The Doggy Bag: The Jon and Chael Edition
TUF? That’s Enough
I am pretty indifferent to Jon Jones-Chael Sonnen as an actual championship fight, but I think what bugs me most is that it feels like the UFC went with this fight just to help “The Ultimate Fighter.” I haven’t watched the show since the fifth season and don’t plan to again. It’s a used-up concept, and I hate how, even in 2012, the UFC is still hampered by the problem of its reality show impacting how it decide its biggest fights. -- Jason from Oakland
Jordan Breen, administrative editor: Here here! Someone get this man a treat bag.
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This season of "TUF" has been universally hailed as the worst ever, with uninteresting coaches, a stale concept and woeful, far-below-sub-UFC “talent” on the show. The ratings reflect that. However, a large piece of the problem is more than likely the fact that it’s buried on Friday nights. If "TUF" is about 18-to-34-year-old males, why put it on the same night that they’re skirt-chasing, committing petty crimes or whatever else they do to get their rocks off?
Of course, Jones-Sonnen is about the only configuration of personalities that the UFC could leverage into a Wednesday night time slot on FX. So far, so good. Unfortunately, like "TUF" situations prior, it complicates the rest of the title picture. I think Dan Henderson gets trounced by Jones and Machida probably loses again -- if less embarrassingly, getting dropped like a sack of groceries and all -- but both of these men were promised title shots. Previously, we were told the only reason Sonnen got the nod for UFC 151 was that he was the only guy willing to take it. The stakes and circumstances are different now, so it should be irrelevant how “gutsy” Sonnen is. However, because of a TV show that no one cares about (and probably never will again, at least in the U.S.), this is the fight we get. That is the part that sucks.
The fact that important fighters need to accept less-than-promised, less-than-desirable matchups because the UFC is desperate to save an antiquated, played-out concept is absurd. "TUF" can no longer produce a reasonable facsimile of UFC-calibre action or fighters, and the notion of a reality show on which people fight one another succeeding in North America seems so 2005. The vehicle still appears to have considerable upside in international markets, and that is undoubtedly the best way for the UFC to keep using it. Trying to use the show to recapture an audience that is numb to the notion and washed over with the sheer volume of fight content is backwards. The fact that the insistence on doing so still messes with entire divisions and the promotion's key players is dismaying.
The real question is whether the payoff will validate all this in hindsight, if the juice will be worth the squeeze. The UFC has already alienated some of its own roster, as evidenced by fighter reactions to the bout on Twitter. Those who accept the matchup don’t seem excited by it but rather tolerate it as a necessary evil of Zuffa doing business. Based on Jones' and Sonnen’s respective celebrity, media interest and the UFC doing the hard sell, this pay-per-view would have sold anyway. In that way, it seems like "TUF" is the only variable where Jones-Sonnen is really bringing something extra to the table. If Brock Lesnar wasn’t getting people to tune into "TUF," what are the odds these two do?
Bring on Jones-Sonnen and whatever strange fights might come after. I just hope that in the future when I’m forced to watch "TUF," it’s in subtitles. And I don’t mean because Ross Pointon is on the show.
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