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Is there a way to stop booing at MMA events?
By Adam Morgan | July 16, 2007
By Adam Morgan
Related post from Five Ounces of Pain.
The reason mixed martial arts promoters paper events is so that they can tout that their event was “sold out.” Making your product appear so appealing that tickets are hard to get makes people want to buy tickets. It’s a psychological principle known as scarcity which, in essence, makes people place value on things that are scarce. If tickets to your event seem hard to get, people assume it’s good. The more people think it’s good, the more people buy tickets. It’s that simple.
Unfortunately for mixed martial arts as a sport and especially for people who are mixed martial arts enthusiasts, papering events does more harm than it does good. In the short run, I guess you sell more tickets. In the long run, though, what you do is let in uneducated fans who only attend the event because it’s free and are attracted merely by the brutality of it. As Zach has stated recently, people who wind up obtaining free tickets are those who look at mixed martial arts with a sort of “toughman attitude.” Those types of people are the exact types of people the sport does not need at shows.
Terrible crowds due to the papering of events has happened twice this month alone. At UFC 73, the crowd even booed during what was arguably one of the best fights on the entire card, Sean Sherk v. Hermes Franca. It was a good fight. It was technical, there was lots of guard passing (something the UFC has been lacking recently), Franca landed a knee in almost every round and there was a dominating performance by the champion, Sherk. And the crowd booed with spite.
An even worse case of terrible crowds due to papering happened just this past weekend at the Bodog FIGHT event in Trenton, NJ. Chants of “USA! USA” for a fighter from South Africa and racist remarks targeted at Yves Edwards. And why does this happen? Because you give away tickets to people who only want to see guys stand and wail on each other.
What’s wrong with having some empty seats? As much as I’d like to think mixed martial arts is “mainstream” now, it’s really not. Sure, it’s getting some exposure. But it’s far from where I thought it would be after UFC 71. In my mind, it’s still a fledgling sport. There are going to be empty seats. The seat is better off empty than with someone in it who has no appreciation for what’s going on in the ring or cage. It ruins the event for those who attend and for those who watch on television at home.
How to fix it?
1. Education.
UFC is what people know. The Ultimate Fighter is the vehicle that brings new fans in. UFC should use TUF as a source for education of the sport. Show the viewers every week a new technique that the fighters are learning. Have a coach demonstrate it with a fighter or have two fighters demonstrate it. Then you show the fighters training that specific technique. Eventually, someone’s going to use one of those techniques to end a fight and you’ll see the end result of practical application. This isn’t too much to ask and would give people an understanding of just how technique driven this sport is.
2. Run shows where big time mixed martial arts hasn’t been seen before.
The crowd in Columbus, Ohio speaks for itself regarding this point. Go to areas where there is a thirst for the UFC. There are hotbeds across the country just waiting for a UFC event to come to their town. From my personal experience, the Midwest is absolutely drooling at the thought of UFC events coming to the region. You have plenty of Midwestern fighters on the roster. Stack a card with them and promote locally. Sell a boatload of tickets and you won’t have to paper ¼ of the stadium. Simple, right? I’m not saying UFC needs to run in the Midwest exclusively, but it’s a good start.
3. Don’t run shows in locations where rampant booing has occurred in the past.
As was mentioned on the Any Given Saturday radio show, don’t run events where there have been bad crowds. Sacramento should not be considered for an event until at least 2008.
4. Simply don’t paper the events.
It’s really that simple. A few empty seats isn’t going to hurt a good mixed martial arts card. Fans will come around eventually and you will fill those seats with real fans. Until then, let it be and don’t ruin your own event with uneducated fans who could care less about advanced jiu jitsu techniques. In the end, it makes your organization look bad.
Are these suggestions too much to ask? Booing ultimately reflects poorly upon the promoter, so why not take steps to erase it? What are your suggestions on how to fix booing?
Topics: Adam Morgan, BoDog, Media, MMA, UFC | 60 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
“An even worse case of terrible crowds due to papering happened just this past weekend at the Bodog FIGHT event in Trenton, NJ. Chants of “USA! USA” for a fighter from South Africa and racist remarks targeted at Yves Edwards. And why does this happen? Because you give away tickets to people who only want to see guys stand and wail on each other.”
And you know those people got in for free? How many were involved in that? How many people were in atetndance and how many got free tickets? Were you there? Really you are so wrong on that it is pathetic. Myths are starting to develop about this event that have little basis in fact.
Your four points on how to stop the booing make sense. I don’t know exactly how promotions go about papering events, or how they distribute thousands of tickets, but I wonder if there isn’t a smart way to do it. Giving tickets away through martial arts schools or MMA gyms might help bring in a more interested crowd. Famly and friends and students of local fighters are often but absolutely not always, more likely to be respectful of the sport in general, so having local guys on the undercard is helpful.
You could also choose smaller venues of say 5,000 seats. For the UFC especially this is a good option because they make most of their money in PPV. The fight club members might buy up most of the seats if you are lucky. I assume they are less likely to be disrespectful.
The education issue is one the UFC has really failed on. TUF is the perfect vehicle for that but rather than educate fans about half guard sweeps, they show food fights. There is so much that can be done in this area.
And yes, the midwestern cities, or anywhere where there is a strong wrestling tradition, are good candidates for a UFC. I often think Zuffa chooses the locations based on where they want to spend a few days vacation. eg Florida or LA.
