Comments on: ESPN personalities rip into Elite XC

By: D. Capitated

D. Capitated — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:24:01 +0000

Running long on Cable television and running long on Network television are two different things. Network has affiliates who have the option of going to the News when EliteXC’s time is up which means lots and lots of smaller markets might have missed the main event if their local station decided to go to the News.

And which ones did that? Because there hasn’t been a single documented case of any particular affiliate deciding to buck a nationally televised event in the middle of it for local news coverage. You have heard of the Heidi Game, right?

By: natureboy

natureboy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:10:28 +0000

By: D. Capitated

D. Capitated — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:28:37 +0000

You know, the NFL is really unprofessional too. I mean, like every Sunday they run over. 3.5 hours for 60 minutes of football? That’s ridiculous.

The NHL had three overtimes last night. Three! Clearly, long dramatic games are exactly what lead to hockey’s apparent demise as a major sport in the United States.

By: IceMuncher

IceMuncher — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:08:41 +0000

WEC always runs over in their shows. They know it’ll be between 2 and 3 hours, but they’re not sure when exactly due to the nature of the fights (will the title fight go 5 rounds or 1?). So they preempt another show and now they don’t have to worry about filling in dead air time if the fights end too quickly. They can just changeover to a different show once they’re done.

CBS might do the same thing, which is why I haven’t criticized them for going 45 minutes over the time limit.

By: Leslie

Leslie — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:02:58 +0000

You know, the NFL is really unprofessional too. I mean, like every Sunday they run over. 3.5 hours for 60 minutes of football? That’s ridiculous.

Do people seriously care about how much a highly rated show ran over? WEC didn’t have to explain MMA to millions of non-savvy viewers, and probably didn’t have near the paid commercial spots. They don’t get points for being on Versus.

By: natureboy

natureboy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:56:02 +0000

Someone check my math on this but one non-title fight with round breaks, intros, post fight interview(s) = about 25-30 minutes (assuming it goes the distance). So 4 non-title fights x 25 mins (we’re use the smaller) = 1 hr 40 mins. Add another 35 for a possible 5 round title fight with breaks, intros & post fight interviews and that’s about 2 hrs 15 mins. Let’s say another 15 minutes for the Opening Dialogue with the “Intro to MMA” video and we’re at 2:30… Oh yeah, did I mention the commercials? For a two-hour show you’ve got about 30-35 of 120 minutes of programming for commercials. That would put the show at 3 HOURS ON PAPER! Looks like they were expecting some early knock outs all around to get the show off the air on time.

By: David

David — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:39:41 +0000

To quote another commenter, “All media personalities have an army of writers. One of his writers is obviously a hardcore MMA fan. =)”

He is just saying what his writers want him to write. In order to bring corporate sponsorship to MMA these promoters NEED TO promote hardcore that is why Dana and Gary seem like such mobsters, they hustle hard to get the sport to the mainstream and then critics complain about small things. Gary Shaw said in the post-fight that he will NOT have Kimbo on every CBS show (hopefully he keeps his word, even though I love the character of Kimbo, exposed and all.)!.

By: The Gaijin

The Gaijin — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:54:19 +0000

Other than running fights that they already ran on the internet (not sure if that meant exclusive rights to ProElite.com streams) what would you have them do?

It’s not pro wrestling where they can “book” fight times down to the exact minute – the whole real fights thing kinda hinders them there.

By: Michaelthebox

Michaelthebox — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:31:16 +0000

For comparison: WEC ran long too, something like half an hour long. But they showed a total of 60 minutes of fighting, rounding to the minute. On the other hand, EliteXC ran about 45 minutes long, while showing only 32 minutes worth of fighting.

In total, about 40% of WEC’s show was fight action. Meanwhile, only a meager 19 1/2% of EliteXC’s show was action.

Pathetic.

By: Leslie

Leslie — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:16:42 +0000

Rome is off the reservation on this one, because he used to say the same exact thing about UFC whenever the payouts were announced. He said that MMA would not be considered a sport until you stop having guys making $40K vs guys making airfare. That still hasn’t changed yet he’s ripping into EXC in particular for the same thing?

Sorry Rome, love you, but you bandwagoned on UFC when you should have been loooking at the whole sport. Moreover, someone needs to explain to me how it would be possible for someone like Kimbo to fight a can? If Thompson was actually in shape Kimbo would just be waking up from a vicious ground and pound, but that doesn’t change the fact he had much more experience and ground skills.