The main event at UFC 217 on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden has all the makings of a classic. In one corner you’ve got Georges St-Pierre, one of the greatest fighters of all time, who is coming out of retirement after a four-year hiatus and has a history of drawing eyeballs to pay-per-view screens. In the other corner, you’ve got Michael Bisping, whose biggest claim to fame is his ability to take down living legends and who happens to have the one thing St-Pierre doesn’t — a WWE-style mouth. And on top of that you’ve got Madison Square Garden, the historic home of combat sports and the venue for UFC 205, the so-called “best card in the history of the sport.”

However, the narratives have not turned into compelling storylines. Instead, UFC 217’s main event is suffering from a serious case of the “who cares?”

Bisping and St-Pierre have been circling each other for a year with the alleged super fight rumored, called off, announced, canceled, and confirmed seemingly ad nauseam. The “will they or won’t they?” drama around the fight did not ramp up expectations, however. Instead, it did the opposite because the answer was inevitable. The aging warriors were always going to fight not because they are long-time rivals, have a natural animosity towards one another, or each has a claim to the title of “best middleweight in the world.” The fight was always going to happen because it’s a money fight and that’s what the UFC is about nowadays.

Naked greed isn’t exactly what dreams are made of and it isn’t helped when casual fans don’t even remember one of the fighters. GSP has been retired for four years, which is just long enough to be forgotten by casual fans but isn’t long enough to elicit nostalgia. The Canadian master was the apex predator in the time before Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey. His name no longer rings a bell with anyone but the die-hards, a fact even acknowledged by long-time UFC announcer Joe Rogan.

What’s more, St-Pierre wasn’t all that exciting when he was the king of the UFC in the early 2010s. The Canadian master was grit-and-grind personified, he was the four-corner offense in basketball, if basketball was played with strikes, takedowns, and submissions. GSP, however, used his strikes to set up his takedowns which allowed him to almost literally lay on top of his opponent, draining their will to fight. It was as effective as it is yawn-inducing, which is why GSP doesn’t show up on any ultimate knockout or ultimate submission highlight reels.

St-Pierre’s style inside the cage is mirrored by his persona outside of it. In press conferences and interviews he struggles to throw shade — he’s just too nice to talk trash. He also is immensely proud of fighting with honor, is obsessed with fairness, and was an early proponent of PED testing. Again, not exactly heart-pounding stuff.

Bisping, and his big mouth, was supposed to make up for St-Pierre’s role as an WWE-style babyface. Unfortunately, the 38-year-old Brit’s mic skills have grown stale and predictable. In the past year he’s called St-Pierre a fat “impregnated alien,” he’s implied that St-Pierre is only in it for the money and that he might be on PEDs — even though St-Pierre is a long-time proponent of drug testing. The loudmouthed Brit has said it all, and none of it sticks because it’s empty talk.

Right after insulting GSP at a recent press conference in Canada, Bisping all but admitted that he doesn’t believe his own schtick: “Georges has been a fantastic representative [for Canada], he’s a great martial artist, he’s a great fighter, he was an undefeated champion, so of course you guys respect him, and I respect him. Even though I’m sitting here talking all this s–t I respect the hell out of George.”

St-Pierre feels much the same way about Bisping: “His resume speaks by itself … As a fighter I really respect him, he accomplished a lot of great things in the sport and that’s why I was very excited to take the fight. I didn’t want to fight nobody else than Michael. Michael, for me, is the highest guy right now in the sport. There is nobody else in the game right now that I can fight that will help my legacy as much as if I beat Michael Bisping.”

Riveting stuff.

The lack of a compelling story usually wouldn’t matter for a headlining fight at a huge UFC event because the organization could always fall back on the claim that the best would be fighting the best. That just isn’t true of Bisping vs. St-Pierre. GSP is the greatest welterweight of all time, but he got to jump the entire line of middleweight contenders to challenge Bisping despite the fact that the division might be the most stacked in the entire world. Former UFC middleweight champions Luke Rockhold, Chris Weidman and Anderson Silva all have a greater claim to a title shot than does St-Pierre, never mind interim champion Robert Whittaker or Gegard Mousasi, who left the UFC for Bellator because he couldn’t see his way to a title fight.

Bisping has eroded the meritocracy within the division even further by not defending his belt. Since taking the title off Rockhold in June 2016, Bisping has fought exactly once — and that was against a then 46-year-old Dan Henderson. Bisping wanted to fight Henderson in order to get revenge for the pair’s 2009 bout which featured one of the most brutal knockouts in UFC history. Bisping got vengeance by grinding out a five-round decision victory. Since then, he’s done nothing while the contenders within the division have torn each other apart.

The irrelevancy of UFC 217’s main event has taken the shine off the best card of 2017. Just like UFC 205, UFC 217 features three title fights, a loudmouthed champion from the British Isles, and so many good bouts that two top-10 fighters in their respective division won’t even make it onto free TV — they are being streamed online instead. The UFC’s marketing machine has failed the card — which might be why tickets aren’t flying off the shelves — they must be hoping that the action inside the cage does all the talking.