« UFC 96 (3/7 Columbus, Ohio) card line-up | Home | An update on our radio co-host’s surgery »
Media coverage of UFC 96 fallout
By Zach Arnold | March 8, 2009
The one major headline coming out of UFC 96 is whether or not Rampage Jackson will accept the fight against Rashad Evans on May 23rd in Las Vegas. The turnaround time would be around two months for Rampage, so it would be a quick fight to take on short-notice. However, the heat for Rampage vs. Evans seems red hot, so I don’t see how this fight doesn’t take place given what kind of business is at stake. Conversely, Machida really does deserve a title shot against Evans. Not as marketable as Rampage vs. Evans, but still a good fight and the undercard could always be bolstered as well. It’s not the end of the world if Lesnar vs. Mir takes place at UFC 100 in July. Plus, the 5/23 show will have Matt Hughes vs. Matt Serra, and Hughes was a hated man by that Columbus crowd.
Dave Meltzer reported late Saturday night that Georges St. Pierre was asked by UFC to work the 5/23 date, but GSP turned it down.
Question of the day: Does UFC need to do any damage control after selling tickets for Mir/Lesnar II last Thursday and then news breaking the next day that Mir had knee surgery and would likely postpone his fight? In other words, is criticism towards UFC warranted or were they put in a no-win situation?
Now, a look at some headlines coming out of last night’s show from Columbus:
- The Canadian Press: Nationwide Arena watches several brutal knockouts and questionable refereeing
- MMA Junkie: Rampage, Jardine, and Hamill earn $60,000USD UFC 96 bonuses
- New York Newsday: Pete Sell loses twice in same fight
- The Dayton Daily News (Ohio): Easy to see why UFC continues to thrive
- The Vallejo Times-Herald (CA): Frightening finish to Munoz’s UFC debut
- Josh Gross (SI): Rampage dominates Jardine at UFC 96
- Maui News: Kendall Grove pounds Jason Day in first round
- Michael David Smith: What was Yves Lavigne thinking? One of the most horrendous displays of refereeing I’ve ever seen
- Ben Fowlkes (SI): Rampage controls Jardine, sets stage for title shot against Rashad Evans
- The Associated Press: Rampage – “Keith is tough. I didn’t expect him to be that tough.”
- Bleacher Report: ‘UFC would do much better without Dana White running the show’
DREAM 7: On a sidenote, results from a show that drew very little attention in Japan or anywhere else. The claimed attendance for the show was 19,528. Well…
Topics: DREAM, Japan, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 29 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
“Does UFC need to do any damage control after selling tickets for Mir/Lesnar II last Thursday and then news breaking the next day that Mir had knee surgery and would likely postpone his fight?”
Depends on how much they knew and who within the organization knew it. (IMO)
Turnaround time is about 3 months. I really don’t care if Rampage excepts the fight or not. Both he and Machida deserve a title shot, so I’m happy with either option.
How come when a hardcore MMA fan gets a writing gig, they immidiately use their pulpit to tear down Dana White? It’s gotten played out, but they keep doing it. And they never nominate somebody to replace him with. Why fire the guy doing a helluva good job for somebody who might screw it all up? They never bother to consider that.
But they are hardcore MMA fans, they watch anything. They don’t care if UFC goes down in a ball of flames. They’ll watch grainy ten year old tapes of RINGS if that happens.
I happen to have some first-generation RINGS tapes, thank you very much.
But don’t worry, Google News has decided that everything from Bleacher Report must now show up on their MMA results and it’s nearly impossible to avoid their links.
In the very first Tito Ortiz interview I saw, he said he would never fight his friend the Iceman. Ha ha. Well he fought him and the second fight he had with him is the current record PPV buyrate holder.
You think Dana might have a personal interest in getting fighters to change their mind on who they won’t fight?
And we saw during the ‘Fitch won’t sign his likeness rights contract’ debacle that unwavoring prick is a role that Dana plays. He’s the ‘bad cop’ and Lorenzo is the peace keeper.
Hardcore MMA fans want Dana to lose his job for what he does, but the only way he will lose his job is if he quits doing those things.
I am not shocked that DREAM 7 got very little press in Japan. It was a WEC type of show, which I couldn’t see having a huge impact in any country these days.
The show was 6 Bantamweight and 3 Lightweight fights. And the Aoki & Kawajiri fights were booked as squashes.
