This UFC fan base is right to hate Women's MMA
Two women's fights on a main card was two too many.
UFC Twitter last Saturday night was an absolute celebration of brutality. And it wasn’t the brutality inside the cage being celebrated but rather it was fans celebrating their freedom to openly hate on the product inside the cage.
Here are some representative examples, all from small accounts, and I can assure you, just a few drops in the bucket of the torrents of hate that rained down on UFC 307 Saturday night:
"Another $80 dollars down the drain get these bitches off my screen. #UFC307"
"This fight looks like 2 moms fighting in the school pickup line over who was first #UFC307"
"#UFC307 do you know how much of an asshole you have to be to put TWO women fights on a PPV??!!"
Let’s pull up the Wiki results:
For their $80, the shrinking minority of fans who elected to pay for the card got a total of 84 minutes and 32 seconds of “UFC action.” And of that 84:32, 40:00 consisted of Kayla Harrison vs Ketlen Vieira grinding to a one-sided decision and Juliana Peña taking Raquel Pennington’s title in a twenty-five-minute snooze-fest.
I presume the plan had been to build up Harrison, the highly-touted Olympic judo gold medalist, as the next title challenger.
Unfortunately, the fans were bored to tears. While she did prove for the second time that she can make the 135-pound women’s bantamweight limit, Harrison also confirmed that she can’t strike, can barely wrestle and is physically struggling to cut to 135… and yet, the new champ definitely wants no part of her.
Just why are Endeavor-era UFC fans paying a high price to watch this level of “quality” from Women’s MMA fights? Zach Arnold argued on The MMA Draw recently that this is the price of admission for Ari Emanuel if he wants massive government contracts for UFC shows.
Politics. It’s about pleasing the politicians and HR departments.
Time to dig up some dirt and review the recent online mud-slinging from the most hyperbolic and representative UFC fans online.
The real representative of UFC’s current fan base: The MMA Guru
There is no one better suited to describe what passes for today’s “smart” version of a UFC fan than The MMA Guru. As Sigmund Freud would say, he’s the id for the kind of fan Endeavor has deliberately cultivated since buying the promotion in 2016.
Here’s a representative sample of the MMA Guru’s live reaction to the Kayla Harrison UFC 307 showcase bout (I’d embed it but it’s age-restricted and can only be viewed on YouTube):
The fight has started, just nothing's happened.
Failed take down there from Kayla. Looking awful on the feet.
Kayla fails a take down but she's got the over unders. Knee to the body from Kayla.
Knee to the body again from Kayla and punches from Vieira. Kayla looks for the trip, doesn't get it. Kneed to the body again from Kayla. Punch from Vieira. Knee. Knee again from Kayla.
Women's MMA, so we meet again. Women's MMA, right.
In the clinch, no separations for this one. Knee to the body again from Kayla. Knee to the head from Kayla. Knee to the body again. Some good knees to the body to be fair. She's working.
Body kick from Kayla. Low kick from Kayla. Moves out the way of the punch. Good take down from Kayla Harrison. Jesus, that was nice. Fair play.
Back take. Half guard on top. Really good take down. Mount. Elbow. Big elbow landed. Good elbow again actually. Huge elbow. Good punches. Punches from Kayla again.Oh the fucking round started. Inside low kick from Kayla.
[Long mid-round discourse on recreational drugs and why he avoids them].
Inside low kick from Kayla.
Harrison might actually be Mike Chandler's father.
Harrison standup is still like a women's standup though. It is still garbage.
I still think I could beat Kayla Harrison in a fight. She was the one women's fighter where I was like, maybe not.
Look at the way she's entering here on these punches. Kayla looking a lot worse on the feet. Terrible on the feet, actually.
Women's bantamweight fighters move like male heavyweights.
Face it, Nunes probably does get rag-dolled by Harrison but, yes, you could catch her on the feet for sure.
Good knee to the body from Kayla. Punch. Another elbow from Kayla. Elbow back from Vieira. Knee to the body from Kayla Harrison. Knee. Elbow from Viera. Sorry, this is a Vieira round.
[Most of round two is knees from Kayla, elbows from Vieira]
[Between rounds] Oh, fuck off, you ain't done shit for fucking 10 minutes and now you’re bowing like a samurai.
Front headlock position from Kayla. Knee to the head. She doesn't get a take down from it though. Shoots in, doesn't get that either.
Huge shot from fucking Vieira. Please let Kayla Harrison win. We need some hype in the division.
[Long sexist diatribe about being confident enough to date a larger, more muscular woman. Some discussion of which female fighters he thinks he could beat in the cage.]
Kayla moves like a piece of construction equipment. Very lackluster movement. Yes, it would seem her entries are awful.
