Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic
In this week’s Trading Shots, retired UFC/WEC fighter Danny Downes joins MMAjunkie columnist Ben Fowlkes to discuss the role that Saturday morning UFC Fight Pass events can play in the crowded MMA landscape.
* * * *
Downes: Ben, I’m not sure if you were too busy going out for one of your extravagant brunches this weekend, but the UFC had another afternoon (for the Western Hemisphere) fight card. In the main event, Mirko Filipovic overcame some early troubles to deliver a devastating TKO win over Gabriel Gonzaga.
I don’t want to get into the “Is Cro Cop back?” question because that just seems uncreative and reactionary. Plus, plenty of other people in the so-called media have already penned such pieces.
Instead I want to ask about these Fight Pass cards in general. What’s their place in the UFC landscape? In the MMA landscape? If Maryna Moroz has a breakout performance and nobody sees it, did it really happen?
Fowlkes: That’s a good question, and something I was thinking about as I sat through the roughly six hours of UFC action that streamed to my home via the worldwide web on Saturday. I thought even more about it after seeing this tweet from UFC commentator Jon Anik, who pointed out that the new longest game in Boston Red Sox history (six hours, 49 minutes) was about as long as an average UFC event.
People like us might sit through the whole thing, but if you’re Stevie Ray trying to get people to appreciate that you showed up on short notice and knocked out Marcin Held on the prelims, you might start to wonder whether you had enough of an audience for your breakout moment.
At the same time, I do feel like there’s a place for this kind of fight card. Maybe it’s the Saturday morning/afternoon aspect of it, the way it makes the whole thing seem, at least in this time zone, less – what’s the word I’m looking for – serious?
That’s a weird way to think about it, I realize, since you look at Gonzaga’s Frankenstein face and obviously that’s pretty serious. But let’s be real, these events are on a different tier. Even the UFC acknowledges this, either intentionally or otherwise, in plenty of ways both big and small. You don’t have to be the most detail-oriented analyst to know by now that if you show up to an event and you don’t see Joe Rogan or the varsity squad ring girls, you are not at an event that the UFC considers big time.
I guess my question is, does that matter? The UFC has created a kind of de facto minor league version of itself, somewhere the lesser-known characters can vie for promotions, but also somewhere the no-longer-primetime players like the 40-year-old version of “Cro Cop” can still make a living. Is that so bad? Does it help that we can look at stuff like start time and broadcast team and know how to categorize it in our minds?
Downes: Rightly or wrongly, I think we do categorize events simply based on what they’re called. “Fight Pass: Krakow” elicits different expectations than UFC 186 regardless of what the actual fight card looks like.
I wonder, though, if we really do differentiate all the tiers. Would you judge Filipovic differently if he were fighting Gabriel Gonzaga on Fox Sports 1 or a pay-per-view? Does Fight Pass main event equal FS1 main card? Where does the featured prelim co-main event work its way in?
If fans or media dismiss a card because of its prefix, what does that mean for fighters? When I was with the organization, every fighter wanted to be on a pay-per-view. It didn’t matter what spot on the card you had, you just wanted to be there instead of an “Ultimate Fighter” finale. Now, with even more events, has that shine faded? With so many events week after week, it feels like fighters just get lost in the shuffle.
MMA is an individual sport, but I think we’ve gotten to the point where the league is greater than the individuals. Yes, stars like Ronda Rousey and Conor McGregor still move the needle, but that group becomes smaller and smaller every year. Part of that is that it’s extremely difficult for somebody to have that perfect mix of charisma and fighting ability. But another reason is that even an average fan has watched hours and hours of programming before a fighter has the opportunity to capitalize on their previous outing.
Think about it. There are 40-plus events that have at least 10-12 fights per card. If you only compete three or four times a year, I don’t care how entertaining your Twitter feed is, that’s still a very small chance to make an impact.
The increase of the number of events has allowed a lot more people to put “UFC Fighter” on their business cards, but has it really helped them? Even from a fan’s point of view, hasn’t it become harder to root for an individual fighter?
Fowlkes: Maybe it’s just made it even more vital to capitalize on what little time you do have to make fans remember you. And no, telling us that you’ll fight whoever the UFC puts in front of you does not accomplish that goal. Hopefully everyone is realizing that now.
