Opinion: UFC 249 a Test of UFC Exceptionalism

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.

Sign up for ESPN+ right here, and you can then stream UFC 249 live on your smart TV, computer, phone, tablet or streaming device via the ESPN app.

* * *
The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida, will end the near two-month hiatus from live events that was forced upon the company by the COVID-19 pandemic. For a third consecutive time, it will break with the consensus of professional sports and entertainment providers— who indefinitely suspended operations while America tried desperately to flatten the curve—and attempt to forge ahead with a live fight card during a national health crisis.

The first attempt consisted of a push to hold UFC Fight Night 171, UFC on ESPN 8 and UFC Fight Night 172 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas between March 21 and April 11. It was quashed by government decree. The second attempt saw the promotion look to hold UFC 249 on tribal lands at the Tachi Palace Casino in Lemoore, California, on April 18. It was slapped down by the higherups in ESPN and Disney. This time however, with its broadcast partners, the Florida State Boxing Commission and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the UFC’s corner, the conventional wisdom is that the show, barring some kind of catastrophe, will actually go on. So confident is UFC President Dana White that the organization has booked two more events—May 13 and May 16—in Jacksonville for the following week and has plans to bring the circus tent back to Las Vegas on May 23.

White has been his typical abrasive self during fight week. In an interview with Sports Illustrated published on May 5, he insisted that if not for the intervention of state governments, the UFC could have safely gone ahead with its original event schedule, cryptically asserting that he “know[s] a lot more than [SI] knows about what’s going on with a lot of things.” In the same interview, he characterized the decision of other sports organizations such as golf and car racing to halt operations as “caving in to media pressure,” complained that he was being unfairly portrayed as a “money-monger” and continued to mosh for Fight Island. In a subsequent interview with Bar Stool Sports, he sustained his assault on members of the MMA media who criticized the UFC’s aborted plans for April 18, underscoring his contempt for accountability and his expectation that journalists will operate as the promotion’s public relations representatives rather than independent reporters. It’s the typical us-versus-them rhetoric that those in the industry have come to expect from White. However, the real question centers on how the promotion’s actions will be received from the mainstream sports world and the general public and whether there may be long-term consequences for forging ahead in the current climate.

Historically, combat sports have been held to a significantly laxer set of moral standards than their stick-and-ball counterparts, with major media tending to reserve scrutiny of promoters and athletes for all but the most heinous conduct. MMA and boxing are, if nothing else, incredibly insular communities with a unique history and culture, and their participants react with hostility to outsiders. This nativism, combined with a history of absurd spectacles and the general aversion to organized violence which many in the media elite hold, have, to a large extent, convinced mainstream sports that the fight game isn’t to be taken seriously, thus giving latitude to its participants that simply would not fly in “real” sports.

The examples of where this has manifested are legion: partnerships between promoters and dictatorships, the whitewashing of high-profile fighters’ records of domestic violence, exploitative labor practices and union-busting, the exile of athletes—and journalists—who disturb the status quo and rife conflicts of interest involving MMA’s powerbrokers. These realities are seldom the subject of sustained examination, much less condemnation, by the mainstream sports media. MMA and boxing reliably produce good revenues and a steady flow of highlights for SportsCenter, but as far as critiquing its political and economic dimensions, that kind of effort is regarded as unnecessary and unwarranted. With the most recent models predicting the virus will claim 3,000 lives per day by the end of June, though, it begs asking whether that inattentiveness will hold up when the UFC is back broadcasting live fights on television while the rest of the world languishes in varying states of quarantine.

Even with robust safety measures in place, the promotion is still putting its fighters on airplanes and in transport hubs before having them coalesce with 100-plus others—judges, referees, commentary and camera crew, UFC officials, commission officials, doctors, cutmen, sound crew, ambulance transport, production, etc.—in an empty arena. The fighters will then exchange bodily fluids with each other for 15-25 minutes. There’s a not insignificant chance that somewhere along the way one of those athletes or supporting players are going to contract and very possibly spread the coronavirus, which is the reason why epidemiologists have cautioned that the UFC’s show-must-go-on mentality is premature and dangerous.

If the UFC manages to pull of its events safely, it will be a boon to the company that has come to relish its ability to defy expectations, a welcome respite for fight fans and a long overdue injection of revenue to its ailing parent company. If it fails, UFC exceptionalism will face its toughest test to date.

Jacob Debets is a lawyer and writer from Melbourne, Australia. He is currently writing a book analyzing the economics and politics of the MMA industry. You can view more of his writing at jacobdebets.com.