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Monday Torture Rack: Why you like ultimate fighting

By Zach Arnold | March 12, 2007

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Andy Kaufman talked about Memphis pro-wrestling fans the same way American media outlets talk about MMA fans today

Another article about MMA’s increasing popularity… Public Torture — Preparing the Audience:

We also have the rise in popularity of Ultimate Fighting in the past few years. People will always pay to see two people beating on each other, but now the public has ruled the Marquis of Queensbury rules are quaint, much as Alberto Gonzalez wants us to think the same of the Geneva Conventions.

Let’s move onto today’s headlines (including results from today’s HERO’s show).

Main match results from today’s HERO’s event at Nagoya Aichi Rainbow Hall (claiming 7,910 paid):

  1. Melvin Manhoef defeated Yoshiki Takahashi in R1 in 2 minutes, 36 seconds by TKO (referee stoppage).
  2. Mighty Mo defeated Kim Min-Soo in R1 in 2 minutes, 37 seconds by TKO.
  3. Vitor “Shaolin” Ribiero defeated Ryuki Ueyama in R1 in 1 minute, 48 seconds with a cross-arm scissors hold for the submission.
  4. Andre Dida defeated Hiroyuki Takaya in R1 in 3 minutes, 29 seconds by doctor stoppage.
  5. Katsuyori Shibata defeated Yoshihisa Yamamoto in R1 in 9 seconds by TKO.
  6. Gary “Big Daddy” Goodridge defeated Jan “The Giant” Nortje in R1 in 3 minutes by TKO (referee stoppage).
  7. Kazushi Sakuraba defeated Yuriy “PLAYBOY” Kiselov in R1 in 1 minute, 26 seconds with a cross-arm scissors hold.
  8. Kazuyuki Miyata defeated Black Mamba in R1 in 3 minutes, 38 seconds with a modified choke sleeper hold.
  9. Kaoru Uno defeated Ali Ibrahim in R1 in 1 minute, 59 seconds with a cross-arm scissors hold.
  10. Hideo Tokoro defeated Kazuya Yasuhiro in R1 in 3 minutes with a cross-arm scissors hold.

Now, onto the media headlines.

  1. 24 Dash (UK): Cage Rage to be screened live on Sky
  2. Hall of Fame Magazine: The Ultimate Fight in Vegas
  3. The Concord Monitor: Nick Zimmermann is loyal to brutal, bloody sport (what can be said about the person profiled in this article?)
  4. Ichiban Shigaisen: Victory, but at the cost of injury for Denis Kang
  5. MMA California: California State Athletic Commission update for 3/11
  6. Mad Squabbles: Cole Escovedo health update
  7. Ringside Report: Operation Dumbo Drop – Butterbean easily defeats Joe Siciliano
  8. Royal Burnell: Is it enough? (discussing Marc Ratner’s proposal to get MMA regulated in Michigan)
  9. The Houston Chronicle: UFC 69 is homecoming for Mike Swick
  10. 13th Round: IFL 3/17 Los Angeles fight card set

Topics: All Topics, HERO's, IFL, Japan, Media, MMA, UFC, UK, Zach Arnold | 26 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

26 Responses to “Monday Torture Rack: Why you like ultimate fighting”

  1. Grape Knee High says:

    LOL at comparing MMA to a neocon interpretation of the Geneva Conventions.

    Boxing, Judo and Wrestling are all Olympic sports and widely recognized as being accepted by the mainstream. Why is it that putting them all together bothers people so much? I think the core problem here is the UFC’s marketing plan.

    The UFC’s continues marketing the sport as “cage fighting” and as an extreme, bloody human cockfight. Just keeping the fight in a cage has negative (and violent) implications to the average American.

    As much as the sport has evolved and as much as Dana White continues to talk about how safe the sport is, the way the UFC markets the sport as a low-brow alternative to boxing and pro wrestling for young males in the US will always mean that people will view the sport erroneously has a barely regulated street fight.

    The fact that people boo the ground game and the UFC has still never attempted to educate their fans further on the nuances of grappling and submission fighting prove that the UFC has no interest in furthering a more subtle understanding of sport. All they want are fans that want to see blood spurting everywhere and quick, first round KOs.

