Opinion: Calling Shots and Breaking Promises
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After emptying its clip to close 2015 in a furious hail of pay-per-view buys, the Ultimate Fighting Championship had to scramble to put together something jaw-dropping for its early 2016 campaign, something that recalled the stacked, spectacle-laden affairs Zuffa sought to create late last year. However, this is MMA, where scrambles can lead to beautiful outcomes, and in this case, UFC 197, tentatively set for March 5 in Las Vegas, fits the bill.
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These fights please the fighters involved, though. That’s why UFC 197 is our first sign o’ the times in 2016 and a potential bellwether moment.
If this was just business as usual for the UFC, we probably would
have seen McGregor defend in May against Frankie
Edgar and Holm sit on the sideline, hoping Rousey would be
ready for UFC 200 in July. In 2015, the UFC put on 473 fights and
41 events, but the vast majority of its revenue came from but a
half dozen of those events, with the overall strength and financial
success of the company hinging more than ever before on superstars
like McGregor and Rousey.
Related » Rafael Cordeiro on Conor McGregor: Rafael dos Anjos Wants to ‘Break His Soul’ at UFC 197
Looking ahead to March and April with no legitimate marquee fights on the horizon, the UFC had to make something happen to try and sustain its magic from late 2015, and it’s telling that the best way the company saw to do that was acquiescing to McGregor’s ambitious demands and Holm’s desire to fight again on a new, fat contract. UFC employ is still often Orwellian and Draconian for most of these “independent contractors,” but the sport’s few chosen superstars are actually developing some honest-to-goodness leverage.
The “I’ll fight whoever the UFC wants next” ethos is far from gone in the Octagon; we still hear it once or twice at least at every event, and Robbie Lawler, king of that ethos, just put on another potential “Fight of the Year” classic with that mantra for the third year running. Nonetheless, since the moment Jon Jones decided he didn’t want to fight Chael Sonnen on a week’s notice, thereby canceling UFC 151, it has been clear that a select group of Zuffa’s best and brightest -- see: financially viable -- had some flex to call their own shots and conduct their own careers; and that capacity might be increasing. Jones’ decision forced the UFC to cancel a major PPV event, unprecedented at the time, and the worst blowback he got from the company was UFC President Dana White’s manic conference call on which he screamed about Jones’ trainer Greg Jackson being an “[expletive] sport killer.”
Prior to Jones’ decision, fighters calling their shots was a rare occurrence, and even then, it was still used as a promotional control mechanism, such as rewarding Chuck Liddell for being the ultimate company man, thus allowing him to fight in Pride Fighting Championships every so often to catch a fat payday. Remember when B.J. Penn got to fight Matt Hughes and Georges St. Pierre as the UFC tried to placate him, hoping to stabilize his mercurial personality and wavering focus? UFC 197 is a different predicament entirely. Pulling the trigger on McGregor-dos Anjos and Holm-Tate is not about the UFC doing its champs “a solid.” It’s the fighters responsible for the UFC’s revenue saying, “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, but that doesn’t work for me. Here’s what I’m thinking.”
Good for them. Actually, not just good for them. McGregor’s lust for 155-pound gold and Holm’s desire to not wait around for Rousey also gives their opponents a major boost. Sure, McGregor was being characteristically glib when he introduced “Red Panty Night” while teasing dos Anjos at a press conference, telling him that he would “change his life” with the payday he would receive for fighting him. On the other hand, when else is dos Anjos, arguably the most anonymous quality UFC champion ever, going to get a chance to headline a card against the sport’s hottest star, one that will sell more than 750,000 pay-per-view units? Probably never.
As for Tate, she finally gets the UFC women’s bantamweight title shot she was “promised,” and if she’s still hung up on pushing her luck for a third time against Rousey, her only viable chance at another Rousey rematch runs through beating the woman who clobbered the former champion.
Mentioning those championship promises, the only clear loser in the UFC 197 design is Frankie Edgar. Only a sociopath wouldn’t feel sympathy for Edgar getting passed over for another 145-pound title shot for the umpteenth time, especially after yet another White title-shot promise followed Edgar’s bashing of Chad Mendes in December. Barely 24 hours after White said as much, Conor McGregor was the new featherweight champion and keen on playing by his own rules. It’s a lame fate for any fighter, especially an all-time great baby face like Edgar, but it’s a fate to be expected, as it’s a direct result of the UFC not appreciating the strengthening leverage of its superstars.
Everything -- historical precedent, insider knowledge, public comments from the promoter, common sense -- suggests that the UFC would have preferred McGregor-Edgar. It’s still a McGregor fight, it sells, it finally gets Edgar out of competitive limbo and it’s still very competitive on paper. Yet, these factors, even combined, couldn’t produce the force to trump McGregor simply saying “No thanks, I’m fighting dos Anjos next,” especially with the company wanting to utilize the Irishman again as quickly as possible. The cruel tragedy is that by pushing McGregor to the stars -- and successfully so -- and bypassing Edgar in the process, the UFC helped push its new champ to superstar status, so much so that he now has the ability to mold its matchmaking; the UFC passed over Edgar to help make McGregor a star, and now he’s such a star that he has his own ability to pass over Edgar, at least temporarily.
Despite how unexpected and shocking McGregor’s title capture against Aldo was, the Irishman was still publicly talking about going for the UFC lightweight title long before taking the 145-pound strap. Given that, as well as McGregor publicly discussing how hard it is to make the featherweight limit and viewing himself as a lightweight in the long-term, the UFC should have at least been reasonably prepared for him to double down on his lightweight campaign. That should have precluded any more “promises” about Edgar fighting for the title. The UFC does not even realize how powerful its posterchildren are until the promotion is bent over the barrel.
After all, that’s how Tate herself ended up in this whole situation. When Tate thrashed Jessica Eye in July, the bout was promoted on network TV as a title eliminator, and White said she’d fight Rousey next. All it took was Rousey to say that she wasn’t interested in fighting Tate again and that she wanted to get her next fight done well before January. All of a sudden, Holm was your No. 1 contender and later your new UFC bantamweight women’s champion.
The Rousey example doesn’t reflect kindly on fighters calling their own shots, but there is a silver lining. Even in a crushing, humiliating defeat, Rousey has maintained her crossover media traction and remains a darling. She was named a finalist for the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, even after the Holm disaster, and now has been booked to host “Saturday Night Live” on Jan. 23. Outside of screwing over Edgar, most people’s primary worry with UFC 197, Zuffa included, is “What if they lose?” Rousey is a unique specimen, but it’s clear that mainstream momentum for an MMA fighter doesn’t necessarily die with a demoralizing knockout.
Zuffa is trying to build on what it did in 2015, a year dominated by superstars in spectacle-laden events. When trying to bring the sport’s biggest and brightest out to shine, the UFC needs to appreciate that it is no longer the Prime Mover alone and that some of these stars are now in control of their orbit.
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