December Is the Make-or-Break Month for the UFC's Young Talent
The UFC has pinned its hopes, dreams and financial future on a loaded December schedule.
Four fight cards in 10 days from December 10 and December 19 feature 82 fighters, nearly a fifth of the UFC's roster. That number doesn't count the members of The Ultimate Fighter 22 cast who will get a shot at the finale on December 11.
Those 82 fighters include the lion's share of the UFC's young talent, the athletes who will carry the promotion on their backs for years to come. If the rise of Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey in the last year has taught the UFC anything, it's that fans buy big names as pay-per-view headliners, not the UFC brand.
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To some extent, of course, the brand does sell. Nevertheless, the difference between an average UFC pay-per-view and one headlined by Georges St-Pierre, Brock Lesnar, Anderson Silva, Jon Jones or now Rousey and McGregor and one featuring Daniel Cormier or Demetrious Johnson is obvious.
Cormier's two 2015 pay-per-views without Jones sold a combined 625,000 units and Johnson's two did 240,000 buys. Conor McGregor's sole appearance sold 825,000, more than UFC 187 and UFC 192 combined, while Rousey's first two headliners moved 1.5 million and early projections have her third trending at 1.1 million buys, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t MMA News).
At the highest levels, MMA is a star-driven sport. The UFC has invested more resources in 2014 and 2015 in publicizing and creating new stars, namely Rousey and McGregor, but they're not the only beneficiaries of the UFC's media machine: Paige VanZant, Sage Northcutt and Elias Theodorou have all been named as potential stars by the promotion's PR staff.
Creating future pay-per-view draws is a long process, but at its core it's one that revolves around putting those potential stars in front of as many eyeballs as possible. That's what the UFC is doing with its young talent this month.
With McGregor headlining against his nemesis Jose Aldo and the middleweight title fight between Chris Weidman and Luke Rockhold representing a strong co-main, UFC 194 is the linchpin of the UFC's "Go Big" schedule in December.
It's expected to sell well over a million units, and the accompanying publicity should draw attention to the Fight Pass event on the preceding Thursday, headlined by VanZant vs. Rose Namajunas, and The Ultimate Fighter finale show the night after. The UFC on Fox event on December 19 should also benefit from the big card's shine.
It's not a coincidence that the UFC has stacked those four events with its most promising young fighters, including VanZant, Northcutt and Theodorou all on that December 10 Fight Pass card. It makes sense to put the promotion's youthful talent at the forefront when the maximum number of eyes will already be watching for stars such as McGregor and Weidman, who is no slouch himself in terms of drawing power.
There is evidence to suggest that stacking multiple events in a short period of time around a major card increases the ratings of the smaller shows. The Frank Mir-Todd Duffee Fight Night that followed UFC 189 in July drew 800,000 viewers, an increase over the previous year's show. The Michael Bisping-Thales Leites Fight Night three days later smashed the ratings of the previous afternoon card, the Chad Mendes-Ricardo Lamas Fight Night held in April.
The strongest evidence to suggest a sort of halo effect comes from the UFC on Fox 16 numbers two weeks after UFC 189. Headlined by the rematch between TJ Dillashaw and Renan Barao, the card averaged 2.8 million viewers, the highest for any of the UFC's summer Fox offerings.
Conversely, the TUF finale show the night after UFC 189 did only 691,000 viewers, a substantial drop from the previous year's iteration that was headlined by BJ Penn and Frankie Edgar's third fight. Stephen Thompson and Jake Ellenberger headlined this July's offering, however, and the drop-off in name value largely explains the difference.
It seems safe to say, then, that piling up smaller cards around a major event will have a positive impact on the overall ratings. Stacking those less important cards with the best young talent on the roster is the most efficient way of ensuring that viewers will be exposed to them, paving the way for future media pushes that can turn them into draws in their own right.
VanZant, the headliner for the Thursday Fight Pass card, is the clearest example of this trend. Matchmaker Sean Shelby gave her several progressive steps up in competition, as befits an inexperienced and raw young fighter. The UFC public relations staff gave her a brief bit of media exposure around the time of her last fight in September.
With that groundwork finished, VanZant received a headlining spot. She was initially scheduled to face Joanne Calderwood, but an injury to the Scot led to her replacement with Rose Namajunas, another youthful and talented strawweight in whom the UFC has invested substantial promotional effort. Both Rousey herself and UFC President Dana White at one point referred to her as "the next Ronda Rousey."