As for your point about differentiating between the tiers, I think that’s the main sticking point right now. I think fans can handle thinking of Fight Pass cards as fun little distractions, while pay-per-views are something that makes you find the couch on Saturday night and hit the mute button on everything else in your life for a few hours.
The problem is when the UFC tries to sell one as the other. UFC 186 is a good example of that. It’s a pay-per-view that doesn’t look like one. You can feel fans pushing back, and it’s not just about the money (though it’s also definitely not not about the money). It’s also just that people don’t like to be told that they’re getting something they aren’t. That feels vaguely insulting to their intelligence.
That’s why I think it’s almost helpful to have these little indicators that the UFC understands the difference in one event’s quality over another. Or is that just me living inside the MMA bubble and assuming that there are more people paying such close attention?
Downes: I’m not sure. How many people differentiate between the UFC, Bellator and World Series of Fighting? Does the average fan care that Demetrious Johnson is the newly crowned “pound for pound best fighter in the world?” To you it may sound like a tired trope, but it may play with people that don’t have to cover the sport every day. I mean, you probably thought you were too smart for the KFC Famous Bowl, but they can’t keep ’em on the shelf!
The thing about advertising, Ben, is that it works. It only works it if there’s a clear message, though. At this point in time, I don’t think either one of us knows what the Fight Pass message is. Is it, “Hey it’s MMA and you don’t have to go to the Waukesha County Expo Center!” Is it, “Watch some legends take a victory lap!” Or perhaps it’s, “Come watch some up-and-comers!”
Maybe it’s all of those things, but it needs to be clearly defined. The presentation of Fight Pass may differ from a PPV in the aesthetics and commentators, but it’s presented the exact same way. That’s an issue for fans, fighters and media.
At the same time, maybe it allows people outside the Montana bubble to enjoy a UFC event. So what if it starts at 8 a.m. Mountain Time? That allows international fans an opportunity to enjoy events in a way Americans fans have had for years.
That’s the problem with having a global organization. When the matches take place in the “English Premier League” you know that they’ll be scheduled with that in mind. If you’re a Manchester United fan living on the west coast, you’ll have to wake up at a certain hour to watch them play. It’s implicit in the fandom. When you’re a UFC fan, you don’t usually take that into account. You expect it to be as convenient as possible.
I know we’ve had this talk before, but won’t some fans just have to accept the fact that they don’t have to watch every UFC event? It seems like a natural conclusion, but every Fight Pass or weekday Fight Night card is always littered with people on social media complaining about it. Maybe it’s different because you are compensated to watch the events, but isn’t this only a problem for media and not fans? It’s like a beat reporter complaining that the Yankees play 162 games and he has to watch all of them. Isn’t he really one of the only people that can complain about that?
Fowlkes: For the most part, I agree with you there. But there is one problem. Consider the case of the UFC women’s strawweight title. On Saturday, as you mentioned, we saw a new contender emerge. Maryna Moroz pulled off a sizable upset over Joanne Calderwood. Moroz then had words for champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk, who was sitting cageside, and suddenly it seemed like we might have an interesting challenger for “Joanna Champion.”
That’s significant. It’s exactly what you’d hope for as a promoter with a new division to push. It’s the kind of thing you’re going to want to lean on when you go to promote the next UFC women’s strawweight title fight.
Trouble is, if a good chunk of your fanbase skipped this event, they probably have no idea who Moroz is or why she matters. You can fill them in somewhat when it’s time to sell the fight, but to a lot of people who didn’t see their moment together in Krakow it’s just going to seem like one Polish chick against another Polish chick. Who cares, right?
That’s the danger of having certain fight cards that, by UFC President Dana White’s admission, aren’t for certain fans. It’s difficult to get us to care about fighters if they did their most important work on fight cards that you basically told us not to care about.
The good news is, the time zone stuff is less of a factor than I think many of us expected it to be. Turns out that early afternoon UFC events are pretty fun. I could get into this. And like you pointed out, people in the U.S. will wake up in the morning to watch the Premier League. I just wonder if they’d keep doing it if the product on their TV screens was, by the league’s own admission, really not that premier.
For more on UFC Fight Night 64, check out the UFC Events section of the site.
Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Danny Downes, a retired UFC and WEC fighter, is an MMAjunkie contributor who also writes for UFC.com and UFC 360. Follow them on twitter at @benfowlkesMMA and @dannyboydownes.
Filed under: Featured, News, UFC
No comments:
Post a Comment