On Sunday, the UFC is asking customers to part with $49.95 for a fight featuring Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino against a fighter named “who?”.
You may think I’m being a condescending jerk by saying that, but if you toggle over to the UFC’s event page right now you will find the company doesn’t even have a photo for Cyborg’s opponent (her name is Yana Kunitskaya, for the record)
Does anyone know how to unlock the Yana Kunitskaya character? pic.twitter.com/UZxZZ9X0kT
— Justin Faux (@justinfauxmma) February 27, 2018
Even UFC president Dana White, the man who is supposed to be selling this fight, clearly had no idea who this woman was when announcing the fight on Fox Sports.
When you look up and down Sunday’s UFC 222 card, which is set to take place at the T-Mobile Arena in Paradise, Nevada, there are a few interesting fights.
The aforementioned championship headliner should be fun for as long as it lasts, and Frankie Edgar will fight Brian Ortega for the right to face streaking Hawaiian champion Max Holloway later this year.
Is it worth the near $50 price tag, though? That’s for you to decide but I’m willing to bet for most the answer will be a resounding no.
This isn’t the first less-than-staller pay-per-view offering served up by the world’s most prominent fight promotion either.
Just three weeks earlier (yes, three) the UFC put its event from Perth behind a paywall, and early estimates suggest it sold a paltry 130,00 units.
If you were to mash both of those pay-per-view offerings together into a super card, it would look a little something like this:
UFC women’s featherweight championship bout: Cris ‘Cyborg’ Justino vs. Yana Kunitskaya
UFC interim middleweight championship bout: Yoel Romero vs. Luke Rockhold
Featherweight bout: Frankie Edgar vs. Brian Ortega
Heavyweight bout: Mark Hunt vs. Curtis Blaydes
Heavyweight bout: Tai Tuivasa vs. Cyril Asker
Now that’s a fight card that would catch the fan’s attention. But with the present-day model of events, a less is more approach is no longer viable.
The Nevada-based promotion has promised a bunch of fights to pay-per-view outlets and television networks. If that weren’t enough, UFC also needs to create content for its own digital streaming service so fans can continue to justify the $9.99 charge to their credit card each month.
Under this model, each fight card feels less compelling than the one that came before it and public interest appears to be at it’s lowest point in well over a decade.
Plain-and-simple, combat sports is a star-driven industry and right now the UFC has none.
Ronda Rousey just threw a bloke through a table on a WWE event so that rules her out. Jon Jones is still facing a possible four-year suspension after a third run-in with the drug police, Georges St. Pierre has ‘retired’ again, the Diaz brothers have shown no interest in returning, and Conor McGregor is playing hardball at the negotiation table.
With the box office attractions out of the picture, the new matchmaking team, consisting of Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard, is attempting to put together champion-versus-champion fights in hopes of selling anything above the basement level of units.
Heavyweight champion Stipe Miocic will defend his title against light heavyweight kingpin Daniel Cormier in July, and there is a persistent rumour that 135-pound titlist TJ Dillashaw will next challenge pound-for-pound and flyweight champ Demetrious Johnson.
Both of those fights are outstanding but neither is likely to convince more than a few hundred thousand to open up their pocketbook.
At this stage, the company must be praying for McGregor to strap on a pair of gloves at least twice in 2018, or else this year will, by any metric, be considered a disaster.
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