For the second year in a row, Amanda Nunes finds herself headlining the UFC’s annual Fourth of July show. While that seems like a ringing vote of confidence from the UFC brass – after all, she is fighting atop a card that features the likes of Robert Whittaker, Yoel Romero, Fabricio Werdum and Alistair Overeem – let’s compare and contrast how the company has marketed her versus how they marketed Ronda Rousey – you know, the “once in human history” fighter that Nunes destroyed on her feet in less than a minute.
When Rousey jumped ship to the UFC in 2013 they promoted the ever-loving shit out of her. She was on ESPN and all the morning talk shows and they promoted her like a bona-fide MMA mega-star. This wasn’t a case of the media making a star out of someone, it was a case of a company convincing the media to LIKEWISE promote their homegrown hero like a transcendent crossover celebrity. And for good reason – lest we forget, there was a two year span where Rousey had four fights, combined for a total of two minutes of cage time. She wasn’t just wrecking broads, she was downright liquefying them with horrifying technocratic efficiency.
Then, there was that fateful night at the cricket grounds in Australia – a bout that, in a weird roundabout way, represented the lineal passing of “the best female fighter” mantle from Rousey to Nunes. Of course, there were some bumps on the road along the way, with Holly Holm and Miesha Tate temporarily holding the belt. But when Nunes carved Rousey alive last December, there was no second guessing it – Ronda’s time was officially up and Amanda’s time was officially now.
The logic here should be pretty straightforward. If Rousey was every bit the cultural phenom the UFC said she was before her last two fights, then what does that make the person who annihilates her? Reason would dictate that person would become an even bigger cultural phenomenon, or – at the absolute least – a cultural phenomenon on equal footing. Alas, Amanda Nunes remains relatively unknown to anyone beyond hardcore fighting fans. Imagine, if you will, the NFL refraining from promoting a quarterback who destroyed the Patriots in the Super Bowl, or the NBA refusing to promote a player who posterized Lebron James. Sounds pretty dumb, right? Well, that’s precisely what the UFC has done with Nunes over the last year – instead of promoting her as the world’s most dangerous woman, they’ve been promoting her as, well, just another set of ovaries with a gold belt around her waist.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the UFC isn’t pushing Nunes as hard as they did Rousey. Surely, the language gap can’t be that big of a factor – indeed, Nunes’ English is a lot better than most Brazilian fighters, and she even enunciates better than the Diaz brothers. I might be in the minority here, but I actually think Amanda Nunes looks more attractive than Ronda Rousey – somebody get some eyeshadow on her and she’d almost be a dead ringer for Michelle Rodriguez. And when it comes to personal life distractions, Nunes is certainly a lot cleaner than Rousey, who – among other things – laughed about committing domestic abuse and has publicly questioned whether the Sandy Hook massacre was real.
Is it ‘cause Nunes ain’t white? Well, that didn’t stop the UFC from promoting the hell out of Jon Jones and Anderson Silva. In fact, the company’s top drawing PPV this year will likely feature two non-crackers in the main event, so perhaps playing the race card just won’t cut it here. Is it because Nunes is a lesbian? You would THINK the UFC would actually try to milk that angle for all it’s worth, virtue signalling about how progressive and tolerant they are by celebrating a gay world champion at every turn.
But … no. For whatever reason, WME just doesn’t feel safe getting behind Nunes. Perhaps they see more potential in some of the UFC’s other young up-and-comers, like, uh … Sage Northcutt? Michelle Waterson? Tom Duquesnoy? Marc Diakiese? With so few proven talents to vaunt and celebrate, you’d think the company would be ecstatic to have a tested and validated champ like Nunes on their hands. Instead, they’re just hedging their bets, playing it safe and smooth with a steady diet of Stipe Miocic, Demetrious Johnson and Tyron Woodley until that Irish fellow gets done foolin’ around in boxing.
Sometimes, being a dominant champion just isn’t enough, I reckon. With another decisive victory over Valentina Shevchenko – which, admittedly, is far from a given – it’d be hard to argue that Nunes isn’t one of the best fighters in any weight division in MMA these days. But is that alone enough to draw a million PPV buys and sell out Madison Square Garden?
Only time will tell. And the early buyrates for UFC 213 are going to give us a pretty big clue as to whether athletic greatness alone is enough to put asses in the seats for marquee MMA events or if the corporate cult of personality is a necessity to keep it moving financially forward as a mainstream sports juggernaut.
