Fight fans are still reeling from the UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House lawn. They’re also trying to make sense of Alex Pereira’s reaction to his heavyweight title loss, while still awaiting viewership numbers that seem, well, realistic.
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.
@formyxscarfalo1: What do you think about the Gane back of the head shots on Pereira?
I think they were real, but they did not make the difference in that fight, and Alex Pereira is not doing himself any favors by fixating on it so publicly. I also think this fight was a great example of why MMA has such a problem enforcing that rule and why we need to figure it out. All those things can be true at the same time.
Advertisement
Let’s start with figuring out what we really mean by “back of the head” for the purpose of this rule. It’s not as simple as the space behind the ears. The way the rule is interpreted confines the no-fly zone to a pretty narrow strip, almost an extension of the spinal cord.
Did Ciryl Gane still manage to hit that strip at least a couple times? He did. But he mostly did it while Pereira was moving, which usually earns a fighter a little extra leeway on that rule. One of the things I learned at the officials’ summit back in January is that kicking a guy in the groin isn’t always a foul. If you go to kick my leg and I jump forward or redirect your kick into my own bathing suit area, brother that one is on me.
But also, what would we have wanted referee Herb Dean to do differently there? If he paused the fight the instant one of Gane’s fists or elbows hits the back of Pereira’s head, Pereira would have gotten a chance to rest and recover. Then we would probably have accused Dean of saving Pereira and interfering in the fight. Instead he let it play out, and Gane finished Pereira with entirely legal strikes a few seconds later.
Here’s where I reiterate that MMA refs have a job that’s so difficult as to be almost impossible. Practically every decision they make (or don’t make) is the equivalent of a play at home plate in the bottom of the ninth. Any intervention on their part can change the entire fight. And taking a hands-off approach gets them blamed for all the stuff they didn’t do.
Alex Pereira (left) was not having a great time against Ciryl Gane on Sunday night.
(Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images)
@bodkins_nick: What makes this loss to Gane so hard for Alex? Because he does not seem to be taking it well
No, he doesn’t. And it’s a little surprising, since we have seen him take other losses with more grace and humility. Maybe he really believes he was egregiously wronged in this fight. But then, he also seems to think that he was on the verge of winning since Gane was about to run out of gas, and there’s nothing we saw to back up that version of events.
Advertisement
He tried to make history by going up and winning a UFC title in a third division. He failed at that. There’s no shame in it. I think fight fans would still respect him for being so willing to try and fail if only he’d shut up and let them.
@GreggoDeCarlo: Is Cyril Gane the dirtiest fighter to ever hold a UFC belt?
I’m tempted to say no, if only because I feel like we’ve seen some dirty, rotten cheaters get their hands on UFC gold over the years. I mean, Jon Jones. He’s probably the greatest fighter in MMA history, but he’s also a notorious skewerer of eyeballs who could have easily lost his title to Anthony Smith due to a blatantly illegal blow.
But it must be said that the past two fights haven’t helped Gane’s reputation. He ruined one title shot by going full Three Stooges on Tom Aspinall’s eyes, and now he beats a two-division champ to claim an interim belt but all anyone can talk about is his illegal blows. If I were Aspinall right now, here’s where I’d be serving everyone a healthy dose of “I Tried To Tell You Guys.”
@ewillcock: Now that it’s over, what was the biggest surprise of UFC Freedom 250? (Other than the obvious awesomeness of the Marine Corps band)
To me it was how smoothly the UFC production staff pulled this off. I was expecting something much crasser, with hiccups caused by the outdoor venue and the unprecedented setting.
Advertisement
Any time you go to put on a live event at a place not made for live events, it’s always tricky. And when we saw that giant “claw” go up on the White House lawn, I think it gave a lot of people strong county-fair vibes. I was worried the UFC would go over the top with the Trump worship and the whole thing would end up feeling like the Kid Rock halftime show. (Though the band deserves a lot of credit for classing up the joint, too.)
It didn’t. It felt almost understated, but with a visually impactful grandeur about it. That was the biggest surprise to me. Justin Gaethje showing up and having one of the best and most tactically sound fights he’s had in years? That was also a big surprise. I think I speak for the whole Uncrowned crew, none of whom picked Gaethje, when I say I didn’t see that one coming.
@InterMetr0: I’ve been following UFC since the very first event and yourself since back in the Cage Potato days and don’t recall ever hearing ANYTHING about corruption/fight fixing in UFC until this latest DC/Trump Jr. purported twitter direct message exchange. What do you make of this?
