BEHIND THE SCENES MMA ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

03/22/10

The UFC and Strikeforce: What does the future hold for Professional MMA?

By David Kim

This is a crucial time in the sport of mixed martial arts.  Fighters have now become household names as the sports’ popularity continues to grow all over the world.  We’re past the times of critics referring to the sport as “non-technical” or “unnecessarily brutal”.  We’ve reached a time where MMA is being accepted for what it truly is: the evolution of full contact sports.

With popularity, you have opportunity.  With opportunity, you have competition. With competition, you have choice.

But Dana White doesn’t want this type of natural progression to occur.  He would rather leave us without choice.  He loathes competition.  You can see it in his face and hear it in his tone whenever he’s questioned or asked to comment about his competition.  He mocks and attempts to belittle any and all competitors.  I’m not sure whether he does this as a self-defense mechanism triggered by anxiety or if it’s just plain arrogance, but it’s very unprofessional.  The NFL is the biggest football organization in the world, yet I don’t hear NFL executives trashing the CFL and discrediting the skill level of their players.

White thinks that any organization that is not the UFC (or owned by them), is ‘crap’ and has nothing but ’second rate’ fighters.  He’ll have you believe that the UFC has THE best fighters in the world.  All of the ‘pro-UFC’ fans out there supporting White’s opinions always point out how dominant Mirko Cro Cop and Wanderlei Silva were in Pride and have not been able to duplicate their success in the UFC.  What about Anderson Silva? What about Rampage Jackson and Dan Henderson? They came over from Pride and mopped the floor with some of the best fighters in the UFC.  So if it wasn’t true that the UFC has “the best fighters” then, what makes it true now?

Look at soccer.  The most popular soccer organization in the world is the English Premier League.  Do the best soccer players in the world play there? No, three of the best players in the world (Ronaldo, Messi and Kaka) are in the Spanish soccer league.  It’s a good thing we have the Champions’ League and the World Cup, where we can see the best players from all over the world compete against each other.  On the same note, are the best baseball players in Major League Baseball? I don’t know.  There aren’t too many Korean or Japanese baseball players in MLB (probably less than 5%), yet both countries have dominated the World Baseball Classic since its inception.

The UFC may have the MOST fighters.  But to say they have the “best” fighters is completely biased and unsupported.  Who knows if Gegard Mousasi can beat Lyoto Machida? Who knows if Nate Diaz or Marius Zaromskis can beat GSP? Who knows if Fedor can beat Brock? We all have our opinions, but we’ve all been wrong before.  Did anyone think that Matt Serra would beat GSP? Did anyone think that Anderson Silva would beat Rich Franklin for the middleweight title after only having 1 win (over Chris Leben) in the UFC? We all have differing opinions on who would win, but there’s one thing that we can all agree on:  we all want to see these fights take place, including Strikeforce.

I’m certain that the UFC wants these fights to happen as well – but only if all the fighters mentioned, are under UFC contracts.  Strikeforce, along with other organizations, encourage co-promotion of fights and allow their contracted fighters to take advantage of other outside opportunities.  Not the UFC.  Dana White has made it very clear that the UFC will NEVER co-promote an event.  Why not? I don’t get it.  I’m certain that a Fedor vs. Brock main event would set a new record for profits in MMA.  Everyone would win: Strikeforce, UFC, and the fans.

Based on the rigid business rules enforced by the UFC, one could surmise that their long term goals focus on creating an elite organization in the sport of mixed martial arts, much like the NBA is to basketball or the NFL to football.  The problem with this philosophy is that fighting is not a team sport.  There are no individual based sports that are governed by organizations restricting them of playing other sanctioned tournaments.  Modern boxing has existed for over 250 years and to this day is not confined to 1 ‘elite’ organization.  What makes the UFC think that this can be achieved for MMA or that it’s even a good idea?

It had been rumored that the UFC would broadcast a free event on SpikeTV to counter-punch Strikeforce’s CBS card on April 17th.  Counter programming isn’t new to the UFC as they have aired counter events (including PPV re-runs) since 2008 when they wanted to compete against an Affliction PPV card.

It would have been difficult, to say the least, for the UFC to come up with a fight card comparable Strikeforce’s April 17th event in such a short timeframe but apparently those were only rumors and there will be no Live UFC program that night.  Strikeforce’s card will include 3 title bouts with names such as Henderson, Mousassi, Melendez and Aoki.  However, I keep asking myself: how impressive does the UFC event have to be to effectively counter against Strikeforce? What percentage of MMA fans out there follow or even know about fighters such as Mousasi, Aoki or Melendez?

Here is what Dana White had to say about the rumors:

“I was never putting an April 17 show on,” said White. “The media started calling me and asking me, so I just fucking let it ride out and let them sweat it. Fuck them. You want to compete with us, let’s do it. I never, ever said I was doing an April 17th show. People asked me questions and I said, ‘hmm, that’s interesting. Okay.’ And I played it a little bit,” added the UFC president.

Since Strikeforce had already begun ticket sales for their April event, it would have been challenging (and expensive) for them to change the date.  A one week shift out would have put them up against the, Zuffa owned, WEC PPV event.  Something Zuffa may have wanted to avoid as the WEC is still in the process of trying to establish themselves as a recognized name in mixed martial arts.

No one knows how long the branding war in MMA will last.  When the smoke clears, and all the battles have been fought, all we can do is hope that we, as MMA fans, will not be deprived of seeing the best fight the best.