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Sunday media review: All UFC, all the time
By Zach Arnold | June 3, 2007
Tonight is WEC from Las Vegas on The Versus Network. The Versus Network is the home of the National Hockey League and has long been a media punchline due to supposedly nobody knowing what the channel is or being able to get it on a basic cable package. Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs drew a 0.72 cable rating. Will WEC become the network’s big ticket item?
Shannon Briggs lost on Saturday night. More details at Boxing Scene.
On Thursday, the Nevada State Athletic Commission will have their monthly meeting. Two interesting notes in their agenda list: 1) Zuffa LLC wants a waiver for a reality TV event and 2) K-1 wants to book the Bellagio Hotel Grand Ballroom for an event on August 11th.
An idiotic letter in the Albany Times-Union on the MMA/dogfighting link.
The newest edition of The Fightworks Podcast.
Onto today’s headlines.
- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Chuck Liddell ‘overhyped’ and ‘The Pieman’ (this is the same paper that published Bryan Burwell’s anti-MMA screed last week)
- UFC Junkie: PRIDE is dead… long live PRIDE?
- The Las Vegas Sun: Ultimate Fighter contestant Alex Karalexis gets kicks in the cage
- Darnell Sue: Don’t mess with MMA
- The Guam Pacific Daily News: Jason Palacios – ‘I’ve trained too hard not to win’
- MMA Weekly: WEC weigh-in results
- The Shreveport Times: Local events crucial to UFC
- The Boston Herald: It’s back to work for Chuck Liddell
- The Winnipeg Sun: Can’t keep him down – Randy Couture craves competition
- North County Times: Maverick sport? Don’t tell Iceman
- The Long Beach Press-Telegram: Bob Arum not ultimate fight fan
- The Maryville Daily Times (TN): Ultimate Fighting seeks change in state law
- Tashiro: Boxing versus the UFC
- The Irish Whip: The future of the UFC
- Chris Vernon (730 AM ESPN Radio – Memphis): Interview with Joe Rogan
- MMA Betting Blog: Bodog and BetUS see huge increases in UFC betting (Bodog claims that action for UFC 71 was comparable to an NFL game)
- Bullpen Catcher: All these upsets – I’m a little upset!
- The Sun Journal (Maine): Kenny Florian gives back to ‘hardcore fans’
Topics: Boxing, K-1, Media, MMA, PRIDE, UFC, WEC, Zach Arnold | 54 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
“Even Dana White will be surprised with our US presence” – K-1 Hero’s President was quoted on MMAWeekly quoting him from their press conference.
I love Japanese culture, so fascinating.
I invite anybody to watch Brock Lesnar’s post fight interview on Sherdog.com. What kind of fighter has tobacco in his mouth while doing an interview like that?
As for Johnnie Morton, I think his loss was great for MMA. The last thing this sport needs is a bunch of people saying that anybody can do it. Plus, the fact that he refused to take a piss test makes him pretty darn bad.
I would be shocked if this event got close to 50,000 PPV Buys. And if I am Showtime, I am actually hoping not many people ordered it, because that is a bad first PPV to have.
I think the biggest story coming out of last night is ESPN & Sports Illustrated. I will admit I didn’t watch SportsCenter last night, but I am going off their websites.
Both websites have no mention of the K-1 Dynamite Card on their front page. Both have a home page news story for Shannon Briggs losing his Boxing Heavyweight Title.
I think this answers a lot of questions about what type of coverage the sport of MMA will be getting. Unless you are called the UFC, not much.
I think we knew all along that the mainstream media was going to cover UFC and nothing else. It also indicates that ESPN might be pretty interested in getting involved in broadcasting some UFC shows. Sounds a lot better than a HBO deal now, doesn’t it?
A proper ESPN deal is 100 times better then an HBO deal. HBO killed boxing.
Showtime has 15 Million subscribers. HBO has 40 Million subscribers. ESPN and ESPN 2 have around 90 Million. When you remove over half of your potential fans with a deal like HBO, it doesn’t kill the sport at first, but it slowly leads to a decline like you see in boxing.
If you have coverage like ESPN’s Sunday Night Game or Monday Night Football, then MMA would get even bigger. Perhaps a Thursday Fight Night once a month on ESPN? With SportsCenter behind them, it is like a guaranteed fan base.
The only thing I worry about with HBO is that if the UFC doesn’t sign with them, then they might go with a boxing promoter who will fraction the sport even more. That is what we don’t need. This is kind of why the UFC is in a bad position right now. If they take the deal, they are killing their audience. If they don’t take the deal, then competition could hurt them. Either way, I think they are mildly screwed.
Hey Zach,
Here is another link for you….
http://msn.foxsports.com/boxing/story/6880270
In the article Dave Doyle is saying the current rumor for number of tickets sold is 1,000. If this number is actually true, and the majority of them being probably $10, then that is crazy.
