UFC's odd couple strike right balance
Lesnar Destroys Mir For Heavyweight Title
Georges St. Pierre spent his Saturday night successfully defending the welterweight title against No. 1 contender Thiago Alves at UFC 100. The one-sided would-be superfight saw St. Pierre win all five rounds, even as he gutted out the last two with a groin injury at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
Afterward, St. Pierre cemented his reputation as a consummate sportsman by lauding his opponent. He remained modest about his chances against middleweight champion Anderson Silva in a rumored cross-division duel, the only potential mixed martial arts fight that has the same box-office pull as the Brock Lesnar-Fedor Emelianenko bout UFC president Dana White has promised fans several times over.
Brock Lesnar was also hard at work at UFC 100, successfully unifying the heavyweight crown by turning Frank Mir's face into a postmodern painting. Impressive as Lesnar was in victory, his postfight antics overshadowed both his own performance and that of St. Pierre: The genetic freak of the Dakotas tried to restart his fight with Mir, announced plans for carnal relations with his wife and ripped Bud Light, the UFC's biggest sponsor. In a few short minutes, Lesnar managed to join the likes of Terrell Owens and Ric Flair, coming off as a crass sore winner who won't shake his opponent's hand, a muscled mass of egomania.
Flipping off the fans and mortifying your bosses might sell tickets in the short term, but most everyone gets tired of the childish villain routine sooner or later. Back in the 1990s, Lesnar would have been right at home, as that decade saw athletes like Deion Sanders and Barry Bonds make millions while living in a me-first world that rewarded them for their on-the-field brilliance as long as the bottom line remained comfortably in the black. Unfortunately for Lesnar, this decade begs for an athlete like St. Pierre; people look at the Lesnars of the world and realize class acts such as Peyton Manning and Tiger Woods deserve true superstar status.
In a bizarre way, St. Pierre and Lesnar are linked, the opposing sides of the same coin. As the two most bankable commodities in MMA, the two fighters hold a profound influence over the future prospects of the UFC.
You can thank the backlash from the steroids era and fans who have grown tired of watching their favorite athletes get dragged into court for the fall of the sports anti-hero. Not surprisingly, Lesnar could care less, while St. Pierre maintains a carefully crafted image that has kept him in the good graces of his fans and bosses. Still, that doesn't change the fact that Lesnar was the headliner Saturday and would sell more tickets than St. Pierre anywhere in the world outside Canada.
That might seem like an anomaly, but every top-tier athlete such as Lesnar enjoys a honeymoon period. Tito Ortiz spent years at the top of the game despite openly ducking Chuck Liddell, all the while slowly but surely alienating fans with equal doses of arrogance and inactivity. The frustration of fans ranked second only to the hit taken by the UFC, which spent years trying to make an Ortiz-Liddell light heavyweight title bout, with the matchup materializing only after it had lost its chokehold on the attention of MMA fans.
Dealing with an egomaniac is a dicey proposition, but the UFC needs a Lesnar around, as long as it can keep him on a short leash. No one is going to mistake the hulking heavyweight champion for an MMA ambassador, so the extent of damage his mouth can do is limited as long as he keeps key sponsors out of his verbal crosshairs and avoids anything felonious. After all, Mike Tyson spent years knocking human beings silly and generally coming off as Brooklyn's answer to Alex DeLarge before legal woes finally torpedoed his career and the American public grew sick of cheering for someone who sickened them. As of now, Lesnar is a polarizing figure, but he still enjoys the support of many fans who cheer him on instead of cheering for his defeat.
That's the kind of figure you need to effectively promote a sport, but it doesn't work without a St. Pierre to balance the promotion. In a bizarre sort of way, St. Pierre and Lesnar are linked, the opposing sides of the same coin. As the two most bankable commodities in MMA, the two fighters hold a profound influence over the future prospects of the UFC. While St. Pierre feels the pressure to re-establish his greatness, Lesnar has to prove his own without letting the theatrics of his World Wrestling Entertainment days turn him into a caricature.
The ongoing argument over which man is better suited to carry the torch for the UFC is pointless; you're never going to have an army of St. Pierres leading the way, and you'll always miss having a Lesnar around to whip the fans into a frenzy. A thin line might separate Lesnar from being an asset or a liability, but the same could have been said about Ortiz, and he still played a key role in the UFC's ongoing siege on mainstream American sports. Once Ortiz forgot the UFC could survive without him, he became a liability and was quickly erased from the memories of his once-rabid fans by the UFC's ruthless business machinations.
That's not something the UFC will ever have to worry about with St. Pierre, which is why the French-Canadian virtuoso remains a safe bet to become a crossover star. The opposite holds true for Lesnar, who will be a headache for White for years to come. Still, what he brings to the table makes him well worth the price of admission. Just how long that remains true will be up to Lesnar, but that's not something about which anyone should worry. There's never a shortage of talented athletes willing to revel in the bad-guy persona, and Lesnar will hardly be the last to serve in that role for the UFC.
Consider boxing again: While Tyson was knocking people senseless, a young British heavyweight named Lennox Lewis was on his way up the ranks. He was articulate, well-mannered and undeniably talented, and the combat sports world flocked to him as the smooth chaser to the harsh aftertaste of the Tyson era. Now instead of having one flavor or another, the UFC has both GSP and Lesnar under the same banner, and that's what matters most.
At this moment, the last barriers surrounding the mainstream are falling, and MMA needs every edge it can get when the sport is so close to breaking through. After all, why settle for only Tyson when you can have Lewis, too? The best part: St. Pierre is a far better dancer than both, and Lesnar has yet to show a taste for human flesh. At this rate, they might someday star in an NBC sitcom in which they play mismatched roommates. Isn't that what going mainstream is all about?
Tomas Rios is a contributor to Sherdog.com.
