MMA in 2014: The Real Winners and Losers
You can't pack the sum total of an entire year into a box and slap one label on it. Life is too complicated for such a simple procedure. Something's bound to ooze out.
So it is for mixed martial arts. It's easy to look at all the downward-sloping trend lines and conclude, as some have, that the sport suffered a bit of a crash in 2014. It might be just as easy to point to a handful of great scraps and great stories and conclude, as some have, that this was another wonderful year for MMA and that everything is perfectly wonderful, thanks so much for asking.
But as Akira Kurosawa showed us lo those many years ago, the truth always dwells in the middle, where emotion holds no sway and tidy graphics go to die.
That's where we're going to try to exist right now, as we evaluate both the good and the bad in the year that was for MMA.
We can't cover it all, but we can surely provide a panoptical perspective. Because as faithful readers of this listicolumn (I just made that term up) know, the final statistics only reveal so much. Here are the year's real winners and losers from across MMA.
Winner: The Knockout
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Here's how much I love you: I did some math for this thing.
There were 45 UFC events in 2014. Those events collectively saw 147 knockouts or technical knockouts and 98 submissions or technical submissions. That means there was one more knockout (3.3) than submission (2.1) on the average UFC card.
That's a real difference. Part of that might stem from the fact that, to an extent, it's always been that way. It has always been easier to command your own limbs than those of another person.
But there might be a little more to it. Fighters aren't stupid, or blind, in any case. They see the performance bonuses, which are common in plenty of promotions. They know knockouts get you noticed. They know knockouts are what people—ticket buyers and check writers alike—want to see. Just bleed, bro, reads the memo line.
That's why Dong Hyun Kim's comments in March, after laying out John Hathaway with a spinning elbow, encapsulate this numbers disparity. Kim openly admitted to morphing himself from a skilled grinder to an unskilled slugger in a play to make himself more appealing.
"I've continued to stack up the wins, but I wasn't given a title shot, so I decided, in order to get a title shot, I had to change the way I fight," he said during the post-fight new conference, which aired on UFC Fight Pass. "So I decided to get much more aggressive, and hopefully I'll get noticed and get a shot at the title."
It summed up the year in a lot of ways. Knockout artists like Robbie Lawler and Donald Cerrone grabbed plenty of headlines. UFC Fight Night 45 grabbed kudos for featuring eight knockouts on its 11-fight lineup.
Great highlights for fans, but its wider implications are less clear. With more brain-injury science rolling in all the time and awareness of the risks of concussion growing across all sports, we'll see how sustainable the approach is. And we'll see how interested people will be in the sport if it becomes a series of sloppy wrestle-boxing displays.
For now, though, the knockout is king.
Loser: All Those Injured People
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Anyone with two eyes and a brain understands the health and safety risks inherent to MMA. No rocket science needed there.
Even so, injuries were particularly impactful in 2014, striking like meteorites on the landscape of the sport.
The bright exception to that rule was supposed to be Dominick Cruz. After a nearly three-year layoff, Cruz returned in September and laid waste to a pretty good fighter in Takeya Mizugaki. Everyone had their Comeback of the Year bouquets arranged and at the ready but then had to toss them in the trash when Cruz suffered yet another torn knee ligament in December.
There you have it. Whenever you thought you were out, the injury epidemic—oh, it's more than a bug now—pulled you back in.
There is plenty more to report on this front. Jose Aldo's training injury led to the "postponement" of UFC 176 (the real winner here? Orwellian doublespeak). Cain Velasquez pulled out of his title defense against Fabricio Werdum and in the process disemboweled the very important UFC 180, not to mention the heavyweight division in general.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Injuries to dozens of fighters, from Jon Jones to Jon Delos Reyes, shaped more than their share of main cards and undercards, from the UFC to the XFC.
Winner: Neil Magny
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I must have missed the article or website that nominated Neil Magny for MMA Fighter of the Year. Oh, no one did, preferring instead to look toward Robbie Lawler or, gah, Tito Ortiz?
Well, hopefully this little distinction, for which Magny will receive nothing, helps ease the pain. Mount this slide on your mantle, Neil Magny. You deserve it.
I mean, he definitely deserves something. The welterweight tied a UFC record for most wins in a calendar year when he beat William Macario in October to move to 5-0 for 2014.
True, it's not like he was defending a belt, but these weren't five pushovers either: Gasan Umalatov in February, Tim Means in May, Rodrigo da Lima in June, Alex Garcia in August, then Macario in October.
In a year that saw plenty of misfortune and underachievement on the fighter side, Magny stands tall as an impressive exception.
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Loser: The UFC
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I don't even feel like writing this slide. Everyone knows about this stuff already. But hey, it's the end of the year, and rehashing is what separates us from the animals.
I'll do my best to be brief without being glib. First, too many events (as previously noted, 45 this year) diluted the quality of the UFC product. But perhaps even worse, this deluge deprived fans, both casual and hardcore, of the opportunity to look forward to (or identify) big cards before they happened and savor them at the water cooler afterward.
Enabled by its often-repetitive marketing, in 2014 the whole UFC thing took on the feel of some joyless assembly line. A chore, even. And UFC president Dana White's equally repetitive, if-you-don't-like-it-don't-watch-it defensiveness over such claims doesn't exactly instill confidence that a solution is coming or that UFC leaders even appreciate the problems.
And yet, the problems are there. Pay-per-view buys are trending downward—way downward. Television ratings are not super-encouraging (though not as terrible as advertised, either).
A lack of star power, brought on by various forces both in and out of anyone's control, is one of the main problems, and is proving difficult to overcome. The UFC's big answer to that? Sign retired pro wrestler CM Punk. We'll see how that shakes out.
Oh, and there was that little lawsuit thing, too.