  2. Psygone says:

    I wonder if that Matthew Hubbard guy bases all of his political decisions around his TV scheduled.

  3. Hey Zach … would you knw enough about general promoter costs to be able to determine if the Art of War show was a success or not? I’d be interested in knowing the general costs involved with a major mma event and how it breaks down as far as where the money comes in

  4. Xenos says:

    What the hell is a cross-arm scissors hold? An arm triangle? Why do you call submissions by their pro-wrestling names?

  5. I think the cross arm scissors is a kimura.

  6. Stu says:

    What the hell is a cross-arm scissors hold?

    An armbar

  7. PizzaChef says:

    Arm triangle is an actual term in MMA, dumbass.

  8. Drew says:

    They’ve been using the “triangle” term in pro wrestling for a long time. I remember playing the old WWE games where you could build a wrestler and give him that move for a upper body submission. But I digress.

    I do agree with Grape Knee High that the UFC has not bothered to try and educate its fans about the sport. Even on the FOX News interview between Neil Cavuto and Randy Couture, Neil kept referring to it as Ultimate Fighting instead of MMA. I also agree that the cage also adds the feel of “human cock fighting” when someone who isn’t knowledgable about the sport watches a MMA fight.

    The UFC will still continue to carry the stigma of a brutal no holds bar fight as long as it continues to market themselves as “Ultimate Fighting”. Dana White can go around telling people in interviews how safe the sport is, but his talk and marketing don’t match up at all, and the sport won’t progess much further until someone steps up to the plate to promote it like a sport instead of an all out brawl.

  9. Rollo the Cat says:

    Someone please give me details as to how the UFC is promoting the sport negatively. The cage? Maybe, but there are good reasons for a cage over a ring. Tell me again how Dana has promoted this as a brawl and not a sport. Go to the UFC website and point something out to me. Go to the many transcripts of interviews with Dana and point something out to me that supports your point. I don’t understand at all.

  10. 45 Huddle says:

    12 Minutes into the IFL, and I am already Video Montaged to death. Not very good for a premiere…..

    Already 2 horrible moments.

    1. Frank Shamrock talks about people dying, and then they show a knocked out fighter within the next 30 seconds with the sound of the heart monitor after the heart has stopped.

    2. The announcer says, while showing a clip of a guy being put on a stretcher: “By the end of this show, somebody is going to leave on a stretcher.”

    That is 10 TIME WORSE then anything the UFC has ever done. If the IFL trying to put the sport back 10 years?

  11. Mr. Roadblock says:

    Yeah. That was tasteless. I was at that show and the arena was completely silent when that happened. That shoudl not be promoted. Also they repeatedly showed an illegal kick from the ground to the face of an opponent on his knees. 20 minutes of BS and promos. Terrible start. Though they say they’re going to show 9 fights tonight.

  12. Zack says:

    They’re probably overreacting to the fact that they got no ratings or buzz at all when they were presenting the product in a bare bones sports like format.

  13. Rollo the Cat says:

    That intro to the show was tha same they had Friday. It was really distasteful. When I defend Dana, it isn’t because I am his secret lover, I am not. It is because he really has helped move the sport foreward. Very much unlike this broadcast tonight. Even the fights look terrible.

  14. David says:

    I cannot fucking believe that they have hyped a fighter getting stretchered out multiple times already. This is disgraceful.

  15. Luke says:

    Was Friday the Countdown to Battleground show? I don’t remember. I live in Canada and I have to download this stuff to see it, so I lose track of when it originally aired. I thought the entire Countdown show seemed like video montage.

    Openly suggesting that someone will be stretchered out is not the smartest move around. It reminds me of the no-holds-barred marketing strategy that Art Davie and Bob Meyrowitz used in the beginning.

    I won’t be able to see the show until the torrent is released online, so if people have updates they’d like to share of interesting occurances on the show, it would be very much appreciated.

  16. Grape Knee High says:

    “Someone please give me details as to how the UFC is promoting the sport negatively. The cage? Maybe, but there are good reasons for a cage over a ring. Tell me again how Dana has promoted this as a brawl and not a sport.”

