Less than two weeks out, UFC Fight Night 76 on Saturday had looked like a promising, if not outstanding, event. Potential star Joseph Duffy received a headlining slot in only his third UFC appearance against action-fighting workhorse Dustin Poirier. Stipe Miocic was to fight Ben Rothwell in a potential heavyweight top-contender matchup, and the rest of the card featured enough prospects and hometown favorites to be interesting to local and hardcore audiences.
The entire card fell apart in less than 10 days. How did this happen?
First, the co-main event went under because of an injury to Miocic 11 days prior to the card. To add insult to injury, Miocic was re-booked a week later as the co-headliner for UFC 195 in January, while Rothwell was left on the sidelines without an opponent.
Next, Duffy went down with a concussion only three days out from the event. He suffered a flash knockdown in his last sparring session, and the doctors—quite rightfully—refused to clear him to get hit in the head during a 25-minute main event against a brutal puncher.
Look, if Joseph Duffy has a head injury it's 100% right that he doesn't fight. More important things in life. It's just a serious bummer.
— Seán Sheehan (@SeanSheehanBA) October 21, 2015
Norman Parke offered to step up to fight Poirier in the main event, but the American—mindful of everything he had to lose in the last fight of his contract—turned him down.
Poirier said to MMA Junkie's Mike Bohn:
This is a business. I'm a professional athlete. This isn't, 'Poke somebody and start a street fight.' I was contracted to fight a guy who I prepared for, and it didn’t happen. Now we’re not just going to scramble and pick a guy and fight...I talked to my coaches and we made a business decision, really. This isn’t a Toughman competition.
He's absolutely right. Rick Story's career has never recovered from the short-notice loss to Charlie Brenneman, and whatever goodwill it bought him with the promotion has yet to manifest itself in favorable bookings or stacks of cash raining from the heavens.
With free agency looming, the risk of losing a fight against an opponent who is stylistically much different than the one for whom he was preparing was too much to countenance. Poirier and his coaches made the right decision for both the short and long term of his career.
On a more basic level, it's the promotion's responsibility, not the fighter's, to build cards that can withstand injuries even if they happen at the very last minute. To its credit, the UFC has done a much better job of that in 2015 than in 2014, when the argument around oversaturation reached a fever pitch.
The promotion has accomplished this Herculean task by running fewer shows and cutting back on the Fight Pass platform. Instead of the 45 shows the UFC ran in 2014, it's on track to run 41 this year; while that difference might not seem like much, it results in booking between 80 and 100 fewer fighter slots over the course of the year—and correspondingly greater depth of talent on the shows that remain.
Despite the improvements, some shows still fall through the cracks. This Dublin event is an excellent example of how that can happen and what the potential consequences might be.
Poirier vs. Duffy was an intriguing main event with real relevance in the Irish market. Duffy, a native of Donegal and the last man to beat Conor McGregor, offered the possibility of another Irish star—one not from the island's metropolis of Dublin—with an exciting style and a potentially huge rematch down the road.
Meanwhile, Rothwell vs. Miocic was meant to provide something attractive to the more casual viewer. It was a heavyweight slobberknocker that likely would have played out on the feet, with the winner in line to receive a title shot. Heavyweights draw eyeballs, and relevant heavyweights are even better.
After the top two fights, however, the card had almost nothing to offer in terms of relevance. There's nothing wrong with the flyweight scrap between Hawaii's Louis Smolka and Dublin's Paddy Holohan, which should be an exciting action fight between a pair of talented up-and-comers featuring a favorite of the hometown crowd. But as a main event, it's underwhelming, to say the least.
Literally can't believe the news about Duffy. Massive blow to the card. Massive. I have no doubt Paddy and Smolka will raise the roof though
— Peter Carroll (@PetesyCarroll) October 21, 2015
Aisling Daly, an Irish strawweight, is now the only ranked fighter left on the card, and she clocks in at 15th in the division.
This isn't a critique of the UFC, at least in terms of how it has handled the fallout from the unlucky run of injuries. The company is paying Poirier his show money; Dana White made it clear Poirier wasn't being pressured to fight Parke, and the UFC is offering refunds to the Irish fans. The UFC has done everything it could to make the situation right.
Yes, it could have put another pair of ranked fighters on the card; with a ridiculous schedule to keep in the next three months, however, it would have been robbing Peter to pay Paul, and whether anybody sees Paul on Fight Pass is an open question.
Would it really have been worth it to put a bout such as Ricardo Lamas vs. Diego Sanchez on this card and thereby rob the Mexican fans of that scrap? Probably not, given the markets involved.
The fact that this now-underwhelming card is in Dublin makes this a much bigger problem than it might be in, say, Las Vegas or south Florida. One bad card in a big market isn't going to make or break things, but the UFC is counting on the red-hot audience in the Emerald Isle. Those rabid Irish fans are the people who made UFC 189 the biggest gate in the history of American MMA.
Fight Night 76, then, was an important event in the UFC's relationship with Ireland. It was a chance to introduce a potential new star in Duffy and build on the promotion's tremendous debut in Dublin in July 2014, which was one of the most exciting and meaningful in its history. Ireland is the first country in which the UFC could have a true presence in every home, and this Fight Night was a chance to cement that tie.
For all its success in stacking cards over the course of this year and dialing back its plans to deal with reality, disasters will still happen when the promotion is stretched this thin.
Take a look at the UFC's next several events. Each is only one or two injuries away from a serious crisis. If either Vitor Belfort or Dan Henderson pulls out of the Sao Paulo, Brazil, event in two weeks, Glover Teixeira, Patrick Cummins and Thomas Almeida will be the only ranked fighters left.
The promotion's next Fight Pass event, a card in Korea on November 28, is every bit as precarious as this Dublin show. It features two ranked fighters and Benson Henderson, who is somehow unranked; a single injury could render the event nearly unwatchable.
Despite the UFC's more realistic approach in 2015, it still doesn't have the resources to stack every event with backup plans. Injuries won't strike every card, and particularly not at the last minute as they did here, but the disastrous fallout from this event is a reminder that thin cards teeter on the knife edge of crisis.
Perhaps the Irish fans won't hold this against the UFC, and their fire for the promotion will still burn hot. If it fades, however, we'll know where the decline began.
