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Rich Hansen's Take
HANSEN: UFC's Void Of Top Pay-Per-View Draws Into 2014 A Self Inflicted Wound
Dec 31, 2013 - 2:10:23 PM
HANSEN: UFC's Void Of Top Pay-Per-View Draws Into 2014 A Self Inflicted Wound
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Rich Hansen, MMATorch Columnist

In 2014, the UFC is planning 13 pay-per-views, 4 Fox shows, 14 FS1 shows, 4 FS2 shows, and as many as 15 Fight Pass shows. That's not even to mention the full slate of Bellator and WSOF events along with three Ben Askren fights in Singapore. However, while there won't be any shortage of fights, the UFC is devoid of top stars, and look to be facing their worst year on pay-per-view in nearly a decade. To paraphrase Rick Pitino when he was coaching the Boston Celtics, "Chuck Liddell is not walking through that door, fans. Brock Lesnar is not walking through that door, and Randy Couture is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door, they're going to be gray and old."

Anderson Silva is done as a main event draw. Even if he returns to fighting, which thankfully seems more likely today than it did on Sunday, his drawing power has been crushed by Chris Weidman. And more likely than not, Weidman isn't going to get a 100% rub to become the next big UFC draw because of the bizarre finishes to his two fights with Silva. Weidman dominated thirteen minutes of action against the former champion, but he will forever be diminished by throngs of fans who will go to the grave convinced that Silva would have won both fights had they played out a little longer. Chris Weidman killed Anderson Silva's juju, but he didn't likely absorb much of it for himself. Weidman's never going to be a million-buy draw on pay-per-view. He's just not.

Georges St-Pierre lost his fire, and reclaimed his life outside of the UFC. St-Pierre was the most reliable pay-per-view draw the UFC had over the last few years, and he likely won't be in the cage in 2014, if ever again. Worse still, his last victory was over Johny Hendricks, the man the UFC clearly is positioning to be the welterweight replacement for GSP. Johny Hendricks is a fantastic fighter, but there are dozens of guys who fight with the exact same style. There's not one unique thing about him. Fans have no fear of missing a Hendricks fight, because he doesn't do anything you've never seen before. Sure, what he does he does with fantastic results, but his style is dime a dozen.

Brock Lesnar rumors continue to pop up simply because of the horrible charisma gap at the top of the UFC roster. Brock Lesnar was a fluke, an aberration, but once he left the sport, no one in the heavyweight division was able to come close to filling his shoes. Alistair Overeem was supposed to be the man, but he shot away (see what I did there? Shot?) his chance to be the next Heavyweight pay-per-view king. Cain Velasquez (speaking of charisma gap) - the baddest man on the planet according to UFC hype - is going to fight once this year. He's undeniably the best fighter in the heavyweight division, but even if he were a draw, even if he wanted to carry the promotion on his shoulders, and even if he was constantly in the spotlight, he's got a bad wing and will only fight once in 2013. While it's ridiculous for people to hold his 'brown pride' tattoo against him, rest assured that keeps plenty of redneck money out of the UFC's hands, boosting the rusted El Camino market instead.

Demetrious Johnson might be the best pound for pound fighter in the sport today. He really might. Of course, no one considers that possibility because the combat sport fan of today is conditioned to believe that the best fighters fight on pay-per-view, and the best of the best headline on pay-per-view. Johnson's only appearance on pay-per-view was in Toronto at UFC 152. It was a scheduled main event, at which point Torontonians responded by very politely closing their wallets. After Dan Henderson's chutzpah murdered UFC 151, Jon Jones was pushed onto the UFC 152 card, both so the UFC wouldn't have to pay him for not fighting, and so that Toronto wouldn't be killed as a market. Johnson has headlined three straight Fox shows, and the ratings for each show were among the lower end the UFC's done on the network.

Dominick Cruz, Renan Barao, and Jose Aldo might be the three best fighters in the world. Barao and Aldo don't speak English. Cruz hasn't fought in 30 months. All three fighters, along with someone named Ricardo Lamas, will be fighting atop the UFC 169 card. Estimate this show to do around 250,000 buys. That's certainly profitable, but still well below what was the buyrate floor a mere two years ago. In case you want to chalk this up to the fallacy that little guys can't sell pay-per-views, ask Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao, Oscar de La Hoya, and Ray Leonard about that.

So, who's left? Anthony Pettis. Ronda Rousey. Jon Jones. The UFC has certainly tried to make Jones the next superstar, with mixed results. Rousey is probably the biggest star in the sport right now, but it's too soon to tell if women's fighting is something that enough people can get behind to make her the next bankable megastar before she is fully ensconced in Hollywood. And just when Anthony Pettis had all the momentum in the world, and might have been the first 155 lb. or less fighter since B.J. Penn to become a true bankable star, his body broke down yet again. Pettis is on the shelf until at least this summer.

