On Sunday afternoon, UFC 127 will go down at Sydney’s Acer Arena and will be headlined by a pivotal welterweight (77kg) encounter between perennial top contender Jon Fitch and former welterweight and lightweight champion B.J. Penn.
A little further down the card, Australian and Brazilian jiu-jitsu expert George Sotiropoulos will attempt to take his eighth straight victory inside the UFC’s Octagon, when he meets German kickboxing specialist Dennis Siver.
With a victory on Sunday, George will move into rare ground in the UFC as he would share the second longest winning streak in the company’s history with UFC hall of famer Royce Gracie and Fitch (current middleweight king, Anderson Silva holds the record with 13 straight wins, for those playing at home).
Unlike boxing, streaks of this magnitude are rare in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) due to the constant high level of opponents faced, the multi-faceted skill-set needed for the sport, and the smaller gloves worn, which makes for a much finer margin between success and failure.
A win would also push Sotiropoulos one step closer to a title shot and the chance to become the first Australian to win a major MMA championship.
At last year’s UFC 110, which was also held at Acer Arena and the first UFC event to ever be held in Australia, Sotiropoulos faced a big step-up in competition as he met former title contender, Joe Stevenson. The support he received from the 18,000 Aussie fans in attendance was staggering, as they roared for every minor transition and chanted his name in between rounds en route to a unanimous decision win for the Geelong based fighter.
The win clearly made him the face for MMA in Australia which has seen a stunning growth of popularity over the past two years. The event last year sold out within two hours of tickets opening, this year it smashed that record by selling out in just half an hour.
But the question must be asked, will Australia always need a successful fighter such as Sotiropoulos to maintain the current level of interest in the sport?
UFC marketing director of international development, Marshall Zelaznik, doesn’t believe so.
“I don’t think so. I think we’re lucky that we have that (a successful Australian Mixed Martial Artist). But I think that people realise when they get into this sport is that you just want to see the best fighters in the world and it’s great if you can have a countrymen to root for. But ultimately, you’re watching it on television, seeing the best competing and you want to see the guys you’ve seen on television competing.”
Zelaznik’s comments have merit as the event sold out last year in two hours when Sotiropoulos had only a semi-final result on the sixth season of the UFC’s reality show, “The Ultimate Fighter” and a handful of usually un-televised under-card bouts to his name.
But if you look at the sporting landscape in Australia it shows a trend that provides a scary counter to Zelaznik’s argument. Sports such as football (the soccer variety that is), rugby union, and tennis, show that we as a country are only really interested when our country does well.
Before the Socceroos qualified for the 2006 World Cup, stadium filling football didn’t even really exist on the Australian sporting calendar, but after John Aloisi potted that penalty against Uruguay we, as a country, were suddenly invested.
We’ve managed to win World Cups in rugby and Grand Slams in tennis but as soon as we got a bum team or our players’ rankings slipped into triple digits, interest began to dissipate.
Also, in terms of the UFC’s international expansion, they usually put on events in markets where they already have a homegrown star. They expanded into the UK on the back of Michael Bisping, Canada on the back of Georges St. Pierre, and later this year they will head back to Brazil on the back of the many highly ranked Brazilians on their roster.
For all of George Sotiropoulos’ success he hasn’t quite reached the level of a Michael Bisping, who rose to prominence after winning the third season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and his ‘love him or hate him’ personality has grown him a tremendous fanbase in his homeland.
Sotiropoulos is a lot more introverted and tries to shy away from all the media attention, which wouldn’t help his popularity or the UFC’s decision to return down under if he were to suffer a loss.
In the end, the rate of ticket sales and the money produced from this year and last year would definitely suggest that there’s more than just a nationalistic fascination with MMA. Hopefully with continued success for Sotiropoulos and the emergence of more Australian talent that question will never have to be answered.
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