Content Killed The Combat Sports Star

Francis Ngannou is fighting in the PFL to defend MMA’s lineal title of the world. Why isn’t his promoter, the PFL, telling the story? Today we’re going to talk about what’s going left unsaid and why it’s by design.

In the mid 1800s combat sports hardly existed. Yes, people fought for gold and glory. But these contests were relegated to dark rooms, hidden alleys, and organized by shadowy figures skirting regulations to make their money off of a brutal spectacle.

That last part hasn’t changed much. What is different is the legitimacy of combat as a sport.

In 1867 boxing’s Queensberry Rules were published. These rules established the use of gloves, three minute rounds with a one minute break, and prohibited wrestling in matches, among other things. The Queensbury Rules laid the foundation for how we sanctioning and evaluate fighting. They allow us to determine who the best is. The first heavyweight champion crowned under these rules was a man named John L Sullivan.

In the century and a half since, boxing organizations have come and gone, but there has been one single unifying thread to unite fighting across the years. The lineal heavyweight champion, aka the man that beat the man that beat the man. You can trace this title from Oleksandr Usyk, the man who unified all 4 heavyweight boxing titles in the process of beating the former lineal heavyweight title holder, Tyson Fury, back to Sullivan.

In the raw, violent, and hyper real world of fighting this history is important if for no other reason than it ends debate. And this concept exists in MMA as well, but it’s a bit fuzzier.

Before Royce Gracie put the UFC on the map in America, both Shooto and Pancrase were promoting fights resembling modern MMA. Pride Fighting Championships started a few years after the UFC, using Shooto’s rules as the basis for their’s. Even with this early fragmentation of fighting promotions the heavyweight title still converged.

Gracie won the UFC’s inaugural open weight tournament. He went undefeated until running into Kazushi Sakuraba in Pride. Sakuraba would pass this lineal title through Pride until it fell to Fedor Emelianenko, the Pride Heavyweight Champion of the world, making the Pride title holder the lineal heavyweight champion of the world. Emelianenko would the lineal title to Fabricio Werdum in Strikeforce. Werdum passed it to Alistair Overem who passed it to Antonio Silva who gave it up to Cain Velasquez in the UFC.

Cain would go on to win the the UFC’s heavyweight title, unifying the lineal heavyweight title with the actual UFC belt. This ended all possible debate around the UFC as a promotion. The physical belt title carried with it the concept of the man that beat the man that beat the man that beat the man.

Velasquez lost the belt to Werdum. He then lost it to Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier who traded it back and forth. Francis Ngannou lost to Miocic, embarked on a comeback trail, and then rematched Miocic to knock him out. Ngannou would go on to defend his title against Cyril Gane and leave the UFC, taking his title as the biggest and baddest in MMA with him, much to the lament of Dana White and the UFC.

Since that day Ngannou lost two boxing matches. He has not defended his title as the best heavyweight fighter in MMA yet. That changes this weekend as he takes on the giant Brazilian slugger Renan Ferreira.

For fight fans and history buffs this is an incredible story line. Ngannou took on the world, climbing out of a sand mine in Africa to find professional fighting in France. He won the UFC’s heavyweight title with a severely injured knee and then he left the promotion on his own terms.

Ngannou took command of his destiny, wrote a legendary story in blood that is transcending fist fighting. My question to you is, why am I the one to tell it? Why isn’t Ngannou’s promoter, the PFL, doing everything they can to explain the significance of the show they’re about to promote?

The PFL claims they are the second largest fight promotion in the world. Maybe they are in Excel, but when you try to search for viewers you’ll come up short.

In 2023 PFL reported to end the year with half of the UFC’s viewership. Their 2024 season opener was reported to have only 122,000 viewers. For context, that’s less than The Augusta National Women’s Amateur golf event had on the same night.

If the PFL has viewers I don’t know where they are. I’m not sure if the PFL knows either. I’m not even sure if they care.

Whenever the PFL releases an interview they claim they’re a duopoly with the UFC, establishing global networks of fighting, and approaching a billion dollar valuation fueled by newly signed sponsorship revenue. In Donn Davis’s recent interview with Sports Business Journal he claims they judge success according to three metrics:

1. Becoming the co-leader in MMA

2. Business metrics

3. The development of the PFL Middle East and North Africa league

What’s missing? Fans. On paper and in person.

I’m sure Davis, Peter Murray, and everyone on the PFL’s senior management team understands building a brand and capital management. Davis is a lawyer turned venture capitalist that invested in an E-Sports team, among other things. Murray is a marketer and brand developer who held a global leadership position at Under Armor. But neither of them have promoted fights. They sell to and communicate with other executives. It’s not that they don’t care about fight fans. They’ve never interacted with them.

You might be wondering, how can the PFL or any fight promotion succeed without fans? A business needs customers to run. Therein lies the rub.

You might think the PFL’s strategy is a path to nowhere. You might be right. Or, something like the PFL might be the perfect thing to slot into the modern sports entertainment world. To understand this you need to understand how the premier promotion, the UFC, makes its money.

Of the UFC’s 1.29 billion dollar revenue in 2023, 67% of it came from “Media Rights & Content”. This is driven primarily by their deal with ESPN.

This is the way it works. The UFC signs a deal with a broadcast partner, ESPN, in this case, to produce X number of events per year. If they do, ESPN pays them hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

I’m not here to say that’s bad business. Frankly, that’s genius. Consider the past.

If a fight promoter wanted to make money off of John L Sullivan in the 1800s they had to get people to show up and buy tickets. In the 1900’s, fight promoters shifted to selling pay-per-views as a way to make more money off of their events. This is partly why fight promotions build stars, establish champions, and say who is who. They need to sell the importance of the fight. They make you want to tune in because they tell you the best person in the world is fighting and you need to watch a master craftsman work.

But without a need to sell fights thanks to revenue built in to broadcast partnerships and contracts, fight promotions simply aren’t selling like they used to. Why spend the money? You take risks when there is a reward and these promotions are rewarded simply by showing up and turning the cameras on.

So, why does this matter for the PFL?

The UFC’s ESPN deal is ending in 2025. Rumors are swirling about where the UFC will go. If they leave, wherever they go to will leave a gigantic gap in ESPN’s programming that the PFL would be happy to fill.

To say it plainly, the PFL has no incentive to promote their most compelling fights. They only need to keep the show going and create content that someone will buy in the hopes of someone else watching it that someone else puts ads on top of.

The PFL is creating a map of what a global fighting brand looks like so they can pass it off to someone else and let them navigate the treacherous waters of fight promotion. And you know what? I don’t even blame them.

Promoting fights is hard because entertainment is subjective. It’s hard to describe what makes a high quality fight card. Is it the action? The stories? The production that ties it all together? It’s that and more. Sometimes all of that is there and people still don’t care. But while quality can be hard to describe we can recognize when it’s not there.

The problem for fight fans is, on paper and in the boardroom, objectively, the PFL is starting to work. The lights are on, sponsorship money is coming in, and we can see people fighting. It doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be there because someone needs TV content to place ads on top of.

For how long? Who can say. If Davis and Murray can moderate the PFL’s burn rate while continuing to raise capital, the PFL will be here until it’s not. They might even become ESPN’s preferred MMA programming.

Whether they care or not, I’ll be watching this weekend. One of the most interesting stories in combat sports is playing out. The biggest and baddest man fighting in a cage is putting on the 4 ounce gloves again to see if he’s still got it. I just wish the people serving the slop would make a point to tell us when it is or not.