The sport of Mixed Martial Arts is one that is supposed to be built on the best fighters with the most wins and dominating performances being put in the championship bouts. In general, the top contenders do get rightful title shots and become stars in their own right through hard work and amazing performances.
This does not always happen however, especially in the modern era everyone is trying to become the next Conor McGregor. This is because McGregor has been a cash cow and is able to use his ability on the microphone to draw people in and get people to buy the pay-per-views because they either want to see him win or they can’t stand him and want to see him lose quite badly.
The selling of Pay-Per-Views this way is a good thing because it has attracted blue chip sponsors to the promotion such as Bud Light, Reebok, and Buffalo Wild Wings. The company is not extremely far removed from the day’s of Rich’s Tire Barn, Mickey’s Malt Liquor, and CondomDepot.com. However, the blue chip sponsors that have been attracted expect to see the most profitable fighters at the top of the division.
This has brought in the idea of the money fights, and seeing someone like McGregor who worked his way up to featherweight gold, but then decided he would just forgo the lightweight rankings and was placed into an immediate title fight against Eddie Alvarez just skipping to the head of the waiting list.
The payday from the McGregor vs Alvarez fight was one of the biggest for the promotion and helped to solidify McGregor as one of the most popular stars in the company’s history. However, this log jammed some of the rankings as other fighters such as Rafael Dos Anjos, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Tony Ferguson and other top tier lightweights. These fighters were relegated to the prelims on major cards because of the company looking for a big PPV buy rate rather than the most logical contender.
Lightweight is not the only division this has happened to with the Flyweight division seeing a log jam for a while when Henry Cejudo and Bantamweight Champion TJ Dillashaw faced off without TJ ever having a victory at 125 pounds. This stopped guys such as Deiveson Figueiredo, and Joseph Benavidez from having rightful title shots. Once again these big money super fights stop the promotion from bringing emerging contenders to the top of their division’s and possibly stop new champions who were destined for a long reign to be capturing the championships.
The most recent example of a division that has been log jammed is the Heavyweight crown with the Stipe Miocic vs Daniel Cormier trilogy. The three fights which took place over a series of years, stalled contenders like the new champion Francis Ngannou, Derrick Lewis, and another top fighter in Curtis Blaydes from getting a title shot. Although the Heavyweight trilogy was extremely exciting and featured a lot of great back and forth it did stop some other great fighters from being allowed to go for 25 minutes.
The Heavyweight division might be seeing another log jam as Jon Jones has declared for Heavyweight but is not stalling on the payday from the UFC saying he wants somewhere in the ballpark of 50 million to fight Francis Ngannou, which would be one of the highest payouts in the promotion’s history. Although it seems the company is poised to book Lewis vs Ngannou if Jones does not want to negotiate.
In all honesty the UFC is not the first company to pursue the super fights as Pride Fighting Championships very rarely had title defenses in the promotion’s history and often times had their champion’s fight in non-title bouts.
Although I understand the company does need to make money and I understand that someone like McGregor is his own fight because of the payday that is known people need to also face the top contender and this spelled issue for guys such as Tyron Woodley who were lobbying for a money fight instead of fighting the highest ranked guy in their weight class.
One fighter who has consistently defended in both divisions of the belt she has held is Amanda Nunes fighting both at Women’s Bantamweight and Featherweight. This is not an easy fix for the promotion but also letting the guys who are popular with the fans build their way up through the divisional rankings to the title fights will probably pay off better in the long run because the anticipation will continue to build rather than see someone in a shocking loss they weren’t prepared for too early in their career.
The money fight is something we will probably continue to see in the future, but I hope to continue to see the top ranked fighters getting shots at the belt instead of the promotion looking for a big pay day.