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Thursday trash talk: Which sport is more fan friendly – the NBA or UFC?
By Zach Arnold | May 16, 2007
The IFL stock price is declining.
On Wednesday night, I was in an irritable mood during the tapings of our latest edition of Fight Opinion Radio. However, I work with talented (nice) professionals like Jeff Thaler and Erin Bucknell who tolerate me every single week. For that, I thank them.
With that stated, after my angry mood (much of it directed toward Dana White’s recent public behavior) on the radio taping, I ended up listening to an interview that NBA commissioner David Stern did with ESPN Radio’s Dan Patrick. Audio here. Trust me – I have never reached a level displaying this much antagonistic, condescending acrimony as displayed by Stern here. Maybe I should aspire to reach such new levels.
To keep this on-topic with an MMA theme, which sports boss do you think is more fan-friendly — Dana White (UFC) or David Stern (NBA)? I want to hear your responses in the comments section of the post.
Onto today’s headlines.
- The Houston Chronicle: Pedro Rizzo, Jeff Monson in summer showdown in ‘Big D’ for Art of War
- Radio (Komikazee): MMA Smackdown #23 w/ Josh Odom
- Fight Report: Kimbo Slice interviews on Miami’s 790 The Ticket
- The Fightworks Podcast: PRIDE and UFC lawsuit not the only game in town – Never Submit movie has its own
- The Fight Network: Gina Carano sidelined, “Dynamite” loses female draw
- Yahoo Sports: Cool customer Josh Burkman
- The Tri-Valley Central (Arizona): Gabe Rivas works to come back after ACL surgery
- MMA Weekly: UFC President comments on HBO deal
- UFC Mania: Exclusive – Serra on GSP, “Hit the road Frenchy”
- Bodog Beat: Drew Fickett goes crazy in New Jersey
- The Ottawa Citizen: Master of the octagon – Randy Couture
- The Shreveport Times: Bible thumper – Joseph Freid is a lover and a fighter
- Lay and Pray: Battle Rap – Renzo, Miletich and more
- Jake Rossen: Unofficial, official guide to May/June, part deux
- The Palladium-Item (Indiana): MMA show set for Saturday at Richmond National Guard Armory
- Broadcast Newsroom (PR): MMA World League brings GFC to online audience of millions
- The Daily Star (UK): Dana’s king of the jungle (White is quoted as saying he had a conversation with Kurt Angle recently)
- MSNBC: Face of MMA (Royce Gracie) ready to defend family honor
- The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio): Childhood experience servers Adam DiSabato well during cage matches
Topics: BoDog, HERO's, IFL, K-1, Media, MMA, Pro Elite, UFC, UK, Zach Arnold | 24 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Looking forward to the radio show. If it was more frequent I’d go out on a limb and say it’s the best one out there.
Is this about the Cintron issue? If it is then Dana is least fan friendly. Here he has a titled boxer at his feet asking for a go and he denies him because “he hasn’t heard of him”. WTF did he open his mouth then!?
You wanna know why no one has heard of Cintron? Because HBO and other older boxing promotions pull BS PPVs and stagnate the talent pool to absurd levels. Cintron’s got a title defense in July and it’s part of the undercard of Gatti/Gomez. Will HBO show it? No. He ain’t going to get coverage anytime soon because even if he does challenge a big name, he’ll have to wait five years just to get the match made.
And why should we care about Mayweather? He just proved he wasn’t a real fighter. What more do you want? You’ll never get his blood on the mat, even if you can afford it.
It blows my mind that Dana just turned Cintron down like that.
If not, Stern blows. He could never tell the intention of the Suns players. It looked like Diaw was heading toward Nash and Stroudemire was heading in to check in for defense.
BTW, did anyone get Wrestlerock Rumble vibes from “Fight League”?
Ok I have got to hear this show ASAP. It’s the self destruction of Zach Arnold!
http://www.ufc.com/index.cfm?fa=news.detail&gid=5863
– Belcher replaces injured Schafer – official.
Love the title, or should it read “all other sports” haha
In terms of fan friendliness, I’d have to say no sport is better at it than Nascar. Next would be baseball.
With the UFC, fan friendliness depends primarily on the fighter. For example, Tim Sylvia was a lousy champion (both in and out of the ring). Chuck Liddell is a league president’s dream. So, in terms of what each president is doing to make their athletes accessible to the public, I’d give the slight nod to David Stern. He, at least, makes sure there are meet-and-greets with NBA players before games.
