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Monday madness: Mark Cuban wants Fedor
By Zach Arnold | September 3, 2007
Your top headline of the day – Mark Cuban wants to do business with Fedor. I don’t know whether to be excited or scared about this. I’m more worried about Cuban in as far as doing business in the fight industry, especially with some of the characters we’ve seen on display from the world of PRIDE.
Fighter’s Only Magazine is reporting that James Thompson is joining Xtreme Couture.
Mike Swick has been pulled off of UFC’s 9/19 UFN card. He was originally scheduled to face Jonathan Goulet in what would have been a pretty entertaining fight. Instead, Goulet is likely to face Dustin Hazelett on that 9/19 show.
Sergey Kharitonov’s participation on the HERO’s 9/17 Yokohama Arena card was officially announced today. Plus, K-1’s benevolent matchmaker Sadaharu Tanigawa has decided to give Yoshihiro Akiyama a chance to return to action at the same Yokohama event. We’ll see if it happens.
Dave Meltzer on changes coming to WWE’s drug policy:
The wrestlers were told last night of new changes in the Wellness program. Marijuana will now be tested for, and believe me, that will not go down well. There will be no suspensions, but there are $1,000 fines for positives. They’ve also added more drugs, most notably anti-estrogen drugs, to the banned substances.
Since his name was listed in various media reports (based from ESPN information) in relation to WWE’s new drug scandal, I was curious what the public response would be by Shoichi Funaki regarding the steroid & growth hormone allegations. His latest posts? Talking about Filet ‘o Fish at McDonalds and Pumpkin Slice is back at Starbucks.
411 Mania is looking for new MMA writers. Someone smart help them out.
A new edition of Inside the Cage radio with Sam Caplan, Matt Cava, and Luke Thomas previewing UFC 75. The event is only a week away.
Your lame MMA/dogfighting joke of the day:
Manhattan hotel magnate Leona Helmsley died last week and the colorful woman’s will was made public Wednesday. She left $12 million to her pet Maltese dog. The dog is already under investigation for bankrolling Ultimate Fighting matches.
There’s a report that supposedly a big MMA event will take place in Minneapolis at the Target Center.
More troubles for MMA promoters in the UK scene. BBC News has more details on the situation. Wasn’t UFC just in Belfast this past June? Huh.
411 Mania on Art of War’s title belt:
I also have to mention that the IFA title looks like something made for a backyard wrestling federation, that was ghetto my friends, get a real title belt. Gladiator has better titles than you.
Onto today’s headlines.
- UFC Junkie: An interview with Houston Alexander
- UFC HP: Michael Bisping – England expects
- UFC Mania: Ultimate Fighter 6 preview – let the drama begin (video)
- MMA on Tap: Evan Tanner vs. Dean Lister proposed for UFC 79
- Irish Whip Fighting: An interview with Elvis Sinosic
- Sprawl ‘n Brawl: Don King says “Ultimate fighting is barbarianism”
- The Fightworks Podcast: Stephan Kesting interview
- The Rochester News-Bulletin (MN): Three belts on the line at Battle at the Barn 21 at Graham Arena in Minnesota
- The Rochester News-Bulletin (MN): A visit with Ken Calonego
- The London Free Press (Canada): London’s Dustin Kiefer gives up shotput for MMA
- The Houston Chronicle: UFC eyes Dallas for Texas return (but The San Antonio Express-News claims that their town is a target for UFC in ’08)
- The Dayton Daily News (OH): Seven weeks of TV bliss for the MMA fan
- The Khaleej Times (UAE): Boost for BJJ in Abu Dhabi
- The Associated Press: California Golden Bears coach Jeff Tedford uses MMA videos for team inspiration
- MMA Weekly: Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone rides high into WEC debut
- WEC HP: A battle-tested Chase Beebe defends his crown Wednesday
Topics: HERO's, Japan, K-1, Media, MMA, Pro-Wrestling, UFC, UK, WEC, WWE, Zach Arnold | 37 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
“More troubles for MMA promoters in the UK scene.”
Amazing, the local council pull the plug on an event in Belfast less than a mile away from the Odyssey Arena where UFC 72 took place.
Hywel – do you have an RSS news feed for your web site?
Cuban thinks he’s latching on to some hot new commodity. I eagerly await the day his operations starts bleeding money.
I believe, but am not certain, that Cuban is relying heavily upon Guy Mezger for a lot of MMA-related advice, including which fighters to sign. Mezger is definitely involved with Cuban’s new endeavor.
