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« | Home | »

Saturday media slum: Dumpster diving

By Zach Arnold | June 29, 2007

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Royal Burnell has a report about an upcoming Art Dore “Extreme Cage Combat” event in Michigan in which Royal claims that fighters are using the dumpster area of a Hooter’s restaurant to set up a ‘locker room.’ Royal’s report includes pictures.

Get ready for Congress to start asking WWE some questions — The Associated Press is reporting that Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson is asking his staff to see if there is cause to hold a Congressional hearing on the issue of steroid abuse, with wrestling at the forefront. More at The Fanhouse.

The Texas department of licensing (which acts like their state athletic commission) is refusing to release fighter salaries for the UFC 69 event that took place in April in Houston.

We have some observations about this story and some contact information…

Take a look at the official ruling from the TDLR posted on the MMA HQ site. It claims that Zuffa LLC, the parent company of UFC, submitted comments about disclosure of the fighter salaries.

We have also considered comments submitted by Zuffa, LLC, d/b/a Ultimate Fighting Championship (“Zuffa”).

Then look at the end of the filing. It gives out the addresses of those who made the requests: Neil Davidson (Canadian Press), Tom Myers (UFCMania.com), Craig Jolicoeur (MMA HQ), and Walt Nauerz.

Now, let’s look at this further…

1) It took an article by Steve Sievert of The Houston Chronicle to expose the fact that there was no drug testing at the UFC 69 (Houston) and UFC 70 (Manchester) events. Why is Zuffa involved in a matter with the TDLR over the issue of releasing fighter salaries when fighter salaries are disclosed in Nevada, California, and other states?

2) UFCMania.com was one of the people who requested for the TDLR to release the fighter salaries for the UFC 69 event. Recently, UFC told fighter Jon Fitch that he could not have UFCMania.com as a sponsor for his fight against Roan Carneiro at the UFC Fight Night 10 event that recently took place in Hollywood, Florida. Are the two events connected or are they not connected? We have absolutely no hard evidence whatsoever to prove or make a connection. Therefore, such a claim would be purely conjecture. In other words, we don’t know at all in any certain terms and cannot make a definitive assertion.

Luke Thomas has an opinion about UFC and media relations.

The AG of Texas is Greg Abbott. His e-mail address is [email protected]

PI e-mail addres: [email protected].

The phone number for PI & A is 1-800-252-8011.

The head honcho for licensing affairs related to the UFC 69 event was Dickie Coles. Here is the web page for the Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation.

The e-mail address for their fight licensing department is CS.Combative [email protected].

Complaints with the TDLR can be filed here.

The excuse that the fighter contracts are protected by common-law privacy and ‘must be withheld’ is on shaky ground, in my opinion. The major state athletic commissions — Nevada, California, and New Jersey all release drug suspensions and fighter salaries. Unless there is a valid state-based privacy law in Texas that prevents such a disclosure, there’s no real reason for hiding such information.

Do the Hustle

So what are our fine friends who used to be Japanese DSE employees up to? They’re working for Hustle Entertainment and now the company wants to book OJ Simpson for their end-of-November Hustle Mania event. It brings back memories of last year when PRIDE believed that Mike Tyson was going to be their saving grace for expanding into America. That didn’t work out so well.

Onto today’s headlines.

  1. MMA Weekly: Finalized line-up for UFC 73 event
  2. The Rochester Post-Bulletin: Ultimate fighting to makes its Mazeppa debut, with authorities monitoring
  3. The New Albany News & Tribune: Mixing it up – former wrestlers bring new fighting style to Jeff
  4. The Arizona Republic: Rage in the Cage champion Richard Hale utilizes methodical style
  5. SLAM! Sports: Tito shoots his mouth off.. again
  6. ITV Boxing: UFC challenge for McCullough
  7. ABC Newspapers: Oak Grove’s Sean Sherks is finally set to defend his Ultimate Fighting lightweight title
  8. The Bristol Herald Courier (TN): Another big MMA event scheduled for Saturday in Bristol
  9. The Terra Haute Tribune Star (IN): MMA card set for Zorah Shrine auditorium (Jason Reinhardt)
  10. CBS Sportsline: An interview with Bas Rutten
  11. MSNBC: IFL struggles for recognition

Benoit story links

  1. ESPN The Magazine: Head-trauma researchers want to study Benoit’s brain
  2. The Observer: Widow of Hercules Hernandez speaks out on steroids in wrestling
  3. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Chris Benoit e-mails tell of friendship, spiritual guidance
  4. ABC News: Police – Wiki confession an ‘unbelievable hindrance’
  5. The Torch: Missing Chris Benoit, and what can be done
  6. AP: Benoit killings put spotlight on steroids
  7. Mike Celizic: Time to wake up, clean up pro-wrestling
  8. The Pasadena Star-News: Putting a face on Fragile X
  9. WrestleMag.com (Phil Lowe): Promoter says GHC addiction for Benoitw as possible
  10. The Baltimore Sun (Childs Walker): Benoit’s shocking death raises question of fans’ complicity

