UFC Vegas 47: Everyone Was a Newcomer at One Time
Much has been made about the amount of new names entering the Octagon to start the year, but you can only become established after making the walk for the first time
Through the first two events of the year, there have been 11 debuting fighters cross the threshold into the Octagon for the first time already in 2022. With four more set to make the walk on Saturday, that number climbs to 15 newcomers through three shows, good for an average of five first-time UFC fighters per event.
There were 21 bouts between the first two shows and another 13 on tap this weekend (tentatively), that means there will have been 68 athletes competing in the Octagon after Saturday, with 22% of them being newcomers. Those fighters are:
Viacheslav Borshchev, Joanderson Brito, Joseph Holmes (UFC Vegas 46)
Andre Fialho, Michael Morales, Victor Henry, Jack Della Maddalena, Pete Rodriguez, Saimon Oliveira, Genaro Valdez, Jasmine Jasudavicius (UFC 270)
Tresean Gore, Chidi Njokuani, Jailton Almeida, Denys Bondar (UFC Vegas 47)
For some, it seems like that number is too high — they feel that there are too many new arrivals competing on each card, too many new names debuting in the UFC each year, and too many unfamiliar faces in general popping up on the UFC roster. They see Dana White’s Contender Series as a blight on the roster, and as a road leading too many inexperienced, unfamiliar fighters in the Octagon each weekend when someone they are far more familiar with could occupy that space.
What seems to get lost in the grumpiness, however, is that the start of every year tends to feature a host of newcomers making the walk for the first time, and that at some point, quite literally every fighter on the UFC was a promotional newcomer, and the vast majority of them were unknowns at the time.
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The first three events of 2021 featured a total of nine debuting athletes, with another nine newcomers on the opening three events of 2020, and 14 more in 2019.
Some of the athletes to make their first appearances inside the Octagon on the opening three shows of those years include Michael Chandler, Mason Jones, Umar Nurmagomedov and Manon Fiorot in 2021, Jamahal Hill, Herbert Burns, and Khaos Williams in 2020, and Greg Hardy, Taila Santos, Jairzinho Rozenstruik, and Raulian Paiva in 2019.
Even if you throw out Chandler because he was an established star coming over from Bellator, there are still four ranked competitors out of the remaining nine athletes in that group, which accounts for 12.5% of the competitors that debuted on the first three cards of the last three years. Including Chandler, that number jumps to 15.625%.
Think about that number again: 15.625% of the fighters that made their promotional debuts over the first three cards of the year over the last three years are currently stationed inside the Top 15 in their respective division, with Chandler and Fiorot making the jump in their first year competing inside the Octagon.
Another way to think about it: all it takes is two fighters (2.34 technically) from the cast of 15 that will have debuted by the time Sunday morning roll around to break into the rankings in the next three years to have matched that same 15.625% clip from the last three years.
The other piece of this — and the much bigger piece of this, in my opinion — is that at some point, everyone has to make their first appearance in the Octagon because that’s the only way that your favourite UFC fighters can actually be UFC fighters, unless you’re using UFC to mean MMA the way I use Kleenex to mean facial tissue.
While there are some notable examples of competitors that migrated to the UFC with established reputations and followings from other promotions or endeavours (Chandler, Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar), and others that had buzz within the hardcore community (Israel Adesanya, Petr Yan), the majority of the top talents in the UFC today made were relative unknowns to the vast majority of the UFC-loving community when they competed for the first time.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the current titleholders, when they made their promotional debuts and who they fought, and approximate the amount of hype there was surrounding their individual debuts.
Rose Namajunas: TUF 20 Finale vs. Carla Esparza; tons of buzz
Valentina Shevchenko: UFC on FOX 17 vs. Sarah Kaufman; short-notice replacement, very limited buzz
Juliana Pena: TUF 17 Finale vs. Jessica Rakoczy; moderate buzz
Amanda Nunes: UFC 163 vs. Sheila Gaff; very limited buzz
Deiveson Figueiredo: UFC 212 vs. Marco Beltran; no buzz whatsoever
Aljamain Sterling: UFC 170 vs. Cody Gibson; moderate buzz
Petr Yan: UFN 132 vs. Teruto Ishihara; moderarte buzz
Alexander Volkanovski: UFN 101 vs. Yusuke Kasuya; no buzz whatsoever
Charles Oliveira: UFC on Versus 2 vs. Darren Elkins; no buzz whatsoever
Kamaru Usman: TUF 21 Finale vs. Haydar Hassan; very limited buzz
Israel Adesanya: UFC 221 vs. Rob Wilkinson; moderate buzz
Glover Teixeira: UFC 146 vs. Kyle Kingsbury; tons of buzz
Francis Ngannou: UFC on FOX 17 vs. Luis Henrique; no buzz whatsoever
Yes, you’re reading that correctly — Shevchenko and Ngannou debuted on the same show, which also featured Vicente Luque, Usman, Leon Edwards, and Oliveira fighting on the prelims, along with the promotional debut of Karolina Kowalkiewicz kicking off the main card, but the return of Nathan Diaz dominated the coverage that week and coming out of the show, since it was when he cut his historic promo on Conor McGregor. Rafael Dos Anjos successfully defended the lightweight title in the main event, in case you’re wondering.
