Everywhere I go at the moment, everyone seems to be talking about co-promoting, or at least — co-existing.
To share... or not to share? It can open a huge can of worms, but one that is worth opening. The hottest sub-topic of all is the exclusion of Fedor from the UFC and M-1’s need to co-promote anything that he touches. But much like a legal battle, this is not the only situation of its kind, but it is the key case that people look to for future instances.
It happens in America, it happens in Japan and it happens in Australia.
On one hand, you have promotions that have put their hard earned money down and built their organisations from the ground up — why should they be sharing anything with anybody? Whether it is their promotions, their fighters or their TV time.
On the other hand, we have the fans. They just want to see their favourite fighters fight against their other favourite fighters — simple, right?
While both sides make very strong points, I think the loudest argument always goes back to boxing. Yeah, remember boxing? I can remember a distant noise in the past that once claimed to be the king of fight sports. But it is hard to remember now after its name has been raked over hot coals, beaten with a stick and dragged down into the mud.
MMA aficionados are deathly scared of boxing. Scared of it taking back the crowds from MMA? No, scared that that’s where MMA will head if we follow the same path that boxing has taken.
Nothing dilutes a sport more than taking away the meaning of its trophies. And nothing dilutes its trophies more than having too many of them.
This is a crucial stage in MMA history and it’s something that needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand. This is not about UFC vs The World. This happens on the small scale too.
Whether it is fair, and whether someone came to the party later than another, is not what is relevant in the end. Only when promotions can start working together will we really see the sport reach a pinnacle. When we start seeing the best fighters in the world really go up against the best fighters in the world.
A single world MMA commissioning body may seem like a pipedream to some and may even seem like a dangerous concept, in that it may give someone too much power, but an MMA world bound together can only mean one thing — more fans, bigger and better fights and a cleaner, more organised sport.
