When Dana White’s Contender Series arrived in 2017 (then entitled Dana White’s Tuesday Night Contender Series, which while reminding people when the show was on was a bit of a mouthful), it was a breath of fresh air in the MMA programming space.
The Ultimate Fighter had grown stale. Watching would-be UFC fighters behave poorly, whether to boost their profiles or not, while crammed into the TUF house seemed better suited to the likes of Big Brother, or Love Island, or whatever piddling reality TV crap was popular at the time.
The Contender Series was different. No fuss, no muss, five fights on a Tuesday night. Put on a strong showing, secure a big finish, get a UFC contract. Fighters got a little introduction package, but not the fish bowl treatment that came with TUF. And it worked: the likes of Sean O’Malley and Jamahal Hill, future UFC champs, graduated from the show to the big time, to the top of their respective weight classes.
Something a little less positive happened along the way, however. In that inaugural season, 16 UFC contracts were awarded across eight episodes. It was 23 the following season, then 30 in season three, which saw the show expand to 10 episodes, where it has been ever since. And the numbers continued to climb upwards. 37, 39, 43, 46! 46 UFC contracts were awarded to fighters appearing on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2023. Not all of them were even winners. That number dropped to 42 last year, but that remains a number problematically high.
UFC hopefuls are going to hate reading this, but hopefully they hear it out. Because the deluge of entry-level contracts being handed out on DWCS isn’t truly beneficial for them either. What it has created is a workplace with a high turnover rate, where the bulk of the bodies coming off the show now appear to be expendable.
If you want a long career in the UFC, there’s really two ways to go about it: the championship route, or the Jim Miller route. Now, Miller is an outlier, given he has more fights than anyone in UFC history. Still, he’s a workhorse, an active fighter who has never so much as sniffed a shot at gold. He wins more than he loses, puts on entertaining fights, and that has kept him in the game.
In the current UFC landscape, there will be no Jim Millers. Not when it’s cheaper to cut your mid-card talent off a single loss (or simply opt not to re-sign them, rather than pay them what they’re worth). Look no further than names like Martin Buday or Taylor Lapilus as examples. Yes, to some extent the UFC has always ditched fighters who they felt weren’t entertaining enough, just ask Jon Fitch or Yushin Okami. Still, there’s no room for Buday or even Karl Williams at heavyweight, rather poetically the thinnest division of them all?
These 40+ contract seasons means there’s a ton of talent on entry level contracts, and while Nevada has now hidden away UFC purses (and those of other promotions) from public view, California has not. In his first UFC fight, albeit skipping the Contender Series, Azamat Bekoev made $12,000 to show, and an additional $12,000 to win. Had he lost, he would have made all of 12 large for a UFC fight, from which you can deduct training camp expenses, and likely the cost of travel for his corners (the UFC tends to pay for a fighter’s travel, plus one corner).
GLORY star Artem Vakhitov turned down his Contender Series contract earlier this year for exactly this reason: the pay sucked, and he was an established fighter from another sport. Given his history with Alex Pereira, the UFC missed out on the chance to book a rivalry similar to “Poatan” versus Israel Adesanya.
How this becomes bad for fighters is, you’re far more likely to end up shown the door after four fights (the length of an entry level contract) when you’re suddenly this expendable. The UFC roster is oversized as it is, at least in certain weight classes. Does anyone really dream of making it to the UFC only to be dropped after four fights due to cost cutting measures?
You don’t need to go back to a 16 contract season, but we should not be cresting 40, or even 35, UFC contracts off a single Contender Series season. It’s not smart for star building. It’s not healthy for a fighter’s career longevity. Yes, they’ll all see it as foot in the door, and fighters are nothing if not self-confident. Still, there’s hope versus reality to consider.
Consider the impact on the fights themselves as well. You want explosive finishes? Make a UFC contract a little harder to get. That may seem cold, like dangling a carrot and yanking it away last-minute. But it’s how the show got started. If Brendan Loughnane wasn’t worthy of a UFC deal in 2019, the 30-contract season, how are we giving out 40+ now?
The Contender Series will no doubt remain a pipeline to the UFC for years to come. Stemming the flow of contracts, however, is in the interest of all involved. Unless your only interest in running a fight promotion is to do so as cheaply as possible, star building be damned.
