Opinion: Treating a ‘Mighty Mouse’ Like a Lab Rat

---

With UFC 191 on the horizon, we should be past the “Why doesn't Demetrious Johnson sell on pay-per-view?” narrative. Not only is it stale, but Johnson didn't ask for this. He is one of the very best fighters on Earth; he is the greatest flyweight ever; he is “Mighty Mouse.” He might be a gym rat, but unfortunately, he is also a lab rat.

“Why doesn't D.J. sell?” isn't the most constructive question to ask. Considering that this trope gets revisited each time Johnson fights, it seems more important to wonder why exactly he's being asked to headline a $60 offering once again. I know that the Ultimate Fighting Championship isn't conducting any sort of cruel scientific experiment on its 125-pound king; this isn't any kind of public flogging. In reality, the UFC schedule occasionally unfolds in such a fashion that square pegs get hammered into round holes, fighters get put into desperate fights, sometimes of questionable “headlining” quality, and we quietly acknowledge the roles of timing and circumstance. Then it's onto the next, hopefully bigger fight.

This will be Johnson's fourth straight bout in which he main events a pay-per-view, in spite of the fact that no one appraises him as any kind of drawing card at this point. Those prior events -- UFC 174, 178 and UFC 186 -- drew less than 500,000 buys combined, and 178 included Eddie Alvarez's promotional debut against Donald Cerrone, as well as the growing star of Conor McGregor versus Dustin Poirier. I don't point this out as disrespect, but rather to re-emphasize my previous contention: Why is this man headlining a fourth straight no-hope PPV? He's not even hitting the necessary buy rate threshold to trigger the much-vaunted “PPV points.” What has this man done to deserve this?

Related » UFC 191 Full Preview

The aforementioned scheduling excuse, the calendar-related “that's the way the cookie crumbles,” is not infinitely renewable as an excuse. Johnson, with very little recourse as the athlete in this case, is being put in less-than-optimal situations repeatedly, perpetuating the tired “too small, no one cares” narrative. Zuffa can't wave a magic wand and make people care about Johnson the way they do McGregor or Ronda Rousey, but it can at least not stitch him up and put him in positions to fail -- and by “fail,” I mean not fulfill casual wisdom about what UFC champions are “supposed” to draw.

As a live witness to fans hitting the doors early during Johnson's shutout of Ali Bagautinov at UFC 174 in Vancouver, I was stunned not by their reaction but by the fact that the UFC created a situation that permitted it to happen. It might have been painful to watch another 10 minutes of the snoozefest between Rory MacDonald and Tyron Woodley, but had the welterweights gone on last, I feel comfortable that fans would have stuck around at least for the British Columbian MacDonald, thereby saving a champion from having to save face. However, the UFC has a pathological obsession with champions going on last, ever since Andrei Arlovski-Tim Sylvia played second fiddle to Vitor Belfort-Tito Ortiz at UFC 51 over a decade ago.

Prior to UFC 178, injury struck, scuttling first Jon Jones-Alexander Gustafsson and then rescheduling the replacement bout between Jones and Daniel Cormier. This is the most pernicious of the Johnson scheduling issues, as we know the extent to which injuries wreak havoc on cards, and the UFC didn't have a terrible amount of options at the time. Nonetheless, you'd think that having to take a backseat to Cerrone, Alvarez and McGregor in the card's promotion while preparing for a sparring session of a title defense against Chris Cariaso would make Zuffa realize that if Johnson's star is to incubate and grow, it needs to be insulated from these sorts of situations. Rather than being a lesson, it has become part of a thoughtless pattern.

Instead, the UFC went right back to sticking “Mighty Mouse” in the pay-per-view cage for UFC 186, hoping that a second title fight between T.J. Dillashaw and Renan Barao would bolster interest in the card, but even from jump street, it seemed like a case of two fives not equaling a real 10. When Dillashaw broke his rib and the fight with Barao was pulled, there we were again, with Johnson headlining a card -- this time in Montreal of all places -- against an anonymous challenger. Even if Kyoji Horiguchi is a wonderful prospect with considerable untapped potential, this is nothing for which a fight promoter should ask someone to pay $60. Worse, the fighter for which locals were literally the most excited and the fighter that could have literally added hundreds of ticket sales if not more, Steve Bosse, never even ended up on the card, as the UFC fought tooth-and-nail to keep the Quinton Jackson-Fabio Maldonado bout. Even when Johnson pulled off a “Submission of the Year” contender with a single second left against Horiguchi, “Rampage's” legal issues remained the focal point of discussion.

