Sometimes all a person needs is a change. Things aren’t going well for one reason or another, so they change something up and all of a sudden everything clicks.
In MMA, that change is oftentimes centered around weight.
Maybe an athlete is cuttin…
Sometimes all a person needs is a change. Things aren’t going well for one reason or another, so they change something up and all of a sudden everything clicks.
In MMA, that change is oftentimes centered around weight.
Maybe an athlete is cutting too much weight to compete in a division and they decide to move up and become an unstoppable force—Donald Cerrone comes to mind after his 2016 tear as a welterweight, as does Conor McGregor after he jumped from featherweight to lightweight and became champion there.
Maybe an athlete is too small for the weight class they’ve chosen and need to cut a little more weight to get in there with people their own size—not that long ago, TJ Grant became a world title contender by going from welterweight also-ran to lightweight wrecking ball. Rafael Dos Anjos became a world champion by doing the exact same thing.
Provided it’s motivated by the right factors and frame of mind (and not because you lost three of four and you don’t know what else to do), making a change in the weight class of choice can be the ideal tonic for a fighter with no other obvious path before him or her.
What follows is a look at some such fighters who may benefit from such a change based on their present standing in a division, their struggles within their present class or their pursuit of elite status being clearer if they elected to make a little switch.
TJ Dillashaw and Urijah Faber have had quite the falling out over the last few years ever since Dillashaw left Faber’s Sacramento-based Team Alpha Male gym and there was even some talk that the former teammates would settle the score in the Octagon, but it’s unlikely as if we’ll ever get to see that fight,
TJ Dillashaw and Urijah Faber have had quite the falling out over the last few years ever since Dillashaw left Faber’s Sacramento-based Team Alpha Male gym and there was even some talk that the former teammates would settle the score in the Octagon, but it’s unlikely as if we’ll ever get to see that fight, as ‘The California Kid” is gearing up to make his last walk to the cage.
Faber will take on Brad Pickett on Dec. 17 in his home of Sacramento and he’s already made it clear that he’ll retire after the fight. Recently speaking on the matter, Dillashaw actually showed some good will towards Faber, although he did say that it’s time for the former WEC champion to ‘call it quits’:
“I do believe it’s time for him to retire,” Dillashaw said during Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “He’s actually, I feel like, declined in his skills rather than getting better, and you need people around you telling you, ‘alright man, it’s time. You’ve done a good job, it’s time for you to hang it up. You’ve got some fighters coming into the gym, that are some new guys, who are kind of beating up on you. It’s time to call it quits.’”
“So hopefully he comes out and looks good and he does it in Sacramento. He always is amped up when he fights there. He’s, by far, a town favorite. He’s a fan favorite. So hopefully he can make a good showing.”
Putting all the bad blood aside, Dillashaw said that he only wishes for the best for Faber in his life after fighting:
“That’s so crazy and it’s such high school drama,” Dillashaw said. “But what it comes down to, when it’s all done and said, we do have a past, we do have a history, and with him retiring, he’s done wonders for this sport as well. You hope he goes out on a good note.
“Even though the guy has really pissed me off, and I’ve had, and still do, a lot of unpleasant hate for the guy, for the way he acted, (when it’s) all done and said, I don’t wish anything bad on the guy.”
Do you believe it’s time for “The California Kid” to call it a career?
Last week former Bellator President and CEO Bjorn Rebney and five of the UFC’s biggest stars in mixed martial arts (MMA) today, including No. 5-ranked welterweight Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, announced the formation of the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association (MMAAA), in effort to fight for better working conditions for fighters in the UFC. The announcement comes
Last week former Bellator President and CEO Bjorn Rebney and five of the UFC’s biggest stars in mixed martial arts (MMA) today, including No. 5-ranked welterweight Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, announced the formation of the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association (MMAAA), in effort to fight for better working conditions for fighters in the UFC.
The announcement comes at the horizon of ‘Cowboy’s’ scheduled meeting with Matt Brown at this weekend’s (Saturday December 10, 2016) UFC 206 pay-per-view (PPV) event from Toronto, as Cerrone is on an impressive three-fight finishing streak since making the jump up to 170 pounds.
