UFC 129 Results: What Is Most Important Implication That Has Been Overshadowed?

UFC 129 was the largest event in UFC history. As such, there is significant buzz about the events of the card.

There is discussion over the epic finishes—Pablo Garza's flying triangle, John Makdessi's spinning backfist and, of course, the instantly-legendary crane kick by Lyoto Machida—as well as debate about the consequences of each fight relative to each weight class.

What will Jake Shields do now? Will Georges St-Pierre fight Anderson Silva? And other such questions are abound in the event's aftermath.

However, there is another important issue that has fallen by the wayside amongst such other matters.

This is the fact that more than half of the fights on the card were free.

Many may immediately think that this is a trivial fact, but that only demonstrates lack of vision and narrow-mindedness.

The importance of so many fights being shown for free is that the UFC—and the sport of MMA as a whole—can pervade society without having to obtain the coveted network deal that fans have long been clamoring for.

The UFC is using new media to bring in fans, specifically to bring in younger fans who will grow into older fans and in turn produce a new generation of younger fans.

Neither the NFL nor any other major sports organization uses new media in that manner. Thus, the UFC can still grow vastly in popularity without having to compromise its product in any way. It can bring what it wants to the fans when it wants and does not have to worry about the desires of network executives or any other such nonsense.

Some may bring up SpikeTV as a network that obviously has some say over what the UFC does. While yes, SpikeTV does have some leverage against the UFC, their network would suffer a tremendous blow with the loss of UFC programming and the UFC would be unharmed; they would just show the rest of the fights on Facebook.

After all, more than twice as many UFC 129 fights were on Facebook (five fights) than were on SpikeTV (two fights).

The only problem would be the loss of the Ultimate Fighter television show, but it is likely that another network would air the show instead.

Putting on so many fights for free with such accessibility in a massively untapped medium—Facebook has over 500 million users and no other sport is reaching those users with such gripping free content—is guaranteed to be successful and plant the UFC seed in the minds of many people.

For example, one needs to look no further than the recently defeated Mark Hominick. One of his sponsors for the fight was a team from the Canadian Football League, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. The UFC has risen to such popularity in Canada that other sports there are attempting to leech of the UFC's popularity.

The UFC can—and will—reach this level of popularity in the United States with Facebook and SpikeTV alone.

By the time the UFC does obtain a major network deal, the event will be a formality; by then, the UFC will already be immensely popular due to their aggressive and skillful use of the resources at their disposal.