Issue 108
December 2013
John Morgan, former Fighters Only World MMA Awards ‘Journalist of the Year’, shrugs off the sight of empty seats at some recent UFC events.
The summer of 2013 will forever be remembered as a momentous epoch in the history of the UFC. As a cornerstone of the newly launched all-sports cable network Fox Sports 1, the promotion moved into an interesting position in the US market.
One of the immediate effects of this new partnership was an even busier schedule than the company was running previously, including an insane stretch of three fight cards in eight days on two continents.
I can tell you first-hand, UFC officials did an incredible job of both promoting and executing all three events, despite the mammoth operational challenges. No offense to the staffs of the world’s other top MMA promotions, but I can’t imagine any other organization pulling it off.
That said, there was some concern in regards to both the attendance and ratings figures of all three events, with an average of fewer than 7,000 attending each of UFC Fight Night: Condit vs. Kampmann 2, UFC 164: Henderson vs. Pettis, and UFC Fight Night: Teixeira vs. Bader. Following that stretch, many openly questioned the health of the sport and whether the UFC had overestimated the viability of its product.
I don’t believe it has.
There will continue to be growing pains as the UFC and Fox figure out how best to leverage each other’s resources, and Wednesday night will always be Wednesday night. It’s not going to be easy to fill a stadium for an event that starts well before most local fans get off work.
But I believe this product has grown well beyond the need to look at attendances as a real measure of success. In truth, the host arenas are becoming studio sets for a product that is being distributed to nearly1 billion homes globally.
Look at UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman, for example. His second-round knockout of Mark Munoz was attended by fewer than 5,000 fans for a Wednesday night event in San Jose, California, where both the UFC and Strikeforce have routinely drawn sold-out crowds of more than 13,000 fans. One year later, Weidman stunned Anderson Silva and is now going to headline one of the most-anticipated UFC fights of all time.
Would the UFC like more butts in seats? I’m sure they would. But I don’t see the numbers as a cause for concern.
Danny Boy's revelation
Speaking of the UFC’s recent eight-day road-trip, I have to say one of the most memorable evenings of that tour was the night that former Milwaukee resident and two-time UFC veteran Danny ‘Boy’ Downes acted as tour guide for a cruise around ‘Brew City.’
Milwaukee isn’t exactly the sexiest outpost the UFC has visited of late, but the two times Wisconsin’s largest city has played host to the promotion, it’s done a fine job. Its inhabitants strike you as genuinely kind, and the fans are both extremely knowledgeable in their love for MMA and incredibly supportive of their local fighters, most notably those from the famed Roufusport MMA Academy.
But the tour wasn’t what made the night memorable; it was the moment that Downes, now a retired competitor in search of a job in the MMA media, revealed to me his lasting impression of his time in MMA.
“It was like a drug,” Downes said. “It took my health, it took my money and it took my family – and all I could think was how bad I wanted more.”
Like so many people involved with this sport, MMA began to define who Downes was as a person. But after decision losses to Ramsey Nijem and Jeremy Stephens, the former Secret Service intern and holder of dual collegiate degrees was lost. His release from the UFC left him without a clear purpose.
That conversation with Downes reminded me of what originally drove me to the sport. The men and women who risk their lives to compete in the cage are without question the world’s greatest athletes. But we should all – myself as a journalist included – take a moment to consider the sacrifices that each and every one of these athletes is required to make.
Sure, fighters deserve criticism for poor performances and any lack of professionalism, but it’s also important to remember that those athletes are simply humans who must deal with the same hardships we all do on a daily basis. And while we can turn off the TV and return to a somewhat mundane life, there is nothing even remotely normal about their lives – even when their days in the cage are over.
