The UFC went all out on making the organization’s New York debut a memorable one.
Now fans get to reap the benefits.
The word “stacked” gets thrown around a lot to describe a UFC card, but this one truly lives up to the adjective.
Not…
The UFC went all out on making the organization’s New York debut a memorable one.
Now fans get to reap the benefits.
The word “stacked” gets thrown around a lot to describe a UFC card, but this one truly lives up to the adjective.
Not one or two, but three belts will be on the line in a six-fight main card that should challenge UFC 200 as the most well-put-together card of all time.
Here’s a look at the complete lineup with predictions for all three of the title fights:
Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz
Aside from being the most difficult to pronounce championship fight in UFC history, this should also be an exciting way to kick off the string of title shots.
Carla Esparza was the original champion of the women’s strawweight division, but Joanna Jedrzejczyk spent very little time in taking it from her and has been the dominant champion ever since. She’s already strung together three title defenses, with her last one coming over rival Claudia Gadelha.
With Gadelha now out of the way, Jedrzejczyk can go back to cleaning out the division, and Kowalkiewicz happens to be the next in line.
The champion doesn’t just have eyes set on winning this one, though. She envisions ending her career with an unblemished record as one of the greatest of all time, per Shaun Al-Shatti of MMA Fighting:
I want to be a legend. I want people to talk about me in five, 10 years, 20 years, that I was one of the best female MMA fighters, that I was one of the best UFC champions in the world back in the day. This is what I want. I just want to retire as an undefeated champion. This is my goal. This is my dream, and I want to make this dream become (real) life.
Kowalkiewicz might be just another bump in the road for the champion, but she could be the kryptonite that she hasn’t found yet.
The Polish contender has an undefeateed record of her own heading into this fight. The muaythai specialist might be the only fighter the champion has fought that can claim to even be close to being as polished on the feet.
Both like to set a blistering pace in the stand-up game. Jedrzejczyk averages 6.36 significant strikes per minute while Kowalkiewicz isn’t far off at 5.98, according to FightMetric.
The difference is likely to be the Joanna Champion’s defense. Not only does she rock opponents with her volume, she does so in a way that she is still hard to hit. She only absorbs 2.32 significant strikes per minute.
Kowalkiewicz is much more likely to open herself up to counters with her attack as she averages 3.87 absorbed strikes.
Expect that gap in defense to be the difference as the fight wears on.
Prediction: Jedrzejczyk by 4th-round TKO
TyronWoodley vs. Stephen Thompson
It isn’t very often that a challenger who has never held a UFC title before comes into a bout as the favorite over the reigning champion.
Such is the case for Stephen Thompson when he goes to challenge for TyronWoodley‘s belt in the co-main event.
According to Odds Shark, Thompson comes in as a 49-100 favorite, while the comeback on Woodley sits at 33-20.
That’s because it’s easy to write a narrative that dismisses Woodley as the champion of 170. While he’s always been an explosive fighter, his first-round knockout victory over Robbie Lawler can easily be looked at as the culmination of all the wars that Lawler has been involved in over the years. We knew his chin couldn’t last forever, and it finally buckled.
That’s not fair to Woodley, but his resume leading up to his title shot was marked by a split decision win over Kelvin Gastelum and almost a year-and-a-half layoff.
Meanwhile, Thompson has proved that he’s the most dangerous contender at welterweight in that time span. He added three wins to his seven-fight streak against top competition with knockout victories over Jake Ellenberger and Johny Hendricks and a decision win over Rory MacDonald.
Thompson’s karate-based striking game is going to be hard for Woodley to figure out. T-Wood likes to close the distance quickly so that he can throw bombs, but Wonderboy is generally light on his feet and ready to cut off angles quickly.
Still, this fight comes down to Wonderboy’s ability to avoid the bomb from Woodley and pick him apart at distance.
According to Reed Kuhn of Fightnomics, Woodley has the best knockdown rate on the card:
That might not matter, though. Thompson has shown his ability to stifle powerful strikers in Hendricks and MacDonald recently. Look for him to patiently pick Woodley apart and come away with a late stoppage.
ConorMcGregor is the most intriguing fighter in the UFC, and he’s looking to do something that would cement his legacy as one of the best fighters in the history of the organization. Holding two belts would be an accomplishment that puts him in rarefied territory.
Doing that won’t be easy, though. Alvarez has been criminally underrated in his time with the UFC. A loss to Donald Cerrone in his promotional debut took the steam out of the Alvarez hype train, but he’s since recovered to go on a three-fight win streak that included shocking the world with a first-round finish of former champion Rafael dos Anjos.
McGregor is a much different challenge than Dos Anjos, though.
While Dos Anjos is a forward-moving bulldozer who was always going to be open to the counters that Alvarez destroyed him with, McGregor is a much more intelligent fighter. This matchup will be a game of violent chess, and given the emotion that’s gone into the pre-fight festivities, it’ll be one with bad intentions.
That’s a matchup that favors McGregor. We’ve seen this song and dance from him before, and with the exception of his first fight against Nate Diaz where he gassed himself going for an early knockout, he’s shown that he can keep his cool despite showing emotion before the fight.
As long as McGregor can remain off the fence, his striking should carry the day in this matchup.
Fighting at 155 is uncharted territory for the Irishman, but it might actually be his best weight class. The cut to 145 usually leaves him gaunt and downright scary looking at the weigh-ins. However, the cut to 155 doesn’t look as taxing, and he’ll still be the bigger man on fight night with a five-inch reach advantage.
ST. LOUIS — Tyron Woodley was all of eight weeks old when his mother delivered him to the blind woman sitting at the back of the church.
“Bring me that boy,” came the command. So it was done.