While the UFC would probably prefer a VanZant victory—she boasts nearly half a million followers on Instagram and has already gotten some promotional muscle behind her—Namajunas is still a viable property with star potential. The bout is a win-win for the UFC.
The same can't be said for all of the matchups in which young and talented fighters will find themselves in the coming weeks. Texan prodigy Sage Northcutt will take on Cody Pfister on that same Fight Pass event, and there's no question that the UFC would rather be promoting a 19-year-old with a model's looks and the athleticism of an NFL prospect than the unheralded Pfister.
Canadian TUF winner Elias Theodorou takes on Brazil's Thiago Santos earlier that evening, and again, the UFC would almost certainly prefer to have the talented and good-looking Theodorou with his hand raised at the end. Twenty-five-year-old Brazilian TUF champion Antonio Carlos Jr. would likely be the promotion's choice against the 34-year-old Kevin Casey, who got popped for performance-enhancing drugs last year.
Bantamweight uber-prospect Aljamain Sterling draws 37-year-old Johnny Eduardo on the prelims of that card. Again, it would behoove the promotion for the charismatic American to walk away victorious. The division badly needs new blood at the top, and the 26-year-old Sterling is a much better bet in the long term than the oft-injured Eduardo.
The first fight on the UFC 194 main card will feature 23-year-old Hawaiian Max Holloway against the veteran Jeremy Stephens in what should be a slobberknocker. While guaranteed action was likely the reason behind the booking, the future of the featherweight division would be much brighter with the young Holloway sitting on the cusp of a title shot with an eight-fight winning streak than with a victorious Stephens.
Earlier that evening, 23-year-old Kevin Lee will take on Brazilian TUF winner Leonardo Santos. On paper, this might look like a win-win for the promotion given Santos' TV exposure in Brazil, but he's 35 and a far-from-entertaining fighter. Lee is sharp and exceptionally talented and could join the lightweight division's elite sooner rather than later.
The only true win-win fight featuring young fighters for the UFC on the UFC 194 card pits Division I wrestler Colby Covington against TUF Brazil 3 winner Warlley Alves in a crackling welterweight matchup, and even there it would probably be better to have Alves emerge victorious. He's charismatic, vicious and has already received a promotional push by virtue of his time on Globo during the reality show.
There are fewer prospects the next week gracing the UFC on Fox event, but there are still several notable young talents. The featured Fight Pass prelim pits TUF 21 winner Kamaru Usman against Britain's Leon Edwards in an outstanding welterweight bout, and both of those fighters are talented and potentially marketable moving forward.
These are the only most notable matchups featuring young fighters during this four-event stretch. Other dark horses include Magomed Mustafaev, Josh Samman, Randa Markos vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz, Omari Akhmedov and Zubaira Tukhugov.
The UFC had also scheduled Mirsad Bektic, easily the best young fighter at 145 pounds and perhaps in the entire promotion, in a stiff test against Tatsuya Kawajiri before the Bosnian-American was forced to withdraw with a knee injury.
It's clear that the promotion is betting heavily on this stretch of events for the future. The UFC has positioned its young talent for maximum exposure and largely placed it in matchups that are designed to highlight its skills.
While it wouldn't necessarily be a disaster for the B-sides of those fights to emerge victorious, a situation the UFC has traditionally been excellent at avoiding, it would still be in the promotion's interest to have its youthful talent win.
The only truly devastating outcome would be if nobody were watching when it all went down. The list of prospects here is mind-boggling in the depth and breadth of its talent, and it represents the cream of the UFC's investments in young fighters over the last several years.
If the "Go Big" concept flops, that will mean a thin lineup for the traditionally big shows in January and February that benefit from promotion during the NFL playoffs on Fox. As it stands right now, those cards are stripped bare of talent, particularly young and rising fighters.
Two months out, not a single fighter has been officially booked for the Super Bowl pay-per-view event, and while a few fighters could potentially make quick turnarounds, that seems like wishful thinking.
If the viewership for these cards reaches the peaks the UFC and most observers think it will, however, then the promotion will have succeeded in exposing its best young fighters to an enormous audience. This is the kind of long-term move that will only pay off in the years to come.
If Max Holloway, Paige VanZant or Elias Theodorou breaks through, the chances are good that we'll be able to look back at this plan and note the role it played in their future success.
Unless otherwise noted, all pay-per-view buy numbers are courtesy of Wrestling Observer Newsletter (as compiled by MMAPayout.com) and all ratings numbers are courtesy of Nielsen (as compiled by The MMA Report).
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. He can be found on Twitter.
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