This was a very bizarre story. One of the things that made it seem potentially plausible is not that the UFC itself has ever engaged in fight-fixing (it hasn’t, though individual fighters may have), but that someone like Eric Trump might believe that’s how at least some of this worked. Let’s face it, the idea of profiting off who you know and how they might be able to rig things in your favor is very much a part of his world. It’s not inconceivable that someone like that, who does not know this world, might think he could use his name and influence to get insider information from a UFC employee like Daniel Cormier.
Advertisement
It’s also not totally unthinkable that Cormier would be outraged by that suggestion, and decide to go public with it in a moment of anger. He wonders why people are stupid enough to believe it was real? That’s why. Because they think he’s a straight-shooter who wouldn’t stand for that. And because a tweet that came from his account seemed to reinforce things that many people already believed about both men.
I’ve got to say, he didn’t exactly help things with his response. For one thing, he didn’t offer up the “hacked or something” explanation until several hours later, after the event. His explanation this week on YouTube was that someone hacked his account, posted these fake screenshots, and then deleted that tweet, all before he ever saw it. He said he only learned it had happened when he arrived at the White House and others told him. But he also said he did post the tweet wondering how people ever believed this, so he had access to his account then, presumably at the same time as the hacker.
So you’re telling me someone hacked into his account to send just this one tweet and then delete it themselves? That’s all they did with this access? If that’s what happened, I guess it was effective as a multilayered attack to sow chaos for its own sake, because here we are talking about it. It’s also super weird, though.
But then, there’s a part of his explanation that bothers me. It’s where he says, several times in his YouTube video, that he “would never do that.” Except in this case, what he means by “that” is … tell us that a powerful person was soliciting insider information? Because if that had happened, wouldn’t exposing it make him the good guy? Isn’t that what he should do? Telling us you’d never do it suggests that you’d be totally willing to keep it a secret, which ain’t a good look either.
Advertisement
I’ve known Cormier a long time and have always known him to be an honest man. So if he says he was hacked, I’m inclined to believe him. But also, that would make him the victim of a cyberattack that had major implications for not just the UFC but the U.S. President’s family. Seems like that ought to merit an investigation of some kind to see who was behind it.
@NoahSas23: Why is it when Netflix and Jake Paul announced their viewership, everyone excepted it without pushback and praised them for such an event. But when Rogan says what paramount’s viewship was for the White House, MMA media is being skeptical and negative about it?
Sure, let me see if I can explain this one for you. Netflix is a publicly traded company, so there could be legal consequences if it lied about its numbers and potentially artificially inflated its value. Joe Rogan is a podcaster known for Just Saying Stuff, and sometimes that stuff is proven to be totally fake immediately after he says it.
Advertisement
Point is, one of those parties can spout whatever numbers it wants with total impunity, and the other can’t. That’s why there’s a difference in how willing people are to believe one and not the other.
But while we’re on the subject, I think there’s this perception that some of us in the media want to see the UFC do badly. What that doesn’t take into account is that, if UFC viewership fell and interest in the UFC dissipated, it would mean the end of our jobs. No media outlet pays you to cover a sport that people aren’t watching. I know because I was writing about this sport back when hardly anyone was watching, and there were very, very few paying gigs for that at the time.
At the same time, most people who go into any branch of journalism have an allergic reaction to bullcrap. Even if the lies are pleasant ones that we might want to believe, we have a hard time just nodding along and going with it if we don’t think it’s true.
Rogan saying that this event drew 150 million viewers between Sunday night and Monday? That strains belief. That’s almost twice as many total subscribers as Paramount+ had going into the weekend. And this was an event that didn’t even start until 9 p.m. ET on a Sunday night.
Advertisement
Maybe once we finally see some firm numbers from Paramount — another publicly traded company — we’ll know better what to make of it. I think any figure north of 20 million would be a huge success for this event. And I think it’s possible the UFC hit that number. This was a big event, no question about it. That doesn’t mean I need to sit here and pretend it was bigger than every single Super Bowl, though.
@pmsdeadandalive: whos gonna tell michael chandler enough is enough? 40 years old, more straight losses than punches landed vs ruffy, 6/7 losses, 2-6 ufc. and gettin beat BAD. id tell him myself from up here at the top where we were supposed to meet but dont think hed hear me way down where he is.
Based on Michael Chandler’s comments on social media after the loss, he’s not seeing this the same way you are. He’s still grinding and he still expects to see us at the top. The fact that he was not the least bit competitive in this fight has not dimmed his optimism or enthusiasm.
But that’s the way it goes. The type of person who gives up easily is not the type of person who makes it to this level. Chandler turned 40 this year and he’s still in the UFC, still getting big fights on big cards. If he could be easily convinced to quit and stay home, that would have happened years ago. This is a familiar story. To be a pro fighter requires a degree of stubbornness and toughness and optimism that also usually makes it hard to know when to stop. If there’s a cure for that, I don’t think we’ve found it yet.