During a recent media scrum after the open workouts at Massey Hall earlier today (Wednesday December 7, 2016), courtesy of MMA Fighting, Cerrone stated that he didn’t know he was sitting on a board when he accepted the invitation from Georges St-Pierre and Tim Kennedy to be a part of the MMAAA:
“As far as the Association goes man, Georges [St-Pierre] and Tim [Kennedy] called me and asked me to be part of it,” Cerrone said. “I didn’t know I was sitting on a board. That kind of took me by surprise, sitting there like, oh wow. I spoke to Dana [White] today on the phone. He’s coming to town, and we’re going to go out to dinner and talk. There’s a lot of things I think this sport needs, you know, retirement pension, health care, things I think we need.”
Cerrone still plans to stand beside his MMAAA brethren and fight for better work accommodations from the UFC such as health care and retirement pension. Despite this, ‘Cowboy’ claims that he and the UFC’s relationship is still a great one and that he is on good terms with UFC President Dana White who he revealed at one point paid for ‘the best lawyers you can pay’ and got him out of a ‘bind’ he found himself in:
“I wasn’t sitting there saying, ‘we’re moving forward today, we’re going on strike, we need more money,” he said. “That wasn’t coming out of mouth at all. There were a couple of people that were there that I don’t plan on working with and being a part of, not mentioning any names. I was there mostly just, not saying I’m leading a board or I’m sitting on a board, but more voicing my opinion of what this sport needs.
“Moving forward, I’m still going to stand strong with those and say this is what I believe we need. I believe as a whole we need health care, we need some kind of pension for retirement. The UFC has been nothing but great to me. I can’t complain, they give me what I want. And like Dana said, I called him and he helped me out. That’s true, man. I was in a bind, he got the best lawyers you can pay, and saved my ass.”
‘Cowboy’ says he has spoken to White since the announcement of the MMAAA was made public, and that the UFC President wishes he would have called him first instead of being ‘back-handed in the face’ by the announcement out of left field:
“He said, listen kid, you can do anything you want. We have a good relationship him and I, and he’s right I probably should have called him and said, ‘hey man, I’m going to do this,’ instead of getting back-handed in the face.”
For now Cerrone’s focus will be set on Brown for their co-main event collision this weekend, which could have title implications if the dominoes fall down correctly, and will resume his fight alongside the MMAAA afterwards.
Cerrone and Brown will meet in the co-main event of UFC 206 live on pay-per-view (PPV), from the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada this Saturday (December 10, 2016).
Former Bellator MMA Founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney has aligned himself with top UFC stars Georges St-Pierre, Tim Kennedy, Cain Velasquez, Donal ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, and TJ Dillashaw to form the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association (MMAAA) in an effort to fight for fair rights for fighters who compete in the UFC. Last week a near two hour
Former Bellator MMA Founder and CEO Bjorn Rebney has aligned himself with top UFC stars Georges St-Pierre, Tim Kennedy, Cain Velasquez, Donal ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, and TJ Dillashaw to form the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association (MMAAA) in an effort to fight for fair rights for fighters who compete in the UFC.
Last week a near two hour conference call was held by Rebney and the fighters to discuss the formation of the new Association and let everyone know what exactly they’re all about. Earlier today (Monday, Dec. 5, 2016) Rebney joined Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour to further discuss his role with the association, first detailing what the first step in the whole process was to get the ball rolling on the MMAAA:
“The first step in the whole process basically — and I don’t want to sing my own praises but I have a lot of experience in this space in another sport, another business, another law surrounding the business — I know the athletes, and about two years ago, probably four and a half or five months, maybe not even that long, after Tim and I had split from Bellator, I was asked by some really smart people who I have enormous respect for to basically create a plan of attack. A plan of attack to force to UFC to completely reverse its outrageous and despicable treatment of its athletes.
