The UFC's Reebok era has finally begun, but things are off to a rocky start

Conor McGregor

At an event today in New York City, we got our first look at Reebok’s UFC fighter kits.

The lights flashed, and the music thumped. The big shot executives from Reebok and the UFC used several years worth of superlatives telling us what a good job they’d done, while the fighters came strutting out in shorts, shirts – even “fight bras” – looking like annoyed runway models who couldn’t wait for the experience to end. The MMA Internet LOL’d, because that’s just what the MMA Internet does in situations like this.

Then it was over. The Reebok era had officially begun. Now what?

First, we should acknowledge that there was almost no chance of these new fighter uniforms rolling out to widespread fan approval. MMA fans just don’t roll like that.

You know how UFC President Dana White likes to say that fighting is in our DNA? For the most hardcore fans of such fighting, those DNA strands are held together by gleeful mockery and snarky tweets.

Plus, the public opinion well on this issue was pretty well poisoned before we even got a glimpse of the actual clothes. The low payout figures, the fighters complaining about lost sponsor money, the fact that the fighters themselves had no choice in the matter? All that combined to form a long, uphill slog toward public approval. The best Reebok and the UFC could have hoped for was that MMA fans might see this stuff and concede that it wasn’t so bad after all.

Still, now that we’ve seen the fighter kits in (and on) the flesh, it does seem like some of our worst fears have been realized. It’s not that the designs are bad – it’s that they’re all more or less the same, which is a problem for an individual sport driven by individual stars.

Some of that is inevitable once you decide that every fighter’s apparel must come from the same company. Reebok executives talked a lot about the importance of “customization” – then showed us a collection of shorts and shirts that appeared to give fighters fewer options than you get when you create your own character in most MMA video games.

All the champions in black. All the fighters splashed with the same UFC and Reebok logos, their names almost an afterthought on the backs of their shorts. You get to show more personal flair serving burgers at Chotchkie’s.

In a way, this uniformity seems to be what the UFC wants. White justified the Reebok deal in part by complaining about quirky weigh-in outfits that seemed, to him at least, silly and unprofessional. Outfitting all the fighters in Reebok gear, we were told, will “elevate” the sport. Seems just as likely to homogenize it, which doesn’t do much to help the fan already struggling to tell one prelim fighter from the next.

On the other hand, so what? The big personalities like Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey? They’re in no danger of blending into the crowd just because they’re wearing Reebok, right?

And that’s true. Then again, they’re also in no danger of cultivating their own signature look, the way Tito Ortiz did with his flames, or B.J. Penn did with his painted-on black belt.

Remember Rich Franklin looking like an ice cream cone? Or Chuck Liddell in icy blue? Even Anderson Silva in black and gold, like some kind of giant, terrifying bumblebee? Those days are over, it seems. I can’t say that it seems like a change for the better.

From the fighter’s point of view, there’s also the lingering financial concern. Remember when the UFC touted the aspect of the Reebok deal that gives fighters a cut of the sales from their own gear? With the shirts looking about as cool as a rec league softball jersey and yet somehow retailing for $80 online, it’s hard to imagine those flying off the shelves. It’s also hard to imagine how the UFC and Reebok spent this much time preparing for the big unveiling, only to come out with shirts that misspell names, ignore iconic nicknames, and include fighters who have since gone to work for the UFC’s competitors.

Point is, this hasn’t exactly been a flawless rollout, and many of the fighters seem to have greeted it with all the enthusiasm of a teenager on a mandatory family vacation.

Maybe it was never going to be perfect. Maybe we would have been dissatisfied with anything the UFC and Reebok came up with. Still, with what they’ve shown us so far, we haven’t been given too many other options. For now, that’s one thing fans have in common with UFC fighters.

For more on the UFC’s upcoming schedule, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.