But in terms of how friendly each commish is to its fans, its Dana White by a mile. He is a presence in a recurring TV show (The Ultimate Fighter), and at the very least pays lip service to giving the fans what they want (I happen to think White is smart enough to realize how important that is, so I think it is genuine). David Stern is not in a position to do that, nor does he put himself into that position.
When he is interviewed, White is at least reasonably civil (he did an interview recently where he came off as a jerk, but only because he was trying to be funny and failing). This Dan Patrick interview is not the first time David Stern has been arrogant and disrespectful.
Dana White does not give interviews to most Internet news sites, but I can’t really fault him for that. Most Internet MMA sites have turned a blind eye towards the appalling conduct of Nobuyuki Sakakibara (Pride CEO). That hardly gives them credibility as being objective.
I’m no Dana White apologist, but he is the guy that took MMA to unprecedented heights in this country, so let’s give the devil his due.
I’m dissappointed with GSP. He’s turning into Hughes. Maybe he picked up some airborne disease from Matt Hughes during their fight or something.
And anyone got any links with Dana’s recent behaviour?
MMA Weekly is your friend:
Dana on the HBO deal
Dana White doubts boxers in MMA
The drug testing issue is in a past newslinks post, as it was from a Houston Chronicle newspaper article by Steve Sievert.
I think the whole GSP thing is being overblown. I think GSP said those things because he felt had to publicly admit that he fucked up, and that he was going to change. In a roundabout way some of the things he said could be construed to be insulting to Serra, but I don’t think any of it was intentional and now Serra is proving he’s the real prick by burning bridges and cutting GSP’s access to train with Renzo Gracie. Thats the thing about BJJ guys – they’re such drama llamas
Wow, the IFL stock price has gone all the way down to $2.25 today (it’s at $2.60 right now). I know the market is going down overall today, but a 25% drop in price during the course of a day is typically not a good sign of investor expectations of a company…
25% drop for a penny stock is nothing. Which is a big part of the reason daytraders and pump-and-dumpers live in that realm.
And why many/most big-firm brokers won’t process stock purchases below a certain price point (in my case $5.00/share). There is too much volatility and potential fraud for some brokers to allow it and still feel that they are representing the best interests of the client. When I wanted to buy a stock that traded below $5, I had to open an account elsewhere at a less respectable firm.
Yes, although the stock was at $17 within the last year, well above the ‘penny stock’ threshold. For a micro cap firm with an unknown commodity/future, the ‘penny stock’ range makes it so it can increase/decrease 50%+ pretty much every day since one small thing can cause massive ripples on the valuation since its base is so hard to quantify accurately. But for a company to go from small cap (about $335 million at its late January $17 peak) all the way down to the lower end of micro cap (about $51 million) in about 4 months is a pretty huge free fall.
Although, it should be noted, that the IFL price was likely greatly overpriced and was going to eventually free fall as it was (which made shorting it in late January and buying it back for the borrowee a great investment).
Hear are the ratings for the Maywether v Oscar fight on Sky Tv in England.It also be noted that Cage Rage pulled in 80000 rating.
1 LIVE SUPER LEAGUE (Sun 1758) 191
2 LIVE SUPER LEAGUE (Sat 1858) 183
3 LIVE SPEEDWAY (Mon 1930) 150
4 LIVE SUPER LEAGUE (Sat 1630) 132
5 LIVE SUPER LEAGUE (Sun 1530) 90
6 DE LA HOYA V MAYWEATHER (Sun 1029) 57
7 FOOTBALL FIRST (Sun 0845) 39
8 DE LA HOYA V MAYWEATHER – 24/7 (Sat 1030) 34
9 FOOTBALL FIRST (Sun 0730) 33
10 WORLD CUP CRICKET (Tue 1801) 29
Why the Dana bashing so much Zach? Saying that you are a mma news website, I hope you do more fact checking next time you talk about stories. Dana all along said they have been “negotiating” a deal, nothing years ago was ever stated that they had a deal signed, sealed and delivered. The statement Dana made was that a deal was reached in “principle”, nothing was written on a contract just yet. Dana even made a statement along the lines “nothing is in concrete, but we are close as we have ever been”. What is wrong with him saying this? He never said a contract was signed and all parties were finished. I do not see the need to lose it on him for this. HBO can back out whenever, and if they do, why is it Dana’s fault.
And your show is not the best one out there, “The Beatdown” is still better. Your show does a good job on looking at stories outside of mma, but when it comes to breaking down fighters and a card, you are still far behind. I will still listen to your show, but you are not the best.
And for your next show, smile. I guarantee that you will have a more positive outlook throughout, not the view of a person who seems to have ate sour grapes before hand.
