« Have the balls to name names, Dana White. | Home | Talk Radio: How to make UFC Live, er MMA Live a better show on ESPN »
A big month of fan interest in May, but will fatigue for MMA and UFC set in for the long haul?
By Zach Arnold | June 2, 2010
I was originally going to write a post about our big month on the site, which broke all-time traffic records in the four-plus year of our existence. We’ve covered a lot of scandals and have touched upon a lot of stories over the years, but May was a magical month for us in terms of reader activity, active links on other sites, and just getting the buzz out there in general.
A heavy reason for that was due in part to the buzz surrounding the UFC 114 main event. I’ll have Jordan Breen set you up here on why he thinks Mixed Martial Arts is in it’s best period ever and afterwards, I’ll give you a taste of the reaction I’ve gotten from long-time site readers, old friends, and casual fans about their mood on Mixed Martial Arts currently.
“MMA now is more exciting than it’s ever been. I know that there’s some of kind of visceral reaction because for whatever reason people expected this wild, crazy exchanging slug-fest between Quinton Jackson and Rashad Evans despite the fact that not only was it not in Rashad Evans’ interest to fight that way, he almost never fights that way anyway. So, to have expected a toe-to-toe battle… I just can’t fathom why anyone would have anticipated such a thing. So there’s a bit of misgiving about the way that main event played out, especially in terms of the action that people seemed to expect but I don’t think there was any real deficiency with how much action’s going on in Mixed Martial Arts on the whole.
Finishing bonuses, like I said, they basically already exist and I don’t think just offering money for every fight to finish is really necessarily in the best interest at all. And we already know that there’s a bit of an issue when guys, especially mid-level guys who are supposed to be filling a role, go out and start fighting in pursuit of bonuses. Do we really want to see Chris Lytle having like tit-for-tat with Kevin Burns because he doesn’t want to box properly or doesn’t want to grapple, he just wants to go and throw haymakers? Is that really what we want?”
A lot of the reaction I got from long-time site readers, going years and years back, is that they are largely tired of watching the product and need a break. Some of my old correspondents are just coming off of big breaks and watched UFC 114 because they got interested again, only to feel burned on the quality of the main event and go back into hibernation (proverbially-speaking). I’d say about a third of the reaction I got from those who haven’t been around for a while is that they watched UFC 114 and are now trying to catch up on events over the past two months.
The saturation factor is huge, but I also think a big concern is that more and more people are looking at the product and aren’t feeling as satisfied with the quality or with the match quality staying on par with the hype being used to get people to watch fights. For someone like me, that makes my job a lot harder. There’s two ways to succeed in my role — you either keep your core group of readers active and happy or else you have to start generating new fans to replace the old ones who have gotten burnt out. Luckily for me, May proved that I was able to keep all of you interested in the site and the sport, but I fully understand that in the long-run for me to have any success I’m going to have to broaden the readership base.
For me, it’s a bittersweet feeling when I see friends I’ve made over the course of many years kind of fade away due to losing interest. After all, what good is doing this job if you don’t make relationships and friendships? This isn’t a get-rich-quick-scheme.
I fully anticipate that June will be a slow month. Summer months are usually slower, anyways, for traffic. People are out of school, on vacation, so on and so forth. However, last year, July and August (UFC 100 and UFC 101) were such huge events that it was impossible not to draw significant site traffic and we did. Those two events had given us our biggest months ever in site history for traffic. I hope and expect the same for the upcoming July 3rd bout between Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin. I’m not sure about how well the Boston event on 8/28 will do.
Going back to what Jordan remarked upon, he thinks that the current overall climate for MMA is at it’s best ever point and he also thinks that more and more fighters are learning how to market themselves and how to get more people interested. I’ll close out this post with some of his comments on one fighter in particular, Chael Sonnen.
“Chael Sonnen… If I told you two years ago Chael Sonnen was not just going to be seen kind of a consensus Top 3 Middleweight, not just be on the verge of a UFC title shot, but be someone that people were excited for. Because that’s the fascinating thing — it’s one thing to pull off some upsets and force your way into the door. Chael Sonnen has forced his way in the door but on top of that he’s done it in the way that makes people excited to see him, excited to listen to what he has to say.
“Any time he appears in some way it’s excites people drastically. And he was seen not just as a boring fighter but a kind of boring personality. You know, someone who really just kind of seemed like every other guy out of Oregon. Not to diss people from Oregon I just mean sort of in the fighter spectrum of things, they weren’t seen as the most fired up cats in the forest. I don’t know that any one would ever dream that kind of thing about Chael Sonnen at this point in time so absolutely there’s always an inherent value to marketing yourself.
“Even if you don’t even say over-the-top things, Dan Hardy was able to put up you know sort of a decent interesting war of words with Georges St. Pierre which was entirely one-sided and he wasn’t even that venomous towards Georges St. Pierre. He was just kind of, sort of snarky and smarmy about it and still people got interested. There is a value as far as I don’t want to say ingratiating yourself but definitely making people feel as though that you’re interesting, you’re someone worth seeing, even if you’re words don’t necessarily match your style of fight.
