Things are getting really weird in the world of MMA. Conor McGregor fought Floyd Mayweather and promptly lost his damn mind. McGregor was last seen throwing a hand truck through a bus window and getting arrested in New York. Georges St. Pierre (GSP) came out of retirement to win the UFC middleweight title, only to immediately vacate said title. The once unbeatable Ronda Rousey never recovered from her first loss and turned into some kind of hermit. Then, before we could forget her, she signed with the WWE and made her in-ring debut at Wrestle-freaking-mania. Now the Diaz brothers are rumored to be coming back to the UFC and Nate, the smaller of the brothers, is rumored to be up for a fight with GSP. The same GSP who was last seen winning a title at 185 pounds. Just to be clear, Nate Diaz has never weighed 185 pounds in his life. What the hell is going on!?
The mixed martial arts landscape has become an unbelievable mess, full of cash grabs, interim titles, and double standards. It seems that the youth of the sport are often trying to morph themselves into a version of Conor McGregor or Chael Sonnen. The problem is both Sonnen and McGregor have perfected their respective shticks and a bad copy of them will only bring in so much money. Imitation may very well be the sincerest form of flattery, but at this point, imitation of these two is a tired reprise that inspires almost no one. Bellator fighter Dillion Danis, for example, has repeated the lines of McGregor word for word in some cases. As a result, people are looking at Danis as more of a Carlos Mencia and less of a Conor McGregor. The copycat route has yet to payoff for anyone, unless you consider Danis getting signed to Bellator MMA with zero fights a huge victory. Many of the up and coming fighters on the regional scene are trying hard to inflate their value so when they do get the chance to grow a fan base, it grows not only in number but in dollars as well. The one constant in all of the weirdness is that the biggest draw seems to have all the power.
Being the biggest draw means you can demand a little more out of a promoter and in today’s market, if you are the top draw, you are basically bullet proof. That is unless you test positive for a banned substance; then you have to sit on the sidelines while the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) determines if you really took the juice or not. Of course, it’s not that simple; in today’s super weird climate, nothing can be. For every positive drug test, there seems to be a denial that points to ignorance as an excuse and for some reason that actually seems to work. Supplements are regularly proven to be contaminated and with that contamination, confirmation the fighter is deemed clean. Is that weird? No? What if I told you that if a UFC fighter tests clean 25 times in a row they receive a prize, would that be weird? Well guess what? Marc Raimondi of Mmafighting.com reported precisely that this week. Fighters who reach the 25-fight milestone will get a t-shirt commemorating the achievement. If that isn’t incentive to keep clean, I don’t know what is.
Fighters certainly don’t want to test positive for a banded substance but it happens. In the past, being out for an extended period of time was a major blow. It would be incredibly difficult for a fighter to work their way back up the rankings and get a title shot if they missed two years due to suspension. Today, titles are used more to sell pay-per-views than they are to determine who the best fighter is. Interim titles are tossed around far more expeditiously and as a result fighters like Nate Diaz and GSP are free to pick and choose what fights they take based on value alone. If there is a title tied to the picture great, but it’s not going to stop Diaz and GSP from drawing huge on a pay-per-view.
In the end, it all boils down to money and that is the only thing that makes sense anymore. What happens next in the world of mixed martial arts is anyone’s guess but it almost certainly promises to be surprising, confusing, or weird.