The trio were the last people to leave on a mid-…
ST. LOUIS — Tyron Woodley was all of eight weeks old when his mother delivered him to the blind woman sitting at the back of the church.
“Bring me that boy,” came the command. So it was done.
The trio were the last people to leave on a mid-June day in 1982, and Deborah Woodley, as God-fearing a woman as they come, did as her aunt requested. Tyron was then hoisted above his great-aunt’s head.
“God, give him the strength of Samson and the wisdom of Solomon,” she said. “That’s a prophesy. I’m prophesying over him.”
As Deborah processed it, the implications were clear: Well before the current UFC welterweight champion selected “The Chosen One” as his fighting nickname, Tyron had already been anointed as such.
“I knew he was,” Deborah told Bleacher Report last week.
Around Tyron’s first birthday, he offered a preview of his great-aunt’s visions, lifting 10-pound dumbbells to the amazement of his mother—so much so that 33 years later, she recounted the scene to a large crowd that had congregated to celebrate her son.
There were other signs. When Deborah took Tyron to the pediatrician, she would get scolded because her infant boy had too much muscle and not enough fat on his frame.
“She didn’t think I was giving him enough milk,” Deborah said. “And I was. I was breastfeeding.”
Several years later, one of Deborah’s friends brought her son over for a visit. He practiced karate and had outgrown his uniform, so it was handed down to Tyron. He wore it while kicking a hole into the concrete of their basement wall.
Tyron was indeed a physical specimen, yet this wasn’t going to be the only type of strength he needed to exhibit in life. Prophesy alone wouldn’t determine his fate, not in the face of life’s circumstances, which could have easily derailed him.
Built on a frame of determination, faith and smarts, Woodley, one of 13 kids raised in a modest four-bedroom home in Ferguson, Missouri, doesn’t come off like a long shot even if in many ways he is.
After earning a degree in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri, where he captained the wrestling team for three years and helped propel a flailing program into one that commands respect, Deborah thought her son was crazy to choose a life of fighting. The truth is, it chose him. When he told her he thought he could excel, that there was a real future for him in this world, she did what she always had: supported him in every way imaginable.
“I’ve always told my children, aim beyond the moon,” Deborah said. “If you fall, you’ll fall on top of it.”
The results of Woodley’s ordained gifts combined with his mother’s work ethic produced his most recent spectacle this July. The 34-year-old mass of fast-twitch muscle closed the distance on Robbie Lawler and starched the dominant UFC champion with a devastating right hand. It was a stunning outcome, not for the result but rather the explosive thrust that precipitated it. And even this was not shocking because Woodley (16-3) is well-known to be capable of such things; it’s just that the sight of them still makes jaws drop.
On Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in the co-main event of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s eagerly anticipated return to New York following a 19-year ban in the state, Woodley has his next opportunity to shoot for the moon. Entering the Octagon against dynamic challenger Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson (13-1), the betting odds place Woodley as the dark horse for the fifth time in six fights, per Odds Shark. He has repeatedly found satisfaction in proving them wrong and said this time will be no different.
“I’ve always felt like the underdog,” Woodley said.
James Knowles III was the senior leader of the McCluer High School wrestling team when Tyron Woodley showed up intent on doing something that hadn’t been done in a quarter-century.
When Woodley was in the seventh grade, he was told there was no way he could win a state wrestling title at McCluer. The comment came from a member of the McCluer team that last took a state crown in 1968.
“You know I’m about to wrestle there?” a confused Woodley responded.
He took the moment as a personal slight and never forgot. It fed him.
Wrestling in the inner city is generally an iffy proposition. It’s an easy sport for school districts not to fund, and the season runs the same time of the year as basketball. Everyone wants to be like LeBron James. The thing about wrestling, it’s not a game. Pickup wrestling isn’t really a thing. In truth, it’s more of a martial art, and competitive grappling isn’t for most people. There’s no showing up half-cocked. Participants really have to want to do it, like deep-down desire.
And then there are the uniforms. The singlet. One of Woodley’s trainers, retired fighter Din Thomas, gave up wrestling in his youth because he couldn’t bring himself to put on the tight-fitting one-piece.
“We had to work our butts off to be able to afford new uniforms and pay for camps,” Knowles said. “A lot of other school districts’ parents shell out money to send their kids off to camps. To high-priced clinics so their kids know all of the newest techniques. These are things we didn’t have. If we did, it meant we went out and worked for it, selling candy and fundraising.”
Deborah Woodley supported her son’s wrestling every way she could, just as she did for her other kids’ interests. The dancer and choreographer. The cosmetologist. The writer and artist. The nurse. The saleswoman. The personal assistant who runs Tyron’s business. They all received Deborah’s support, same with their adopted cousin and several half-brothers.
Despite working three jobs, sometimes pulling triple shifts, Tyron said his mom only missed one or two wrestling meets ever. These days, she attends all of his fights, and she will be in New York when he fights Thompson.
“I had to do what I had to do,” she said. “No sleep.”
Tyron’s father left him on his 10th birthday. The man lived within jogging distance. They crossed paths at the grocery store. But Woodley never turned emotional about it. He was more stone-faced than anything, and he admitted to channeling whatever angst he felt into wrestling. Between being told he couldn’t win and the intense work ethic instilled by his mother, Woodley’s wrestling took off at McCluer.
“He excelled at athletics, but he was not somebody who walked onto the wrestling mat as a natural,” said Knowles, who at the age of 31 became the youngest person elected to the mayorship in Ferguson, a post he held in 2014 as civil unrest exposed fault lines between the community and the law enforcement tasked with protecting it. “He was naturally physically gifted, but he worked his butt off to be successful.
