UFC marketing team striking out this coming Saturday at UFC 117

U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A. A chant that resonates throughout UFC arenas at almost all UFC events; most recently at the UFC on Versus 2 show at the beginning of the Takanori Gomi versus Tyson Griffin fight. Before that, the chants were heard during the Chris Leben and Yoshihiro Akiyama war at UFC 116. American UFC fans have a nationalistic; some say jingoistic, pride about their country that translates to sports (including MMA) and fans will many times support US-based fighters over foreigners.

Imagine my surprise then a couple months ago when looking at the UFC 117 card seeing that every televised matchup featured US-based fighters against Brazilian fighters. Immediately, I realized that this was a perfect opportunity to jazz up a card that isn't that appealing to casual fans. It features one of the worst drawing UFC Champion in the modern era, Anderson Silva, against pretty much an unknown wrestler in Chael Sonnen. The undercard does no favors in terms of names. The Ultimate Fighter Season 10 winner Roy Nelson, despite being on the highest rated season ever, Junior Dos Santos, Jon Fitch and Thiago Alves don't light up the eyes of the casual fan. Matt Hughes, the only other "name" fighter on the card has seen his draw and relevance fade into basic non-existence.

It's a tactic that has worked in -- wait for it -- professional wrestling for years. The All-American babyface against the cold calculating Russian or the sneaky and underhanded Japanese fighter or the hard-headed Samoa; matching up an American with a foreign "heel" was a surefire money drawing technique. One that was so good that it saw wrestlers take on the role as non-Americans primarily for the money it would attract. Scott Simpson from Minnesota became Nikita Koloff, U.S. Icon Sergeant Slaughter took on the role as an Iraqi sympathizer and more recently, Italian-American Mark Copani played Arab-American heel Muhammad Hassan so convincingly, he was catapulted to a potential World Title reign (which was ultimately axed when controversy arose over an insensitive angle ran at the time of the London terror bombings).

With Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen, you have the perfect pair to play these roles. Silva, as the foreign heel, is seen as cocky, confident and dismissive when addressing the media. His performance during his last fight infuriated a substantial portion of the fans. He's gone unbeaten in the UFC and many want to see him "put in his place". On the other hand, you have Chael Sonnen who, despite his character failings, is a charismatic man. Though not a perfect "babyface", he does possess an appeal to a lot of "Heartland America", based on political ideals.

By infusing this PPV with some good ol' country versus country competitiveness, it could give this card that added bit of incentive for undecided buyers to purchase it. The Olympics, despite features tons of sports most don't care to watch, always drums up interest and gets decent ratings. The recent surge in World Cup Soccer galvanized the nation into embracing a sport that, for all intents and purposes, goes largely ignored. There is money to be made plucking the heartstrings of Middle America. There are places where every house in the town has an American flag proudly displayed on their home.

The UFC is no stranger to "Patriotic marketing". Most recently, the ninth season of the UFC's reality show The Ultimate Fighter featured Team U.S.A, headed by Dan Henderson, and Team United Kingdom, headed by Michael Bisping. The season drew great ratings - in fact, the highest ratings since Season 4 - and the UK's Michael Bisping's antics energized the mostly American fanbase to root for their own fighters. While the winners both ultimately hailed from the U.K., Team USA won the final battle as Henderson knocked out Bisping in a highlight fashion at the most watched PPV in UFC history, UFC 100.

In addition to the reality show series, the UFC also featured a PPV (UFC 58) promoted with a country versus country theme featuring the USA versus its northern neighbor Canada. The event was headlined by Rich Franklin and David Louiseau in a Middleweight Title fight and BJ Penn versus Georges St. Pierre as the co-main event. Realizing that both fights featured an American and a Canadian fighter, the UFC quickly decided to promote this face and scrambled to find fights that fight the criteria, working with Canadian promotion TKO Major League MMA.

Despite this, the UFC has chosen to place all of their proverbial advertising eggs in the "Will Anderson Silva fight?" and "Sonnen Xenophobic and Culturally Insensitive World Tour" baskets. While Anderson Silva has gone on a self-imposed media brownout; Sonnen has been more than happy to verbally rampage his opponent and a whole country. And thus, interest in this card is not as high as it should be. Coming off the heels of the World Cup, American Pride is at a fever pitch, proper marketing appealing to that sentiment could give this PPV a nice amount of buys when estimates have the projected numbers around 400-450,000 buys.

Follow me on Twitter. Twitter.com/MMAFightClub

SBN coverage of UFC 117: Silva vs. Sonnen