And the whole “Chuck calling out Tito” bullcrap, I do not know if you listen to the interviews that Tito gave, he talked about how Chuck was Dana’s (lack of a better term) bitch, always doing what Dana asks of him, not doing anything of his own will. If I was Chuck, I would be pissed off too. So for Chuck talking about Tito, I think it was more of Chuck’s views, not Dana telling him to do it.
dana white is easily worse. has david stern ever called anyone a f****ing homo like dana white did to jerry millen? has david stern ever called anyone a f****ing idiot or f****ing goof like dana white has done about many people? has david stern ever said about a prominent nba player “nobody knows who the hell that person is” like dana white did about shogun?
I heard the Tito interviews about the boxing debacle and he brought up Chuck on his own and insulted him. That is probably the reason Chuck is striking back. Of course, Dana may be helping out with that, but I think Liddell was sufficiently insulted to take the initiative on his own.
Yes, there is reason to question if Dana can keep up with growth of MMA as it moves from rap/metal, tribal tats, beanie caps, and shaved heads to a more mature product. Dana is 35ish and still skateboards every weekend and seems to embrace the lifestyle of a teenager in many ways. Hopefully, for the sake of the sport, he shows some adaptability and a willingness to listen to other people. Maybe the arrogance and brashness is just affect.
I think having different shows with different images and styles might work. Spike could continue with the Xtreme UFC approach, while a show on another station could appeal to a broader audience.
Also, will the IFL continue until they run out of money at the end of the year or will they see the writing on the wall and get out with whatever money they have left? what would be the advantage to continuing when clearly, hope is lost?
Rollo, that’s a really good point. It would be interesting to see a UFC product on NBC that is produced in a similar fashion to their NFL or NHL product.
“You wanna know why no one has heard of Cintron? Because HBO and other older boxing promotions pull BS PPVs and stagnate the talent pool to absurd levels. ”
No, no one has heard of Cintron because he got mollywhopped and quit like a bitch in the biggest fight of his career, and is only a world champion because Baldomir didn’t pay some sanctioning fees.
He opened his mouth about negotiating with HBO because he knew it would get credibility for his product. The fact that Jim Lampley spent time knocking MMA on the De La Hoya/Mayweather broadcast indicated what kind of effect the UFC/HBO media reports have had on the boxing community.
So, to say that Dana hasn’t benefitted from opening his mouth about a proposed HBO deal would be incorrect. He has talked about the HBO negotiations repeatedly and even admitted in one media interview that while he was cocky in saying a deal would get done, he was confident a measure would happen.
Look – I praised Dana last year when the UFC boom occurred and ripped on PRIDE when that company went to shambles. I was labeled every name under the book for doing so. Dana’s the only major game in town right now, so of course whatever he says that doesn’t come through will be more heavily scrutinized. Why shouldn’t it?
All I really wanted to say was this Zach (and this may come off wrong because I am super bombed right now from the bar), there is nothing wrong with Dana opening his mouth on a HBO deal being in the works. It is his job to give his two-bits on a deal like this, and now that the major proponent for having mma on HBO has been ousted because he could not keep his hand of a woman (and he deserved his punishment too), Dana has the right to see that a deal might not happen because of unforeseen events.
Look, I am not a huge Dana fan, never have been and his comment “Who is Shogun” reaffirmed that. But to go after him because of the PRIDE and HBO dealings is absurd. He only stated what he thought on these matters, nothing more. What is wrong with that?
And secondly, I may have been a dick about your radio show (I am a aspiring writer so I know how criticism is sometimes hard to swallow), but that is how I truly feel. It lacks on bringing to the forefront the talents of each fighter and how said fights will go down. It always has, and unless changes are done, always will. Not saying you suck and I hate you (I bookmark this website and enjoy reading it every day), but that is just how I feel about the radio show, that is all.
Now how about that IFL rap video? Dopest film ever!!!!
Secondly, Jordan, how do you know so much about this world. I thought the guys at Sherdog were kidding when they called you a walking encylopedia, but now I see how that statement carries a lot of weight.
If we have a fighter on who wants to talk fight strategy, I’d be more than happy to have them do so. I think on the whole, our show has a different feel than others because of the backgrounds we come from. Jeff as the grappler and former agent (plus current lawyer), me as the age-old pro-wrestling and MMA writer, and Erin bringing the casual fan perspective and humor to the mix. I know it’s not a show for everyone, so we’re not going to try be something we aren’t.
Cintron also was the “W” that led Antonio Margarito to start claiming “I’m the most ducked man in Boxing!!111” to the media ad nauseam.