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Tuesday afternoon notes: More UFC 71 media skepticism

By Zach Arnold | May 29, 2007

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CNBC’s Darren Rovell has been critical of UFC in the past, stating that the company and its fighters are not attracting major blue-chip sponsors yet. Today, he deemed the UFC 71 event an ‘ultimate embarrassment’.

The talented Adam Morgan pointed out this Concepts Marketing post to me about UFC. Notice that all of this traffic is for UFC and not any other MMA league (IFL, KOTC, etc.)

On ESPN Radio today, Colin Cowherd says the reason MMA is popular is because it’s a sport that is easy for the fans to follow and understand.

The Fight Network has an update on the story broke by Dave Meltzer on Sunday night about whether or not Ken Shamrock was offered a fight against Royce Gracie on the K-1 Dynamite show.

Gryphon confirms that the UFC 71 show did not air in Japan.

Michael David Smith asks the question on everyone’s mind — is an ESPN and UFC partnership just a matter of time?

Sherdog writer Mike Sloan is quoted in a New York Times web site article today.

Onto this afternoon’s links.

  1. Deadspin: Not the best weekend for the UFC
  2. Five Ounces of Pain: Noah Thomas to fight Marlon Sims in sanctioned UFC bout
  3. Minyanville: Ultimate Fighting – a proven moneymaker with plenty of enemies
  4. The Redditch Advertiser (UK): No holds barred in cage fighting
  5. BoxingScene: MMA fighter picks Tommy Morrison over Chuck Liddell
  6. The Fanhouse: UFC’s concussion policy puts NFL’s to shame
  7. MMA on Tap: Is PRIDE officially dead?
  8. UFC Junkie: Roger Huerta added to the August UFC 74 card
  9. ESPN’s Page 2: UFC 71 gives us yet another surprise
  10. Crave Online: Are you serious? Liddell/Jackson
  11. NBC Sports: Juanito Ibarra provides the method to Rampage’s madness
  12. NBC Sports: Boxing sanctioning body NABC goes from the ropes to the cages

Topics: Boxing, Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, UFC, Zach Arnold | 22 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

22 Responses to “Tuesday afternoon notes: More UFC 71 media skepticism”

  1. Zack says:

    “But I think the sport, being called the replacement to boxing, laid a big egg on Saturday night as its champion Chuck Liddell went down in 1 minute and 53 seconds to Quinton Jackson on Saturday night.”

    Great sentence. On Saturday night we witnessed Saturday’s sports pinnacle, which was Rampage Saturday night KO’ing UFC LHW champ Chuck Liddell on Saturday, the 6th day of the week.

    It’s funny that this writeup was an afterthought to the upcoming spelling bee LOL

  2. Zack says:

    By the way…pretty good MMA quiz here:

    http://www.nerdtests.com/mq/take.php?id=23781

    I scored a 21.

  3. ilostmydog says:

    I like how Rovell calls 71 an embarassment AFTER he has a huge write-up and seeds a frickin’ spelling bee. This, of course, in addition to bragging about being the top handicapper for the competition (how many handicappers could there possibly be for a spelling bee???).

  4. The sport is what it is. It’s a fight. And anything can happen, even flash knockouts. What you saw Saturday wasn’t a surprise to those who have been following MMA for a long time. If mainstream America wants to accept mixed martial arts, they will have to understand that, JUST LIKE BOXING, there will be wars and there will be fast KO’s. It’s a fight.

    Rampage winning, in my opinion, is the best thing that could have happened for the UFC. We will see how it pans out. But as Luke Thomas, of Bloody Elbow, said, the sport has turned a corner and there is no going back now.

  5. Ivan Trembow says:

    The UFC was also on both Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption today but I missed both of them!

  6. Ivan Trembow says:

    And supposedly there was also something on SportsCenter about Chuck Liddell’s alleged pre-fight partying. Ahh, I miss one day of the ATH-PTI-SportsCenter block and I miss three MMA-related segments!

  7. 1000 Cent says:

    Mainstream is fickle, if the fight went 5 rounds, people would complain that there wasn’t enough action. If the fight was predetermined and went 20 minutes, fans would complain “it’s fake”. Then there’s the race factor, that no one wants to be out and about, about it, but it seems like it’s there, sadly.

