Former featherweight champion Mike Brown will fight for the second time this month at Saturday night's Fight for the Troops 2. And for the second time this month, you won't see him unless you're in the building.The UFC has decided to put Brown's fight with Rani Yahya on the non-televised undercard, and it won't even be one of the fights broadcast on Facebook before the Spike TV portion of the card begins. At UFC 125, when Brown lost a split decision to Diego Nunes, it was one of only two fights on the 11-fight card that wasn't televised, either on the pay-per-view broadcast or the Ion TV preliminary show.
For fans who know Brown both as a former No. 1 featherweight in the world, and as one of the most likable fighters in the sport, that's disappointing. But it's not surprising.
It's not surprising because even when Brown was one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in mixed martial arts, you always got the sense that he was something of an afterthought: The first two times Brown defended the WEC featherweight title, it was in an arena where his opponent would have the home crowd on his side. And even after all Brown had done as a WEC champion, his final WEC fight was also relegated to the unaired prelims.
The UFC knows its business well, and if Brown isn't being put on television, that probably means the UFC has determined that he's just not a particularly big draw. And now that he's 35 years old and has lost three of his last five fights, it's easy to see why the UFC would determine that he's not going to become a big draw in the future.
But it's still a shame that a fighter who should be among the most well-liked and well-respected in the game is actually known only to a small number of hard-core fans. And as long as Brown can't get on TV, that won't change.
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