“So at that stage, and I was working on some other cool stuff I was working on a great tech venture and an OTT project and some really cool stuff that was unrelated to all the time I spent in combat sports, but I started really digging. The first step for someone like me when you start digging is you do an enormous amount of due diligence, fortunately and thank god I could step back and do a lot of due diligence cause I had the time and wherewithal and the access points to understand the numbers, because we’d all heard it for years. Now you’d heard it, you’d talked about it, we’d all heard it as a promoter who’d done pay-per-view (PPV) and cut deals in 140 countries around the world, etc.”
While Rebney was the frontman at Bellator MMA, he couldn’t really focus on the big picture of what he is fighting for now, as he was more focused on the competitive aspect of beating the UFC. Now that he and the promotion have parted ways, he is able to see the ‘despicable’ nature which the UFC is treating its fighters, so he said he’ll do everything in his power to put a stop to it:
“You hear about it, but you don’t hyper-focus on it because you’re not trying to build a company or promotion that’s trying to compete with the UFC. So I wasn’t sitting there saying to myself ‘Okay, I need to know backward and forward every UFC number and the dynamics and the percentages of what they’re doing and what they’re not. I was more engaged of the competitive aspect of ‘What do we do next to try and take a step up this ladder’, but as you start diving into it and as you start looking at the numbers two plus years ago,
“I thought ‘Okay, well, this is insane, it’s unethical, it’s outrageous, it’s despicable, If you know the sport, you know what happens long-term. Its got wrongful on it in so many different ways, then I said ‘Okay screw it.’ To do this, and to do it right, for the people who’d reached out to me, first of all you got get some of the biggest names in the space of the UFC to step up.”
Having such huge names such as GSP, Velasquez, ‘Cowboy’, Kennedy, and Dillashaw is certainly a plus for the MMAAA’s fighting chance to make some serious change between fighters and the UFC. That change won’t come quickly, and it’s something Rebney says he has been in conversations with St-Pierre to form the MMAAA for years:
“We’re fortunate enough to have Georges, and Tim, and Cain, and ‘Cowboy’, and TJ onboard. And I started talking, I started talking to Georges, years ago, and Tim — and I don’t remember how long ago cause it was so very very long ago, and you secure that. You secure their understanding, you secure the relationship with Georges, Tim, TJ, and Cain, and you sit down and say ‘Here is what’s at stake, here’s what’s going on, here’s how the other leagues work, here’s how a real sports enterprise is supposed to function.’
“And you get them to understand it very clearly, and then you figure out ‘Are they going to be willing to engage? Are guys at that level with those type of names going to be willing to put themselves out to say that this matters and this is important?’
Rebney also pointed to hiring the best legal teams, PR firms, and marketing teams also play a huge factor in one day reaching their ultimate goal:
“Then you have to have legal backing, so you find the greatest attorney literally in this type of legal matter and it’s Jim Quinn. Who has written the book on sports related matters, representing athletes, representing athletes associations, he is responsible for creating and crafting law that governs how the NFL does business. I’m like, ‘Can you get Jim Quinn onboard?’
“And then you go out and you get strategic PR firms to handle both general market and sports related, then you get a team of marketing specialists onboard, then you get key strategic advisors onboard, a whole meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting, and you get money behind it because a fight like this is not a fight like you just send out a few Tweets and say ‘Wow this is really important, let’s get it done.’ You’ve gotta have real support behind it.”
St-Pierre, Velasquez, Kennedy, Cerrone, and Dillashaw aren’t the only fighters apparently on board with the MMAAA. Rebney says there are a whole lot more people involved with the movement, however, they have asked to remain nameless for the time being:
“The people who came to me initially, they have asked to remain nameless Ariel, I said it on the thing and I’m going to respect that. Guaranteed on my eyes there will be a time, without any question, where I am able to introduce them, they will be proud as crap when I can introduce them because — I did not sit back and say ‘This situation is a disaster, I wanna fix it. Who do I put in place?’ People came to me and said ‘This situation is a disaster.’ As I used to say a ‘cluster f*ck’.
