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Monday media review
By Zach Arnold | February 12, 2007
Enjoy violence w/ some Japanese commentary.
A new poll question has been added to the right side of the page. Results from our last site poll:
Who should buy PRIDE?
- UFC (Zuffa LLC) – 43%
- No one should – 34%
- Ed Fishman – 24%
Onto today’s headlines.
- The Fightworks Podcast: Interviews with Xande Ribeiro, Royler Gracie, and Kid Peligro
- The Valley Vanguard (Michigan): Regulation of MMA events needed (this is a great article)
- The Shreveport Times: Women fighters make mark in MMA (live report from Elite XC show claiming the event drew 4,000 fans)
- The Boston Herald: Rising star on a ‘Rampage’ (a must-read story)
- The Houston Chronicle: Nathan Marquardt fights outside spotlight
- UFC Junkie: Interview with Keith Jardine
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 24 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
So what are we looking at for UFC 71 now? Chuck is definitely fighting but will it be against Keith Jardine or Rampage. Rampage said he wanted more fights before the title shot so I’m thinking Jardine who seems to be keen from that interview. Plus it will give more build up time for the fight.
Zach, you should post a link to Eddie Goldman’s latest podcast; he’s at it again. After his recent tirade against the UFC, he went a little soft on Elite and Frank Shamrock in particular.
Basically, many of Eddie’s negative points against the UFC recently were epitomized with Shamrock’s performance and post fight comments. Frank’s poor performance could easily be placed alongside Eddie’s remarks concerning the UFC’s “small time dot com college football bowl” sentiments; Frank having zero takedown defense and nearly zero ground defense. Renzo, the smaller, older fighter was controlling the entire match with no problems, it even appeared to be a huge mismatch to those who didn’t know either fighter.
His much maligned ‘encouraging antisocial behavior’ remarks completely apply to Frank’s flagrant fouls and poor, negative and unsportsmanlike remarks towards Renzo; accusing a tough as nails, ‘old school’ legend like Renzo of quitting is disgraceful and an embarrassment to Frank’s long gone legacy. The same could be said for utilizing Charles ‘Krazy Horse’ Bennett, whose thug-like mentality certainly falls into the ‘antisocial behavior’ department.
Frank also commented on ‘coming to fight’ and not wanting to be held down, another cornerstone of Eddie’s complaints against the UFC – the desire to eliminate and/or diminish ground fighting and technique. But Eddie brushed off Frank’s comments as ‘just a fake pro wrestling angle’ and nothing more. How embarrassing for Frank to react this way after such a storied and rewarding past he had; equally embarassing is to see Eddie fold on criticizing the completely disgusting actions of Shamrock on this otherwise great night of fights.
The pro wrestling angle was not only used several times but Goldberg was an official paid EliteXC employee here. While Eddie discussed Mauro’s comments on Goldberg’s past, he continued to defend and give his blessing to Goldberg as a commentator. How imbrazenly two-faced is this for Goldman – UFC shows Hulk Hogan for 10 seconds and he gets inflamed to the point of a near heart attack, but Elite/Showtime hire Goldberg and he’s quite positive with this. (Note: I personally don’t have the same issues with this as Eddie does, I just wish to point the huge indescrepancy in his comments.) In other words, its OK for Showtime, but not for the UFC.
I respect Eddie Goldman a great deal, he is a legend and has covered the sport for many years but his agenda against the UFC has become his downfall. He desires so badly to see any other promotion succeed and become a threat to the UFC, that he loses his edge as a quality journalist. In my opinion, Frank Shamrock’s display of unsportsmanlike conduct and disgracing Renzo after being disqualified for illegal strikes, that have been illegal for several years, is one of the most infuriating things I’ve witnessed in recent years within MMA. I have no desire to see this guy fight again. He obviously in not anywhere near the level of talent he once was, his ego is so huge it’s many times that of his brother Ken (maybe near Rickson Gracie level) and his poor attitude after being controlled by someone he was ‘supposed’ to walk through all add up to one hugely disgraceful athlete.
Kudos to Renzo Gracie for fighting his fight, controlling the style an pace of the action and getting the win.
Take a cue from Mark Kerr, stop while you can.
The link to Eddie’s show is on the Elite XC thread in the “Fallout” links section.
He really ripped into Mauro Ranallo big time. That was red meat territory there.
I wrote the Vanguard article.
Cool.
1. I question if the Elite XC event actually sold 4,000 tickets.
2. I’m afraid to listen to the Eddie Goldman podcast. My blood boiled a little bit with his tired of the UFC.
3. I was very happy with Sherdog Beatdown Radio. Josh Gross did a fantastic job at discussing Frank Shamrock vs. Renzo Gracie. And he wasn’t very nice when talking about Frank. It was a very good segment.
