UFC penny pinching Poatan into retirement? Nevermind, he was 'hacked'

Right on cue, Dana White prepares to promote a TKO Boxing event likely richer than UFC's yearly payroll.

Mid-day Wednesday, former UFC light heavyweight and middleweight champion Alex “Poatan” Pereira’s X.com account posted: “I always answered the UFC’s calls, but if they want to play with me, we can do that. I’ve never spoken poorly of the UFC but with what I’ve just heard I’m disheartened. I’ve already had thoughts of not fighting anymore, and after what was just relayed to me this may be the start.”

The MMA world barely had time to start bitching about the promotion underpaying the man who has headlined or co-mained 8 pay-per-views in the last 18 months when the video below dropped.

He didn’t even know about it, he was hacked. He has a great relationship with the UFC.

I have no way of knowing what happened, but I do not believe his X.com account was hacked, and I can only assume UFC Chief Business Office Hunter Campbell called Poatan and worked things out between 1 and 3 pm Central Time.

The haters piled on quick all the same

The quick resolution didn’t stop a flood of complaints from MMA meida:

• Ariel Helwani: “This is alarming stuff from Alex Pereira. Not sure we have seen this level of frustration or discontent from him. It will be interesting to see what may come from this.”

• Ben Fowlkes: “One of the most frustrating things about the UFC is they make a billion dollars a year and would still throw their biggest stars overboard if they think it’ll get them to a billion and one dollars.”

• Ben Davis: “Poatan threatening retirement… MMA is cooked.”

• Dan Stupp: “Ah, yes – who needs marketable UFC stars in this day and age? They're a dime a dozen, right? It's getting harder to pay attention to MMA these days. And Poatan's one of the few remaining reasons to tune in.”

• Dave Simon: “UFC has so few legit draws. UFC 315 is only half-sold for this weekend. Angering Poatan is not the move. They should be bending over backwards for Pereira.”

Dave Simon makes the painful connection with UFC 315’s reported poor sales for this weekend in Montreal. As you can see, there a LOT of tickets still available for the show:

The days of the UFC packing Montreal’s Bell Centre with cards headlined by Georges St. Pierre are long gone.

‘The UFC is on fire’

It’s not just UFC 315 either. UFC 316 in New Jersey is headlined by a rematch of Merab Dvalishvili and Sean O’Malley that no one asked for, and the promotion still has no headliner for UFC 317, the International Fight Week card in July.

Vaunted independent journalist Ariel Helwani begs to differ, saying on his Tuesday show: “…the UFC is on fire. They can do no wrong. They are the only place that can go to a Des Moines and just sell, ‘The UFC is coming to Des Moines,’ and have an incredible gate and an incredible crowd. In fact, I continue to say the UFC is in the best place they have ever been. And they are about to get a billion-dollar plus TV deal.”

Turki’s terrible weekend

Of course, Ariel also tweeted this about his pal Turki Alalshikh’s debacle in Times Square last Friday:

ESPN’s Andreas Hale had a slightly different take on the Times Square event, tweeting: “Let me be clear: This is the most absurd event that I have ever covered. I am in the green room of Good Morning America watching boxing in Times Square and I can see 3 Elmos, Terence Crawford, KSI, Mike Tyson, a fake Tupac & Snoop Dogg, Ariel Helwani and a bunch of rich people.”

As Zach Arnold and I discussed on the podcast, Turki’s two-PPV-card weekend was a debacle in more ways than one. Not only did poor planning result in the Times Square card having no live audience and taking place behind a tall red barrier that blocked the tens of thousands of passersby in the Square from seeing the fights, but the fights themselves were marked by a record-setting lack of action.

The same thing happened at Turki’s Saturday night Riyadh card featuring Canelo Alvarez, which is now the all-time record holder for fewest punches thrown in a 12-round fight.

Pundits from former champ Tim Bradley to Inside Boxing’s Dan Canobbio were quick to blame excessive fighter pay.

