UFC 200: The Ultimate in Failing Upward

UFC 200 is the greatest card in the history of mixed martial arts.

Full stop.

Nothing else comes close. UFC 100, a triple bill centered on the sport’s two biggest stars—Brock Lesnar and Georges St-Pierre—in title fights and the rivalry between Dan Henderson and Michael Bisping, which was thought to reach its violent conclusion (or did it?), is the promotion's best event until now.

It doesn’t hold a candle to this one.

No one knows whether Saturday's event will break the pay-per-view record UFC 100 set (1,600,000 buys). But when comparing the matchups, the two aren’t competitive. Don’t forget, Shannon Gugerty jerked the curtain that night in July 2009, while a guaranteed barn-burner in Jim Miller vs. Takanori Gomi will do the honors Saturday.

Other giant events such as UFC 116 (Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin), UFC 189 (Chad Mendes vs. Conor McGregor) and UFC 196 (McGregor vs. Nate Diaz) are remembered fondly, but they were nothing close to what the UFC will offer Saturday.

And the whole thing happened in spite of itself.

As much as the MMA world is thrilled for what awaits in Las Vegas, it’s important to remember the clumsiness and good fortune that supported UFC 200's construction. There is no Ronda Rousey. There's no highly criticized, cash-grabbing rematch between Diaz and McGregor. A weird co-main event between Jose Aldo and Frankie Edgar for an interim title that doesn’t need to exist was originally set and the other fights made people shrug in indifference.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as the promises from UFC brass suggested it would be. A case could be made that UFC 198 (Fabricio Werdum vs. Stipe Miocic) and UFC 199 (Luke Rockhold vs. Bisping) offered more for the hardcore fan. Support for that claim exists when one points to the intriguing title fights, anticipated debuts and general violence offered at those events.

But then, just as the sport uttered “meh” at the UFC 200 card, things went haywire.

One half of the dubious main event, McGregor, was jettisoned for protesting his media schedule. The other half, Diaz, went on vacation.

The prelims slowly, often quietly, became fleshed out with stars, superstars and former champions, creating depth and an event that is as good as anything Fox Sports 1 has received from the UFC since they went into business together.

Oh, and that Aldo vs. Edgar co-main event that didn’t need to exist?

A returning Brock Lesnar bumped it down the card. The same Lesnar who closed the door on MMA only a few months before holding his wrestling bosses hostage, demanding they free him for one more turn in the world of unstaged fisticuffs. They did. So here comes good ol’ Brock, lumbering out of the Canadian wilderness to take his place against Mark Hunt in a must-see co-main event.

Even in the face of the most chaotic turn of events in the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency era, which saw Jon Jones lifted from the main event only minutes before starting his weight cut, his would-be opponent, Daniel Cormier, found himself scheduled to fight Anderson Silva out of nowhere in a contest that’s arguably more intriguing, even if it lacks competitive merit.

The UFC lost the best fighter to ever strap on gloves during fight week, Jones, and replaced him with the fighter who held the mantle for a decade before him in Silva—on 48 hours’ notice. That is an outrageous piece of good fortune.

It’s all symptomatic of the UFC failing upward in the biggest fashion it ever has heading into its 200th marquee event. Sometimes, things just work out.

The event didn’t need Rousey’s star power, McGregor’s salesmanship, random title fights of questionable merit or Jones to show up clean and fight his biggest rival because things kept falling into place.

What the UFC has, thanks to necessity and good fortune, is the best card it has ever built. It has something for everyone. Chaos, carnage, competition and champions will all be on display.

If this is what failure looks like, it would be nice to see the UFC fail more often.

Follow me on Twitter: @matthewjryder.