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.
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.
This just in: Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney and UFC President Dana White don’t like each other very much. The latest in the feud between the top executives in the mixed martial arts world began on Saturday, when White sent out a tweet mocking Rebney after Eddie Alvarez recaptured the Bellator lightweight strap from Michael Chandler. […]
This just in: Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney and UFC President Dana White don’t like each other very much. The latest in the feud between the top executives in the mixed martial arts world began on Saturday, when White sent out a tweet mocking Rebney after Eddie Alvarez recaptured the Bellator lightweight strap from Michael Chandler. […]
Bad idea: Booking it as the main event of a UFC Fight Night card on FOX Sports 2…because Machida main-eventing on that channel worked so well the first time.
Lyoto Machida vs. Gegard Mousasi is a fight that’ll make hardcore fans happy. It’s one of those matches where you can’t help but go “Hmm, I really wonder how that’s gonna play out,” when you hear that it’s been booked. That’s what we did at CagePotato HQ. We stroked our burgeoning beards and pondered who would win.
Machida is coming off a dominant head-kick knockout of Mark Munoz, in the Dragon’s debut at 185 pounds. Mousasi, while on a four-fight winning streak, hasn’t competed since April 2013. By the time he steps into the cage against Machida in February, the Armenian will have nearly a year’s worth of ring rust.
No other matchups have yet been announced for the 2/8 Fight Night card, which will take place at the Arena Jaragua, the same venue that previously hosted Belfort vs. Rockhold. So will February’s lack of baseball produce a considerable uptick in ratings? Or is this one of those international events that us North Americans aren’t supposed to care about in the first place? Either way, we’ll keep you posted on any more updates for this card, or if either combatant pulls a Lil’ Nog.
(Come February, we’ll find out if “Middleweight Machida” is on par with “Motivated Penn” and “Broke Fitch.” / Image via Getty)
Bad idea: Booking it as the main event of a UFC Fight Night card on FOX Sports 2…because Machida main-eventing on that channel worked so well the first time.
Lyoto Machida vs. Gegard Mousasi is a fight that’ll make hardcore fans happy. It’s one of those matches where you can’t help but go “Hmm, I really wonder how that’s gonna play out,” when you hear that it’s been booked. That’s what we did at CagePotato HQ. We stroked our burgeoning beards and pondered who would win.
Machida is coming off a dominant head-kick knockout of Mark Munoz, in the Dragon’s debut at 185 pounds. Mousasi, while on a four-fight winning streak, hasn’t competed since April 2013. By the time he steps into the cage against Machida in February, the Armenian will have nearly a year’s worth of ring rust.
No other matchups have yet been announced for the 2/8 Fight Night card, which will take place at the Arena Jaragua, the same venue that previously hosted Belfort vs. Rockhold. So will February’s lack of baseball produce a considerable uptick in ratings? Or is this one of those international events that us North Americans aren’t supposed to care about in the first place? Either way, we’ll keep you posted on any more updates for this card, or if either combatant pulls a Lil’ Nog.
(If you think Bellator’s main carders are old, you obviously haven’t checked out their prelims in a while…)
After months of rolling our eyes while trying to make sense of Bellator’s new “sign pretty much anyone the UFC cuts and pray that it boosts our ratings” business model, the ratings for Bellator 99 – the promotion’s first show as The MMA Senior Circuit – are finally in.
Now, how you chose to interpret these numbers depends entirely on who you feel like being cynical towards this afternoon.
(If you think Bellator’s main carders are old, you obviously haven’t checked out their prelims in a while…)
After months of rolling our eyes while trying to make sense of Bellator’s new “sign pretty much anyone the UFC cuts and pray that it boosts our ratings” business model, the ratings for Bellator 99 – the promotion’s first show as The MMA Senior Circuit – are finally in.
Now, how you chose to interpret these numbers depends entirely on who you feel like being cynical towards this afternoon.
