Opinion: Aldo’s Rib and the High Stakes of a No-Win Situation

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For now, the year's biggest MMA spectacle remains intact. For now, Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo will still fight at UFC 189. McGregor may become champion, Aldo may successfully defend his title, the UFC may make millions on pay-per-view.

I'm not sure I'd say anyone is “winning,” though.

You may think it foolish to suggest the UFC is coming out a “loser” when, for the time being, the company has reaffirmed its biggest event of the year and dodged what looked like a catastrophic bullet, with Aldo's rib injury threatening to cancel or postpone the contest. UFC President Dana White's paternal “Relax!” and smiley face tweets posit a world where everything is all good, just the same as it was last week; however, that's just not the case.

The “good news” that Aldo hasn't broken his rib but merely has a bone bruise and cartilage damage is a mitigation of the awful, but not an eradication. The fact that the greatest featherweight ever can fight is a mutually exclusive issue from whether or not he should still fight. It puts the UFC in zugzwang, trying to find the best solution to minimize damage in a situation where damage is assured.

If Aldo doesn't compete, the UFC is forced to either find McGregor a replacement fight or pull him from the card. For a replacement fight, only Chad Mendes and Frankie Edgar represent suitable opponents, and both would be asked to take a career-altering fight against a dangerous opponent on three weeks' notice, in spite of the fact that Mendes and Edgar are both good enough to win their way to future title shots under more hospitable circumstances.

Also, the UFC runs the very real risk of incinerating the biggest fight to ever happen under the lightweight division, maybe even including the lightweight division. The company invested in Aldo-McGregor to the nth degree in every conceivable dimension; the fight was promoted with a 12-day, 10-city press tour across three continents. Botching Aldo-McGregor and losing the fight forever might legitimately be one of the biggest failures in MMA history.

Yet, pulling McGregor from the card is no easy task. The UFC welterweight title bout between Robbie Lawler and Rory MacDonald is still on tap, but Zuffa has done little to push the contest given the shadow Aldo-McGregor has cast over the rest of its product, and neither fighter is likely to drum up a ton of interest without the mega-fight anchor in the main event. The UFC has hinged its entire International Fight Week soiree around this fight. Its absence would render the card a massive disappointment before any action even takes place in the Octagon.

Worse, neither of these outcomes offers peace of mind (or money) to the hundreds, possibly thousands, who have bought tickets and booked travel from Ireland, Brazil or elsewhere. Fan tourism remains a major component in the UFC's success, especially when it relates to big-ticket, mainstream, international draws, which are all the more crucial during a recession for the sport in North America. Short of trying to present the fight however the UFC can, nothing can be done to appease these consumers. Even if the fight goes on as expected, it may be widely perceived as tainted, depending on its outcome.

It may seem like fortune is smiling on the UFC, with Aldo's rib injury being less severe than previously thought and the champion wanting to fight on. In reality, the fight that the UFC has on its hands now is not the same fight it has spent millions of dollars and five months promoting. That fight is gone, and we're left with its mutated cousin, a reminder of the high-stakes conflicts that occur in creating major prizefights.

The bout's integrity is in question. Never mind the amplified, rancorous reaction to everything he says or does, a potential Conor McGregor title capture is already marred. Regardless of whether the Irishman took the title in a 25-minute war or a two-minute massacre, his detractors -- or simply those critical of the UFC's decision to continue with the fight -- would frame what should be a historical, monumental moment in the sport as a fraud. McGregor's ascent to the throne, should it come to pass, shouldn't be reduced to a political fiasco, yet that's precisely what will happen if he does his damn job.

Public perception still counts for a lot in this world. In spite of Zuffa's overt favoritism toward McGregor, who has been groomed for stardom since he burst into the promotion two years ago, there's a big difference between the UFC paying for his McMansion while he trains in Las Vegas and, in the minds of many, engineering the best possible situation for its poster boy to take the 145-pound title. This perception will become an agreed-upon reality amongst a swath of the sport's fan base It also operates under the assumption that McGregor himself is 100 percent healthy, which is always questionable with fighters entering any bout, let alone one of this magnitude.

It's also crucial to consider Aldo's own agency in this matter. The 28-year-old ace has pulled out of five title defenses during his four-year UFC tenure due to a spate of injuries, but none of those fights were nearly this extravagant. With a recently reworked contract and headlining a card finally poised to do massive pay-per-view buys, saying Aldo is financially incentivized to fight is a gross understatement.

