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The Natural

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9 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

There is no fat on that "it's a down year" statement. Everything is doing between 200k-300k.

There is fat to it but you have to put the term 'down year' into context. Yes, it's a 'down year' compared to last year, but last year had three of the biggest buy rates in company history, with four PPV's doing over a million buys. So whilst it is a 'down year', it was always going to be because they were coming off their best year ever.

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1 minute ago, ColinBollocks said:

Yeah, but the fact it's down so much is wild, is my point. The new owners can't be happy with such a sharp dive.

They can't be happy, no, and they probably didn’t expect it given that they, by all accounts, never gave Amanda Nunes a chance in hell of beating Ronda Rousey. I get the strong feeling that WME went into buying the UFC with stars in their eyes and their hands in their undies.

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Matt Hughes has been involved a road accident where his truck collided with a train, he has some kind of head trauma but details are scarce at the moment. Horrible news.

 

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Going by an article in a local paper, it sound like Hughes either didn't see the train coming or tried to beat it.

5 minutes ago, TildeGuy~! said:

GDR to be stripped I assume.

GDR was likely always going to be stripped of the title. For whatever reason, she does not want to fight Cyborg, and that's who UFC wanted in the title picture to begin with.

I don't expect the women's featherweight title to fare well regardless of who holds it. There simply aren't enough quality fighters to make the division meaningful. It's another title that exists simply for the sake of having it. It doesn't need to be around.

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Not really. The reason it exists and the sake of having it is showcase Cyborg. The division isn't much of anything, no doubt, but we've seen a few times that a strong champion props up a weak division. UFC clearly feel they can do some business with Cyborg going Goldberg through a division, rather than some random weight she barely makes. Once Cyborg pisses off then the division probably doesn't need to be around.

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4 minutes ago, ColinBollocks said:

Not really. The reason it exists and the sake of having it is showcase Cyborg. The division isn't much of anything, no doubt, but we've seen a few times that a strong champion props up a weak division. UFC clearly feel they can do some business with Cyborg going Goldberg through a division, rather than some random weight she barely makes. Once Cyborg pisses off then the division probably doesn't need to be around.

They don't need the title to showcase Cyborg. They've been perfectly happy to showcase her without it. Adding a title just to have a title as part of the sideshow doesn't make the title meaningful, nor does it make the division meaningful when it's clearly just an excuse for a jacked up featherweight to destroy undersized featherweights or featherweights who are hopelessly overmatched. A strong champion propping up a weak division is the exception rather than the rule. In any event, such a situation only has finite shelf life before people lose interest

And if the title is going to be casually discarded once Cyborg pisses off (or more likely pisses hot), then why bother having it around in the first place? Treating any title so dismissively tarnishes the rest of them because it educates people into not taking them seriously; how can a title be seen to mean anything if they’re so casually thrown in the bin? It also kills the credibility of the fighters remaining in the division if the promotion would rather scrap the title than let the remaining fighters in the division vie for it; how can the fighters be seen to mean anything if the promotion is so willing to tell people they’re not championship calibre? Yeah, some of them won’t be, but you neither need to make it so obvious nor paint the entire division with the same brush.

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Simply, the goal for the UFC is to make money off of this. If Cyborg breaks through that 200-300k bracket, then it's a tremendous success. If not then it's just another belt they can use to help bulk up a PPV. Your point about it not needing to be around will only be valid if it does no significant business (i.e. the 200k Holm drew in Jan),

The credibility of the division is on Cyborg. If they can create another star out of it, great. It's a company clearly driven by star power and the UFC building a division around Cyborg signals that they fancy there is something worth going with.

The UFC clearly feel they do need a title on Cyborg or they wouldn't have bothered with this. It's a prop, right now, but Cyborg can make it mean something in the same way Rousey or JJ have given their divisions respect with their dominating displays.

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1 minute ago, ColinBollocks said:

Simply, the goal for the UFC is to make money off of this. If Cyborg breaks through that 200-300k bracket, then it's a tremendous success. If not then it's just another belt they can use to help bulk up a PPV.

Titles that nobody cares about bulk up a PPV? You have a very weird definition of the phrase 'bulk up'.

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