Opinion: Melbourne and the UFC 37 Delusion

Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com, its affiliates and sponsors or its parent company, Evolve Media.

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I have found a few things in life, such as flea markets and grocery stores in Chinatown, where the quality of the product seems inversely proportional to its trappings. I found a two-foot tall vintage California Raisin statue a few months ago in an antique store where it seemed more likely I would contract leprosy. I continue to find bizarre sodas and snacks in small markets that haven’t cleaned their floors in 28 years. These sneaky locales are reminders that while usually it’s a life philosophy, you can’t always just a book by its cover.

You know what’s not like a dusty pawn shop or shady-looking bodega that surprises and charms you? Mixed martial arts in 2016. And that brings me to the UFC 37 delusion.

The UFC Fight Night card (online betting) scheduled for this Saturday in Melbourne -- or, once again, Sunday morning and afternoon if you’re unfortunately there live in Australia -- is not good. While there are the usual gripes to be made -- and frankly, more than usual -- about the oversaturation and dilution of the UFC product, especially as it concerns international cards, it’s not entirely Zuffa’s fault here. After all, we were supposed to get a Luke Rockhold-“Jacare” Ronaldo Souza rematch in the main event before the umpteenth injury of Rockhold’s career, a knee this time, nixed the contest. Nonetheless, while it’s a fantastic and highly relevant middleweight contest, Derek Brunson-Robert Whittaker is not a UFC main event. I mean, I know it is now due to circumstance, but still, it’s not. Worse, the rest of the card is moribund.

The reason I’m bringing all this up is that I’ve been shocked to read and hear people, including callers to my Sherdog Radio Network show, praising this forthcoming card or expressing excitement about it as a direct function of the card’s ostensibly low-quality and anonymous roster. Nevermind how asinine it seems to get excited over a lame UFC card a week after getting smashed with two UFC cards (and a Bellator card) in the same damn day, every time we get one of these UFC cards that has been progressively more and more watered down, people cry out “These are always the cards that end up being the best!”

No, actually, they don’t. You know what cards end up being the best? Major cards that deliver. If you think that the UFC’s return to Melbourne is going to hold to a candle to UFC 205, you’re a blathering dimwit.

So, where does this well-established MMA maxim come from? While naturally there were fight cards that defied low expectations on paper before May 2002, the whole “lame cards are actually the best” idea was crystallized with UFC 37 in Bossier City, La. Coming off an outstanding and still-revered UFC 36 card two months prior, MMA fans were roundly disappointed by UFC 37, mostly due to a plethora of injuries. Chuck Liddell was originally to take on Vitor Belfort in a title eliminator, before Belfort, in true Belfortian fashion, was besieged by allergies. Evan Tanner stepped in, only to injure his ribs. There was even talk of Igor Zinoviev coming out of retirement to face Liddell.

UFC matchmaker Joe Silva tried to get his favorite fighter, Rumina Sato, to come over from Japan to face a still-developing B.J. Penn, who had just lost to Jens Pulver in his first UFC title challenge months earlier. Sato was interested but non-committal, then got injured, replaced by the Lion’s Den Joe Hurley, who then promptly got into a car accident and was forced to pull out, with unheralded Paul Creighton stepping into his spot. Fans also wanted to see rising Russian prospect Andrei Semenov take on former middleweight champ Dave Menne, but Menne also got injured, leading to much complaining about random Matt Hume pupil Ivan Salaverry replacing Menne.

After his awful fight with Chuck Liddell four months prior, no one really wanted to see Amar Suloev, even if it was against a prime Phil Baroni. Sure, it was exciting that Aaron Riley was coming to the UFC, but who was this 20-year-old Robbie Lawler kid, with only four fights? I’m not kidding, people really did feel this way, even if it seems incredibly hard to believe.

The reason it seems hard to believe now, almost 15 years later, is that people simply had no idea what the hell they were getting into with UFC 37. The event truly had everything. The main event was fun and farcically iconic, with “Big” John McCarthy getting thrown into referee hell by Matt Lindland tapping to Murilo Bustamante and claiming he didn’t, resulting in Lindland getting tapped twice and his ass whooped over 12 minutes. Ricco Rodriguez pulverized sturdy veteran Tsuyoshi Kosaka to cement himself as a future UFC title contender. B.J. Penn treated Paul Creighton how great fighters treat showcase and bounce-back opponents and continued cultivating his already-rabid fanbase. Phil Baroni hammered Amar Suloev’s face in and cemented himself as, if nothing else, one of the most talked about fighters in the sport.

And that Andrei Semenov that everyone was so keen on? Ivan Salaverry dummied him, crushing him from top crucifix position just a liiiiitle bit before Matt Hughes brought it en vogue. And the forgettable Caol Uno-Yves Edwards fight and referee Mason White allowing Benji Radach to grab the fence while pounding out Steve Berger? Forgivable. Why? Because in the first fight of the night, Robbie Lawler waged war all over Aaron Riley for 15 minutes and showed all the promise of an eventual welterweight king. There was so much entertainment and so much to process. Why? Because these fighters mattered.

Of the 16 fighters on the UFC 37 card, in retrospect, the worst things you can say about any of the lot is that Paul Creighton was a much better competitive grappler than he was an MMA fighter. Even Steve Berger was a respectable journeyman. Every other fighter on that card mattered. They were champions, perennial top-10 fighters, fringe contenders, action fighters. There’s 26 fighters scheduled to hit the Octagon in Melbourne. As of this writing, 10 of them do not have Wikipedia pages, which could very well be some sort of record. Seven of those 10 are already actually UFC veterans.

With the size of the UFC roster now and in general, the difference in the sport’s competitive structure in 2016, it’s nearly impossible to have an event like UFC 37. If a card is set out to have a bunch of stars and hot fights and ends up decimated by injury today, do you really think you’re going to end up with an Ivan Salaverry stepping into the spot in his UFC debut? How often does a novice 4-0 fighter light it up in their UFC debut like Robbie Lawler did while showing so much long-term promise?

The idea of theoretically weak UFC events inherently as potential “sleeper cards” just doesn’t hold weight any more. Let me be clear: none of this is to say that the Brunson-Whittaker event will fundamentally be a boring card. However, at this point in time, if the UFC offers a card with drastically more fat than meat, it isn’t redeemed by action alone. Keep in mind, this is coming from the creator of a thing called the All-Violence Team. But, if violence and violence alone was all that mattered, we’d venerate terrible, D-level regional promotions all over the world.

In fact, while I won’t dissuade anyone from watching the card -- I’ll be watching, after all -- I do believe that a reactionary impulse to see an inferior card’s wackiness as a possible predictor of greatness is corrosive. To reflexively champion a staggeringly inconsequential UFC card on the hope it may turn out great is not only not realistic in 2016, it tacitly suggests that card quality doesn’t matter and that people will consume whatever garbage the UFC shovels at them. That said, based on the volume of tickets still available for the 14,000-plus seat Rod Laver Arena, I’d say a lot of folks are already taking a conscionable stand with their money.

This doesn’t mean that no UFC card will ever shock us, defy our expectations and thrill us again. It still happens, just look at UFC 199 and UFC 204 earlier this year. But when those beautiful surprises come along, they’re not to be bootleg international Fight Night cards. They’re going to more likely be pay-per-view events, the sorts of cards with exciting champions fights, imminent title challengers, emerging contenders and hot prospects -- real stakes, real consequences -- so if and when the action and violence does pop off, they mean something.

You know, like UFC 37.