“The week leading up to UFC 223 was absolutely bonkers. Between the musical chairs of finding an opponent for Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor’s now infamous bus attack, there has never been a more ridiculous series of events preceding a fight card. The fact that a proposed UFC Hawaii event fell through went largely unnoticed amid the pandemonium in Brooklyn, New York.

Miraculously, the event went pretty well. There were entertaining and divisionally relevant fights, and while my heart goes out to the fighters who had their bouts cancelled due to McGregor’s antics, having fewer fights made the event as a whole much more watchable. Thus, despite the attendant nonsense of fight week, there is still much to unpack…”

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“UFC 223 was supposed to be simple: Khabib Nurmagomedov, the undefeated number one contender would finally square off against interim lightweight champion Tony Ferguson. They had been paired three times before, and each time the fight fell through due to alternating injuries – Khabib, then Tony, then Khabib again. The winner would become the undisputed lightweight champion, the title that Conor McGregor had gone 500 days without defending. With McGregor’s absence from the cage, Ronda Rousey’s disappearing act, and the PED problems of Jon Jones and Brock Lesnar, the UFC desperately needed to give fans something to be excited about. Anticipation for the main event and a comprehensively stacked card underneath it made UFC 223 the first quality mixed martial arts offering of 2018. And in a matter of days, it all went to shit…”

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“There can be no doubt that the Ultimate Fighting Championship has been a successful business venture. Its story of going from a $2 million company in 2001 — and one that wasn’t even profitable until 2005 — to a $4 billion company in 2017 is staggering enough, but consider the fact that this growth occurred in a marketplace where virtually every other competing organization struggled to stay in the black. The UFC’s rise has been a remarkable achievement on paper.

Yet in spite of the evidence of the business savvy working behind the curtains, the powers that be still continue a puzzling practice: incentivizing fighters through win bonuses. For most fighters, their purse consists of “show money,” which is then doubled if they win. In theory, this sounds reasonable, but reality paints a different picture…”

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