Topics: Boxing, IFL, Japan, Media, MMA, Pro-Wrestling, UFC, UK, WWE, Zach Arnold | 11 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

11 Responses to “Saturday media slum: Dumpster diving”

  1. PizzaChef says:

    Zach, I don’t know if you read this or not, but this guy did some research and found out stuff about the guy who made the Benoit wikipedia post.

    Sounds quite like the lovely fellow, know what I mean mate?

  2. Ivan Trembow says:

    Any more radio/audio links from this week’s coverage of the Benoit murders/suicide?

    The thing that’s so incredibly ignorant about the Texas commission ruling is that they refuse to give out the fighters’ salaries, citing privacy, but they included every single one of the fighters’ home addresses in their ruling. That makes a lot of sense…

    Also, the legal basis in the ruling is flimsy at best, given the policy of almost every legitimate athletic commission in the country. It’s also amusing that it says, “We have also received comments from Zuffa, LLC, d/b/a/ Ultimate Fighting Championship (”Zuffa”),” but later says, “As our ruling is dispositive, we need not address Zuffa’s arguments.”

    I wonder what that legal document from Zuffa to the appeals board looked like. Somehow I doubt it said, “Don’t fucking ask me about fucking numbers! The fighters are making great fucking money! There’s not a single fighter who has complained about their fucking salary! And they don’t even fucking want to know what the fuck the other fighters are making! You should worry about how much fucking money you’re making and mind your own fucking business!” although if it did say that, it would be an overwhelmingly convincing argument.

  3. Royal B. says:

    Just to clarify. The “Tough Gloves” competition was last night. Tonight is the “Xtreme Cage Combat” card.

    And yes, both types of fighters were and will be housed in the dumpster area of the Hooters. Blogger is weird with the picture sizes, but I took a pic of the “Locker room” while they had a semi trailer in it for scale.

    Further talk with friends in that area also say they moved a dumpster out temporarly for the event.

    The pic:

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v361/Royal3/DSCF0054.jpg

  4. chis says:

    Anyone know the Tv ratings for K-1 max.

  5. Lynchman says:

    Regarding Fitch:

    It is my understanding that the main reason was the use of “UFC” in their name.

  6. Body_Shots says:

    [It is my understanding that the main reason was the use of “UFC” in their name.]

    UFCJunkie sponsored Sean Salmon, so I’m not sure that’s the reason. Not that it matters anyway, it’s their show, their world and they make the rules. They can accept or refuse any sponsor they want.

  7. MMA Fan says:

    if ufc really had an issue with ufcmania or any of these sites… or if dana was honest about his disdain for the mma media he could easily have them shut down for copyright violations. WWE/WWF used to shut down and take over all the fan sites that had WWE in their domain. UFC could easily do this to about 10 active sites using UFC in their URLs.

  8. Euthyphro says:

    Hey folks, if you have nothing to do, take a look at the current design for my upcoming site:

    http://www.mmaspectator.com

    any thoughts?

  9. Jeremy (not that Jeremy) says:

    MMA Fan, as much ill-will as not cooperating with these guys generates, sending in the lawyer corps would be even worse.

    Especially when they can just go to the registrar and stop the domain name from renewing so they can reclaim a site associated with their copyright instead. It’s passive-agressive.

  10. MMA Fan says:

    jeremy. i agree with what you said. However its a brand thing. I am personally shocked they allow it right now. What vince used to do was scare every one with potensial law suits and 1 by 1 they took over every wwe branded site. Today now, no one dares register a wwe url. the fact sites are profitting off their trade marks (they all sell ads) , no different then suing an upstart mma company for using the term “Ultimate Fighting” or an Octagon cage.

    HUGE wrestling sites like wwfwcw.com wwfmania.com and others all went by the wasteside. Sure they could be MMAJunkie/Mania but their google/SEO marketing efforts based off piggybacking on the UFC brand would end. This strategy obviouly wouldn’t work with sites like sherdog and fightopinion. However in a big swoop at anytime they could shut down every UFC branded site. Long term if want to do an MMA site, the smart money is not using UFC in your URL.

  11. Jason Gatties says:

    Personally I wish all the athletic commissions would with hold fighter salaries. Its none of my business what the fighters make and shouldn’t be your business. Try asking me how much money I make. Don’t hold your breath for a response.

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