MMA mirrored the rest of the world in 2017. It was a strange year, and it wasn’t always good.
Entering the negotiating period for a critical new broadcasting contract and with still-new UFC owners WME-IMG yet to make a major impact on that op…
MMA mirrored the rest of the world in 2017. It was a strange year, and it wasn’t always good.
Entering the negotiating period for a criticalnew broadcasting contract and with still-new UFC owners WME-IMG yet to make a major impact on that operation, TV ratings wobbled fromrespectableto lukewarm to record-breakingly abysmal. Speaking to a major lack of star power, no UFC pay-per-view eventtopped one million buysin 2017.
That said, there’s plenty to love in this wild sport. Fighters like Demetrious Johnson, Max Holloway, Cris Cyborg and a host of others are a joy to watch. MMA is still the purest sport out there, with the toughest and bravest athletes still fueling that fire.
But those athletes, and the promotions that promote them, don’t always help their own cause of advancing the sport beyond hardcore fans and the sports-bar crowd.
With the sun rising on 2018, here’s hoping for a great year for the sport we love. To do that, we first have to say goodbye to those moments we’d most like to forget.
During normal years, trying to predict the future of mixed martial arts is a fool’s errand.
After the white-knuckle thrill ride that was 2017? Forget about it.
If the last 12 months have proved anything, it’s that the impossible can and will happe…
During normal years, trying to predict the future of mixed martial arts is a fool’s errand.
After the white-knuckle thrill ride that was 2017? Forget about it.
If the last 12 months have proved anything, it’s that the impossible can and will happen in combat sports. For evidence of this phenomenon, one must look no further than the boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and ConorMcGregor on Aug. 26.
First considered just a pipe dream, it turned into one of the biggest pay-per-view events of all time.
Who could have predicted that? Probably no one.
Still, as 2018 begins, there is at least some use in reflecting on MMA‘s last 365 days and projecting where it might be headed during the next calendar year.
Sure, many predictions are going to go horribly wrong; some, however, may well end up coming true.
With that in mind, here are the Bleacher Report MMA team’s best guesses about what to look for in 2018.
It’s all over. 2017, that is.
Or, as a jettisoned former face of the UFC might say: It. Is. Allllllllllllllllllllllllllll. OVER!
It was not exactly a banner year for the promotion, and despite what Dana White brazenly claimed as it came to a close, it’…
It’s all over. 2017, that is.
Or, as a jettisoned former face of the UFC might say: It. Is. Allllllllllllllllllllllllllll. OVER!
It was not exactly a banner year for the promotion, and despite what Dana Whitebrazenly claimed as it came to a close, it’s probably one the MMA leader is happy to see finished.
When the best work you do is to abstractly connect to your biggest star’s boxing debut, it’s hard to imagine feeling differently.
But now, with UFC 219 having come and gone and taught some lessons most already knew—Cris Cyborg is very good, Khabib Nurmagomedov is very good, you might not know 40 percent of the fighters on a pay-per-view card these days—the attention turns to the future.
And with that turning of focus, one major question arises: What is the UFC as we enter 2018?
In light of the brand’s position, nobody can give a good and honest answer.
Is it a fight promotion where the best fight the best?
Maybe, but considering Conor McGregor is holding a division hostage by not defending his title and Georges St-Pierre hurled a monkey wrench into one by jumping the queue for a title fight and then abandoning it immediately, it’s hardly guaranteed. Plenty of the best fighters in the world were passed over for money fights this past year; plenty more will be in the next.
So, is it a fight promotion where fights just happen for the sake of the money they’ll generate, merit be damned?
Also maybe, but there are still plenty of worthy champions out there hustling against the next top contender every time out. They deserve respect and acknowledgment in this odd, new climate, even if they don’t always get it.
Is it a media company?
One might have thought so until TV rights negotiations started and things went south. The gaping void of its over-the-top Fight Pass subscription service isn’t helping any, either. Originally sold as the future of fight viewing, the internet-only offering has devolved into an uninspired source of live events, if an adequate library of old fights. The UFC appears to be more a company with unrealized media interests and aspirations than anything else at this point.
How about a boxing promoter?
If you believe logos you see on Dana White’s T-shirts, it certainly is, but that’s about as close as it is to overseeing two pugilists in the ring right now. The likes of Bob Arum and Oscar De La Hoya—you know, actual boxing promoters—are even getting tired of hearing about it, and nothing pains boxing folk like taking the time to acknowledge MMA.
The whole thing is just a big, weird mess. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to any of this but rather a bunch of decisions being made and things happening, with no structure to any of it.
