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Saturday media splash: Another Tito Ortiz PR blunder?
By Zach Arnold | May 18, 2007
The Andy Wang remix from The Ultimate Fighter
Angry Andy Wang discussion between MMA fighters online.
Day 54 since the March 27th handshake deal between UFC & DSE for the PRIDE asset sale… with no sale finalized at the moment. Tickets for Hustle’s 6/14 Korakuen Hall show are on sale through ‘Hustle Entertainment’, but the web site still says DSE Inc. on it. Also, there is news today that Wanderlei Silva is reportedly taking this year off.
The latest edition of the Fox News Fight Game video segment features a short interview with David Mamet, the director of the new MMA movie project Redbelt (starring Tim Allen).
Headline from the Mad Squabbles site — Randy Couture is not training Tito Ortiz.
TeamNogueira.com, check it out.
Ron Borges retires from The Boston Globe newspaper. Conflicting thoughts on this news can be found here. Borges got caught in a big plagiarism scandal a couple of months ago and was also a target on our site last year for pushing The Zuffa Myth in a couple of pro-UFC articles.
An 11-year old Brit needs sponsorship.
From the Union of Grass Valley newspaper in California:
• At 12:55 a.m., a caller from a bar on Neal Street reported a man standing at the intersection of Mill and Neal streets was threatening to fight. He said he was an Ultimate Fighting Championship champion. His had been kicked out of the bar, and another bar would not let him in. Police located the 22-year-old man and arrested him on warrants.
Yet another example of someone angrier than me on a radio show. See, I’m not such a bad guy after all on Fight Opinion Radio.
Onto today’s headlines.
- The Marshall Independent (Minnesota): City weighs ultimate fighting issue
- The New York Times: Veterans of Storm Find Relief in Combat
- Yahoo Sports: Fighting for respect (Taylor vs. Spinks)
- Black Athlete: MMA and boxing – action plenty
- MMA on Tap: Brock Lesnar, Jake Shield conference call quotes
- MMA Weekly: Brandon Vera eyeing return to the octagon
- Sprawl ‘n Brawl: Al Bundy does jiu-jitsu
- NBC Sports: Rampage looks to end the Iceman’s streak
- MMA News: Interview with Andrei Arlovski
- Tagg Radio: Interviews with Royce Gracie & Johnnie Morton
- The Edmonton Sun: Boxing is losing the fight to UFC
- The Victoria Times Colonist: Cops hit back at ‘ground and pound’ – retraining of Victoria police squads
- The Fanhouse (AOL Sports Blog): UFC 71 – Odds moving in Quinton Jackson’s direction
- The Las Vegas Sun: Ref Richard Steele steps into new arena
- MMA Torch: Torch Podcast show #3
Topics: Boxing, Canada, HERO's, K-1, Media, MMA, Pro Elite, UFC, UK, Zach Arnold | 9 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Could careless about Tito Ortiz and his PR bullshit. Quit writing about that asshole hes a boring fighter to watch and his team fucking sucks dick, no joke.
I listened to the most recent FO Radio Show. I feel the hosts have it completely wrong when it comes to Dana White and his challenge of boxing.
First, I must prefix this by saying that there really is no MMA Media out there. At least not for a major publication. ESPN is outsourcing their news to Sherdog.com. This means they have no care to give a full analysis of the fight game. Plain and simple. They will provide news and fight coverage, but we will not be seeing in-depth coverage like we do with the baseball steroid scandal. It is going to be superficial coverage. ESPN Magazine & SI are both doing MMA cover stories, but those feel more like promotional pieces then in-depth coverage.
Now, Dana White knows this. He has the media exactly where he wants it. They are talking about his sport enough to give him free publicity, but not enough to ask the critical questions.
When Dana White challenged Floyd Mayweather to fight Sean Sherk, the news stories were on the front page of Yahoo! Sports. It was being talked about by a mainstream audience. White was brilliant to take another sports golden moment and have them talk more about the UFC.
Now, after the fact, the media press died down. This is when Cintron issued the challenge. The articles about this were hard to come by, and if you could find them, were buried on the boxing websites. There was no mainstream coverage. Dana White got his message out. He can turn down all of these no name boxers, and unless you are a true hardcore fan, you haven’t heard anything about it. But the casual fans sure heard Max Kellerman discuss MMA on the biggest Boxing PPV ever.
My point is that Dana White might look like an idiot for turning down boxers now, but the people who think he is an idiot is such a small fanbase that in the reality of sports, it doesn’t matter. White got his companies out to the public. That was the only intention. And unless a boxer has a huge name, it makes no sense to have an MMA fighter compete against him. And he knows this.
Considering my last Fight Opinion Weekly column essentially made the points you listed up above, I’d say that some of us do understand what he’s doing by calling out boxing.
Dana’s behavior is still hypocritical, however. You can be a smart businessman & PR magician while being disingenuous (in my opinion).
It’s great that David Mamet is doing an MMA movie. That’s almost a guarantee that we’ll finally see a serious film about the sport and not a Cinemax late night piece of shit. Mamet is one of this country’s bmost prestigious playwrights and film directors.
Indecision advertising on Fight Opinion, now how cool is that…
I suggest you read Mamet’s most recent book, Bambi versus Godzilla. While Mr. Mamet is an accomplished playright this is no doubt another schlock production by Sony Pictures in an attempt to capitalize on mainstream money. Having Tim Allen star in this is a joke.
I dunno, I can understand why Dana would want Mayweather or someone of equal caliber. Having Cintron come in and get paid boxing money would skew the UFC’s fighter pay system pretty badly.
I am very excited for Brock Lesnar. I can not wait until that fight. They really gave him an animal for a first opponent. I hope Brock wins and gets an offer from UFC.
Al Bundy fucking rules. 4 touchdowns in one game and better at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu than Zuluinho. He’s a fucking hero.