Mailbag: After UFC's big Paramount debut numbers, is MMA set for another growth phase?

What will the UFC’s move to Paramount do for overall viewership, and what can we learn from the UFC 324 streaming numbers? Is it ever a good idea to be coached by your significant other? And what should happen to a fighter who breaks his opponent’s nose with a pre-fight head-butt?

All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA on X or @Ben_Fowlkes on Threads.

@zachmarcus: Does the paramount deal actually mean fewer people will watch whole events? Theres no longer an $80 commitment to watch the whole card. Now people can watch the main event only and not feel like theyre wasting money.

I think the takeaway is that more people will watch some UFC fights. Possibly a lot more. Early reports from Paramount claim that the UFC 324 main card averaged 4.96 million viewers, peaking at 5.93 million streams. We rarely got reliable numbers during the ESPN era, but I think we would have heard about it if ESPN ever sold 6 million pay-per-views. (Khabib Nurmagomedov vs. Conor McGregor is, as far as we know, still the high-water mark for UFC pay-per-view sales with 2.4 million buys.)

This makes sense, right? If the cover charge at your club is $9 instead of $80, you’re going to get more people willing to wander in and check it out for themselves. Will all those people stay the whole time? No, but I’m not sure it matters. It definitely doesn’t matter to Paramount, since the subscription cost is the same whether you watch one fight or 10. And there are bound to be people who think they’re only interested in the main event, but tune in early so as not to miss anything and end up catching more fights by accident (and liking it).

Point is, the UFC is in a good position to substantially increase viewership, at least in the United States, for the first time in a long time. Price makes all the difference. Putting up a huge pay-per-view paywall (which was itself behind an ESPN+ subscription paywall that cost more than Paramount+) meant people had to be pretty sure they were going to see something worth the money. But at $9 per month, a lot of people will sign up just to watch a handful of fights here or there. Plus they’ve got “South Park."

Last thing on the Paramount topic: Advertisements. Yes, there were a ton of them at UFC 324. And sometimes they crowded out stuff we actually cared about, like walkouts and corner work. But as someone who came up in the pay-per-view era and got gradually squeezed from $40 per event all the way to $80, I feel a lot more forgiving of ads when it helps the cost drop to $8.99 for everything. They put that mute button on my remote for a reason.

@picturehousepod: In light of your post re your frustration with the phrase ‘first ballot hall of fame’ in MMA, which other common ‘MMAisms’ would you like to eliminate?

I hate when fighters talk about how they want a rematch with someone who beat them so they can “get that one back.” You won’t. You won’t ever get it back. This is a different fight and if you win it, that prior loss will still be on your record. That’s how it works and you know it.

I also hate any mention of “Octagon control.” No one cares about that. It basically never impacts the judging of a round. You can’t even clearly articulate what it means. It’s just an empty phrase for commentators to abuse.

Speaking of stuff commentators lean too heavily on, phrases like “in the mix” or “crack the top 10” or “get a number next to his name” have rapidly lost all meaning in the UFC. These rankings don’t really matter. The UFC has basically told us that. It’s a talking point for the broadcasts, but that’s about it.

As for referring to Dominick Cruz as a “first-ballot UFC hall of famer,” I get what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to convey that he’s an automatic choice. He has to be in the UFC hall of fame, which is true. But. There. Are. No. Ballots. Nobody gets a vote. The UFC alone decides these things, so using that phrase here really just draws attention to all the ways this is not like other sports hall of fames. The other difference is that other sports have an actual building to house those halls, but that’s a conversation for another day.

@NeedXtoseePosts: If it's true that Arman broke Hookers nose with the headbutt do we sort of have to say

"fair enough"

If UFC didn't trust him to headline the first Paramount card

I mean, even if it didn’tbreak his nose, it's bad. It’s a bush league move, no different than sucker-punching a person on the scales. And once the actual fight got underway the very next day, Dan Hooker wound up dealing with significant swelling right near the spot where Arman Tsarukyan had just head-butted him.

