This card has Chad Mendes vs Myles Jury buried beneath fucking Dennis Bermudez (who is on a 3-fight losing streak) vs Rick Glenn (who lost to Jury in his last fight) as well as Randy Brown vs Niko Price, whoever they are. And yes, Mendes himself is on a 2-fight losing streak and a layoff - but he's a 3-time title challenger, and one of those losses was when he headlined a PPV vs Conor and then fought Frankie. He's the biggest star of those 4 by a mile, Jury is the 2nd biggest and they've both clearly earned the spot more. We've then even more bizarrely got Darren Elkins vs a standout prospect floating on the undercard (not even 'headlining' the prelims).
There is this narrative going around that position on a card doesn't matter - to which I reply:
People are mistaking the fact that the prelim 'headliner' of a PPV card is often a bigger fight than some early fights on the main card with this being applicable to every position on the card. The reason that fight is big is because you are trying to convince people to buy the PPV and it gets the biggest overall audience of the night. It's the exception to card hierarchy not the rule, and it only applies to PPVs.
Otherwise, people have been conditioned to equate the position on the card with how important the fight is, as this is the boxing model and has historically been the MMA model too. When you take an interesting, important fight and bury it beneath a bunch of generic, unimportant fights you are just making it seem like one of them too. You are telling your audience 'we don't give a fuck about this fight and neither should you'.
There is this narrative going around that position on a card doesn't matter - to which I reply:
People are mistaking the fact that the prelim 'headliner' of a PPV card is often a bigger fight than some early fights on the main card with this being applicable to every position on the card. The reason that fight is big is because you are trying to convince people to buy the PPV and it gets the biggest overall audience of the night. It's the exception to card hierarchy not the rule, and it only applies to PPVs.
Otherwise, people have been conditioned to equate the position on the card with how important the fight is, as this is the boxing model and has historically been the MMA model too. When you take an interesting, important fight and bury it beneath a bunch of generic, unimportant fights you are just making it seem like one of them too. You are telling your audience 'we don't give a fuck about this fight and neither should you'.
