The UFC White House event is just a few days away. What will we be talking about once it’s over? And how many people should we realistically expect to join this particular party? And what about the fighters who will not be in attendance?
All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA on X or @Ben_Fowlkes on Threads.
@NoahSas23: This is a really fun fight card in the White House coming up, what are the top storylines you’re expecting to come out after the event is wrapped up?
You’re totally right. The fight card itself does have a lot of interesting stuff going on. It’s struggling to be noticed right now, what with the inescapable political optics of the event and the focus on the venue and the setup as the true star of the show, but once the cage door closes we should get some good, memorable stuff out of this lineup.
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So let’s focus on that first. (More on the other stuff in a moment.) My expectation is that Ilia Topuria sparks Justin Gaethje and makes it look pretty easy. Gaethje always has a puncher’s chance. This we know. But the version of him we saw against Paddy Pimblett was too slow, too predictable and just all around too vulnerable to pose much threat to Topuria beyond a lucky haymaker (though championships have been won and lost on those before).
If it goes that way, I think the calls for Topuria to face Islam Makhachev will get even louder. But I doubt the UFC will want to pay extra for that fight, so it’ll probably be Topuria and Arman Tsarukyan next instead.
The heavyweight affair is a lot tougher to call. I could see it going either way, but it almost doesn’t matter who wins. Tom Aspinall has to be next for either Alex Pereira or Ciryl Gane. He absolutely has to be. And either way it goes we should get a huge fight out of it.
Ilia Topuria is perhaps the best fighter on the planet. And no one is even talking about him.
(Ed Mulholland via Getty Images)
@MHMFoster: What’s the expectation the Monday after the event? Water cooler talk, significant jump in Paramount + subs, sustained mainstream interest?
Regardless of outcomes I don’t think anyone becomes a mainstream star. The MMA audience is what it is, casuals are checking out after Conor
The instant I heard UFC CEO Dana White say that this whole event would only be available on Paramount+ I went, well, there go those Super Bowl numbers. Clearly, the goal here is not to get this event seen by the biggest possible audience. If that were the goal, it would be on CBS. And don’t tell me there’s some immovable obstacle keeping it off CBS. Here’s what the current Sunday night lineup looks like on the network during this event, according to TV Guide:
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8-9 p.m. ET: An episode of “Marshals”
9-10 p.m. ET: An episode of “Tracker”
10-11 p.m. ET: Another episode of “Marshals”
Keep in mind, these AREN’T EVEN NEW EPISODES. These are reruns. CBS is choosing to show reruns instead of a marquee live sports event that it has exclusive rights to, an event that we’ve been assured will be among the greatest sports events of all time. Let. That. Sink. In.
For Paramount, this is about driving up streaming service subscriptions. It’s way more about what the UFC can do for Paramount and not what this event can do for the UFC or MMA. No one in this equation seems to be thinking at all about increasing the sport’s visibility or popularity. The only people who appear to care about the actual fighters at the event are us, the existing fight fans, the same people who would have cared just as much if this event were happening at T-Mobile Arena or Timbuktu.
@Beastin364: You keep saying Sean Strickland isn’t banned just not invited. Don’t you think all the stuff he said about it got him on the no invite list though? So what’s the actual difference is it just semantics
If we turn on this event on Sunday night and every other current UFC champ is in attendance, then I will agree that Sean Strickland was banned and his comments about Trump were probably part of it. But it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case. Nothing we’ve heard about the guest list makes it seem like the UFC plans to use too much of its limited ticket supply on current fighters. From the sound of it, even Aspinall, who really should be there to face off with whoever wins the interim heavyweight title, wasn’t invited.
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There’s a reason why Aspinall should be there. But there’s really no reason why Strickland should. There’s only one fight in his division on this card, and it’s between two unranked guys. He can watch that from home!
Plus, can we just be honest with ourselves here for a minute? Say you’re having a fancy party and you’re inviting a bunch of bigwigs you want to impress. Say it has to be a secure, tightly controlled environment where any little hiccup could come off as a major disaster. So you’ve put a lot of money into this and you really need it to go well. Would you invite known agent of chaos Sean Strickland?? I don’t believe you would. Not for a second.
@AzzaHausen: Katie Taylor will now be the only fighter to have fought in both mythical stadiums that never existed , Croke Park and Cowboys Stadium. Does Katie become the greatest mythical fighter to perform or is it still sea level cain?
I’m just glad that, after all this talk, someone will finally fight at Croke Park. And after hearing Petesy Carroll extoll its virtues on The Craic, I’m seriously considering buying myself a plane ticket to check that out in person. Might even hoist a pint while I’m there, who knows?
@fewLikeCLew: Which event has more respectability, UFC Freedom 250 or Strikeforce: Playboy Mansion?
I suspect that the fighters on the Playboy Mansion card had a much better time before and after than these fighters will at the White House.
@LCombatsports: What keeps you covering combat sports?
I wrote something about this on my Substack this week, but the short version is this: It’s true that many aspects of the way fight sports operate are ridiculous and bad. I think you could make a case that it’s always been that way, from the time of the London Prize Ring to the extremely racist era of boxing to the mob-controlled era of boxing to the UFC siphon-off-all-the-money-for-already-rich-people era. But the sport itself, for that brief time between the bells (or airhorns), when the brutal honesty of it is all there is, that part is still better than anything else in sports.
@NiftuCalrissian: If you could book a freak show fight to main event Freedom 250, what would it be?
Mark Zuckerberg vs. Elon Musk. As long as we’re getting all Roman empire on it, some billionaire VIP should go full Commodus and get in the arena himself.
