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With today's announcement that the UFC and FOX will put on a fight for the UFC Heavyweight Title in November, the UFC is showing that they are all in on this deal. This is not just a new way to distribute their product and promote pay-per-views. This has the potential, in the long run, to blow up the way the UFC does business. I'm not saying that they're going to go away from the pay-per-view model within a year, or even within five years. But if the Velasquez-dos Santos fight does monster numbers on FOX, the seeds could potentially be planted.
In retrospect, this was really the only option for the UFC. If you're going to have a shortened card (whether one or two televised fights, it doesn't matter,) you've got to make it count. A non-title fight wasn't going to do that. They had three options: Move GSP-Diaz to this event, have Anderson Silva fight again with a short turnaround time (likely against Chael Sonnen while finding another opponent for Brian Stann,) or the option they went with. Velasquez-dos Santos was clearly the best choice.
Besides the timing problems of GSP-Diaz, that fight will likely play out with GSP taking Nick Diaz down and controlling him for five rounds (let's face it, shall we? Diaz's weakness is wrestling, and GSP has no weakness that Diaz can exploit.) The buildup to the fight would have been good, but the fight itself wouldn't have delivered in a way that's going to hook first-time viewers. As far as Silva-Sonnen, the buyrate for UFC 134 turned out to be pretty disappointing - whether that's an indication of Silva's inability to draw a great buyrate, the lack of enthusiasm for foreign-country-based shows, the effects of a hurricane that knocked out a lot of power on the East Coast, or some combination, it's not exactly worth the risk to rush Silva back into action. Also I don't know that you want Sonnen being the mouthpiece of your first network show.
Which brings us to Velasquez-dos Santos. Neither is a household name, but they both have something going for them: they're heavyweights. No matter how good the smaller weight classes are, the heavies will always capture the imagination of the casual fan. And the upside here is that these guys are going to deliver. I think it would be a pretty big surprise if this fight isn't completely explosive. Not to mention that both fighters speak English, which is a plus in promoting the fight.
There's basically no downside to this fight unless it turns out to be a clunker, which is highly unlikely. The other thing it has going for it is that there won't be any prelims. It seems weird to say this, but think about it: if there were one or two fights ahead of this one on the card, what if they were boring? What if people tuned out and either didn't come back or came back too late? That's no good. With this model, you'll get a solid block of time beforehand to hype the fight (and if there are some quick finishes on the undercard, maybe we'll get a look.) This event is going to be hyped during NFL games and during some other very highly-rated programming, sports and otherwise. Someone is coming out of this thing a star - and if you're going to have a star, he may as well be your Heavyweight Champion.
Chris Brennan Marcelo Brito Rob Broughton Mike Brown Junie Browning
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