Next weekend at UFC 162, a fighter ranked in the top 15 of his weight class will be fighting in the opening bout of the night, aka the “curtain jerker.”
If this was a flyweight fighter, I wouldn’t be writing this column. But it’s not a flyweight bout that opens up UFC 162’s Facebook prelims, it’s a contender in the UFC welterweight division.
The fighter is Mike Pierce, and he takes on David Mitchell in a 170-pound scrap at 4:00 in the afternoon (Las Vegas time) next Saturday. If you’ve ever seen a UFC show in Vegas, you know that not many people show up to the first fight of the event, especially not when it’s at 4 p.m. And we all know that only the hardcores are sitting there on their laptops watching the Facebook preliminary card stream, which means a lot of people are going to be missing Pierce’s fight.
But this wasn’t a scheduling quirk, and this wasn’t because the UFC 162 card is so stacked that they couldn’t fit a fighter so close to the Top 10 on the PPV card, or at least the televised FX card. This is especially true when you have fighters who have recently been suspended for drugs (Chris Leben, Dave Herman) taking those coveted free TV spots – you know, exactly the kind of fighters who should be relegated to the prelims, if you ask me.
Regardless of how UFC president Dana White will choose to spin this if he’s asked by reporters next week, the reason Pierce is fighting on Facebook is because he has a relatively fan-unfriendly fighting style, and the UFC knows there’s always a chance he’s in that ‘black-hole fight’ that White dreads on every card. This isn’t to say Pierce is a bad fighter; in fact, he’s an excellent fighter, one of the best in the world in his weight class, who uses his strengths against his opponent’s weaknesses, — or in other words, exposes his opponents’ porous takedown defences with his excellent wrestling. In fact, of all active fighters in the UFC welterweight division, only Georges St-Pierre, Johny Hendricks, Josh Koscheck and Matt Brown have won more fights at 170 pounds in the Octagon than Pierce has
But Pierce, who has a 16-5 overall record in MMA, has been to decisions in 13 career fights, meaning more often that not, there’s no finish in his fights, and the fans are paying to see finishes, which the UFC knows. That’s the reason why the UFC threw him in the first fight of the night, so the least amount of people can see him fight. With 11 career fights in the UFC and eight of those bouts going the full 15 minutes, Pierce is the new Jon Fitch, aka the new smoke break fighter. I don’t mean to sound so harsh because I appreciate what fighters like Pierce and Fitch do, but the casual fan doesn’t, and that’s why the UFC is stashing him on Facebook against a low-ranked fighter like Mitchell – and it’s why they may let him go with a loss, despite his excellent 8-3 record in the UFC.
Last October, the UFC sent Pierce and Aaron Simpson a message when they made both guys the first fight of the night at UFC on FX 5, a message that was made even louder and clearer when, after the Jeremy Stephens vs. Yves Edwards fight was scratched at the last minute, the UFC decided to put Carlo Prater vs. Marcus Levesseur on TV instead of Pierce vs. Simpson, despite the fact that neither Prater or Levesseur was ranked, and Pierce and Simpson were.
Ironically, the UFC made a mistake, as Pierce and Simpson’s fight turned out to be one of the most exciting bouts of the night, and it convinced a lot of observers that Pierce had heard the UFC’s message loud and clear, and was going to change his fighting style. But he went back to his takedown-rinse-and-repeat strategy in his next fight against Seth Baczynski at UFC on FX 6, and after that stinker he lost all of the goodwill he gained in the win over Simpson, and thus he’s back on Facebook.
After all, there is a reason why he fought Simpson in October and then Baczynski in December, and then had to wait all the way until July for his next fight, despite the fact that many welterweight matches have needed replacement fighters in the first six months of 2013. The UFC offers fighters who are exciting those replacement matches first, and Pierce needs to start being more exciting if he wants to get those calls from UFC matchmaker Joe Silva – just like he did when he knocked out Simpson and then got the short-notice call to fight Baczynski.
Pierce really needs a big win next weekend, and he needs to acquire it in impressive fashion if he wants to show the UFC he can become a fighter that the fans want to pay to see fight. Because if he doesn’t, he’ll be in the “Jake Shields doghouse,” and that’s a place no fighter wants to be.
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UFC 162: Silva vs. Weidman is due to take place on July 6, 2013 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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