King & Slim: The postponement of UFC fights needed to happen
In this week’s edition of King & Slim, Ant Walker and Kristen King give their honest reaction to the UFC postponing upcoming fight cards due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ant: Alright, Kristen. We are literally minutes removed from the news finally breaking via Brett Okamoto from ESPN that UFC 249 has been canceled along with the upcoming events such as UFC 250 that were supposedly in the works to take place at either Tachi Palace or this so-called Fight Island that Zuffa was trying to secure.
This has been quite an ordeal. We’ve done some segments about this before. We’ve done our own separate reporting about this whole thing. Now that this chapter is over, how do you feel?
Kristen: Well, first let’s get something straightened out and it’s about the wording of what is going on right now. A lot of people are under the impression that all of these events are canceled, but they are actually postponed. That means eventually they are going to happen. It’s just not on the timeframe that was initially planned for.
As far as witnessing the end of this ordeal, I am very happy and thankful that it didn’t happen because at the end of the day we all have to look out for each other as human beings first. My reaction to everything that was trying to be set in motion as far as having the fighters still compete, I was definitely worried because this is something that should not be taking place during a time of uncertainty. Even though they were trying to pull a lot of strings, it just didn’t sit right with me. I understand what they were trying to do as far as having the athletes do something and providing live sports during a time of despair and agony for a lot of people, but it’s not worth it to risk the health and safety of your independent contractors.
I would have hoped they would have pulled the plug a little bit sooner, but now that they have, I am relieved that no one is going to be put in unnecessary harm because that is what would have happened had these events went through.
Ant: I have to echo those sentiments. My initial feeling was relief. This huge sigh of relief that this regrettable chapter – and I think history will look back on this as a regrettable chapter – is over with. We can just kind of collectively move on, hope for the best and hope that the world including the live sports that entertain us will get back to normal at some point in the near future. But, priorities have to be set and unfortunately as much as we love mixed martial arts – and clearly we love it because we talk about it, write about it, podcast about it for peanuts – it’s not the priority right now.
A far as entertainment, I’ll find other ways to get through this without endangering a roster of fighters, the UFC staff and any sort of regulatory officials that may be involved in whatever sort of event that the promotion was trying to put on. Beyond my relief that these fighters, the staff and any commission officials aren’t in danger specifically because an event has to go on, I am relieved for the sake of the sport that this didn’t happen. This was a very dangerous precedent that the UFC was getting ready to set.
Kristen: Absolutely. And I think the sport lives up to its reputation as the red-headed stepchild of the sports world because it does stuff like this. You were the only organization that was trying to go on with something that was virtually impossible and that is why the sport is always going to be looked at in that way. Has it made strides since it first came into the mainstream? Yes. However, when you do stuff like this, you start to set things back and a lot of people start to question you. No one wants that. We worked too hard to remove ourselves from that reputation. Why regress when we have made such great progress?
Ant: Senator Dianne Feinstein of California put out a statement officially condemning the UFC moving their event to Tachi Palace and just conducting any sort of operation of this scale during the pandemic. That seemed to be the turning point of when things started to shift within the organization. We were about this close to being human cockfighting again.
Kristen: Yes! I was going to say when was the last time you heard about a US Senator making a public condemnation of MMA? The main one that comes to my mind is the late senator, John McCain. Since then, it’s been relatively quiet until now.
Ant: Right. So to start heading backward, it begs the question of why? To say you’re the only thing that’s going at this point. It’s understandable from a financial standpoint why the UFC wanted to push forward, or that Endeavor I should say, would want to push forward. Of course, there is big money in sports and when you’re the only one in town, okay. I understand that, but we’re looking at something much bigger than that.
The sport was so dangerously close to backtracking all this progress that had been made to show you a diminished version of a product that we don’t need right now.
Kristen: You and I both know what they are capable of doing and this was not it. I know people are going to say, ‘Well Dana White has always been persistent about this kind of thing’ and you know what? I fully appreciate that. He tried to do his best for what he thought was going to be good for right now, but it was not going to come remotely close to what we know could be done under normal circumstances.
Ant: Agreed. It’ll be interesting to look back at this in the coming years to see what this chapter is going to look like in hindsight. Right now, it doesn’t look very good, but fortunately, it is over and we can not have to worry about fighters or coaches or commission officials trying to push forward during the worst time. I’m sad that we’re not going to be able to watch any fights, but the state of the world makes me sadder. That is more important.
Kristen: Realize that this was going to do more harm than good. I think everyone needs to regroup, stay at home and focus on getting back to normal by doing your part. Think about what you can do to ensure that we can go back to doing what we all love. It’s killing us not to be able to interview fighters about topics outside of COVID-19. It’s killing us that we don’t have that access right now, but we still want things to be done the right way because we care about the well-being of these people who do amazing work. No one is celebrating the postponement of the cards. All we want is for the people involved to remain safe, healthy and taken care of during this time.
