Within the 5 years because the UFC left Fox to announce a $1.5 billion broadcast deal by 2025 with ESPN, it has been onerous to discover a time when UFC president Dana White wasn’t smiling.

The face of martial arts’ most profitable promotion since 2001, the indefatigable 53-year-old maverick White normally closed every calendar 12 months by reminding his MMA media members how profitable the ESPN deal was, usually declaring it the perfect 12 months within the UFC. financially thus far within the firm’s historical past.

However the begin of 2023 felt a bit of completely different.

The UFC at present finds itself at an alarming intersection of narratives, occasions, and unresolved points – sometimes surrounding the remedy of its athletes – making a “excellent storm of challenges” that has the potential to threaten future success.

after all, there never ending war pay issue He is dominated the headlines for 2 years as he escalates the dispute between White and an MMA media, recurrently known as “scumbags” for questioning his decision-making course of. Then, there Recent gambling scandal former fighter and revered coach James Krause led to the slicing of two UFC fighters after the promotion banned all contributors from legally betting on fights resulting from reputable considerations concerning the integrity of the product.

Worse, White has publicly apologized after a video surfaced this week. Physical quarrel with his wife from New Year’s Eve It was videotaped at a nightclub in Mexico. No authorized fees had been filed, however everybody from ESPN to the UFC to dad or mum firm Endeavor remained awkwardly quiet afterward.

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ESPN’s solely touch upon the incident was, back to the UFC saying the media, “ESPN distributes and UFC produces content material.” From the unhealthy timing information, information of White’s home quarrel got here the day ex-UFC fighter Phil Baroni was arrested in Mexico. the allegation that he beat his girlfriend to death.

This all brings us to Thursday morning, apparently from left discipline, when one in all White’s most ardent critics, YouTube star {and professional} boxer Jake Paul introduced that he had signed a two-fight MMA deal beneath the PFL banner and launched pay-per-view. – view the “tremendous struggle” part. PFL additionally introduced that Paul will obtain firm fairness and his arrival will imply PPV fighters will obtain “no less than” 50% of earnings; it is a purposeful punch concentrating on the UFC, which pays its fighters based on earlier courtroom filings. 20% of complete income.

Whereas the Paul information could appear unrelated on the floor, the most important shock issue within the announcement was that ESPN, which has a smaller output cope with the PFL, basically employed one in all White’s greatest PPV rivals in Paul. UFC fighters will compete straight towards him beneath the identical community banner.

Nakisa Badarian, a former CFO of the UFC, which White beforehand dismissed as a “scumbag account,” was additionally employed by the PFL and given a inventory. Badarian, co-founder of Paul’s Most Precious Promotions, will help with league operations and technique for the PFL’s PPV growth.

PFL co-founder Donn Davis even used the Paul announcement to clarify precisely what his intentions had been, in an interview with The New York Occasions on Thursday.

“You might be not a prisoner of the UFC,” Davis mentioned. “Now you can select the UFC or the PFL, however what makes the PFL completely different is that we’re popping out with an actual financial partnership for fighters.”

Whereas none of the present points the UFC is going through will lead to crippling short-term issues – other than the deafening silence of ESPN, the UFC, and dad or mum firm Endeavor relating to White – the long-term risk of each difficulty can’t be ignored. .

Each Paul and Davis’ give attention to combative remedy goes past a easy payoff and has some direct hyperlinks to the continued playing scandal; in 2021.

Featherweight Darrick Minner, one in all Krause’s former fighters, entered a now notorious struggle with a pre-existing leg harm towards Shaylian Nuerdanbieke on November 5. Minner used it to kick his injured leg twice within the first spherical earlier than bending over in ache and being stopped by elbow blows.

The dramatic fluctuation in pre-fight odds, together with the large cash that got here in a first-round TKO loss for Minner, led to the struggle being faraway from numerous sportsbooks, and UFC betting was quickly banned in a number of jurisdictions, together with the Canadian province of Ontario. Till the investigation that led to Krause and Minner’s exile is carried out.

However other than the very actual concern that the Minner struggle is mocking the potential for behind-the-scenes impropriety and hypothesis is escalating in the direction of fight-fixing, his destiny will not be too completely different from former smallweight champion TJ Dillashaw’s defeat to the present champion in October. Aljamain Pound.

Dillashaw badly injured her shoulder at coaching camp and later admitted she was out of the socket. entering the fight more than 20 times. Dillashaw would go on to lose by second-round TKO after a shoulder cut up within the opening minute made him largely uncompetitive. The connection between Minner and Dillashaw surrounds pre-existing accidents and UFC coverage, which dictates that the promotion will solely pay for surgical procedure after accidents skilled contained in the Octagon.

On the floor, the profitable ESPN deal and the fixed stream of latest sponsors added point out that the UFC has grown to a degree of success and cross-applicability it may solely have dreamed of 15 years in the past. By 2008, the UFC was turning into an rising PPV device that rivaled that of boxing however had bother breaking the stigma of cage preventing sufficient to get constant protection from main shops like ESPN.

At each step of the corporate’s rise, White prophesied concerning the model’s world potential and was forward of the sport that the UFC would sooner or later be acknowledged because the “large 4 sports activities” group on par with the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and elite school sports activities. To White’s credit score, this got here true when the ESPN deal was signed and the deliberate cross-promotion of sports activities on the community by means of legacy platforms like “SportsCenter” and “First Take” was seen as a sort of commencement. Nation Membership Popularity Degree.

White’s already strong status for persistently assembly and/or exceeding fan expectations for giant fights was additional cemented into legendary immortality with brash strategies. kept the product alive amid the coronavirus pandemic. When the UFC extremely fulfilled the minimal set of dates required by the ESPN deal whereas White’s rivals had been idle, abruptly ESPN+ turned the one place to go to on the town for stay sports activities within the spring and summer season of 2020.

Each the UFC and White have develop into darlings of nearly everybody, from the followers to the identical ESPN executives who partnered with them. However the easy journey wasn’t with out bumps, as White was informed to “again off” by ESPN’s dad or mum firm Disney in April 2020. first tried to stage fights in California Native American grounds earlier than any state fee offers approval.

Nevertheless, what this set of doubtless compromising points appears to query for the UFC is whether or not White and his relied on fight promotion are really prepared for prime time, particularly when it comes to the duties that include being offered as such a mainstream presence. The ESPN deal supplied the UFC particular dates on terrestrial tv with ABC.

ESPN’s silence within the wake of White’s home scandal appears to query whether or not the community views the UFC on par with different main leagues it has partnered with, together with the NFL and NBA. Can another main sport’s commissioner or front-line govt get away with this sort of unhealthy press with out punishment? And what’s ESPN’s duty to report on model as aggressively as different sports activities?

White has constructed a lot of his status on how politically incorrect he recurrently chooses to be. In earlier occasions when MMA was seen as nothing greater than a cage struggle with the surface world, UFC may have labored higher when it aired on Spike TV or Gasoline TV. Nevertheless, it can not proceed at this degree the place beforehand minor or forgotten subjects develop into entrance web page information.

What occurred to White and his spouse was nothing in need of petty and rippled by means of a martial arts group that already had a awful monitor file when it got here to home abuse and the remedy of victims. The rallying cry of fighters, followers, and even media members in current days who’ve publicly supported White reveals that there’s nonetheless main change to be made.

The UFC might have fulfilled all or most of White’s lofty desires to get to the place he’s at present. But when current historical past reveals that the honeymoon is over and uneven waters are imminent for an organization whose response to severe issues is extraordinarily immature for the platform it carries.