And that Cung Le drug-testing embarrassment.
And the time when White compared women's fighter Cristiane Justino to "Wanderlei Silva in a dress."
The UFC did some good things. Banning TRT was among them. But its strange bunker culture doesn't exactly engender the feeling that the good ideas will outweigh the bad anytime soon, at least intentionally.
And don't get me wrong: The UFC is still the best promotion with the best fighters and it's not close. It makes good matches more often than not. If I were banned from watching UFC events, I'd be a very sad man. But I worry about the UFC's direction in 2014, or lack thereof.
Winner: Bellator
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Now for some proof that MMA, as a whole, is not dying or dead or devoid of ideas.
Scott Coker and a little conglomerate-backed engine known as Bellator turned plenty of heads after Coker took over for the floundering and much-maligned Bjorn Rebney back in June.
Right off the bat, Coker went on a hiring spree that shows no signs of abating (Brock Lesnar, anyone?). In November Bellator 131 set a new promotional high-water mark for interest and ratings.
With Viacom behind them, Coker and Bellator may be ready to hit their stride and possibly give the UFC something to think about besides its next target for noogies.
Winner: Women's MMA
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Robbie Lawler received most of the Fighter of the Year nods from fans and media. And hey, that's understandable. Lawler did go 3-1 in 2014, completing a momentous career comeback this month by avenging that lone loss and capturing the UFC welterweight title.
But that vote signals a preference for a fun storyline over a tale of more sustained excellence. UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey won both her bouts this year in a total—not an average, but a total—of one minute and 22 seconds.
She's not especially likable, but she is especially bankable. If she's not the most popular MMA fighter today, she's certainly its most dominant.
But Rousey is just the tip of the spear in what was a pretty good year for the women's side of the game.
All-female promotion Invicta inked a deal to air its events on UFC Fight Pass.
New stars—and a new UFC champion—emerged following The Ultimate Fighter season 20, which featured members of the promotion's new strawweight division. Meanwhile, in the World Series of Fighting promotion, Jessica Aguilar, who very well might be the best strawweight on the planet, continued to do her thing, winning three times in as many tries this year.
And don't forget the stirring return of Cat Zingano or the first UFC victory of possible star-in-waiting Paige VanZant.
Rousey still hovers above it all, though. Rumors and talk about potential high-profile challengers—fighter-turned-actress Gina Carano, coverted boxing champ and 2014 UFC signee Holly Holm, Invicta fighter and on-again off-again bantamweight Cristiane "Cyborg" Justino—have eaten plenty of pixels in 2014 and will probably continue to do so in some form or fashion.
Women's MMA is here to stay, and it has real star power. Stay tuned.
Loser: The Old Guard
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Not a golden year for MMA's Golden Age.
Following separate-if-intertwining drug-test melodramas, Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva both retired in disgrace (though Sonnen certainly enjoyed the softer landing of the two).
Speaking of melodrama, over in Bellator, 39-year-old Tito Ortiz and 37-year-old Stephan Bonnar waged a silly-at-best war of words and a Hall of Shame-worthy fight at Bellator 131 this fall. Still working on finding the best way to wipe that thing from my memory banks.
On the other side of the Atlantic, 40-year-old Mirko Cro Cop continued to cling to fighting, despite indications that he is past the point where he can do so at the highest levels, where fans are most accustomed to seeing him.
Back in the States, we're more accustomed to these sad displays. Dan Henderson, now 44, and Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, 33 in real years but probably more like 75 in fighter years after a career riddled with injury and brutality, shoulder on despite majorly diminished abilities. Sometimes, they shoulder on against each other!
Chris Leben and Jamie Varner were among the other sport veterans who called it a career in 2014. Miguel Torres, once the face of WEC and generally considered the sport's best lighter-weight fighter, was knocked out in his debut for Titan FC.
MMA is a young sport, so it hasn't yet had to go through as many of these sorts of graceless endings as have the other, more established games. It's not easy to watch heroes from the sport's first great era flame out and/or fade away, but that's what's happening, and it's time fans got used to it. With a sport this violent, many more such endings are, sadly but assuredly, on the way.
Winner: Entire Nation of Ireland
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It's more than just Conor McGregor. This year was a far-reaching turning point for all of MMA on the Emerald Isle.
Dublin-based SBG Ireland might just be the hottest gym in the sport. It sent several of its charges to the UFC's employ this year, and between them, those fighters amassed a UFC record of 6-1 on the year. Pretty good.
Yes, McGregor was in the mix. And he probably had the best year of any fighter, maybe across the whole sport. He combined all that microphone panache with two first-round knockouts, first of Diego Brandao and then Dustin Poirier. Now he's on everyone's lips as not only the next potential challenger to featherweight champion Jose Aldo but also as the next big star of MMA.
The gym also had two fighters reach the semifinals on separate seasons of The Ultimate Fighter. Cathal Pendred did so on the middleweight side of the TUF 19 bracket, and women's strawweight Aisling Daly accomplished the feat on TUF 20.
Irish flyweight Neil Seery also had a solid year, as did Northern Ireland's Norman Parke.
The crown jewel of the Irish MMA year came at UFC Fight Night 46 in Dublin. The Irish fighters on the card—McGregor, Pendred, Paddy Holohan, Seery and Parke—combined for a stirring 5-0 mark on the night. By the time McGregor sent Brandao to the canvas in the evening's main event, a full-on Guinness-soaked MMA revival was in session.
Ireland has a rich combat-sports tradition. With McGregor at the helm, bringing fighting excellence back to this nation can't be anything but a great thing, and 2014 will be remembered as the year that dam broke open.
Scott Harris writes about MMA for Bleacher Report. For more, follow Scott on Twitter.
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