Opinion: UFC 332 made Dana White look right, but there's a bigger problem
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UFC 332 set a promotional record for knockouts.| 📷: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa/Getty
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For all the criticism UFC 332 received, it ended up being a banger of a card. It produced 11 knockouts, an Ultimate Fighting Championship record, including seven consecutive first-round finishes, another promotional record. Violence was the name of the game, leaving viewers who craved it satiated. Of course, it also left Dana White rubbing the results in the faces of detractors who complained about the card.
As much as White’s gloating annoys me in these situations — this wasn’t the first time a maligned card proved entertaining, and it won’t be the last — he isn’t necessarily wrong to say “told you so.” It was one of the most entertaining cards from top to bottom that I can recall in recent memory. Ultimately, that’s what the UFC is all about. Yes, it’s a sport, but fans spend their hard-earned money to be entertained.
UFC 332's record knockouts didn't silence the critics
Of course, that wasn’t the complaint from the naysayers, myself included. It was the quality of the card, measured against the standard the UFC itself had established with its previous numbered events. There weren’t many names familiar to casual fans who had only recently taken an interest in the sport. Rafael dos Anjos may be a former champion, but he lost his title more than a decade ago. Deiveson Figueiredo is also a former champion — less than four years ago, he was the flyweight kingpin — but he looks absolutely washed. I don’t mean to disrespect Natalia Silva or Cong Wang, but neither appears to have the “it” factor that makes stars. Silva is now champion, but she’s not a star, not by a long shot.
I understand that extenuating circumstances partly explain the card’s low quality and that not all events will meet the same standard. Some will inevitably be below average. The bigger issue was that the UFC seemed to feel it didn’t need to stretch itself to produce an acceptable lineup. To me, the promotion took the easy way out, setting the card up for violence rather than competitive fights.
Did UFC 332's matchmaking favor knockouts over competition?
Make no mistake, the potential for violence on this card was particularly high once all the pieces fell into place. It didn’t look like a happy accident; it looked like the product of deliberate matchmaking.
For instance, durability doesn’t last forever. Pound on a rock long enough with a hammer, and it will eventually crack. That analogy has its limits when applied to fighters, but the accumulated punishment these veterans have taken raises questions about how much more they can withstand. There were three fighters 40 or older on the card; all three were stopped. Figueiredo may not be 40 yet, but he’ll turn 39 in December and has taken considerable punishment over the past couple of years. He had previously lost by TKO to Brandon Moreno, but another stoppage felt inevitable if his recent struggles continued.
To be fair to the UFC, most of those contests didn’t look like intentional squash matches. Court McGee drew Eric Nolan, who had yet to win in the UFC. Dos Anjos looked good against Alexander Hernandez until he didn’t. King Green was ... well, he was King Green, and there was good and bad in his overall performance against Esteban Ribovics. Those fights were relatively competitive, but I thought the veterans were at considerable risk of being stopped. That also doesn’t erase the several matchups that looked like obvious mismatches.
Payton Talbott, Deiveson Figueiredo & the UFC's prospect strategy
Given that Payton Talbott easily outpointed a game Henry Cejudo in his previous appearance, Figueiredo looked like a sizable step down. With Talbott still ascending as a fighter, it was hard to envision anything other than a glorified squash match ... which is exactly what it became. Damian Pinas also appeared to get a step down, going from Cesar Almeida to Andrey Pulyaev. Highly touted Anthony Wint was booked on less than a month’s notice to face a newcomer with far less hype, Lucas Armand. Those three fights lasted a combined 3 minutes, 47 seconds — less than a single round of action.
I can’t fault the UFC for using that strategy. With other promotions competing for prospects, it has an incentive to sign them before they’re ready for tougher competition and give them manageable opponents while they develop. Why not make that development time entertaining? Build hype around the youngsters. Give the viewing audience something it is likely to get excited about. The result was a card most fans will remember fondly, even if the main event ended up being as flat as many feared.
Could UFC 332 change how Dana White builds future cards?
Given that the UFC brand is now a bigger star than any individual fighter — assuming Conor McGregor is no longer a viable exception — I expect similar matchmaking to compensate for numbered events whose lineups leave fans complaining. I doubt the Madison Square Garden cards will get that treatment, but I could see it happening in Cincinnati or Denver. A Brazilian card also seems like a prime candidate. In other words, a location whose appeal alone wouldn’t be a major selling point when recruiting free agents in the major team sports.
I don’t expect the UFC to acknowledge such a strategy. The promotion will continue to say it has the best fighters in the world and that, as long as fans are entertained, it’s doing its job. At the most basic level, that argument is correct. Nuance can add gray to a black-and-white situation, but I don’t expect the UFC to supply it. As much as I want to complain, it’s a damn good approach. Don’t expect it to work as well as it did at UFC 332 — that’s a best-case scenario — but look closer at the next numbered event you find underwhelming. It may be primed for several finishes.
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