“I was a 189-pounder. Tyron was 140, maybe 135. We played king of the mat, and the winner stays in the middle. Sometimes, Tyron would be in the middle when I got out there.
“To me, what stood out was his perseverance. He was not going to fall out on his own. He was going to have to be taken out. That mentality is what helped him persevere to the level that he’s at today. It didn’t come because he was born with it, per se. He was born with some but worked for the rest.”
During Woodley’s senior year, he posted a perfect 48-0 record at 165 pounds and didn’t cede a point unless he allowed an opponent to regain his feet. Upon capturing the state title, he made sure to tell the man who said it couldn’t be done that he thought about that statement every year until he won.
A top-five wrestling recruit out of high school, Woodley signed with the University of Nebraska on a scholarship that would have paid for 75 percent of his tuition. That plan changed when the head coach, Tim Neumann, was forced to resign amid allegations that he improperly paid wrestlers cash when their scholarship money ran out. That’s how Woodley ended up at the University of Missouri, a program that was considered a layup around the Big 12 until coach Brian Smith was hired to change the culture.
“It was not only that he was a talented wrestler. He had a great work ethic,” Smith said. “But it was also about what was going on with the program and the type of person he was with his leadership. It elevated our program. It brought other people to our program with recruits. They would say, ‘Hey, if Woodley is there—he’s a great person, good kid, good student—this is where we want to be.’
“He made the most of it. His toughest year was his junior year. That was the year he didn’t All-American. He learned a lot from that year. He had had his oldest son born that year. I knew at one point he was afraid to tell me he was having a baby. I told him, ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. You’re going to love this child, and you’re going to be a great father, too.’ I said, ‘We’re going to have to work through it.'”
In 2003, Woodley became the first Missouri wrestler to claim a Big 12 Conference title. He served as the Mizzou wrestling captain for three years and scored All-American status twice. After Woodley stopped Lawler in the fastest welterweight title fight finish in UFC history, Smith texted him congratulations. Woodley was grateful, though he reminded his former coach that he still hadn’t gotten over not winning an NCAA title.
Wrestling seemed to be Woodley’s future. After college, he focused on earning a graduate degree and coaching. Assisting at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville for $30,000 a year was less than glamorous work, which would have been fine, but Woodley’s shoulder needed surgery, and he had gotten used to the big support network that comes with being at a major program. Any chance he had of wrestling internationally was gone unless he could get it repaired, and continuing on the path he was on wouldn’t get it done.
Woodley met MMA trainer Wade Rome, who promised to secure the wrestler health insurance if he worked around his American Top Team-affiliated gym in Columbia, Missouri. In 2007, Woodley had spent enough time at the gym to go under the knife. He had already dabbled in MMA, making his amateur debut two years earlier. Woodley mostly served as a sparring dummy for some of ATT’s top fighters. They learned how to deal with a big, powerful wrestler. He learned how to take punishment.
“He was pretty open, especially when we first started working together,” retired fighter Yves Edwards said. “His boxing definitely wasn’t what it is now. He couldn’t throw a punch beyond the fact that he was an explosive athlete. He could punch you and hit you, but technically, he couldn’t put combinations together with proper technique.”
Again Woodley went to work with the desire to be his best.
“I think a kid from the inner city, if I had to recruit, is the ideal person for MMA,” Woodley said. “They’d be less likely to be affected by hard work. They’d be less likely to not appreciate something when someone is helping them out, because they probably don’t have a ton of stuff. And all the stuff that encompasses their environment. All the struggles. All the heartache. All the pain. All the things they’ve had to actually endure to just not die, I think those things would make them think about training differently. I think about training differently.”
Nearly a decade later, Woodley is considered among the most dynamic fighters in the UFC. That wasn’t enough, though, to stop him from feeling like he was spectating greatness. It was time to move to the next level of the game.
One of the few criticisms levied against Woodley from the people who know him best is that he sometimes fell victim to a mental block.
Ben Askren followed Woodley to Missouri, and on several occasions, he challenged Woodley’s authority as team leader. For Askren, a two-time NCAA champion and member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic wrestling team, it was a matter of pushing his teammates to their absolute best. Eventually, he and Woodley developed a bond that formed after they shared some hard training sessions on the mat.
“I think a lot of us felt he had the potential to be even better, and I think there were mental things holding him back,” Askren said of Woodley. “Winning the UFC title got him over the hump there.
“He likes everything to be the way it should be, almost too perfect. A lot of times in athletics, it’s not about who’s more perfect or who has better technique, it’s about who’s going to go execute when it’s time to get down and dirty.”
It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes for the sweat pouring from Woodley’s 5’9″ frame to soak through several layers of clothes. After spending the majority of his training camp in Milwaukee preparing for Thompson, The Chosen One returned home for one final weekend ahead of his first UFC title defense on Nov. 12. It would be a busy few days in St. Louis before leaving for New York, and he was just starting to shed weight to reach the welterweight division’s 170-pound limit.
“Did you hear?” Woodley said during the middle of a 25-minute circuit-training session. “USADA tested me, and I came back positive for hard work and beast-like characteristics.”
In an era when UFC fighters are regularly caught with banned substances in their systems as the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency exerts its influence over MMA’s top promotion, Woodley says it’s been two years since he ingested a nutritional supplement. Looking at him with his shirt off, it’s hard to believe that the only tub of protein powder in his home, a beautiful property that feels about as far removed from Ferguson as one can get, met its expiration date in 2015. Maybe that’s because for as long as Woodley can remember, his physical gifts were honed by old-fashioned hard work.
This is what he says. This is what the people around him say. Everything worth having needs to be earned.