4. There have been a lot of misconceptions about the offer Brandon Vera received from the UFC. The contract offered is much like the one they offer to Liddell, Ortiz, and the the big stars. The only thing is that to unlock a lot of the PPV compensations, he needs to win the title. If he thought he could win the title, he would be making more in the UFC. You have to think he doesn’t think he can beat Sylvia or Cro Cop, and that is why it is easier to take the guaranteed money of Showtime. And on a side issue, if Gary Shaw is offering 8-0 Brandon Vera $1.5 Million just to sign, he would have to give a guy like Chuck Liddell $10 Million to sign and $15 Million per fight. He opened up a flood gate he can’t contain himself.
5. Pro Elite is also in the running to purchase Pride. Nobody is certain how well those negotiations are going. It would be interesting to see one company who has never made a profit in MMA, try to buy another MMA company, who is bleeding money in MMA.
After their debacle in their first show, they need to buy some experience in running MMA events. PRIDE would be a VERY expensive aquisition for said experience but it would immediately bring a stable of fighters to be showcased on Showtime.
I would put that 1 million+ they are willing to spend on Brandon Vera into a bank account somewhere and hope that they are the winners on the PRIDE purchase.
Awesome work Aaron.
Whoever ends up purchasing Pride, will be over spending for the company. However, I can’t really blame them for doing it because you don’t want your competitor getting all those fighters.
If you look at the value of Pride to the USA market, it really isn’t worth much. Pride as an organization has never had more then 50,000 PPV sales. Not one of their fighters are popular within the casual US market. Their top fighter, Fedor Emelianenko, makes Mirko Cro Cop look marketable. Silva, Rua, Arona, & Nogueira all speak Portuguese. Their footage isn’t worth too much. There isn’t anything there that warrants a high price tag.
From the Rampage interview:
“I hope God is enjoying this movie. I know God has a great sense of humor. As long as I make Him happy, I’m good. Ever since the day I was born, I’ve been living a comedy, a drama and a horror film. And sad to say, sometimes it’s been a porno.â€
Amazing.
Mauro has been getting so much flak for making, at most, 2 or 3 comments lasting all of 20 or so seconds about Goldberg’s background in pro-wrestling and I just see it as him trying to make conversation. What the hell else was he supposed to talk to him about?
“Would you say that right hand had the force of a V-8 with 660 lb-ft torque?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“If you look at the value of Pride to the USA market, it really isn’t worth much. Pride as an organization has never had more then 50,000 PPV sales. Not one of their fighters are popular within the casual US market. Their top fighter, Fedor Emelianenko, makes Mirko Cro Cop look marketable. Silva, Rua, Arona, & Nogueira all speak Portuguese. Their footage isn’t worth too much. There isn’t anything there that warrants a high price tag.”
1. Arona and Nogueira both speak English.
2. once PRIDE is purchased, the purchaser will have access to all footage of Fedor in PRIDE, which would easily make him marketable. you’re reaching big time.
Regarding the EliteXC show, Frank Shamrock came off as more of a fraud than he ever has before, which is really saying something.
Gina Carano vs. Julie Kedzie stole the show and was a fantastic fight.
I agree Critic, whoever ends up buying the company will get themselves a real money pit. A few days ago there was an interview with Dana White, where they talked about a possible buyout, and that the asking price was 7 billion Yen. That’s almost 58 million Dollars! That’s a whole lot of money for a promotion that’s more or less a sinking ship and unproven in the US. Not even their great talentpool of fighters like Emelianenko, Nogueira, Barnett, Silva, Rua, Arona and Gomi would justify such a price. There’s just no upside in doing so, because let’s face it – even these fighters will not instantly bring in a profit.
The UFC started to make money 4 years after they were purchased by Zuffa – 4 years in which the company made another additional 34 mio $ in debts! And the fighters they used in all these years surely didn’t come with such huge price tags attached to them as the likes of Fedor and company would. You can bet that the new owner would have to spend at least 15-20 million a year on the fighter salaries (if they decide to keep them all), not including money for the sets, pyros etc, since they’d need to keep these to not entirely alienate Pride’s fanbase, so let’s add another 10 mio per year for that. All that would mean that they’d lose something around 87 mio $ in the first year of this “new” Pride (that is, if they don’t just keep the fighters and footage and close shop). That’s a HUGE amount of money, that i honestly don’t see any company (apart from the UFC) getting back in the foreseeable future.
