Quote:
Originally Posted by molson
Now that Francis Ngannou has taken his rightful place and scariest fighter in the world, there's an interesting financial scenario playing out. Jones/Ngannou is probably the biggest money fight the UFC has now. But because of their deal with ESPN, they get the same money per PPV regardless of how many buys it generates. They make more of a gate for a bigger fight, and they should be back to full Vegas shows in a few months in time for Ngannou's next fight, but, the range on that isn't as big as the range between different buyrates. So for the UFC, it actually makes sense to do Ngannou/Derrick Lewis next, because that will cost them a lot less money, and they'll make just about the same amount from either fight.
I kind of want to see Ngannou kill a few people first before we get Ngannou/Jones. I know long-term booking doesn't work in in MMA, something will go wrong. But I'm kind of bored of super-fights. There's so many weight divisions now, I don't know why it's so terrible to maybe have some dominant champions who just run through people for a while. But it seems like after 1 or 2 title defense, or in Ngannou's case, before he even gets to that, there's an impatience and a sentiment of "he's cleared out the division!", and people start talking fights involving other weight classes, etc.
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Very well said, this is the exact same sentiment that was nagging me before Adesanya stepped up and was strengthened by how bad that card was and how he clearly wasn't a light heavy.
And yeah I know he "earned it" and had run through his division already, and it wasn't the scenario you were actually describing, but in general I'm on board with less super fights and people jumping around weight classes and going back to what IMO made the UFC great 10 or so years ago, which was an organization that genuinely gave the best fighters a shot at winning a title. Not guys jumping 4 or 5 in line because they are a big name or fancy a shot at a different weight class and the UFC can make a ton of money off it.