UFC’s upcoming big-money run
Published by on September 3rd, 2008 in Current Events

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By Zach Arnold

If Chuck Liddell is able to defeat Rashad Evans this Saturday night in Atlanta, Georgia at UFC 88, UFC could well be on its way to the company’s biggest three-month run in PPV business — ever.

That’s a bold statement to make, especially given how much of a party crasher Rashad Evans could be to the proceedings if he is able to pull off the upset against Chuck Liddell.

If Liddell is able to defeat Evans, UFC will have three major blockbuster events in four months. UFC 91 on November 15th will be headlined by Randy Couture vs. Brock Lesnar. UFC 92 on December 27th could feature Chuck Liddell vs. Forrest Griffin for the UFC Light Heavyweight title and Wanderlei Silva vs. Quinton Jackson on the undercard. UFC’s ‘Super Bowl’ event will feature Georges St. Pierre vs. BJ Penn in a clash between the UFC’s 170-pound champion and UFC’s 155-pound champion. That’s a lot of PPV buys at stake for a company that continues to get richer while everyone else (outside of Strikeforce) continues to lose a lot of money financially in MMA.

Dana White is so confident that Affliction will be finished by January 2009 that he said he would be ‘horrified’ if the upstart organization was still around by then. Given the amount of money lost on the first Affliction event and the complete lack of buzz for the promotion’s second event on October 11th at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, I’d say that White right now is on target with his assessment of the competition. The week before Affliction’s Vegas show, Elite XC has Kimbo Slice vs. Ken Shamrock in South Florida. Not only will both men essentially be putting their careers on the line, but Elite XC’s long-term business future will likely be on the line as well. If EXC fails to draw many eyeballs for the Kimbo/Shamrock fight on CBS, then it’s going to be hard for CBS to justify supporting Elite XC as a long-term MMA play.

There were a lot of MMA insiders who questioned how UFC would fare during the Summer months in regards to the outside challenges the company would face. Once Lorenzo Fertitta inserted himself into a full-time management role in UFC, everything else seemed to fall into place for Zuffa. Affliction started with a bang and looks like it could go out with a whimper. Elite XC has lost so much money so quickly that even one of their champions (KJ Noons) isn’t taking the company seriously. DREAM is on life support and could very well get the axe if they can’t pop a big rating for their Yokohama Arena event on September 21st. No one at this point is really serious competition for UFC, which is a very positive outcome for Dana White considering the heat he was under for not having Randy Couture or Tito Ortiz under full control just a few months ago.

The UFC-only climate for MMA fighters is going to be fascinating to watch. Politically-speaking, everyone is going to have to play the role of a good soldier and keep their mouths shut. If they don’t, they will be out of a job and perhaps out of the business for good. What does this mean for your average MMA fan/consumer? The average fan only cares about seeing the best and most marketable fighters, and UFC delivers on that front. Nobody else does at this point. A UFC-only environment is a plus for casual fans, who aren’t too interested in shelling out big bucks to buy PPVs from the competition. This is why Elite XC’s attempt to move into the PPV market for 2009 is too little, too late. It’s foolish. The company has little or no leverage to make people pay to see a product on PPV that they were watching for free on CBS. What big-money fights can EXC deliver on PPV that they haven’t delivered so far on CBS? The answer — none.

By the beginning of 2009, UFC (along with WEC) could conceivably control all the major talent in every single weight class in the world. Yes, there is Jake Shields with Elite XC. He’s their 170-pound champion. If Elite XC folds or sells it assets to UFC due to financial problems, we could very well see Shields fighting in the Octagon. Then there are the heavyweights like Andrei Arlovski and Josh Barnett. Barnett will never be in UFC and Arlovski may return, but certainly not at the salary that Affliction is currently paying him. The danger for so many non-Zuffa fighters right now is that without any serious competition or major alternatives happening in Japan, UFC has created themselves a pure buyer’s market where they dictate the price of fighters. Dana White was reportedly furious at the amount of money Affliction threw at fighters for their debut show because White supposedly felt that it would throw fighter purses off-kilter and cause certain fighters to be over-valued. Somehow, given Affliction’s current status, I have to guess and assume that UFC isn’t too worried about this situation right now.

While other MMA organizations have lost millions of dollars, UFC stands to make tens of millions of dollars at the gate, on PPV, and through sponsorships & merchandising over the next four months. It’s the kind of big-money run that a promoter can only dream about, and you have to tip your cap to UFC for being able to pull this off. They are going to deliver the big matc

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