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ESPN gives Sherdog the Ring Magazine treatment
By Zach Arnold | July 19, 2008
For many media-types and fans in the sport of boxing, the weight class rankings in Ring Magazine are considered more legitimate than the rankings from various sanctioning bodies in the sport. Whenever you see ESPN cover a boxing event, they will talk about who the Ring Magazine champion is as opposed to who is a champion representing a certain sanctioning body.
As of tonight (July 19th), ESPN has officially added an MMA category to their ‘bottom line’ channel news ticker. The news ticket tonight featured basic news lines stating that Anderson Silva defeated James Irvin at 205 pounds, and in a separate item noted that Fedor defeated Tim Sylvia to become the first WAMMA champion.
However, the bigger development in terms of ESPN’s slant on MMA coverage involves the Sherdog ranking labels. ESPN went out of its way to list both pound-for-pound and heavyweight rankings when discussing Silva, Fedor, and Sylvia. The ticker note that Fedor was ranked 1st and Sylvia ranked 4th on Sherdog’s best heavyweight rankings list.
The significance of this media angle is clear — ESPN is now giving Sherdog’s rankings list the same kind of credibility that it has given to Ring Magazine. This is a big step up for Sherdog’s overall public profile.
Strangely enough, however, ESPN did not air actual clips from either MMA event on their SportsCenter program. Considering how slow the news cycle usually is in the States during July for sports, there’s no legitimate excuse to not cover either MMA event on television. AOL Fanhouse, in contrast, got it done right.
Topics: Affliction, MMA, Media, UFC, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
So how come Fightopinion.com doesn’t have rankings?