I know how much we all enjoy a healthy burst of moralizing, especially on the weekends, but let's be close to honest here. Brock Lesnar's effect on the future of MMA is exactly the same before and after his heartfelt and touching thank you to the crowd at UFC 100.
Yes, doubling up on the middle-fingered salute because he didn't win the crowd over was a bad idea -- so bad an idea that his boss, Dana White, went to the extreme course of reaming out his meal ticket after the fight.
But the kids, White's beloved target audience, are at worst indifferent to it and at best (for ticket sales, anyway) delighted by it. It's a move lifted from Stone Cold Steve Austin of WWE fame, and Austin was one of the biggest tickets in Vince McMahon-twisted history.
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| However you felt about the UFC before Brock Lesnar's actions is probably how you feel afterward. (Getty Images) |
White, though, is playing for bigger stakes, and that includes a bigger piece of the mainstream market.
And as it turns out, they're both right, and therefore both wrong.
MMA has found its niche, and UFC 100 was the top end of that. It was as big a card as could be constructed, and White had months to make it right. By most analyses by MMA fans, he did. For those who aren't MMA fans, it doesn't matter.
And as is usually the case when a sport puts on its biggest show, the market finds its own equilibrium. This was almost certainly MMA's Wrestlemania 3, the one in Detroit that put Hulk Hogan over, and just as McMahon never could top it, this is probably the zenith of White's career arc as well.
We don't say this because we care about MMA one way or another. For us, it doesn't meet the minimal standard for fun, and we know that there will be scandals that will hit the sport in the future because that is the way of our nation -- vice and shame always follow the dollar, especially in Las Vegas -- but still we say let a thousand cauliflowers ears bloom.
But we also know there is a ceiling for every sport, and right now the only one that seems to be picking up steam in the U.S. is international pro soccer. That, of course, is because domestic pro soccer is still in the margin-of-error stage of development, and because the U.S. national team got jiggy with it in South Africa last month.
This, we'd be willing to bet, is MMA's ceiling. It is hard to imagine White topping this card for MMA-level attractiveness any time in the foreseeable future, and the business he did was quite impressive. But everyone who wanted access to UFC 100 and Lesnar 2.0 had it, so logic tells us this is a spike in interest and not a new baseline.
In other words, Lesnar offended people who probably weren't watching and aren't going to start, and those who were watching probably said, "Yeah, that was pretty stupid but I was gonna buy the T-shirt anyway."
Thus, for those who see a shocking and dismaying moment for MMA in Lesnar's stunted sense of customer relations, calm down. For those who think it will break through to a new audience, calm down too. You've got your audience, it's pretty well topped off, and Lesnar will win back any naysayers inside the tent the next time he punches someone's face in. Outside the tent, nothing will change. They were offended before, and they will stay offended.
And that should be OK with White, at least if he's any kind of realist. He should be deliriously happy with the gates, and while he can talk about this being the springboard to new heights for his endeavor, history suggests that every pastime finds its level. We're betting not even Brock Lesnar's titanium fingers can break through that wall.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
