UFC Dublin II and UFC Dublin III – 462 days and a world apart.
Those expecting the promotion’s third excursion to the Irish capital to recapture anything similar to the success of its second are either absurdly optimistic or Dana White.
Why though?
There are more Irish fighters competing on the card than there were last year and the competition against which each are pitted on Saturday is a step-up in literally every case.
But as the hype train leaves the station for the second year running, the wide-shouldered, tattooed, bearded conductor is nowhere to be seen.
As travelling fans disembark their flights at Dublin airport ahead of UFC Fight Night 76, they will be struck by the posters advertising “The Fighting Irish.”
Joe Duffy will hold the centre of the octagon this weekend but the UFC went for ol’ reliable Conor McGregor to centre their line-up of fighters… All very Jesus Christ in The Last Supper.
But McGregor will not be fighting on Saturday.
We can’t really give the UFC too much grief for marketing UFC Dublin around the biggest name in Irish MMA but it does come across as something of a slight on the likes of Joe Duffy and Paddy Holohan that they aren’t being given the backing that they deserve.
If you stood on Grafton Street asking passers-by about their knowledge of MMA, I’d be flabbergasted if more than 10% answered with anything other than “oh that’s that McGregor fella, isn’t it?”
And that’s kind of understandable. He put Irish MMA on the map so obviously the casual fans are going to associate the sport with him but, by the same token, the fact that he’s become synonymous with MMA isn’t fair on the other Irish fighters who’ve gone through just as many tribulations on their way up the career ladder.
Let’s be honest… Irish fans aren’t as excited as they were last July simply because Conor McGregor isn’t on the card this time around.
That’s not to say that they won’t roar the house down or enjoy themselves. They’re just not as passionate.
The mere fact that headliner Joe Duffy continues to be battered with the moniker “the last man to beat Conor McGregor” and that he is pitted against Dustin Poirier, who Irish fans would have remembered from his clash with The Notorious, shows that the UFC thought that the Irish audience needed some context as to how this card is relevant in their McGregor-centric understanding of MMA.
We receive analytics about how many people are clicking into our stories on various sports at any time and it will surprise absolutely nobody to learn that our MMA numbers sky-rocketed in the days before and after UFC 189, the event at which McGregor earned his UFC interim featherweight title.
Did UFC Glasgow, which featured Joe Duffy, Paddy Holohan and Paul Redmond, reach the lofty heights of UFC 189? Nope! Not even close. The Irish interest level wasn’t a drop in the ocean of Conor McGregor v Chad Mendes.
While the numbers don’t lie, it’s not like UFC Dublin is going to be an utter flop. The tickets sold out in record time but I imagine the vast majority of those sales came from fans expecting something similar to the exhilarating audience experience of McGregor v Brandao.
That’s not going to happen! Simple as.
Whether you’re in the arena on Saturday or following on television, you’re going to see an awful lot of hardcore fans leaning to their buddies to explain that “Aisling Daly is Conor’s training partner” and that “Joe Duffy beat Conor McGregor before.”
BAMMA 22 was a good gauge of how the Irish interest in mixed martial arts has maintained without McGregor in the conversation and it didn’t shock me one bit to see the 3Arena half empty by the time the main event came around.
While I don’t think that Saturday’s UFC will have fans filtering out to the lobby before the final bell, I think that casual fans who are hoping for more of the deafening wave of noise that rose up when the lights dimmed and The Foggy Dew rang out last July will be left a little disappointed
That’s not the fault of the fighters because who’s to say that Duffy, Holohan or any of the other Irish contingent can’t become the next superstar for the promotion?
But they’ll never truly reach that next level if they continue being contextualised in the same breath as Conor McGregor, which is the fault of the promotion.
Imagine if every fighter was being sold as “the next Anderson Silva,” or “the last man to beat GSP.” How would they cultivate their own autonomous identity and garner a following? It would be impossible and I feel that the UFC should have shown that there’s more to Irish MMA than Conor McGregor when selling UFC Dublin: Duffy v Poirier.
The UFC have set their stall out on their style of direction and they’ve clearly decided to pour their time and money into their superstar while his supporting cast remains neglected.
