At UFC 170, a fairy tale gets wrecked by reality

I keep imagining some poor kid, some impressionable youth in the urban wilds of North America who likes fighting enough to follow the UFC obsessively, but who has an attention span too twisted by the modern Twitterverse to actually sit through all two hours of the classic film “Rocky.”

I imagine this kid listening to UFC President Dana White and UFC color commentator Joe Rogan as they hailed Patrick Cummins as a real “Rocky story,” and I imagine him trying to piece together the plot of the movie based on what he saw in Saturday’s UFC 170 pay-per-view co-headliner in Las Vegas.

I imagine him doing this, and I imagine him coming away convinced that the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1976 went to a film about an overmatched barista who got wrecked in the first round by an opponent who was much, much better than him (check out the Cormier vs. Cummins video highlights). I imagine him being confused as to why people seem to like this movie so much. I imagine him wondering why it’s not called “The Guy Who Beat Up Rocky.”

We all knew how Cummins’ fight with Daniel Cormier would play out. It was just a question of whether we’d allow ourselves to believe it. Just look at the betting odds. The UFC might sell you a fantasy and the media might repackage and repeat it, but the people with money on the line tend to be a little less sentimental, and the odds always tell a story.

Sometimes they say “coin flip.” Other times they say “squash match.” This time they said “borderline un-sanctionable.”

Not that we can blame Cormier (14-0 MMA, 3-0 UFC). He walloped Cummins exactly like he said he would, and even gave him an extra little shove after the referee stoppage as if to appease those who expected something more malicious than your standard TKO finish after all the talking out of turn that Cummins (4-1 MMA, 0-1 UFC) did to sell this one.

If you can criticize Cormier for anything, it’s his enthusiasm. He wanted to beat somebody up this weekend, and he didn’t particularly care who it was. This coffee shop guy who used to serve as another body in wrestling practice? Sure, why not. Paydays don’t come much easier.

The same could be said for the UFC, which did a weirdly impressive job of selling this one, in part by being willing to latch onto absolutely anything. Cummins, we were told, had 40 opponents pull out of scheduled bouts on the small circuit with him. That’s f-o-r-t-y, as in 10 times as many fights as he had on his record coming into this one. It’s a claim with a Paul Bunyan quality to it. Can you even name 40 light heavyweights outside the UFC right now? Did some of these guys pull out of a fight with Cummins more than once?

If you weren’t convinced by all the fights he didn’t have, there were also these tales of his gym heroics. He tossed Cormier around the wrestling room. He “rag-dolled” nameless UFC fighters in practice, according to Rogan. Then again, at one point Rogan also looked wide-eyed into the camera to tell us what a physical specimen this guy was. Why, he does gymnastics. He “rides mountain bikes uphill,” also known as how most people ride mountain bikes. Give him a phonebook to rip in half and a burning Chrysler to lift off some trapped baby, and he’ll be an urban legend by lunchtime.

But I’m being a little too hard on Cummins, who seems like a nice enough guy. Certainly he’s a game fighter just for being willing to accept a fight like this on such short notice. You get the sense that he knew this was his ticket into the UFC, and so he was willing to let the powers that be use him however they wanted in exchange for admission. A high price to pay for a contract that guarantees him very little.

He got trounced here, but he’ll get another chance, according to UFC President Dana White. Trouble is, after you’ve built him into a monster, how do you put him back into the light heavyweight hopper as just another dude? How do you match him against anyone outside of the top 10 or top 15 without admitting this was all hype driven by necessity? That’s tough for Cummins, who seems like he might really turn into something if he had time to prepare and develop as a fighter.

There’s a different problem at work for Cormier. We know he’s almost certainly a top light heavyweight. We suspect he is, anyway. He schooled several quality heavyweights before he dropped weight with no problem. He looked quick and powerful and dangerous in the few brief moments he spent in the octagon on Saturday night. He also made Cummins look like he didn’t belong in there with him, which he didn’t, but which doesn’t exactly tell us anything we didn’t already know about Cormier.

He’s good, but this fight did nothing to tell us how good. It was a placeholder, a Band-Aid. It kept Cormier on the card and kept fan interest from plummeting. It was a fairy tale slapped together and given the hard sell, then immediately abandoned once it had served its purpose. It was “Rocky” as told by the Coen brothers or Darren Aronofsky.

Was it better than pulling Cormier from the card and waiting for a worthy opponent? Better than leaving Cummins in the coffee shop until he could make his way into the UFC on merit rather than narrative? Was it, in other words, better than absolutely nothing? Maybe, yeah. But the better question might be, since when is that all we ask for?

For complete coverage of UFC 170, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.