After his training concluded for the day, Woodley leaned against the wall of his gym, an American Top Team-affiliated academy in the St. Louis suburb of Brentwood. This is the gym’s second location, and the front lobby is under construction. On the list of things he is grateful for, owning a training facility is near the top. And not just because one of the best fighters in MMA needs a hideout location close to home. This is bigger than him.
“I had kids in there that were addicted to heroin, and the gym became their sanctuary,” Woodley said. “If they didn’t have the gym, they felt like they would go back to using. I’ve had families that had nothing in common, this was the one thing they felt like they could do together. I’ve had people that lost 400 pounds in there. Low self-esteem. All sorts of things. As an athlete, I thought if I moved, I was failing. But as a businessman, it was stupid for me to stay in there and eat up that monthly overhead.”
That overhead was nearly $12,000 a month, totaling close to $500,000. His business partner and one of his biggest fans, Tim Sansone, a St. Louis real estate developer, never wavered in his commitment to Woodley or the facility.
Woodley met Sansone after he began scouting locations for a gym. They hit it off, and almost immediately Woodley began teaching Sansone’s children. Sansone Saturdays, they called it.
Soon enough, Sansone felt comfortable offering the fighter a deal. For half of Woodley’s future earnings, he would open a gym with him. Woodley passed because he felt big-money fights would come and it didn’t make sense to give that much away. Sansone was impressed. The real estate developer attempted to line up investors for Woodley for a couple of years until Sansone realized he was the right person to partner with Tyron.
“He said back then that he would be world champion and he believed it,” Sansone said. “It was infectious. I got caught up in it. It felt right. I liked him a lot. He was the kind of guy I wanted my kids to meet and train with. The guy has been straightforward and honest with a high degree of integrity since I met him.
“One thing I know in business, it does not matter where you come from at all. It matters what kind of effort you’re willing to put forth. If you’re honest and willing to put in the time, you’re going to do well. I was just as fortunate to run into him as he was to run into me.”
“When he makes up his mind, that’s just what’s going to happen,” said Edwards, who advised Woodley against opening his own place. “That’s what he’s going to do and go all-in. To do that, you have to be driven and committed, and I think there’s a part where he’s not going to listen to naysayers and try to prove them wrong. It’s unspoken, but that kind of drive makes you seem like you’re hardheaded and stubborn. When you don’t know someone, and sometimes even if you do, that’s something that sours you to a person.”
Unspoken or outspoken, Woodley has had a knack for rubbing people in MMA the wrong way since he jumped into the sport in 2009. The people who know him best bring up his infectious sense of humor, but it hardly ever translates when he speaks in public. As his profile has grown, so has the recognition that words have consequences.
“You need to think before you speak,” Woodley said, “and if I say something, I’m not taking it back. I’m going to stand on it, 10 toes down. If it becomes a situation where people don’t like it, I’m OK with that. You also have to realize you can’t force someone to have the same mindset as you, to think the way you think. They have their own life experiences, and that’s probably why they’re geared a certain way, and also, you can’t fix stupid.
“There’s some ignorant people in the world, and if I spend time trying to convince people to think like me, I’ll be wasting valuable time I could use to be growing my business, perfecting my craft as a fighter, watching film, studying or just enjoying time with my family. Or just sleeping. Those are things that are way more important than troll-smashing on the internet.”
“Say anything, and you come off looking like Louis Farrakhan,” Thomas said.
Woodley has taken the time to reflect on how he’s perceived. Wondering what he can and can’t say. Discussing double standards that let certain champions get away with speaking in tones he doesn’t believe he can. Race baiting. These are things that make Woodley different than other champions in the UFC and unique even among African-American competitors.
At a time when black athletes have cast aside the tired notion of “shut up and play” for stand up and speak, Woodley finds himself in a unique spot, one he seems especially qualified for and leery of.
“I get n-bombed, or called a monkey or coon every single day,” Woodley said, noting that for every person who unleashes this type of hate on him, there are 20 others who offer words of encouragement.
St. Louis hasn’t fully embraced Tyron Woodley yet. With a win over Thompson on Saturday, that might change. For a man who seems to be a natural ambassador for the city and its residents, particularly the urban community, that’s the hope.
“It’s really important that people recognize that there are people in this country, especially people in this area here, who grew up with a lot of the same hurdles in life as Tyron,” said Mayor Knowles. “There’s a lot of people who have undergone many of the same obstacles and challenges that Tyron has. And someone like Tyron, who has not only been able to work and become successful for himself, but remain grounded and understand the importance of family and community…that’s huge.
“Someone who has grown up in the area, I think he’s somebody who can relate to people [because] he’s had similar experiences that people are upset about. Speak out about the experiences and hurdles. The disparities that exist like this and all across this country. Tyron can speak out about that, having experienced all those same sorts of things while also speaking out about how he overcame them. And how maybe as a community and region we can work to overcome them. I think he’s a great spokesman for that. Clearly, he has a perspective that needs to be heard.”
If Woodley is going to become the kind of champion who generates headlines and pay-per-view dollars for the UFC, the solution might be in unlocking African-American interest in mixed martial arts. As far as combat sports go, the black community at large tends to gravitate toward boxing. Woodley said he hopes to change that dynamic.
Thus far, the UFC has displayed little interest in promoting Woodley any differently than it does other fighters who are successful but don’t quite move the proverbial needle. So Woodley has taken it upon himself to get his name out there. He’s invested in his brand the last couple of years and hopes the UFC will see it as an exercise in gaining momentum.
“If I was his fight promoter, I would sell him as here’s a guy that came from some of the toughest circumstances that anyone in the country could come from. He made no excuses. He looked for no breaks. No handouts. No nothing. He made his own luck,” said Sansone. “He chose his own career path. He didn’t let anyone tell him what to do or what not to do. He was smart and put in the work. I would say look at what’s possible. Whether it’s the African-American community or anybody in this country, look at what this country allows for if someone is willing to put in the time and work. Nobody can outwork him. To me, that’s the key.”
