Alex Pereira looked at the UFC 334 poster, saw a heavyweight title fight on top and the women's title fight stacked underneath it, and asked the one thing the UFC would rather nobody said out loud. On Instagram he posted the poster and wrote: "Why the Women's Fight is not the Main Event? Okay, let me help promote this cause no one is paying attention to it." He's needling Ciryl Gane, obviously. The whole post is built to make Gane vs. Josh Hokit look like a headliner nobody asked for, and the women's fight is the stick he grabbed to swing at it. Pereira has no history as a crusader for women's MMA, and the timing lines up a little too neatly with his own feelings about Gane. Take the messenger with a shrug. The question still stands. UFC 334 is scheduled for Madison Square Garden on November 14. The main event is Gane against Hokit for the heavyweight title. The co-main is Amanda Nunes against Kayla Harrison for a women's title. Put those two fights side by side and ask yourself which one you'd set your night around. One fight has a woman who belongs in any serious conversation about the greatest ever to do this, against one of the most decorated athletes to walk into the cage. The other is a heavyweight pairing the promotion itself is working overtime to sell. The defense you'll hear is that the heavyweight belt always tops the bill. That's true, and it's also not a reason. "We've always done it this way" explains a habit. It doesn't justify a decision. A main event is supposed to be the fight people most want to see, the one with the most history and the most eyeballs behind it. When the biggest star and the best fight on your card are both in the co-main, the ranking tells you the matchmaking defaulted to a rule instead of thinking. Then there's the uglier line that gets floated whenever this comes up, that women's fights just don't draw. Nunes is one of the biggest names the sport has ever produced. Harrison arrived in the UFC as a genuine event unto herself. If this fight can't anchor a card, no women's fight ever can. That's really the point people are making when they say it doesn't draw. It doesn't hold up. The UFC is responsible here, whatever Pereira's motive. It has a habit of overlooking Nunes on her own nights, and it's doing it again at the biggest building in the sport. The promotion had a chance to put two of its most accomplished champions at the very top of a Madison Square Garden card and flinched toward the heavyweight belt because that's the safe muscle memory. Pereira is petty here. He's also the only person in this conversation who asked a sharper question than the people running the card. None of this is settled. The card isn't final until fight night, and the order could still change. But as it stands, the UFC looked at Nunes versus Harrison and decided it was the second-best fight in the room. That's the call, and it's the wrong one.
