Do's and Dont's for Naming an MMA Event

MMA organizations promote many events a year. In order to distinguish them, they name and/or number the events. Some events have good and easily identifiable names while others have confusing or ambiguous names that leave the fans guessing. This article is a general list of good and bad things organizations do when naming events.

The Good

Things that help distinguish one event from another and give you a general idea about the event.

Number the Event

As a rule of thumb, most events should be numbered. The main benefit of this is that it makes it easier for fans to remember the order of events past and present.

If the Event Is Part of a Tournament, List the Round and Year

The main exception for not needing to number an event is if it part of a tournament. In this case, the round of the tournament and the year should be included in the title.

Dream did a nice job of this. They included the weight class, year, and what round of the tournament an event was. They even went the extra mile to number the events on top of this. A good example of this is "Dream 4: Middleweight Grand Prix 2008 Second Round."

Include Something Else After the Number

Some good things to include after the number are:

1.The names of the fighters in the main event. This makes it easy for fans to remember who's fighting in which event. An example of this is "UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit."

2. An adjective or phrase that can easily be associated with the fighters in the main event. An example of this is "UFC 47: It's On!", an event that showcased Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz finally meeting in a fight that had been waited upon for a long time.

3.An adjective or phrase that is associated with where the event is taking place. These can range from simply including the name of the location, such as "Strikeforce: Nashville," to more complex ones such as "UFC 101: Declaration" (the event took place in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was signed).

Give Different Types of Events Different Style Names

Giving different types of events different style names can best be described by how the UFC gives a different style of names to events that are not pay per view.

Examples of this are The Ultimate Fighter Finales, UFC on FOX, UFC on FX, and previously the Fight Nights on Spike. Non-UFC examples of this are the Strikeforce Challengers series and Pride Bushido series.

The Bad

Being confusing, nondescript or redundant.

Not Numbering or Only Numbering an Event

Yea I know I'm kind of including this point twice but it's very annoying because neither piece of information is enough to stand alone. Not numbering makes remembering event orders hard while only numbering makes remembering which event is which difficult.

Prime examples of this are Strikeforce and Bellator events.

Strikeforce only names their events and this can be chronologically confusing because of the difficulty remembering which event took place in what order.

While Bellator only numbers its events, this becomes confusing because it can be hard to remember which event is which.

Giving Events Generic Adjectives or Phrases for a Name

Look at a list of UFC, Stikeforce, Pride, and EliteXC events. Most of the adjectives or phrases could describe any MMA event. While it's a personal call as to which are generic and which are relevant, most of the names from years back are kind of lame.

Other Minor Annoyances

This page is mostly me nitpicking some minor problems I have with the names of a few events.

1. Not only does Bellator only number their events, they number them with roman numerals. While I have no problem reading roman numerals, Arabic numerals are significantly easier to read.

2. When a generic name is used again with a 2 or 3 after it. Some examples are "Pride 18: Cold Fury 2," "Pride 24: Cold Fury 3," "Pride 22: Beasts From The East 2," "Pride 23: Champion Chaos 2," "Strikeforce: Young Guns II," and "Strikeforce: Young Guns III."

Thanks for reading.