there are a bunch of huge problems for any supposed purchaser of PRIDE (or DSE):-
– PRIDE has close to zero value in the US – its losing money
– PRIDE has close to zero value in Japan – its losing money and its yakuza scandal means it will never get back to free TV – ever
– the video library has limited value (sales of DVDs of old events are negligible)
– the fighter contracts may not be enforceable – fighter contracts are personal contracts and cannot be assigned to a new party without the consent of the fighter – of course, this problem will disappear if the buyer actually buys DSE; but DSE is owned by the yakuza and so buynig a yakuza tainted company will have a lot of legal issues
– the Japanese staff at DSE are close to useless in the US market
So what actually would a purchaser be buying that has any value?
the smarter and cheaper choice is to wait for DSE to sink further and simply sign up fighters as they become available
http://boxing.nv.gov/Agenda/AG02-16-07.pdf
“Listen guys, all I’m saying is that the referee he KO’d was Finnish. Practically not even a real person!”
In Cage Rage this weekend, obese 40 year old boxer Butterbean knocked out British heavyweight star James Thompson in 43 seconds, and Mark Kerr proved once again that his career is over.
http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=3421&zoneid=13
http://www.pridefc.com/pride2005/index.php?mainpage=news&news_id=1001
– JOSH BARNETT replaces Trigg in commentary-booth 🙂 And plenty of pro-wrestling references.
It would seem like Gary Shaw is becoming the Harold Smith AKA Ross Eugene Fields of his time, only I don’t think Shaw is involved in a Wells Fargo embezzlement scandal while inflating the salary base of fighters. There is, after all, a reason that promoters in general do not like to give guys incredibly high purses unless they become a long term force (and in that case it should be the fighter and his manager pushing the issue) and I’m honestly confused why Shaw, a Boxing promoter for a good while, wouldn’t have the common sense to limit the cap on his purses.
“And he was also the promoter, so that definitely makes him into a non-human!”
😉
I did not realize that Arona & Nogueira spoke English.
However, my point was that the Pride 205 lbs division is all Brazilians. Whether you agree with it or not, a division full of foreigners is not a marketable entity in the United States.
And Fedor, while he a god of MMA, he is not a marketable fighter to the US market. I don’t care how much footage they have of this guy. He just doesn’t have the look of the fighter. That combined with no English, and he will be near impossible to catch on in the states. If he rose to fame in front of the fans in the UFC, and they were able to follow his career, he would probably be marketable. But to just bring him into the states, and expect him to draw, is insane. He just can’t do it in my opinion.
Yvel trying to get licensed isn’t the only interesting thing in the agenda. There’s a Steel Cage Promotions LLC, that wants to get licensed as a promoter in NV, and that’s a company i’ve never heard of before and Google also doesn’t bring up any results. So it’s most probably yet another start-up promotion trying to run the Las Vegas market. It’s really getting a bit crowded there…
And Pride’s trying to get a 1000 free tickets for Nellis Air Force Base approved. Sure, at first glance it looks like a “Good for them, supporting the troops”-situation, but i somehow got the feeling that the event doesn’t sell too well, and that they’re just trying to fill the Thomas & Mack this way…
Two things – a) Steel Cage Promotions sounds more or less like a wrestling promotion trying to get licensed rather than an MMA group, but of course… it also could be a stupid name for a new MMA group. b) It depends where the LLC is incorporated. If it’s in Nevada, then it’s hard to dig up information. If it’s another state, the information on the company’s structure should be easy to find.
Update: Did a search under Steel Cage LLC, got nothing. Realized it was Steele Cage Promotions LLC, did the search on Nevada’s business site and got the listing. Because it’s manager-managed (using Oshin’s estate planning as the legal representative listed), information regarding the members of the LLC is not listed. Plus, if the company gets sued, Oshins is listed as the manager (therefore any sort of asset search in a lawsuit filed against this company shows the assets of Oshins, not its members). The LLC was formed on October 24th, a few days after the PRIDE 10/21 LV show. So it’s a local Las Vegas company looking to get into the market for sure.
I think Dana White could figure out a way to make Fedor a draw. but that’s just me.
(and as far as I know, all of Brazilian Top Team speaks English (both Nogueira brothers, Bustamante, Arona do at least). Silva is working on his and I swear there will ONE DAY be an improvement in his speaking.)
I have no idea how anyone could think Fedor couldn’t be a draw in this country.
Dana White was able to make Jeremy Horn a draw in his fight vs Chuck Liddell, and you don’t think the best fighter mma has ever seen couldn’t draw?
Since when do Russian wrecking balls who feel no pain, have great punches, slams, and subs not draw?
Steele Cage Promotions is at http://www.steelecage.com. Richard Steele is behind it. That gives the company instant credibility. I’m a big Richard Steele fan, so I bet he puts on a big show. I love the name Steele Cage. It’s perfect for Richard.