    1. People have differing opinions on the cage vs. the ring. However, the ring is accepted as a mainstream sporting format in boxing, kickboxing and pro wrestling. No matter what your personal opinion on the matter, a regular person unacquainted with the rules and conventions of MMA will view a cage as much barbaric than a ring.

    2. Dana White personally encourages (and sometimes demands) trash-talking in the pre-fight interviews, which often end up with brash, idiotic predictions of bloodying people up with elbows and brutal KOs.

    3. The bad nu-metal and gladiator theme at the beginning of every UFC event alone cultivates a low-brow viewership.

    4. Dana White consistently calls Bonnar/Griffin 1 has one of the best fights in UFC history and acknowledges that it was one of the reasons for the UFC’s current success. What was that fight, if not an extremely bloody, glorified street brawl? By saying this in public, he is admitting that that fight is what he wants to see in the UFC and is subtly encouraging his fighters to basically have 2nd rate boxing matches.

    Don’t get me wrong, I think Dana is a great personality in the sport and has the kind of charisma to personally deliver this sport to the masses in much the same way John Madden is an icon in NFL marketing world.

    I just think he could do a much better job of educating fans to accept and enjoy more technical standup, more technical grappling, see the beauty in an great submission and not just be drunk football fans that boo everything in sight. With a rabid, uneducated fanbase, there’s a chance the sport burnout very quickly. With a rabid, EDUCATED fanbase, there’s a chance the sport could do well for generations and be one of the major sports in the world. Clearly PRIDE is not managed well enough to achieve this, but the UFC clearly is. I just think they could do better.

  17. Euthyphro says:

    This show is complete trash. I like the IFL, but this is promoting to the lowest calibur of fight fan.

  18. Luke says:

    “1. People have differing opinions on the cage vs. the ring. However, the ring is accepted as a mainstream sporting format in boxing, kickboxing and pro wrestling. No matter what your personal opinion on the matter, a regular person unacquainted with the rules and conventions of MMA will view a cage as much barbaric than a ring.”

    I don’t think the cage is an issue anymore. And to the non-fan who thinks its barbaric, they don’t have to watch MMA. Actually, they probably aren’t watching MMA. So its not surprising that they’re not acquainted with the rules and conventions. You’re not going to convert everybody. Some are always going to be opposed to the sport. I’m not in favour of changing everything (especially long established trademarks like the octagon cage), just so your detractors stop writing nasty things about MMA.

    “2. Dana White personally encourages (and sometimes demands) trash-talking in the pre-fight interviews, which often end up with brash, idiotic predictions of bloodying people up with elbows and brutal KOs.”

    This is a different than personally encouraging that somebody be carried out on a stretcher. Nobody in UFC hopes for serious injury. Not even the fighters when they’re trash talking. There is no reason for announcers to trash talk. Let the fighters do it. Many fighters have said that, yes, prior to a fight they go out to take someone’s head off, but afterwards they hope they’re ok.

    “3. The bad nu-metal and gladiator theme at the beginning of every UFC event alone cultivates a low-brow viewership.”

    What would you prefer? The biggest demographic that watches UFC is males 18-34. I think that sort of music is appealing to them, and rock or metal music is pretty common for fight promotions to use. Its generally up-beat, and gets your adrenaline pumping, much like a fight does. I don’t need to hear instrumental elevator music before a big fight. Its not really something that excites you.

    “4. Dana White consistently calls Bonnar/Griffin 1 has one of the best fights in UFC history and acknowledges that it was one of the reasons for the UFC’s current success. What was that fight, if not an extremely bloody, glorified street brawl? By saying this in public, he is admitting that that fight is what he wants to see in the UFC and is subtly encouraging his fighters to basically have 2nd rate boxing matches.”

    Dana White also said on Inside the UFC that Matt Hughes/Frank Trigg at UFC 52 was one of his favorite fights. Maybe this means he’s encouraging guys to pick up their opponents and carry them across the ring, fireman style. I remember Forrest having a bloody nose, and beyond that I don’t remember a lot of gore in that fight. It wasn’t the most technical stand up fight, but even in a technical stand up fight, there is still the possibility that someone gets bloodied up.

    On a side note, I don’t hear these complaints when people talk about Frye/Takayama in PRIDE four or five years ago. Thats always talked about as being a legendary fight, and it was no more technical than Bonnar/Griffin.