Under the guidance of the Fertitta brothers, there was a plan. And sure, it was often the type of grandiose scheming better suited to a Bond villain (who seriously targets a goal of “world f–king domination” in any context, ever?), but the results were good enough that such claims were accepted as part of the fun.
Could the UFC conquer Europe and Asia? Could it really ever become bigger than soccer on a global level? Was there a limit to the world’s appetite for mixed martial arts?
People mostly knew the answers, but they were along for the ride.
It was enjoyable to watch a sport evolve from grassroots to a multibillion-dollar commodity, and the entertainment and accessibility that came along with the product made the journey satisfying.
Today, could the average fan even tell you where the last event took place? Or what number it was? Or who headlined?
Probably not.
The modern UFC is rudderless, adrift in the sporting seas and taking on water thanks to a typhoon of pointless events filled with unknown fighters, worthless interim titles and the hottest new “chalk”-colored Reebok fight kits.
It spent 2016 working to please everyone—and boy did it ever please in 2016, with classics like McGregor vs. Nate Diaz (twice), Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey returning and the promotion finally breaking into New York—and then spent 2017 working to please absolutely nobody.
So what is the UFC heading into 2018?
Confused and confusing, compromised and confounding. Badly in need of someone or something to save it.
For the first time in years—probably ever, in fact—it is lost and there is no evidence it holds the key to finding itself.
Fifteen minutes wasn’t enough for Khabib Nurmagomedov Saturday at UFC 219.
In the wake of his savage, three-round beating of Edson Barboza at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nurmagomedov said he was ready to go again.
With the afterglow of his lopsided un…
Fifteen minutes wasn’t enough for Khabib Nurmagomedov Saturday at UFC 219.
In the wake of his savage, three-round beating of Edson Barboza at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nurmagomedov said he was ready to go again.
With the afterglow of his lopsided unanimous-decision win (30-25, 30-25, 30-24) still hanging in the air, the 29-year-old Dagestan, Russia, native said he wanted fights with UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor and interim champ Tony Ferguson.
Both of them.
In one night.
“Conor and Tony are nothing,” Nurmagomedov said in the cage and later in a UFC release. “It does not matter to me which one I get next. If the UFC will allow me, I will fight them both in the same night.”
Perhaps Nurmagomedov just wanted to make up for lost time.
Owing to a laundry list of injuries, he’s fought in the Octagon only three times during the past three-and-a-half years. After making the fourth-ranked Barboza look like little more than a tune-up opponent in their co-main event bout, he was right to call out the top dogs at 155 pounds—and as quickly as he can get his hands on them.
The days of the UFC staging single-night, multi-fight tournaments are long gone. For Nurmagomedov to get his wish of a two-for-one special against McGregor and Ferguson, he would likely need a time machine.
Fact is, considering his injury history and what will be at stake, The Eagle would be lucky to land a future bout with either of the UFC’s lightweight champions.
Especially McGregor, who spent 2017 establishing himself as one of the biggest draws in combat sports.
After the beating he put on Barboza, Nurmagomedov represents that least desirable equation in all of MMA: the toughest matchup for the lowest possible financial return. On top of that, agreeing to a bout with him comes with a high risk that things will fall apart at the last possible minute.
Both these factors weigh heavily on a man like McGregor, who has previously made it clear he only wants to fight people he knows will show up. Every step of the way in his UFC career, the bombastic Irishman has carefully plotted a course from one high-exposure, big-money fight to the next.
Each step has been bigger than the last, culminating with McGregor’s boxing match against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in August 2017. That fight became one of the biggest-selling attractions in the history of pay-per-view and may have netted McGregor as much as $100 million.
With that kind of money in the bank, UFC President Dana White has routinely said he has no idea whether McGregor will fight again. Though the man himself contends his next bout will be in MMA, notions of boxing matches against Manny Pacquiao or Paulie Malignaggi continue to swirl.
Given how McGregor views the world and the rarefied position he enjoys, why would he take the risk of a fight against Nurmagomedov?
He wouldn’t.
Or rather, he shouldn’t.
Even if he does return to the UFC, it would be more prudent for McGregor to first take on Ferguson in a unification bout. On top of that, he could complete his trilogy with Nate Diaz or hold out for a superfight against someone like Georges St-Pierre.
Of all the fights on the table, Nurmagomedov would likely be the smallest payday. There’s also the small matter that the Russian’s hard-nosed, grappling-based style would pose significant challenges for McGregor’s stand-up oriented game.
Nurmagomedov has a tendency to get overly aggressive on the feet and leave himself open to counters. That could give McGregor an opportunity to land one of his vaunted left-handed power shots. If he can’t KO Nurmagomedov early, however, their meeting would likely turn into the sort of bout McGregor should avoid at all costs.