Winning, of course, is the most likely way to open doors. If Woodley does his job in the Octagon, all he can hope for is a small push from his promoter.
“It’s a big gap missing with the urban community,” Woodley said. “That’s a community that’s been driven into the boxing arena for so many years. When Floyd Mayweather retired, it was a perfect opportunity for the UFC to educate the urban community on what MMA is. Still to this day, they think it’s just crazy cagefighting with mostly Caucasian fighters and sprinkles of brothers here and there. They don’t really understand it. I think I’m a person who can help educate.”
Last Saturday, as Woodley visited the Premiere Palace Barber Shop & Salon on Florissant Ave., he was greeted like a favored son. They hadn’t seen his UFC belt since he won it, and the hefty leather strap was passed between barbers and patrons. Photos were taken. Smiles and laughs were abundant. When Woodley was nine, he scored his first job at Premiere, sweeping and cleaning and doing whatever else was needed. This is where his hustle hit the road. The drive to succeed. To persevere. To do whatever he could to make his life and the lives of the people around him better.
There’s a sense that the community has improved, Knowles said, by building upon what there was so as to be much more inclusive than in the past. Woodley agreed. As for the police, who Woodley claimed had been belligerent to him in the past, there is renewed focus on law enforcement and the underserved segments of the community.
Knowles said the community needs Woodley and other homegrown figures like him. The face of Ferguson, which exploded in 2014, has changed. An influx of new businesses are growing accustomed to the community, and investment has returned a net positive from where Ferguson was two years ago. Socially, the community has a number of events throughout the year that are well-attended by a racially diverse mix of people. Knowles, who is white, said win or lose, Woodley is expected to be honored at an event after Thanksgiving.
“There’s still disparity in this region,” Knowles said. “Access to schools, jobs, training, education. Those are larger issues that transcend the Ferguson city limits, but we’re making progress on here. Things are getting much better, but … the schooling issues [and] economic issues affect the St. Louis County area, and we probably need a voice to help get some attention to those areas.”
This sounds like the role for a star. Just don’t tell that to Deborah Woodley, whose son has also taken to acting and appeared in a speaking role in Straight Outta Compton.
“I got a problem with that stardom thing,” she said. “Really, it’s just work. It’s Tyron’s job. For people to recognize you, let your work speak for you. Don’t try to go all out to be recognized. That goes back to reputation. You don’t need all that.
“For him to go do something with it, for him to encourage somebody, help change a young man or woman’s life or mindset about life, he’s always had a good heart.”
Deborah moved from Ferguson to troubled East St. Louis. She refuses to let Tyron buy her a home in a safer neighborhood, and she won’t leave because she believes this is where God wants her to impact the community.
“I walk up on gangbangers and say what I gotta say,” Deborah explained. “I pull up their pants. I tie rope around them. I give people money who look like they’re having a real struggle. And I pray with them. That’s my purpose.”
Was there ever any question over Conor McGregor’s ability to excel in the New York City spotlight?
Sure, the glare is a few watts brighter in the Big Apple, but part of McGregor’s success comes from the way in which he steps into the beam, no matter ho…
Was there ever any question over ConorMcGregor‘s ability to excel in the New York City spotlight?
Sure, the glare is a few watts brighter in the Big Apple, but part of McGregor‘s success comes from the way in which he steps into the beam, no matter how intense.
Not only does McGregor embrace that role, he almost seems to need it. And as he prepares for his Saturday bout with Eddie Alvarez at UFC 205, he’s having himself a time on the town.
“There’s so much going on in the city right now. So much buzz,” McGregor said Thursday at a news conference attended by Bleacher Report. “I mean, I’m just trying to enjoy it and embrace it. … The city has treated me amazingly. They’ve been showing me a lot of love.”
This from the guy who hopped into Thursday’s presser wearing a full-length white mink coat and what appeared to be red pajamas. This came minutes before he brandished a chair at Alvarez, nearly inciting a very well-publicized brawl.
It seems he’s taking advantage of the public fish bowl.
“I’m driving around, having fun, training, shopping, just living my life, preparing for another contest,” McGregor said.
And not just any kind of driving. The featherweight champion has been using a custom-made Rolls-Royce to tour Manhattan all week. You know, the one with his face and name painted on it.
Wait, correction: There are now two Rolls-Royces.
“One Rolls for each gold belt,” McGregor said at the press conference, in reference to the two UFC titles he’ll own if he can capture Alvarez’s lightweight title on Saturday. “I’ve just been driving around embracing the city.”
We’ll see what, if any, impact the city’s diversions will have on McGregor when he faces Alvarez on Saturday. As of Friday afternoon, McGregor is a -155 favorite (bet $155 to win $100), according to Justin Hartling of Odds Shark.
Saturday night is undoubtedly a work night for McGregor. But until then, it’s all fun and games.
“That’s what I do,” he said. “It’s the Mac life.”
Scott Harris is live in New York City for UFC 205. For more updates, follow Scott on Twitter. All quotes obtained firsthand.
Conor McGregor arrived in The City with a pointed swagger that was both arrogantly self-congratulatory and ruthlessly dismissive of the rest of his colleagues filling out what is objectively an excellent card. Which is to say, he was on his A-game.
“I …
Conor McGregor arrived in The City with a pointed swagger that was both arrogantly self-congratulatory and ruthlessly dismissive of the rest of his colleagues filling out what is objectively an excellent card. Which is to say, he was on his A-game.
