Hyden's Take
HYDEN BLOG: UFC 176's Cancellation And The UFC's Oversaturation Problem
Jul 16, 2014 - 11:45:05 AM HYDEN BLOG: UFC 176's Cancellation And The UFC's Oversaturation Problem

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By: Frank Hyden, MMATorch contributor

UFC 176 was scheduled to take place August 2, but has been canceled. The reason for this cancellation is because of a neck injury suffered by Jose Aldo, rendering him unable to defend his UFC Featherweight Title against Chad Mendes. I'm disappointed because I was looking forward to this fight, as I'm sure many others are as well. However, this cancellation also speaks to a major problem plaguing the UFC right now: they run too many events.

More often that not, the UFC has one-fight cards, and fill the rest in with average at best fights. There's just too damn many events for them to be able to have good-enough-for-the-UFC fights throughout the card. Now, when there's an injury, it ruins the event. This is the second pay-per-view that the UFC has had to cancel, the other being UFC 151. That event was supposed to take place in September 2012. That right there tells you about the overabundance of pay-per-view events that the UFC has run. They were supposed to have run 25 events in 23 months. That's a lot of money to ask people to shell out. From September 2012 to now there have been 67 UFC events. Take that to the end of July and the number grows by three.

That makes 70 UFC events in 22 months, a little over three events a month. That's a lot of UFC action. I would say that's way too much, especially when it leads to watered down cards that have to be canceled if the main event is lost due to injury. I know the main event is the big draw, but it's dangerous to book events where that's the only fight worth a damn. Lorenzo Fertitta talked to Fox Sports Live and had this to say about the UFC 176 cancelation:

"In addition to that, obviously on pay-per-view events, there is typically a championship bout on the card."

This isn't always true. UFC 153 was supposed to be headlined by UFC Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo vs. Erik Koch, but had to be canceled due to injury. Anderson Silva fought Stephan Bonnar on short notice in the main event.

UFC 161 was supposed to be headlined by an interim UFC Bantamweight Title fight between Renan Barao and Eddie Wineland, but Barao got hurt. Rashad Evans vs. Dan Henderson served as the replacement main event.

It isn't unprecedented to have a PPV headlined by a non-title fight, though it's certainly not desirable in any way. Canceling the event outright may benefit those who had bought tickets in that they can get a refund, but what about those who had bought hotel rooms, plane tickets, etc.? I'm sure they would have been pretty upset if the UFC had kept the event, but at least it's better than nothing.

The UFC is playing a dangerous game by running so many events. It waters down the product tremendously, and in turn creates situations such as these. And they're actually increasing the number of events. They will run five events total this month, and were supposed to run five events in August as well before the cancellation. September brings four more events, and October is at least three events, with a good possibility of a fourth being added as they target that month for Aldo-Mendes 2.

Running three events in a month frequently is extreme, four becomes way too many, and five is overkill. Business is down for the UFC, and oversaturation is the reason why. It hasn't helped that they've also lost some big names, especially Georges St-Pierre. Then they shoot themselves in the foot by having UFC Lightweight Champion Anthony Pettis sitting on the sidelines so he can film The Ultimate Fighter Season 1000 (that number may not be totally accurate), so he's unavailable to fight for a while even though he's recovered from injury.

These cards are spread way too thin, and it's affecting interest. The UFC is expanding at a time where they should be putting more focus rekindling interest amongst fans feeling burnt out. They also need to consider that they're not in a vacuum. Bellator and World Series of Fighting are running events as well, so fans are getting an overload of MMA action. The old saying goes that "You don't miss something until it's gone," but that's just not possible with MMA. You can't miss something that's always there, and right now, the UFC is like a house guest that won't leave.


Comments and suggestions can be emailed to me at hydenfrank@gmail.com and you can follow me on Twitter at @hydenfrank