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As we all know, heading into 2024, UFC business is booming. The world’s largest mixed martial arts promotion has been on a profitability tear of late, squeezing money out of every single crevice, corner, and cranny (that’s alliteration for the Michael Bispings out there) of their fans and broadcast platforms and advertising partners.
Is the product getting better too? Who cares!?
Apparently Saudi Arabia does.
Saudi Arabia demands better UFC card
The Middle Eastern dictatorship has become a sports-washing powerhouse in recent years, turning to competitive athletics as a way to paper over a long and unwavering history of human rights violations. It’s a good trick, used by governments all around the world. Give people a spectacle they’d love to see and they’ll show up for a healthy dose of propaganda to go along with it. Even if not one critical voice is changed or silenced, there’s always room to find fans who will suddenly be adding ‘a trip to Riyadh to their bucket list.’
Only, the thing with spectacle is that it has to be spectacular.
Back in October, the Saudi government paid for former UFC champion Francis Ngannou’s first ever pro boxing match; a bout against unbeaten WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. That was spectacular. In December they brought in top draws Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder for a stacked end-of-the-year card. Nevermind that it was something of a disaster for future plans to make a Wilder/Joshua fight that has been floating in the ether for years now, it was a big card that got people talking. It also set up Ngannou vs. Joshua in Riyadh in March. Big events, high stakes, big money; the course is clear.
Last year, as part of their new TKO partnership with longtime Saudi-bought sports entertainment property the WWE, the UFC secured it’s own deal to put on an event in the kingdom. According to a report from MMA Junkie, a $20 million site fee secured the Arab nation the right to host a UFC event on March 2nd at the aptly named ‘Kingdom Arena.’
What better way to impress a big spending new business partner than a regionally tinged Apex event?
Apparently all $20 million buys is Eryk Anders, Jairzinho Rozenstruik, Javid Basharat, and Muhammad Mokaev along with a main event to be named later. It’s little wonder then that it appears the Saudis have told the UFC to hit the bricks and come back when they’ve got a real plan.
Ariel Helwani reports that the UFC has been forced to re-schedule their planned debut in Riyadh, “because the powers that be in Saudi Arabia want… a more entertaining fight card. They want a deeper fight card with bigger names on it.”
Who saw this coming? We did
All things considered, it’s at least a little odd that the UFC didn’t have something better prepared for such a major new partnership. But there are suggestions out there that the promotion could have been trying to play both sides against the middle in their dueling—and much longer standing—partnership with the UAE.
“[Dana White] seems to think he’s in this for the long term with with Abu Dhabi,” longtime Bloody Elbow contributor & editor Karim Zidan explained on a recent episode of the Level Change podcast. “But I don’t think he understands, really, that this idea [that the UFC is] going to expand across the region through Abu Dhabi doesn’t really work. Because it’s not like the UAE is going to get into a partnership with Saudi Arabia.”
“Out of the blue, the UFC announces that it’s going to Saudi Arabia for a Fight Night card of all things… I thought that was just so lazy and stupid of the UFC. If you’re going to some place like Saudi Arabia after all this glitz and glamour you just saw, are you seriously taking them a Fight Night card? I’d be amazed if they let it in the building, like they don’t care about stuff. Do you think the Saudis are going to be impressed just because the UFC showed up in town? They’re about to host the World Cup.”
If Dana White & co. were hoping to keep the UAE happy by making their Riyadh debut a small potatoes event, it seems they badly underestimated Saudi interest in the UFC brand. It’s part of what feels like a growing trend. The promotion appears to be booking around UFC 300 with the idea that the ‘UFC 300’ label sells itself. They booked big name Aussie talent out around UFC 293 and ended up with Sean Strickland in the main event against Israel Adesanya and Justin Tafa vs. Austen Lane and Tyson Pedro vs. Anton Turkalj opening their PPV.
There’s some bad luck in there too, no doubt. But a UFC product that increasingly seems to target advertising partners and marketing deals over fan engagement seems to be running into this kind of bad luck more and more often with less and less concern about avoiding it. For a promotion that’s so used to bullying the market in the US (a helping of Power Slap with every broadcast), this power play had to come as something of a shock.
It’s no fun saying that it took Saudi money to check the UFC’s increasing laziness, but that appears to be the case. If we’re going to have to put up with more sports-washing efforts in MMA, let’s at least hope we get a good fight card out of it.
The card the Saudis rejected
This is what we know of the planned UFC Fight Night card that was to have taken place in March on Saudi soil.
- Mohammad Mokaev vs. Alex Perez
- Jairzinho Rozenstruik vs. Shamil Gaziev
- Eryk Anders vs. Jamie Pickett
- Joel Alvarez vs. Ludovit Klein
- Javid Basharat vs. Aiemann Zahabi
- Yanis Ghemmouri vs. Vinicius Oliveira
- Brendon Marotte vs. Mohammad Yahya
- Abdul-Kerim Al-Selwady vs. Loik Radzhabov