That is, a slow and methodical destruction of the legend he’s worked so hard to build.
Take the Barboza fight for a prime example of how that could happen.
The Brazilian fighter had some solid moments in the early going at UFC 219, peppering Nurmagomedov’s lead leg with hard, low kicks and sticking him with some punching combinations. But Nurmagomedov merely waded through all of it, latched on to Barboza’s legs and dragged him to the mat.
After that, it was rinse and repeat for the next 14 minutes.
Nurmagomedov spent nearly every remaining moment brutalizing Barboza with his trademark ground-and-pound offense. His relentless takedowns sucked the steam out of Barboza’s flashy, kick-heavy offense, and then Nurmagomedov set about systematically battering every part of his opponent’s body with his fists, knees and elbows.
Or at least that’s how it seemed.
It was an impressive—sometimes ugly—display, and the fight could have been stopped long before going to the judges. When the smoke cleared, Nurmagomedov had reasserted his position as perhaps the scariest lightweight in the world.
The victory ran Nurmagomedov’s overall record to 25-0 and made it nine wins in a row in the UFC. Even in the uber-competitive lightweight division, his relentless grappling and ferocious ground-and-pound stand out.
His ice-cold demeanor and penchant for over-the-top one-liners have also made him reasonably popular with the UFC’s hardcore fanbase, but his inactivity has prevented him from making a dent among casual fans.
Add it all up, and there doesn’t seem to be much compelling McGregor to fight Nurmagomedov.
The only reason for McGregor to do it would be a sudden commitment to defending his title against all comers. Since winning the UFC’s featherweight crown in December 2015, McGregor has yet to defend a championship inside the Octagon. He’s always had bigger challenges attracting his attention.
Then again, if there’s a wild card in all this, it’s McGregor himself.
Predicting The Notorious’ next move has always been impossible. In fact, it has long been rumored McGregor is interested in a fight versus Nurmagomedov—if it could go down as an over-the-top spectacle in Russia.
If the UFC could put together a compelling financial package, perhaps it would be enough to turn McGregor’s money-conscious head.
No matter what, a fight against Nurmagomedov would be a big risk and potentially the biggest challenge of McGregor’s MMA career.
In order for it to be worth it, something in the equation would likely have to change.
She gave it her all. She even made it to the final bell of the final round. But in the end, Holly Holm got the same result that nearly everyone who has stepped into the cage with Cris “Cyborg” Justino has over the past 12 years.
She lost.
There is, of …
She gave it her all. She even made it to the final bell of the final round. But in the end, Holly Holm got the same result that nearly everyone who has stepped into the cage with Cris “Cyborg” Justino has over the past 12 years.
She lost.
There is, of course, no shame in losing to Justino, because everyone loses to Justino. Her only mixed martial arts loss was in her first professional fight, way back in 2005, to a kneebar submission by Erica Paes just 1:46 into the first round. Less than two minutes into her career, and she was forced to submit. Forced to acknowledge she’d been beaten by a better opponent.
It has been 12 years since that night in Curitiba, Brazil, and over the course of 21 fights, she has been the one battering opponents into submission. Breaking their will. Rendering them a bloody mess and a swollen, fun-house version of the person they were before.
Only once had another human survived into the fourth round with Justino. Holm took her to a decision. Holm will get plenty of backhanded credit for that moral victory, as well she should. She had a few bright moments, too, landing punches that appeared to stagger Justino. They were few and far between, though, and do you want to know the truly unnerving thing? Those moments when Holm showed strength seemed to make Justino smile, as though she appreciated that, finally, another human was giving her a run for her money.
But that moral victory (and swollen/broken facial features) is all Holm will take home to Albuquerque, and moral victories are not highly prized by professional fighters. Holm wanted this one. You could see it on her face, see it during her frenetic *will you please stop pacing* introduction. She *wanted* to beat Justino so badly, and what a *story* it would’ve been if she’d been able to do it, right? The only woman to ever beat Ronda Rousey and Cris Cyborg. What a moment.
But it was not to be. Justino was on a different level Saturday, even from her own prior career performances. She had power, of course, and she had incredible accuracy with her striking. But what she had in spades was energy. Justino was a constant presence in Holm’s personal space, rarely affording her a chance to breathe, and Holm’s game plan of circling into Justino’s powerful right hook played out pretty much exactly as one would expect. Holm was double-tough, though, and was able to survive until the final bell, after which Justino took a unanimous-decision win.
