensai, The Brooklyn Brawler, andDyn-O-mite, because there are enough “good” matches coming from indie wrestling organizations to give his viewers worthy alternatives. It’s time for the UFC to acknowledge that my second-best option no longer involves driving thirty miles to rent a bootlegged King of the Cage DVD that I’ve already seen four times.
Make Your Subscription Based Digital Networks Actually Worth Owning
So, can we talk about that hilarious “UFC Digital Network” for a minute? Because I’d like to formally ask if anyone on the planet is dumb enough to buy that thing. I’m not sure how much the UFC thinks I’m willing to pay for “Not even basic cable worthy” UFC cards, but anything over $0.00 is pushing the limits of reality for me.
– Every single episode of Raw, Smackdown, and every pay-per-view the company ever recorded.
– Every future pay-per-view except for future Wrestlemania events.
– However, as a reward for purchasing a six month subscription, Wrestlemania 30 will be included as well.
There aren’t enough TUF outtakes, NSFW-ish ring girl videos, and Mean Gene Helwani interviews in existence to make the UFC network comparable to the WWE network, and the WWE network isn’t making you flip between two separate apps in order to access it.
Al Bundy, your reaction please:
If you’re going to charge money for a service, make sure you’re providing more than what I can already legally get for free from your rivals. Asking me to pay for the caliber of fighters I can easily find in Bellator and World Series of Fighting for free? Don’t care, not happening.
Coincidentally, it was at this point in the history of professional wrestling – once the novelty started wearing off and the casual fans lost interest – that promoters decided to drift away from legitimate competition. The UFC doesn’t have to follow directly in professional wrestling’s footsteps in order to learn from its history. Vince McMahon may promote an entirely different product, but that doesn’t mean he has nothing to offer our sport.
