UFC: Co-Promoting May Be Good for Business

Co-promoting is a term that does not seem to exist in UFC president Dana White's vocabulary, unless he is stating that the UFC is not interested.

White is a great businessman and built a company that has become a monopoly amongst the mixed martial arts promotional community. It is understandable that he would not want to help another company profit off of the brand he and the Ferttitas built.

It must be pointed out, however, that beyond the hardcore fan, most people don't know the difference between the sport of MMA and the brand that is the UFC.

In a recent interview on FightHype.com, Affliction vice president Tom Atencio pointed out that very fact, saying, "I think the only thing that hurts us is people knowing UFC and not MMA."

White could use that logic to his advantage and create some "super fights" that the fans would be interested in, helping to generate huge pay-per-view numbers.

Hardcore fans would obviously know what was going on if the two brands ever decided to work together, but the casual fan would most likely think Affliction was simply a sponsor of the UFC.

The UFC would be able to deliver "super fights," i.e. Fedor vs. Lesnar, and make a huge profit in return without losing their monopoly-like status. There is no mixed martial arts promotion in existence that will ever be on the same level as the UFC and White knows it.

I say, give the fans what they want and co-promote at least once, even if it's just one or two fights on a card, while there is little to no risk involved.

This is a win-win situation for the UFC at this point. Affliction is still under the radar with the casual fan and the UFC needs to capatilize on this great business opportunity while it lasts.

White is a far better businessman than myself, but I can't see how the negatives could possibly outweigh the positives in this situation. As a fan I can only hope he will give in and co-promote at least one time.