UFC & Dustin Poirier: The more things change...

Joe Silva may have retired, Endeavor may have bought the promotion, and the WWE may have merged into the business, but in a few core ways the UFC is still the UFC.

Illustration by Chris Rini.

If it were anything other than combat sports, this would have been felt like something of a minor scandal brewing for the UFC. For MMA fans, though, it’s pretty much all old hat. Ari Emanuel may have put a corporate shine on Dana White’s fight company, but in some of the least appealing ways, it’s still the business we’ve known for decades.

This last week we saw an announced headlining fight between Vicente Luque and Sean Brady fall apart after it was revealed that—despite the UFC’s assurance that the bout was set—the fighters had not, in fact come to an agreement on the booking. More particularly that Sean Brady had hoped to be able to take the fight, but was recovering from an injury that ultimately prevented him from being ready in time.

More notable than that bout, however, was a whole storm of nonsense kicked up by Dustin Poirier. Currently set for the co-main event of UFC 299, the ‘Diamond’ took to social media in the past couple days to announce that he had failed to reach an agreement with the UFC for his bout with Benoit Saint Denis. With seats already on sale and a couple of weeks of UFC advertising in place, Dana White & co. had apparently been selling wolf tickets…