With Evander Kane set for surgery, will he become the Oilers’ Mark Stone, spending the entire season on LTIR only to emerge from the dressing room for Game 1 of the playoffs? It’s certainly one of the possibilities.
Days after digesting the UFC’s event at the Sphere, I can say, without pause, the event was an historic moment in the long, decorated history of combat sports.
If we believe the event was a “one-and-done” as UFC CEO Dana White called it, then we have assuredly witnessed a “one-of-one.”
Sitting in a venue that has no equal on this earth, it was astonishing to watch the UFC provide fans in attendance with an immersive collision of fantasy and reality.
The visual representation of fantasy worlds as the backdrop for a sport that has been described to be “as real as it gets” was as bold of a statement as any major sports entity has attempted and it delivered something unique and exciting from a mixed martial arts promotion that, while having evolved, has offered tried-and-true, consistent production for upwards of a decade.
This was risky and ambitious, an escape from the expected and the UFC in its finest hour, daring to deliver a special evening to those who were willing to approach it from a place of curiosity and intrigue.
While the broadcast offered a unique feel, it was difficult to capture just how magnificent all of the visual elements were from inside the venue. Before, during and after the fights on the main card, everywhere you looked, you could not help but notice something new and interesting in the tapestry being presented.
This was the only time I have attended a combat sports event where it felt like I was watching a combative competition in an entirely different world rather than within the confines of an arena.
The production costs were stated to exceed $20 million, which, put into perspective, is about the price of three ads for the Super Bowl and what better advertisement could the UFC possibly have had than this?
It was a representation of what the UFC is capable of and what happens when you dare to stand out.
White was extremely confident in what his promotion was about to achieve prior to UFC 306.
“I can’t wait to hear what you guys think tomorrow night,” White said to media members following a scrum on the eve of the event. “I want the most brutal, honest, harsh criticism that you can possibly fire away after this one.”
While White has been dismissive of the opinions of the media at times, he knew that any doubts would be silenced by those who were not yet aware of the grandiosity that they would experience the next evening.
In the interest of fairness, I’ll accept White’s challenge and note some things that could have made an incredible show even more incredible.
For starters, one missed opportunity was saving all of the 90-second feature segments for the main card.
I completely understand the idea of building to a big crescendo of visual elements, but had the first story run at the end of the televised preliminary card with the unveiling of the first backdrop, it would have given viewers who were on the fence about purchasing the pay-per-view main card a small glimpse at what they would miss if they did not order the fights.
Another thing I would have liked to see was more immersive entrances for the fighters. Whether it was more artistic in nature, or the animations used for the main card also being used for the prelims, something to that effect would have utilized the arena’s capabilities more frequently over the course of the entire evening.
Of course, there is always the chance that a fight falls off and that concern could have been a consideration for investing the time and resources into doing so.
These are small, nitpicky suggestions for the sake of using a critical eye to make something exceptional only incrementally better.
Overall, the second Noche UFC was a triumphant night for combat sports that will be celebrated for the foreseeable future and hopefully inspire other entities to push themselves to the limits of what is possible.
Most importantly for the sport, it exhibited the growth of MMA as a mainstream phenomenon.
If you back look at UFC 178, the organization’s September pay-per-view that took place in the same city a decade prior that featured fighters that would soon become household names, including Demetrious Johnson, Conor McGregor, Dustin Poirier, Jorge Masvidal and Amanda Nunes, that card drew a $2.2 million gate. Who would have guessed that 10 years later, the UFC could hold an event that would have a gate 10 times that amount.
The biggest takeaway from attending the event is that the UFC showed this past weekend why it continues its ascension as a sports and entertainment powerhouse and was a shining example of what inspiration and boldness can create to raise the bar of what combat sports can look like in the future.
