Issue 115
June 2014
Fighters Only editor-in-chief Nick Peet on the UFC’s plan for expansion away from home and what it means in the bigger picture.
The biggest transition during the Zuffa-owned era of the Ultimate Fighting Championship is currently underway – both inside and outside the Octagon.
The icons and personalities who have carried the organization to such illustrious heights in the past 13 years are now slowly being moved aside to allow a new generation to drive the sport forward.
Just like Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz before them, Anderson Silva and Georges St Pierre have exited stage left and a host of future potential MMA greats have been only too happy to take their place.
Cain Velasquez, Jon Jones and José Aldo are the flag bearers for the world’s dominant mixed martial arts promotion in 2014 – but their emergence to the fore is also being accompanied by a wave of new faces outside the cage.
Commentary teams, ring announcers, ringcard girls, doctors, officials and executives – the UFC is no longer a traveling roadshow that pitches its tent for one night only in cities and countries around the world. It’s now a truly global sports entertainment powerhouse capable of staging fight cards across the globe, independently of the original US production team.
Staples of past UFC events, like Joe Rogan, Mike Goldberg, Bruce Buffer, Burt Watson and even Dana White himself have been replaced globally with ‘local’ substitutes and the result has been – shock-horror – simply more of the same.
The fighters aren’t fighting any less vigorously, the fans aren’t enjoying it any less, and while the current shows, perhaps, don’t have the same bells and whistles fight fans have come to know and love, the new additions have slipped in seamlessly. Testament to the UFC’s global recruitment policy perhaps.
Clearly the biggest change is not having Dana at every event. White has become the poster boy for the UFC and fans seem to connect with him more than with any fighter on the card. His bullish business attitude and carefree approach, with fans and media alike, have made him likely the most popular sports executive on the planet.
But just like Anderson’s legendary career, all good things must come to an end, and in order to take the UFC forward into the next decade the role of the UFC president will continue to decrease. With as many as 65 fight cards penciled in for 2015 alone, how could it not? After all, he’s just one man.
During its second trip to Abu Dhabi last month the UFC revealed to FO its plans to build a TUF house in the Middle East to run production for all EMEA seasons of The Ultimate Fighter. A huge deal that redefines the UFC’s approach to finding new talent in the region. Yet Dana was in Mexico, working on the TUF season down there – a clear sign of change at the highest level.
A little more than a decade ago brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta insist they paid millions for just three letters and a broken Octagon. And yet it seems that as the sport moves into the next decade and beyond, those three little letters are set to climb higher up the ladder of the world’s leading brands than either of them could have ever imagined.
‘NO REAR VIEW MIRROR’
The similarities between the new great cities of the United Arab Emirates and the UFC are astounding. Just two decades ago both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, like the Octagon, were merely destinations full of potential. Home to the dreams of many, but the fortunes of few.
Today all have grown and continue to grow at an exponential rate that shows no signs of abating. The Middle East is becoming the world’s playground and so it makes perfect sense that the world’s fastest growing sports entertainment producer should lay roots in the desert sands.
The sale of 10% of the UFC by Zuffa to Flash Entertainment four years ago promised so much. Owned by members of the Abu Dhabi royal family, it was thought Flash would make the UAE a home for the Octagon in the Middle East. Yet one flatlining fight card back in 2010 seemingly closed the door between both parties.
But all that’s about to change. Following the Octagon’s 2014 return to the region, the UFC is planning to build a TUF house and gym production facility there this year, where back-to-back seasons of The Ultimate Fighter will be made for the global market.
A huge part of that deal includes financial support from the Abu Dhabi tourism agency and the state-owned Etihad Airways. One executive in Abu Dhabi recently described the Middle East approach to business growth as having “no rear view mirror” and that’s exactly the kind of attitude the UFC relies on.
