Elias Cepeda, who writes for Yahoo Sports and is a regular contributor to the UG Feed, is hugely enthusiastic for the UFC 244 main event between Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal. It’s a fight built on overwhelming exciting talent and personalities, built with respect not manufactured trash talk. But that’s not the complete story. Here are three things to think about …
1. Making the BMF title ‘official’ makes it less cool
The UFC quickly jumped on Diaz’s Baddest Motherf@$%er in the game concept, and decided to create a physical belt for the title. We quickly went from two confident anti-heroes agreeing to fight one another out of mutual respect for a symbolic title that represented how they did not and could not be understood within official parameters, to them fighting for a corporate-approved and designed belt that will be placed around the winner’s waist by a wrestler-turned-movie star. It’s a classic example of a dominant culture adjusting itself to remain relevant by co-opting and incorporating an emergent culture. The point is that Diaz and Masvidal fighting each other is still dope, but the belt they’re fighting for is corny.
2. The wrong people will profit most from the BMF title
Nate Diaz publicly invented [the BMF title], in this context, but it’s the UFC that is licensing it. That means it will oversee its use, how it is profited from and decide how all those profits from the idea are divided up instead of the talent who created the concept and who will fight it out doing so.
3. UFC’s drug-testing system is structurally flawed
The UFC hired USADA and can fire them. This creates a structural conflict of interest if independent oversight of drug-testing protocols is the intended goal. … The UFC and USADA’s rules are also often troublingly fluid, and the process for determining those rules is done away from public view, as just happened with Diaz. … The UFC/USADA investigations and disciplinary processes are done behind closed doors and not subject to the same level of inquiry from journalists as state commission ones which are public proceedings. So, the UFC/USADA processes are opaque. … Big-name fighters like Lesnar, Jones, and Diaz get to circumvent the mushy rules or have them interpreted through non-accessible processes in their favor or have their cases expedited while other fighters don’t. That has everything to do with exercises in power and nothing to do with fairness or caring about athlete wellness.
