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Media: The good, the bad, and the ugly
By Zach Arnold | July 24, 2006
By Zach Arnold
Prepare to be entertained.
The good: Nationally televised Los Angeles Times sports column J.A. Adande went to his first MMA show, the WFA event at the Forum in Los Angeles. He came away impressed.
Hard to tell which was the stranger development last week: that I had a phone conversation that began with, “Hey, it’s Rampage,” or that the former star of my 8-year-old Boys Club basketball team now puts on sporting events that feature men who punch, kick, grab and choke each other and call themselves “Mayhem” … and “Rampage.”
The good and bad: The Saskatoon Star Phoenix has an entertaining article about the struggles both boxing and pro-wrestling are facing in competition with MMA.
We have a new champion in the sports entertainment industry. Boxing is on life support. Pro wrestling is near an all-time low in popularity. That’s allowed one company to take the title from Don King and Vince McMahon. All hail mixed-martial arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. TV ratings for World Wrestling Entertainment are half of what they were in 2000. Pay-per-view buys have plummeted. Wrestlemania drew 560,000 domestic buys in April. Not bad, you say? February’s No Way Out drew 140,000 domestic buys. April’s Backlash drew 130,000. (Remember those numbers.)
Unfortunately, he spouted the Zuffa myth — even though he got the PPV numbers right!
And then, the ugly: From the Dayton Daily News.
UFC: Unforgiveable Ferocious Crudeness.
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, WFA, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I’m both ashamed and embarassed. There was a UFC article in my hometown newspaper and I didn’t know until I read it here.
Mickey Zezzo is officially a moron.
To be fair to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix article, it only gets the part about running away from regulation wrong. It gets the part about the rules right:
“[Zuffa] stressed that rules to make the sport legit had long been in place — round-by-round scoring, mandatory gloves, drug testing, no biting or headbutting”