UFC on Fox 22: White Hats, Black Hats and How to Make a Star
HBO's prestige sci-fi Western, Westworld, has been a hot property over the past few months. There's been lots of internet chatter and editorial pieces on what it all meant.
It was with good reason too; the show was weird, but not inaccessibly so. It had stars. It was unique in a way almost nothing else on television has been for a while.
An early scene depicted one character dressing for his trip to the show's park. After being outfitted in appropriate Western attire, he got to pick his hat on his way out the door—on one wall hung white hats, on another hung black. He chose white, and he was on his way, the whole thing amounting to blunt symbolism regarding the season ahead.
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People choose their hats in life, too. They decide whether they want to be good or bad, good at being bad, or bad at being good. In the fight game, if stardom is the goal, you need to pick your hat as expressively as possible and hope that doing so gets you attention and makes you rich.
On Saturday night in Sacramento, California, the UFC will hit national airwaves. Fox will broadcast the four main card fights, and the notion of getting attention looms large across the slate.
The main event features two popular strawweights who have built a following on in-cage performance and a physical appeal that doesn't hurt in women's MMA, as Paige VanZant takes on Michelle Waterson in a probable barn-burner that's likely to put the winner a fight away from serious title contention. Depending on which person you talk to, both ladies might be worthy of white-hat status.
Urijah Faber, 37, will fight his last fight. Given his age and acumen for pursuits outside of the sport, it seems likely he'll avoid the combat sports faux "retirement" that lasts for a few months or years.
A true white hat, Faber was a superstar when athletes who weighed less than 170 pounds didn't gain that status. For a period, he almost single-handedly kept WEC afloat and helped blaze the trail that gave MMA Jose Aldo, Conor McGregor and Max Holloway.
Even Mike Perry will show up for work in Sacramento, a magnetic black hat who's undefeated at 9-0 and has sneaked into the conversation of prospects to watch in 2017. His magnetism has not come because he's likable, what with his cornermen spitting racist comments during a fight and his backstory involving probation and a UFC-branded gym. But if he keeps winning, people will keep watching in hopes of seeing him lose.
But nestled in the middle of this card is the fight that stands to make the truest star of all: Mickey Gall vs. Sage Northcutt. At a time when only McGregor and Ronda Rousey have any transcendence to their stardom, it's men like Gall and Northcutt who may be on the way to seizing the throne.
In Gall, the promotion found a natural salesman who has never been afraid to snatch an opportunity. He called out CM Punk before the sweat dried on his UFC debut, then obliterated the former pro wrestling superstar—who brought no shortage of eyes to the fight—on the biggest stage he'd ever found.
He was also excited to wear a black hat in that instance, offhandedly praising Punk after the fight before turning his attention to Northcutt in a memorable post-fight rant. He didn't let up from there, campaigning for the bout through traditional media and on social media, even challenging Northcutt to a hair vs. hair stipulation.
Northcutt is the white-hat star the UFC has been looking for since the days of Georges St-Pierre. He's almost comically well mannered and pleasant in his engagements, coming off as polite to the point of being oblivious or aloof. He's also 20 years old, a genetic freak and the type of lifelong martial artist who has developed ninja-like movements as second nature in his muscle memory.
In terms of having a face to put on posters, you couldn't find a better guy than Super Sage. He's all smiles and spiked hair, thrilled to be one of the baddest men on Earth while doubling as a college student and crushing apples with his bare hands on Instagram.
So what better way to get attention than by pitting Gall and Northcutt? That hat narrative is the type of thing that's captured people's attention for a long time, made countless stars in MMA before and made Westworld a cultural phenomenon.
By putting Gall vs. Northcutt on a show that will likely garner more eyes than any pay-per-view this year, the UFC gets two of its hottest young properties out there for public consumption. The bout will also provide an interesting engagement between their personalities and attitudes.
And when someone has a raised hand, one of them will be that much closer to stardom.
People want to see these things. They want to see the conflict of good and bad in their stars.
Given the way Saturday's card is built, the UFC is counting on it.
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