In the End, It Was About the Sage Northcutts We Made Along the Way

It’s a tale as old as time: A dude impresses the boss on “Dana White’s Looking for a Fight”. So he’s brought into the UFC a little too soon, is coddled with easy match-ups. Then he leaves for a promotion in Asia, and gets absolutely murdered.

I am, of course, talking about Sage Northcutt, the human action figure. He made his debut at ONE Championship: “Kill the American White Boy” yesterday, and was paired up against veteran kickboxer Cosme Alexandre. And this happened:

Yeah, it took 29 seconds for Northcutt to kiss the canvas. But what did you expect would happen? ONE Championship has no vested interest in feeding Northcutt tomato cans like the UFC did. Heck, there’s more value in pairing him up against dudes that will kill him. Because then it makes it seem–to the fans in Asia at least–that ONE’s fighters are better than the UFC’s stars.

Which, sure, is BS for the most part… unless you’re talking about the Sage Northcutts of the world, who were plucked from the vine long before they were ripe just so the UFC could squeeze some fan interest from their glistening abs.

Don’t mourn for Sage for what happened yesterday. He left the UFC because he felt he could make more money elsewhere, which is sure what ONE is giving him. So he’ll be able to afford plenty of hair gel. And besides, ONE definitely has some badasses on its roster–look what happened when Eddie Alvarez made his debut.

Now I’m actually to see how other UFC fighters would do against the ONE Championship crew…