Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino has unfairly been the butt of some off-color gender-based jokes in the past, but this is just silly. The UFC women’s featherweight champion recently tweeted that her employers, who she’s been at odds with for some time and were sold for $4 billion last year, still made the ridiculous mistake of listing […]
Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino has unfairly been the butt of some off-color gender-based jokes in the past, but this is just silly.
The UFC women’s featherweight champion recently tweeted that her employers, who she’s been at odds with for some time and were sold for $4 billion last year, still made the ridiculous mistake of listing her as the men’s heavyweight champion on their app:
To the bewilderment of mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members across the world, tomorrow’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) stacked UFC 214 from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, appears to be poised to go off without a hitch (fingers crossed), something that unfortunately hasn’t been the norm for a Jon Jones-headlined card in recent […]
To the bewilderment of mixed martial arts (MMA) fans and media members across the world, tomorrow’s (Sat., July 29, 2017) stacked UFC 214 from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, appears to be poised to go off without a hitch (fingers crossed), something that unfortunately hasn’t been the norm for a Jon Jones-headlined card in recent years.
The all-time great, who was only beaten by himself and his outside-of-the-cage problems with drugs, will have yet another attempt at a comeback when he meets archrival Daniel Cormier, the stalwart champion who has won four fights in “Bones’” absence but was still beaten by the troubled ex-champ, in the UFC 214 main event. The co-main event features a closely-matched welterweight title affair between power slugger Tyron Woodley and peerless grappling whiz Demian Maia, why consensus women’s No. 1 pound-for-pound star Cris Cyborg meets former Invicta champ Tonya Evinger for the women’s featherweight belt in the event’s third title fight.
The fighters weighed in according to California’s increasingly strict weigh-in standards this morning, the results of which can be seen here. Now, the fighters will square off in the final media event of the UFC 214 build-up when the ceremonial weigh-in begins shortly at 8:00 p.m. EST. Watch the video streaming live right here:
It’s no secret that the UFC is having a tough run in the first seven months of 2017. After a banner year in 2016 with multiple pay-per-view (PPV) events eclipsing the coveted one-million buy threshold, new owners WME-IMG are finding out just what it’s like to run the world’s biggest MMA promotion in a time […]
It’s no secret that the UFC is having a tough run in the first seven months of 2017.
After a banner year in 2016 with multiple pay-per-view (PPV) events eclipsing the coveted one-million buy threshold, new owners WME-IMG are finding out just what it’s like to run the world’s biggest MMA promotion in a time of downward-trending PPVs without flagship stars Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey anywhere close to the octagon.
True, McGregor will return to the ring against Floyd Mayweather, on August 26, but that could be hurting the UFC’s actual numbers more than helping them. We’ll get to that shortly.
Regardless, both the preliminary card television ratings and pay-per-view buyrates for July 8’s UFC 213 from Las Vegas were recently revealed, and the numbers ultimately amounted to some of the most dismal overall viewership turnouts the UFC has ever seen. Now, women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes’ extremely late withdrawal from her championship bout versus Valentina Shevchenko most definitely caused the lack of buys, but the numbers are concerning nonetheless.
Things didn’t get better two weeks later when UFC on FOX 25 aired live from the Nassau Coliseum on July 22. Despite former middleweight champion Chris Weidman securing an emotional headlining win over Kelvin Gastelum in his hometown, the card had the lowest-ever ratings for a UFC on FOX event in overnight ratings, a number that rose to “only” the third-worst of all-time when the time slot spillover numbers for the main event were factored in.
That continued a disturbing decline for big FOX-aired cards in 2017, but those numbers are also simply indicative of the overall trend of the year, where pay-per-view rates have went down drastically in addition to TV-aired events and PPV prelim numbers.
There are several big underlying factors for this sharp and disturbing decline. On the eve of the biggest pay-per-view of the year, let’s take at the five most impactful.
Promoting Only McGregor & Rousey:
The UFC enjoyed their most lucrative two-year stretch in history from 2015-2016, a time when their biggest-ever crossover stars in Rousey and McGregor were winning big fights in dominant fashion. Rousey was being called the most dominant fighter in MMA, and McGregor won both the featherweight and lightweight titles while becoming the sport’s biggest star.
But that time period simply couldn’t be sustained, as Rousey infamously lost the belt to Holly Holm at UFC 193, following it up with another unsuccessful title fight in her 48-second loss to Nunes at 2016’s UFC 207, after which it appears Rousey may never fight in the UFC again.
McGregor is not gone; at least not in the same sense as Rousey. He’s obviously involved in his hyped-up boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, and while the UFC will obviously get a ton of attention and hype from that massive spectacle, it brings up one vital, overarching point – the UFC simply promoted only their top two stars in recent years, and while it clearly worked in that regard, it left them much too dependent on McGregor and Rousey for success, because their other fighters just aren’t bringing in any numbers at all.
If they ever want to get back to the level where they have their big draws and their mid-level stars; say in the time of dominant champions Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre where mid-level stars like Rashad Evans and Rampage Jackson could still sell an in-between card for 350-400,000 buys, they’re going to have to diversify their promotional strategy.