Back to our regularly scheduled broadcast…
Namajunas and Teixeira were the only ones with “tons of buzz,” with the former having been a rising star under the Invicta FC banner and known through her relationship with Pat Barry, and the latter having a reputation as a top talent outside the promotion and bolstered by his longstanding relationship with UFC legend Chuck Liddell.
A few of the current champions carried buzz from previous stops, like Yan and Adesanya, while Sterling was getting hyped up as the next top prospect coming out of the Serra-Longo Fight Team following the success of his teammates Chris Weidman and Al Iaquinta. Season 17 of The Ultimate Fighter was the first to feature female competitors and was coached by Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate, which helped elevate Pena’s exposure heading into her dominant effort in the finale.
But seven current champions had little to no buzz heading into their UFC debuts — they were unknown commodities that the majority of fight fans weren’t checking for, but within a couple of fights, it was clear that each of them was someone to pay close attention to going forward.
Now I’m not saying that Viacheslav Borshchev or Jasmine Jasudavicius are going to be the next Usman and Shevchenko, but Victor Henry and Michael Morales already beat established talents in their respective debuts, and Njokuani is a somewhat established veteran fighting this weekend, so where is all this animus towards and frustration about the number of first-time UFC fighters lining these cards coming from?
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Focusing on the amount of newcomers competing in the Octagon feels like an easy way to get into being critical of the UFC, specifically in regards to fighter pay, as the majority of debutants come in at the lowest end of the pay scale.
Critics can look at the first three cards, see there are 10 DWCS alums out of the 15 newcomers, and launch into how terrible it is that the UFC “fills” these events with unknowns and Contender Series alums that make peanuts compared to some of the more established names that have been released or allowed to fight out their contracts in recent months / years that they are already familiar with.
It doesn’t matter that they were dismissive or disinterested in many of those athletes for one reason or another or that 10.3% of the 165 fighters currently ranked in the Top 15 across all UFC divisions matriculated to the Octagon via the Contender Series — folks just hate that the UFC has created this pipeline for bringing new talent into the promotion and starting them at the company equivalent of minimum wage.
Let me be clear: I agree that fighter pay is a massive issue and want to see all competitors make considerably more money than they do now. That said, I also don’t have any issue with the UFC looking to consistently add new talent to the ranks and making value decisions about tenured competitors at the end of their contracts or when the results haven’t been there because that’s happens in most companies across a vast array of industries, not just the UFC.
If folks were really upset that there were so many fresh faces popping up inside the Octagon, they would pay more attention and show greater support to a greater number of fighters on the roster, instead of focusing almost exclusively on the most popular competitors and those that in the championship picture, although some of those athletes still don't even get that much love.
But they’re not actually upset about the number of newcomers competing in the UFC because they’ve all adopted countless former newcomers that became popular and successful and risen to the top of their respective divisions — it’s just that they [a] don’t want to do the work to know these men and women in advance, [b] conflate their unfamiliarity with these competitors with meaning the fights and events will be lesser quality, and [c] can use it as a Trojan horse for talking about the myriad gripes they have with the UFC, which seems to be the most popular topic amongst fight fans and MMA observers these days, because it sure isn’t the fights themselves.
And that’s what bothers me about the criticism of the number of newcomers competing early in the year or the persistent stupidity of the “No Wikipedia Pages” argument: these men and women get dismissed and disparaged because they’re at the outset of chasing their dreams on the biggest stage in the sport by folks that want to be critical of the promotion or are too lazy to put in the effort required to familiarize themselves with these fighters even a little, which isn’t even that hard.
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Let me close with this:
You didn’t know you your favourite movie was going to be your favourite movie until you watched it the first time; that your favourite album would be your favourite album, favourite artist would be your favourite artist, or favourite food would be your favourite food until you initially experienced those things.
You also didn’t know your favourite fighter was going to be your favourite fighter until you saw them compete that first or second time.
At some point, all the things you love today were new to you, including your partners, kids, friends, pets; quite literally everything.
So if you’re mad about fighter pay, pissed off at the UFC in general, or no longer as into watching every fight on every card the way you were before partners, kids, friends, and pets starting taking greater priority in your life, just say that instead of taking aim at these newcomers chasing their dreams because you’ve got a bunch of other gripes or things in your life that keep you from wanting to get to know them.
And feel free to offer up a “my bad” every now and again when one of these unknown commodities delivers an exciting finish or a fight you quite enjoyed.