« Dana White calls Fedor a “mythological creature” made up by the media | Home | Joe Rogan says you should consider Cain Velasquez or Junior dos Santos for #1 spot in Heavyweight rankings »
Paul Heyman admits that he and a group of investors considered buying out Strikeforce
By Zach Arnold | July 2, 2010
ARIEL HELWANI: “A lot of fans when they heard that you were around they’re like, wow, so, Paul isn’t involved in wrestling any more and he’s friends with Brock Lesnar. There were rumors at one time of you perhaps buying Strikeforce. Are you ever going to get into MMA? Because there’s a lot of people out who say this is the perfect guy to get into this sport.”
PAUL HEYMAN: “I don’t know. It’s… man, this is some brand here (UFC), you know, I mean the Fertittas and Dana White have built one hell of a brand. You know if I get into MMA, it ain’t going to be to compete with these guys because that’s just asking to get your ass kicked. Strikeforce was an interesting situation. At the time we had a group of people and a group of investors and a group of producers that wanted to get together and it looked like the right deal at the right time and at the last second it turned out not to be the right deal and so we are all friends. I have a lot of respect for Scott Coker. I have a lot of respect for the brand that he built and I have a lot of respect for all the growth that Strikeforce has experienced, you know, but to come up against these guys?”
ARIEL HELWANI: “No interest? I’m sure people come to you all the time, right?”
PAUL HEYMAN: “You got to be really well-financed. You got to have a long-term game plan. You got to have TOTAL network support. You know, I mean, listen, you know… if it’s interesting and if it’s there, yeah, you know. But I just… it would have to be all the pieces put together because these guys HAVE THEIR [expletive] TOGETHER. I mean, think of it this way: last year, UFC sold more PPVs domestically in the United States than the entire professional wrestling industry did on a worldwide basis. We’re just talking domestic against the pro-wrestling industry worldwide and these guys sold more PPVs domestically than wrestling worldwide. C’mon.”
I would highly encourage you to watch this interview. (This is why I didn’t transcribe the entire interview.) You will see why Heyman had such emotional control over so many people for such a long time in wrestling.
One further note — MMAFighting.com is now providing a link to buy UFC PPVs online. The way UFC has been able to embed into major media outlets through financial means is a key reason why they have been able to influence, to an extent, what is talked about and what is focused on.
(Writers who claim that fear isn’t a motivating factor about what is said versus what is not said are misleading you. I’ve had plenty of conversations on this front with many MMA writers in the past.)
It’s the same deal with UFC Live MMA Live on ESPN as well. It really is incredible to watch how Zuffa has been able to do something that other major sports organizations haven’t achieved in influencing media coverage. MLB has its own site for online content, but UFC has been able to take that business component and use it in a way to give the media that is currently covering them a financial reason to stay on good terms and not rock the boat, politically-speaking.
As Jordan Breen recently stated, UFC is playing chess as far as controlling the media while everyone else is playing checkers.
Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, UFC, Zach Arnold | 8 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I HEART PAUL HEYMAN…. The man is a genius!!
The UFC can control the media because they aren’t big enough to make a blimp on the map. If they ever get big enough, they won’t be able to control it….
Looks like Ariel was under Paul’s spell during that interview. Paul’s clever enough to be more interested in taking Vince on under the right circumstances than taking Dana on. Of course, he didn’t let that on to Ariel, who was too busy marking out, but Dave Meltzer knows the score:
http://www.cagesideseats.com/2010/6/28/1542054/paul-heyman-update-dixie-carter
Well, first off Helwani gets under anybodies spell. He’s like the Larry King of the MMA Media: people go to him because he’s a goof who just blindly accepts whatever anybody tells him without having a dialog about it (see the Dana interview where he admits tampering with the Fedor-Tapout deal and he says nothing.) He’s an idiot, as he proved on that Versus show where he had to talk about ball sports and came off just slightly more informed about it than Bryan Alvarez.
But Paul E. could have anybody under his spell. I’d bet money that he could have control of Zuffa signed over to him if he wanted. The guy is the greatest con man who ever lived. He had guys working hardcore wrestling matches for him for free for 2 years and had mind control over everybody for the entire 6 years he ran ECW. As Raven once famously said “You could walk into Paul Heyman’s office with a gun ready to kill him, then a minute later have his dick in your mouth.”
So needless to say a rube like Ariel never stood a chance at being anything but looking like a fanboy in puppylove around Paul E. Hell, I would too.
It might not be that Ariel just blindly accepted what Dana said on the issue – he may not have wanted to push Dana. Dana basically admitted it was true that he stopped the Tapout deal. He tried to spin it a positive way, but you know Tapout got the “if you do this I’ll consider you a competitor… and you know what I do to competitors” speech.
Ariel can’t go around pissing guys like Dana off or else he won’t continue to get interviews with them. A lot of guys wouldn’t ask that question in the first place. The answer we got was pretty obvious as it is, so why irk Dana by commenting on it more?
Thank goodness that we have been spared MMA guys being put through flaming tables and thumbtack death matches . . . geez the only people dumber that Paul are those who mark out for he and his so called legacy.
How much money does he owe you?
Where have you been? AOL has been serving up a UFC online PPV link next to their UFC coverage forever. Same with Yahoo. I’m sure this cozy relationship has no effect on how they cover the UFC.
“You got to have TOTAL network support”
He still hates TNN/Spike.