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UFC 61 – where’s the buzz?
By Zach Arnold | July 5, 2006
By Zach Arnold
It’s Wednesday, and we’re only a few days away from the UFC 61 event in Las Vegas with Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock as the headliner. MMA HQ has predictions, but the bigger question on my mind is whether or not there is serious mainstream buzz for this upcoming show? There seems to be more interest in Dana White in the mainstream media these days than there is for this specific show.
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 11 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
There are stories about Dana White because the UFC is more worried about promoting itself than it is about promoting its fighters. It’s a reflection of the UFC’s “pro-wrestling,” brand centric philosophy.
The UFC has lost some of it’s buzz ever since the “media ban”. We used to get multiple weigh-in videos from the MMA news sites, plus all the write ups on the fighters they would offer, and pre-fight hype articles. But not now, and the UFC is to blame. The UFC is my favorite organization, and ever since the ban they have left me hanging a bit in the “build up” department. The edited weigh-in vids they offer on their site suck, and the pre-fight fighter interviews all take place in the same spot and feel scripted… like the fighters can’t really say everything the would like too. In their effort to control the media and increase traffic to their site, they have lost alot of the hype.
There is no such thing as “mainstream” MMA coverage unless its politicos talking about “human cock-fighting” on one of the 24 hour news networks OR a newspaper writer getting a special interest story out of the way by interviewing a local fighter. “Mainstream” is a gigantic myth. Boxing isn’t even mainstream and it’s on bigger channels/networks.
This Saturday night, I’m watching 154-pound champ Roman Karmazin vs. former welterweight champ Cory Spinks on Showtime boxing. This is NOT – repeat – NOT a rematch.
I think UFC is oversaturating the market and that’s the reason you don’t see a mass media buildup. When UFC ran 6 shows a year with every other one of them having a big main event you did see media coverage. UFC fighters were on FOX Sports, FOX & Friends on FOX News Channel, the Donnie Duetch show, Carson Daly and various local news outlets. You can get novelty or big main event coverage with that kind of setup. They’re not really new or fresh anymore. It’s the same with boxing. When Floyd Mayweather fights Oscar next spring you’ll see them on every TV show. Karmazin v Spinks might be the best fight this weekend and you don’t see them getting any press.
Lack of mainstream coverage? Hmmm…what?
Yesterday I heard atleast 15 radio spots on 3 different radio stations (Chicago, South Bend & Detroit) promoting the event. On TV, I saw the PPV commercial SEVERAL Times on MULTIPLE channels, including a LOCAL channel not connected with my dish (I was at work when I seen that commercial…we don’t have cable here).
A good example would be…a year ago I NEVER heard a radio spot promoting a PPV event. One year later, I’m hearing like 15 a day.
There is more “mainstream” media than just print. Keep in mind the other forms of media out there. I assume they didn’t just run commercials on South Bend, Chicago & Detroit radio. I’m going to assume that every major market has been running these ads all week.
One final example, two sports talk show hosts dedicated a half hour to the upcoming ufc and the sports show was NOT a fight related show. They normally talk baseball.
Jason,
I don’t think most of us count paid television and radio commercials as mainstream media coverage.
The talk show, on the other hand, would count.
[…] Is it me or is the buzz not as great for this weekend’s UFC as usual? I dont hear or see much of buzz in the fan forums about this event. Maybe we’re getting saturated…UFC will have to be careful with that. Well it looks like its not me after all…I just saw Zach posting about this after I wrote this entry. […]
Mr.Roadblock,
I just wanted to point out that Karmazin V. Spinks will be horrible because all Cory Spinks fights are horrible.
I know you weren’t really speaking to the quality of that fight but (THE?) Eddie Goldman was, I hope, just using it to point out that no one should be interested in watching Ortiz/Shamrock 2 when there are fresh match-ups to be made (although no one should be interested in Cory Spinks either.)
In the Boxing community people will care about this “weekend’s” ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights, Telefutura’s Solo Boxeo, and the Showtime undercard (televised or not). The Spinks fight can rot in hell. 🙂
The UFC card is hard to get worked up over when there are only three fights I’m interested in, with two I wouldn’t mind watching. That’s not something worth discussing OR paying a PPV price for. I’m guessing other people feel the same way.
I don’t have a real buzz for this event because I don’t really care who wins any of the fights. Yeah, I’m sure some of them will be good but none of the Undercards particularly mean anything (i.e. none of them set up a definitive #1 contender spot or whatever) and in the main events, I don’t really care who wins either, especially between Tito and Ken. It’s the same as Hughes vs Gracie – one is clearly the better fighter and always will be, so if the other managed to fluke a win, that’s all it is – a total fluke!
To be honest, although I agree somewhat that there has been a lack of buzz lately, that’s not because of anything the UFC is doing media-wise, it’s just because there haven’t been any real super-fights – and I can’t really see there being one for a good while either… I mean, the only one I can think of that they could do now would be Franklin vs Liddell and I don’t think the UFC have the desire to do that any time soon.
Mind you, I imagine some of the buzz will be back for GSP vs Hughes – I am looking forward to that bad boy.
[…] So I wrote a post a few days ago asking where the buzz was for the UFC 61 show. To be fair, here’s the mainstream coverage that the show is getting: […]