Saturday night’s fight was born to the sound of dog whistles. UFC has learned that negative headlines tend to produce positive returns at the box office

Hours after the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s initial foray into the UK for an historic card at the Royal Albert Hall, an ashen-faced Dana White stood in the lobby of his London hotel. It was the summer of 2002 and the UFC president was desperate for news about a late-night dust-up outside the posh nightclub Chinawhite that involved some of his best known fighters.

White was a novice promoter at that point, a year and a half on the job. He knew that his efforts to recast the UFC as something the general public could embrace was fragile enough that reports of the UFC’s most popular names brawling in the streets might imperil his business.

But nothing happened.

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Perhaps the UFC was easy to ignore at the time. Newspaper editors and television producers couldn’t have cared less about the promotion or what its new ownership group had set out to accomplish. Perhaps cage-fighting was considered low-brow enough to remain in the shadows forever, no matter how many dollars the company’s nascent ownership group was willing to invest, no matter how valiant some of the fighters were, no matter how significant the arc of mixed-style combat actually was.

Whatever the reason, the people in charge of marketing the UFC concluded then as they have since: they can get away with things more established sports entities can not.

White’s company – shaped by experiences that show “anything goes” is “business as usual” – is molded by the belief that negative headlines tend to produce positive returns at the box office. This year has provided more than enough proof.

In April, the most popular mixed martial artist ever, Conor McGregor, entered a loading dock in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn with destructive intentions, going so far as to lob a metal handcart through a bus window. It sent shards of glass into the faces of UFC fighters, executives and innocent bystanders. McGregor’s intention was to get at Khabib Nurmagomedov, the unbeaten Dagestani lightweight who looked a grave threat to the Irishman’s perceived dominance inside the octagon.

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McGregor marauded with his friends but they failed in their mission. White called it the most disgusting act in the history of the company. That was before the UFC shrugged off the incident by deferring to criminal proceedings in New York that ended in a plea deal and embracing a treasure trove of footage featuring the wild-eyed McGregor as part of its sales hook for UFC 229, which White said boosted his expectations that the event would reel-in the biggest pay-per-view buy rate in the history of the promotion.

Before and after Saturday’s fight in Las Vegas, White brushed off questions about the impact of playing up the criminal behavior as part of the storyline, but behind the scenes concerns about clashes between the fighters’ teams prompted an increased police presence around the cage. Meetings between UFC officials and the camps about their conduct in the arena took place only a couple hours prior to Nurmagomedov and McGregor meeting in the Octagon.

While White was personally bothered by the actions of his fighters inside a packed arena — consider all the work that has gone into making the UFC something people all over the world care about — he seemed uninterested in examining whether the way the fight was promoted helped ensure its ugly conclusion.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Conor McGregor gestures at Khabib Nurmagomedov before their bout. Photograph: Brandon Magnus/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

White did as he’s always done by appearing inconsistent. The UFC fighters who attacked McGregor after the bout would never fight in his promotion again he said. But he failed to specify punishments for McGregor and Nurmagomedov, the two men everything centered around. For them White relied on a familiar justification: this is the fight game, where sharp words are uttered, tempers flare, and, packaged the right way, money is made.

Nurmagomedov v McGregor was setu-p as the biggest fight in UFC history because it checked all the boxes — sporting relevance, huge personalities, pop culture significance, genuine animosity — and featured fighters who unloaded dog whistles that stoked tensions between the Irish and Russian fans.

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After McGregor’s dalliance with Floyd Mayweather Jr, Mystic Mac’s global appeal made people pay attention to the UFC like never before. This is how 20,034 fans packed T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and yielded a live gate of over $17m.

If precedent didn’t suggest otherwise, UFC 229 would appear to be the tipping point that relegates MMA to secondary status in the sports world. On a night McGregor could have gone from Mystic to Mythic he misfired. Meanwhile, Nurmagomedov, who touted sport and respect above spectacle and trash talk, showed otherwise.

Unlike in 2002, when few people paid attention, UFC contests play out in a meaningful cultural stratosphere in 2018 yet its operators still pay no mind to the impact. UFC remains excellent though at picking the lowest hanging fruit, which factored into the rivalry between Nurmagomedov and McGregor spilling out from the cage into the stands and, in several instances, onto concourses.

The undefeated Nurmagomedov, fresh off his fourth-round submission of McGregor, was forced to apologize for climbing over the cage to attack the Irish fighter’s corner. Rather than taking part in one of the most important sporting nights in UFC history, UFC 229 went to a place where results matter less than the spectacle they inspire.

The night should have ended with McGregor vanquished, licking his wounds, contemplating what being exposed by Nurmagomedov meant for his reputation and profile. And with Nurmagomedov, proud son of Dagestan, securing the pinnacle of MMA for himself.

Instead, White once again acted like a man concerned by his fighters’ antics. But one suspects when he inspects the revenues from UFC 229 – and thinks about the money to be earned from a rematch – he won’t be bothered at all.