Saturday night was the kind of moment I never expected Justino to see. For so long, the Ultimate Fighting Championship closed its doors to her. It fawned over the blond-haired judoka, gave her a new division and bestowed on her a title without actually having her go through the process of winning it. But the bald-headed guardian at the gates constantly refused to acknowledge what the rest of the world could already see: that Cris Cyborg, not Ronda Rousey, was the best female fighter alive.
Justino’s long road led to Saturday night. The UFC didn’t relent. It didn’t accept her, not even begrudgingly. No, she forced her way here. She kicked the door down. And on Saturday night, Dana White—who once said Justino looked like Wanderlei Silva in a dress and then did a grotesquely offensive impersonation of her—was forced to grimace and wrap the featherweight championship around her waist.
Cris Cyborg fights Holly Holm on Saturday night, and there’s zero hype for it.
You know Cyborg. The most dangerous woman in the world? That’s her. Always has been, despite the UFC’s best efforts over the years to convince us that it was Ronda Rousey.
C…
Cris Cyborg fights Holly Holm on Saturday night, and there’s zero hype for it.
You know Cyborg. The most dangerous woman in the world? That’s her. Always has been, despite the UFC’s best efforts over the years to convince us that it was Ronda Rousey.
Cyborg’s marketing lies not in glossy marketing or appearances on Ellen or awkward Hollywood red carpet photo ops. She never had Dana White talking up her sex appeal.
Instead, White said Justino was “jacked up on steroids beyond belief” and that she looks like “Wanderlei Silva in a dress.” And then, as if to reinforce his point to the giggling media surrounding him, clomped around on stage in an impersonation that, even for White, was a low point in a career filled with low points.
The thing about all those mindless and offensive comments from White? They had an impact. Today, White is viewed by MMA fans as something of a joke who never speaks the truth in public; if he says something isn’t going to happen, you can pretty much count on it happening.
But there was a time, back before fans caught on, that White was a real influencer. And all of those things he said about Justino over the years, all the times he badmouthed her and used her as a crutch to prop up Rousey, all of it had an effect on the way Justino was viewed and continues to be viewed to this day.
So let’s talk about the steroid thing. Here are the facts: Justino has tested positive for a banned substance twice in her career, but only one of them actually led to a suspension—her positive test for stanozolol in 2011 that put her on the sidelines for a year.
Yes, she tested positive for an unspecified substance used in weight-cut recovery in late 2016, but she received a retroactive therapeutic use exemption from the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the agency that oversees and manages the UFC’s anti-doping program. Her temporary suspension was lifted and she was immediately restored to active competition. The only thing Justino was guilty of was forgetting to do her paperwork.
But news like this has a funny way of going right over our heads. There are still people out there who will claim she’s been banned twice for steroids, conveniently leaving out the fact it wasn’t actually steroids both times and how the second time ended up being a big nothingburger. Justino has passed thirteen random USADA screenings in 2017. She passed 11 tests in 2016.
But we’re in a place where facts don’t matter. What matters is the way we feel about people or events. if our gut tells us something, we think it’s the truth, often in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Even if Justino hadn’t failed a single test, many fans would view her as a cheat just because she looks a certain way. White spent years reinforcing that notion. With his words and actions, he made it acceptable for fans to feel the way they do.
What’s really unfortunate about how White and the UFC have shaped public perception of Justino is just how easy she would be to market on performances alone (not to mention the fact she’s just about the nicest person you’ll meet in MMA).
She made Gina Carano decide that perhaps a career in Hollywood was a better option than stepping into the cage again. Erin Toughill also opted for retirement when faced with the prospect of seeing Justino standing across from her in a fight.
Moments after Germaine deRandamiebecame the UFC’s first featherweight champion, she was asked by Joe Rogan about facing Justino and suddenly remembered a nagging hand injury that needed surgery. De Randamie later opted to vacate the championship and change divisions rather than defend the belt against Justino.
After spending years insulting Cyborg in order to build her own reputation, Rousey decided Justino needed to undergo an even more drastic weight cut than usual in order to attain the privilege of facing her. Rousey wasn’t running away, per se, she was just making the meeting an impossibility.
But who can blame her? This is a woman who strikes fear in the hearts of her opponents. Holly Holm probably isn’t scared of Justino, but surely there’s a nagging little feeling somewhere in her gut that says Saturday’s fight may go quite poorly for her.
Justino is a destructive force of nature. A one-person wrecking ball. The best female fighter in the history of mixed martial arts. She is literally a promoter’s dream. But the promoter in question spent years tearing her down, and now they’re trying to use her to promote a traditional big year-end show.
If it fails spectacularly, they’ll only have one person to blame.
It’s all over. 2017, that is.