MMA: Trend or Fad?
by George Wong
There´s also a concern thTo The recent meteoric rise of MMA, (mixed martial arts), but more specifically, the UFC the last three years has been dogged by one major question: Is it merely a fad or a bonafide trend? This is a fair question with all things that seemingly come out of nowhere like the UFC has.
Four years ago, nobody outside of the hardcore fans knew who Chuck Liddell, Georges St. Pierre, Rampage Jackson or Tito Ortiz were. Now, it´s hard to find an 18-25yr old male who doesn´t know these guys. But in order for the sport to continue its rise or maintain its trajectory, several things must come together.
Recent numbers for their main revenue stream, pay-per-views, have been very strong. UFC 79, 82 and 83 rank in the UFC´s top 10 grossing pay-per-views. This, in spite of the UFC recently having raised their pay-per-view prices by five dollars. These numbers can be attributed to their headline fighters. More on these fighters later. UFC 79 had the long-hyped “dream match” of Chuck Liddell vs Wanderlei Silva and Matt Hughes vs Georges St. Pierre in a contender elimination match. UFC 82 was built around basically one fighter, Brock Lesnar. Lesnar carried lots of fame/fans from his pro wrestling days with him into the octagon, and it showed. It was a relatively weak card but the promotion was based on his match with Frank Mir. UFC 83 speaks for itself, the very first UFC card in Canada, with Canada´s top MMA fighter Georges St. Pierre challenging the wise-talking New Yorker who dethroned him a year ago.
Getting back to the headlining fighters, Chuck Liddell is 38 years old. Matt Hughes is 34 and has “two to three” fights left before he retires. Wanderlei Silva is 32, but has lots of miles on him, and he´s not a very big name in the States. Heavyweight Champ Randy Couture is 44 years old and is entangled in a legal dispute with the company. Brock Lesnar has a pro record of 1-1 even though he is already 31 years old and is untested in MMA. Of these fighters, only Georges St. Pierre is young, at age 26 has a long career ahead of him. The company needs to find ways to build new headliners and it appears it had done a good job so far. Forrest Griffin, Roger Huerta, Anderson Silva, Rampage Jackson and “second tier” fighters Diego Sanchez, Jon Fitch, Kenny Florian are just a show a similarity, look at pro wrestling. In its heyday of the late 90s, it´s top stars were the Rock and StoneCold Steve Austin. Now its top star is John Cena. While Cena is a star, he´s nowhere near the Rock and Austin´s level, and the business has reflected as much.
e UFC may be burning out its home base, Las Vegas. They had to heavily “paper” or give away free tickets to its UFC 81 show to make the live crowd larger even though pay-per-view for this show was strong. Multiple cards may have worn the novelty off, but the UFC is smart enough to expand and take their show on the road.
The last major concern is the lack of a major network television deal. The UFC has been in negotiations with several networks, bu the stumbling block appears to be how the show will be presented. The UFC wants to use its own announcers while the networks want to use their people. The UFC believes their own people got them there, and want their own people announcing their own product and rightfully so. Until this last hurdle is cleared, there´s no guarantee of smooth sailing. A niche network like SpikeTV doesn´t cut it.