It wasn’t the card originally planned, but the ladies of Invicta FC 24 once again put on a solid event. Originally, Megan Anderson was to defend her featherweight title against Helena Kolesnyk. However, the UFC signed Anderson away to fight Cris Cyborg. Invicta FC president Shannon Knapp moved Tonya Evinger, the reigning bantamweight champion, into […]
It wasn’t the card originally planned, but the ladies of Invicta FC 24 once again put on a solid event. Originally, Megan Anderson was to defend her featherweight title against Helena Kolesnyk. However, the UFC signed Anderson away to fight Cris Cyborg. Invicta FC president Shannon Knapp moved Tonya Evinger, the reigning bantamweight champion, into […]
Cris Cyborg Justino was originally scheduled to take on Megan Anderson for the vacant UFC featherweight title at UFC 214 on July 29, 2017, but Anderson was forced to withdraw from the bout shortly after it was officially announced. Anderson has received a bit of backlash in the weeks since she’s withdrawn from the fight, […]
Cris Cyborg Justino was originally scheduled to take on Megan Anderson for the vacant UFC featherweight title at UFC 214 on July 29, 2017, but Anderson was forced to withdraw from the bout shortly after it was officially announced.
Anderson has received a bit of backlash in the weeks since she’s withdrawn from the fight, but she recently said that she doesn’t owe anyone an explanation:
“I understand where people are coming from, but honestly I don’t owe anyone an explanation,” she said on a recent edition of the Sean, Funky, and the Baddest Man podcast. “I have personal stuff. Say if you had personal s**t you were dealing with. Would you want the whole world pressing you and forcing you to try to tell them? No, you’d probably be like, ‘F**k you guys, this is my s**t.’”
Without going into too much detail, Anderson revealed that it was personal issues that forced her out of the bout, but she assured fans that she is coming for Cyborg later this year:
“I want to make one thing clear and that’s unfortunately this is out of my control and I didn’t want to have to pull out of the fight. I was ready for that fight. I wanted that fight more than anything. I’m definitely not scared of Cris and hopefully once this stuff is kind of figured out, I want that fight back. She can say what she wants, but I’m coming for her regardless.”
“The thing that pisses me off the most is people think like I’m scared when that’s far from the truth.”
Cyborg will still fight at UFC 214, instead taking on Invicta FC bantamweight champion Tonya Evinger. To prepare for the title fight, Cyborg has sparred with Olympic boxing champion Claressa Shields. After watching the video, Anderson said she was even more ‘confident’ about fighting Cyborg:
“I’ve seen that and I was even more confident going into that fight. I seen a lot more holes in her game from that footage than I saw positives. I was even more excited for the fight. It was almost like the opposite of what people said and maybe we can rematch that fight when on the card when McGregor comes back.”
Would you give Anderson a strong chance of beating Cyborg?
Its been a long and troublesome road for the UFC’s hunt for a legitimate female 145-pound champion. Germaine de Randamie defeated former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm back in February to become the division’s inaugural champion, however, after refusing to fight Cris “Cyborg” Justino in her first defense due to her history with performance-enhancing […]
Its been a long and troublesome road for the UFC’s hunt for a legitimate female 145-pound champion.
Germaine de Randamie defeated former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Holly Holm back in February to become the division’s inaugural champion, however, after refusing to fight Cris “Cyborg” Justino in her first defense due to her history with performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), the promotion stripped “The Iron Lady” of her title.
Cyborg and Invicta FC featherweight champion Megan Anderson were expected to go head-to-head for the vacant UFC strap, however, Anderson was forced to pull out of the bout due to reasons not yet disclosed. Anderson was replaced by Invicta FC bantamweight champ Tonya Evinger who will step in to fill the void.
UFC President Dana White recently sat down with MMA Junkie to discuss the crazy ride to crowning a 145-pound champ, and said that ‘the least we can do’ is grant Justino a fight for the title:
“She’s had a rough go here in the UFC,” White said. “She hasn’t been thrilled with things that have been said, things that have been done. And to be honest with you, : : ‘Cyborg.’ So the least we can do is get our (expletive) together and get this woman a fight for the title.”
As for Anderson’s replacement, Evinger, White believes that the Invicta 135-pound champ is a woman who is going to step into the Octagon and bring the fight right to the Brazilian powerhouse – something others have been wary of in the past:
“(Anderson) had some personal problems and couldn’t do this fight,” he said. “And Tonya Evinger is a girl who has been around for a long time. She’s tough, she’s gritty, and what I’m really looking for is, I want a woman that’s going to go out and fight ‘Cyborg.’ I believe Tonya Evinger is that woman. We’ll see.”
White then went on to claim that Cyborg ‘owns’ the 145-pound division, and that any woman looking to fight at featherweight can expect to be standing opposite Justino inside the Octagon come fight night:
“We make it very clear: When you go into that division, you know who you’re going to be fighting. Basically, ‘Cyborg’ owns that division. You go into the 145-pound division and you’re fighting for a belt, you’re going to fight ‘Cyborg. “We signed ‘Cyborg,’ we made a commitment to ‘Cyborg,’ and not everything is easy and not everything is as fun as other divisions or whatever, but we made a commitment to this woman.”
White then went on to claim that Cyborg ‘owns’ the 145-pound division, and that any woman looking to fight at featherweight can expect to be standing opposite Justino inside the Octagon come fight night: