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Regardless of what transpires at UFC 207, the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s year-end event seems destined for historical notoriety based on the pre-fight shenanigans alone. We’ve had Cain Velasquez torpedo his rematch with Fabricio Werdum by publicly discussing his impending surgery and managing pain with cannabidiol; Johny Hendricks blew weight again; Cody Garbrandt and Jeremy Stephens got into a fight; and of course, Ronda Rousey has done no media.
How we wind up remembering Rousey’s media kibosh will be inevitably tied to whether or not she beats Amanda Nunes, but there is a certain toothlessness to it anyway. She didn’t let the “UFC Embedded” crew get much footage of her and she balked at doing fight week press, but it’s not like Rousey has been some kind of ghost.
She did daytime television with Ellen Degeneres and late-night television with Conan O’Brien. She still pops up on TV in her MetroPCS commercials. Her Twitter and Instagram accounts have been well maintained, belching out constant streams of black and white photos, #FearTheReturn propaganda, Susan B. Anthony quotes and UFC 207 promos. That’s not exactly an absence.
Plus, she’s still the subject of a ton of media, even if she’s not an active participant in it. There’s Rousey pieces on just about every major American newspaper’s website. Brett Okamoto’s Cheat Sheet on UFC 207 was front and center for most of Thursday on ESPN.com. She got a Darren Rovell puff piece on the site, too, plus an ESPN The Magazine piece by Ramona Shelburne. She’s still a TMZ fixture, and E! Online has a boilerplate “best shape of her life” story on Rousey. She’s on Esquire, Forbes and Maxim’s sites right now. Again, she doesn’t exactly lack for coverage.
As fellow Sherdog columnist Todd Martin discussed in his piece this week, it’s arguable that Rousey staying silent and passing on the most rote of media engagements has created greater drama and intrigue than her bout with Nunes would have in the first place. Also, there’s few things worse than interviewing people who don’t want to be there, especially a fighter cutting weight before a major bout. Yet, naturally, she still dominates the conversation in her absence. Thanks to her level of celebrity, PR flacks handling her social media accounts and a few well-chosen talk show appearances, she has created a mainstream media hologram, a synthetic proxy of herself that makes her still seem generally present in the promotion process.
The conventional wisdom is that retreating from the spotlight in the run-up to the fight is detrimental for business. There’s even some precedent, if we consider UFC 141 five years ago today. Brock Lesnar, undeniably one of the biggest draws in MMA history, spent over a year out of the sport due to his battle with diverticulitis. When he came back in December 2011, he did a $3.1 million gate and an estimated 535,000 pay-per-view buys after we’d become used to numbers that were double that; and of course, while Lesnar always showed up for his mandatory press obligations, he was notoriously terse and private when he wasn’t doing pro wrestling shtick and generally hated doing media.
However, Lesnar’s drawing ability was -- and is -- inextricably linked to his ability to galvanize pro wrestling fans; Rousey’s success as a draw has been about mainstreaming. As discussed above, Rousey is a constant media presence, plus she excites and capitalizes on demographics like lecherous old dads, soccer moms and young girls in a way no other MMA fighter ever has. The only Reebok fight kits I’ve ever seen worn in public, not at an MMA event, are Rousey kits.
People who don’t really like MMA watch Rousey fight, and ultimately, they are not people who would be hungrily taking in fight week media if Rousey was present. Besides, most people don’t read beyond a headline, and they often share articles without even reading them. So long as Rousey remains an object of interest for mainstream media, she can publicly exist without really being there. If anything, a Friday night card is more detrimental to the drawing power of UFC 207, given Rousey’s hyper-casual fanbase, than her not really doing media.
Now, whether it’s “fair” is another question. As we all know, Conor McGregor’s “retirement” earlier this year was predicated on him not wanting to fulfill certain media obligations. In this case, UFC President Dana White simply acquiesced.
“Back in the day, Ronda would literally do anything we asked her to do,“ White said on Wednesday. “For her to ask something like this, how can I say no to that? She’s done a lot.”
Now, this is obviously weak logic. While it can’t be doubted that Rousey has done an insane amount of press and media on the UFC’s behalf, so has McGregor. More than that, it smacks of favoritism and a more pernicious kind than your average “superstar treatment,” since Rousey is represented by WME-IMG which now owns the UFC. However, McGregor, even in his massive stardom, benefits more from these media engagements than maybe anyone.
McGregor is a gregarious extrovert in a way Rousey is not. He’s able to turn even the most routine, prescribed press engagements into a treasure trove of hot quotes, neologisms and memes. McGregor’s drawing power comes from whipping up excitement among a more traditional sports fanbase, so his trash talk and throwing energy drink cans is beneficial to the financial bottom line.
I support McGregor should he ever want to duck out on future media obligations, but he has been able to constructively use them to both make money and influence discourse. He benefits directly from even the most inane press events. These are the moments in which McGregor can hold court, talk about what fights he wants and when and politick over money and co-promotional rights. He can influence public and popular opinion; Rousey does none of those things.
Really, she’s the ideal MMA superstar to impose a media blackout, as nothing really seems to change. Whether she wins or loses at UFC 207, we’re all going to have to keep watching that weird thumb wrestling commercial of hers.