Zach: Check the K-1 Dynamite post. The link’s been there for several hours now. 🙂
I’ve been saying for a long time that I think the UFC’s broadcast rights will end up on ESPN. ESPN has so many channels and is always looking for programming. There’s a premium on sports-related programming that can actually draw ratings. When I interviewed Dana White I tried to prod a little bit and see if he would say they were going to open TV negotiations up to channels outside of Spike. Dana praised Spike and said he had no intention of leaving. He did say their current deal wouldn’t prevent them from doing deals with ESPN or HBO. However, ESPN isn’t going to want to share rights. I wonder if Dana’s feelings towards Spike changed after they declined the option of televising UFC 72.
Dana wants to be loyal to Spike but I believe the media blitz we saw from ESPN last weekend was a test. They wanted to gauge the interest-level in the UFC. If the ratings and the feedback come back strong, don’t be surprised if they make the UFC an offer they can’t refuse.
Last I had heard, the UFC’s TV contract with Spike expires in mid-2008. I think we’re getting pretty close to a point where Zuffa begins to start talking about a new contract.
Obviously my eyes deceive me.
Both websites have no mention of the K-1 Dynamite Card on their front page. Both have a home page news story for Shannon Briggs losing his Boxing Heavyweight Title.
There is one, actually, about Morton’s KO, right on ESPN’s front page.
There has a lot of TV ads for WEC on Versus on both SpikeTV and Versus all weekend.
I predict a 0.5 rating. What rating would be considered a success?
That ESPN article just went up a in the last hour or so. And the article really makes no mention of Lesnar, Gracie, or Sakuraba. It feels more like a football article.
With Lord Stanley getting a .72, I would say anything in that range would be a great success. I actually think the show will get higher then a .72. With the UFC website promoting the event, and a good amount of advertising, I think it could even get close to a 1.0. But obviously that is a pure guess. The ratings should be interesting. Let’s see if Zuffa themselves can break the mold of MMA selling beyond the “Ultimate Fighting” name.
You guys expecting the WEC to do more than a .5 are nuts. I’m serious. If it does a .3 Zuffa will jump for joy.
HBO isn’t what hurt Boxing, it was channels like ABC & NBC on basic cable that had an even wider potential base slowly pulling out of the sport that really hurt it. Ali, Leonard, etc. had national exposure on those channels for years. In addition, the over-exposure of PPV events (hell, Briggs-Ibragimov last night was a freaking PPV) has damaged the image further since most people are turned off at having to pay to watch two less than great fighters going at. When it’s a superfight (such as De La Hoya-Mayweather Jr.), they fans are willing to shell out the cash, but not for tenth rate fights. Also, the less frequent fighting by drawing cards as they go up the fighting ladder hurts the sport as there are less potential big gates/TV revenues/PPV buyrates to accrue. Whereas 50 years ago it wasn’t that uncommon to see fighters have 100+ fights in their career and fighting at least 4-5 times a year, a fighter today who has 50-60 fights is a ‘long term veteran’ and him fighting 2-3 times a year is a small miracle.
Simply put: the landscape of Boxing changed, both in terms of the total market exposure on TV and the activity of the drawing cards.
ESPN will kill MMA, trust me those greedy cocksuckers will milk MMA for all it’s worth and dump it.
Tomer Chen has a good point. However, I think your point shows how boxing went from an elite sport to a secondary sport. My point is that is has now completely falled off the map because of a channel like HBO. Either way, you make some valid points.
Sherdog.com is once against disappointing me. (What a shock). Not only did Josh Gross completely ignore Brock Lesnar’s drawing power yesterday on Beatdown. He completely has no clue that if Lesnar is promoted correctly by a company like the UFC, then the Pro Wrestling fans will be there….
Now, they have no live play by play coverage of the WEC. Yet they had full coverage of K-1 Dynamite. Nothing like buying into the hype. K-1 has 2 Top 20 fighters in JZ Calvancanti & Jake Shields. Both were given scrubs to fight.
The WEC event features a Top 3 Featherweight in Urijah Faber. A top 10 Featherweight in Mark Hominick. A Top 20 fighter in Brock Larson. And more importantly, it is a more even card. Yet they are barely covering the event.
What gives? Does Zuffa have to put the event in a 90,000 seat stadium, give out 80,000 free tickets, get a DJ, and have a horrible card for Sherdog to cover it in depth?
“HBO isn’t what hurt Boxing, it was channels like ABC & NBC on basic cable that had an even wider potential base slowly pulling out of the sport that really hurt it.”