“I run this whole s–t. I run New York,” he said during the UFC 205 media conference call last week. “I’m the reason we’re even here in the first place. I’m the reason this whole thing is happening. If I wasn’t here, this whole s–t goes down. And that’s the truth. That’s facts. There’s no one else out there. There’s no one else but me.”
Since he’s not running for office, there’s no need to fact-check him, but just know it’s not all factual, even if it’s truth-y.
The fact is, McGregor is the show, both before, during and after UFC 205.
And in some ways, the question of what he will be doing on the morning after UFC 205 is just as interesting as the results of his fight Saturday night against Eddie Alvarez. That’s the kind of intrigue he has built up for himself over the years and the amount of power he has in the fight game. Depending on what he’s going to do, McGregor’s next move may leave two divisions tied up in knots, fans in a rut and the new ownership in a panic.
McGregor is already the best featherweight in the world, and after Saturday night, he could lay claim to the lightweight crown as well. Never in the 20-year-plus history of the UFC has a two-division champion reigned, and such an accomplishment will most certainly make McGregor the most powerful fighter in MMA history and maybe even the most powerful individual in the sport.
That might sound like hyperbole, but at this point, McGregor may already have the former tag. His success has allowed him to call his own shots, picking his opponents, divisions and timelines. When the UFC actually tried to rein him in by dumping him from the UFC 200 card, McGregor returned a month later and, along with Nate Diaz, pumped up a pay-per-view that easily outsold the card he was originally supposed to be on. In fact, it set a single event pay-per-view record, according to MMA Fighting.
In some ways, that result was the best and worst thing that could have happened to the UFC. If McGregor had any remaining questions about his worth, they were answered that night when he headlined an event that sold absolute gangbusters for no good reason. It wasn’t a title fight, and the undercard wasn’t particularly strong.
Through sheer force of business alone, McGregor is officially a one-man movement, but on top of it, he won, giving him the ultimate in leverage. For a new ownership team desperate to maximize every cent of profit to recoup its massive $4 billion investment, that meant McGregor is slicing into its cut. Beyond that, he’s going to have a say in putting together the biggest events, because it’s pretty difficult—nearly impossible, really—to create them without him.
To be blunt, everyone knows this truth: Right now, no one has the pull McGregor has.
“Everyone in this game does what they’re f–king told. Everyone but me because I run the game, so I don’t give a f–k about all that,” McGregor said. “If I tell you you’re on the prelims, you’re on the f–king prelims. If I tell you you’re on Fight Night, you’re on f–king Fight Night. No one has no say in this but me. I’m the only one that can say anything about anything. Everyone else does what they’re told, and rightfully f–king so.”
He’s not really wrong. In an organization that has been controlled by oligarchy—first the Fertitta brothers and Dana White, now WME-IMG and White—McGregor has inserted himself into the equation and flipped the power structure on its head.
In doing so, he’s the first fighter to penetrate the dividing line between fighter and management. Right now, he’s the only fighter actually in control of his own fate.
Of course, that is one of the stakes of UFC 205 as well.
Regardless of his increased power, a loss may be enough to send him back to the featherweight division, where he’s been champion in absentia for close to a year.
That’s the thing about his place on high. One slip and there will be plenty of people waiting to push him down further. Because of that, the importance of winning at UFC 205 cannot be overstated, even if he downplays the possibility of failing at anything.
“I’ll just continue changing the game,” he said. “Continue breaking records, continue striving to put this game onto that next level like I have been doing since day one. So that’s my plan.”
The business of McGregor, Inc., does stand to gain exponentially from UFC 205.
The UFC-in-New York subplot has woven its way through the sport for so long that many have drowned it out, but with its location in the media capital of the U.S., there will be more eyeballs on McGregor than ever, not just from fans but also from media, celebrities, tastemakers. The opportunities that may come out of this for him will be dizzying.
From the beginning, he has been the type to seize the moment.
It took just a few seconds for him to establish himself as a potential superstar. Just 67 of them, in fact, or exactly the time it took him to knock out Marcus Brimage in his UFC debut. The next time out, McGregor’s walk to the Octagon in Boston felt like the arrival of a rock god. Despite his fighting in the prelims, the UFC blacked out the arena, and when his music hit, the 14,000 fans reacted like Larry Bird discovered the fountain of youth and suited up in his old Celtics “33.”
That’s the kind of star McGregor is. He seems to suck everything into his vortex and change the course of events at his whim.
The continuation of this kind of existence is predicated on winning. The UFC has never been an organization that has taken well to athletes flexing their power, but in McGregor’s case, it has little option but to give him room to pose.
When and if he loses, that relationship is certainly liable to change. Maybe. With McGregor, anything seems possible. He is, after all, a man who told the UFC after he first lost to Diaz that, no, he wouldn’t be defending his featherweight belt and would in fact be fighting Diaz in a rematch. The UFC balked at first, but we all know how that game of chicken ended.
As McGregor continues to consolidate his power, other threats will arise, but so far he has shown himself to be an excellent fighter and shrewd businessman.
On Saturday night, one of two things will happen: Either he will win and go home with two belts, another pay-per-view record and more power than any UFC fighter has ever seen; or he will lose and be forced to regroup while the new UFC ownership team tries to pull back some of the slack it’s been forced to hand him.
For McGregor, these are heady days, but he can come crashing down from his prolonged high in a blink. As Ronda Rousey discovered when she was knocked out by Holly Holm, invincibility is an illusion that often shatters instead of merely being chipped away. The higher you rise, the more crushing the fall. You know all the platitudes.
For McGregor, it’s real life. Swagger, after all, only works when the audience is willingly along for the ride. So far, no one’s found a reason to get off. At UFC 205, at The World’s Most Famous Arena, in one of the world’s greatest cities, the eyeballs watching will represent both pressure and opportunity, but McGregor can’t talk his way through Alvarez or the moment. For us, that makes it fun.
