I’ve always contended that the UFC actually sucks at fight promotion, and is particularly abysmal at fighter promotion. However, it is astonishingly, remarkably, extraordinarily, near impossibly good at self-promotion.
The UFC is always in the news. When Elon and Zuck are trading barbs about settling their beef in a cage, there’s Dana White. When Trump shows up at a PPV, they make that the story of the event as much as the fights themselves. When Gen Z tik tok celebs want mainstream media cred, Dana is there to roll out the carpet.
The UFC’s business is promoting the UFC. It’s akin to the old pro wrestling days when the ECW crowd would chant the name of the promotion after the guys in the ring committed some obscenely violent, dangerous, potentially career threatening and probably life-altering.
The logic then parallels what is likely the current logic. ECW was a smaller promotion whose talent was constantly being poached so why would they focus on promoting wrestlers who could bolt tomorrow? Meanwhile, the UFC trades in a sport wherein anyone, even the best guy in the world, can lose at any time with one slip. Why invest all that money into one guy when he could lose his next fight in 30 seconds? It’s a surer bet to reinvest in self-promoting the organization that can and will outlive the fighters. It makes perfect sense logically and financially but it sucks for the fighters.
To Vince McMahon’s credit, while he certainly promoted the WWF/WWE, he also promoted the shit out of Hulk, Stone Cold and the Rock because he still understood that the crowd was there to see the talent. Apples to oranges, obviously because it’s a hell of a lot easier to promote the hell out of the guy when you know he’s going over on the PPV but still…the UFC realllllly needs to get better at promoting it’s fighters bc there has been a palpable dip in general mainstream interest.