On UFC Broadcasts, What They Don't Tell Us Is Often as Important as What They Do
Reviews are in for UFC 187, and they are nearly unanimous.
This was the best night of fights MMA fans have seen in a long, long time.
From Daniel Cormier's winning the light heavyweight championship to Chris Weidman's holding serve against Vitor Belfort, the eveningโs dueling main events put an exclamation point on that rare pay-per-view worth more than its $60 asking price. With stellar individual performances from supporting actors Donald Cerrone and Andrei Arlovski, the eventโs three-hour main card rarely dragged.
.jpg?w=2560 "Steelers Football")
To top it off, several of the bouts came preloaded with thought-provoking and relevant out-of-the-cage storylines.
There was Belfort's return after he took 18 months off to ditch his controversial testosterone replacement therapy regimen. There was Anthony Johnson's vying for a title despite past domestic violence issues. There was the fact that Cormier and Johnson were only even fighting because Jon Jones had been stripped of the championship following an alleged hit-and-run accident.
There wasโto put it mildlyโa lot going on.
Unfortunately, if you didnโt already know about some of these important topics, you might have missed them completely on Saturday night. The official broadcast team certainly didnโt want to talk about them.
This is nothing new, obviously. Oftentimes, what UFC broadcasts donโt tell us is just as important as what they do. These arenโt regular sports telecasts, after all; theyโre carefully planned corporate infomercials in which the messages are meticulously groomed and tightly controlled.
Bad news is so often swept to the side that if youโve been watching UFC events for years, you probably donโt even notice anymore. You just innately understand that to get the whole story, you have to read between the lines. Or at least read a website.
Perhaps this weekendโs event only felt jarring because there was so much to ignore.
Play-by-play man Mike Goldberg and color commentator Joe Rogan did their normal duty, carrying the audience through an 11-fight card without once really engaging with arguably the three biggest stories of the night.
Belfort's fighting for the first time in three years without TRT? Ignored it.
That spate of news stories re-examining Johnsonโs checkered past? Ignored it.
Cormier and Johnson only meeting for the title because Jon Jones was recently given the boot? Well, they couldnโt completely ignore that one, but the UFC seemed to do its very best to keep it at armโs length.
Just before the UFC 187 main event, producers aired a short video package highlighting the Jones situation, but nobody ever actually uttered the words โfelony chargesโ or โhit and run.โ
At least not out loud.
Instead, they noted we were about to crown a new titlist at 205 pounds for the first time since 2011. They spoke of Cormierโs recent loss to the champion and referred to Jones as being โon the sidelinesโ or โon hiatus.โ Nobody mentioned the pregnant woman with a broken arm, the marijuana reportedly found in Jonesโ vehicle or eyewitness accounts saying he ran away from the wreck before briefly dashing back to grab a large wad of cash.
Of anyone, Cormier came the closest to actually putting his finger on it. After heโd defeated Johnson by third-round submission, he seized the microphone from Rogan and declared: โJon Jones, get your s--t together! Iโm waiting for you!โ
If youโd been paying attention to the UFC news cycle, no explanation of Cormierโs words was needed. If you hadnโt, none was offered.
Again, all this merely amounted to business as usual. The UFCโs announcers work for the fight company, so there has never been any expectation that they will say anything other than exactly what the UFC wants us to hear.
Perhaps fans donโt even want to be bothered with pesky details like what happened to the light heavyweight champion. Perhaps they donโt care why Belfort suddenly showed up on their TV screens looking like a three-day-old balloon. Maybe they just want to plunk down their money and spend a few worry-free hours watching the fights.
But for hardcore MMA fans, it was hard to ignore the fact that this version of UFC 187 only existed because of these storylines. Johnson and Cormier were only fighting for the title because the UFC told Jones he couldnโt. Weidman and Belfort were only there because three previous efforts to get them in the cage together had failedโtwice due to injury, but once because Belfort was pulled out for drug-related reasons.
Largely pretending those narratives didnโt exist made the whole event seem like one big lie of omission.
