Image: Ben Duffy/Sherdog.com illustration
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As the first quarter of 2022 comes to a close, let us take stock of our sport.
The first three months of 2022 have been rich with storylines, from the accustomed week-to-week dramas, both big and small, playing out in cages all over the world, all the way up to seismic shifts that affect the entire sport. As we pass the two-year anniversary of COVID-19 forcing the industry to a temporary halt, it feels as though major fight promotions, like most other industries, have reached a kind of uneasy truce with the pandemic. The Ultimate Fighting Championship, Bellator MMA and other major players have settled into a new “business as usual” that, even if it isn’t exactly a return to the status quo ante, has brought professional fighting back to airwaves and arenas.
With the sport as a whole approaching some form of stability, 2022 has become a blank canvas upon which individual players have painted their own rising or falling arcs. Here is the stock report for Q1 2022, encompassing people as well as broader entities.
STOCK UP: On the Road Again
The UFC held four events outside of its Las Vegas, Nevada stomping grounds in the first quarter of 2022, more than in any quarter of last year and the most since its long residency in Abu Dhabi in the summer of 2020. That alone is an encouraging sign for fans who crave a return to normalcy — not to mention for the promotion itself, which surely misses live gate receipts as a revenue source. Better yet, after a year-plus of the UFC reserving its rare road trips for big pay-per-view events, fans two weeks ago packed Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio for UFC on ESPN 33. If the UFC can sell out a venue with a free Fight Night card — and an average one at that, frankly — it is a sign that the Apex era might be nearing its end. Here’s hoping that UFC Apex shows never go away entirely, as the intimate setting and pin-drop acoustics have given us some indelible moments over the past two years, but “UFC Columbus” was a solid test case for the industry leader taking its show back on the road.
STOCK DOWN: Jorge Masvidal
Don’t be fooled, Masvidal’s alleged sucker-punching of Colby Covington wasn’t about Covington’s trash talk; it was about having gotten embarrassed in their fight. Covington had said most of those same things in the lead-up to UFC 272, after which Masvidal had 25 minutes to punch him in the mouth about it, and for money. If he had succeeded, either Covington would have shut up — notice he hasn’t said a thing about Kamaru Usman’s dad recently? — or Masvidal could have shrugged off any further comments as desperate and hollow. He didn’t succeed, though, and so here we are. This latest incident, however, tracks perfectly with Masvidal’s stunning record of self-defeating behavior over the last several years. Three years ago, “Gamebred” was at best a hardcore fan favorite, at worst a near-forgotten man on a long hiatus, but in either case seemed like the longest of longshots to break through as a top contender or true draw. Then, in one of the most remarkable mid-career reinventions in MMA history, Masvidal became one of the biggest stars in the sport — perhaps the biggest star in the sport, period, on the night he defeated Nate Diaz to win a gimmick belt that the two had essentially willed into existence.
Since winning the “BMF belt” in November 2019, Masvidal is 0-3 in sanctioned fights, none of which have been especially competitive. The losses came against the top two men in the division, and might simply represent a good fighter hitting his competitive ceiling against better fighters, but win or lose, he has only fought once per calendar year since his breakthrough. For a fighter who suddenly found himself a superstar in his mid-30s, that is the opposite of making hay while the sun shines. And now the 37-year-old is in a legal quagmire that may threaten his freedom, let alone his ability to make the most of his remaining prime years as a prizefighter. All in all, Masvidal is perilously close to undoing his own Cinderella story, and when we look back years from now, March 2022 will probably go down as the clock-strikes-midnight moment.
STOCK UP: One Championship
The Singapore-based promotion celebrated its 10th anniversary last weekend with One Championship “One X”, a 20-fight marathon that spanned two calendar days for Western viewers and put One’s best foot forward in terms of top talent, marquee names and the idiosyncrasies that make it unique. It was also a pay-per-view, with audiences treated to a pair of lengthy free undercards before being asked to shell out $40 for the main card.
“One X” was a success because it featured most of the things any right-thinking martial arts fan should love about One — multiple rulesets at the same show; outstanding production values; generally exciting fights — as well as at least some of the things any right-thinking martial arts fan has been screaming at the promotion to deliver for years. Namely, “One X” featured public weigh-ins, which have been sporadic to nonexistent at previous shows. In the end, however, the main event of “One X” featured two of the promotion’s best fighters and biggest stars, Angela Lee and Nong Stamp, who went out and put on a fantastic fight after having verifiably made weight. As a fight fan long frustrated with One’s opaque practices even as I enjoy the in-cage product, I call that a qualified success. More of that please, and enjoy my $40.