This would seem to set the table for Nick Khan, Dana White and the TKO boxing crew to ride to the rescue by bringing the UFC model of low, low, low “athlete expenses” to the sweet science.

But first, Dana is going to promote Canelo Alvarez vs Terence “Bud” Crawford for Turki and company in September with a significantly different business model.

So, what does it all mean?

What does Alex Pereira being mad at the UFC totally happy with the UFC have to do with Turki Alalshikh’s shitty weekend of fights, Canelo vs Crawford, and fighter pay?

The obvious connection is TKO and their ambitions to extend their combat sports/sports entertainment monopolies into boxing.

Monopoly control isn’t the only thing TKO wants to bring over to boxing. They also want to extend Dana White’s long-standing narrative that by keeping fighter pay low, he’s been able to deliver the matches UFC fans want to see.

Dana and company want to bring that story to boxing.

We’re trying to point out that that story is bullshit in the UFC — match quality has relentlessly eroded because underpaying fighters ultimately drains the talent pool.

We’ve got an ironic juxtaposition here. Many UFC fans still are happy to carry TKO’s water and insist everything is great while MMA media has (mostly) been bitching about declining card quality for years now.

Boxing fans know better, but interestingly, boxing media seems happy to parrot TKO’s talking points about fighter pay, while completely ignoring the reality that Dana White’s debut as a boxing promoter will involve two incredibly well-paid fighters in Canelo and Bud Crawford.

Turki’s plata o plomo (“silver or lead”) media strategy is working even better than the UFC’s cash or credential cancellation play did back in the FOX era — the last time they had to care about the press.

Some, like Ariel Helwani, continue to insist that the UFC’s strategy is working great, after all they’re expecting the UFC to double its media rights revenue to $ 1 billion annually.

But others of us are noticing that the UFC is not booking the big fights — they can’t even give us Jon Jones vs. Tom Aspinall, and we’ve abandoned hope of ever seeing Jon Jones vs. Francis Ngannou.

We’ve also tried to point out that the UFC has increased its live event revenue by dramatically increasing ticket prices. So far, that has worked great, with higher prices covering up the fact that attendance at venues like Las Vegas’ T Mobile Arena has been slightly down from post-COVID peaks.

That strategy might be about to bite TKO in the ass at Montreal’s Bell Centre. Canadians, particularly French-Canadians, are not fond of Donald Trump or UFC’s close association with him. There is no Canadian UFC star comparable to the great Georges St-Pierre. Joe Rogan can’t even be bothered to make the trip. Why should Canadian fans pay a massive price increase to see a product that no longer speaks to them?

The official TKO shill line is ‘Get over it.’

Boxers and their managers should pay close attention to Alex Pereira’s predicament. He’s been a complete company man for TKO, repeatedly taking short-notice fights when the UFC desperately needed last-minute headliners, seemingly happy with a small % of revenue, signing a long-term deal that will lock him in with the promotion for the rest of his career.

Pereira’s apparent conflict with TKO tragic hacking reveals that TKO doesn’t even believe their own narratives. The story is always “losses don’t matter in MMA, it’s not like boxing, where fighters have to be very careful about what fights they take lest they lose their priceless undefeated record.”

And yet now that Pereira has taken a loss to the prototypical UFC meat-grinding wrestler, he’s apparently not getting what he expected to get from the promotion.

Pereira is a classic example of exactly what happens time-in and time-out when you give UFC what they want. Dana White and company have done a masterful job of conditioning the fans to take their side in any conflict with a fighter who wants better pay.

This is the antithesis of prize fighting.

Boxers and their managers should hold on tight to the reality that boxing fans pay to see their favorite fighters and don’t care about promotional branding.

That used to be true in MMA and pro-wrestling as well, but those days are long gone, and with them the glory days of PRIDE and the Monday Night Wars.

Here’s hoping that the Sweet Science can hold out against the Private Equity bros and their relentless “value extraction.”

Nate Wilcox is Editor-in-Chief of The MMA Draw. He founded BloodyElbow.com in 2007 and sold it in 2024.