I don’t disagree that the dude should have been punished for that. Suspend Tsarukyan. Fine him. Give the money to his opponent. Whatever. But do it within the confines of clear actions and consequences that everyone knows about and is aware of ahead of time. This thing where you claim that the No. 1 contender needs to work his way back to a title shot because we’re mad at him for now makes no sense. Tell us what the punishment is, what he has to do to resolve it, and then let’s move on.

@jmprobus: Does Rose dropping Wittman as HC, for Barry, draw a distinct line in the sand for her career? She just doesn’t seem to be the same fighter, at all, but it’s not as if the talent has vanished.

I’m struggling to think of examples where it’s been a good move for a fighter to have a spouse or a partner as their main coach. It almost never goes well. I think there are plenty of championship fighters who’ve had their romantic partners involved somewhere in their camps, but not as head coach.

I think a lot about something Robert Follis used to say about it back when he took over as Miesha Tate’s coach. He told her boyfriend at the time, Bryan Caraway, that he could be her partner at home or her boss in the gym — but not both. Imagine holding a glass of water, he said. It’s easy, right? Feels like it weighs nothing at all. Now imagine holding it all day, every day. Very quickly the weight will become unbearable.

@Beastin364: Lot happening with the PFL lately. Execs leaving and new rankings. Is this a last try to turn it around and if so can it work? PS when are you turning in your PFL rankings

Shockingly, the PFL did not ask me to be included on the rankings panel. No one at Uncrowned, as far as I know, was asked. And the other MMA journalists I polled informally after hearing about these new PFL rankings? None of them are on this panel either.

So I emailed Combat Registry, the entity responsible for coming up with these rankings, and they replied saying that “PFL has made the decision to not disclose the voting members” due to concerns that they might be “harassed and/or criticized.” That seems weird to me. It’s the PFL trying to have it both ways. If you want your rankings to come with whatever authority can be derived from saying they were compiled independently by media votes, then tell us who the media members are and how they each voted. If you’re not willing to do that, why bother? How are we supposed to know you aren’t just making it up?

As for the executive shakeups at PFL lately, it’s definitely not a sign of things going great over there. I hope PFL survives, if only because MMA is better when there’s competition and options, but the indicators are starting to look pretty grim.

@LCombatsports: Follow up to my question a couple of weeks ago, do you think Vice getting into combat sports opens up any employment opportunities either within vice or combat sports media?

You'd think so. Someone has to create content to go with the programming. The question is whether Vice wants to become a real combat sports media outlet or just a platform. At times in the past the company has seemed to teeter back and forth on that question.

@AzzaHausen: Usmans last fight with PFL is in two weeks, how is he going to disrupt the ufc lightweight picture if he moves there?

From what Usman Nurmagomedov has said publicly, it sounds like his contract will keep him in the PFL for most of 2026. I’m not sure how sure any of us can be that the PFL will exist in 2027 (see above), so a UFC move at some point seems practically inevitable. And when he gets there? History tells us that a Nurmagomedov in the lightweight division tends to be a problem for everyone else at 155 pounds.

@bear_reynolds: Rank Dana’s priorities between boxing, UFC & power slap. Why do you think he’s not the promoter he was in his UFC heyday? Is it: A) lost motivation after the payday when they sold; B) other priorities like boxing and powerslap; C) He’s sick of his new corporate overlords; D) Other

Dana White is always telling us that fighters lose their fire and their drive once they make too much money. Maybe the same thing has happened to him. It just took a lot more money to do it.

Maybe he’s a victim of his own success. He helped build the UFC into a multi-billion-dollar machine that, at this point, runs smoothly and reliably whether he has his hand on the wheel or not. Maybe that’s boring for him. Maybe the whole thing is also not nearly as fun when he’s doing it for a publicly held corporation like TKO rather than with his childhood friends Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta.

Stuff like Power Slap seems to be an attempt to recapture the magic of those old days when they were building something (and cornering the market on an entire niche sport) together. Even the Zuffa Boxing thing, I think he’s more motivated by the idea of something new — and the idea of taking over a space that other people currently occupy.

The UFC has basically already won at MMA. It dominates the sport and enjoys an essentially unchallenged business model that keeps almost all the money it generates. Maybe that’s too predictably lucrative to be interesting for a guy whose main hobby — as in, the thing he does to relax in his off time — is high-stakes gambling.