Tomer, frankly I am amazed that ABC maintained any association with boxing after the US Boxing Championships debacle of 1977. IMHO, if it wasn’t for Alex Wallau’s presence in the executive boardroom, ABC would have pulled out of the sport many years before they did.
So, I’m watching this thing on TV called WEC WrekCage. I have been impressed so far. Much better then the IFL in terms of production. Frank Mir is doing fantastic as a commentator. I’m not sold on the other guy yet, but I need to hear him for an entire live event before I can make up my mind.
I like the cage size too. Just big enough, but still better for the smaller fighters. Carlos Condit was impressive.
45,
What are you talking about?
They have a preview and pbp for the WEC on Sherdog. As well as coverage on the weigh-in.
I don’t think you looked too hard.
I’m watching it on TSN right now as well. Pretty cool little program going on. I’m pretty jacked to see Homnick and Yahya (2007 ADCC champ). Apparently this Zellner guy used to be a pro wrestler…another Brock Lesnar or Tony Halme/Sean O’Haire? (I’m kidding)
Faber is siiiiiiick. I’d love to see him fight against Tyson Griffin again or against Frankie Edgar.
That’s funny. because I was getting the entire undercard results off of The Fight Network. I had checked Sherdog.com a few times, even as late as an hour ago, and they had nothing up.
Is there anyway that this “working relationship” between K-1/Showtime/EliteXC etc. can be used to really market Lesnar in the US??
I imagine that Elite XC could do well to have him headline a PPV. If they actually properly promoted it and stuff like that, unlike that sad sad effort K-1 displayed for yesterdays gong-show.
WEC was well run even before Zuffa bought them out, and Zuffa has given them a lot of help in the production aspects. The show looks very good so far.
I’m always a little irritated by people who say that IFL will eventually succeed when people get used to the team concept. It isn’t the team concept that is killing them, its the production.
Yeah it’s quite possible – like you said, maybe they are slacking and just put it up pretty last minute. Either way its been a really fluid and excellently produced product so far. Anyone who’s not watching is missing some good stuff!
Good on ’em….gives me something to do other than watch Family Guy/American Dad re-runs!
I just find the whole production, presentation etc. to be sooo bland and boring. There’s so many things they could do to make themselves exciting and different, but of course they don’t. It seems like now that MMA’s a hot product everyone wants to get involved and pour money into it but doesn’t have a FREAKIN’ clue.
Apparently they’re allergic to making money and are content to allow Zuffa carte blanche at all the money to be made.
WEC show has been great so far, not in terms of fight; Stann/Zellner were two relative greenhorns, and while Karalexis put on a good performance, he’s still just a gatekeeper. But the show seems very smooth, and natural.
Apart from Mir’s pandering with his open/closed guard comments, the commentary is quality and sport intensive, and doesn’t reek of the standard “THIS IS MMA, THIS IS SAFE, CLEAN FUN, WE PROMISE!” foolishness. If Yahira/Hominick and Faber/Farrar are quality fights, this will be an outstanding telecast.
Mir stumbles over himself too much, but he is showing potential.
I’m a little confused on how they are showing the Larson fight right now.
The WEC show has less energy then a UFC show, but is still good. If the IFL could do tis with their product, they would be so much more successful. They aren’t, and that is why their ratings went down hill.
Larson was so fucking close to a cobra clutch.
“Mir stumbles over himself too much, but he is showing potential.”
I notice Mir is far more amped up than previous commentary ventures such as UFC 50. If he could cool out just a tad, it’d be stellar. His UFC 50 color commentary was some of the best MMA commentary this sport has had.
Jordan, when you have your show on Sherdog radio, will you have a co-host or will you be flying solo?
“Jordan, when you have your show on Sherdog radio, will you have a co-host or will you be flying solo?”
Nothing definite yet, but the hope is June 12 for a debut. I’ll be semi-solo, as the idea is to have TJ there for some banter, but the MMA content will mostly be me by my lonesome. But, if people don’t dig that, I have no problem getting a more traditional co-host. We’ll feel it out.
Yahya just SCHOOLED Hominick once he got that distance closed. However there was some tense moments as he makes the Gracies look like masters of setting up takedowns in there. He looked like Tito Ortiz in there just diving at his legs!! haha.
lol Hominick should be ashamed that he got taken down with that bullshit.
Rani needs to work on setting up the takedown with strikes, because he’s not going to be able to do that against someone like Faber (or, God/Jesus/Buddha/whatever willing, Kid Yamamoto).
Hominick vs. Yahya was interesting. Hominick was doing great while backing up. Sadly, once Yahya got a hold of him, he was lost. Hominick could have easily gotten out on top, as Yahya didn’t have any hooks for a little hit. That is a pretty standard wrestling escape. But Hominick reminds me of Sam Stout and Duane Ludwig. So solid on their feet, but just can’t compete once they make it to the ground.
