Trading Shots: Did Amanda Nunes become a star by beating one in Ronda Rousey?

The lead-up to UFC 207 saw a heavy emphasis on the challenger at the expense of the champion. In this week’s Trading Shots, retired UFC and WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to discuss that move, and whether or not it can be undone now.

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Downes: Ben, the last time we traded shots, we talked about the one-sided nature of the UFC’s promotion of Friday’s women’s bantamweight title fight at UFC 207. It was billed as Ronda Rousey’s comeback fight with little mention of the actual champion, Amanda Nunes.

Especially considering Nunes (14-4 MMA, 7-1 UFC) needed only 48 seconds to finish Rousey (12-2 MMA, 6-2 UFC), it seemed like a wasted opportunity. Fear not, because Dana White has just the answer:

“Everyone was chirping about the promotion for this fight; it was all Ronda based,” White said. “I could have spent $100 million on advertising, and nobody would still have known who Amanda was. After tonight, everyone knows who Amanda Nunes is now, OK? Tomorrow morning, ask somebody who Amanda Nunes is. Now they know. That’s why I’m the promoter, and everyone else isn’t.”

Looks like you and your other birdbrained friends in the so-called media have been thwarted once more. That’s why you sit at a laptop chirping, and he’s the promoter. I now give you the floor to apologize.

Fowlkes: I think I stared at that quote for about 10 minutes trying to get it to make sense. I read it. Then I read it again. Then I relaxed my eyes, hoping that the letters might drift free of one another and reform in some order that made more sense. Nothing.

So what White’s telling us is that advertising and marketing don’t work. It is impossible to make the public aware of any particular fighter before her fight. Simply can’t be done, not for any price. That’s weird, because it kind of seems like that is the bulk of a promoter’s job.

For the reasons we discussed last time, I understand why the UFC thought the best way to sell this fight was by selling Rousey’s comeback. But I don’t agree that there is nothing the UFC could have done to help people figure out who Nunes was and why she mattered.

I also don’t agree that this one fight solves that problem. Remember when Nunes won the title, Danny? That was in the main event of UFC 200, an event that sold a little more than a million pay-per-view buys, according to reports. If beating a more famous fighter on a widely watched fight card is all the promotion a fighter needs, why wasn’t Nunes a star after that one?

She was the UFC’s first openly gay champion. A fighter who’d come to this country to pursue her career and was now living the American dream. There wasn’t a story worth telling there?

In the lead-up to this fight, the UFC ran ads that didn’t even mention the champion’s name. It ran ads that continued to insist that Rousey was the “baddest woman on the planet.” It told us to “fear the return.” Even Joe Rogan thought it was weird, and he seems like a dude with a pretty high weirdness tolerance. Now you want me to believe that it was all some next-level genius promotion tactic to benefit Nunes?

Downes: I agree that this is an ex-post-facto justification by White. He can insulate himself either way. If Rousey had won, you could say, “See? That’s why we didn’t push Nunes!”

Where I do agree with White, however, is that the UFC could have spent millions of dollars promoting Nunes and it wouldn’t have worked. No matter what promo package the UFC put together, Nunes would have been overshadowed by Rousey. Advertising dollars aren’t there to conform to your ideas of fairness. They exist to sell pay-per-views. What would have been the return on investment for Nunes-centered advertising? Minimal.

At the very worst you could argue that this strategy is shortsighted, but even that doesn’t hold up. The UFC could have produced an hour-long special called “The Pride of the Lioness,” and it still wouldn’t have helped.

The people outside your MMA bubble viewed this as the Rousey fight, not the women’s bantamweight title fight. All the push Nunes could have received would have been blunted by Rousey’s celebrity.

Outside one ESPN article, Rousey didn’t talk to the media at all, and she was still the story. The UFC didn’t write all these think pieces about Rousey’s psyche; that was the journalists. Any one of them could have done a piece on Nunes, but instead they speculated on Rousey’s mental state and asked Brendan Schaub what he thought. Why? Because there were more clicks (read: $$$) in Rousey stories.

I can already see the promotion for Nunes’ next fight. She’ll be the Rousey-slayer. Heck, that’ll be Holly Holm’s moniker for the rest or her career. Even in defeat, Rousey will have a more valuable name. MMA isn’t like the Highlander, Ben. Just because you beat a superstar, you don’t become one.

Fowlkes: There were two good reasons to push Nunes before this fight. One was to give yourself somewhere to go in the not unlikely event of a Nunes victory. But the other reason is that a one-person fight is always less interesting than a two-person fight.

I’m not saying that the UFC could have turned Nunes into a Joe Frazier for Rousey’s Muhammad Ali with just a little different video editing. But even if you think this is purely the Rousey show and she’s going to stampede to victory, how do you not realize that the triumph is only as great as the obstacles you overcome to get there? Selling us on Nunes equals selling us on the magnitude of the challenge facing Rousey. It’s a win-win.

Apparently you don’t have to do that, though. You can just wait until Nunes wins the fight and then, bang, instant star. So the UFC president would have us believe, anyway. And I hope that is the case, because it seems possible if not likely that Rousey will never come back and the division will have to find a way to exist without her.

Wouldn’t it have been nice, Danny, if the UFC had spent at least a little more time and money preparing for that eventuality?

Downes: It would have been nice, but it wouldn’t have been practical. You have a finite amount of resources to spend on an event. The new UFC owners need revenue, and they’d like it now. If the buy rates are to be believed, then it looks like the strategy worked. Whether you’re a promoter or a fighter, it might be nice to have an eye on the next battle, but you have to concentrate on the present. As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once wrote:

If you are depressed, you are living in the past.
If you are anxious, you are living in the future.
If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

In that way, perhaps Dana White is a Taoist master. And even if he didn’t mean it like that, I bet he’d tell you he did anyway.

For more on UFC 207, check out the UFC Events section of the site.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.