The Doggy Bag: The Worrywart Edition
Foxy Fights and First Impressions
I thought UFC on Fox 3 was great. However, the UFC lost all momentum with the “casual” fan after the first two UFC on Fox cards. The first ended in less than a minute and the second was a bunch of “boring decisions” living up to the negative stereotypical criticisms of MMA. Now, they are blaming poor ratings on a lack of “star power.” Most people don’t know anyone outside of Brock Lesnar and Tito Ortiz; at the risk of sounding like a bad sales pitch for a dandruff shampoo, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Why didn’t they do this for UFC on Fox 2? I can’t help but think the UFC would be in a totally different position if it would have showed Benson Henderson-Clay Guida on that first card. -- Joseph from Madison
Tristen Critchfield, associate editor: Although it was an outstanding fight, I’m not so sure that putting Benson Henderson and Clay Guida on national television last November would have fixed the ratings decline that currently plagues the UFC on Fox.
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The first show was designed to give fans a taste of the UFC-Fox partnership and was not officially part of their four-fight-per-year agreement. The network wanted only one fight that night, and that is what it received. With that in mind, it would have been nearly impossible to sell high-ranking executives on a main event featuring Nate Diaz -- a fighter who has a devoted cult following but is still building his mainstream audience -- the next time around. By filling the second Fox card with stars like Rashad Evans and Chael Sonnen -- names that the Average Joe is more likely to be familiar with -- the UFC made the right move. The fights themselves might not have been all that crowd-pleasing, but they were significant and helped set the stage for what will likely be two of the promotion’s biggest pay-per-views this year: UFC 145 and UFC 148.
To quell the criticism, the UFC took a different approach to the most recent Fox lineup, placing a greater emphasis on exciting matchups instead of name recognition. And, as you pointed out, the fights delivered. However, Fox was not excited with a product where “The Ultimate Fighter 1” competitor Josh Koscheck was the closest thing on the card to a household name. That dissatisfaction was reflected by the relative lack of promotion UFC on Fox 3 received in relation to the previous two events.
That appears to be the biggest dispute between the UFC and Fox: the promotion is trying to build an audience through exciting fights, while the network wants big stars. That is why a Diaz-Jim Miller headliner in January wouldn’t have worked.
When you consider that UFC on Fox 3 averaged 2.4 million viewers -- slightly less than an EliteXC show on CBS did in 2008 -- perhaps the network executives are right. The viewers that Fox wants to attract aren’t the ones who look up obscure fights on YouTube, because those are the diehards who will most likely watch every card regardless of the matchups. Fox wants the casual crowd, the group that wasn’t surprised when Ortiz beat Ryan Bader last summer because they had never heard of Bader.
People didn’t stay away from the UFC on Fox 3 because they were turned off by a series of ho-hum decisions some three months earlier. They stayed away because they didn’t recognize the featured attractions. I personally favor the UFC’s philosophy, but, in the future, it appears that the organization will have to strike a better balance between exciting fights and big names to appease its business partner.
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