Fails another takedown. Her entries on takedowns are horrific.
There's a good entry on the hips. see if she can get this. Picks her up, takes her down. That's big. Huge in this round. Women don't get back from bottom position in MMA so this is probably over unless Goddard gets involved.
[The referee is] warning her to do some shit. Good elbows and punches. Good shot there as well on the re-entry.
Good ground and pound.
That'll probably be the fight. Good win from Kayla Harrison. Lays on top for the end. Gets up. It's over.
Wow what thriving entertainment value. Riveting stuff.
[To a fan in his chat:] Oh you took the opportunity to pick up some drinks at the store?
Fan: ‘How's the fight been?’
The fight's been pretty shit.
Other than the Buckley KO, what has there really been on the card?
Fan: ‘Is the pay-per-view even worth buying?’
No.
That’s brutal.
What’s even more brutal is that the UFC office cannot dismiss the impact or relevance of The MMA Guru as a spokesperson for the UFC audience.
There’s a reason this black-pilled incel has a huge profile online. He rose in prominence via YouTube’s Big Tech algorithm and the UFC office has been playing along, hoping his inflammatory content will help sell their PPVs.
That was very much the case — until just recently.
For all his downmarket “anti-woke” political-cultural vibes, the Guru is an amazingly passionate fan of the UFC product. His fight previews and “fights to make” videos are some of the best out there because he cares enough to watch and re-watch endless hours of the UFC product out of love for the fights.
Although we’re seeing him getting burned out in real-time.
He has my sympathies. Those who were watching me doing the Care/Don’t Care Previews back in the early 2010s got to see me go from “UFC obsessive” to “UFC over-it” in a similar fashion.
One way we can measure MMA Guru’s impact is by comparing his traffic to that of two veteran, respected MMA voices: Luke Thomas and Ariel Helwani.
The MMA Guru’s live stream of UFC 307 generated five times the web traffic as Ariel Helwani’s UFC 307 competing offer did. The guy whose massive Grantland-style project is backed by Apollo Global Management (Yahoo).
Luke Thomas’ Youtube did better than Ariel’s did with 90K views.
The MMA Guru got two-and-a-half times more views than both Luke & Ariel Combined.
Oof. As a member of the old MMA media guard, damn, our day is done.
By the time the co-main women’s title fight began, UFC Twitter fans were primed to savage Women’s MMA:
Top excellent number one UFC Business Analyst Fight Oracle, supposedly the former Front Row Brian, is a loud and proud TKO investor. He lost his shit this past weekend with the Women’s MMA content on UFC 307. He is starting to see Women’s MMA getting between him and his money.
"People cry bitch & moan about powerslap being jammed down their throats by uncle Dana. Keep the same energy with w/ WMMA. This is a terrible product. You wouldn't lose your female audience AT ALL if you eliminated WMMA."
I actually agree with his next point.
"There is a very strong argument to be made that eliminating women's MMA from UFC, is a net gain.
“If there's another RR/Gina out there, they'll come to you eventually. You don't need to "build" divisions. just call up randos. No one knows the difference. The best are who UFC says are the best."
Then, Brian and his followers careen back into the red-pilled sexism that the UFC fan base is known for. You could strongly argue that this type of conversation has been actively encouraged by the Ari Emanuel & Mark Shapiro administration when Endeavor took over UFC in 2016.
Never forget that OG Zuffa monopolist Lorenzo Fertitta nipped as much of this kind of crap in the bud because he wanted to present the UFC as a mainstream product aimed at mainstream (Obama-era) fans.
"Dana says they're not woke. All I see is are these horrid women's fights and pandering to LGBTXABX++** community."
But again, the blind sexist pigs have found a nut. The reason the UFC got into Women’s MMA after years of Dana White insisting they would never feature the ladies is because Strikeforce had so much success with first Gina Carano and then Ronda Rousey.
That, and the fact that the UFC bought Strikeforce to shut it down and had Ronda under contract anyway.
Then, our blind pig does some original reporting about how the UFC represents itself to sponsors, investors, and one other very interesting group that Brian doesn’t mention — but would be if he was actively reading Zach Arnold's brilliant work here at The MMA Draw:
DEI. Diversity. Equity. Inclusion. Or as conservatives mock it, DIE.
Now, I’m the kind of guy that Brian thinks of as a blue-pilled cuck or whatever, but as a middle-aged, middle-class, state-school-educated, red-stater who somehow survived ten years inside the fucking DEI/HR nightmare that was Vox Media… I have to agree there’s some yuck factor to DEI that is fueling this Women’s MMA backlash.
