There’s a guest piece up over at MMA Payout by Rob Maysey arguing that the Muhammad Ali Act should apply to MMA.
Most of the article just explains how the law would actually apply to MMA, and as much as there is to talk about in that section, there is only one paragraph where he makes an argument as to why this law should apply to MMA:
The Act seeks to prohibit promoters from being “able to rig the sport by placing favored boxers who have signed away promotional rights in the top rankings,” and for those boxers who refuse to cooperate, from being “arbitrarily dropped from the ranking or prevented from moving up.” In short, the Act attempts to prevent promoters from forcing boxers into coercive contracts as a condition of participating in a given match.
This protection alone is of enormous benefit for all mixed martial artists. Currently, no objective rankings are utilized by any of the major promotions. Title shots should be awarded by merit, and not based upon contracted promotional exclusivity. Fighters and fans alike would benefit, as the best fighters would contend for titles, and fighters currently on the outside such as Matt Lindland, Josh Barnett, and Fedor Emelianenko would be in the public eye. Market value of these fighters would increase, as the public would demand to see the best matchups available, regardless of a fighter’s contracted promotion.
It is an item of faith among many fans that it would simply be better for the industry if the best could fight the best, regardless of promotion. Unfortunately, like most items of faith, there is no reason to believe it is true. The only reason MMA is even on television in the United States is the UFC’s dominance of the industry. If the industry was in the state that Rob Maysey and others desire just a few years ago, we would have never seen the Ultimate Fighter, the true catalyst for MMA’s explosion in popularity in the United States. That is only one example among many.
There is simply no reason to believe fighters or fans would be better off simply because Matt Lindland could fight Anderson Silva. The public tunes into fights to see personalities they know fight in exciting fights. The idea that there is a gigantic market of people dying to know who the number one heavyweight in the world is is just wrong. That question may be answered in two weeks when Fedor Emilianenko faces his first tough competition in years, and I suspect about 50,000 people will tune in to see it.
I think that if fans with Maysey’s view got their way, the MMA fan base that has expanded over the last three years would disappear. These fans have made UFC pay per view shows a monthly activity because they know the fighters, have seen the hype shows, watch the reality show, and are able to follow things in a pretty simple fashion. None of those fans care about Matt Lindland vs. Anderson Silva.
Fighters would be far worse off under such a system. Without the buyrates that the UFC pulls in, payouts would immediately plummet. What do you think Anderson Silva would rather do: A) Fight 5 times a year and make $400,000+ a fight including advertisements in front of millions of fans; or B) Fight Sherdog ranked fighters that have no fanbase and make far less. Without Zuffa’s marketing, a pay per view headlined by Anderson Silva and Matt Lindland would probably do about 15,000 buys. Who does that help?