The UFC’s comeback tour is almost in the books.
As noted last month, America’s largest MMA promoter is on the verge of completing a full-scale turnaround after a tough 2014. With strong box office showings from new stars like Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey, it’s possible this year might prove to be the UFC’s best on pay-per-view since the halcyon days of Brock Lesnar.
Hard to believe, but since the publication of that initial story, the fight company’s 2015 outlook grew even rosier. It bumped Rousey’s title defense against Holly Holm up from UFC 195 on January 2, 2016 to UFC 193 on November 15, thereby assuring itself something close to a million extra PPV buys (give or take a few hundred thousand) for this calendar year.
The rest of the UFC’s end-of-the-year slate also filled in, and it looks—in a word—awesome.
Fans will be on pins and needles just hoping it all happens as scheduled.
Assuming it does, December will feature three high-profile fight cards in nine days. There will be a trio of hotly anticipated championship bouts and as many as four potential title eliminators. It will be a wild ride and—if it all comes off as planned—will put an exclamation point on the end of the UFC’s return to form.
Spoiler alert: skepticism abounds.
Even though 2015 came off much better than recent years, memories of best-laid plans busted and broken are still fresh in the mind. Some observers still see a stellar future schedule as an opportunity to start calculating the potential for major letdowns.
They can’t get too hyped up about what’s in store without those four little words dancing in their heads: card subject to change.
Maybe there is good reason for concern here. Most of the biggest ticket fights on the December schedule include guys known to cause delays.
The unquestioned main event of the month is Jose Aldo finally meeting McGregor in a featherweight title unification bout at UFC 194 on December 12. The history of this star-crossed fight should be intimately understood by anyone whose eyes graced an MMA news website during 2015.
The UFC has been trying to put it together since January. The dominoes that toppled when Aldo pulled up lame just weeks before their first intended meeting at UFC 189 haven’t totally been cleaned up yet.
Chad Mendes stepped in on short notice, but he did as much to undermine McGregor’s claim to elite status as he did confirm it. The fight company scrambled to set the Irish phenom up with an interim title but then zagged him into a surprise coaching stint on The Ultimate Fighter—opposite Urijah Faber, of all people—in an overt attempt to use him to prop up one of its most hackneyed properties.
McGregor’s do-over with Aldo at UFC 194 on December 12 is our only chance to find resolution on any number of 145-pound questions. In classically over-the-top fashion, McGregor contends he’s still unconvinced Aldo will show up.
Fans too are nervy. Rightly or wrongly, they’ve come to see Aldo as snakebitten—a guy who could never stay healthy long enough to make good on the potential he enjoyed when the UFC brought him over from the WEC in 2011.
This time, the fight company has obviously employed dual insurance policies. Nobody wants to see any further postponements between Aldo and McGregor, but at least the UFC will have a couple of fallback plans if something unforeseen happens.
For starters, the promotion conveniently double-stacked title fights on the UFC 194 card, placing Aldo-McGregor on top of Chris Weidman’s middleweight championship defense against Luke Rockhold. So, if McGregor-Aldo gets called off again at the last minute, UFC 194 will still be able to boast it has some gold on the line.
Nothing beats slapping a UFC title on the poster.
The problem with that Plan B, of course, is that Weidman hasn’t been immune to unexpected detours himself. His title defense against Vitor Belfort was put off an entire year in 2014-15 due to a laundry list of factors.
In the interim, Weidman defeated Lyoto Machida at UFC 175, but also didn’t exactly earn a reputation as being Mr. Dependable.
In terms of hedging its bets on Aldo-McGregor, the UFC will have an additional emergency response option on the table as well.
Frankie Edgar and Mendes are booked to fight in another stellar featherweight bout at the TUF 22 live finale the night before. Either could step in if an injury sidelines the 145-pound title fight again, and Edgar says he’s already been told it will be him.
Beneath the Edgar-Mendes bout, matchmakers have lined up a 155-pound battle between Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov. If the world starts coming apart again, Ferguson vs. Nurmagomedov would be a serviceable TUF 22 main event.
You know, assuming that fight actually happens.
Nurmagomedov is only just now returning, after all, in the wake of a knee injury and a 20-month absence. He was once regarded as the obvious No. 1 contender, but his bout with Ferguson marks the beginning of his own comeback tour.
Can he keep it together long enough to make good on a title fight? Only time will tell.
But back to UFC 194, where the brightest spot on the undercard is also a redux:
Yoel Romero vs. Jacare Souza has been twice postponed already. The two were intended to meet at UFC 184 and then at UFC on Fox 15 before first a sickness to Souza and then a knee injury to Romeo pushed their bout back.
Both guys remain top 185-pound challengers, and the winner here is expected to be next in line for the winner of Weidman vs. Rockhold—if the tandem can stay healthy. Romero is 38 years old and Souza is 35, so neither can afford many more injury delays.
The UFC’s final event of the year will be UFC on Fox 17, mostly notable because it features a free lightweight title fight and for marking the first chance at UFC gold for fan favorite Donald Cerrone.
If there’s one thing we can say with almost complete certainty, it’s that the Cowboy will be ready and willing to fight Rafael dos Anjos on December 19.
The same has not been true of the new champion in recent months.
Dos Anjos hasn’t been seen since he took the 155-pound title from Anthony Pettis at UFC 185 in March. In the wake of that victory—for which RDA received a Performance of the Night bonus—he revealed he’d torn his MCL training for the fight and has been on the shelf ever since.
But wait, there’s more.
The co-main event of UFC on Fox 17 features a long-awaited heavyweight scrap between Junior dos Santos and Alistair Overeem. Neither of those guys has been all that active lately, either.
Dos Santos has not fought at all during 2015, owing to a hand injury. Overeem fought in March—a win over Roy Nelson—and has been idle ever since.
So, you see, there are still a lot of moving parts.
The downside, of course, is that we’ve learned the hard way that these highly anticipated runs can fall by the wayside for a multitude of reasons. On the bright side, the UFC’s December schedule looks too good to vanish completely.
We should be able to rest assured that at least some of this stuff will happen on time and as expected.
If it does, it will amount to the UFC launching a final flurry for just before the bell, necessary not only for convincing spectators it has emphatically won this round but for proving it's still got a lot of fight left in it.
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