Question to Tapology: Do You Think WME-IMG Will Undermine the Success of the UFC?

This is a question I have had rolling around in my brain for a while now, and I didn't give it much cause for pause until I looked at the long list of people getting axed by WME-IMG in recent months, with the tipping point being the talk about removing Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan from commentary.

This whole scenario to me seems about as bad as when Turner Broadcasting bought majority ownership in what would become World Championship Wrestling.  For those who have no idea what in the **** I am talking about, I'll explain in as a condensed of a TL;DR version that I can.  When WCW was struggling in the 80s, Ted Turner bought its promoter (Jim Crockett) out to save the company and put his corporate goons in charge of the promotion.  As a result, they helped undermine the business Ted was trying to save as they kept cutting essential personnel and changing the aesthetic of the promotion as they didn't know how to run a wrestling promotion, and it was because of their meddling that WCW would flounder until it was briefly saved in the late 90s before it was again ruined by new corporate suits brought in thanks to the TimeWarner merger and eventually killed and sold to Vince McMahon in 2001.

Fast forward to the UFC sale to WME-IMG and what have they done?  Cutting what could be considered as essential personnel and are trying to change the aesthetic of the product.  I mean the losses of guys like Tom Wright, Garry Cook, Dave Sholler, and Joe Silva alone are somewhat concerning, considering how important they were to the company.  Now the whole rumblings about replacing Goldberg and Rogan (which probably means bumping up Anik and Stann *sigh*), a commentary group many casual and hardcore MMA fans like, makes me wonder what they are trying to do.  Is WME-IMG trying to improve the company or are they trying to gut it?

I mean, as much as I had hatred for the idiotic **** Zuffa did sometimes, *cough* REEBOK DEAL *cough*, they played a huge part in making the UFC a juggernaut in MMA and making the sport relevant.  Now with WME-IMG in charge, I really wonder if the UFC might be hampered with these corporate suits now in charge.

What do you guys think?

* Edited at 01.02.2017, 2:29 AM ET *

Nah, I just think they, as a Hollywood management company, want to make it look more Hollywood. I think the product is going to change, everyone will cry about it, most will hate it, some will like it, everybody will get used to it.

You don't spend $4.5B on something you're going to undermine.

They've got their people and they're giving them the spotlight jobs. It's what they essentially "do for a living".

If it becomes like WWE, then it will be awful. I have the feeling there will be more fake rivalries than there already are.

Even before the sale was official the one thing I said was at least we know the Fertittas are MMA fans. They ran the company for years in the red before it finally turned around. WME-Img will be a bottom line first company. My fear isn't that UFC will become like WWE, my fear is it will become like boxing. Fake rivalries don't bother me as long as they are settled in a real fight. What will bother me is having 500 titles that mean nothing and no champs willing to defend them because they only want big money fights.

As for gutting the company and removing key personel it is somewhat worrisome but it won't affect the sport the way it affected WCW. This is mainly because UFC doesn't have scripts and have far less creative control. You can try to set up favorable matches like some other promotions have done but nothing is 100% safe in MMA. In the end it only takes one punch to end a hype train. We saw what happened when Gary Shaw stacked all their chips on Kimbo. Some could make the argument the same is happening with Conor  but at least he is a fairlly proven entity who isn't all hype.

As for Goldy and Rogan in particular as much as they are staples of the UFC and the voice of the Octagon. I don't actually think they are critical to the success of the sport. That little **** up at 207 where Rogan created controversy where there should have been none is an example. To make matters worse he harped on the comission when he was clearly wrong, then went into the cage and made a flatly incorrect statement as a matter of fact. It's fine to make mistakes but they do make them often. I'm more concerned with the loss of guys behind the scenes and we will see how it goes when the new matchmaker takes over.

The truth is as long as they set up competitive match ups and constantly look for new stars they will be fine.

* Edited at 01.02.2017, 12:23 PM ET *

@bigj to be fair to Rogan in that case, he had just gotten validation from Marc Ratner, which you would think would be reliable.  Honestly I'm never too impressed with the clarity of the explanations that Ratner gives during those on-air segments.  This episode makes me seriously question his expertise.