I’m 100% committed to diversity. My hiring record at Bloody Elbow proved that. We had the most diverse staff in MMA media and anywhere at Vox Media. All of that was done back when SB Nation was 95% white dudes — before the DEI initiatives of the mid-2010s. It got pretty galling having a 80% Ivy League educated coterie telling me and every other state-school educated, over-age-40 at the company we were… whatever it was… that meant we spoke last at meetings, if at all.
Basically, DEI is the kind of bullshit where Democratic Mayors paint BLACK LIVES MATTER on a crosswalk and then double the police budget.
Enough about that, back to MMA’s version of Inclusion
Anyway, let’s just say I loathe corporate DEI as much as these MAGA chuds do.
But what the MAGA chuds are missing is what Zach Arnold explained on Monday in his masterful UFC 307 MMA Draw article. The UFC boosters get to the edge of the proverbial cliff but don’t want to look to the inevitable conclusion. Zach takes you there and gives you a ringside seat.
The reason TKO’s version of UFC features women’s fights so prominently is because the segment of their customer base that moves the needle are political officials who are deciding whether or not to spend millions in taxpayer dollars to bring The Octagon to their city. An excerpt from Zach’s UFC 307 piece:
First, women’s MMA fights are a selling point politically. Especially when pitching shows for government contracts.
A lot of big cities are Democrat-controlled. Women’s MMA is a selling point for that audience of politicians.
While it’s true that the UFC makes the majority of its money from media rights, the brutal reality is those TV deals are cut twice a decade and involve Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro locking in guaranteed per-event payments.
Once those TV deals are signed, fan opinion doesn’t impact the bottom line — short of an absolute collapse in demand.
What does make a big difference in their quarterly revenue reports for Wall Street is how much money they managed to gull out of government officials who bid against each other to bring the UFC circus to town.
Salt Lake City paid big to host UFC 307. The powers-that-be presumably liked the fact that the card featured not one, but two women’s MMA fights.
I’m curious if any of those local decision makers followed the UFC chatter on X.com. What did they think of the tone and tenor of that discussion?
I’m also curious what will happen to this current UFC audience, as the post-COVID generation of fans discovers what every previous generation of UFC fans discovers eventually.
I’m especially curious how that dynamic will play out at live shows as that UFC fan base becomes increasingly vocal and frustrated with the product. Ironically, the over-inflated ticket prices that are preventing UFC event sell outs might be protecting the promotion by keeping so many peanut gallery commoners and poors away.
We have a big culture clash developing between UFC fans and those writing the government checks. This is one battle the UFC office won’t be able to extinguish easily as its red-pilled incel audience diverges vocally and potentially violently against the Karens in charge of their local venue.
You know, the ones who diverted taxpayer money in the UFC’s direction (and who very well may be hoping for political contributions or referrals from friends of Ari or his family).
The oligarchy producing a shadow play, pitting one side against another.
Despite being one of the key Democratic party insiders who determined exactly when it was time to swap out Joe Biden for Kamala Harris, Ari Emanuel has allowed Dana White to appear alongside Donald Trump at both major UFC events and the Republican National Convention.
Ari also allowed Dana to ride out getting caught on video striking his wife in January 2023 in Cabo with no consequences.
These decisions have deliberately cultivated a fan base that is perfectly represented by The MMA Guru and brilliantly used by the opportunistic but honestly too-talented-for-MMA Jesse on FIRE.
That fan base is on a dangerous collision course with the blue city political decision-makers Ari and Mark Shapiro are busy leveraging for site fees.
I can imagine any number of possible in and out-of-the-cage disturbances as the UFC product quality relentlessly erodes while the percentage of women’s MMA time on the card stays the same.
At some point, the fans will mutiny ON SITE at a show in front of the ruling class. Some way. Some how.
The UFC front office that successfully blew off generations of MMA media — from the original message board forums to the second wave of blogs to the tamed professional sites whose era has recently ended — is now dealing with a whole different animal now.
The UFC office thinks that The MMA Guru is in a containable, isolated silo — like Bloody Elbow. The miscalculation is that this YouTube influencer has a stronger bond with his much larger audience.
We are increasingly seeing utterly dumbass Gen Z influencer antics lowering the discourse at UFC events — something my old carcass never thought was possible. You have to imagine that this degradation of decorum will bleed over into regular UFC audiences.
This is a fan base which goes head-to-head with the NFL for most violent audience brawls despite representing a much smaller number of people.
Even the most flagrant urban politician might blanch when they see more coverage of a UFC event they routed millions in tax payer dollars on World Star Hip Hop than in their local news daily (if they even still have one).
That inevitably sets up a conflict between Team Red (the Trump-voting ticket-buying fans) and Team Blue (the big city Kamala-backing electeds).
Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro have been remarkably successful at selling the notion that they can somehow tame the scary Trump-voting young male consumer base and make them support products like Bud Light and maybe even the local mayor or city council.