For McGregor, that makes it the edge of everything he’s earned and chased, with a mighty fall below.
After an uncharacteristic three-week break and a well-regarded but low-profile cable TV event last week, the UFC begins its madcap push toward the new year in style this weekend.
Actually, that qualifies as a significant understatement.
By the time it’…
After an uncharacteristic three-week break and a well-regarded but low-profile cable TV event last week, the UFC begins its madcap push toward the new year in style this weekend.
Actually, that qualifies as a significant understatement.
By the time it’s all done, Saturday’s UFC 205 from Madison Square Garden in New York City may go down as the biggest event in the fight company’s history. After a lengthy political battle to see MMA sanctioned in the Empire State, the UFC is doing everything it can to make sure its first event there makes a splash.
UFC 205 will feature three title bouts—headlined by a bona fide superfight between lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez and featherweight kingpin Conor McGregor—and a lineup so deep even the prelims feel special.
With Tyron Woodley making the first defense of his welterweight crown against Stephen Thompson and Joanna Jedrzejczyk putting her strawweight belt on the line against Karolina Kowalkiewicz, there should be something for everyone when the UFC makes its first appearance in the Big Apple.
As the head honchos at WME-IMG begin to make themselves at home as the UFC’s new owners, does the stacked nature of UFC 205 indicate a new direction for the organization’s pay-per-view lineups? Or is this a one-time-only blowout to celebrate the sport’s (legal) arrival in NYC?
I’m joined by Bleacher Report’s Mike Chiappetta to discuss the significance of UFC 205 and whether these sorts of star-studded mega-events will become a trend moving forward.
Chad Dundas: If the whiff of this particular UFC mega-event feels familiar, it might be because the UFC just put on a star-studded gala in the form of UFC 200 on July 9. Like UFC 205, that fight card was meant to feature three title fights, though a public hang-up in negotiations between UFC ownership and Conor McGregor led to one of them being scratched (more on that in a moment).
At the time, UFC 200 was promoted as the biggest event the fight company had ever done. It scored an eye-popping estimated buyrate of 1.2 million, according to Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter (via MMA Payout). It also set records for total gate at an American MMA show, the highest reported combined payout for any single UFC event and an attendance record in Nevada.
Not too shabby—even by the UFC’s garish standards—for a marquee celebration of the organization’s bicentennial.
With one notable exception, however, the pay-per-view events between then and now have been somewhat lackluster.
UFC 201 on July 30 was headlined by Woodley’s welterweight title win over Robbie Lawler and drew a fairly paltry 240,000 buys.
UFC 203 on September 10 featured Stipe Miocic’s successful heavyweight title defense against Alistair Overeem and also got some help from CM Punk’s MMA debut, but it still managed just an average estimate of 450,000.
UFC 204 on October 8 boasted new middleweight champ Michael Bisping’s long-awaited grudge rematch with Dan Henderson, was staged across the pond at in Bisping’s native Manchester, England, and was projected to net 275,000 buys.
Of course, that one exception we mentioned above was a big one, obviously.
After McGregor got yanked from the UFC 200 card, the UFC bounced his rematch against Nate Diaz to UFC 202 on August 20 and ended up breaking its own single-event PPV buyrate record. The second installment of their welterweight blood feud spiked the UFC 202 buyrate all the way up to 1.65 million—but was a huge anomaly, for obvious reasons.
Had the UFC and McGregor not gotten crosswise at UFC 200, the enormous success of UFC 202 never would have happened, so let’s take it off the table for the moment.
Without UFC 202, the combined buyrates of UFCs 201, 203 and 204 fell well short of what the organization managed to pull in a single weekend with UFC 200. They also fell short of what the company expects to garner Saturday with UFC 205.
So, Mike, is UFC 205 just a one-time extravaganza to celebrate the promotion’s first event in New York City? Or does its proximity to UFC 200 signal a developing trend? Will the UFC continue to pop its buyrates once per quarter with one big tentpole event like 200 or 205 while letting some of the rest of them slide?
Or with rumors of a reduced live event schedule coming as early as 2017, is it possible that by next year every UFC event becomes this kind of high-profile homerun? What say you?
Mike Chiappetta: I think an equally important question here is, Can the UFC actually continue to produce such monster events? We can’t even discuss the possibility of these types of mega-shows without the presence of superstars.
The event business is a star-driven one, so what happens if Ronda Rousey retires after UFC 207 on December 30? She’s already said it’s one of her last fights, but some, such as FloSports’ Jeremy Botter, have said it will be the final fight for Rousey. What happens if McGregor takes a long break, as has been rumored and reported by multiple outlets including the Sun?
If we look at the UFC’s pay-per-view sales over the last five years, only six have done over one million buys. Five of them have included McGregor or Rousey. The only other to reach the mark was the aforementioned UFC 200 that featured the surprising return of Brock Lesnar.
If the UFC is playing with a smaller deck of cards—or, more specifically, if the aces are pulled from the deck—are mega-events even possible?
I, for one, do not think so. The UFC may get lucky if Jon Jones wins a shortened suspension (Editor’s note: Jones was suspended for one year), but no other champion or athlete on the roster aside from perhaps the Diaz brothers can spontaneously generate the kind of star power and buzz necessary for a true tentpole event.
Sure, by running fewer events, the UFC has a better of chance of stacking shows with multiple title fights as well as extra bandwidth to promote them. That’s a positive. But adding Miocic to, say, Demetrious Johnson does not exponentially increase their star power or the value proposition for viewers who are debating whether to part with 60 hard-earned dollars. Sure, an event with two such champions will do better than a show with just one, but most of the viewers responsible for taking a show past the baseline audience are savvy consumers who demand to be wowed before making the buy.
