Phil Davis (Photo/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)In 1971 mayor Richard Daley told Newsweek that Chicago was "The City that Works." The powerful political patriarch meant to imbue a sense of pride in his constituents. Compared to other major metropolises, thought Daley, Chicagoans got up in the morning, strapped on boots and worked a job. In Daley's mind his city was supporting an economy. True or not, the moniker stuck.
The UFC is visiting Daley's Chicago for the first time in three years, but Saturday's UFC of FOX 2 is arguably the most important commercial card in promotional history. The prime time card is the first network television event of the promotion's seven-year, $700 million deal with FOX. The first UFC event on FOX, which aired in November and featured the UFC heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, was added by network executives in the hopes of bolstering rating for the 2012 fight season. The event set some viewing records, but is best remembered as being filled with lots of fluff and little fighting.
To capture the mainstream audiences they failed to nab with their first iteration, the UFC has composed one of their most competitive cards in promotional history (notably on a weekend free of gridiron deities). Much like the blue collar utopia Daley imagined in the 70s, the UFC is promoting its product on the their hardest working and most reliable resource they have at their disposal: wrestlers.
The UFC on FOX 2 features four NCAA All-Americans, premier among them is light heavyweight headliner Phil Davis an NCAA champion at Penn State. Chael Sonnen (Oregon), Chris Weidman (Hofstra) and Shane Roller (Oklahoma State) round out the card. Davis' opponent Michigan State alumni Rashad Evans was an NCAA qualifier at Michigan State but never placed (something Phil Davis has been pleased to point out). Were it not for an elbow injury to Mark Munoz, a two-time All-American and NCAA champion from Oklahoma State, the card would have featured two wrestler-only fights.
Why the UFC decided to feature so many Division I wrestlers, and why they were they pitted against each other like roosters is not a simple answer, and is certainly not without debate. However, the growth of the sport and the UFC's role in putting on 40-plus shows a year has meant an increased reliability on the heart, heartiness and work ethic of the wrestler class.
Mat men of Davis' and Munoz's pedigree are no longer rare in the UFC. Just six years ago the financial incentives weren't strong enough to pull more than a few grapplers from the NCAA tournament, now the sport's best can't ignore the enormous income potential, leading to cards like that in Chicago, where there are competitors on the card (Weidman and Davis) who have actually wrestled against each other.
The UFC isn't putting these fighters on the free FOX card because they think fans want to see a wrestling match. What UFC matchmaker Joe Silva and president Dana White are betting is that the wrestling skills of Davis and Evans negate each other and leave the men to figure out their issues by throwing their very sizable mitts into each other's faces.
The motivation or this type of wrestler-based clash comes from the Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard trilogy. Both are former NCAA wrestlers (Edgar never earned All-American honors. Maynard is a three-time All-American from Michigan State, and coincidentally lost in the 2002 NCAA wrestlebacks to Shane Roller) were left to bludgeon each other once they realized their takedowns were essentially ineffective. The UFC is betting that Davis and Evans resort to the same type of crowd-pleasing fisticuffs that led the Edgar vs. Maynard fights to be considered among the promotion's greatest of all time. With luck, Dana White hopes that viewers are in place for the main event potentially earning the UFC thousands more fans and millions more dollars.
While White and other UFC executives seem to be placing the future of the promotion on the broad backs of these cauliflower-eared brethren, the promotion no longer operates a monopoly on incoming wrestling talent. Wrestlers have proven to be a vital part of the MMA formula, and in a business where the effort of fighters is as essential as talent, wrestlers have proven to be work horses.
Bellator provides substantial anecdotal evidence that wrestlers have become necessary to bolstering the perceived competitiveness and success of a burgeoning promotion. CEO Bjorn Rebney's has legitimized his roster by recruiting some of college wrestling's top available talent, often before they have acquired significant cage experience. Current champs include bantamweight Joe Warren (Michigan), lightweight Michael Chandler (Missouri), welterweight Ben Askren (Missouri) and heavyweight Cole Konrad (Minnesota). That selection of wrestling talent competed with the UFC's best on the mat, and could do the same inside the cage.
Whether in Bellator or the UFC, the designation as an NCAA All-American or NCAA champion has additional cache with fans that recognize the achievement more than they do obscure kickboxing titles, or jiu-jitsu rank. Fans know the hierarchy and respond to the titular significance. Even those who don't understand, at least went to high school and grasp that wrestling is filled with semi-maniacal, quixotic weight-cutters. Those personal experiences give new viewers a solid connection to their own world experiences -- a launching point for companies like the UFC looking to recruit new fans.
While the link can seem too psychological, consider the UFC's second most common linkage, the Brazilians, who are unable to communicate with, or capture the attention of the American crowds nearly as well as the NCAA wrestling community (however, they do a great job in their native Brazil). Wrestlers tend to be outspoken, with guys like Sonnen, Evans, and Askren creating large followings on Twitter. Big-time wrestlers like Davis also tend to recruit a significant fan base from their alma mater. Penn State wrestling fans will tune-in on Saturday night to watch their former NCAA champion compete, as will fans of the Oklahoma State Cowboys and Michigan State Spartans. Those numbers might seem small for now, but an additional 25k-50k fans watching fights free on FOX should convert into future pay-per-view buys.
The wrestler-turns-fighter trend is only beginning. Like athletes from American Samoa who for a combination of cultural reasons and physical intangibles are the most likely on earth to play in the NFL; wrestlers will become noticed as the most likely to succeed in the octagon and continue to refine their collegiate experiences to prepare for their post-graduate opportunity in the fight game.
Like any sought-after population, the wrestling community is becoming self-aware of their marketability. The three most recent graduating classes have already produced top-ranked cage talent. Newbie fighters like Bubba Jenkins (Penn State/Arizona State) and Lance Palmer (Ohio State) are only a few victories away from being introduced on national television, and have already gathered significant fan followings. Chris Honeycutt (Edinboro), a Division I wrestler who is ranked No. 2 nationally at 197 pounds in the InterMatWrestle rankings, still has two months left in his wrestling career, but is already contemplating where to start his MMA training.
The UFC on FOX 2 is only the strongest example of White and UFC executives picking men they thought worthy of wowing the average sport fan into buying a few more PPV fights per year. Because, after all the predictions are written about style matchups and techniques, the success and failure of a fight card comes down to whether or not the UFC is going to make more or less money off the fighters.
Just like former Chicago's Daley, UFC president White wants to excite his constituency. Where the former mayor turned to a pithy slogan and interview in a national magazine, White turned to his stable of big-bodied, loud-mouthed wrestlers and set them loose in prime time.
Hey, whatever works.
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