At this point, the world is well aware of what happened. A contender suffered a last minute knee injury and a champion refused to fight on short notice. From that point, the dominoes crashed to the ground, resulting in the UFC canceling its September 1st event. Just that quickly, the whole card was written out of the history books, and the sport, the fans, and the fighters must decide to move forward. Even still, the events that went down last week will continue to affect the athletes who step into harm’s way when the cage door closes.
According to UFC President Dana White, the event was called off due to Jon Jones taking the advice of Greg Jackson and refusing to fight Chael Sonnen. With that decision, twenty fighters, their corners, and their traveling mates were left without any income, and with the bills associated with competition traveling. Fighters immediately sent their vitriol towards Jones, in what was understood, although misguided, anger. Jones’ decision was shocking because no one would ever expect a fighter, let alone a champion, to turn down a fight if called upon by the UFC. However, though unexpected and shocking, these actions may set into action a bigger response that may serve to benefit these athletes.
In mixed martial arts, there isn’t any misunderstanding the fact that the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the power player of the sport. It can set fighter values, event expectations, and anything else it considers acceptable, because it doesn’t have any true competition. While not a complete monopoly on the sport, there’s a reason why it is considered the “big stage” of MMA. It is in its best interest to keep the power out of the fighters’ hands in hopes of being able to tell them what they have to do and when they have to do it without much pushback. Jones pushed back, and that is part of the reason why White was so quick to blast him and his trainer in public.
White shrugged off suggestions that the UFC’s matchmaking practices over the last year plus could have attributed to this situation. Instead, he placed all the blame on Jones, hoping to lower his overall value and put him back in place with the other fighters on their roster. Jones already had a perception crisis among the fans of the sport, but most of those fans still supported him enough that he was able to establish himself as a star, gaining a sponsorship with Nike, among others. Yet the tirade that White went on caused fans to come down on Jones in such a way that he was almost required to apologize as a public relations move. In doing so, Dana White and the UFC made it known that they considered themselves the true stars in mixed martial arts.
On the other side of that coin, Jones may have taken a step that will push mixed martial arts closer towards the position that its close relative boxing finds itself. Boxing is dominated by a few big names, and these names are fighters, not promoters. There’s a reason why Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao were the two highest earning athletes between 2011 and 2012. That reason is their power as world-class athletes to determine for themselves what they do and when they will do it. Promoters play the second fiddle, and can only make moves when the fighters are ready. The UFC has done a sound job in creating an atmosphere that is the exact opposite.
This has proved to be a sound strategy up until this point, but the UFC now has to deal with an extended television schedule and the fact that they do not have enough “big name” fighters that can carry an event. Now, instead of promoting the fighters as a whole, the company has gone with promoting prominent fighters such as Jones, Sonnen, Anderson Silva, and Georges St. Pierre. So when one of those individuals bows out due to injury or a business decision, the ramifications can be monumental, both financially and in terms of fan perception.
So what Jones has done may force the UFC’s hand, and it could begin to promote these fighters in such a way that fans watching at home and in attendance will begin to care about more than just the main event fighters. Hopefully, fighters and managers will see the value of going beyond the call of duty, and pushing their names out to the masses through multiple marketing efforts. That is the only way to thrust yourself into some of the opportunities to make money that would be out of reach otherwise. The other possibility is that the UFC can continue to push “top heavy” events, and this kind of catastrophe can happen again and again. And with cancellation clauses non-existent in UFC contracts, fighters on the undercards will continue to suffer. We see it in boxing time and time again; the UFC is potentially headed in the same direction.
For fighters to protect themselves, it is now time to begin investing more into their careers as businesses. Yes, they are involved in a sport that they love; but they must also begin to see themselves as brands they must develop into full-fledged income sources. Furthermore, the bigger a name that you become in the sport, the more important it is to find an adequate management and public relations team. Jones should have had a PR representative in place long before this situation developed in order to deal with his public perceptions issue, but not having that voice with the media caused him massive amounts of damage. There is no excuse for Sonnen being on ESPN before Jones. Fighters need to do what is necessary to avoid having this kind of thing happen in the future. However, these aspects of being an athlete cost money, and it is well known that many of these fighters are not making large amounts of money. Nevertheless, it is that much more important to build yourself into a brand that continues to bring in income whether you are inside or outside the cage.
It will be interesting to see what will happen in the aftermath of the UFC 151 cancellation. Will fighters use this opportunity to wrest some of the power away from the top promoter in the sport? Or will the UFC recognize a potential problem, and reposition itself as the biggest name on the marquee?