“Well, Rashad Evans is I think an even greater example. More of the vitriolic trash-talking leading up to the fight I think was done by Rashad Evans as opposed to Quinton Jackson and he was the one that tried to slow the pace of the fight down and was looking to put Quinton Jackson up against the fence and tucker him out that way. Definitely at odds with his words, fighting style nowhere near as aggressive as his candor before the fight and yet people were interested in seeing it. People had big expectations because of the kind of venom that was being spewed before hand. Absolutely, there’s always going to be a big-time inherent value in such a thing.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 10 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Lots of good fights will keep people interested. Long runs of lousy fights won’t. Liddell/Franklin does zero to affect how I feel about Lesnar’s comeback fight.
Only the casuals believed that because they don’t know any better and think “two guys who hate each other will mean all athletic competition goes out the window and they re-enact Frye-Takayama.” If the fight not delivering that turns them off to MMA, good, they’re idiots who should have ordered Ghetto Brawls 28 on pay-per-view that night instead.
But that does go for the point that hyping up “OMG I’M GOING TO MURDER THIS GUY THEN BRING HIM BACK TO LIFE, MURDER HIM AGAIN, GO TO HIS FUNERAL AND GRAPPLE WITH HIS CORPSE, THEN SEE HIM IN THE AFTERLIFE AFTER I DIE IN 50 YEARS FOR A REMATCH~!” and knowing you’re not going to deliver on anything remotely that exciting is certainly going to turn people off in the long run. Silva-Sonnen has a very slim chance of delivering on being an exciting fight. Either Silva is going to be on his bicycle for 5 rounds or Chael will lay on him for 5 rounds. But the art of selling a fight correctly is still being perfected. So you have to give some leeway for trial and error.
(1) ““OMG I’M GOING TO MURDER THIS GUY THEN BRING HIM BACK TO LIFE, MURDER HIM AGAIN, GO TO HIS FUNERAL AND GRAPPLE WITH HIS CORPSE, THEN SEE HIM IN THE AFTERLIFE AFTER I DIE IN 50 YEARS FOR A REMATCH~!””
Ok -that got a legit, out-loud at work laugh from me.
(2) “Silva-Sonnen has a very slim chance of delivering on being an exciting fight.”
THIS.
What I cannot seem to understand is that for all of the incessant “Sonnen is such an awesome ‘promo’ guy!”, “Sonnen has his smack talk down..this is so awesome”, etc. – Sonnen is not the guy to deliver an exciting fight that fans are longing for…against Silva or anyone else for that matter. Sure, he might get people hyped up (“ZOMG! he’s really pissing off Silva!”…but Silva was plenty pissed at Maia and what happened there?) – but the failure to deliver once you’ve got people frothing at the mouth for an action-packed, exciting slobberknocker isn’t really going to accomplish anything other than pissing off already pissed of fans even more!
It’s going to be up to Zuffa to reign them back in. What do the fighters care if too much hype slowly kills fan interest? They got paid and aren’t in it for the long haul, so it’s not like BJ Penn, Frank Mir and Chael Sonnen are going to be sipping martinis at a party and saying “Hey, maybe we need to stop working the idiots at home up so much because they’re going to catch on that we’re not that interesting.” So maybe the next time Zuffa puts on its finances classes for fighters they can do an acceptable promo class to teach them how to be exciting without threatening to kill their opponent and then turn the dead fighter into a zombie to be used as a sparring partner.
Sorry – that wasn’t really meant as some sort of indignation of Chael…hell, it’s pure genius on his part, because he’s making bank.
It was more of a shaking my head at the internet MMA fans falling all over themselves for how “awesome” Sonnen is, and how he’s such a breath of fresh air, and how he’s going to put Silva in his place for ripping off the fans.
Sonnen’s going to go out there and be just as boring as Silva ever was to 99% of these fans…but they’re just desperate to grab onto something.
Is Chuck Liddell vs Rich Franklin really the headline fight for the next UFC or is that a bad practical joke?
In all fairness, it was a main event that was going to have significant build up via a season of TUF to get fans interested, regardless of their relevance in the title picture at 205, until Tito pulled out.
Frankly it’s not a bad match-up in terms of name value to the casuals and is probably a fantasy match-up (again its unfortunately 3-4 years too late) that people thought would never happen when they were both the poster boys of 185 and 205 not too long ago.
It will probably give us an idea of where Franklin stands in the 205 division given the divisional purgatory he’s been in for the last 18 months.
I’m actually liking the upcoming UFC card. It was one that I had a strong loathing for a few months ago, but now that it’s here I’m interested.
Chuck looks like he’s in great shape and who knows, maybe the time off will do him good and he won’t be as susceptible to getting KTFO. The loss to Shogun doesn’t look so bad now either. Franklin is coming off a loss, but he’s still a great fighter.
Overall it’s an intriguing comeback fight for Chuck.
Lots of other interesting fights on that card too like Crocop vs Barry. Just a general solid card, without any blockbuster fights.
The fact that it was Chuck vs Tito 3 probably had a lot to do with my disinterest in the card. Really, who cared about that fight? Easy and obvious win for Liddell.
Well, Chuck has been quite a bit more chinny than in years past.
That alone would give Tito a better chance considering that Chuck would not even blink when guys like Tito/Randy would manage to hit him with a power punch.