July should become new Mega-Event date for the UFC

The growth of the UFC has been a wondrous phenomenon. Even more interesting is the organization's burgeoning establishment of a normalized schedule.

For the first time certain dates and locations are being associated with UFC events. 

For instance, there is the the UFC's typical end of the year mega-fight card as well as their Super Bowl event. Both of which occur in Las Vegas. Columbus, Ohio has turned into a great destination for early March as the UFC has essentially become unofficial partners with the Arnold Classic. Montreal has also become a destination of choice for April, though Montreal's athletic commission may spoil a regular event in the city. 

WKR believes that the UFC should begin to permanently schedule mega-events for the weekend immediately prior to the MLB All-Star game.

As WKR has detailed before, the middle of July is the dog days of the sporting world, while there is always potential of competing storylines for the most part the sporting landscape is a barren desert and the UFC could be an oasis to fill the bi-lines of columnists and pundits. 

A concerted effort by Zuffa to put their most marketable stars on a July fight card could be a shrewd media strategy to further developing mainstream credibility. 

UFC 100 coverage

The UFC most likely is already following this strategy as their three previous July events all held significant bouts.

In 2008, UFC 86 featured a "fight of the year" light heavyweight title fight between then champion, Quinton Jackson, and Forrest Griffin. Unfortunately the rest of the card was lackluster and the event had very little steam going into the fourth of July weekend.

The previous year featured the poorly named UFC 73: Stacked. While the event did appear stacked on paper the event was poorly received by fans as Rashad Evans and Tito Ortiz fought to a draw while Sean Sherk laid on Hermes Franca for twenty-five minutes. The one bright spot was Anderson Silva's first round TKO over Nate Marquardt.

The 2006 July event was UFC 61: Bitter Rivals, which featured the unbearable Sylvia vs. Arlovski decision and the quick Ortiz Shamrock decision.

All three of these events show an attempt by the UFC to feature prominent cards in early July but none of them succeeded as well as UFC 100. It should be noted that UFC 100 was a centennial event with two title fights so of course it will obviously generate more coverage than another event. But there is still an opening in sporting calender that the UFC could fill if they scheduled their marquee fighters in significant bouts to fill that void.