@yoss

They might not be purposefully trying to undermine it.  But with the cuts they are making and treating it like your standard corporate entity which it's not has me concerned that the reach of the sport will shrink.

Well it seems that, according to MMA Weekly, WME-IMG just brought on some new investors to the tune of $1.1 Billion and the stock they have bought is going to be from Flash Entertainment and...

the remaining stock of the Fertittas and Dana White.

Dana apparently is denying that he is going to be bought out and that he is going to remain on as he and WME's head Ari Emmanuel are "business partners".  And sure Dana may still be on the payroll, but I highly doubt that he is going to have the same amount of power he had pre this recent news.

Dana denying something? How often has simething he denied end up being true?

With every passing month I worry more and more UFC is sinking into the Boxing model. With all the attention to capitalize on a few big money fights a year and the rest of the division left in the lurch. Unfortunately it also seems to be what the fans want. They complain the roster is too deep and there are too many low talent fighters. They want only a handful of events focused on their favorite fighters future be dammed. They forget almost every big star in the UFC started as a supposed talentless nobody fighting on the prelims for the organization minimum. 

As for Dana he doesn't have to have a stake in the company in order to be the president, he can run it as an employee subservient to a board of directors. Despite whatever we may think I would say WME-IMG investing another 1.1 billion shows they have a lot of faith in the future of the company and whatever their focus, they believe it is working. As much as I hate the short sightedness of McGregor v Mayweather they will probably make a bigger profit off that than any of their previous PPVs this year with a much smaller investment.  

While I do think WME-IMG had been chasing some strange match-ups based on the misguided allure of short-term money fights that aren't really money fights in the first place, I don't think the long-term of the UFC is in any sort of danger. They're going to get a big TV deal with another network once the FOX deal is up, and while the sports cable landscape has cooled slightly compared to what it was, they'll still be making more on the next deal than they did on this one. 

I even think they're made a few wise decisions in recent months in terms of taking a few breathers between major events rather than trying to shoehorn in a PPV every single month when there just isn't a need for it. I think 10 PPVs a year would be perfect, with the Fight Nights acting as nice showcase cards for up-and-comers.

Will be interesting to watch, but the UFC isn't in danger right now. Weirdly, the promotion seems to be in a bit of a win-loss-win pattern in terms of annual revenue. 2013 was a huge year, then 2014 blew with the departure of GSP and Anderson Silva and Jon Jones' former inability to generate significant buyrates. 2016 was when they really cashed in on the star power of Conor McGregor, and 2017 has been a deadzone until UFC 214. The sport is cyclical and is dependent on the emergence of new stars. Thing is, there will always be new stars. 

Jon Jones is just entering his prime and looks to be a bigger draw than he ever was before, I don't think Conor is done in the UFC, and new names can emerge at the drop of a hat. 

In the meantime, I think the UFC would be well-served to start catering more heavily to their hardcore fans, which make up a significant number of paying consumers. Even hardcores haven't been purchasing PPVs in 2017 because the cards have blown. 214 is reported at doing 850k, and I think the stacked undercard has a lot to do with that. Based on early announcements for upcoming PPVs, I think they're trying to do a better job of giving buyers their money's worth. We've learned that the old 300k buys "floor" for a UFC PPV is an illusion. If the card sucks and has no star power, it might draw as low as 100-150k buys, as seen with Mighty Mouse cards and UFC 213. Stacking the shows (even without a major star) gets you back up into that 300k + zone they want to be in for sustained profitability. 

That said, I DO think WME-IMG has been forced to reevaluate profit margin goals since purchasing the promotion. This **** isn't as smooth as they figured, I'm sure. But it's still an immensely valuable and growing franchise in an era where sports programming is the last bastion of profitable live television. 

I hope they bring the UFC to the next level but I am not sure if they will.  By next level I do not mean the WWE crap that it sometimes looks like.

* Edited at 08.11.2017, 9:56 AM ET *