How Zuffa Has Dropped The Ball On The WEC Merger, Part 2

In part one of this article, I led out with statistics regarding the number of fights that have been promoted by the UFC since the merger.  These show a lower number of fights being promoted at 135 and 145 so far, and the glaring lack of TV coverage for these divisions.  So far things don't look good, but it is still early.

In part 2, I will cover the five commandments and flesh out some of my other ideas regarding how 135/145 are being promoted.  I'll also examine how Versus has been affected, how established UFC 155 guys dropping will affect things, TUF 14, and the facebook effect.  And I'm going to look at that Brittney Palmer picture.  A lot. 

So let's look at the commandments in order, and see how they've played out so far.

1.  Two more divisions means more title fights - Well, there haven't been any title fights yet.  Before you get mad at me for saying that, I realize it's only been just over three months, and Aldo vs. Hominick is currently scheduled to co-main UFC 129 in Toronto.  Jose Aldo was scheduled for UFC 125, but an injury pushed that back.  Current UFC Bantamweight Champion Dominick Cruz defended his title successfully on the last WEC card in December and likely wouldn't have been scheduled until April anyway.  Unfortunately though, he had surgery on his hand so it'll probably be a while longer than that, likely around July at the earliest.  This leaves the conundrum of TUF 14 - does the UFC go with Urijah Faber/Dominick Cruz and put off a title defense until probably December?  That would mean zero bantamweight title fights in the entire first year it was in the promotion.  For now, while injuries are obviously beyond the UFC's control, it's taking longer than the UFC would have liked to monetize the two new titles for sure.  No "ball dropping", just circumstance.

2.  Sponsors were more likely to get on board with guys now in the UFC, which benefits the fighters - I won't dispute this as a fact.  The problem is in execution.  When the WEC was still around, a lot of these guys were on TV regularly.  Granted, it was on Versus.  The last three events averaged 560k viewers or so (for perspective's sake, the last 18 measured events averaged about 600k), and WEC 48 on PPV drew a reported 175k buys.  Sponsors are more likely to get behind a fighter that's on TV regularly as opposed to an undercard fighter.  That's just good business.  Of course, the UFC brand name itself is enough to get these guys some more sponsorship money than they did in the WEC regardless of whether their fight is televised or not.  But...what happens when 90% of these guys lose their spot on TV? 

I've already laid out the relative rarity of seeing these guys on TV so far.  The ones that have made it are clearly making more sponsorship money just because of the fancy new letters (UFC), but how long does it take before sponsors start noticing the actual numbers?  The recent UFC show on Versus drew under 100k more viewers (681k average) than WEC 53 did on the same channel (615k average), and just 80k more than the WEC averaged over the last three years.  The last prelims on Ion did around the same number.  They're still doing excellent numbers on Spike, which likely led to Chad Mendes making that Money.  Cool.  But with the UFC increasingly spreading their coverage across multiple platforms, combined with their reluctance in getting the little guys on ANY platform at all, are these fighters really going to be rolling in sponsorship dough like people expected them to?  Torres and Faber will, sure.  Other then them and the champs though? And speaking of platforms, the new one isn't even beneficial in terms of sponsorship money. 

While facebook fights are great for fans that want to see more fights, most sponsors don't view streamed fights any differently than they do untelevised fights.  The low number of viewers and the platform likely isn't worth the extra expense for most of them.  For example, Demetrious Johnson likely wasn't making any extra money because his fight with Kid Yamamoto was streamed on facebook that day.  He certainly gained something from the exposure, which might matter monetarily down the road.   But were sponsors coming out of the woodwork to advertise on his shorts because his fight was being streamed on the internet?  No.  And since most of these guys aren't getting on TV anyway, even the alternative to TV isn't making them extra cash.  Sad but true.

3. UFC cards lacked depth, and adding 145 and 135 would lead to much stronger cards overall - I always viewed this as a total copout, because this is generally only applicable to people attending events, and if you don't know who any of these guys are anyway, how do these fights add any allure to attending an event?  While 135 and 145 fights are generally very exciting and certainly add to the arena experience, they're completely irrelevant to most of the people buying tickets to the show.  And to the other 99% of people that are watching on TV/PPV/facebook, we're not getting to see most of the fights anyway!  It makes no sense. 

Because Zuffa hasn't taken the time to build these guys as draws yet and have chosen to televise only a chosen few, they're leaving themselves in a position where they aren't creating any new draws. Sure, right now Torres, Faber and the champs can co-main a card.  But no one else is even PPV-worthy on their own.  Every way you look at it, the depth is an illusion and will wither away even further unless they change their approach.  For instance, if Eddie Wineland beats Urijah Faber, they're hooped.  You don't make a full-fledged draw off of one win, but you can certainly kill one with one loss.

4.  The WEC fighters were relatively unknown, and the UFC platform would give them much more exposure - Part one covered this.

5.  The WEC fighters were underpaid, and they'd make more money in the UFC. - I can only speak to reported salaries here, because whatever "backroom bonus system" that might exist is well beyond anything that could be thoroughly examined.  For this issue, there's very little data to work with this early in the game.  There's also the fact that each fighter is in a different situation, with some apparently still under their WEC contracts while others have re-negotiated.  Down the road this can be examined more thoroughly, but for now I'll just throw out the stats that have been reported.

Since the merger, only 10 ex-WEC fighters have had their salary reported by athletic commissions after competing in UFC fights.  Here they are, listed with their UFC salary and win bonus (if they won, obviously), and their salary from their last reported WEC fight.

Fredson Paixao  4k/4k UFC, 3k/3k WEC 50
Pablo Garza  4k UFC, unknown WEC 51
Will Campuzano  3k UFC. 3k/3k WEC 46 (last WEC fight unreported)
Nick Pace  3k/3k (lost 20% due to missing weight) UFC, unknown WEC 51
Tyler Toner  3k UFC.  3k/2k WEC 48 (last WEC fight unreported)
Leonard Garcia  16k/16k UFC. 14k/14k WEC 48 (last WEC fight unreported)
Mike Brown  23k UFC.  21k WEC 48 (last WEC fight unreported)
Diego Nunes 10k/10k UFC.  5k WEC 44 (last two WEC fights unreported)
Josh Grispi  15k UFC. 9k/9k WEC 41 (last WEC fight unreported)
Dustin Poirier  4k/4k UFC. 3k/3k WEC 50.

I know, super limited info.  So far, it doesn't seem like anyone getting much of a raise.  Don't worry though, I'm not going to even attempt to argue this this point. I'll just take a wait-and-see approach and come back to it later. 

What is obvious that the UFC provides the opportunity to win fight bonuses that are worth a lot more money than the 10k the WEC usually gave out.  Out of the seven events WEC fighters have competed on so far, ex-WEC fighters have picked up four bonuses: Donald Cerrone (75k, fight of the night), Brian Bowles (40k, sub of the night), Shane Roller (40k, KOTN), and Pablo Garza (30k, KOTN). This is more money than any of them were making salary-wise, so good for them.  I won't argue that the opportunity to pick these up is a big advantage, but it's still not a guarantee by any means.  And, surprisingly enough - the only person to win a bonus in the last year yet not make it to TV in any form?  Pablo Garza.

Now that were done with the commandments, we can briefly address three other things that have popped up - 155 guys dropping, Versus, and TUF 14.

A few 155 guys  so far are willing to drop to 145 and offer some credibility to the division.  Guys like Kenny Florian and Tyson Griffin are very good fighters and are well-known, adding depth and notoriety to the division.  Are they draws?  No, not really.  But they're certainly bigger draws than 99% of the guys at 145 fight now.  I can only find two possible faults with this - one is that the UFC-bred guys will monopolize what little TV time is afforded to the 145 division.  Honestly, the only way new talent will get exposure will be to break through these gatekeeper-types.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  I'll let you decide.   The other is that this has zero effect on the bantamweight division, which is half the equation here.

I wonder how the people at Versus feel right now.  They signed a deal that whittled their MMA coverage from 9 events a year down to 4.  Basically, they traded 7 WEC events for 2 UFC events.  As stated above, they averaged about 600k fans over the course of the last three years for their WEC shows.  I'm sure they made the deal expecting ratings like they got for UFC Live 1 (1.24 million viewers).  Instead, they're getting almost half that (681k viewers).  While the brand name probably means they can make more revenue off of advertising, it must be a bit disturbing to see this trending.  I'm also curious about how they feel in regards to the talent that's being put on their shows.  We'll find out more going forward, but based on the first event...I'm not sure how awesome this trade will work out for them.

Lastly is the concept of TUF 14.  For various reasons, the UFC hasn't pulled the trigger on a 135/145 TUF up until now.  TUF 14 has been confirmed to feature them, and now it's just a matter of sorting out coaches.  If Urijah Faber beats Eddie Wineland, you have to consider him a lock for one spot.  The other spot is likely down to Miguel Torres (if he beats Brad Pickett), or the champ Dominick Cruz.  As stated above, using Cruz would mean zero title defenses for a full year, which is a concern.  If they went with Torres, they could go with Bowles/Cruz 2 in the meantime.  All are options, but all have pitfalls.

For the greater health of the divisions, it would be helpful.  It would establish some depth in both rosters and give them some TV exposure.  I feel bad for the current crop of FW/BW's though, that have missed out on the opportunity.  Guys like Takeya Mizugaki, Demetrious Johnson and Scott Jorgensen are going to get passed over while a new crop of unranked prospects are going to get all the attention lavished on them.  A TUF 4-style show would be great, but obviously contractual situations would prevent that.  I just wish they had done something like this BEFORE the merger, because it would have given the divisions a better baseline headed into the UFC.

So that about covers it.  Overall now that the whole thing is written out, the title might be a bit misleading.  I guess it should be a question - Has Zuffa dropped the ball?  Most would say it's too early to tell.  I think there are disturbing signs that the future path is not lined with fame and cash like people expected it to be.  But there are a lot of potential positives too.  Laying it out like this has helped me to see that, and I'm willing to admit that I don't feel as dark and gloomy about the whole thing as I did when I sat down with my dos Equis to start this thing.  MGD made me weak for part 2, apparently.

Going back to my original two points though, I still feel that the UFC is going to struggle with promoting seven divisions and 135/145 divisions are in real danger of being viewed as second-tier for a long time.  And that the potential benefits of the merger have been overblown to a degree.  The purpose of the WEC was to build these divisions into UFC-worthy states.  Clearly they're not there yet, so did the merger come too early, or was Zuffa simply never going to take the WEC to bigger heights anyway?  That's a question that we'll probably never know the answer to.

In December, I'll go over this again and we'll see how things have played out over the course of a full year.  I hope the future proves me wrong and that all these guys will be well on the path to getting the respect they richly deserve by then.  I might be acting like a debbie downer by saying that I'm not confident about that.  But only time will tell.