In the end, James Toney won and the UFC lost, Earnin' Money Fast

(Part of the WKR: Year in Review) Let me get this straight. You take a broke boxer who can't get fights in his own sport. You take this boxer who is 280 pounds and old who no one wants to fight in his own sport. You take this boxer and not only do you give him a fight in the UFC (a place where most fighters only DREAM of competing in), but you put him on PPV. Not only do you put him on PPV, but you put him in the co-main event. Not only is he in the co-main event, but his "fight" is promoted twenty times more than your own championship fight. Forget what happened in the cage, James Toney won.

Google Trends of James Toney searches over the last year

Before we even go into how much James Toney got compensated, let's look at the cache James Toney's name has now. Before Dana White signed him, most people assumed the real James Toney retired in the late 90's and this fat tub that replaced him was another guy. Toney was irrelevant in the scheme of things. He only had two boxing matches in the past two years; he was clearly hurting for money. So what does he do? He starts trolling MMA and it gets his name out there. Suddenly, people want to hear from James Toney. He takes it a step further; he calls out fighters and plays to the insecurities of Dana White and Deebos him into a contract. You could count the number of times James Toney was mentioned on SportsCenter in the past 5 years on one hand. Now? He's the most talked about boxer outside of Pac and Mayweather.

James Toney's last fight was against an angry former sparring partner. While payday info wasn't readily available, I can tell you one thing it wasn't; it probably wasn't 500,000 dollars.  

The UFC lost of a lot of cache with this fight. They pushed their own title fight to the background to promote a "freakshow". It was to the point that no one actually cared about the title match. They didn't give anyone a reason to. The fight reflected bad on the sport as a whole; it looked to be the result of an insecure sport doing whatever it took to try and gain credibility and acceptance from a "real" combat sport like boxing. MMA was so desperate for relevance in the greater sports arena that it found some fat out of shape boxer, tried to present him as somewhat credible and put him in the ring to lose. I don't blame people for having that viewpoint because that's exactly what it was. There was no reason for this fight to be made other than to satisfy the ego of Dana White and the fans.

The sad part is that the UFC thought this would be a huge success and have the sports world buzzing. No one buzzed. Boxing fans didn't care outside of a few delusional ones, sports fans in general didn't care and the greater sports media didn't care outside of "Hey look, it's irrelevant James Toney fighting in MMA lol".  The sports media paid more attention to Dennis Rodman's affairs in professional wrestling than they did Toney and the UFC. The only people who actually cared were the UFC fans, the ones who so desperately seek that validation. The sport looked foolish on Saturday.

And for what? There wasn't an increase in publicity for the UFC and after the string of excellent shows, it certainly didn't need it. If it was for financial gain, then they weren't successful. The gate for the show was disappointing, it's clear that UFC president Dana White was expecting much closer to a sellout than what was actually there. Without this fight and another semi-relevant fight in its place (like Randy Couture versus any decent 205er), the show would've done the same business. The buyrates don't look to be too promising either as trending numbers put it at 570K (remembering how last month's PPV was overestimated). That cannot be seen as anything but a disappointment considering the UFC's 3^rd biggest draw (and only real solo draw besides Lesnar, GSP and retired Chuck) was on the card and it was a title fight. BJ Penn is a guaranteed minimum of 500K buys and even the ill-timed UFC 112 card did that much. If those numbers hold true, then UFC 117 headlined by "non-draw" Anderson Silva outdrew the "freakshow" PPV. And what's the point in having a non-draw freakshow? And I can't imagine morale around the locker room when you hear that a non-drawing freakshow got 500K and more than likely points on the PPV. Especially for a fighter like UFC champ Frankie Edgar who hasn't seen 500K salary in his career from the UFC.

Let's be blunt. James Toney doesn't give a damn about MMA or the UFC only that their name is on a check. So he'll take his payday and go. Hell, he's trying to get another one and I don't blame him. If he can scam more money out the UFC marks then I say "Go right ahead". As for the UFC, this experiment should've never happened. Take your "L" and learn from it.

I think I'm Sakuraba, Royce Gracie

Doing work? I'm hella lazy

One fight in a cage

Real niggas getting money, I'm so fucking paid

I think I'm Sakuraba, Royce Gracie

Doing work, hella lazy

One fight in a cage

Real niggas getting money, I'm so fucking paid

My dark skin triple black

my body swell,

Mumble when I speak, talkin like I'm Chuck Liddell

Lights out that's my nick name

Boxing dyin losin all my big fame

Kinda broke, but in my heyday,

I was world champ, now I need a payday

 So I talked some shit to get you aggravated

Hired Soares so a nigga could be translated

Hold the cash up, where Bautista

Where Bobby Lashley, where my dogs at?

I got that contract

And it's so fat you might call it Big Country

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SBN coverage of UFC 118: Edgar vs. Penn 2