The UFC remains bent on global domination. The world's largest MMA promotion already makes regular visits to Japan, England, Brazil and Canada. By the end of 2015, it will put on its first shows in Poland, Scotland, the Philippines and South Korea. Better yet, it has growing fanbases in Ireland, Mexico and Australia.
At first glance, the UFC seems closer than ever to realizing its dream...but in reality, the situation is far from rosy.
The promotion's push into China was an absolute disaster, with The Ultimate Fighter: China becoming an embarrassing endeavor for the company. Potentially lucrative markets such as Russia and India remain out of reach. Brazil is becoming less interested in MMA by the day, and the UFC is quietly showing itself out of Canada.
Even in booming regions, the gains could be fleeting. Will Ireland stay interested in MMA if Conor McGregor's title hopes go sideways? Will Mexico keep filling stadiums with a struggling Cain Velasquez? Will the promotion even return to Scotland, Poland or South Korea?
While there are milestones aplenty for the UFC, there is little actual progress in terms of cementing itself as a worldwide juggernaut in sports. Calamity could be just over the horizon.
What should the UFC do to avoid disaster, then? Get back to basics. Get back to copying the WWE.
With both promotions poised to push into Japan, a market that they both have history with, the UFC's shortcomings are more obvious than ever. So why not compare and contrast the two promotion's methods of cementing their place in the Land of the Rising Sun?
How the WWE Does It
If you are a fan of pro wrestling, or talk to someone who is, you've no doubt heard about NXT, the WWE's Florida-based developmental promotion. While expectations of the promotion are extraordinarily high after a year of consistently excellent pay-per-view events, NXT's purpose remains the same as ever: to groom incomplete wrestlers en route to the WWE.
Potentially marketable superstars join NXT to hone their craft at various points in their careers. Indy wrestling stars, stagnating actresses and former bodybuilders all train alongside one another to sharpen their skills in the ring, on the microphone and in front of a camera.
Sometimes, a superstar will spend several months as a work in progress. Sometimes, he will receive polish for years. Often, he will get quietly signed and released without ever being seen on TV by fans. Still, the WWE's willingness to test-drive potentially valuable wrestlers, build them up in front of their primary fanbase and then roll them out to an excited foreign audience allows the company to instantly have someone resonate with the market it is courting.
The benefits of this approach were abundantly clear at the "Beast in the East" event.
Japanese NXT wrestler Hideo Itami had a well-publicized homecoming and spearheaded a grassroots effort to promote the WWE's upcoming shows through signings and media appearances. The shows were studded with past and present stars with roots in Japanese pro wrestling such as Chris Jericho, Neville and Finn Balor. At the top of the card? Megastar Brock Lesnar.
The event wasn't necessarily a smashing success, but it was still a definitive boon for the company. While Japan didn't immediately forsake its own pro wrestling organizations, the show was a strong display of the organization's talent. More importantly, Lesnar's presence would translate into a major ratings success for the WWE at home.
While few countries have as much interest or history in pro wrestling as Japan, this approach to building stars with specific markets in mind, and doing so in front of the company's primary fanbase, allows the WWE to confidently step into any potentially lucrative market, whether it is Japan, Mexico or India, with just a few years of preparation.
How the UFC Does It
The UFC has two methods of breaking into a new market.
The first, and perhaps most successful to this point, is to heavily push established talents in their respective home countries. The UFC, as stated, has made major strides in various nations on the backs of fighters such as Velasquez and McGregor who have found in-cage success independent of the UFC's marketing plans.
It's a low-risk, low-effort approach, but it's also one that is less than reliable for a company that is expanding as aggressively as the UFC.
The other method? The Ultimate Fighter, with modest support from free-agent signings.
In 2005, the MMA-themed reality series saved the UFC from bankruptcy, and the company began utilizing it to grow its international following and talent pool in 2009 with The Ultimate Fighter: United States vs. United Kingdom. To say that this has been successful would be...inaccurate, to put it kindly.
There have been some small victories, sure, and several serviceable fighters have come from the show (most recently Yair Rodriguez of TUF: Latin America). But even at its best, TUF has been more of a tent to spend a week in rather than a foundation to build upon. The greatest example of this came in The Ultimate Fighter: China.
China has long been the most sought-after market in all of sports, and the UFC is no different in that regard than the NBA or IOC. With that in mind, the promotion rolled out a season designed to both familiarize fans with the concept of MMA and get them invested in the coaches and upstart fighters who would represent the massive nation in the Octagon.
