A Big Batch of Random UFC Cards

There's a pretty big fight today, so I thought I'd post some UFC cards I picked up at some point over the last few months. Technically, today's fight is a boxing match, but it involves arguably the biggest UFC star since Ronda Rousey, Conor McGregor. Topps actually has made a trio of cards available for pre-order under their UFC Now banner, one for each fighter's weigh-in and one for the weigh-in generally. If you buy the individual weigh-in card of the fight winner, you will also get a bonus card of that fighter. I went ahead and ordered a copy of all three cards. As of the time I am posting this, there are still about six hours left on the pre-order window. If that interests you, click here. 

I don't have any new McGregor cards, and I don't think I've got any Mayweather cards at all, so I'll be showing off some other stuff. It's mostly a grab bag of parallels and hits, with these first couple cards being relic cards of UFC Hall of Famer Urijah Faber. The card above is a Fight Mat Relic card from 2014 Topps UFC Champions.

This one is a Fighter Relic card from 2012 UFC Bloodlines. It looks to be a piece of t-shirt or something similar. This one's serially-numbered # 169 / 188. I wish Topps would bring back a good comprehensive base set to the UFC line, but I can understand that there's probably not much money in that. They are releasing a Chrome set soon, which might be as close as we're going to get to that in 2017. The UFC needs some more big stars to carry the brand, especially maybe some stars who don't pop hot on drug tests.

This Cung Le relic card is another Topps UFC Bloodlines relic card, but it comes from the 2013 version of the product. It also looks like a bit of t-shirt, and is numbered # 011 / 198.

Going back to mat relics, here is a bit of the mat from UFC 76 on a card featuring Mauricio Rua. This card comes from 2010 Topps UFC. At UFC 76 he lost to Forrest Griffin due to a choke submission.

The last relic card in this batch of scans is an Alexis Davis card from 2014 Topps UFC Knockout. The relic swatch looks to be a two-color bit of shirt. She won her last fight, in April of this year.

Jumping ahead to 2015 Topps UFC Knockout, I have an Autograph Relic card of Francisco Rivera. His last fight was in 2016, and the UFC site lists him as a former fighter, so he might be done. That loss marked the end of a stretch where he lost 5 out of six fights over three years, so maybe he just didn't have it anymore.

I may already have a copy or two of this Jessica Penne autograph from 2015 Topps UFC Champions, but she has a cool signature and I am a sucker for cheap UFC hits, so I picked up another. She's lost three fights in a row now, with her latest being a loss by decision to Danielle Taylor in April 2017. Around the same time, she was also the first female UFC fighter to be flagged for a potential doping violation.

This Vitor Belfort card is a parallel of an insert card from 2011 Topps UFC Moment of Truth. This is the Onyx parallel of his Elite Skills insert, numbered # 13 / 88.

I am having a hard time pulling up a decent checklist for 2010 Topps Knockout, but I am assuming this parallel looks Green to me. It is numbered # 19 / 88.

I don't know why I like Gold parallels so much for UFC cards, but I pick them up when I can. This is a Bethe Correia parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 55 / 99. Sorry for the lack of real content in parts of this post. There are some days when I am just not feeling it.

The final card in this group is a Gold parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Champions. Gold parallels from this set are some of my favorite cards to pick up, so I will always try to get them if I can. This one is numbered # 07 / 25.

I am not really pulling for McGregor or Mayweather. I guess the most entertaining thing would be for McGregor to win, as that would potentially throw the boxing world into disarray. I don't know much about boxing, but I am guessing that Mayweather's wealth of experience in the sport will make this a one-sided battle in his favor.

Breaking it Down 25: Some UFC Stuff from TeamBreaks.com

On the same night I got all the WWE Undisputed stuff I posted a couple of days ago, I grabbed a couple of fighter spots and a base card spot in some UFC breaks. I am not a huge UFC fan, but I follow some of the big stories and I am always looking for something new to add to my cardboard collections. The site for this breaker is TeamBreaks.com. It appears to be a one-man operation and he focuses mostly on UFC breaks, although he does a smattering of other stuff. I actually participated in one of his other breaks a long time ago, but hadn't really checked back in for a while until now. That card up top is a Francisco Rivera autograph relic card I got from a 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines break. I got a random fighter slot, so the list was randomized and each slot got four fighter names assigned to them. If hits got pulled for any of those names, you got them. There was also a base card  /inserts slot available for any cards not considered as hits..

His site has a few draws for me. One is that he does cheap breaks. I am not sure how he makes any money, but maybe that's not his overall goal. He breaks stuff in small enough increments that you can get a random fighter spot for a couple of dollars and have a chance at something. I may not hit anything, but that's easier to justify on a $2 fighter slot than it is on a $20-80 team slot on most MBL / NFL / NBA / NHL breaks. At least I get to sit and watch cool cards get opened for half an hour or more. Second is that it seems like there aren't a lot of people busting the stuff he does. I can find a fairly large number of people busting any of the main sports, but I haven't run into a lot of UFC or wrestling breakers. They might be out there somewhere, but I haven't run into them. Third, he does quite a few giveaways and promotions, so even if you don't get a hit you might wind up with something. Fourth, he isn't super-annoying to listen to on his video feeds. My only complaint in that department is that he and / or the chat feed get a little off-color from time to time, so headphones are required when my kids are running around.

