Competition and the world of Mixed Martial Arts
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008Ultimate Fighting Championship. World Extreme Cage Fighting. Pride. International Fight League. Affliction. Elite Xtreme Combat. All of the above are promotional organizations, past and present, in the world of Mixed Martial Arts. All of these multi-million dollar companies are trying to get a piece of the proverbial pie by promoting the fastest growing sport in the world today.
The Ultimate Fighting Campionship (UFC) and sister company World Extreme Cage Fighting (WEC) represent the largest of these companies and are owned by Zuffa Ltd. Pride, IFL and Elite Xtreme Combat (EliteXC) represent the now defunct side of the business. They are the challengers that have all been bankrupted by the mighty UFC. Most people are excited by the fact that the UFC now seems to have a complete and utter stranglehold over the promotion of MMA, but to me things could be much better.
Too the casual fan the UFC is Mixed Martial Arts and vice versa. The UFC is the top dog and they know it. This means that the UFC is able to operate with impunity when it comes to fighters salaries, contracts, venues, cost of pay-per-views, fighter match-ups, likeness rights, etc. This translates into low to no salaries for beginning fighters, lack of control over sponsorship deals, less then stellar fight cards, lackadaisical promotion and high pay-per-view/gate charges.
A good promotional company that could offer some competition to the UFC would make a world of difference and provide the casual and hardcore fan with better quality MMA in every aspect of the sport. For example, when Affliction held their first ever fight card, the UFC immediately called their #1 fighter (Anderson Silva) and scheduled a free fight on Spike TV on one months notice. This is just one example of how competition could work wonders in the world of MMA. Just think, if we had a few companies competing with each other we could have top fight cards every month, the pay-per-view fee (now 44.95 per fight) would be much lower and with more events each month the public would have more venues available to attend fights. As it stands now if you live in the state of Florida you may have a UFC fight come once a year (in 2008 there were xero!). With 3 or 4 large MMA promotions, every state may be visited multiple times a year.
Many people will argue that with multiple organizations there would be multiple champions and no way to tell who is the best in the world. This is true in part, but if these companies co-promoted and worked together (while still making boatloads of money for themselves) we could have inter-organizational fights, controversies and excitement. Also, this would once again create better main events, as each organization would have to strive to put on the best show and garner the most support.
I am a very big fan of everything MMA and the UFC, but I do not see any harm in having more then one big dog in the backyard.
- Darin Duehl