Twitter Mailbag: Where'd you go, Donald Cerrone?

In this week’s Twitter Mailbag, a fighter association board member starts walking back his support, and one of the heavyweight division’s most entertaining personalities readies to fight a guy whose name you can’t spell all the way up in Albany, N.Y.

All that and much more, but as always you can ask a question of your own by tweeting it to @BenFowlkesMMA.

Seems like Donald Cerrone might want to be a little more strategic with his words. Last week he told us he was afraid, but he was standing up for a fighters association because it was the right thing to do. This week he tells us he was surprised to learn he was on the MMAAA board, and he doesn’t want anything to do with some of the people involved.

That’s a bad look for both Cerrone (31-7 MMA, 18-4 UFC) and the MMAAA. It makes it seem like this association didn’t take care to make sure everyone was on the same page before it jumped out into the public eye, and it makes Cerrone seem way too susceptible to even the slightest pressure.

To pull this off, you need unity and you need trust. If your core group immediately begins unraveling, how can other fighters trust in the unity of it all?

As for White, he responded to the news by following the exact same playbook he always reaches for when there’s dissent in the ranks.

First, establish that whoever is mad isn’t even that good anyway (“… first of all, he’s only headlined like three fights – ‘Fight Nights’ – in his career. Never held a title in the WEC, never held a title in the UFC …”).

Second, bring up a time when you gave him something as proof that he has no right to ever ask for anything (“… a couple years ago, he was on his boat, gets into a beef with a guy on another boat. He’s in trouble. Who does he call? He calls me. What do I do? I go out and find him the best criminal defense lawyer and I spent over $100,000 of my own money.”)

Don’t get me wrong, it was cool of White to help Cerrone out. (Less cool of him to keep talking like Cerrone isn’t one of the most legit badasses in the company, title or no.) What he doesn’t seem to realize is that doing a few favors here and there is not the same as dividing up the overall pie evenly. Cerrone can conclude that White helped him out and still believe that other fighters need him to help them out.

A great fight? Seriously? I call shenanigans on your claim, good sir. While I’m not saying Ryan Hall’s approach was indefensible, I will say that the fight that resulted from it wasn’t much fun to watch.

That’s not only Hall’s fault. Gray Maynard (12-6-1 MMA, 10-6-1 UFC) was in that cage too, and he didn’t do much but look frustrated when Hall (6-1 MMA, 2-0 UFC) wouldn’t play the way he wanted him to.

Still, if I told you that every UFC event from now until the rapture would begin with a showing of Hall vs. Maynard, you can’t tell me you’d be in your seat with your popcorn ready five minutes before showtime.

Bigger than Conor McGregor (21-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC)? As in, a bigger star? A more popular fighter? With more fans and money and leverage? No. Not even close. Victories alone aren’t enough to get there. That’s just not how this sport works.

But if we’re talking about legacy, or even just those semi-infuriating pound-for-pound lists, then yeah, those two wins would probably cement Jon Jones (22-1 MMA, 16-1 UFC) as the best MMA fighter on the planet. The question is, can he stay out of his own way long enough to get it done? Because we know that no opponent has even come close to dethroning the man. We also know that he seems intent on being his own worst enemy, over and over again.

I’m more annoyed by the opponent than the date and location. I don’t mind firing up the Fight Pass to see Derrick Lewis (16-4 MMA, 7-2 UFC), one of the more weirdly fascinating attractions in the heavyweight division. And I don’t believe we can complain when the UFC doesn’t put good stuff on Fight Pass, then complain when it does. What I want to know is, how do you go from a win over Roy Nelson to a fight with Shamil Abdurakhimov (17-3 MMA, 2-1 UFC)?

One big mistake is that people hear a certain figure and think all that money ends up in a fighter’s bank account. It doesn’t.

Depending on where you fight and where you live, taxes can get pretty complicated for pro fighters. If you’re an independent contractor, you already get screwed on taxes. If you’re one who gets paid all in one big chunk in a state where you don’t live, it can get a lot stickier.

Then there are fees for licensing and medical testing, the money you owe to trainers and management, plus the money you had to invest in your own training camp just to make working out twice a day and eating clean all through training camp a viable possibility. Even if Patrick Cummins did make $300,000 for that fight, it wasn’t all his and it wasn’t all profit.

But Cummins (8-4 MMA, 4-4 UFC) said he didn’t make that much to fight Daniel Cormier. He said he has yet to make that much money in total over three years with the UFC.

White wants to compare his UFC pay to what he was making as a barista, but he ignores the fact that baristas don’t put themselves through grueling preparation just to make it to the part of the job they actually get paid for, nor do they risk serious, life-altering injuries when they’re whipping up a cappuccino.

Also? If you’re working at Starbucks, chances are you’re an employee with access to actual benefits. So maybe not a comparison you want to invite if you’re the UFC.

The UFC’s new owners definitely need a huge increase in TV rights fees to make their vision tenable. As of now, the Federal Reserve reportedly considers the deal that helped finance the sale a “substandard loan,” and it rebuked Goldman Sachs for it. If the UFC can’t continue to tear it up on pay-per-view en route to a much bigger TV deal in 2018, that’s big trouble.

But that’s the other thing we have to remember, is that it’s not negotiation time just yet. FOX Sports is said to have an exclusive negotiating period that begins in late 2017, and the current deal doesn’t expire until the following year. A lot can happen between now and then.

If you’re a network looking at the UFC right now, things look pretty good (assuming you can get the UFC to put more stars on free TV instead of saving the good stuff for pay-per-view). But you scan the horizon and you see a lot of potential storms for the company. Will your two biggest stars still be around then? Will those talks about a fighters association and a potential work stoppage get serious? Will the Ali Act Expansion disrupt the UFC’s whole business model?

That’s a lot of unknowns. And for the kind of money the UFC wants, networks are going to need some answers.

That and about 12 pounds of leather and gold. Which, don’t get me wrong, is nice to have. If Max Holloway (16-3 MMA, 12-3 UFC) goes out there at UFC 206 and wins the interim UFC featherweight title, I’m sure it’ll be something he takes care not to leave behind when he checks out of the hotel the next morning.

But come on, we all know that, especially in this situation, that belt is nothing more than a bookmark to remind us who’s got next in the 145-pound division. Even that is subject to change under the right conditions.

I don’t see why we need to choose, but a functional, competent fighters association would be better for the fighters in the long run. It doesn’t have to be the MMAAA, and the more we hear about it, the more it seems like maybe it shouldn’t be that, but there’s simply no way that fighters won’t benefit from some solid collective bargaining.

The Ali Act Expansion? While I think some aspects of it could bring needed reforms, the overall impact in boxing has been to provide fighters with a framework for legal action that rarely sees a satisfying conclusion. For improving the lives of fighters now, an association would be more effective.

When you say “in months,” it’s worth noting that the recent UFC “Fight Night” ratings have been pretty low, with most events averaging in the 600,000-800,000 viewers range. It’s also worth noting that, if you include pay-per-view prelims that aired on FS1, that statement just isn’t true. The UFC 205 prelims drew somewhere around 1.8 million viewers, compared to just slightly over 1 million for the TUF 24 Finale.

Maybe what it tells us is that it does make a difference when you put a title fight on TV. The ratings for this one were just slightly lower than they were for the TUF 23 Finale, which featured a pretty fun title fight between Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Claudia Gadelha.

So really, maybe it shouldn’t surprise us. Turns out that the quality of fighters you put on TV actually impacts the ratings. Though I’m not sure it proves that “Mighty Mouse” is headed for a pay-per-view blockbuster next.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.