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Building A Fighter
By Luke | March 11, 2007
Rashad Evans beat Sean Salmon via brutal KO on January 25th at the Seminole Hard Rock in Florida. The show ended up drawing a 1.7 cable rating on Spike TV. It was a showcase fight for Rashad, who had been brought along slowly by Dana White and Joe Silva to eventually be a contender to Chuck Liddell’s LHW title. After delivering a beautiful head kick to Sean Salmon to score the highlight reel KO victory, it was apparent that Rashad was ready to challenge some of the bigger names in the UFC LHW division.
UFC is criticized constantly for not employing the best fighters in the world, and for building up guys who – in the eyes of knowledgeable hardcore fans – don’t deserve the spot they’re given. Forrest Griffin, Stephan Bonnar, Chris Leben, among others come to mind. Griffin just recently suffered a bad loss to Keith Jardine at UFC 66. Bonnar suffered a painful defeat to Forrest Griffin at UFC 62. Neither of these competitors have been seen or heard from much since their respective losses. Chris Leben has now suffered a number of high profile losses recently. Most recently to Anderson Silva and Jason MacDonald. It can be argued that none of these fighters are truly top tier fighters in their respective divisions, and the same can be said for Rashad Evans. Rashad’s victim list is far from a who’s who of top fighters. Sam Hoger, Stephan Bonnar, Jason Lambert, and Sean Salmon aren’t exactly top ten material. Of the four that are listed, Lambert probably comes the closest to cracking the top 10 in the LHW division, and Rashad dominated him, and pulled out an impressive KO win using his wrestling skill to mount Lambert, and then pounding him out.
The win over Jason Lambert was probably the key win in Rashad’s young UFC career so far. Lambert was considered a formidable opponent for him, and Rashad had yet to finish a fight in UFC. He took Sam Hoger and Stephan Bonnar to decisions prior to that fight. Had Rashad lost to Lambert, or gone to another boring decision, it probably would’ve hurt his image among the fans, and with Dana White and Joe Silva, who are desperate right now for fresh challengers for Chuck Liddell. Rashad came through though, finishing Lambert in impressive fashion, and setting himself up for his main event spot on UFC Fight Night in January.
His opponent on January 25th wasn’t another step up from Lambert; in fact it was definitely a couple steps below Lambert. Sean Salmon was an unknown fighter, but he was a very strong wrestler, who UFC thought could really challenge Rashad on the ground, and force Rashad to either fight standing up, or step up his wrestling in order to win. When Rashad realized he was facing his equal on the ground, he decided to stand with Salmon, and eventually scored a brutal KO via nasty head kick that hospitalized Sean Salmon and led to intense criticism of UFC for their handling of the injury on national television. Nonetheless, it established Rashad Evans a legit contender in the eyes of fans who tuned in that night.
When I look back at how Rashad has progressed in UFC, it really does say a lot for Dana White’s ability to groom young fighters to a level where the fans believe they have a legit shot to compete with the elite guys in their weight class. And, if you want to sell fights on PPV, you need people to believe that both guys can win, especially if both guys aren’t huge superstars as was the case with UFC 61, or UFC 66, where Tito Ortiz/Ken Shamrock, or Tito Ortiz/Chuck Liddell were both well established names in the eyes of casual fans.
Looking forward, its rumored that Rashad’s next opponent will be Tito Ortiz on May 26th, possibly underneath a Chuck Liddell/Quinton Jackson main event. Rashad Evans is a bad style match for Tito Ortiz, which makes Tito a great opponent for him. Tito doesn’t like to get hit, and isn’t a strong stand up fighter. His strength is similar to Rashad’s, in that he loves to get the takedown and work his ground and pound to finish guys using elbows, or punches. Rashad has a very good chance at defeating Tito Ortiz, which would be an extremely high profile win for him, and give him even more credibility as someone who can challenge Chuck Liddell down the road.
Once again, hardcore fans aren’t big fans of this type of booking, but the main objective in MMA is drawing money, and UFC has done a masterful job of building up Rashad Evans to a level where he can potentially be a money-drawing fighter with Tito Ortiz, and maybe even Chuck Liddell down the road. Obviously a lot of fans would prefer if UFC could sign Mauricio Rua, or Rogerio Noguiera, or someone of that ilk to come in and challenge Chuck Liddell, but both of those fighters are still under contract to PRIDE, and aren’t available to UFC, so this is the next best option, in my opinion. Even if the two previously mentioned fighters were available to UFC, I think building them up in a similar fashion to Rashad Evans would be beneficial. Give them a couple tune-up fights, and let fans see what kind of monsters they can be, before going ahead with the big matches with Liddell, or Tito, or whomever the top UFC LHWs of the day might be.
While keeping in mind that MMA is a sport, and that you want the best to the fight the best, it is a business as well, and you want to build interest for fights between the best so that you maximize the number of buys you do on PPV, which is why I’m a big fan UFC’s booking philosophy. They’re currently doing this with Mirko CroCop and it accidently paid off because instead of CroCop fighting Tim Sylvia in his first fight in UFC, he fought a much lesser opponent who he could run through easily, and look impressive doing so. This allowed for Tim Sylvia to have his fateful encounter with Randy Couture, and now, one week after UFC 68, fans are already clamouring for a dream match of sorts between Couture and CroCop, which if built correctly will top the 1 million buys that Liddell and Ortiz did in December.
Topics: All Topics, Luke Nicholson, MMA, UFC | 5 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
How about Lochida? Shouldn’t he be the front runner?
I think it would be more accurate to say:
“It was a showcase fight for Rashad, who had been brought along slowly by Dana White and Joe Silva to eventually APPEAR TO be a contender to Chuck Liddell’s LHW title.”
Or “to be marketed as” as contender …
Good article, well constructed points. Rashad/Tito is a high risk/high reward proposition for Zuffa. If Rashad wins they’ll get a great buy rate when he fights Liddell or Jackson. But if Tito wins it kills a guy who could have been a draw with no upside. You can’t sell another Tito/Liddell fight and Tito and Jackson say they won’t fight each other, though maybe for the right money they would.
The Tito situation is interesting because Zuffa is essentially stuck booking and paying him. His name irrationally draws fans and Zuffa can’t let him headline a show for a rival promotion. But by keeping him around they are in danger of him jobbing out their up and comers like Griffin and Rashad.
It’s a good point about Tito. Nobody is clamoring to see him lose to Liddell again, but he is probably better than everyone else they have at 205. If I were Dana White I would think seriously about convincing Tito to move up to hw. Tito looks like he walks around at 225 or 230, so it isn’t a stretch at all.
If he beats Rashad, then what? They will be stuck with either him vs Chuck again or him vs Rampage, a fight that both men say they won’t accept.
Keith Jardine is morphing into a legit challenger, but like Tito-Rampage, Jardine says he won’t fight Rashad.
Lyoto is probably their best 205er other than Tito, but his fight against Hoger wasn’t on PPV, so he is suffering from Marquardt syndrome, I.E. winning in obscurity, thus nobody cares enough about him to pay 40 dollars to see him lose to Liddell.
I find this side of the sport somewhat depressing. Especially when a pro wrestling fan is tellling me about it 🙂
People are always complaining that the UFC doesn’t show enough undercards. A previous poster made the great point regarding Lyoto and Marquart. Well perhaps the UFC should consider getting these previously unseen undercards into “UFC Unleashed” sooner rather than later. You give people what they want, your fighters get the necessary exposure. Where’s the problem?
To me it’s similar to UFC 70 on Spike. What better way to show people what they’re missing with the PPVs? Not to mention it’s just good business to throw your dedicated fans a bone every now and then.