I have tickets to 84 & the Affliction show. Should be a good couple months.

The upcoming Elite XC card looks very exciting!

*steam comes out of 45 Huddle’s ears and his face turns bright red with rage*

The booking is brilliant, IMO. They set up what should be an entertaining night of stand-up fights with a lot of KO potential.

*45 Huddle Hulk-smashes his keyboard and foams at the mouth*

Slice vs. Thompson is virtually guaranteed to end with a massive KO, which the crowd will go crazy for.

Lawler vs. Smith should be an absolute war, with both men smashing the hell out of each other, and I see the same thing for Baroni vs. Villasenor.

*45 Huddle kicks his dog in the ribs and throws a wicker chair our his apartment window*

And how can you not be entertained by Gina Corano? Whether you’re a MMA fan or not…damn.

With some potential stars, hot women fighting and a killer TV deal, Elite XC has the opportunity to actually make a run at competing with UFC.

*45 Huddle runs at his monitor full-speed, smashing his head through the glass…TKO*

ESPN2 puts Just For Men on the canvas. Same with Autozone. The promoter of the event sees only the $30,000. I’m not arguing that advertisement isn’t important to a degree, but to act as if boxing is reliant on it when its shifted its sport to premium channels with no commercials and PPV is ridiculous. The primary sources of money are live gate plus PPV buys and/or network money.

Hell, years ago, there was a growing fad of fighters advertising gambling websites on their backs! But that money goes straight to the fighters, not to the promoters of networks.

And the networks hated it to such a degree, you can’t show up on TV with the tats anymore.

Of course the perfect explanation that another mma company’s TV numbers going up is that it’s a mistake! I’m sure you were saying the same thing about mistakes and unreliability of ratings for all the TUF, UFN’s and Spike UFC cards when they pulled good ratings too.

AND – 80% are giving the fight to Sylvia?? After watching that fat slob flail around on his back like some novice ground fighter against Nog and showing his susceptibility to faster, more agile HWs with good greco/clinch skills against Randy – I’m pretty sure you’ve got that number backwards.

1. Aleksander Emelianenko vs. Paul Buentello. This actually is a 50/50 fight, yet it won’t be on the PPV. They are giving it away for free on FSN.

2. Renato Sobral vs. Mike Whitehead – Whitehead has always looked unimpressive against top talent. Should be a win for Babalu.

3. Matt Lindland vs. Fabio Negao – Should be an easy win for Lindland.

4. Josh Barnett vs. Pedro Rizzo 2 – Should be an easy win for Barnett.

5. Rothwell vs. ??? – If it is Arlovski, then this is the best fight on the PPV. If not, then it could be a dud of a fight potentially.

6. Tim Sylvia vs. Fedor Emelianenko – I think like 80% of the hardcore fans are picking Sylvia.

Once again, I’m buying this card just for the talent. But my expectation is:

1) Bad PPV Production
2) One Sided Fights
3) Potentially Boring Heavyweight Action, as it typically is.

As for that Strikeforce number, something is likely wrong in the calculation. It just makes no sense. Nelson isn’t exactly using data from each household, and I always thought the ratings were BS once 200 channels became a norm.

Oh, and Zach Arnold (and everyone else) did you read the news on NBC’s Strikeforce show/infomercial getting better Nielson ratings than Craig Ferguson’s and Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk shows? Crazy huh? I guess the actual viewership went from about 319,000 viewers to 949,000. That is a HUGE jump. I still haven’t seen the show yet. And to think TNA can’t get their viewership to move… Hell, TNA’s viewership has gone DOWN since Samoa Joe became TNA heavyweight champ. So I guess Kurt Angle IS the main draw in TNA after all…