Got plans for Saturday night, UFC fans?
No? You better make some.
After this weekend, you aren’t going to have much free time until—oh—October or so.
There may not be a UFC event scheduled for Saturday, but beginning next week the fight company launches headlong into the heart of its 2015 schedule. Things are going to get a little crazy.
During the next 27 weeks, the organization will put on 25 of the 46 events scheduled for this year. They will come at a fast and furious pace. It will be a bonanza for fight enthusiasts, a breakneck sprint through a minimum of eight title fights, seven pay-per-views and an endless loop of smaller Fight Night events going down in far-flung locations from Virginia to Poland, New Jersey to the Philippines, Glasgow, Rio and Houston.
Put it this way: From the start of April to the beginning of October this year, there will be only five Saturday nights with no UFC.
It’s going to be great...
Or, the whole thing is going to fall apart.
We knew from the jump that 2015 would be a make-or-break year for the UFC. Last year wasn’t kind, as a bevy of injuries and a tidal wave of bad news left the promotion battered and bruised. It had its credit downgraded by Standard & Poor's, and slumping PPV buy rates made everyone who draws a paycheck from this sport a little nervy.
We pinned our first hopes for a turnaround on January, which promised to stomp lustily from the gate with fights like Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier and Anderson Silva vs. Nick Diaz. That promising start fizzled when we learned both Jones and Silva failed drug tests in the wake of their victories—Jones for cocaine, Silva for steroids.
It left a sour taste, and maybe left us feeling like we’d been burned one too many times, too.
At some point, we’re going to have to stop getting our hopes up, right?
The UFC, of course, is as acutely aware as anyone that this upcoming stretch will be vital to determining the health of its brand. It also likely isn’t blind to the fact many fans are feeling battered by swelling PPV prices, positive drug tests and the effects of what we benignly call “the injury bug.”
Maybe that’s why the company has started stocking most of its future PPV efforts with not one but two title fights. Maybe that’s why it’s now making a practice of holding gala press conferences and equipping its upcoming schedules with hashtag-able slogans like “The Time is Now” and “Welcome to the Show.”
It needs this run to work out, and so do we.
Unfortunately, the mighty have already started falling. T.J Dillashaw pulled out on Tuesday from a rematch against Renan Barao at UFC 186 due to an injured rib. If this year is going to clear the hurdle of our expectations, that can't be the trend. Not again.
Still, there is a lot on the horizon that should be circled on every MMA fans’ calendars.
April kicks things off in style, with an event every weekend. The months will be highlighted by April 18’s middleweight showdown between Luke Rockhold and Lyoto Machida, which headlines UFC on Fox 15. UFC 186 will soldier on with just one title defense on April 25, as Demetrious Johnson now takes over marquee status for a flyweight fight against the streaking but unheralded Kyoji Horiguchi.
May’s UFC 187 may have the potential to be the event of the year. In the main attraction of that card, Jones defends his light heavyweight title against Anthony Johnson, while Chris Weidman and Vitor Belfort finally meet for the middleweight strap in the co-headliner. With Donald Cerrone’s lightweight No. 1 contender fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov and a heavyweight tiff between Travis Browne and Andrei Arlovski also on the card, that will definitely be one you’ll want to open your wallet to order.
The whole month, in fact, could be one for the ages. Lest we forget, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather are slated to break the PPV bank on May 2. The rest of the UFC’s schedule is no slouch, either, with a pleasing heavyweight affair between Mark Hunt and Stipe Miocic on May 11 and Urijah Faber vs. Frankie Edgar on May 15.
May 2015: IBJJF Worlds, Metamoris 6, May-Pac, Canelo-Kirkland, UFC 187, Faber-Edgar, Miocic-Hunt. Combat sports golden era? Gluttony? IDK.
— Luke Thomas (@SBNLukeThomas) March 23, 2015
June features the long-awaited heavyweight title unification bout between champion Cain Velasquez and interim champ Fabricio Werdum. That one is scheduled for UFC 188 in Mexico City on June 13 and probably deserves its own knock-on-wood disclaimer, given the often grim injury status of Velasquez. Still if—if!—it happens, it could be something special.
That will bring us to July. Oh, sweet, sweet July.
The month of our nation’s birth could really test our mettle when the UFC pulls off four events in eight days on July 11, 12, 15 and 18. But while the sheer numbers of shows may be the bad news, the good news is that the flood of fights kicks off with Jose Aldo putting the featherweight title on the line against Conor McGregor at UFC 189.
McGregor vs. Aldo may well to turn out to be the UFC’s bout of the year, at least in terms of hype. The company is already running them through a “world tour” to promote the thing, and McGregor’s proved so good at selling himself during his short run in the Octagon that the fight should command unprecedented interest—by featherweight standards, anyway—by the time it actually rolls around.
The beginning of August will see Ronda Rousey’s squash match against Bethe Correia at UFC 190 in Rio de Janeiro and, scheduling-wise, that’s about as far as we can see into the future at the moment.
Get all that? Ok, good. Take a breath.
All told, it’s going to be a lot—and a lot of it looks like a lot of fun. Even excluding the chance that at least some of it doesn’t happen, however, the biggest question will be whether those marquee events will be enough to see fans through the rest, through the considerable chaff.
After all, 15 of the 27 upcoming events will be of the second-tier Fight Night variety and will be scattered across broadcast platforms like Fox Sports 1 and the UFC’s own digital subscription service. Some will surely be great—like Chad Mendes vs. Ricardo Lamas and Faber vs. Edgar, for example. Some won’t and could well resemble last weekend’s painstaking three-hour Fight Night 62 main card, which culminated in a five-round grind between Demian Maia and Ryan LaFlare.
The possibility exits that even if everybody stays healthy and everything stays on track, this will still end up feeling like too much UFC.
If it does, then another year’s worth of debate about oversaturation will be difficult for UFC brass to ignore.
For the time being, however, perhaps we owe the company the benefit of the doubt. These next several months should feature enough front-line action to get us through the occasional B-list stinker.
That is, if injuries and drug test failures don't force us to dismantle the whole schedule and than hammer it back together with spare parts and chewing gum.
After October 3, we’ll get a break. The UFC will take a bit more then a month off in the wake of Fight Night 79 and won't return until November 7 for Fight Night 80.
So, yeah, early fall—that will be a good time to brush up on your hobbies, reconnect with family and friends and figure out if there's life outside fighting.
