Issue 092

September 2012

As anyone who has ever trained for a professional mixed martial arts contest can tell you, injuries are an undeniable part of the sport. But as of late, it seems injuries are becoming an epidemic rather than a simple nuisance. In recent weeks, injuries to José Aldo, Thiago Alves, Vitor Belfort, Michael Bisping, Dominick Cruz, Thiago Silva and Brian Stann, among others, have wreaked havoc on the UFC’s summer and fall schedule, delaying and outright canceling numerous headlining matchups.

For his part (and perhaps as a simple means of maintaining his sanity), UFC president Dana White said he’s finally just accepted that injuries, even those to his key players, are simply unavoidable. 

“It’s just part of the business now,” White tells Fighters Only. “I’m numb to it. Last year it was a tragedy, and now it’s just part of the deal.”

But fans haven’t been quite as understanding, and many have offered a bit of verbal revolt. Some are just frustrated TV viewers who are upset they won’t be able to watch the fights they’re most interested in seeing. But others are ticket buyers, angered the fighters they paid to see will no longer be appearing on the card.

What can the UFC do? It’s tough to say. Some MMA fans and pundits have openly suggested the UFC’s revolutionary insurance policy, instituted in 2011, is to blame, with fighters no longer forced to fight through injuries suffered in training (only to suggest they happened in competition) in order to receive insured medical care. 

While this may, indeed, lead to a small percentage of fighters willing to step out of a fight in favor of medical treatment, it’s important to note that the policy does not pay for anything other than the medical care.

In short, if you don’t fight, you don’t get paid. Those economics certainly would seem to dictate the insurance policy isn’t fighters’ primary reason for withdrawing.

Others have suggested the UFC’s busy schedule is the real culprit. With exponentially more fighters and more fights on the schedule, it stands to reason that more injuries will occur. Compounding the issue, the critics say, is the fact that with so many fighters booked at one time with three and four UFC cards scheduled ever month, replacement opponents are few and far between. 

There is some valid stock in this argument. After all, fight fans who paid to see one particular fighter are sure to be disappointed if that is the competitor who withdraws from the card. And the UFC has recently been forced to pull fights and fighters from one card – for instance Urijah Faber vs Renan Barao and Rich Franklin from UFC 148 – in order to fill openings at other events.

But you can hardly blame the UFC for holding events with increasing frequency. After all, with broadcast partner Fox shelling out millions for content on FX, Fuel TV, and Fox channels, White and his cohorts are contractually bound to produce fight cards.

White, himself, blames the rigorous training programs of his fighters for what seems to be an increasing frequency in practice mishaps.

“You have so many talented guys out there now all in the same camp, going at it like they’re fighting for the title,” White says. “These guys need to tone it down in training a bit and stop hurting each other.”

It may be a bit ironic that this rash of injuries comes just as the sport’s fans and media have shifted their focus to the use of performance-enhancing substances. White, who long said it was simply up to the commissions to control what fighters were putting into their body, even recently said that the UFC will soon be policing itself by increasing the amount of testing they already do above and beyond commission orders.

Could it be that the answer lies in the issue currently being targeted as a problem? Could performance-enhancing drugs be the key to enhancing these athletes’ performances?

I’m not suggesting for a moment that fighters be allowed to freely inject and ingest any substance they deem fit. Quite the contrary, entering the cage with anything short of a level playing field is criminal, in my mind. But could highly monitored, highly regulated use of testosterone and some steroids actually prove beneficial to the long-term health of MMA fighters, not to mention their financial well-being?

White has gone on record saying he’s actually in support of the highly controversial testosterone replacement therapy. It’s science helping sport, and the UFC boss believes that as long as the commission’s rules are followed, there shouldn’t be any issue with using medical substances to assist in the physical maintenance of MMA fighters, who by most accounts have the most-grueling training regimens in all of sport.

The UFC’s schedule is only going to get busier. And if insurance claims were truly being abused, you can believe the underwriters would yank the policy with a quickness. The evolution of training programs can certainly aid in keeping MMA’s fighters safe, but perhaps they could benefit from a little assistance.

By John Morgan, former Fighters Only World MMA Awards ‘Journalist of the Year’.