UFC 96 & “Weak Cards” in MMA
Posted by Alan Conceicao on March 8th, 2009
Falling square in the middle of the pack, tonights UFC 96 event featured strong fighters in interesting bouts and lesser names in less interesting ones. However, it has inspired some talk about what makes a “weak card,” and so it would seem a good jumping off point (following UFC 95 and the announcement of UFC 99) to review why they are touted as being weak to begin with.
The first and most obvious aspect is that there were no title fights. Title fights aren’t in and of themselves always great (Dave Menne held a UFC title once! So did Matt Serra), but they’re typically the best fighters in the promotion at that given weight. Second, there’s a distinct lack of star power, even among the prelim fighters. Gray Maynard may be better pound for pound than Chris Lytle, and so might be Jim Miller, for that matter, but people are more willing to entertain watching Chris Lytle because of his sloppy kickboxing, “finishing” style. Finally, weak cards often feature mismatches. WEC 39 last weekend provided a -1300 favorite in Jose Aldo, a fact rarely repeated on other websites when recapping his KO win. This weekend, we have Brandon Vera fighting a balding, chubby, clearly overmatched foe.What’s interesting is that there seems to be a running argument against the weak UFC card argument that “big names don’t always translate into good fights,” often combined with “some of these bad cards have had great action.” I say that the arguments against it are interesting because they basically remove any responsibility for the UFC to actually book good fights. Saying “Look how awesome UFC 95 was in spite of who fought on it!” is a very subconscious way of saying, “I don’t care who the UFC has fight or how good they are, I just want to see knockouts and submissions!” Really, it is.
Sure, there will be those who disapprove of that statement, but it’s completely true. Look at the reaction of fans to UFC 91. Who were these people who really believed that Nate Quarry was going to beat Damien Maia? They are probably the same people who picked Neil Grove over Mike Ciesnolevicz, come to think of it. Much was said about how exciting Bocek/Robinson and Hazelett/McCrory were, in spite of neither fight featuring anything near elite talent. If those fights happened in, say, the IFL, no one would have cared about the participants, much less how the fights went. When did someone last talk with you about Healy/Markham?
Its not that they’re better fighters than people outside the UFC, because they aren’t. Being in the UFC alone makes all the difference. In that sense, the majority of the promotional work to just sell people on fights is already done; Zuffa can put on mismatches (as Patt/Vera was tonight) or bouts between journeymen (Brown/Sell) and there are no complaints about them being on a PPV, since they are UFC caliber fights. After all, they have to be, because they are on a UFC show. Self fufilling prophecy and all.
Now this is not to say that UFC 96 was a bad event or devoid of anything positive. Rampage/Jardine was a little sloppy as both men didn’t look well conditioned, but the fight certainly wasn’t bad. Gonzaga/Carwin ended as suddenly and in exciting fashion as many heavyweight fights have. Gray Maynard pulled off maybe the best performance yet of his career. And yet, how much excitement did you have for Hamill/Munoz? Especially after it started, when Munoz was exposed as being completely deficient in almost all qualities pertaining to MMA within the first 30 seconds? Is that really what you’re looking for from a MMA PPV? Don’t pretend the possibility hadn’t come to mind before given that Hamill’s fought high levels of competition before and Munoz, well, hadn’t.
What I’m perhaps getting at is this: Are MMA fans any different from the Irish faithful that used to pack the MSG Theater to watch John Duddy beat whichever scrub his management had pulled up for that particular financial quarter? We often talk about wanting competitive fights between high level competitors and how boxing has abandoned that, but it seems when push comes to shove, what is said more is that they’d prefer early knockouts involving gatekeepers than to see such bouts.
Is MMA really any different in terms of its matchmaking? It looks increasingly to not be the case. Even Dana isn’t pretending that he’s stacking the cards every time out (he says there’s too many to stack). And if it isn’t, then what is it about the perception of fans that would get them to consciously pay for Sell/Brown?
March 8th, 2009 at 3:51 am
In full agreement with the article outside of one thing: I think you’re being unfair to Dustin Hazelett! He might not be an “elite” (read top ten) talent just yet but he’s certainly close and shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as Mark Bocek. Outside of that though, yeah.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:59 am
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