Opinion: The UFC's Sink or Swim Mentality

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This past week, the Ultimate Fighting Championship announced its main event for UFC 281 at the world-famous Madison Square Garden in New York City: middleweight kingpin and top pound-for-pound talent Israel Adesanya taking on aging kickboxer Alex Pereira. On paper, it's an absolutely silly matchup. Pereira only made a full-time commitment to MMA in September 2021, less than a year ago, and is 6-1 in the sport and 3-0 in the UFC. His only victory over a Top 20 middleweight was his most recent outing against Sean Strickland, and he has yet to face a good grappler. Yet I don't hate the matchup. While someone like Derek Brunson or Marvin Vettori might brutalize Pereira, Adesanya is a fellow kickboxer who has never used offensive wrestling in his MMA career, and as the UFC talking heads endlessly remind us, Pereira holds two kickboxing wins over Adesanya from 2016 and 2017.

That means less than those talking heads would like us to believe, as Adesanya's striking has improved since and Pereira's has either stayed the same or slightly declined, not to mention the huge differences between striking with four-ounce MMA gloves in a large, octagonal cage and striking with big boxing gloves in a small square ring. Nevertheless, it reminds me of some classic Japanese MMA matchmaking. After establishing himself as one of the world’s best kickboxers, Mirko Filipovic's MMA debut was against Top 10 heavyweight Kazuyuki Fujita, who had defeated Mark Kerr, Ken Shamrock and Gilbert Yvel a year ago and whose only official loss was an immediate stoppage against Mark Coleman in the finals of the 2000 Pride Fighting Championships Grand Prix, as Fujita was too exhausted from his victory over Kerr earlier that night to proceed. Another elite kickboxer, Mark Hunt, with an MMA record of 1-1, fought the world's best light heavyweight, Wanderlei Silva, won by split decision and then faced the world's second or third best heavyweight, that same “Cro Cop,” and won again by split decision.

More to the point, it's an outstanding illustration of the UFC's sink-or-swim mentality. The promotion throws promising, up-and-coming fighters in against high-level opponents as soon as possible, whether they're ready or not. Either they succeed or they're exposed. In MMA’s early days, this was completely unavoidable. There was almost no separation between the highest and lowest levels of the sport. Fighters would either debut in the UFC or need just a few wins to get there, and once in the promotion, it would take just a couple more victories to fight a top opponent, or even for the title. Randy Couture is a prime example: debuted in the UFC, smashed two oversized oafs in professional wrestler Tony Halme and Steven Graham in one night, fought top star Vitor Belfort at 2-0, then faced heavyweight champion Maurice Smith for the belt at 3-0. As the sport has expanded, with at least two orders of magnitude more fighters competing and several “levels” of the sport to get through, this is no longer a necessity, yet the UFC has retained the same fundamental approach.

Like many approaches, sink or swim is a double-edged sword. On the plus side, fans aren't subjected to skilled young fighters smashing an endless series of overmatched opponents as happens in boxing. One doesn't have to wait until a prospect is at least 20-0 before they face a legitimate contender. Every fight is significant and an important part of their career. It also means young fighters can potentially spend more of their careers competing against the best.

The downside is that those same young fighters don't get a proper chance to develop their skills, shore up all their weaknesses, and test themselves against a gradual increase in competition, both strikers as well as grapplers. There are countless examples of this working out poorly in the UFC. Think of all the endless hype around Edmen Shahbazyan not long ago. Just two years after his victory on Dana White's Contender Series, the 22-year-old Shahbazyan found himself in a main event against longtime middleweight contender Derek Brunson in late 2020. Oh, and Shahbazyan was a giant -400 favorite! We all know what happened: Shahbazyan's weak gas tank and poor defense off his back were exposed by the tough, experienced, and highly skilled Brunson.

Instead of taking a step back and rebuilding, Shahbazyan's very next fight was against the same caliber of contender and yet another well-rounded grappler, this time in the form of Jack Hermansson. It was sheer lunacy, and the exact same thing happened: Shahbazyan won the first round but his conditioning failed him, Hermansson took him down and badly beat him up. That time Shahbazyan survived to hear the final bell instead of being finished, but it was small consolation. Refusing to learn, Shahbazyan took his next fight less than six months after that brutal beating, against surging young talent Nassourdine Imavov, where he was promptly knocked out. Had he taken things more slowly, Shahbazyan might have been an undefeated top 10 fighter and a serious challenger to Adesanya's throne right now. Instead, he is on a three-fight losing streak, all of them bad, his hype gone, seemingly floundering and lost.

Whether through the Contender Series or direct signings, many fighters join the promotion before they're properly seasoned, and that kind of development ends up being difficult once in the UFC. Look at Chase Hooper, stuck alternately winning and losing against low-level featherweights and having to rely purely on grappling, since his striking is so far behind everyone else that even if he improves it considerably, it's still a liability.

Looking around at the UFC's champions, it's clear that going steadily is better. Adesanya was already 11-0 and had been competing in MMA for almost six years when he joined the UFC, vastly more experience than Pereira has before challenging for a title. Adesanya had beaten some good fighters along the way, like Kenan Song and Melvin Guillard. Adesanya's teammate and fellow pound-for-pound candidate, featherweight kingpin Alexander Volkanovski, was 14-1 and had been a full-time mixed martial artist for over five years when he debuted in the UFC.

We can also contrast this approach with Bellator MMA. Look at former featherweight champion and top pound-for-pound talent A.J. McKee. He debuted in the promotion in 2015 and had a slow, gradual ascent to the top. Thus, by the time he finally faced Patricio Freire in 2021 for the title, McKee was 17-0, exceptionally well-rounded and ready for anything a fight could throw at him. His first career loss finally came by close decision in the rematch with Freire, the reasons for which I've written about, but he's still one of the best in the sport. That might not have happened if he had taken the Shahbazyan approach. A lot of credit here has to go to his father Antonio McKee, not only an excellent coach who has guided his son well, but a very good lightweight fighter in his own time who never made it big, and wanted A.J. to avoid the pitfalls of the sport.

Thus, we observe the good and bad of the sink and swim approach. It makes for better fights but also destroys a lot of talented young fighters, which is exactly why the UFC will keep doing it. The main focus of its business model is the promotion itself, rather than individual stars, since stardom brings about fighters with more power, who can refuse to dutifully obey everything UFC President Dana White wants, as has occurred recently with Francis Ngannou and Jon Jones, and in the past with Randy Couture, Tito Ortiz and many others. However, it's good to keep the costs in mind along with the benefits whenever you see a talented young fighter thrown into the deep end too early.