The other breaks I got into were all for 2015 Topps UFC Champions. In the bigger 6-box break I got a few fighter slots. My only hit card was this Jessamyn Duke autograph. There might have been more hits to go around, but most of the hits were doubled up across the boxes, so most of the autographs hit in the first half of the break were pulled again in the second half of the break. I've got a couple of other Duke cards, so I guess you can call it a PC now.

I also got this Black parallel of Sara McMann. Most of the parallels in Topps UFC products feature serial numbers with a lot of 8's in them, because UFC fights happen in an octagonal cage. So instead of being numbered out of # / 200, these Black parallels are numbered # / 188. This one is copy # 061 / 188. Some of the rarer parallels are # / 8.

There are also serial-numbered cards with more traditional numbering, like this Jessamyn Duke Gold numbered # 08 / 25. It's probably the best card I got in the break. The card backs are pretty light on statistics, instead usually including a brief write-up of how the fighter's 2014 went. They also include height, weight, training location, weight class, and the fighter's Twitter handle. I would be happier if they included at least win-loss records or titles held or Bowman-like graphics of wins by type or strike percentage or something.

I also had the base card slot from one box of 2015 UFC Champions. I got 170 / 200 base cards toward a complete set, with 7 doubles. That's pretty decent collation. While flipping through the stack I saw something interesting on Stephen Thompson's base card. I cropped the picture down a little on the right for a better look. It's the Blowout Cards store logo! The only online mentions I could find about Blowout sponsoring fighters come from the 2010-2012 time frame, but this picture is from a bout in July of 2015 so they must have continued the practice. The UFC has a (relatively) new sponsorship deal with Reebok now which did away with most / all of the individual fighter sponsors in favor of a large agreement with payouts based on fighter rankings and official merchandise sales. I am not sure when it took effect, though, or whether it covers t-shirts worn after a fight.

I'm not sure where this little foray into MMA cards will take me. I've been digging around on the UFC website a bit lately, learning about the fighters and weight classes and whatnot. I got a free trial to their online streaming service and watched the Fight Night card last night, which had twelve different fights. I don't know a whole lot as far as technical details, but the fights were interesting and it was usually pretty apparent to me who was in control at any given time. There were some pretty dramatic reversals, though, so you couldn't always tell who would win in the end. It just takes one or two good hits or a grappling mistake for things to get turned around. I found it pretty entertaining. The main event between Rose Namajunas and Paige VanZant was pretty epic, but there weren't really any fights that didn't hold my interest except for one that ended within a few seconds due to an accidental eye poke that required medical attention.

One thing that helped keep me engaged in each fight was the UFC Fantasy Pick 'Em game, which has you pick the winner, the round in which the victory was won, and the type of victory. There are different bonus points that can be won, too, like picking an underdog that wins or for picking a title fight correctly. I didn't do too well in the game, but I got 5 / 12 fights right, with 1 bonus for an underdog and 2 perfect picks (getting the round and type of win right in addition to picking the winner).

I've found a few fighters who I might start small PCs for, so we'll see how that goes. There doesn't seem to be a huge market for UFC trading cards, but there must be a few people out there buying this stuff. The speculators come out in droves whenever a big event goes down, and there are a few fighters who seem to be popular no matter what. Combat sports are a different animal than the usual sports that people collect cards from. The major sports leagues all have a pretty consistent schedule, with each team playing a certain amount of games per year against a specific group of opponents. That means that a fan can count on seeing their favorite players / teams a certain number of times in a given year. Fighters, whether in UFC or boxing, don't have that predictability. A fighter might have 5 bouts in a year or they might go many months or more than a year between fights. It is all so political that even a really good fighter might never have a chance at a title belt depending on what the promoters want to schedule. In other sports you know that if you win enough games to win your division you are going to get a shot at a championship in the playoffs. A fighter doesn't get that guarantee, because the promoters are looking to make the most money, not necessarily to give the best fighters a shot at a belt. Winning all your fights doesn't necessarily guarantee a shot at a belt, unless the promoters feel they can sell tickets to that show.

I've been a little hesitant to get into this stuff, in large part because most of the real-life people I know who are fans of MMA are not people I get along with. I don't really want to associate myself with them. What really pulled me into it in the end was the meteoric rise of Ronda Rousey, which kind of spear-headed a public acceptance of the sport. I guess that makes me a bandwagon fan, but if you really stick to a strict definition of bandwagoning there can only be one original fan of anything, and that makes everyone a bandwagoner of one kind or another. I'll stick with it for a while and see where it goes. At the very least it adds a little more variety to my card collection.