Who’s Stepping Up In MMA?
Published by on February 4th, 2008 in Operation Cleanup

 Print |  Email |  RSS

By Charles Jay

The job that Dana White, with the Fertittas’ money behind him, has done in building the UFC to the point it is today, is startling. I’ll guarantee you can point to very few success stories like it in the recent history of pro sports.

The UFC has opened up possibilities elsewhere in this industry. Others have been trying to make an entry of sorts. Heck, it’s likely you wouldn’t be reading story, on this website, if it wasn’t for the efforts of White and the UFC.

Regarding those who are coming into the business, White has been rather territorial, as if because he, in effect, created the dynamic under which this industry is operating, that he somehow has some implied dominion over it.

In reality, we’re way past that kind of thinking now. Walter Chrysler manufactured his cars on an assembly line, and there wasn’t a damn thing Henry Ford could do about it. What’s more, no one argued the point. Business is business. When you are successful there will be imitators. There will be competition. But the competition has been lacking something. Well, before we get ahead of ourselves – because that’s something I’m going to get into in the next piece – suffice it to say that the competition is lacking – period.

We need to have legitimate challengers to the UFC. Not because I am anti-UFC, because I am not. But because even a monopoly gained on merit is a monopoly. And very rarely is a monopoly a good thing.

So I ask – when is a genuine competitor for the UFC going to surface?

I ask that because most of the people who have come to the table thus far have missed. If we were to draw an analogy to a field goal kicker trying to boot one through the uprights, some of them were just wide to the right, like Scott Norwood for Buffalo in Super Bowl XXV. Others just shanked it. You can make your own judgments as to who falls into which category, but in the way of a quick review, PRIDE could have competed eventually in the U.S. market, but it was absorbed by the UFC along with WEC. The IFL has just not really gotten any traction. You look at Elite XC and you would like to give it a chance, but some of the big shows have ben disappointing, and they seem to exist only because of a deal with Showtime. If Showtime loses interest, what will they be left with? Kimbo Slice in somebody’s backyard? Maybe, but I hope it’s not mine.

The others aren’t doing anything significant enough – or even insignificant enough – to mention.

I’ve come to the conclusion that as time progresses, there are two types of organizations that are going to find some level of long-term success in this business. One is the promoter who produces small-scale club shows, using local talent and drawing from a local fan base that wants to go out to a live show in their “neighborhood,” so to speak; something the UFC, for example, is not serving and not competing directly with.

The other kind of organization will be the one that can go balls to the wall with the “big guy” – the UFC – possessing enough connections and resources (financial and otherwise) to go head-to-head in competing for talent and competing for fans. And it’s an organization that has to be able to play a little hardball.

Anyone else is basically a “tweener,” having enough resources to put on a larger scale show, even something on pay-per-view once in a while, but never enough to really compete with the UFC’s product on a consistent basis. The longer they go, the more of a chance they’re going to be swallowed up.

The UFC needs a challenger, really for the good of the sport in general. Is anyone ready to step up and take the bull by the horns?

Well, there just might be. We’ll talk about that a couple of installments from now, but next I want to explore the missing ingredient that could spell success but often leads to failure in its absence.