Keller's Take
KELLER: Another "Biggest Event in UFC History" was a total disaster, will November 12 avoid similar fate?
Sep 6, 2011 - 2:28:14 PM KELLER: Another "Biggest Event in UFC History" was a total disaster, will November 12 avoid similar fate?

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By Wade Keller, MMATorch Supervising Editor

November 12 can be a great day or an awful day for UFC. Another "Biggest Event in UFC History" was September 28, 2001, and it was awful.

It could have been a great day. Tito Ortiz, a breakout star with charisma and youth, was facing young phenom Vitor Belfort in the main event. It was UFC's first event ever in Las Vegas. It was UFC's return to national cable pay-per-view after being banned years earlier for being deemed too controversial and unregulated.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The main card fights were boring. They went to draws. There were no knockouts. Even worse, Vitor Belfort no-showed the main event due to an arm injury. He was replaced by little-known Vladimir "The Janitor" Matyushenko. He and Tito fought to draw. The crowd began leaving during the fight.

In the semi-main between Pulver and Dennis Hallman, the crowd chanted "boring" and booed very loudly during the final round. Pulver mouthed "I'm sorry" to the crowd after the final horn sounded. He promised the fans he'd do better next time if they'd have him back.

A dejected crew gathered with the (relatively few) media people backstage after the event. I was among them, and I overheard Jens Pulver shrugging and telling other fighters before the press conference, "I did my job; I threw punches."

This was UFC's chance to impress the national media who bothered to attend this controversial live sport's Vegas debut. This was a chance to welcome back fans of UFC who had been shut out of live PPVs unless they had DirecTV the previous few years.

"We are devastated," UFC president Dana White told me after the post-event press conference. "We really wanted to impress new viewers. We had four great events leading up to this event. We did everything right, or so we thought. You just can't expect that every fight is going to be a draw. You can't control it, but you don't expect it, either."

In the press conference, White said that he could book mismatches to ensure knockouts, but he didn't want to compromise the sport. "This was just a bad night, but those who watch us regularly know we're better."

Hallman said: "If you want to see the real deal, sometimes this is what happens."

Does Fox know "sometimes this happens," though? On November 12, if Dos Santos and Velasquez have a five round stalemate without many punches, something as bad as the final round of Tito Ortiz vs. Forrest Griffin, will UFC be damaged badly enough that it takes years to recover?

What if the fight ends in the first minute? Being the only live fight on the broadcast, will that send the wrong message about how entertaining a great MMA fight can be? Will novice and skeptical viewers think Dana White did give them a mismatch just to increase the odds of a devastating knockout?

A long boring fight or a super-quick knockout are two less-than-ideal outcomes. There's the torn eyelid finish (Randy Couture vs. Belfort). There's the blood stoppage that could make Fox viewers (and leery executives) recoil due to the gore. There's always potential for a gruesome injury or someone getting knocked out and carried out, with new potential fans writing off the sport as too ugly and brutal to be worth supporting.

Yes, there are plenty of great outcomes that are possible. But to put almost all of their chips on one fight with this much on the line is nearly unprecedented. Yes, there was a lot riding on Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar, but the expectations weren't at the level of this heavyweight fight on Fox. Yes, Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock live on Spike had high expectations, but it didn't feel make or break.

Fortunately, this isn't a one-time special on Fox. If something does go wrong - as I'm sure UFC execs have let Fox know is possible, although not likely given the nature of the fighters in the main event - UFC will have a second chance. UFC, more so than in 2001, has cemented itself with a whole generation (or two) of sports fans who won't go away because of one bad outing. A boring fight or a late injury to one of the fighters will be a setback, but it won't kill the sport.

If UFC can survive the September 2001 debacle, it can come back from a bad November 2011. Fortunately, the Dos Santos vs. Velasqeuz fight is about as good as it gets short of Brock Lesnar being available when it comes to the expected pace and intensity of fight. Fortunately, too, this isn't a Kimbo Slice or Check Kongo one-dimensional match-up; this is a classic mix of a stand-up specialist with takedown defense against a top level wrestler with the goal of neutralizing any stand-up disadvantage.

White surely hasn't forgotten September 28, 2001. He'll be bracing for the worst. But the very future of the sport in 2011 isn't on the line as it potentially was in 2001.

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Wade Keller is supervising editor of MMATorch. He has covered MMA since before UFC 1 for the Torch Newsletter, and is among the longest tenured reporters covering the sport. He is a double-black-stripe belt in tae kwon do and has practiced judo and jiu jitsu at the North Star Martial Arts Academy under Michelle Holtze and Tom Crone. He founded MMATorch.com as a dedicated MMA website in 2006 and launched the MMATorch App in 2008. MMATorch is among the top five most read MMA-dedicated brands in the world.