Anybody out there remember a lady who was at a time the most highly paid MMA fighter in the entire world? She would headline cards that featured many top men in the world but she was the focus of the entire thing. She would sell out arenas all over the world wherever she went and because it was so important to have a good starting time in the USA for a fight that took place in Australia, the promotion forced that event to start early in the morning, which must have kind of irked fans in Aus. She was on top at the world and was the biggest star ever in MMA for women and one of the top overall. Then she quickly faded away when she started to focus more on acting and modeling and I don't think that this is a coincidence. Her name was Ronda Rousey and now she is relegated to near obscurity as a not-even-that-popular WWE wrestler. Sure she makes a million a year but in UFC she was making substantially more.
Conor is the highest earning UFC star of all time and without question was and likely still is the sport's biggest draw. I like him as a fighter although he hasn't really impressed me in a while as far as his fighting capacities are concerned. Starting when he got involved in boxing against Mayweather for an absolutely mind-blowing amount of money, his focus seems to be more on his brand than on MMA and from a financial point of view I think this is very wise on his part. I do also think that it will be his downfall as far as his legacy is concerned.
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Conor is one of the most recognizable fighting faces in the world so when I heard that he was going to do a remake of Roadhouse I was first a bit irked that they would try to remake that film and then I just though oh what the hell, they remake everything else so why not that? In my mind I would have preferred to leave Patrick Swayze's legend intact and leave that movie alone but people are going to watch it anyway and Conor's presence in the film is only going to increase those numbers.
Conor himself talked about how the filming schedule was much more grueling than he had anticipated and he now has a much greater respect for the amount of work that actors and actresses do because of it. I can believe that seeing as how sometimes films are made in a manner of weeks rather than the months or years that some of the larger films spend on making movies.
Conor admitted without holding anything back that he was so busy while on set that he had nearly zero time to train. I would imagine the same would have been the case for Ronda Rousey and this likely contributed to her downfall.
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I suppose there are two ways to look at this situation: One is that these fighter's could crash from the top at any time if they enter a slump very quickly and this would result in them falling out of favor in the fighting world as well as the world of anything altogether. Just think about other stars who went from being huge draws to nothing at all very quickly such as Anderson Silva, Johny Hendricks, Thug Rose, and many others. If they have a chance to do something that is more sustainable as far as their bank balance is concerned such as acting, promoting a brand of theirs, modeling, or really anything else, in my mind it makes sense for them to do it. In fickle sports like MMA you can go from making millions for an appearance to making the Fight Night minimum of around $30,000 in just a year or two. Just ask Alexander Gustafsson. That guy went from being a major player in the light heavyweight division to being a non issue in record-setting pace. Unfortunately for him he DID NOT pursue endorsements, acting, branding, or other things and instead just focused on MMA like we would like to see our fighters do. He went from frivolously purchasing mansions worth over $10 million to having an overall net worth of $400,000 all in the span of 5 years.
Therefore, if Conor is looking to step away from fighting and focus on things like making whiskey and movies, I actually think that could be a decent idea. He is currently in a contract with UFC that requires him to do 2 more fights and at least for now he appears to want to do these fights but isn't really pressing the UFC for exact dates.
Conor has lost 3 of his last 5 fights and the only wins were against opponents that I believe were hand-selected as people for him to defeat in the effort to get the hype train for Conor up and running again. With him choosing to do things like acting and other work rather than training, it really wouldn't surprise me if he loses the last 2 fights on his contract, if he does them at all. If he were to suffer another horrible injury the likes of where he turned his leg into spaghetti vs. Dustin Poirier, I think that would be the end of the line.
What do you think? Should fighters like Conor abandon the sport when they have a chance to do something safer and perhaps more lucrative? As much as we would like to see this guys and girls stick around and fight forever, they do have to look out for their own best interests at some point or end up facing potentially being like so many fighters who have nothing to show for it after 15 years in the sport!