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The Paramount Era Begins
January 25, 2026
UFC 324: GAETHJE VS. PIMBLETT. The Paramount era begins…
It could also be called “The Advertisement Era.”
I paid around $100 for the premium annual subscription to Paramount+. My girlfriend asked me, “Are there going to be ads?” I laughed.
Not because I read the fine print—because I didn’t. I went with the higher tier because I don’t want to miss anything UFC-related that might end up behind a paywall. But I laughed because I was pretty sure they’d run advertisements during the live broadcast no matter what tier I paid for.
And guess what?
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S E V E R Y W H E R E
Ever since the Fertittas sold the UFC, there has been a growing focus on monetizing everything UFC. Of course there are in-octagon ads, commentary does ad reads, Buffer does ad reads, and there are normal ads between fights. But as time goes on, more and more things are sponsored: getting your name on the canvas, the UFC “prep point” being sponsored, sponsorship stickers on the commentators’ headphones, and advertisements replacing walkouts. There are ads between rounds, too.
Now they have it where, even if they do show the fighters in their corners, an L-frame ad pops up, and you can’t hear the corner audio anyway. During this event, Ghostface from Scream was shown walking around behind fighters (Waldo Acosta, specifically), and it led straight into a Scream trailer. It’s a massive amount of advertising, and I don’t see that changing.
To me, this was expected—maybe not for most of the main card like they did, but still. The amount of money Paramount paid for this partnership was astronomical, so they’re going to monetize everything. Dana White was asked about it, and he said he’ll look into it and that he thinks things will change. But that’s not really up to Dana White.
What I do think Paramount will try is integrating ads less intrusively. Instead of cutting away and not showing anything, they’ll run ads side-by-side with the content we actually want to see. The bigger question is: which audio wins? The walkout and corner audio, or the ad?
My guess is the advertising.
That’s why I’m calling it the Advertisement Era. We’re going to watch how advertising is approached, evolves, and gets implemented into a live sporting event—right up to the point where it’s supposed to “not feel intrusive.” It’s going to feel like The Truman Show.
As I’m writing this, I’m seeing that ads were trending on Twitter, too. The headline reads: “FANS SLAM ADS DURING UFC 324 DEBUT ON PARAMOUNT+.”
Listen—MMA fans (really UFC and betting fans) are ultra shitty in general. They are 87% fairweather fans, and I would truly believe that statistic even though I have zero data. But their complaints about ads are justified, and I only saw a couple of bootlickers saying they didn’t mind.
Okay—so, tons of advertising. The next takeaway I had was: “BLINK-182.”
Travis Barker’s involvement with MMA goes back to his fandom, but also to a business opportunity for his clothing company, Famous Stars and Straps. He sponsored fighters back in the day. Anyway, his and Blink-182’s presence was featured heavily: their music, Travis interviews, Travis playing drums in the octagon (not live—on video), and him in the crowd with Kourtney. It was a lot. Too much. Shit, I think Travis even mentioned UFC is anti-establishment. Sure, Travis… maybe up until 2001 when the Fertittas purchased it. It’s popular now because they went establishment friendly.
There was also a lot of filler at the beginning of the broadcast because quite a few fights fell out. I’m sure they were prepping for a much longer run time that would’ve been filled with fighting, not talking. Michael Johnson vs. Alexander Hernandez, Cam Smotherman, Harrison vs. Nunes—gone. This was less of an issue for me, but it did piss off a lot of fairweather fans. Then again, they’ll complain about literally everything, including a good fight.
Dominick Cruz was inducted into the Hall of Fame, which is absolutely deserved. He was one of my favorite fighters when he was active… well, as active as he could be given the injuries. His style is still something I like to study.
When the main card started, they did a really good promo package to kick off the new era.
Anyway, let’s get to my picks and the fights.
| Fighter | Result | Fight rating |
|---|---|---|
| Gaethje | ✅ | 9/10 |
| O’Malley | ✅ | 7/10 |
| Black Beast | ❌ | 5/10 |
| Rose Namajunas | ❌ | 2/10 |
| Arnold Allen | ❌ | 7/10 |
| Umar | ✅ | 2/10 |
| Ateba Gautier | ✅ | 5/10 |
| Nikita Krylov | ✅ | 6/10 |
| Charles Johnson | ❌ | 5/10 |
| Josh Hokit | ✅ | 5/10 |
| Ty Miller | ✅ | 6/10 |
7 right, 4 wrong. My K/D ratio is 1.75.