The sales pitch is simple: if you give us big tax money, we’ll mainstream you with our young, male audience and those Trump voters you’re scared of will love you because you brought them the UFC.
Alas, once the fans behave the way they have been encouraged to behave by UFC and their most prominent boosters, the sales pitch about mainstreaming falls apart.
Just like it did for Bud Light, who is locked into a very expensive long-term partnership with UFC that so far shows no sign of bringing back the Red State fans they lost in a transphobic moral panic.
There’s a very good chance of a dramatic public debacle at a live UFC event which will completely convince those politicians approving the massive government contracts that, just maybe, we don’t want to be associated with that crowd.
That’s when Ari’s habit of playing all sides and paying attention to none of them will blow up in his face.
There hasn’t been a world in which someone like the sixty-something corporate titan Ari Emanuel has had to contend with the reality of someone like The MMA Guru.
The MMA Guru has literally bootstrapped his laptop into a global platform. He is as plugged into the cage fighting zeitgeist like no one we’ve seen since Dana White.
TKO needs Guru to sell their non-major UFC PPVs. Take away Guru, Jesse, the stock and options players on Twitter, and social media carnival barkers and who does Endeavor have left to celebrate their terrible fight cards?
What will they do to keep profits growing every quarter until they sell UFC to the Saudis? If they fuck it up bad enough, they won’t be able to sell at all.
Even in the Zuffa days, the UFC public relations shop was notable for its arms-length distance from — and contempt for — the very MMA media that marketed their product to their most loyal and profitable fans.
That calculated distance, and in the case of MMA Guru, has now produced a monstrous young lion whose spirit threatens to force its way into the very Octagon cage or at least the broadcast via the crowd. The fighters talk about him. The UFC commentators and personalities can’t help but mention him.
Who knows? In an era when every UFC fighter is encouraged to be an influencer themselves, anything can happen. And guess who is one of the UFC’s most right-wing and politically radical fighters on Youtube?
And guess who had Jamahal Hill’s back when Hill was engaged in a deeply regrettable back-and-forth with Ariel Helwani.
The TKO brass has made this bed and now has to lie in it.
It started with 2016’s decision to allow (encourage?) Dana White to suddenly emerge as a huge Trump supporter. In the prior Zuffa era, Dana was apolitical and quietly gave money to the local Democratic kingpin who ran Nevada.
Endeavor followed that up by supporting Dana after the wife-slapping video in Cabo. Then Ari went to bat for him with WBD boss David Zaslav over Power Slap!
Being there for Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath of his multi-count felony convictions cemented UFC’s political legacy and married them with the junior Proud Boy Nelk Boys demo.
It will be interesting to see how TKO rides out “The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime.”
Endeavor may have spun a web of influencers around Dana White to build his broader public profile and let him get the brand in front of normies, but the people who are paying outrageous amounts to be in the same building as the Octagon are watching The MMA Guru, not Howie Mandel.
Endeavor’s inability to resist exploiting their Democratic political connections for taxpayer cash to boost the quarterly Wall Street numbers is the final ingredient in this combustible cocktail.
And UFC’s version of Women’s MMA definitely has a role in this bizarre conflict.
Nate Wilcox is the Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw.
The silo effect is very real in MMA coverage. The Substackers, the Twitterati, the remaining Facebookers, the Youtubers, Tiktokers, Rumblers. I don't know how people keep up.
It was divisive enough when it was Underground Forum and Sherdog. Yes, things got nasty at times on TUF but there was room to get PBP and some decent multi-paragraph content. Sherdog's board had a mixture of great long-form with horrible short-form "nuthugger" after "nuthugger" flame wars.
This is an altogether different beast in 2024. It's less about arguing over fights than the political associations connected to UFC as a political shop itself.
I listen to Luke and Brian because I'm always looking for a different perspective. Same with John Nash & Stephie. I try to listen to some of these more "popular" hosts and even at 1.75x I just find myself wondering what I am doing with my life.
It's funny that the stock/options crowd for TKO is a much more fascinating and interesting crowd to talk fight sports with than the fans who are actually (or supposedly) paying for the PPVs.
My only observation on MMA Guru is how much longer will Endeavor tolerate him before they decide to (proverbially speaking) order the Code Red. UFC didn't take out Ariel. I'm interested to see how long this cold peace lasts.
I understand the broader point of this article that the UFC product has been so carelessly milked that the quality has declined substantially and lots of redpilled assholes have become the new MMA media. That ultimate conclusion doesn’t excuse the blatantly sexist and gross title/subtitle/opening paragraphs. I truly value your analysis but I’m also a woman martial artist and it depresses the fuck out of me every time I read WMMA hate