Rebney strongly believes that if the sport of MMA continues down the road it is currently on at the moment, it will not survive without any short-term or long-term protection for its fighters:
“And somebody has to fix it, somebody has to make this right because as TJ and I said when we were at the press conference, I don’t remember if he said it first or I said it first, but we both said basically the same thing. If this doesn’t get fixed, we don’t have a sport in ten years. There is no possible way that mixed martial arts (MMA) can continue down this trajectory, and survive. It can’t. And that’s not hyperbole, that’s not a threat, that’s not me sending out a message to Ari Emanuel, that’s the God’s honest truth.
“It will not survive. It has to change. You ask these guys to give up that kind of sacrifice, to give up what these guys are giving up long and short, short-term and long-term, you have to have protections in place. You gotta have pensions post-career, health care, etc. You put that in place, and once those things are in place, you know building something like this out is not just about filing a law suit, it’s not just about making some plans to go visit guys in gyms and talk about the issues, it’s about a legitimate strategy.
While Rebney has equipped himself well for a fight against the big guys at the UFC, he knows he’s in for quite the challenge going up against WME-IMG and the UFC who have a joint $10 billion worth between them, but feels he has executed his strategy perfectly up to this point:
“WME-IMG is a $6 billion company. They are one of the two most powerful agencies in the entire world across the sports and entertainment spectrum. They’re a huge, monstrous, powerful conglomerate. The UFC is now a $4 billion enterprise. Between WME-IMG you’re talking about 500,000 plus employees, monster power, monster influence. You gotta be ready to put a strategy in place. You’re gonna fight somebody like that?
“That’s not jumping out of the seat at a smoker somewhere at going ‘screw it my training went well for the last week I’ll jump in when somebody bounces out of a fight.’ You gotta be prepared. You have to have everything conceivable in place. The backing, the support, the people, the brains, all of it. And that’s what I charged myself with organizing and putting together. And it’s in place.”
With some big names involved and some of the best lawyers, PR firms and marketing specialists already onboard with the MMAAA the future for the association is looking rather bright. How do you believe they’ll fare in their battle against the UFC?
When Demetrious Johnson takes on Tim Elliott for the flyweight title this Saturday, December 3, it will mark the conclusion of the 24th American season of The Ultimate Fighter. Including 10 international seasons spread out between Brazil, Latin Am…
When Demetrious Johnson takes on Tim Elliott for the flyweight title this Saturday, December 3, it will mark the conclusion of the 24th American season of The Ultimate Fighter. Including 10 international seasons spread out between Brazil, Latin America, Australia and China, that makes for a total of 34 iterations of the venerable reality show.
Over its 11 years of existence, the show has produced a torrent of talent, and the epic finale fight between Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin has entered UFC lore as the moment the promotion made it into the big time.
But after 34 seasons, hundreds of fights and a plethora of names and faces, most of them completely forgettable, what is The Ultimate Fighter, and what does it mean to a $4.2 billion promotion that’s in the midst of a massive reorganization? With a drastically shrunken audience and a long gap since the rise of a new star from the show, its future is in doubt, and so is its role.
Over the years, some of the show’s competitors have gone on to great things, including a total of 28 appearances in UFC title fights. Several have even won titles.
Michael Bisping, the middleweight champion, won the third season of the show. Former light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans won the second season, and his predecessor, Forrest Griffin, won the original season. TJ Dillashaw, the runner-up on the 14th season, won the bantamweight title and defended it twice. Matt Serra, the beloved winner of the fourth season, shocked the world by upsetting Georges St-Pierre.
Despite all that talent over the years, the show’s ratings have steadily declined over the years. The debut episode of TUF 24 drew just 370,000 viewers, down from 479,000 last spring for TUF 23 and 622,000 for the ConorMcGregor-coached TUF 22. That spike for McGregor‘s season, however, was an outlier; the debut of TUF 21 pulled 490,000 viewers.
Even McGregor‘s number, however, is a fraction of what the show used to draw. 2012’s season 15, an attempt at doing the show live to shake things up in the first season on FX, pulled more than a million viewers per episode, per an analysis by Brent Brookhouse of Bloody Elbow that year.