You can almost cut the UFC some slack for not meeting Johnsonโs legal issues head-on or for putting the Jones story on the backburner in order to focus on the two guys actually fighting that night. Neither of those stories directly affected what fans were seeing in the cage.
The drama surrounding Belfort, however, was a different thing entirely.
Clearly, after his long, well-publicized dalliance with TRT, the sudden absence of the controversial hormone treatments changed everything for The Phenom. He showed up at UFC 187 physically depleted, looking not at all like the muscle-bound beast who crafted three consecutive head-kick knockouts during 2013.
As the UFC broadcast team repeatedly marveled at his longevityโliterally counting the days since Belfortโs UFC debut in 1997 and reminding us that recently heโd looked even more dangerous than in his 19-year-old salad daysโit actually felt like they were mocking us.
โI canโt believe about 20 years ago, you and I were talking about Vitor Belfort,โ Goldberg said to open the main card. โWeโre still doing it tonight.โ
โThereโs no one like him,โ Rogan replied. โThereโs no one from that era that is not only competitive today but fighting for the title in a really high-profile fight. Vitor Belfort is coming off three of the most spectacular victories of his career 20 years into the game.โ
All of this discussion went down without a hint of irony, of course.
Goldberg and Rogan never mentioned Belfortโs positive test for elevated levels of testosterone from February 2014. They never noted that 20 days after that failed test the Nevada State Athletic Commission suddenly banned TRT from competition.
They never pointed out the striking physical differences between the Belfort who showed up to fight Weidman and the dangerous maniac on the highlight reels, even as they aired them.
Had Belfort lost all that muscle mass as a result of an illness or some terrible accidentโlike the motorcycle wreck that knocked former heavyweight champion Frank Mir out of competition back in 2004, for exampleโit would have been a major topic of conversation. Yet on this night we were tacitly asked not to make an issue of Belfortโs stunning physical transformation.
They couldnโt stop people from thinking it, though. When the UFC posted the results of its โfan pick โem pollโ prior to the middleweight title fight, it revealed that 75 percent of spectators tabbed Weidman to win. Certainly, those numbers wouldnโt have been nearly as lopsided if anyone thought the โmost spectacularโ incarnation of Belfort was going to show up that night.
But we didnโt expect that guy, and he didnโt show. Weidman crushed Belfort by first-round TKO, and then we all moved onโanother chapter of MMA history closed without so much as a wink and a nod.
And look: We know why the company does this. Itโs trying to sell us stuff. Itโs trying to pocket our money and keep us all coming back for more. UFC PPVs are more sales pitches than news reports. This is a reality we perfectly understand, even if it occasionally feels like a slap in the face to people who know whatโs going on behind the scenes.
The weirdest part, maybe, is that we all know theyโre doing it. We show up to a UFC event expecting a certain amount of spin. We know weโre getting the companyโs perspective rather than the unadulterated truth. Weโve decided that we can put up with it because thatโs the way things have always been and, really, what are we going to do about it?
You have to reimagine our sportโs entire history to dream up an MMA universe where fight promoters actually treat us like adults.
But thatโs weird, right? Itโs strange to know that andโwhatโs moreโto be OK with it.
At this strange juncture in our sport, it seems fitting to wonder: What if the UFC just told us the truth? Would that really be so bad?
Would it really harm the product if it chose to take on Belfortโs TRT use in a responsible and realistic way? What if the UFC just came out and told us Belfort had opted to use a controversial medical treatment that not everyone approved of, one which the NSAC later decided couldnโt properly be policed? That heโd been very good while he was on the stuff, but now nobody was sure exactly what was going to happen to him?
As a fanbase, we could handle that...couldnโt we?
Would it change anyoneโs mind about Belfort? Would it make more people cheer for Weidman? Would it make us all so disgusted that we switch off our TVs and leave MMA forever?
Doubt it.
Smart money says it wouldnโt matter much at all.
Even if it did make for some uncomfortable momentsโlife is complicated, you guys. Weird stuff happens, and you have to decide how you feel about itโat least we wouldnโt have to pretend we didnโt notice.
.jpg?w=2560 "Players with Shocking Career Earnings ๐ณ")
