As we’ve seen with many publicly traded companies worldwide, the trends of corporatization have left their infectious fingerprints on many of the things we hold near and dear to our hearts. And for me, the UFC is one of those things.
As a lifelong martial artist who was old enough to remember the karate and taekwondo booms of the early ’90s, the UFC came along and introduced everyone to the world of MMA – a world that I have not stepped away from ever since.
I’m incredibly fortunate to be able to cover this sport for a living, but I can’t help but wonder: Would I still be around buying pay-per-views and spending 90 percent of my Saturdays glued to a screen for the current quality of UFC offerings if it wasn’t my job?
According to recent reports, a lot of fans have asked themselves similar questions and answered in kind.
There’s obviously a ton of things we can point to and ESPN+’s consistent shortcomings as an app and service certainly don’t help the matter. However, I’d argue that a key common thread for a large number of our complaints can be traced back to the contractual obligations that are driven by content-hungry corporate overlords, resulting in a relentless UFC schedule that is steadily turning into a slop trough for the proverbial piggies to get their fill.
Many of said “piggies” prefer to have their slop fed to them at the same time every Saturday, but there is an undeniable cost to stepping on the gas of a volatile combat sport that already lacks an offseason. And though I typically draw negative reactions whenever I point out the undeniable fact of cause and effect, this past Saturday’s UFC card, which was supposed to be headlined by Erin Blanchfield vs. Maycee Barber, only added credence to the case that myself and many have made for years now regarding an over-saturated schedule.
Some folks in the comments to my tweet embedded above were quick to misconstrue the message by making it be solely about Barber (who technically had longer notice than usual for her latest training camp), but that doesn’t change the fact that the UFC of old could compensate for these fallouts with consistent quality.
It also doesn’t change the fact that the decent majority of fighters on these cards regularly forfeit full training camps to compete for the world leader. And for those saying the UFC had no other main event choices, let’s not pretend that the matchmakers don’t regularly bury lighter-weight contenders’ fights like Blanchfield-Barber on undercards while simultaneously punishing fighters who have pulled out or are prone to pulling out a la Arman Tsarukyan before UFC 311.
But this piece is not about Barber (whom I wish well) or any one particular person or event. It’s about the health of the MMA space as a whole and how the UFC schedule is affecting it. From the constant card shuffling to bookings of impromptu fights and rematches, there’s no denying that the UFC’s health – despite its sheer dominance in this space – is connected to the sport’s health.
The purpose of this piece is to separate the MMA space into four different categories – the fighters, the fans, the promotion and the media – to better help explain the connections.
The fighters
First and foremost, let’s start with the most important piece. Without the fighters, what would we watch? Who would the UFC promote? And who would I cover?
However, despite their undeniable importance in the grand scheme of things, it’s the fighters who are consistently finding themselves with the short straws and left with the heaviest costs from both physical and financial burdens.
And though the “relentless UFC schedule” can technically afford them financial opportunities, the systemic effects of low fighter pay subsequently translate into a structural problem where a huge portion of the middle class that the UFC quietly built off the backs of has been largely obliterated to make way for the lowest bidder to fill their spot and keep the machine going.
Consider Dana White’s Contender Series. Don’t get me wrong: plenty of good fighters have come through the Contender Series, and this isn’t meant to be a criticism to any of them in particular. Nevertheless, there’s no denying the corporate-style churning and housecleaning that the UFC has been able to do since the Contender Series launched. And when you factor in their need to hit contractual obligations by making themselves a viable commodity from a consistent content standpoint, you now see a much more carefree approach to what gets rubberstamped for rollout.
Changing weight classes after a match was set was a big no-no for the UFC brass going back to the Joe Silva days, but now it’s common for people to pull fight week stunts with their weight and still be accommodated in some form or fashion.
Even an important divisional fight between top-ranked contenders like Ketlen Vieira vs. Macy Chiasson was forced to go forward with one fighter arguably at a disadvantage in a now-defunct division, while random matchups like Joe Pyfer vs. Kelvin Gastelum or John Castenada vs. Chris Gutierrez get preserved and rebooked over and over again.
Obviously there are legitimate arguments and reasons for the cases cited, but none is more important and defining than whatever the current needs of the UFC schedule are.
With this in mind, you can’t help but wonder if the little leverage fighters had is somehow even lesser today.
Conversely, at the top end of things, we’re now seeing somehow even less meritocracy with the ranking system due to the superseding nature of the UFC schedule. So instead of deserved and sensible matchups, we’ve been fed a steady flow of rematches and impromptu fights ever since the pandemic.
Or when we do get fresh or fun fights involving champions, they’re now forced to relinquish their titles for the sake of the schedule, even if they’re divisional greats who have defended such as Ilia Topuria or Islam Makhachev. Not only has the UFC undeniably steered away from their star-making approaches and embraces of the past, but their prioritization of having gold on the posters has taken an even more dramatic turn as even the top fighters are losing leverage.
Hell, even International Fight Week headliners (which is basically one of the UFC’s only regular tentpole events now that they’ve abandoned Superbowl, Memorial Day and New Year’s weekend shows) barely even get their official bookings done by the industry standard of eight weeks out. And with the UFC schedule serving as the No. 1 priority, it’s also not uncommon to see their traveling shows suffer even further since they seem perfectly fine with booking top Canadian talent in Iowa just a week before they visit the criminally underserved provinces of Canada – which is just one example of many in regards to the costs of keeping the UFC ship afloat.
Getting ready for a cage fight is a hard enough thing to see to completion no matter who you are, so seeing everything from fight quality to fallouts become even more prevalent under the current conditions shouldn’t be surprising.
What is both surprising and sad, however, is that there’s an arguable stagnation of skills and growth that’s been happening during this period that many are describing as a plateau for the UFC. While everything between welterweight and featherweight are stacked beyond belief, many of the divisions – particularly the heavier-weight men’s and women’s weight classes – have either stagnated or outright regressed over the past decade.
But with a strict schedule to keep, who has the time to properly build stars, much less successfully managed careers and divisions?
The fans
The UFC has done such a great job of promoting its brand over the fighters throughout the years that now it’s not uncommon for a lot of self-ascribed “fans of the sport” to be the first in line to push back on behalf of a company that shows less and less care toward them as they all collectively blame the media or the fighters themselves.
The less vocal fans have spoken more with their dollars given the notable drops in viewership and PPV buys in recent years.
Meanwhile, the UFC – which took an insane amount of victory laps for their efforts to get around COVID-19 regulations during a global pandemic – is still regularly running relatively the same amount of shows from their home base warehouse of the Apex in Las Vegas. And though the matchmakers will noticeably try a bit harder to book better fight slates for the live crowd of their traveling shows, it’s still not up to snuff when you consider both the traditional UFC standard and the insulting inflation of their ticket prices.
So now, the UFC, akin to fellow TKO stablemate WWE, regularly closes its shows with a post-event presser bragging about gate numbers with no self-awareness of its struggles with quality control or the struggles of fans to afford tickets.
Even if you’re among those who are financially stable enough to attend a live UFC show, where would you go and how often are you even going with their diminished traveling schedule?
Or maybe you’re not so much of a hardcore fan as you are an avid gambler, which is a lot of what makes up the sports space considering the mass marketing of betting these days. If that is the case, then you, too, should be concerned about the effects of the UFC schedule.
As I’ve said many times before this latest health debacle happened with Barber, it’s hard to know just how much of an honest fight you’re even getting these days given all the extra pressures and lack of leverage…
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