The Bottom Line: Needle Watching

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Is Kamaru Usman more like Georges St. Pierre or Rashad Evans? St. Pierre, you of course say. These are the two greatest welterweight fighters of all-time: powerful, athletic, strategic and dominant. Rashad Evans was an excellent fighter from a different weight class but doesn’t have the resume of the other two in the cage. However, I don’t raise the question in the sense of their fighting prowess. Rather, the question being raised is which fighter most resembles Usman’s stature as a drawing card. That remains an open question.

St. Pierre, like few other fighters in MMA history, captured the imagination of fans who supported him and would order his fights regardless of opponent. The variation in terms of business and interest between his more high-profile opponents and the more low-profile ones was not that great. Nick Diaz and B.J. Penn moved numbers more than Jake Shields and Jon Fitch, but the bulk of GSP’s fan base ordered all of those fights. Some 650,000 homes would order to see St. Pierre no matter what and another 300,000 or so might be persuaded one way or another.

Evans, by contrast, was not a towering attraction in and of himself. When asked to main event a pay-per-view against the likes of Michael Bisping or Thiago Silva, he drew towards the bottom of what a generic Ultimate Fighting Championship pay-per-view event would do at the time. On the other hand, if Evans had the right opponent or headlined the right card, he could be magic. His bouts with Quinton Jackson, Jon Jones and Forrest Griffin—the latter with help from Frank Mir-Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Jackson-Wanderlei Silva—were all box-office bonanzas.

Evans absolutely could draw in a big way, but he needed a good dance partner. It wasn’t that he needed to be carried, either. He was central to the interest in his top fights, and his opponents would not have done nearly as well without him. Evans was the inverse of St. Pierre: 300,000 or so homes might be his base of interest on pay-per-view, but 650,000 or even more might join with the right opponent and dynamic.

Usman for most of his career seemed an unlikely superstar. He didn’t have a flashy style or a boisterous personality. His path to the title took longer than it likely would have if the UFC had more confidence in his potential as a star. Since winning the title, however, Usman has done very well for himself in captivating the public interest. Certainly, his dominance in the Octagon has played a big role in that. The fact that he’s fighting a more exciting style has helped. Fans have also gotten to understand who he is much better.

As a result of Usman’s emergence, his four fights with Colby Covington and Jorge Masvidal have been among the biggest fights of the last three years. The big question is now whether Usman can carry over that success without Masvidal or Covington, two great opponents for him in different ways. It’s going to be hard to find many future opponents with the charisma and bravado of Masvidal or who can make their fight with Usman seem like more of a grudge match than Covington.

Leon Edwards is an almost perfect baseline to test where Usman stands. It has taken him even longer for him to get his welterweight title shot than it did Usman, and a big part of that is lack of fan demand. He has one finish in a little under six years and only one bonus in his UFC career, which came so long ago it was on the undercard of the Gabriel Gonzaga-Mirko Filipovic rematch. Usman also has a previous win over Edwards, which doesn’t help matters, although that might be helped by the fact that few remember that fight.

If Usman can do significant business with Edwards in the UFC 278 main event, he’s going to do significant business with any opponent in the short to medium term. He’s not St. Pierre as an attraction, but he is an attraction. If on the other hand, the card struggles, it’s a signal that Usman needs help to move numbers the way he has in recent years.

Luckily for Usman, even if the show in Salt Lake City this Saturday underwhelms from a business perspective, there’s help on the horizon. There’s a lot of intrigue surrounding Khamzat Chimaev already, and his main event with Nate Diaz next month is his most prominent opportunity to create demand for a title shot yet. If Chimaev wins impressively, Usman will have another potentially formidable dance partner from a marketing standpoint. Even if Usman isn’t the next GSP from a box-office standpoint, he might not have to be next time out.