Opinion: A Note on Immediate Rematch Imperatives

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With elevated levels of Jon Jones-Daniel Cormier drama and Tony Ferguson’s sudden revelation that he needed blood and fluid drained from his lungs and couldn’t fight Khabib Nurmagomedov on April 16, this week was mostly a reminder of the grim, cyclical nature of injuries in MMA. Beyond that disappointment or maybe fuelled by a general animus as a result of that disappointment, it also appears many MMA folk aren’t too pleased about Miesha Tate making her first title defense at UFC 200 against Brazilian hitter Amanda Nunes.

Since the bout’s announcement on Wednesday, critique has centered on the idea that Holly Holm deserved an immediate rematch after being choked out cold in the fifth round of her first title defense in March. More specifically, as laid out in this story by MMAJunkie’s Steven Marrocco, there is a question of whether Tate chose to fight Nunes over Holm -- as claimed by Holm’s manager Lenny Fresquez -- or if, as Tate claims, she was told by Ultimate Fighting Championship brass that Holm opted to take time off and Nunes was simply next on deck.

However, the he-said, she-said angle of the story isn’t what’s getting play. Surveying the MMA social media and YouTube comments landscape, it seems like there are two primary factions of dissenters: the this-is-bad-business group and the this-ain’t-fair group. In some ways, I’m sympathetic to their causes, but ultimately, fighters have to fight.

The bad business group mostly seems like journalists and hardcore fans with deep online engagement, most of whom have a penchant for pro wrestling. I’m not oblivious to the benefits of “the big fight,” “the hot angle” or any similar metaphor, especially given how Zuffa has so steadfastly moved toward staging seasonal, massive events to attract larger media attention. I know that Tate-Holm 2 is a profitable bout. Yet, from wrasslin’ to boxing, history tells us that people, especially casual folks who contribute to any event doing above-average business, want to see stars; and star power dies hard.

People waited for Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield through a rape conviction and Holyfield’s losses and health concerns; and they waited for Tyson and Lennox Lewis when the bout’s outcome was never in question. They waited for Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao when its inevitable outcome also became more and more obvious with every passing bout prior. Wrestling nostalgia dies hard, which is why Hulk Hogan did big business with Roddy Piper in 1984-85 and 1996-97. It’s why legitimate Hollywood drawing card Dwayne Johnson still shows up to half-ass it as “The Rock” once in a blue moon and people eat it up.

More than that, whose business is this bad for? Regardless of what version of the bout’s creation you believe in, Tate is still a fighter who was talking about potentially retiring less than a year ago. If, as champion, she wants to hop on a card like UFC 200 and potentially get a payday to defend her title in a high-profile situation, do a ton of media and build her brand, how does that undermine her and what does that harm?

The only potential harm is, of course, if she loses to Nunes. Though a formidable and deserved challenger, Nunes’ front-running style and questionable fitness provide a good look for Tate’s scrappy, scrambling style, especially with Tate’s history of late-round success; both of her title captures in Strikeforce and the UFC came in the championship rounds. We can’t discount an upset, as Nunes is possibly the most physical, ferocious fighter at 135 pounds, at least early in a bout, and the Ronda Rousey-Holm-Tate title passing has been predicated on upsets. However, as I’ve written about before, no one wins when promoters are scared of making fights, especially in a sport where every six- or seven-figure paycheck matters immeasurably and you might get two or three of them in a good year.

Let’s say the alleged “worst-case scenario” for the UFC comes to pass and Nunes takes the title by clobbering Tate in her 10 minutes of nitro-boosted hammer swinging. The UFC would then have the best possible scenario to stage the anticipated Holm-Rousey rematch, with the winner sashaying into another title shot. That’s an event that could potentially do a million pay-per-view buys. Again, how is this bad business and how is this even in question? It’s pessimistic and counterproductive to imagine that the UFC product or MMA on the whole is best when fighters are frozen out, with promoters attempting to arrange them in perfect order and sequence. Are we truly better off with another immediate rematch?