I know that injuries are beyond the UFC's control and they have played a role in Johnson being mired in MMA meta-discussion hell. Yet here we are, headlining a PPV with Johnson and John Dodson, a man he handled in his first title defense over two years ago and a man against whom he is even better equipped to execute the same strategy again. The UFC on Fox 17 card scheduled for Dec. 19 is literally better equipped to sell on PPV, with the more popular Cerrone challenging for Rafael dos Anjos' UFC lightweight title and the Junior dos Santos-Alistair Overeem co-feature. That's a card with a chance for 350,000 buys or more, as opposed to one that will be lucky to break 175,000.

However, the UFC had a PPV date scheduled for Sept. 5 in Las Vegas, so dammit, we have got to have a card. With UFC 151's cancellation continuing to resonate as a historic MMA milestone and UFC 176's cancellation last summer, Zuffa is understandably sensitive about nixing scheduled PPVs; I'm sympathetic to this notion and a PPV-centered business like the UFC does not want to repeatedly injure its brand. As I wrote about last week in this space, the UFC is going all-in on the last quarter of 2015 and trying to erect as many monumental, stacked cards as possible. If this is your strategy, why entertain a card such as UFC 191?

If the UFC really wanted to “#GoBig” in this case, it would have canceled UFC 191 as soon as the tea leaves started to settle eight weeks ago and put Johnson-Dodson and Frank Mir-Andrei Arlovski alongside Cormier-Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 192. Those fights, plus Woodley-Johny Hendricks and Ryan Bader-Rashad Evans would give the Oct. 3 card a lineup as stacked as any forthcoming non-UFC 194 offering, even if the 205-pounders are paired incorrectly. While there is a hit when you cancel an event, you're trading in promoting a farcical placeholder PPV to the tune of 125,000-150,000 buys and putting that promotional juice behind a much better UFC 192 card.

Without even considering the UFC picking up momentum and what that could mean in the lead-up to that event, that's a potential half million PPV buys. More importantly, it's three or four times as many people seeing the same event that features Johnson, who is at worst one of the three best fighters on the planet. If “#GoBig” is going to be your motto, do it. It could help Johnson do the same.

No matter what shape the UFC's imminent promotional strategy takes, it needs to be one that at least recognizes that Johnson has the 125-pound division on lockdown, will be champion for a minute yet and therefore he should be protected from half-assed promotions and being used as just another cog in a machine.

I have never bought that “little guys” can't sell in sports, as the 122- to 135-pound weight range in boxing offers plenty of vivid, contrary examples. However, MMA's flyweight division is still embryonic, and unlike in boxing, countries like Mexico and the Philippines that can offer 140-pound-ish athletes who can cut to flyweight are not MMA hotbeds at this point. Sustained dominance alone isn't always rewarded in MMA; Anderson Silva toiled atop the pound-for-pound list for years before he struck gold with Chael Sonnen becoming his pro-wrestling-esque foil and crammed his foot down Vitor Belfort's throat on Super Bowl weekend. “Mighty Mouse” has had three years blazing a trail in essentially a new division, one that statistically offers him less of a chance to encounter a Sonnen, a McGregor, a Nick Diaz or whatever sort of kindred spirit could produce a bankable Johnson fight and propel the weight class forward.

Maybe that fight isn't at 125 pounds at all, and it will be realized if and when Johnson returns to 135 pounds to meet T.J. Dillashaw or the last man to beat him, Dominick Cruz. If that is the case, it's contingent on Johnson continuing to win, which means that the UFC is still going to be promoting his title fights. If Johnson is to be any kind of star, he will be sold on his long-term dominance and as one of MMA's most steadfast professionals; and you know that Johnson will hold up his end of the bargain. Most importantly, if “Mighty Mouse” is to be sold and consumed at all, Zuffa cannot treat him like another lab rat running in the wheel of the UFC PPV machine.