Affliction is dead as an MMA promoter, and while many enjoy pissing on the promotion’s grave, I am not celebrating. History tells me that the UFC won’t be able to sign Fedor, and if they can’t, I don’t see any upside at all to this news for MMA fans.
Affliction doomed itself to failure from the start by creating a payscale based on the assumption that the debut show would do over 300,000 buys. This was never possible, and their surprising success on PPV was still not enough to make up for this tragic assumption
Affliction only gave us two shows, but it contributed a lot to the MMA world. It brought Fedor Emelianenko to the United States on a full time basis, and helped him establish his name here. He still isn’t a huge superstar, but he’s further along that road than he was when Pride collapsed. Fedor scored two first round victories over tough opponents, men that many predicted would beat him in the weeks before his fights, only to now claim they weren’t really tough opponents. No serious fan believes this, Tim and Andre were borderline top 5 heavyweights and Fedor crushed them.
Affliction also gave new life to the careers of Vitor Belfort and Josh Barnett. Barnett squandered it, but Vitor Belfort is poised to go back to the UFC and fight top fighters at middleweight. If not for Affliction, we’d probably still be discussing his career in disappointed terms. I predict we will again soon, but Affliction gave guys like Vitor a new lease on life.
Finally, Affliction overpaid fighters and provided a number of guys with more financial security in two cards than they are likely to earn in the next five years. Over the course of four fights (two Affliction, two Strikeforce) Andrei Arlovski made in the neighborhood of $4 million in fight purses. For the sake of comparison, Arlovski made $170,000 for his final UFC fight. Guys like Vitor Belfort, Matt Lindland, and Babalu made hundreds of thousands of dollars, amounts that will help them train and feed their families for years. You can mock Affliction’s business sense all day long, and lord knows they were never in this for charity, but a number of fighters really benefitted from their short run as the UFC’s rival.
In the end, Affliction gave fans one good show and one great show, and paid fighters a lot of money. Their legacy is not negative, only unfortunate.