What’s wrong with Cuban? The guy understand sport, media, business and how to put the 3 together better than 90% of people involve in the sport right now.
He has a particular personality? Big deal..
Cuban is one of the few who could shake up the UFC. The UFC is riding a wave of success but they are at the crest right now and have nowhere to go but down. Since the death of Pride I’ve lost my passion for watching the sport, I doubt I’m alone. Not because of the athletes but because the sport lost its underground hardcore appeal for me. The UFC has turned MMA into boxing. Promoters like Dana white think that HE is important, showing little respect for the fighters that make this sport exciting. MMA is a real sport based in martial arts, not a fake entertainment show. Dana runs the UFC with no class, integrity, humility and honor. He is alienating his main fan base and slowly eroding the foundation the MMA is based on, martial arts.
So the question is why don’t I watch MMA anymore, I love the sport. The answer is i have class, integrity, humility, honor and a remote control. MMA has run is course, its time for a retraction. TUF ratings will be lower than ever this season and pay per view buy rates will sink. We have turned the channel.
Thanks zach for your work, sorry i don’t come by anymore, UFC is losing me fast.
I dont think Cuban is dumb, he ten times the brain of Zuffa. He knows how to treat people and athletes and has common sense. He is twenty moves ahead of Dana already.
Akiyama’s Back!! Lets all Rejoice.
I am not implying that Mark Cuban is dumb — far, far from it. However, the fight industry is a whole different animal where a lot of conventional business rules do not apply.
I don’t question Mark’s business savvy as a person one bit, but I do question the character and savvy of several people in this business.
PRIDE was always entertainment-first, sport second. Which is probably the right attitude to take. They understood that you had to present a product that was credible to both the hardcores and the masses watching on free-to-air TV at home. There’s little comparison between the experience of going to a UFC show and the experience of attending a PRIDE event when the company existed, and a lot of it is by design. UFC is making money doing their thing with their own style and PRIDE made money doing its thing with its own style. Oil and water as far as the type of products they presented.
Zach,
Oil and water? I disagree about pride being more entertainment based than the UFC? I’m only speaking about TV not live. Pride seems to have a lot more fights, which is why I watch MMA. One fight after the next. UFC is one long commercial, with a few fights mixed in. I just don’t remember long breaks with movie trailers being aired.
Akiyama’s not officially back. Softbank as sponsors are still having doubts about his return, and as such, Tanigawa has said his return is a “delicate” situation. GBR have reported additional comments that Tanigawa said it was “50-50”.
Also, Berdych’s performance here against Roddick is disgusting.
PRIDE had their PPV product (which was fight to fight to fight) with an intermission while the free-to-air shows featured maybe 4 fights. They were entertainment-first and always tried to put on a larger-than-life show, which was the appeal in Japan.
Doesn’t Mark Cuban own the TV station HDnet? They used to have the old WECs live in HD.
“Doesn’t Mark Cuban own the TV station HDnet? They used to have the old WECs live in HD.”
I’m just tired of Dana White constantly putting down fighters, calling them worthless, insulting their management, insulting the promotions they came up in, just so he can save a few dollars on the contract at the end of the day.
I have no problem with Cuban increasing his presence in the sport, mainly beacause I like promoters who treat the fighters like athletes and real people, rather than like checkers on a board.
Frankly, I don’t think the UFC is building a sustainable brand- their model looks more it is based on hype and a “what’s hot” approach to the public market, and that means oversaturation and an eventual recession of the brand- and since this is a monopoly, the sport itself. For that reason, I strongly support someone entering the game who knows how to create interest in a sport event after event, season after a season- with the long term in mind.
Did somebody really just post on on FO with the handle “Dru Down”? This is the best day in the history of your website, Zach.
Here’s a thouht: kill the WEC name and rebrand the org as PRIDE 😀 (with the ring, and the screaming announcer lady!!!!!)
Dru Down was a 90’s west coast rapper. Of course if he came out now he’d probably be named LIL’ Dru. God I feel old.
Dru Down the poster, I have to disagree. I think UFC is building a sustainable brand. As for “Loose Cannon” Dana White and his interviews, that’s another matter..
I love UFC. But I feel they need top competitive promotions to bring out the best in them. And not only that, there’s more great fights for us, the fans, to watch. I welcome Mark Cuban’s entry into MMA.
If I would’ve known Art of War was on PPV I would’ve ordered it. Disappointed to see Monson lose, he’s one of my favorites.