That brings us to the it’s-not-fair crowd. Nearly this entire criticism rests on the fact that this bout is a part of UFC 200, alongside Conor McGregor’s unnecessary immediate rematch with Nate Diaz. There’s a mental symmetry with McGregor and Holm both being upset on the same night and then having them both seek redemption simultaneously. With that said, while no one was outright rioting over Diaz-McGregor 2, the bout was met with righteous skepticism: Why is this happening now? Why is Frankie Edgar getting jobbed again? Why is this bout at 170 pounds? I co-sign on all of these concerns. In a vacuum, a Diaz-McGregor pairing will always be delightful violence and an easy sell. However, given the actual MMA world we live in, where McGregor departed 145 pounds and left it on the backburner, where Edgar has been repeatedly strung along to the point of incredulity and mild Zuffa embarrassment, Diaz-McGregor 2 was the least sensible of options, even more so than a McGregor-Jose Aldo rerun.

So if people rightly question the logic and appropriateness of Diaz-McGregor 2, why is there such a push for Holm to get the same treatment? What happened to two wrongs don’t make a right? Immediate rematches are not fundamentally flawed, and there are plenty of perfect contexts for them. Still, the immediate call for immediate rematches, especially given that people accurately diagnose their pitfalls, is a programmed, conditioned response after years of the UFC’s reliance on the tool. It hasn’t always been this way, nor does it have to be.

Thursday was the nine-year anniversary of Matt Serra smashing Georges St. Pierre at UFC 69, the greatest upset in this sport’s history. I got an email from a radio listener who was reflecting on the bout and essentially asked why the UFC didn’t opt for an immediate GSP-Serra rematch. Certainly, if you imagine that fight unfolding in 2016, you’d assume the UFC running it back would be a shoo-in. Yet, at the time, it wasn’t even discussed.

When Serra thumped GSP, recently dethroned champion Matt Hughes had already won his prescribed tune-up bout against Chris Lytle, which “earned” him another crack at the title; when Serra and Hughes were announced as coaches for “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 6, it was expected and no one really squawked. St. Pierre had his bounce-back fight during the summer and took out Josh Koscheck before being blessed with a title shot. This boxing-style booking was expected, and no one thought anything strange of it.

More than anything, the imperative of immediate rematches seemed to come out of the lightweight division’s quest for attention. In April 2010, when Edgar won an asinine unanimous decision and took the UFC’s 155-pound title from B.J. Penn, it set off a chain reaction. The second fight happened because Penn was ripped off, but after Edgar dominated him in the rematch four months later, the lightweight division was left with its only bankable star in a rut, bound for 170 pounds again.

Combine the lack of divisional star power with how talented elite 155-pounders are and you suddenly had an endless string of close, competitive title fights and no obvious emerging star to break up the monotony. Thus, we end up with Edgar facing Penn twice, then Gray Maynard twice and then Benson Henderson twice. In the years since, this behavior has become normalized. Now with any close fight or minor upset in a situation involving a champion, there is an assumed tolerance for the immediate rematch.

Before the Penn-Edgar debacle, throughout Zuffa ownership, immediate rematches were rare. Really, the only notable ones were Randy Couture-Pedro Rizzo and the second and third iterations of Tim Sylvia-Andrei Arlovski. In both cases, you have competitive fights, a lacking heavyweight talent pool and the fact that the much-preferred UFC poster boy had lost the prior bout. Yet when Hughes won the UFC welterweight title by unconsciously slamming Carlos Newton with an accidental power bomb, only to be woken up by referee John McCarthy and realize he was champ? No immediate rematch. Fans were just stoked to see Hughes fight Anderson Silva, then in actuality, Hayato Sakurai.

The business-savvy worriers neglect the realities of fighters making paper and completely dismiss the obvious history of star power outshining defeat in MMA, boxing and pro wrestling. The but-Conor-got-one folks’ very beef acknowledges that immediate rematches are often silly, yet they stop short of realizing that the expectation and tolerance of them is a very recent, very backwards UFC invention.

Even if cogs get broken, let the machine keep chugging along. Let fighters fight and cash cheques, let champions defend their titles. Rousey and Holm will return, and when they do, there’s more money to be made. In the meantime, who can complain when Tate is getting paid and being forced to do Fox Sports 1 appearances in which she is outed as “Poopsock?”