    IMO, UFC 71 was one of the best cards of the year, it showed that as a fan, anything can happen, and don’t turn away from the TV during a fight. Just because a “Gotti – Ward” fight wasn’t on the card doesn’t mean people should be puting this show down :D.

  8. fightopinionReader says:

    Boxing critics are quick to pounce on the lame Liddell – Jackson fight. To them thats prove positive of a lame fight night since in boxing, a lame main card is a lame fight night. They fail to realize that a UFC fight night (a night of fights on pay per view, not to be confused with Spike’s UFC fight night) consists of several exciting fights.

    I would also argue that the 48 second Jardine-Alexander fight was very exciting.

  9. deadlogic says:

    I thought the show was good on Saturday. Maybe not great, but good. I was rooting for Jackson and Alexander though, so that made it a bit sweeter. It’s fascinating to see how the casual fans are reacting. I would have never thought that it would be perceived that way. The main event fights aren’t always about long wars, as we’ve seen many times. The new fans will have to watch a few shows to see the anticipation build for the truly remarkable fights, but they will have to be drawn in by good fights. We’ll have to see if the next UFC helps this along, although it appeared to me as more of a free Spike TV card at last glance.

    Oh, and I got a 24 on that quiz. Good stuff. =]

  10. Tomer Chen says:

    I scored a 21.

    Got 25 (Fan of the Sport rating), myself. Good test, although I found 21 or 22 of the questions pretty easy.

    And I agree, 1000 cent. If the mainstream media wants to verbally rape the UFC 71 card, they’ll find an excuse to. If they want to praise it to high heaven, they’ll find an excuse to as well. Just like any media, really, it’s about inherent biases and, more often than not, a person will be swayed by the media that ‘fairly’ portrays the product/story/etc. in question based on said biases that match up with the reader.

  11. Tomer Chen says:

    Boxing critics are quick to pounce on the lame Liddell – Jackson fight. To them thats prove positive of a lame fight night since in boxing, a lame main card is a lame fight night. They fail to realize that a UFC fight night (a night of fights on pay per view, not to be confused with Spike’s UFC fight night) consists of several exciting fights.

    Eh, I remember lots of Boxing media websites praising the Marco Antonio Barrera-Rocky Juarez II card overall even though the main event was a pretty one sided technical battle. I just think that they are being duplicitous by condemning the card on the main event’s relatively lack of activity until the sudden finish in the case of MMA while generally being fine with good undercards making up for bad main events in Boxing since Boxing has been their bread and butter business/passion for years, so they have a natural tendency to support it (as I mentioned in bias point above as well).

  12. Xenos says:

    I scored a 34 on that test. 99th percentile, a “fanatic”. Both good and sad in their own way.

  13. Matt Boone says:

    I got a 21 also, but I promise I didn’t run to Sherdog’s fight finder to cheat on every answer also….which was harder to do than I thought it’d be.

  14. Damn, I’m a TUF noob. I think my website is making me dumber.

  15. UFCDaily.com says:

    Gotta love hypocrites…

    This is my new media is so big because everyone can have a say about it. It’s just too bad some people don’t understand the sport. I am perfectly fine with people not liking the sport and stating why but nothing irks me more than when someone calls it “human cockfighting” and the like.

    Seriously, in an hour you could read the rules, some history, and watch some fights and understand the sport. Is it really all that much to ask?

  16. chairibofjustice says:

    I got a 28. I totally forgot there were two Ultimate Ultimates.

  17. Jonathan says:

    I got 32 on the quiz…I am a fanatic. Surely this legitimizes it…right?

    And the UFC in a write up AFTER the spelling bee is dumb.

    And I say that we will see UFC shows on ESPN within a year.

  18. Allen says:

    That last post was supposed to show my score graphic from the quiz site. It was a 33. Yeah.

  19. Stu says:

    Marlon Sims vs Noah Thomas … Dana is a fucking hypocrite.

  20. Marketrman says:

    I’d like to point out that I didn’t look at other leagues (i.e. IFL). However, I’m more than willing to see how they compare to UFC if you wish. I can send an email with attachments. What is your email address? I can be reached at [email protected], or MarketRMan if you have AIM (AOL Instant Messenger).

  21. […] Vegas, Nevada. Feel free to share your thoughts directly with him at [email protected] (thanks to FightOpinion.com for the heads up).            May 29th, […]

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