5 major UFC events that turned out to be a letdown
With just over three months to go before UFC 300, the hype around the event is growing by the week, particularly as more big fights are added to the card.
Dana White and company will be hoping that UFC 300 is one of the promotion’s biggest successes yet, but as we’ve seen in the past, a big event doesn’t always deliver the goods.
On numerous occasions, the world’s biggest MMA promotion has put together mega-events, only for them to turn out to be huge disappointments.
Here are five major UFC events that turned out to be a letdown.
#5. UFC on Fox: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos (2011)
Before its current deal with ESPN, the UFC’s broadcast partner in the US was the Fox network. The partnership was a largely fruitful one that lasted almost a decade and produced some great events along the way.
Unfortunately, the inaugural show on the network was not one of them.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the event, which featured a 10-bout card and took place in Anaheim, California, in late 2011. The issue came with the decision – in the US at least – to broadcast a single fight, the headliner, on television.
The fight was certainly a big one, pitting heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez against top contender Junior dos Santos. Had their bout been the kind of classic five-round brawl they would later produce in their third meeting, the broadcasting approach might’ve worked.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Dos Santos decimated Velasquez with a right hand in a minute, meaning US fans witnessed minimal action.
International fans, of course, were treated to some great fights featuring the likes of Dustin Poirier and Benson Henderson. In fact, had the US broadcast featured Henderson’s fight with Clay Guida, the reaction to the event probably would’ve been overwhelmingly positive.
Sadly, though, thanks to the odd decision to televise a single fight, the only feeling fans came away with after this event was one of disappointment.
#4. UFC 251: Usman vs. Masvidal (2020)
During the early days of 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic, the UFC, like the rest of the sporting world, largely shut down. Swathes of events were cancelled, and nobody really knew when things would start back up.
Remarkably, the MMA promotion was one of the first entities to get things going again. After being shut down in March, the UFC returned with a series of events in Jacksonville, Florida, in May, and then returned to their Las Vegas base.
However, when Dana White announced that the promotion had “secured an island” to put on shows that could feature their international fighters, things sounded even more exciting.
The idea of ‘Fight Island’ instantly conjured up images of old-school martial arts movies that featured fights in exotic locales, and many fans began to believe that they’d see the octagon situated on a beach of some kind.
However, this idea – even if it was partially caused by the imagination of the fans – proved to be incorrect.
The island White had talked about was Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, where the promotion had held numerous events before. In the end, UFC 251, the first event to take place there, looked exactly the same as any other event produced by the promotion.
It was hard not to be disappointed, and when most of the bouts on offer, including the long-awaited grudge match headliner between welterweight champ Kamaru Usman and Jorge Masvidal went the distance, that feeling only multiplied.
In hindsight, the event wasn’t bad as such, but considering that fans were expecting a UFC version of a Bruce Lee movie, it was still a letdown.
#3.UFC 112: Invincible (2010)
If the UFC’s return to Abu Dhabi in 2020 was a slight letdown, then its debut on the Middle Eastern island in 2010 was a huge one.
The event initially stemmed from Abu Dhabi-based company Flash Entertainment buying some shares in the promotion, and so naturally, Dana White and company wanted to put on a big show for the locals in their debut there.
Therefore, UFC 112 featured a huge triple main event with two title bouts that featured two of the promotion’s most popular champions, lightweight king B.J. Penn and middleweight titleholder Anderson Silva.
Early on, the event looked like it could produce something special. The undercard was largely entertaining, while Kendall Grove and Mark Munoz produced one of 2010’s most underrated bouts in the main card opener.
However, things went downhill with the triple main event. Firstly, welterweight legend Matt Hughes put on a dull kickboxing bout with fellow pioneer Renzo Gracie, and even a highlight reel finish couldn’t save the fight.
Penn’s title defense against Frankie Edgar was a passable, if a little slow, fight, but the fans were disappointed when ‘The Prodigy’ came out on the wrong end of a questionable decision and lost his title.
The worst came in the headliner, though. Silva evidently decided that he wasn’t interested in fighting challenger Demian Maia, and although he could clearly have outclassed his fellow Brazilian, he instead chose to dance and taunt his foe for five rounds.
The fans were left furious, as was White, who refused to present ‘The Spider’ with his title belt after the fight. In the end, nobody was happy with this damp squib, and it took the promotion more than four years to return to the Middle East.
#2. UFC 200: Tate vs. Nunes (2016)
After 2009’s UFC 100 turned out to be a stone-cold classic event that featured a number of memorable moments, hopes were high that 2016’s UFC 200 would somehow top it.
Unfortunately, thanks to a bunch of late-notice changes and some fights turning out to be damp squibs, it fell very short of those lofty expectations.
Initially, the promotion settled on a headliner featuring a rematch between featherweight champ Conor McGregor and his bitter rival Nate Diaz. The two men had fought earlier that year with Diaz winning, and despite the bout being thrown together on late notice, it broke the promotion’s pay-per-view buyrate record.
However, when ‘The Notorious’ refused to attend the event’s media obligations, the fight was pulled entirely.
Still, when the new headliner – another big rematch between Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier – was announced, fans seemed placated, particularly when the surprise return of former heavyweight champion and then WWE-star Brock Lesnar was revealed.
Unfortunately, by the time the event came round, things went badly wrong.
Jones was removed from proceedings following a positive drug test, and while Anderson Silva agreed to step in on a day’s notice, his bout with Cormier turned out to be a dull one, with ‘DC’ taking an understandable safety-first approach to win.
Lesnar did return, with his positive drug test only happening a few months after the show, but his fight with Mark Hunt was a largely dull one that saw Lesnar wrestle his way to victory.
The other fights on the card, meanwhile, were okay, but they simply didn’t live up to the hype around the show, at least not compared to those on UFC 100.
Overall, given the hype coming into the event, it was hard not to see UFC 200 as a letdown, something that Dana White will be hoping doesn’t happen to UFC 300 in April.
#1. UFC 33: Victory in Vegas (2001)
The gold standard for UFC shows that turned out to be disappointing remains UFC 33, which took place all the way back in 2001. It was an event so bad that Dana White still brings it up today.
2001 was a major year for the promotion, largely because it was the year that the original Zuffa – White and the Fertitta brothers – took over from the original owners SEG.
They instantly upped production values, changed around the promotion’s weight classes and introduced new titles at 155 pounds and 185 pounds, and began to bring the sport of MMA out of the shadows of the late 1990s.
UFC 33, therefore, was supposed to be the crowning achievement for the new owners. Not only was it set to be the promotion’s first ever show in Las Vegas, but it was also their return to pay-per-view after a lengthy absence.
The matchmakers duly stacked the card with three title fights, headlining with the promotion’s poster-boy, Tito Ortiz, taking on another big star in Vitor Belfort. It looked like a classic event was about to happen.
Disaster struck when Belfort was forced out due to injury and was replaced with the lesser-known Vladimir Matyushenko, but sadly, that was only the beginning of what appeared to be a curse on the event.
After three exciting prelim bouts, literally every main card clash went the distance and turned out to be painfully dull, with the lightweight title bout between Jens Pulver and Dennis Hallman being particularly bad.
Worse still, the length of the event meant that the pay-per-view was cut off before the end of the Ortiz vs. Matyushenko fight, robbing fans of any kind of conclusion.
Naturally, everyone involved in this event was bitterly disappointed, not least White, who saw his vision explode directly into his face. Incredibly, it would be another 15 years before the promotion put three title fights onto pay-per-view again after this debacle.