At the very last second, I changed my pick from Natalia Silva to Rose Namajunas—and that happens to be the fight I disagreed with the scorecards on. I think Rose won the first two rounds, and Natalia obviously took the third. I can also see an argument for Andrey Pulyaev defeating Ateba Gautier, but I’d need to rewatch it. My dog was going insane, and I missed chunks of the fight.
I enjoyed Ty Miller’s clean, straight punches. He had some difficulty against the southpaw stance of Adam Fugitt, but he did well. Fugitt performed well given my expectations, and I thought he had excellent body kicks.
Josh Hokit is a better fighter—and a much better athlete—than Denzel Freeman. Freeman had nothing: covering up, barely countering, and offering almost no resistance. Hokit’s power wasn’t impressive in this fight, but as he gets more comfortable standing, he’ll start seeing openings sooner. Right now, it’s mostly pressure and volume. Eventually, he’ll need more composure, or he’ll get sniped.
I still despise the guy’s absolutely stupid WWE gimmick, which is basically him impersonating wrestlers and Chael Sonnen verbatim. The only “original” thing he does is say one controversial thing here and there. It’s stupid, and if the guy wasn’t an athlete, he’d be the first to sign up for ICE.
Moving on to Arnold Allen: I really thought Arnold would win. He had crisp striking and good movement, but eventually Jean’s power messed him up, and Arnold also gassed out. Jean moves on, and I don’t. He’s a bit of a donk—insane, maybe acoustic, emotional—but he’s fun to watch. If you were doing absurd, stereotypical comedy about a Brazilian MMA fighter, you’d come up with Jean Silva.
Derrick Lewis and Waldo were a letdown. Waldo mostly waited and capitalized on Derrick making mistakes. Derrick didn’t want to make too many mistakes, but he did. Waldo is good, not great. He moves okay. He’s a new name in the heavyweight division and will continue to be in interesting matchups. I need to rewatch more of his fights because I haven’t come to a conclusion on how I feel about him.
Sean O’Malley won a decision. Some are saying Song Yadong was robbed. I disagree. I could see it being a controversial decision in the sense that it could go either way, but I felt Sean won. It comes down to the first round. Sean landed the cleaner strikes at a higher volume in Round 1, and the stats back that up.
I’m not big on looking at stats to make a decision, but in this instance it makes sense. You look at the first round and see O’Malley landing at a higher clip, and you see the damage on Song’s face. What sways people is Song’s explosiveness and power, but one or two big moments can’t eclipse who did the real, cumulative damage. Sean wasn’t super hurt by the end of the round, and neither was Song—but Song had visible damage. The numbers don’t lie on this one.
Justin Gaethje vs. Paddy Pimblett. This was a tough one to pick for me personally for a few reasons:
- Both fighters get hit often.
- Justin Gaethje is 37 in the lightweight division.
- Paddy is younger, but skill-wise he’s not the better fighter.
- It’s Gaethje. He could be the best fighter on planet Earth and still lose because he is chaos.
Ultimately, I went with Gaethje because I thought he’d have better cardio over five rounds, he’s the better fighter, and I didn’t think he’d get taken down. There’s also the pressure of the moment, the aura, and the question of whether Gaethje is just going to look old.
The only way I can describe this fight is: these two beat the shit out of each other. People want to complain about the eyepoke Gaethje did and the nut shots. Even if those didn’t happen, Paddy was going to get messed up.
They both left something in the cage—especially Paddy. Gaethje did well to try to exhaust Paddy as much as he could. In those early rounds, Gaethje didn’t do much in terms of volume. He let Paddy throw bombs. But kudos to Paddy: he didn’t slow down as much as I thought he would, and the dude can really take a punch.
I don’t know how his chin will fare after this fight long-term, but let me just tell you: he has a chin. He took 25 minutes worth of absolute bombs.
Although it was entertaining, I don’t see either of them beating Arman or Ilia. It was a fun main event in terms of action, but it misses the mark of the true best-in-the-world competing and what was really at stake. It was an interim title.
That’s why I scored it a 9/10, but it might be more fair to put it at an 8/10. We need better storylines, stakes, and skill levels for the 9 and 10 marks.
Nonetheless, about 40% of the card was a good time.