That was widely considered a disaster at the time, since the last season to air on Spike, season 14, had averaged more than 1.5 million viewers per episode.
That sounds like a good number, but even 1.5 million viewers represented a decline from the show’s peak. Kimbo Slice’s appearance on season 10 was a ratings bonanza, and his fight with Roy Nelson set a record with more than 6.1 million viewers. The coaches’ fight that season, featuring former light heavyweight champions Evans and Rampage Jackson, drew over a million pay-per-view buys as the UFC 114 main event.
Those salad days are long gone. A paltry 304,000 viewers watched November 23’s episode of the show.
Per John Morgan of MMA Junkie, there will be at least one more season of TUF, set to air in April and focused around an all-star concept. That report comes with a caveat, though: As part of a broader effort to cut costs, according to investor documents analyzed by MMA Junkie’s Ben Fowlkes and Steven Marrocco, the annual production budget for TUFwill decrease from $27.6 million to just $10 million.
Whether that translates to Fox Sports 1 handling the production and therefore the costs, fewer seasons of the show per year or some combination of the two is up for debate.
There’s no real debate that the format has become stale, a mixture of training sessions, banter, manufactured bad blood between the coaches, silly antics in a palatial Vegas estate and fights that range from awful to occasionally inspiring, as they’ve mostly been on the current season. Why would viewers keep tuning in for essentially the same product year after year?
In fairness, the UFC has tried to spice things up. They’ve tried a live season (TUF 15), introducing a brand-new weight class with the strawweights (TUF: A Champion Will be Crowned, season 20), pitting rival fight camps against each other (season 21), putting the sport’s biggest stars on the show with Ronda Rousey and ConorMcGregor (18 and 22, respectively) and now awarding the winner a title shot.
None of these attempts have succeeded in halting the long, steady ratings decline. Viewers are increasingly uninterested in the show; maybe they’ve seen it before, or maybe the entire concept of throwing competitors into a house together and then filming it is just a decade past its prime point in reality TV more generally.
It’s worth stopping to ask precisely what TUFis trying to be at this point in its history, because that’s the fundamental issue. Is it trying to draw the maximum number of viewers? Is it supposed to be the breeding ground for future champions? Is it supposed to introduce viewers to the fighters? Is it just a tool for finding and signing talent?
Despite the ratings drop, TUFis still a solid property for Fox Sports 1 in the context of their other non-live programming, which is only now starting to build an audience. The 304,000 viewers who watched the November 23 episode, for example, was still the network’s largest audience of the day, even beating out a Champions League game.
As long as the UFC keeps making TUF, Fox Sports 1 will probably be happy with its returns. But what about the other aspects? Is it still growing talent?
TJ Dillashaw, who appeared on 2011’s season 14, is the last truly great fighter to come through an American version. Some have shown promise, like winners Michael Chiesa (season 15), Kelvin Gastelum (season 17), Julianna Pena (season 18) and KamaruUsman (season 21), but none have broken through to the top.
The international seasons have produced a few contenders, including rising featherweight Yair Rodriguez (TUF: Latin America) and surging middleweight Robert Whittaker (TUF: The Smashes). For every legitimate success, though, there has been a string of disappointments. None of the four seasons of TUF: Brazil has produced an elite fighter, and TUF: China is best forgotten altogether.
Suffice to say, TUF isn’t the major source of elite talent for the promotion at this point in its history. By my count, 29 of the UFC’s 150 currently ranked fighters came up through the show. That’s a significant proportion, but it’s not an overwhelming one.
As a means of simply stocking the roster with fighters, TUFhas more utility, as 121 of the 538 fighters on the roster—22.5 percent of the total—entered the UFC through the reality series. It’s not a bad way for the UFC to establish itself in a new market and bring in some new fighters, as long as the promotion isn’t holding its breath about getting future champions out of it.
What does the future hold for the venerable reality show? Is it still worth it for the UFC to run season after season of TUF? It depends on what the promotion is trying to get out of it, but probably not. At this point, it’s doubtful that any new gimmick or twist would bring back the millions of viewers who watched the show in its heyday.