The UFC is in the midst of a fantastic talent flow right now. It is possible, even likely, that ten years from now we'll look back at every person who held a UFC championship during the year 2013 and regard them as the best ever, EVER, at their respective weight class. And not one of them can draw flies to a county fair. Jones has had some big buyrates in his career, but those numbers are dropping with each fight. Same with Cain Velasquez. More than ten million people saw him fight Junior dos Santos in November 2011. fewer than 600,000 bought the rematch. Fewer than 350,000 bothered to buy the trilogy fight.

Why aren't people paying to watch fights in this era, an era that is more talent-laden than at any time in the history of this sport? Is it because all of these champions have nothing to offer? Hardly. Or is it possible that the UFC is stretching themselves too thin in a marketplace that has plateaued (or receded), a marketplace that wants to be attracted to fighters and not three random letters, which is all the UFC wants to sell these days.

Don't believe me? Watch darn near every video promo that the UFC puts out for every pay-per-view. You've got poorly edited clips of one guy punching and kicking another guy, rarely ever submitting or grappling mind you, while Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg's voices are poorly chopped up like dead Chef in South Park over the video clips. All of this while a really crappy piece of not-as-good-as-Stemm music plays. Then the next month, they change the music from one crappy song to another crappy song, replace Fighter A and Fighter B with Fighter C and D, sloppily insert different clips of Joe and Mike, and VOILA! Another disposable masterpiece.

My point, and yes there is a point, is this: the UFC doesn't dare to promote the fighters, the best fighters on the planet, ahead of the brand, because once the fighters trump the brand, then the fighters at the top of the heap - who are getting relative peanuts compared to the top boxers (or compared to the Fertitta's, Dana White, and some Sultan in the Middle East) - are going to actually have a large percentage of the power.

This generation of top-shelf talent is in desperate need of promotion. Cain Velasquez hates talking. Every time Jon Jones talks, five more people think he's a phony. Chris Weidman might go down in history as the best fighter of this generation, but he's a question mark. Johny Hendricks has the empathy of the fans, but that won't last forever. His fight with GSP was the lowest selling GSP pay-per-view since he fought Jon Fitch. So, statistically speaking, Johny Hendricks is Jon Fitch. Folks, that's called damning with faint praise. Anthony Pettis could be the guy, but he'll need the UFC's help if he's going to catch on like B.J. Penn did. The UFC is doing a good job with Ronda Rousey. Of course, they also chose to make her look like a misanthropic troll ogre on Fox Sports 1 for 13 weeks straight. And for what? So that when TUF 18 did the worst ratings of any season in TUF history that they'd turn a C+ level fighter into a star who can't beat anyone better than Julie Kedzie? Good idea to make Miesha Tate more beloved than the best chance for superstardom that the roster possesses. Admittedly, they couldn't do much with the double birds on the way down the rock climbing wall, but had they chosen to make Tate look like the heel, they could have made that work.

Do you want to know why Jon Jones isn't selling 1.1 million every time out? Because the UFC would rather keep him down and under their thumb than pay him what he's worth. Because if someone as unable to connect with people as Jones gets eight figures per fight, how much is someone the fans actually love going to make as champion?

Do you know why Dana White allowed Ronda Rousey to look like the most miserable person in the world on thirteen weeks of The Ultimate Fighter? Because they don't want her to become more popular than the brand. You know why they made the two-faced Miesha Tate Look like Mother Flipping Teresa? Because even at her most popular she's still an average fighter who's never going to have the power to be any trouble to them. They very easily could have spent weeks showing her playing favorites, making fun of Armenians, etc. But they didn't, because they know she'll never be more than a blip on the radar, and five years from now she's likely to be nothing more than a footnote. Same can't be said about Rousey, who will either be a legend in this sport, or will be making 10x the money in Hollywood than she makes now. See what happens when a fighter gets leverage?

Now don't get me wrong here. The UFC isn't a plantation, the top stars aren't slaves, and Dana White isn't quite Calvin Candie. And unless every champion and number one contender decides to take a stand, then nothing's going to change. There is only one Jon Jones, one Anthony Pettis, one Ronda Rousey, but there are a hundred Bobby Voelkers, scores of Edwin Figueroas, multitudes of Will Campuzanos. Until the elite of the roster realizes that they are more important than the letters "UFC", the wealth they make will take care of many fewer generations of their families than would otherwise be the case.


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