Only 12 days before UFC 249 was scheduled to begin, Justin Gaethje accepted an offer to fight Tony Ferguson in the main event.
But Gaethje figured he’d be no better than 90 or 95 percent of his best, which is remarkable because it’s a tall order to fight Ferguson when everything is perfect.Â
He did it because fighting is how he feeds his family and, more, because the bout gave him the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming the world champion.
Gaethje, though, will have to wait for that opportunity, and who knows now when it will come, after the UFC ceded to ESPN’s wishes on Thursday and decided not to stage UFC 249 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
UFC president Dana White went to extraordinary lengths to make the card happen, as well as subsequent shows. White is as dogged a person as there is on the planet and he wasn’t going to surrender until he had no other choice. With ESPN no longer willing to broadcast it, there was no card and so White agreed to postpone UFC 249 and all future shows until either the pandemic is over or public health officials declare it is safe.
When the news broke, there was much celebrating on social media. White is an aggressive, polarizing figure, and he’d worked to put the fight on in the face of intense opposition and extraordinary odds against him.
Those who celebrated likely were doing so because of enmity for White, and they saw this as a very real and very public loss for him.
Imagine, though, how the 50 or so UFC fighters who have been preparing in the worst possible conditions must have felt after seeing the glee far too many expressed on social media about the shutdown of the cards.
These fighters prepared while most of them were quarantined in their homes, while asked or ordered by their public officials not to leave except for essential business. Fighting isn’t an essential business in the government’s eyes, particularly not during a pandemic that has already killed five times more Americans than the terrorist attacks of 9/11 did.
These fighters didn’t know when they’d fight, or where. A few of them didn’t even know who their fight would be against, as their opponents dropped out and the UFC was trying to find replacements.
When White announced on Monday that UFC 249 would be held on April 18, the fighters scheduled for that show had to feel grateful. Their training camp wasn’t for nothing.
I trained 3 times a day whereever I could, dieted hard while stuck in quarantine, lost my opponent said yes to whoever else they can find, put my health on the line knowing there was a chance it wouldnt happen because I love what I do I’m a fighter. if your celebrating this ef u
— Belal Muhammad (@bullyb170)
Fighters incur significant expenses during training. They suffered as they tried to cut weight. Given their inability to leave their homes, they had to find creative ways to prepare for the world’s hardest sport.
Fighting is a huge mental challenge, and it weighs on one when there are so many unanswered questions. Fighters also push harder when they have an event coming up than they do when they’re working out in between fights.
It is hard to push when you don’t know for sure whether there will be a payoff, with the payoff being the bout.
Three days after White gave them hope that they’d fight, it all came crashing down around them. On Thursday, ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro called White and told him his side was having second thoughts about going forward with the show.
The New York Times reported California Gov. Gavin Newsom may have called executives at Disney, the parent company of ESPN, to express his displeasure. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) issued a statement urging the fight to be postponed.
Whatever the reason, Disney and ESPN officials decided on Thursday not to go forward and told White, who promptly postponed his show.
That led to some rejoicing on Twitter, perhaps because those who were pleased saw it as White finally getting his comeuppance.
The athletes undoubtedly took to the internet to get the news, and they saw others celebrating when it turned out that everything they’d done for the last two months or so was for naught. There wouldn’t be a paycheck coming, and so it would be harder to pay the mortgage, the rent, the car payment and to buy medicine and groceries and fill the car with gas. White later said he would pay the fighters, but he is under no obligation to do so.Â
And no one of the admittedly few who were gleefully celebrating the card’s demise could know White would pay them their salaries.
These fighters are among the toughest people on Earth, but they’re also human with the same problems the rest of us face. None of them cheered when a factory furloughed its workforce or a newspaper laid off more reporters.
This, though, is the cesspool that social media has become.
These are trying times for everybody, and it would help if we’d each think a bit before we acted.Â
It’s never good to revel in others’ misfortune, which is what those who cheered the cancellation of UFC 249 were doing.
I didn’t think the show should have been held because I had serious questions about its impact on public safety. But I was disappointed for the fighters when it was canceled because I know what they put into getting ready.
It was nothing to cheer about, and those who did so just showed themselves to be little more than boorish louts.
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