The Farsightedness of MMA and Our Desire for Mythos – Part I

The Farsightedness of MMA and Our Desire for Mythos – Part I

It might just be the most exciting time to be a mixed martial arts fan. With news buzzing about Affliction closing and the implications thereof involving Fedor, the UFC, and Strikeforce, significant news seems to be breaking every day.  The buzz has perpetuated a recent trend in MMA culture of farsightedness.  Visiting the MMA forums and news sights, one might not realize that two exceptional and significant cards are just over a week away.  Three of the best pound for pound fighters will meet significant and in some cases their most significant challenges in recent memory. Why is it relevant and what does it mean that abstract possibilities have taken the fore while fights in front of our face seem to sit at the periphery of our focus.

You could say that Fedor is the biggest and most important news in MMA because Fedor is the best fighter in the most important weight class in combat sports and you would be right.  However justified the excitement is, there is another significant bout approaching that’s lack of hype is somewhat troubling. I can understand the lack of fanfare for Penn/Florian and Bowels/Torres; those make sense to me.  However, Anderson Silva and Forrest Griffin have made their way into popular sports consciousness. Even friends of mine who are the most casual fans (by that I mean friends that will watch MMA with me only because I am not going out until it is done) know who Silva and Griffin are.  In fact, from my experience these are two of the only 4 fighters that get these casual fans excited about an event.  Not to mention this is a serious super-fight. This is a huge LHW and former champion going toe-to-toe with the MW king and almost consensus pound-for-pound king (although I still give the nod to Fedor).  Forrest has shocked the world before and, due to his size and recent resume, is likely the most dangerous fighter Anderson Silva has faced, at least on paper. Even if you want to ignore that Torres vs Bowels is the top two fighters in a division in a long overdue title fight and Penn is finally returning to defend his LW title, Silva vs Griffin represents a significant pivot point for two of the most important divisions in MMA today. This fight could potentially affect the future of GSP and the WW division as well.  I point this out not to hype up a fight that has not received what I see as adequate attention, but to demonstrate that the oversight of forthcoming events is significant and speaks to two relevant implications.

First, MMA’s loyal fanbase and the buzz that it creates for a fight have implications on the mainstream attention that a fight or a card will get. Of course we won’t know for sure how well a fight will draw until it is done but it is hard for me to imagine that Anderson Silva vs Forrest Griffin will do the kind of numbers that it should, given what we have seen from other cards.  It seemed to me that when Chuck Liddell was on top and Tito Ortiz was challenging him in their second fight, the MMA world was losing its mind for the fight and the numbers followed. Lets face it though, the folks in the forums and frequenters of ufc.com or sherdog.com cannot produce the kind of numbers that the UFC does for a PPV.  Drawing those kinds of numbers relies on a group of people who choose weather or not to watch the UFC from show to show based on the card that is being put up.  Lesnar vs Couture was suppose to be the biggest show in history for just this reason but the attention peaked to early and the event was sort of poorly placed among other cards that stole some of the buzz.  UFC 100 was perfectly placed, wasn’t interfered with by big out of ring/cage news.  My point is this, for an MMA event to garner significant attention and make its way into the mainstream consciousness; the loyal MMA fans have to be excited about it.  We may get tired of breaking down the same fight over and over and sometimes there is nothing to do but wait, but it is the buzz we create that catches the attention of those who may or may not pay attention to MMA.  If we get to farsighted, we don’t give the fights in front of us the attention they deserve or need.

Cont….