– On one hand, you can view the ratings boost as a sign that UFC veterans like Vladimir Matyushenko and Houston Alexander – despite being well past their sell-by dates – can still draw in the casual MMA fans, simply because they’re guys that the casual fans have actually heard of. You can’t have two nobodies headline an event and then act surprised when the casual fans don’t tune in – even if said nobodies are two of the best non-Zuffa middleweights on the planet. Perhaps the same way that signing David Beckham caused casual sports fans to take Major League Soccer seriously, the UFC castoffs will get causal MMA fans to consider Bellator a worthy alternative to the UFC. Make that we as human beings value namerecognition more than talent and potential whatever you will.
– On the other hand, if you only feel like being cynical towards Bellator instead of humanity in general, you can point out that Bellator 99 didn’t have nearly as much competition as Bellator 98 did. Bellator 98 had to compete against NCAA Football and NASCAR (don’t laugh, it’s true) for the casual sports fans’ attention. With that in mind, can we really pin Bellator’s improved ratings on Diego “I once lost to KenFlo you remember that right?” Nunes?
It’ll be interesting to track how guys like Cheick Kongo, John Alessio and Paul Sass move the needle for Bellator, but until then, what do you think affected Bellator’s ratings more?
The study of TV trends/viewership is an interesting and incredibly thorough one, but there is perhaps no television trend more notorious than the Friday Night Death Slot, which maintains that any program placed in the graveyard slot (approximately 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) on a Friday night is ultimately destined for cancellation. Countless examples can be cited to back this theory: Malcolm in the Middle, Firefly, the criminally overlooked Happy Endings, and of course, Fridays. In fact, the dreaded time slot can even be held (at least partially) accountable for the abysmal ratings of TUF 15and TUF 16.
Of course, some scheisters out there will try to convince you that Friday night is primo advertising time, throwing all sorts of fancy “facts” and “numerical data” at you in the process, which probably explains why Bellator is voluntarily moving their events to Friday nights starting in the fall. Loretta Hunt was the first to pass along the news:
To avoid the NFL crush, Bellator MMA will move from Thursday to Friday nights this fall, Spike TV president Kevin Kay exclusively told SI.com during a screening this week forFight Master, its original MMA reality series debuting on June 19.
I don’t want to see Bellator going head to head with the UFC,” said Kay. “I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario (Author’s note: The answer you’re looking for is “the UFC”), you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.
Kay goes on to cite TUF 16 as an *example* of a show doing well during the Friday slot, as well as the Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush”, which averages 4 million viewers on Friday nights. Yes, a show that captures all the drama of sifting through sand reels in 4 million of us — week, after week, after mind-numbing week — before we switch over to the History Channel to watch people drive trucks across icy roads for the eighth year in a row. Meanwhile, Arrested Development was cancelled after 3 seasons. This is why we can’t have nice things, Nation.
The study of TV trends/viewership is an interesting and incredibly thorough one, but there is perhaps no television trend more notorious than the Friday Night Death Slot, which maintains that any program placed in the graveyard slot (approximately 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.) on a Friday night is ultimately destined for cancellation. Countless examples can be cited to back this theory: Malcolm in the Middle, Firefly, the criminally overlooked Happy Endings, and of course, Fridays. In fact, the dreaded time slot can even be held (at least partially) accountable for the abysmal ratings of TUF 15and TUF 16.
Of course, some scheisters out there will try to convince you that Friday night is primo advertising time, throwing all sorts of fancy “facts” and “numerical data” at you in the process, which probably explains why Bellator is voluntarily moving their events to Friday nights starting in the fall. Loretta Hunt was the first to pass along the news:
To avoid the NFL crush, Bellator MMA will move from Thursday to Friday nights this fall, Spike TV president Kevin Kay exclusively told SI.com during a screening this week forFight Master, its original MMA reality series debuting on June 19.
I don’t want to see Bellator going head to head with the UFC,” said Kay. “I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario (Author’s note: The answer you’re looking for is “the UFC”), you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.
Kay goes on to cite TUF 16 as an *example* of a show doing well during the Friday slot, as well as the Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush”, which averages 4 million viewers on Friday nights. Yes, a show that captures all the drama of sifting through sand reels in 4 million of us — week, after week, after mind-numbing week — before we switch over to the History Channel to watch people drive trucks across icy roads for the eighth year in a row. Meanwhile, Arrested Development was cancelled after 3 seasons. This is why we can’t have nice things, Nation.