The “group of oddballs living together in a house getting into some drama” concept is simply played out as a format for reality television. Compare the ratings of MTV’s TheReal World in 2010, much less 15 years ago, to its ratings now; it’s not pretty. Unless the show is a cultural institution like The Bachelor, which itself represents a much different take on the core concept, that ship has long since sailed.
If the UFC wants to maintain a weekly programming format, though, there’s room to work. It could continue to run tournaments of this type to introduce promising new fighters. There’s not a single reason to think the house concept has added a single thing to the profiles of any of the legitimate talent the show has produced in the last five years.
That, at the end of the day, has been TUF‘s value: finding and bringing in new talent, some of whom have turned out to be good fighters. Most of them, however, are filler. The UFC needs filler to stock more than 40 events per year.
As a vehicle for introducing those fighters to a broad audience, it hasn’t succeeded in quite some time, and there’s no bringing that level of mainstream penetration back as it’s currently constructed.
From that first wild season that brought us Forrest Griffin, Diego Sanchez and a whole generation of stars who powered the UFC’s first great expansion to season 24 and Tim Elliott, TUFhas been a cornerstone of the UFC. Its days of ratings dominance and cultural relevance, however, have been gone for a while.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. For the history enthusiasts out there, he also hosts The Fall of Rome Podcast on the end of the Roman Empire. He can be found on Twitter and on Facebook.
It looks like the time has finally come. It seems as if the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association is actually happening and that can mean some very, very big changes moving forward in the sport. The Association promises some pretty bold, pretty intriguing offerings for those who looking for some security outside of the major mixed martial arts promotions, namely the UFC.
It looks like the time has finally come. It seems as if the Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association is actually happening and that can mean some very, very big changes moving forward in the sport. The Association promises some pretty bold, pretty intriguing offerings for those who looking for some security outside of the major mixed martial arts promotions, namely the UFC. Fighter treatment has been a hot-button issue for quite some time now, specifically fighter pay, health insurance, and severance/retirement packages fighters aren’t afforded with their contracts with top MMA promotions.
Is this Fighter Association what the athletes have been waiting for? At this point it’s hard to say. The Fighter Association has been set up in hopes of representing their clients, namely fighters under the UFC brand for example, and their best interests. Tim Kennedy, Georges St-Pierre, and the other fighters on the board have gone on record stating that their first line of business is to obtain a settlement package that will ensure that past, present, and future UFC fighters will be given the benefits needed to give them a safety net for their post fight careers. Going forward they are hoping to expand on this idea of giving the power back to the fighters.
So far, it sounds great and it’s about time that something was done to ensure that fighters are given a fair shake. The problem is we can’t celebrate so soon. Until a great deal of fighters join this association, until we’ve seen that the big promotions are actually being threatened by this new entity, there’s no way of knowing if the MMA Athletes Association is truly going to make a change. With big names like Georges St-Pierre, Donald Cerrone, Cain Velasquez, TJ Dillashaw, and Tim Kennedy as members of the board, fighters are sure to be in good hands moving forward. It’s all about if they can actually get some traction for this thing to work. Until then, everything is a question mark.
What is your take on this new Mixed Martial Arts Athletes Association?
Jonathan Salmon is a writer, martial arts instructor, and geek culture enthusiast. Check out his Twitter and Facebook to keep up with his antics.
![Donald-Cerrone-[1]](http://cdn.lowkickmma.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Donald-Cerrone-1.jpg)
‘Cowboy’ says he has spoken to White since the announcement of the MMAAA was made public, and that the UFC President wishes he would have called him first instead of being ‘back-handed in the face’ by the announcement out of left field:
Rebney also pointed to hiring the best legal teams, PR firms, and marketing teams also play a huge factor in one day reaching their ultimate goal:
While Rebney has equipped himself well for a fight against the big guys at the UFC, he knows he’s in for quite the challenge going up against WME-IMG and the UFC who have a joint $10 billion worth between them, but feels he has executed his strategy perfectly up to this point:
When 