UFC Still Has Lessons to Learn from Boxing

In two weeks, UFC plans to deliver one of the better cards in its history. Featuring two excellent title matches and abundant with top contenders, UFC 211 is more worthy of your dollars than any event UFC has offered to this point in 2017, but casual viewers may not be able to tell when watching it.

The show will open with STEMM’s “Face the Pain,” as nearly every UFC pay-per-view has for the past 15 years. (The song is still as horrible as it was then, but it now also has the detriment of being embarrassingly outdated.) Preceding the title bouts, the combatants talking about their opponent, with highlights of their finer moments and Joe Rogan adding some color. The arena will go dark, the fighter’s selected music will play (unless UFC President Dana White doesn’t like that music and replaces it with generic metal), and the fighter will begin their walk from backstage to the cage. UFC adopted the entrance style more than 13 years ago, inspired by White and the Fertitta brothers’ fondness for Mike Tyson’s ring walks. The style suits some fighters well, but most blend in with the others, and production for the biggest main events on pay-per-view bears little difference from the smallest main events on UFC Fight Pass.

On Saturday, the first weekend in a two-week break for the UFC, boxing took center stage as an alleged 90,000 fans took to Wembley Stadium for the heavyweight title tilt between Anthony Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko. Even if you didn’t know of the story, the stakes, or the pre-fight estimates of more than one million pay-per-view sales in the UK alone, the presentation alone made it clear that this was a monumental clash.

A camera orbited the arena from the sky above, as though in that moment, everything revolved around this event. The camera work in the arena basked in the fact that the bout had sold out a massive stadium and added to the feeling that this was an important happening. The sound of “Sweet Caroline,” if not blood pumping, was harmless and welcoming to casual viewers in a way that “Face the Pain” could never be. While Klitschko opted for a traditional entrance, Joshua stepped onto a stage that rose into the air with the large letters “AJ” set ablaze behind him by a person with a flamethrower. It was unnecessarily extravagant and silly, but also unique and memorable. In the fight business, in which building stars is the name of the game, unique and memorable are the type of things that make stars.

Today, days after a spectacle of an event and a spectacular fight, Anthony Joshua is a bigger star than he has ever been.

The UFC does not have to have a fighter’s name in flames or trade its humble walkway for something on the scale of Pride. Even when they have taken relatively small steps outside the norm, it’s typically effective and widely praised. When Conor McGregor and Chad Mendes walked out to live music at UFC 189, it made the fight feel momentous. Small visual additions to some entrances at UFC 129 in Toronto added excitement. Even something as minuscule as a lighting change during the stare down for Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz at UFC 66, which they have repeated on occasion over the years, lent a bit more importance to the contest.

Small deviations from the norm can make for a much more interesting and memorable viewer experience. Why not change the video package style every once in a while to get the audience more familiar with the main event fighters rather than a supposed grudge? Why not build the prestige of a world championship by introducing former titleholders before a title bout? What’s the problem with trying out pre-fight national anthems? Do we really have to keep listening to “Face the Pain”?

After some very rough early years, Zuffa’s UFC has developed a solid core production geared toward fight fans, but its cookie-cutter approach is costing the promotion opportunities to make bigger stars and make events and fighters stand out. This sameness promotes the UFC above all, as has been a basic tenant of the organization for the past 16 years, but it also handicaps them by limiting the tools they use to promote fighters.

“Promoting” doesn’t stop once the event starts; it continues through the show intro, in the pre-fight video package, in the entrances, in the fight itself, and in the post-fight activities. Minor details can make a big difference when it comes to the audience’s attention and their investment in certain athletes. In this regard, many major boxing matches, such as this past weekend’s Joshua vs. Klitschko clash, have a leg up on the UFC.

Dan Plunkett has covered MMA for 411Mania since 2008. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @Dan_Plunkett.