Hey Jordan, I think it would be interesting if you had a weekly fighter profile. Give fans a chance to become educated about a new foreign fighter every week. Heck, I’m a hardcore fight fan, and I would probably learn a lot from something like that.
“Hey Jordan, I think it would be interesting if you had a weekly fighter profile. Give fans a chance to become educated about a new foreign fighter every week. Heck, I’m a hardcore fight fan, and I would probably learn a lot from something like that.”
I’m cool with that. If you’ve got any suggestions, or even if you just wanna call in and talk about Fighter X, that’s fabulous. I’m down for whatever.
Also, Yahira is hilarious. How can’t you enjoy a guy who once said “I just want to prove jiu-jitsu is stronger than karate”?
“15 Successful Title Defenses”
The First Ever WEC Myth?
HOLD THE FUCKING PHONES
ADELAIDE BYRD?
This fight kicks major, major ass.
Lightweights & Featherweights can just do stuff that isn’t possible for the heavier fighters. A short, but very entertaining fight.
Zuffa has to be happy with Faber winning. He is the posterboy of the company.
Mir solidified the night by calling an Iranian Lift. If he doesn’t call a Granby Roll at the next event, I’ll be let down.
I was overall impressed with the WEC fights, and if they are going to show live fights on a weekly or semi-weekly basis, that is great for the sport and for us fans.
The thing about Lesnar is that in order to draw the pro-wrestling fan-interest, he has to be acknowledged as being a former pro-wrestler by the promoter. No way in hell Dana White will do that. Gary Shaw will. Calvin Ayre will. K-1 did.
David M: More like a bi-monthly basis. The next live one is in August or September.
The K1 show sucked the love of MMA out of me. The WEC show reminded me what the sport is really all about.
I wacthed the WEC event. Damn good show. I was impressed. I didn’t watch Dynamite!! on Saturday because I went to an amatuer kickboxing show in Plymouth, Pa. Some damn good fights. The craziest thing was that the best fight of the night (atleast in the top three. there were thirteen fights. Two of them exhibitions) was a fight between two I think twelve year old girls. It was a crazy good fight, I swear. And it wasn’t one of the exhibition fights either. it was a sanctioned full contact rules fight. All the fights were full contact rules (eight kick minimum per round). Besides the one fight, all the other fights were male fights, most being adults, including a fifty year old that had no business being in a ring, and got knocked out in the first round. And the event had the worst music ever. Almost all of it was a cover band doing older WWF/WWE theme musics, and the legit version of “Whoomps, there it is!!”. Almost made me commit suicide.
“But Hominick reminds me of Sam Stout and Duane Ludwig. So solid on their feet, but just can’t compete once they make it to the ground.”
Seeing as Hominick and Stout are both Team Tompkin guys out of London, Ont. – there might be a bit more to that…maybe they need a bit more sub-D training in their camps. Though Hominick did pull out a nice triangle on Edwards a bit back. I realize that Rani is a sick sub guy – but its not like he was even pulling out any crazy Saku/Aoki style stuff to get that sub on him…pretty standard stuff.
And for the love of God I hope Mir stops trying to get over his whole “the Lion Kill” phrase. It sounds so dumb and he only says it every 5 seconds if someone has any semblance of back control.
“The thing about Lesnar is that in order to draw the pro-wrestling fan-interest, he has to be acknowledged as being a former pro-wrestler by the promoter. No way in hell Dana White will do that. Gary Shaw will. Calvin Ayre will. K-1 did.”
You really think that’s necessary? I mean people will clearly know who the guy is…all you have to do is just market him in the right places and people are going to recognize him (he’s got a pretty unique look). Even if you just make some kind of veiled references, I don’t think you’d have to go to the extent of actually tossing out “WWF Champion” and hurt your image as a “legit org/event”.
Play up his amateur athletic background and “All American” image. Hell, Dana White wanted to bring in Kurt Angle – he can’t be THAT concerned.
I think the very first step is actually running commercials during Smackdown, RAW, & ECW. The fact that K-1 did not do this, was a horrible idea (or lack of).
Exactly what I was thinking. Get some ads during WWE or pro wrestling related programs or on channels they run on…maybe run some “pro wrestling-esque” promos for him and viola! They’re dying for an American HW face in MMA…and if handled right and brought along smartly he’s got some great tools.
And K-1 and PRIDE have shown that the Japanese in the fight game have NO CLUE how to run shows in the US. They could draw in Japan on name alone and just announcing guys who were going to be on the card, but they can’t seem to realize how embedded UFC is and that maybe they AREN’T household names in the US b/c they haven’t run shows here before.
The commission and not announcing fights until 5 days before really hurt them too. Maybe they need to get smart about having experienced American promoters to run shows overseas (re: here)??