Is Bob Arum really a ?big, fat, lying, dirty, two-faced, scumbag pig,? as Dana White suggested recently in an interview at a network affiliate? Well, I don?t know about those remarks, but they come out of some of the recent verbal sparring between the two rulers of their respective empires ? and the fact that Arum is engaging in it is another sign that the UFC has certainly arrived, I might add.
As I have mentioned before, it was quite a while before boxing took the world of mixed martial arts seriously. Boxing promoters were generally of the opinion that the sport posed no threat, and that even in acknowledging that there was a viable audience that was following the UFC (and at the time, other MMA organizations), it was only a remote possibility that it was taking boxing fans away.
This is only one man?s opinion, but I?m not sure they realized that while boxing fans were not moving wholesale over to MMA, there was a ?middle crowd? who had dollars they could allocate toward a pay-per-view purchase, analogous, for our purposes, to the ?undecided? segment in an electorate, and there was a healthy contingency among these more casual fans that was gravitating to the MMA telecasts.
What boxing promoters probably miscalculated was the fact that in capturing the younger audience, mixed martial arts has precluded fans from even considering boxing. Not that they won?t do it at a later date, but they are not developing into boxing fans at an early age. Participant levels have been declining, and the relative lack of organization (chaos, if you will) in boxing was working against it in a new and different way, as by comparison, UFC had its talent, and its plan, in order, regardless of whether it constituted the ?monopoly? some (including Arum, apparently) have tagged it as.
Let?s put it this way. Arum?s fighter, Manny Pacquiao, and a fighter Arum does not control, Floyd Mayweather, would constitute a fight that would break all records in pay-per-view. That much is a foregone conclusion. But not only is that less and less of a possibility with each passing day, it has almost become a preferred option for both Arum/Pacquiao and Mayweather to go in other directions and milk some easy money, because the marketplace, for the moment anyway, is allowing for that state of affairs.
I can?t imagine that a similar situation could persist in a sport like mixed martial arts, not as long as the UFC hold virtual control over the sport. If there were two stars who would make for an obvious ?mega-fight? to the extent the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight would be, the UFC would certainly find a way to make that happen. I?m not saying that is right or wrong, but that?s just the way it is.
Of course, whether the UFC really wants stars to get that big is another subject worth discussing. And it speaks to another thing Arum has brought up, and which White has addressed with his trademark ?tact.? Arum has made mention that the boxers get 80% of the pay-per-view bucks, while the UFC fighters get 20%. That may not be precisely accurate, but it probably does represents the general dynamic. White counters by saying ?You realize Bob Arum has guys fighting on his card that get paid 600 dollars? Guys who fight on those big cards, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, get paid 600 dollars. Nobody has ever been paid 600 dollars in the history of the UFC ? our UFC, since we have been in business.?
At the risk of trying to sound overly diplomatic, both of these guys are right, and both are wrong, in a certain respect. Or more to the point, they are representing their perception of their model, vis-a-vis the other, with some degree of intellectual honesty. But they are ignoring certain obvious truths and realities about the other?s business.
Yes, the headliners on a PPV card Arum, or any other big-time promoter might stage, are going to be paid better, relative to the total amount of pay-per-view brought in, than their UFC counterparts. In most cases, much better. But that is the case because boxing, under the model that has been used to sell and promote, is largely geared toward ?names.? It?s more like a movie that must ?open? big, with pictures getting distribution because of the name value of its stars. Because of that, there is a tendency for the cards to become ?top heavy,? with almost all of the emphasis placed on the main event. The ?losers? in that transaction are the fighters on the bottom rung of the undercard, fighting four-rounders, and it would not be unusual, I guess, for some of them to be paid six hundred to twelve hundred dollars. Critics of the boxing model might say that failing to present a more balanced pay-per-view show is something that ignores long-term thinking.
The UFC model is one where, in the big picture, the ?brand? is the thing. What that does is de-emphasize the idea of ?mega-star? as an essential part of the promotion. Don?t get me wrong; we would never say that fans do not tune in to see a particular fighter, and many of them have rabid followings. But there are more of them; selling a show is not dependent on the participation of a short list of names. People have been conditioned to buy a ?UFC show,? not a ?Brock Lesnar show? or an ?Anderson Silva? show.
Thus, one of the strategies is to make the show ?deep? by offering the undercard fighters in a featured role. It certainly helps that fights can only go a scheduled three or five rounds, but the UFC leans a little more toward the WWE?s way of doing things, where they are presenting a card full of interesting fights, not just one or two. And they are consciously developing talent on the undercards so that when they move up the card, they are already sold to the audience. The natural effect of this is that the fighters on top of the show are going to be paid less than what boxing pays ? again, relatively speaking, and notwithstanding what they may get in terms of sponsorships and bonuses ? but the fighters deep into the undercards are going to be paid much more than those who occupy the preliminary fights in boxing. In other words, there is infinitely more balance.
That each one operates according to his own respective model does not make anyone a ?big, fat, lying, dirty, two-faced, scumbag pig,? and I think there?s a little grandstanding on White?s part to appeal to his Gen-X audience.
However, I would say this ? if you told Arum, or Don King, or Golden Boy, or Gary Shaw, or Lou DiBella, or any of these promoters that all they had to hang their ?brand? out on a shingle and be guaranteed a dependable pay-per-view audience, if only they would restructure the way they pay their talent, they would probably go for it.