Put his guaranteed purse aside. Since rising to a position to command buy-rate bonus money, Aldo has routinely drawn around 200,000 pay-per-view buys, give or take 30,000 buys or so. McGregor changes that dramatically.

Aldo's February 2013 defense against Edgar at UFC 156 is the only positive outlier, generating an estimated 330,000 buys. This is notable, as the modern, standard UFC pay-per-view bonus structure pays one dollar for each pay-per-view over 200,000 (up to 400,000), two dollars for each buy between 400,000 and 600,000 and $2.50 for each buy beyond 600,000. With the UFC boldly, if optimistically, projecting one million pay-per-view buys for UFC 189, it's got to be hard for Aldo to pass on a payday worth $3-5 million dollars. There's no financial security if he doesn't fight; if he pulls out and McGregor loses to Mendes coming out of the on-deck circle, Aldo's golden goose has been cooked. He has already headlined against Mendes twice on pay-per-view, drawing just over 400,000 buys for UFC 142 and UFC 179 combined. Aldo has been vocal about being paid more in the recent past; his motivation is not hard to ascertain.

At this juncture, the most peaceable and positive outcome for the UFC would be Aldo retaining his title in a close, spirited brawl that confirms McGregor's place along the featherweight elite. However, even with a valiant, successful title defense, Aldo would be carefully straddling the narrative space between the celebratory “What a performance! The heart of a champion!” and the cynical “If he was so hurt, how did he just fight like that?” McGregor will be publicly mocked, tarred and feathered for losing to a physically compromised Aldo, which in turn, cheapens and undermines Aldo's hypothetical accomplishment.

Yet, even the most delusional Jose Aldo fan can appreciate that the nature of the champion's injury is serious. It is an injury that impacts both Aldo's remaining preparation and his execution on fight night. Bruised ribs and cartilage damage may seem rosier than full-out fracturing, but Aldo is trying to peak for the biggest fight of his career. Now, his mobility and even his ability to draw a breath will be compromised, all while running the risk of aggravating the injury further; and that's just before the fight.

Even if everything goes as perfectly as it reasonably could for “Scarface” from now until July 11, he is then tasked with defeating a predatory and exotic striker who has become increasingly comfortable with attacking the body in his recent fights. Check out this quote from Aldo's Nova Uniao training partner Alcides Nunes, who will go down as an unfortunate cog in the wheel of MMA history:

“I threw a kick, but slipped with all the sweat on the mat and ended up hitting his rib,” Nunes told MMAFighting.com's Guilherme Cruz. “I was mimicking McGregor's unorthodox style, things he does in the fight. I'm also left-handed, my style is similar to his, so that's why they asked me to be part of his camp, but I ended up slipping and causing this injury.”

It's not even that he smashed Aldo's ribs. Rather, consider the fact that he smashed Aldo's ribs because he was pretending to do what Conor McGregor would do. Aldo was hurt by exactly the kind of technique McGregor excels at, and McGregor is now fully aware of his injury and has three weeks to figure out how to roast his ribs even worse. The potential for a rib injury to have a lingering, pernicious impact should never be underestimated. It's why we haven't seen Bellator welterweight champion Douglas Lima in more than a year. Hell, in hindsight, it appears to be the biggest factor in Chael Sonnen almost thwarting Anderson Silva in their first encounter, with “The Spider” carrying damaged ribs into the Octagon in Oakland, Calif.

Conor McGregor is fighting for the 145-pound crown, but now even if he seizes it, many will view him as an counterfeit king, his defining moment sullied by circumstance. Jose Aldo is risking his throne and legacy while injured to ensure the richest payday of his career. The UFC cannot avoid unduly tarnishing its Irish golden boy if he loses or looking like opportunistic conspirators if he knocks off a wounded champion.

Aldo and McGregor may get in the cage in Las Vegas and give us a classic, injuries be damned, delivering the cool million pay-per-view buys for which the UFC so deeply yearns, but it still won't be the bout we were promised. The risk is now greater, the rewards uncertain. The stakes are even higher and all parties are doubling down. Unfortunately, for Aldo, McGregor and the UFC, the fight is no longer about who wins it all but who loses the least in the process.