Over the weekend, the UFC held a Fight Night event in Lincoln, Nebraska, headlined by top lightweights Justin Gaethje and James Vick. Earlier that Saturday, the celebrity boxing match between popular YouTube personalities Logan Paul and KSI took place in Manchester, England, with the fight ending in a majority draw.
The post-fight numbers showed that the match between Paul and KSI had more than 770,000 PPV purchases on Youtube. UFC Fight Night 135, on the other hand, raked in an average of 596,000 viewers, one of the lowest Saturday night UFC totals in FS1 history.
This disparity has given retired heavyweight fighter Brendan Schaub more fuel to lambast the UFC, which he did so during a recent episode of his Below the Belt podcast.
“I loved what they (KSI and Logan Paul) are doing because they are showing how easy it is to promote a fight!” Schaub said (transcript via MMA Fighting). “When everyone goes, ‘Being a promoter is so difficult.’ Really? These kids have zero background!”
“They both decided, ‘Hey, we both have a following,’ and they did it all their own. I’m sure they lined up with some help to acquire the arena and get the ticket sales and all that, but for the most part two famous guys showed you how easy it is to promote and sell a fight.”
“It is not rocket science. No one is skilled at doing this,” he continued. “We give way too much respect to these promoters. They are not that skilled. It’s very obvious who should be fighting, what fight to make, how to build a fight.”
Schaub further highlighted what he feels are the shortcomings of the UFC as a promotion company, noting how it tends to rely on fighters to bring attention to their own fights.
“When a fight does not sell, that’s when you realize how sh—ty a promoter is,”” Schaub said. “Whenever there’s two headline UFC fighters, both those guys are so f—ng talented it’s not even funny. For those fights not to sell should not rely on a fighter. That’s where a promoter or the marketing business of the UFC, or name whatever boxing promoter you want, should come into play. It is not the responsibility of them. Them being the fighters.”
“For these two guys with zero background to sh-t on any UFC fight this year, numbers-wise, shows you how poorly of a job the UFC is doing at times and how easy it is to promote a fight.”
Lately, Schaub has been trashing the UFC for their promotional practices. His latest tirade centered on how the company is “riding and dying” on promoting disgraced ex-NFL star Greg Hardy.
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