(GUEST EDITORIAL by Jon Lock)
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
I hate this song, but it keeps ringing in my ears as I think about the core fans of MMA. Have they flown the coop? Has the white sugar diet of super fights spoiled the hearty meal for the hardcores, as they feel abandoned by not getting their answers when the best used to fight the best.
There is no doubt that the Conor McGregor vs. Nate Diaz type superfights bring in the masses and feed the pop culture machine, but in the end, has it hurt the sport of MMA?
Who knew Pink Floyd’s infamous rantings at the end of The Wall, “If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?” would ring so true today when I think of the state of MMA, and more specifically, the state of the UFC.
The UFC was built on answering questions or “the question” – who is the best? When you tuned in, you didn’t know what was going to happen, but you knew that at the end of the night the question “who is the best?” would be answered.
I can’t help but think that, as of late, that isn’t always the case.
Conor McGregor has undoubtedly turned the sport on it’s head and it has been a most wonderful ride “while visions of sugar plums danced in OUR heads.” It has been a magical journey as Conor has taken us with him as he leaps to other dimensions. I mean divisions. No dimensions is correct, as he fought Diaz and then back to another division, as he became a two division titleholder, doing what others only dream of. He somehow talked himself into a boxing match with arguably the greatest boxer in the world, with many other questions to be answered and a rave around the water cooler. Everyone was talking about the unspeakable.
It is quite mystical and, in fact, I feel like the past year and a half has been an indulgent party in Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, but at the end of the day, I’m starting to feel like Augustus Gloop stuck in the tube being sucked to my doom. The paradigm has shifted, McGregor has changed the game for better or worse.
This past weekend, we were treated to a full meal of fights, some great contests in Winnipeg, but for some reason it had the worst ratings yet for a UFC on FOX in December. RDA emerged as a top contender in his new division against MMA great Robbie Lawler and Josh Emmett announced his arrival as a featherweight contender with his incredible knockout of Ricardo Lamas among several other great finishes. Good fights, your expected meat and potatoes high-caloric diet, but lacking interest, have fans gotten drunk on a diet of sugary “money fights”?
This year has been a struggle with Pay-Per-View numbers for the UFC. While the UFC doesn’t release it’s numbers, third quarter Pay-Per-View numbers for UFC 215 and UFC 216 reportedly both did in the low 100,000 range. Numbers that were the norm in the very beginnings of the UFC ZUFFA era, but not what we expect today.
General interest in MMA is in a slump, some may say a decline, and I am not saying that there is any one thing to blame – there never is – but I can’t help to think that the high sugar diet we have recently been on has skewed our perspective. When we have a mouthwatering ribeye placed in front of us like this past weekend or even UFC 216, too many fans are looking for a candy bar and passing on a real meal.
We need to get back to the meat and potatoes. We need to eat our meat and put the pudding to the side. We need to answer that question of “Who is the Best?”
