The UFC is apparently in trouble. Since Brazilian star Alex Pereira lost his light heavyweight title to Magomed Ankalaev at UFC 313, there has been noise claiming Dana White isn’t too happy about the situation.
Over the course of the last year, Pereira was considered a sort of savior for the promotion. Every time a big PPV needed the main event being replaced, they could call the Brazilian. Commended as a pay-per-view attraction due to his activity and fire-first fighting style, Pereira would show up, put on a show, and save the day.
Now that Pereira doesn’t hold a title anymore and has a huge loss next to his name, former heavyweight contender Brendan Schaub has claimed that the UFC is facing a potential watershed moment. Without Pereira at the top, the promotion has run out of bankable stars, he claims.
“The UFC is in trouble, man,” Schaub said on The Fighter and the Kid. “Hey, name their biggest star, go. Who? Belal (Muhammad) — who we love. (Magomed) Anakalev? How many pay-per-views is he selling, two? His mom and his uncle? Who else? (Alexandre) Pantoja? 135 (sic) [pounds]. We don’t give a f*ck”, he added.
“Merab (Dvalishvili)? Nah, not happening,” Schaub continued as the bantamweight champion also took a stray.
According to Schaub, potential stars are limited. The vet claims that going forward, only Dricus du Plessis and Islam Makhachev could land that moniker. All this, while the promotion’s biggest star has been on the sidelines for almost 4 years and seems more interested in partying with the Nelk boys than anything else.
Loss of star could force UFC to bring back McGregor
Despite all his inactivity in recent years, Conor McGregor remains the biggest star at the UFC’s disposal and is likely to draw the biggest crowd. But can the UFC depend on him to sell PPVs, especially since the last time they did that, it was UFC 303 and the Irishman pulled out of the fight with less than 48 hours to go?
Since then McGregor has been throwing the promotion a few bones here and there but primarily remains elusive to accountability on the two fights left on his UFC contract.
Furthermore, the Crumlin striker, according to reports, has yet to submit a drug test sample to the UFC’s anti-doping program in the last six months.
With White reportedly hoping to strike a deal with Netflix- in a similar vein to TKO Group partners, WWE, the UFC will really need to pull some rabbits out of hats to make sure the deal goes through.
Netflix has reportedly not been a big fan of the PPV model, and without legitimate stars in Pereira and McGregor in their corner, the UFC loses a precious bargaining chip, especially now that it business has become matter of public debate.
And as per a report from the New York Post, the UFC’s recent pay-per-view numbers are “way down” compared to expectations. The report details how the promotion’s relationship with ESPN is tenuous at the very least due to concerns over the network’s technology capabilities.
Notably, fans expressed their anger with the ESPN network last weekend, with many unable to successfully purchase the UFC 313 flagship card due to an error with the streaming service.
This may spell some reasoning for the numbers side of the business being perceived as being less than satisfactory.
