They gave him top billing in PPVs, they tanked. Top billing on free cards... tanked in ratings. I'd come on here and what were people saying? "Didn't watch.. manlets"
Giving someone top billing isn't how you make a draw in combat sports. You have to develop rivals for them and ideally get them to fight another draw. That's how nearly every combat sports draw was made. Notice how the UFC never bothered to develop the division around MM?
You can't expect a promoter to somehow manifest fan interest
That's literally a promoter's job. Make. Fans. Interested. It's not a science, but it's pretty clear the UFC half assed MM and the FLWs.
Shitty promoting? Tell me what they could have done to change peoples' minds.
-Lean more into MM and gaming
-Learn how to promote fighters beyond the archetype of "hey, he talks trash, pay attention"
-Spotlight the division more (I actually don't blame the UFC for how the FLW tournament was bungled)
-Promote FLW title challengers more
-Sign every FLW you can, instead of constantly cutting them en masse and having to rebuild the division and its storylines
-Pair him up with an existing PPV draw: Boxing did this with even smaller fighters and got decent results. They only did this once with DJ
-A little out of the box, but one of the issues with mma is that camera angles from above the cage make fighters look smaller than they are. This could probably be fixed.
-Shit, the UFC could have probably drummed up interest by doing another tournament with a million dollar prize or some silly gimmick. Works in pro wrestling, which is the same business model.
There's also the larger issue of the UFC doesn't really know how to make stars (aka the job of a promoter), rather they just hop on the bandwagon after the fact.
