...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!
By: Shawn Ennis, MMATorch Senior Columnist
Recent months have brought a slew of roster cuts from the UFC, several of which were controversial. The names have been hashed and rehashed, so we're not going to get into that part of things just yet. Dana White said when the cuts first picked up steam that the UFC needs to cut at least 100 more fighters in order to be where they want to, and that raises an interesting question: Just how many fighters does the UFC need on its roster?
I want to look at this purely from a numbers perspective. I wrote in September about the UFC's need for predictability in the scheduling of their events (and I still firmly believe that it would be extremely beneficial for them to do something similar to what I mentioned there), and roster sizes play a significant role in event scheduling as well.
Just for the sake of consistency, let's stick with the same numbers that we talked about in the scheduling column. The UFC is on pace for 33 events this year (11 events through April), and there are usually about 12 fights per card. That's a total of 396 fights per year, which will accommodate 792 non-unique fighters. That means that there are 792 slots for fighters, but one fighter will take up more than one slot depending on how many times he or she fights per year. Let's say that each fighter has an average of 2.5 fights per year. If that's the case, the UFC has room for 316 total fighters.
Right now, the UFC has nine divisions. In a perfect world where each division is considered equal, 316 fighters would give you a cap of 35 fighters per division (As a side note, this would never happen. Besides certain divisions being more marketable – which is a self-fulfilling prophecy – there are just more fighters at some weights than at others). On the surface, that is plenty of room. So how many fighters does the UFC employ right now? If you look at their official website, they are carrying 385 fighters. That's 69 more than they need for the 316 slots that they have to fill 12 fights per card with 33 cards per year, with each fighter fighting an average of 2.5 times per year. From a pure numbers standpoint, it looks like White was just about right with his estimate of 100 fighters needing to be jettisoned from the bloated roster.
Now, the other side of the coin is that the UFC's official site has several fighters on the roster who are no longer active – Royce Gracie and Chuck Liddell to name a couple. So the 385 isn't perfect, but the point is that the UFC does indeed need to make a lot of cuts.
Even once all the blood has been shed and all of the fat trimmed from the list of fighters under the UFC umbrella, there are a few questions and a few wild cards to keep in mind.
First, what is the endgame for the new divisions, and where are you going to trim fighters from in order to make room for them? The flyweight and women's bantamweight divisions have thirteen and twelve fighters listed respectively. That certainly isn't the ideal cap that the UFC is looking for in those divisions. Women's bantamweight will likely explode with the next season of The Ultimate Fighter, while flyweight could take longer to build up, depending on how big a priority it is for the UFC's recruiters to fill it out. Seeing as how the roster is already overloaded, where do we trim in order to make room for the new ladies at 135 pounds?
The most likely candidates for trimming are lightweight (75 fighters), welterweight (73 fighters), and middleweight (60 fighters). But while those are the most populated of the weight classes, there are also 50 featherweights on the roster, and the lightweight and welterweight rosters have proven to be full of young talent. As we've seen in the last couple of days, just because featherweight isn't quite as crowded doesn't mean the fighters in that division are safe from the chopping block.
Once the UFC actually gets down to their ideal roster size, whatever that ends up being, the question becomes maintenance. It's vital to continue to scout young talent, and not to let go too soon the fighters who show promise. So how does the UFC divvy out their slots for fighters? What I would propose is that they make a system whereby there should be very few questions raised or hands thrown up in exasperation when fighters are released. They could simply keep the top 20 in each division (according to whatever internal ranking system they decide to use), and leave the remaining slots open for prospects, veterans who still hold the public's interest, TUF cast members, and injury replacements.
And speaking of TUF cast members, the time has come to reset the expectations surrounding who will end up with a roster spot. The tournament itself has lost a lot of meaning for several reasons (there have been too many tournaments to count, several winners have unceremoniously washed out of the UFC, etc.), but chief among them is the fact that there is no real perception that the fighters actually need to win the tournament in order to catch on in the UFC. Of course, we've known since the first season that this is the case. Look at half the roster of season one still alive and kicking, and it's easy to see that the tournament is little more than a marketing gimmick.
So let's make it a little more interesting. We already know that bringing on most of the cast of each season of TUF is only going to eat up more roster spots. So instead of just bringing on fighters who look pretty decent during the season, how about setting criteria? For instance, you have to win your first fight in the tournament in order to even fight on the finale. And you have to win your fight on the finale in order to stay on the roster. In a 16-man or –woman tournament, that would narrow the field from 12 nameless TUF veterans added to the roster every six months to five (I'm allowing for both finalists to stay on the roster). It's a way to make the tournament more important and to cut down on the number of fighters that you're just going to cut anyway after they take up space on some Facebook prelims. Give those spots to some up-and-comers, or fighters in new weight classes.
Of course, the most important part of all of this is to stick to it. When you see new fighters that you want to sign, it's time to look at some fights in that weight class and pick your "loser leaves town" fights. It's not necessary to make these public of course, but it's not exactly rocket science to figure out which fights these are if one knows what one is looking for. No one said it was going to be easy, but sticking on the roster – or maintaining the roster from an administrative side – of the biggest MMA promotion in the world shouldn't be easy.
(Attention MMATorch app users: Make sure to upgrade to the latest edition of the MMATorch app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device!)
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.