Typically when I wake up the next morning after a DREAM or Sengoku card, I can find at least 50% of the fights online. So far, all I could find was the Aoki fight.
Dream has really turned into a company that concentrates on Middleweights and below. Pride at it’s best was Heavyweights and Light Heavyweights.
Judging from Dana’s reaction on Friday, I don’t think he knew anything about Mir’s knee.
Yves Lavigne should be fired for his performance in the Brown-Sell fight.
I’ve never said that about any other ref incident. I’m normally defensive of referees who are lambasted by fans, fighters, corners and promoters. Reffing is easy to bash and hard to do.
Three factors make refing such a thankless task: 1) you are making split-second decisions in real time. 2) you bear huge responsibility over someone’s health on one hand and his career on the other. 3) you are in the public eye at all times while performing your duties.
None of these factors shed light on Lavigne’s bizarre refereeing job in that fight. It wasn’t only the late stoppage, although that was certainly horrendous. It’s the fact Lavigne stopped the fight by stepping between the fighters and even physically pulling Brown away, before inexplicably asking the celebrating winner to resume punishing the hapless Sell.
I watched the fights in Vancouver at a bar full of hockey fans who were watching the game on another screen. By the end of the Hamill-Munoz all the hockey fans had switched their attention to MMA. But after the senseless beating of Pete Sell, a sense of unease hung over the bar, and people soon returned to their hockey.
[…] Update II: Neither fight is definite now. Also, GSP was reportedly asked to fight on May 23 but turned it down (via FightOpinion). […]
Yves Lavigne made one mistake and people are all over him. Get off his case. He is the best ref in the business.
I would rather see Machida get the shot. He deserves it and he has really changed his style lately. He will be a very popular, exciting and long reigning champion.
Lavigne certainly had a bad night last night and I think that most of the criticism towards him for his performance is warranted, but I think calling for him to be fired is too extreme. He is a terrific ref and I was extrememly surprised and disappointed by his performance last night. He definitely does not have a history of bad calls, and for him to be prevented from reffing future UFC’s would be a big mistake. Hopefully he learns from this so that it doesn’t happen again.
That Bleacher Report rant is so bad it is actually entertaining. Enhancing the entertainment value are the writer’s responses to comments.
So what is the story with DREAM as a promotion now? Nobody seems to care. Is K1 commited to MMA still?
Why no thread on DREAM? The show was pretty decent.
Dream hasn’t run on television here yet. The previous events were live on HDNet, but this one is on a one week tape delay.
Oddly, Sengoku is going to be live, in the middle of the week (20th) at god only knows what time.
Kind of hurts your pop in the US when you go from live television to one week delay. I’ll be interested in talking about it next Sunday probably.
What about us hardcore fans who stay up to watch the stream? 🙂
I haven’t seen anybody call Matt Hamill “classless” for hitting a man who’s head just bounced off of his own knee. Matt Hamill clearly saw that the fight was over and delivered two more shots to Munoz’s head. Now Rampage got called “classless” for the end of the Wand fight. Whats the difference?
They’d be wasting a major money maker to not do evens/jackson!
Even if they have to wait. The revenge angle, the smack talk, all the ducks are in order!
And although Lyoto is of course plenty deserving, somebody has to fight the winner.
Thats Lyotos slot and its reserved.
He’s not going anywhere, so theres nothing so immediate that a marque match like shad/jackson should be wasted.
rampage was classless because the ref was holding him back and he was still throwing in shots after
Rampage = Heat of the moment. It’s not exactly easy to turn off aggression in a second.
Hamill = Celebrating for 5 minutes after the KO. Completely classless.
45 Huddle = not one to talk about anybody else being classy or classless after he wrote, “I know he [Matt Hamill] is deaf, but he acts like he is retarded with how completely out of reality he is.”
As for whether the UFC deserves criticism for putting the Lesnar-Mir tickets on sale, it’s not like they knew that Mir was injured and decided to put the tickets on sale anyway with Lesnar vs. Mir as the advertised main event. Oh, wait a minute…
Cage Potato reported: ““Sources tell us that Mir’s camp asked the UFC not to announce the fight earlier this week since the champ had just had knee surgery that would prevent him from training other than on a treadmill or in a pool for 4-6 weeks. The UFC apparently ignored these wishes and announced the fight anyway, which they’ll probably have to scrap if they can’t convince Mir that it’s no biggie for him to be unable to train before the biggest fight of his life.”