It’s great for the UFC to stack shows, but do you think this can be a realistic, successful strategy long-term?
Chad: That’s a good question. Together, McGregor and Rousey accounted for more than 60 percent of the UFC’s total PPV buys during 2015, according to a recent story by MMAjunkie’s Ben Fowlkes and Stephen Marrocco. That makes them even more important to the overall success of the company than previous big-draw tandems like Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture or Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre.
Still, these are human beings we’re talking about, and the UFC would be comically shortsighted to not plan for life without them.
The fight company managed to make UFC 200 a smashing success minus both its top draws—but it needed Lesnar and a late-replacement effort by Silva to make it all come together. Even then, some observers thought the card lacked a little oomph after the UFC forcibly withdrew McGregor.
Still, as UFC President Dana White is fond of pointing out, sideline spectators perennially predict doom and gloom when known UFC draws near the end of their runs and somehow new stars always pop up to take their places. McGregor, for example, was a virtual unknown prior to his arrival in the Octagon in mid-2013. Fast-forward a few years, and he’s arguably the biggest star the sport has ever produced.
If there’s any one place where WME-IMG might have the upper hand on previous UFC ownership, in fact, it has to be the potential for creating new stars. That’s sort of what the Hollywood-based mega-talent agency does, after all. If the new owners want to take some of the organization’s young guns and get them out in front of the public, they are better positioned to do that than anyone in the history of MMA.
In the short term, however, your fears are well-placed. But if McGregor and Rousey both go on hiatus during 2017, it will only increase the pressure for the UFC to pop buyrates by trying to put on a tentpole event once every few months. Even if the athletes lack real crossover drawing power, stacking UFC titles two and three deep is a fairly tried-and-true method of pushing numbers up over at least 500,000.
So, Mike, just for argument’s sake, let’s say White calls you up tomorrow and puts you in charge of UFC PPVs for the next year. What does 2017 look like under the Chiappetta regime?
Mike: Before I unwrap my master plan, it needs to be said that the ability to “create” new stars is a fairy tale. Think about how many billions of dollars movie studios spend making flops. In 2016 alone, the Ben-Hur remake is believed to have cost Paramount a $100 million loss, according to Brent Lang of Variety, while The BFG, a Disney film, will lose the studio more than $100 million, according to Bloomberg.
The same people who push these films are the ones running agencies like WME-IMG. They don’t have a golden touch or a secret formula. They do market research and see what connects emotionally and try to bridge the two as best they can to sell a product.
It doesn’t always work. And movies are a business they actually understand deeply. Mixed martial arts is a different animal completely. The entertainment business is largely dependent on focus groups and months of planning; how nimble will they be in changing their promotion in a late headline switch?
In MMA, stars have always grown organically. McGregor, for instance, arrived with a grassroots Irish fanbase behind him but captured wide acclaim through his brash personality. Rousey showed up on the scene with her Olympic credentials, and her magnetic presence and killer instinct quickly won over the masses. It takes many elements to “create” a superstar, and several of them are intangibles that can’t be added on, only magnified.
Sure, WME-IMG has the infrastructure in place to create awareness of its events and athletes, and I’m sure that’s what you’re referring to, but what I’m getting at here is that WME-IMG leadership has no easier task than its predecessor.
If the goal is to stack events in hopes of increased eyeballs, my strategy would be to bank up the Brink’s truck for the true stars.
Yes, WME-IMG has aggressive earnings goals in place, and yes, it wants to maximize its profit. While it’s easy to spend other people’s money, in the long run, it would make sense to pay the true superstars who create these mega-shows. After all, 60 percent of a one-million-selling, $60 million revenue-generating pay-per-view monster is far better than 100 percent of a 200,000-selling, $12 million snoozer. If the only way to incentivize McGregor, Rousey and the Diaz brothers is through cash, then pay them. Sure, eventually, someone else will break through the noise to join them, but no one appears close to ready quite yet.
Pay-per-view is an unforgiving medium. As long as the UFC depends on it for the bulk of its revenue, it will be susceptible to yearly swings. There are ways to mitigate those risks, and it involves paying the athletes what they’re worth. If McGregor, Rousey, et al. are the rainmakers, paying them accordingly isn’t a gesture of altruism; it’s simply good business.
Eddie Alvarez and Conor McGregor are set to headline the biggest card in UFC history, UFC 205. And boy, just look at this lineup of fights:
Eddie Alvarez vs. Conor McGregor
Tyron Woodley vs. Stephen Thompson
Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Karolina Kowalkiewic…
Eddie Alvarez and Conor McGregor are set to headline the biggest card in UFC history, UFC 205. And boy, just look at this lineup of fights:
Eddie Alvarez vs. Conor McGregor
Tyron Woodley vs. Stephen Thompson
Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz
Chris Weidman vs. Yoel Romero
Kelvin Gastelum vs. Donald Cerrone
Miesha Tate vs. Raquel Pennington
Frankie Edgar vs. Jeremy Stephens
Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Michael Johnson
Rafael Natal vs. Tim Boetsch
Vicente Luque vs. Belal Muhammad
Jim Miller vs. Thiago Alves
Liz Carmouche vs. Katlyn Chookagian
In honor of 205 being the deepest card ever, the Bleacher Report MMA prediction squad is giving you a special treat. Instead of previewing and predicting the main card, we’re going to pick the winner of each and every fight on the card.
So let’s jump right in! Who is the B/R MMA crew taking on Saturday night? Read on and find out.
The UFC went all out on making the organization’s New York debut a memorable one.