UFC 192: Why Jon Jones attending could help spark more buys

Submitted by Ben Miller

Jon Jones is free from the clutches of “The Man” which has thrown a monkey wrench into UFC booking, or so says conventional wisdom. The theory is that the Daniel Cormier vs. Alexander Gustafsson fight at UFC 192 no longer will draw as a championship fight because fans don’t believe in the championship.

Jones was the dominant champion in Cormier & Gustafsson’s weight class (having previously beaten both men in championship fights, even) until he was stripped of the belt for reasons that had nothing to do with fighting.  Since Jones can now officially return whenever he likes, the UFC 192 main event is meaningless, at least according to conventional wisdom.

The reality is that Jones’s return to the UFC’s good graces is not a problem for UFC 192’s business prospects Saturday. Actually, it could even help.

UFC 192 was a business problem before Jones ever copped a plea. As of this writing, tickets are still readily available, but that is just the problem with the live gate. As Paul Fontaine pointed out three months ago on this site, UFC pay-per-view business is heavily dependent on stars and grudge matches. Both Gustafsson and Cormier aren’t stars and this isn’t a grudge match. And while the size of Cormier and Gustafsson works to their advantage, it wouldn’t have been enough to make UFC 192 a big success even if Jones were behind bars.

Essentially, the weak ticket sales illustrates that what the public had already decided was the same as many MMA observers, including myself, felt: Jon Jones is the real UFC light heavyweight champion, and promoting any other two fighters in a light heavyweight championship fight is a turnoff.

The real uncertainty is not whether Jones’s re-introduction to UFC will hurt UFC 192 business. The real uncertainty it whether Jon Jones being back can help UFC 192 business.

A long successful pro wrestling angle has been to have a third party at ringside while two feuding wrestlers have a match.  My favorite example — and an example that mirror’s UFC’s light heavyweight situation to a degree — was at WWF: In Your House in December 1996. “Sycho” Sid Vicious (yet another example of Vince McMahon thinking that his audience is dumb, assuming that fans might pronounce Psycho, “puh-sai-ko”) had recently won the WWF World title from Shawn Michaels by cheating (Sid hit Michaels with a video camera after a ref bump at Survivor Series ’96), and now Sid was to face Bret Hart at the following pay-per-view (In Your House: It’s Time because original booking plans were for Vader to win the title, not Sid).

What on paper was a bland match between Sid and Bret was spiced up significantly by having Michaels at ringside to commentate.  In relation to UFC 192, Cormier is Sid, the unworthy champion. Gustafsson is Bret, the man pursuing a championship while really wanting to a rematch against someone else (Bret was gone from WWF television for most of 1996 after losing the title to Shawn at WrestleMania) and Jones is Michaels, the champion who lost his title under nefarious circumstances (and, coincidentally, the guy who I think is the greatest of all time at his sport/business).  

The circumstances are right for Jones to attend UFC 192 Saturday night, sit at cageside, and spark some interest in an otherwise lagging pay-per-view.

There are obvious differences between a wrestling angle where a third party sits ringside and a UFC fight where a third party sits cageside.  In wrestling, fans expect the ringside wrestler to interfere in the match somehow, while in UFC that would be frowned upon.  (Though, that’s not entirely impossible. Who can possibly forget Chuck Liddell’s cageside antics during the first Tito Ortiz vs. Forrest Griffin fight in Anaheim [which, believe it or not, had in-building heat rivaling Steve Austin at his peak & Cain Velasquez’s UFC heavyweight title win over Brock Lesnar]?)  

Still, UFC could — with some precise PR magic by their PR wizard Dave Sholler and others — spike UFC 192 business by convincing UFC marks that business will pick up with Jones at cageside tonight. Obviously, UFC can’t state explicitly that Jones interfere in the match or fight the winner of DC vs. Gus that night, but UFC can imply that fireworks might go off.

If UFC is going to run their business like pro wrestling or boxing instead of a structured sport — and all signs point to them continuing in that direction indefinitely — then they might as well go all the way.  Sure, rewarding Jon Jones’s bad behavior by upping his profile and making him the centerpiece of a pay-per-view he’s not even fighting at sends the wrong message.

But UFC has crossed that bridge, chopped the bridge up into tiny little pieces, ground up those pieces, and smoked them in Keith Richards’s peace pipe. Sending the wrong message no longer matters, but popping a buyrate for this woebegone UFC 192 main event does.