Jonathan Snowden puts it well on Five Ounces of Pain: http://fiveouncesofpain.com/2009/03/08/snowdens-five-things-about-ufc-96-lack-of-professionalism-reigns/
“In the 1980’s and 1990’s it was a fairly common business practice for professional wrestling companies to sell tickets for shows by advertising stars who wouldn’t be on the card. Stars that they knew wouldn’t be on the card because they were injured, they were on vacation, or they weren’t with the company any more. Despite the pro wrestling overtones of UFC’s promotional strategy, despite Dana White’s bombastic public persona, despite the trash talking and backstage shenanigans, I’ve always held Zuffa to a higher standard than the WWE. Not anymore.
If Frank Mir is telling the truth, and there is no reason to believe he isn’t, Zuffa put tickets on sale for Mir-Lesnar II knowing full well that the fight wouldn’t happen at UFC 98. I understand they were put in a tough spot, but there is only one word for that kind of bait and switch: unacceptable.”
Also, kudos to some in the MMA media for finally (in the past week) writing about Zuffa’s policy of pretending that unconscious fighters have disappeared and never updating viewers on their condition or even mentioning them again.
I stand by my Hamill comment. He does act like a retard. He did the same thing on tough 3 which led to everybody hating him. He is socially retarded. I’m not even bashing. He just is.
As for the Mir situation… I love it how Ivan automatically assumes wrong doing.
1. Zuffa is getting bigger. What is told to one employee might not get passed to the next.
2. He could have told them he wasn’t ready. Try might have agreed to go on with it. Then as he practiced more realized he couldn’t do it.
Honestly, none of us know the real answer. I just gave two examples of how it might not be as bad as Ivan is trying to make it seem. But I doubt he will ever give them the benefit of the doubt.
Lastly, this is a STUPID debate on Zuffa showing hurt fighters. And I’m glad people like Ivan aren’t in charge of the sport. MMA still is not sanctioned in NY. It still is not accepted by a lot of older people… People who run TV networks or are in charge of marketing. Zuffa is doing the right thing for the current times. Perhaps 10 years from now when the sport is sanctioned in every state. But not now.
You do realize the irony of saying that anyone else is classless while also saying that someone “acts like a retard,” right?
Also, I’m not automatically assuming wrongdoing; I quoted what Cage Potato reported and what highly respected MMA book author Jonathan Snowden wrote. Did you miss the part where Snowden wrote, “If Frank Mir is telling the truth, and there is no reason to believe he isn’t, Zuffa put tickets on sale for Mir-Lesnar II knowing full well that the fight wouldn’t happen at UFC 98.”
As for Zuffa showing unconscious fighters, I was just commenting that it’s good to see more and more people in the media raising the same concerns.
My words are harsh, not classless. I think Hamill has a long enough history (as I discussed) to warrant those comments.
As for whether the UFC deserves criticism for putting the Lesnar-Mir tickets on sale, it’s not like they knew that Mir was injured and decided to put the tickets on sale anyway with Lesnar vs. Mir as the advertised main event. Oh, wait a minute…
I admit I find it funny to see the comments over on 5 Oz. complaining that Mir/Lesnar II was booked for even longer than Mir was injured, as if that’s pertinent.
Heck, Rampage isn’t even a lock to actually be at the UFC 98 fighting yet. No contract is signed. He may get evaluated and turn out to have a broken toe or something that puts him under a no-contact medical suspension for a month. I’m thinking Rashad Evans/Machida probably wouldn’t satiate the same fans that were rushing off to buy tickets for Mir/Lesnar II. Call it a hunch. My only wonder is how long the UFC can get by booking shows with such fluid main events before people stop buying tickets.
Two 2011 Predictions:
1) Matt Brown challenges for the Welterweight Title.
2) Pete Sell is the first UFC fighter to suffer permanent brain damage during a fight. This guy needs to find a new line of work before he ends up a vegetable.
45 Huddle— So if you determine that someone has a history of “acting like a retard,” then it’s not classless for you to say that they’re “acting like a retard”? I see.
No one has really answered my question. Ivan was one of the people calling Rampage classless after the Wand fight. Not one word about Hamill’s fight. What is the difference. Hamill is deaf not blind. He can tell when he has knocked someone out, so that is not an excuse.
Calling anyone a retard is indeed classless. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle, I am told.