On the “what does the rest of the world associate MMA with” front: Norwegian cable sports channel SportN began airing K-1 tapes this summer, an have now apparently made it a permanent feature on their “Macho Monday” schedule. Dynamite USA airing right now(yeah, I know, but still), and like Eurosport they are airing all three K-1 brand. SportN and Eurosport are the two sports channels available on regular cable here, and K-1 is all over the place with no competition.
On the “boxing vs. MMA” front: Commentator is an experienced boxing announcer dude who came in with no clue, but it’s actually getting to be a bit charming as some excitement shines through and he picks up a term here and a term there, albeit mostly home-made ones. With that in mind I can live with him not knowing who Royce Gracie is. It’s all about the attitude.
Even very successful and smart people can fail in certain industries. It happens all the time with big corporations. MMA companies are basically impossible to run. The capital needed is very big. However, it takes years to even get a return on the profits, with the likelihood of only debt and no return.
Fedor Emelianenko has no appeal in the US Market. He can be called the greatest Heavyweight ever, but nobody will care unless he is in the UFC. And to get beyond that brand loyalty is going to be near impossible, even for a guy like Mark Cuban.
************
I find it interesting and odd the topic selection that Josh Gross and Sherdog.com have. As always, they have their play-by-play’s, fighter interviews, international segments, and their radio shows. But they don’t have a lot of articles on average.
They completely ignored the fall of Pride until a few weeks before it was announced. They ripped into Dana White about steroids, yet never posted an article about UFC 74 being steroid free. They are now covering the Fedor Emelianenko story, yet not getting any of the juicy information like Dave Meltzer is about Fedor turning down opponents and trying to avoid other fighters…..
One who knew Gross’s & Sherwood’s anger for Dana White…. Wouldn’t be shocked in selective process they have used in determining which articles to run.
I can’t wait to see if Akiyama can pull shit out his ass without grease and if Cuban can hook up with Bodog they may do some big shows and gain more market share, lets hope they go public 😉
(I got this from a thread at deathvalleydriver’s MMA section. The poster says this news comes from somene calling themselves bobsappfan):
It’s true, Fedor has signed a UFC contract. He will be making 1.8 million per fight and is locked in for 4 fights at this point. He is being allowed to compete in sambo competitions, but the Russian co-promotion with UFC is not happening. Fedor’s management was upset about that, but Fedor himself insisted on the contract anyway because he wanted to fight where they had the biggest concentration of the best of MMA HW’s.
I am not even going to bother posting this to Sherdog, I was flamed way too much last time I broke news and didn’t appreciate it. I’m sure this will make it there soon though. The official announcement will be made right before the main event of UFC 75.
If it is the bobsappfan from the UG, then it might be legit. i haven’t posted over there in a long time, and my memory is shaky, but i thought he was fairly credible.
I guess we will find out in time.
To us 20,000 to 30,000 hardcore fans, this is a big deal. Brock Lesnar being signed is a bigger deal to the few million casual fans they have. And I bet we will see Lesnar with the UFC at some point….
The only thing i hope is that Fedor doesn’t have 100% control over his opponents. i want to see him fight Sylvia after all of this.
Dru Down was a fucking king.
Dru Down was the pimp of the year…no fear
[…] Fight Opinion says he doesn’t know whether to be excited or scared. […]
From what he said in the article, it looks like Cuban’s game plan looks pretty good so far. Establishing a Friday Night Fights thing and working with other promotions before he starts his own (if he even does), so he has lots of contacts and a solid base of people who go to his channel for MMA that will be there when it debuts.
Anyway, while I think MMA is about more than just fighting and that the entertainment aspect is important as well (You can watch a fight a most bars on a Friday night that doesn’t you would pay to watch the event even if the guys have some skill) I don’t think the oil and water analogy is apt. In my experience, Pride was analagous to a rock concert while the UFC is more analagous to a Monster truck show.
Pride had exceptionally high production values (like a rock concert) and most of the people who attend their show were devoted to the product and understood it (not unlike fans of a band who know all of the lyrics to a song) but because of the production values even those who didn’t know what was going on at the beginning could be entertained and sucked in pretty easily. Pride’s hype videos are so much better than anything the UFC has ever done. Considering how much money the UFC spent on buying Pride (for apparently nothing) you’d think they would at least snatch up their video production team.
Anyway, with monster truck shows (at least the last time I went to one several years ago) all of the production is the monster trucks—which is the approach the UFC seems to take all of the entertainment is in the fights. They put forth some of, if not the least inspiring promo packages in all of sports and that’s when they don’t simply rely on the shadowboxing in the mist crap that looks like it was made by a Community College film studies dropout. If I weren’t yelling at Goldberg for pimping Mickey’s Malt liquor for the 11th time that night, I think I might fall asleep before they even put the fight on. And of course, while there are devoted UFC fans that actually know what a gogoplata is most of the people at their events tend to be drunk and there to see some destruction/violence.
