What’s the ‘Biggest UFC Fight That Never Happened’?

UFC is the biggest MMA promotion in the world. While UFC is worth billions today it was once a struggling promotion – which is a part of the lore and how the organization justifies not paying athletes fairly nowadays.

Just like this past weekend, many of the biggest cards have fallen apart for one reason or another.

Traditional fans were amped to see  Randy Couture take on Mirko Cro Cop not to mention the negotiated match between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano.  Similarly there’s an arguement to be made that Rousey’s ultimate test would’ve been against peak Cris Cyborg in the early 2010s.

Contemporary UFC fans are likely to select Khabib vs Ferguson as a must-see that just never ended up happening.

In a recent appearance at TimboSugarShow, Helwani highlighted some of the biggest scrapped event in UFC. Helwani stated Fedor and Randy Couture, Rousey and Cyborg at their prime, and Anderson Silva and St-Pierre as some of the big ones, but he voted for another event in the end.

“Brock versus Fedor would have been gigantic,” Helwani began.

“Randy versus Fedor would have been gigantic. GSP versus Anderson Silva would have been gigantic. Ronda versus Cris Cyborg would have been gigantic, when they were both in their primes.”

“If I had to pick the one that would have made the most money, it probably would have been Brock versus Fedor because the plan was to take that to Cowboys Stadium. That was gonna be a huge, huge deal,” Helwani added.

“So, if I had to pick one — and there’s a million that we could choose from — I’d probably go with that one.”

Brock Lesnar became UFC’s biggest box office draw when he transitioned from wrestling to mixed martial arts. Brock was considered for a match with Fedor after devastatingly defeating Frank Mir in his first UFC title defense.

Emelianenko was one of the biggest names in mixed martial arts, which UFC did not sign. Unsurprisingly, he was the target of UFC’s boss because he had established his career in MMA and Combat Sambo. White envisioned a historic main event between Brock and Fedor at Cowboys Stadium Dallas but alas it never came to happen.

But due to UFC’s penny pinching ways in addition to a reluctance to let Fedor keep competing at Sambo it never happened.