The results were disastrous.
Head coach Cung Le was at the center of a drug-testing scandal that hurt both his reputation and the UFC's and eventually resulted in Le joining the class action lawsuit against the UFC. One of the team coaches, Hailin Ao, was thrown off the show early in the season because he didn't actually know how to fight. The other, Tiequan Zhang, hasn't been seen in MMA since.
As for the fighters? Again, disastrous.
And the worst part? Fighters the UFC opted to fast-track into the promotion such as Jumabieke Tuerxun and Jingliang Li just haven't been up to snuff.
While there hasn't been an official announcement, the UFC seems to have abandoned its plans to invade the massive nation. Mainland China remains out of reach, and the UFC will not return to the consolation prize of Macau in 2015. There are no plans for TUF: China 2, and none of the remaining fighters from TUF: China 1 has a fight lined up in the UFC at this time.
What Can the UFC Learn?
The UFC has struggled mightily to build up stars. That's a well-documented, oft-discussed fact. While it has had the likes of Jon Jones and Ronda Rousey fall into its lap, they've become big names in spite of the UFC's promotional practices.
The promotion's sole approach to building up names involves giving its star-in-the-making preferential treatment during its regularly scheduled programming. Sometimes that results in a .500 fighter like Erick Silva getting booked near the top of cards. Sometimes, that results in a fighter like Paige VanZant actually getting fights while fellow contenders such as Randa Markos are left begging for work on Twitter. Sometimes that results in a fighter such as Conor McGregor avoiding every stylistically disadvantageous matchup en route to a title shot.
Ultimately though, the UFC isn't taking an active role in building up fighters. It is merely giving them an extra bit of spotlight as they build up themselves. That doesn't necessarily work in a star-driven sport like MMA.
Take, for example, Teruto Ishihara. The 24-year-old performed well on Road to UFC: Japan (an abridged version of The Ultimate Fighter) and will likely go from there to fighting two times per year (maybe three, if he's lucky) on Fight Night preliminary cards. He may sink, he may swim—either way, he will be a non-factor for the indefinite future.
That's an utter waste of talent. Ishihara is as marketable as they come, with a fan-friendly, knockout-focused style in the cage and a youthful swagger outside it. He could be a breakout star in both his native Japan and in the United States.
The UFC, for the most part, is leaving his fate up to chance. Needless to say, that is far from the best way to capitalize on his high prospective value both as a fighter and from a promotional perspective.
In a Perfect World...
Let's say the UFC decided to get rid of everything, start over and adopt the WWE's model for building talent. And let's say it who to go into China again. And finally, let's say the UFC got its hands on a Chinese Olympic hopeful that failed to qualify for the Games.
How should the UFC go about building him up? The WWE format sees the organization consolidate prospective talent stateside and surrounds them with trainers to hone their skills in the ring and on camera before sending them up to the big show. The UFC has the infrastructure to do something similar.
With a nationwide network of gyms and plenty of tug with all the major camps in the game, the UFC could easily hook this imaginary fighter up with the kind of trainers that China, in general, lacks at this time. From there, it should set him up with an English tutor to prepare him for media events. Most importantly, rather than tossing him into the hell of Fight Pass preliminary cards, the UFC should assign him to one of the many organizations that the promotion has eating from its palm like Legacy FC, Shooto Brazil or Eurasia Fight Nights.
Take this fighter with a strong combat sports base. Put him in a position to succeed. Let him sharpen his teeth. Then, finally, roll him out to fans as an already complete package.
That kind of long-term investment in a fighter is far more likely to pay off than the UFC's spray-and-pray approach to international expansion. What's more, it will allow the promotion to pre-emptively assess prospects' strengths and weaknesses rather than simply tossing them out against a random, similarly unknown fighter and seeing what happens.
Make no mistake, either: The UFC knows that this is what it should be doing.
It did scout out fighters from abroad and set them up with a top gym. The UFC is signing fighters and having them fight in their preferred feeder organizations. The promotion does play Cupid for fighters and top coaches (or "diet coaches," as it were).
The big change is that the UFC needs to start making this the rule, not the exception. Saying a prayer each night that a fighter from outside the United States or Brazil will rise to the top just isn't working. Once the UFC starts taking an active role in the development of fighters, it can stop relying on luck and start actually building up the next McGregor or Joanna Jedrzejczyk.
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