And now that I think about it, considering the UFC is setting records in ppv buys, has a huge tv deal with Spike TV and is essentially selling infomercials for movies on their ppv’s, someone really ought to do some investigating about where the money in the UFC is going. The extra revenues aren’t going to the fighters and it sure as hell isn’t going to an increase in production values on their shows, so maybe 45 hurdle should call his buddy Josh Gross and see if he can do an expose instead of just focusing on ppv coverage and steroid scandals.
The biggest problem about Mark Cuban’s goals is that his channel is only in 6 million homes. Which means the number of viewers will likely be under 100,000…. Just like ShoXC events…..
As for money…. If you actually calculate the paydays and estimate the PPV Extra’s for Ortiz, Couture, Liddell, Jackson, and others…. Zuffa is going to be paying out in excess of $20 Million this year to fighters. That is a lot of money. Paydays don’t increase overnight. But that have done a lot since the UFC has become popular. If I am Zuffa, I am letting it happen slowly…. Because if the UFC is a fad, you don’t want to be stuck with all of these huge contracts and no way to pay the athletes…..
Cuban is also producing quite a few movies in his attempt to consolidate some of the new and growing media upstarts.
Two of the big growth markets currently are political critique and mma fighting, both of which have captured the imagination (or lack of in the case of the latter) of millions if not billions of people around the world.
Here’s a couple of his companies upcoming projects…
http://www.reuters.com/article/reviewsNews/idUSN0228523020070902?pageNumber=3
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914809/
The one thing in common with many of the projects produced by Cubans companies is controversy.
“Zuffa is going to be paying out in excess of $20 Million this year to fighters. That is a lot of money.”
They grossed about $210 million last year in ppv buys……the cable company gets half so that leaves a little over $100 million. That means player/fighter payroll is about 20%. No other Major league sport in the US could get away with giving such a pittance. They could double the amount they give to $40 million and they would still be below industry standards for the US’s major league sports. The NBA cap is around 51%, the NFL and MLB are in the same ballpark. Maybe the reason UFC isn’t treated like a major league sport is because it doesn’t act like one….. it is treated on par with boxing, a sport awash in stories of it’s fighters/players getting the shaft. Given a little time we will hear the same stories in relation to mma, but i don’t think you will really care, seeing that you seem to support some monolithic corporation as opposed to the guys getting their heads caved in and their limbs broken.
“the cable company gets half so that leaves a little over $100 million.”
Yea, I’m sure the government didn’t want any of the money they made last year. Let’s leave the finances to the experts guys.
If the IFL and Pro Elite have done nothing else… it has shown us how much it costs to run an MMA company. And with 40+ employees and many more expenses….. I think it is a safe bet that Zuffa isn’t rolling in the dough as much as some people think. I’m not crying poverty for Zuffa, but people’s ideas of what it costs to a run a company is so out of wack compared to reality. In reality, fighter purses are only one of many expenses for Zuffa.
Either way… When a fighter proves himself, he is well compensated by Zuffa. But they make themselves prove it first.
“I think it is a safe bet that Zuffa isn’t rolling in the dough as much as some people think. ”
LOL
People laughed at Zuffa because they weren’t signing Bustamante. They offered him a contract, realized they couldn’t afford it, took it off the table, and offered him less. People thought they were just being cheap.
The good thing about MMA fans is that they don’t change much.
LOL
Things are getting out of hand. The UFC needs to sign Sokodjou, sign Lesnar and pit him against Fedor and then maybe, JUST MAYBE the Japanese would have SOME faith in the UFC brand and if Dana could splurge on a Japanese crew running Japanese shows, they could revamp the brand. The Japanese are hardcore consumers and I am sure if he wanted to he could get it back, but hes a fucking Boston pussy that talks like he is the shit but wouldn’t throw hands with Tito “Little-Head” Ortizzzz
Japan’s a hard market to take over right now, there’s lots of competition over there. The UFC is better off solidifying and strengthening their position in America and Europe. It’s a huge market, and it doesn’t have established orgs like K-1, Shooto, etc to compete with.
Zach, no rss feed as yet but we’re working on it – will shoot you an email when we’re up and running
– “More troubles for MMA promoters in the UK [Belfast] scene.”
Cage Wars ran a big event at King’s Hall Belfast on April 2007, and will be running another event there again this October.