  19. The Gaijin says:

    Luke: While your point on Frye/Takayama is correct…the fight really doesnt have any relevance or notoriety to North American fans outside of the hardcore fanbase. I’m sure if the general North American sporting public saw that fight it would likely be decried for being brutal and gory but the fact is that “I dont hear these complaints when people talk about Frye/Takayama…” is because those people never saw it!

  20. Luke says:

    Gaijin that is true. Thank you. I was mainly referring though to hardcore fans who decry Bonnar/Griffin as being brutal and gory.

  21. Erin says:

    “3. The bad nu-metal and gladiator theme at the beginning of every UFC event alone cultivates a low-brow viewership.”

    Yup, that’s right. As a fan of fast music and the movie 300 I am obviously horribly low brow. Nice.

  22. Grape Knee High says:

    Luke:
    “I don’t think the cage is an issue anymore. And to the non-fan who thinks its barbaric, they don’t have to watch MMA. Actually, they probably aren’t watching MMA. So its not surprising that they’re not acquainted with the rules and conventions.”

    Please read my very first post. I am exactly talking about why the media still gets on the UFC’s case. And it’s because of the way the UFC markets itself. The fact remains that the cage presents itself as a more brutal arena than a ring. That’s just a simple fact. Nowhere did I say they should get rid of the cage.

    “This is a different than personally encouraging that somebody be carried out on a stretcher.”

    Did I ever say that White personally encouraged this? Again, I’m talking about *perceptions* here that the UFC engenders on its own. As much as people are willing to talk about PRIDE’s failing here, I guess it’s no surprise the UFC kool aid is strong on this board.

    “What would you prefer?”

    They can leave this alone for all I care. It’s been there for years and I ignore it. But again, I’m talking *perceptions* by the mainstream, and an intro like this does affect a non-fan’s perception of the UFC.

    “On a side note, I don’t hear these complaints when people talk about Frye/Takayama in PRIDE four or five years ago. Thats always talked about as being a legendary fight, and it was no more technical than Bonnar/Griffin. ”

    I never said Bonnar/Griffin was a bad fight. Just that White pimping it so much encourages fans and fighters to think that *that* fight is a what the UFC is about, when it really isn’t. MMA and the UFC is about much, much more than 2nd rate boxing and street brawling that Bonnar/Griffin showed.

    Erin:

    I apologize if you found my comment offensive, but again, I’m talking perceptions and marketing here. And, yeah, 300 is a movie for young men looking for stylish violence. Does 300 really scream “high art” or something to you? Just because something is low-brow doesn’t stop me from watching it, and I’m looking forward to watching 300.

  23. The Gaijin says:

    Oh I have no qualms about Griffin vs. Bonnar at all – to use the old phrase “it is what it is”. It’s far from glamourous or anything I’d show someone to prove my point that MMA is very technical and skilled fighters in high caliber competition. But let’s call a spade a spade, that fight made the UFC a TON of fans and just as Gatti vs. Ward I-III were all out slobberknockers with no sense of skill or technique involved – those are the type of fights that wind fans up.

    Anyone who “craps” all over a fight that is as exciting as those b/c they’re brawls, is just being an elitist. Frye/Takayama falls into the same category – far from a technical masterpiece, but about as exciting an mma fight as it gets. It’s just unfortunate that people will use these kind of fights to villify MMA, when they’re naming the same type of boxing matches (that are far more dangerous in terms of fighters’ health imo) FOY’s.

  24. Rollo the Cat says:

    Gaijin,

    Those fights have a place. They are fun to watch when they occur on a card with other types of matches. By themselves they are not something to brag about. Like a bowl of Fruit Loops is a PART of a nutritious breakfast, so too is Bonnar-Griffin a part of a good MMA card.

    I onl get upset when people point to those types of matches a being representative of the sport. Shogun-Rogerio was an MMA masterpiece a fighting version of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. Frye-Takayama was Led Zeppelin.

  25. Xenos says:

    “Arm triangle is an actual term in MMA, dumbass.”

    No shit. I was wondering if a cross-arm scissors hold was an arm triangle. Think before you type next time.

  26. The Gaijin says:

    Rollo:

    Thank you…I totally agree. I like your comparisons!!

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