As an immediate remedy that fans can take to stop booing at events, I would give an example from a pro wrestling match I attended decades ago. Newer, Impatient fans had begun to chant “:boring” at the matches, anytime there was either a lull or even just when there wasn’t a high spot being performed. They showed no appreciation for the finer aspects of the performance. During such a “slow” moment in a match between two of the sport’s master performers, a few fans started the “boring” chant. before it could cathc on, the people in our section responded by standing up and applauding the wrestlers in the ring, drowning out the idiots. It worked and they didn’t open their mouths the rest of the night.
Booing is only wrong in some cases. To want to see booing removed entirely from the sport is not something I agree with. While it is obviously not called for all the time, there is nothing wrong with fans showing their impatience sometimes.
The ground game can either be a very exciting scramble for dominance or it can be used to delay actually causing damage to the opponent and a way to kill time. If the fans want to boo when that happens, it is not really a concern to me. I would probably be booing along with them if I felt one or both opponents were stalling.
I seriously doubt it can be proved that booing only comes from people who got in for free. If that was the case, every time an MMA event legitimately sold out, it would be free from booing.
When fans go beyond booing and start using racist taunts, that is when they cross the line and I will not defend that at all. And chanting “USA” when one of the opponents is not from this country also seems pointless to me, although it is not as cruel.
Theoretically if a fighter always showed up to give the fans a show, he would never be booed. Fighters should be tought to always go for the kill and to never stall. Some fighters like to abuse the rules and time limits and this has caused some fans to get so upset that they begin to boo them. I am not agains the ground game, but I can understand why some fans are so weary of it, considering that part of the fight game is where a lot of the abuse of their patience stems from.
Great post. It’s nice to hear constructive ideas about how to improve one of the sport’s sore spots.
I agree that you can combat the negative trend of booing by running new markets and avoiding markets that boo heavily. But I disagree with some of your other premises.
The biggest myth about the booing is to me the notion that it is caused by ignorance of the sport. There was definitely a time when that happened. I remember going to UFC events in 2001 and 2002 where you would get booing as soon as it hit the ground, even if the guys were moving for submissions and it was an action fight. That’s not what you get most of the time any more. Fans will react to guard passes, submission attempts and the like. The booing isn’t that the fans don’t know what’s going on – it’s that they expect action every last second and have no patience at all. Some of the biggest booing this year has been for slow standup as opposed to ground action. So I don’t think education is going to have any real effect.
I also disagree with the connection made between booing and comp tickets. I have no concrete evidence one way or another, but a lot of the booing recently has come at big events with very high ticket prices. I don’t think it’s comps that are booing – if anything I think they’re by and large just happy to be at the event. I think the people that are booing are the ones paying the really high UFC ticket prices. I think those ticket prices are a big part of the issue – people pay hundreds of dollars for tickets and they feel entitled to non-stop action for that money. If they aren’t getting what they want, they are very quick to boo and are unforgiving because they’ve paid so much money to get in. And if that is the case, there isn’t a lot that can be done about the booing. We’ll just have to learn to accept it to some degree as a trade-off with getting such huge gates.
It’s appealing to me as a big MMA fan to think that if all the people attending MMA events are big MMA fans that it will lead to a more respectful crowd. But I don’t think that respect and knowledge necessarily go hand in hand. ECW crowds were the perfect example of that in the pro wrestling context.
I like the first two suggestions:
#1 is ok, but somewhat generic answer. Everyone loves education, ask a politician.
#2, good point. A novel show attracts the diehards, who horde the tickets before the assholes do.
But:
#3: Sac was great once, why can’t it be great again? If you starve the die hards (18-24 months should do the trick), you can get a great crowd again.
#4: Dynamite USA was heavily papered, in fact, only suckers bought tickets. Yet it was one of the best crowds of the year (along with Strikeforce and UFC 68). How do you explain this?
My hypothesis is the complete opposite: higher ticket prices attract boorish fans. When you charge $250 for the average ticket, fans feel entitlement. They feel not that they have an obligation to be good fans, but to act any which way they want. They are, afterall, spending 5x what it costs for, say, a football game. Also, once you elevate a ticket to a status symbol, you’re going to get people who are going just to floss, and chances are likely they’re assholes.
No, you scare non-fans away who know nothing about what’s going on. “Hey, they’re giving something to me for free, it must be crap.” Compare what reaction you’ll get when you give that to a hardcore fan: “Holy crap, a free MMA show? I love MMA! I’ll go even when it’s crap!” IHere, the non-fans would likely not show up and hardcore fans more likely will. The know-little fan looking for knockouts that shows up with a comp will probably be more tolerant of bad action, afterall, he comes with the expectation that the event will be crap.
The situation is different with the UFC, since everyone knows the UFC and would assume it won’t be total crap. Here, you can paper the general public, or target jiu-jitsu schools, and I’ll bet there will be a difference in the fan that shows up. Which can explain why the Dynamite USA crowd was so well-behaved: FEG targeted the right groups (Koreans, apparently) in their papering efforts.
By what I’ve read, the racist BodogFight crowd was there because they were Eddie Alvarez fans. As fans, they’re willing to pay for tickets to act like assholes, comping was most likely not the cause.
The higher the ticket prices, the more you have to paper a show. UFC had 8,622 paid and around 5,000 comps for the Sacramento show. 5/13… 40% of the audience is in for free. Combine that with alcohol sales, and you end up with marks who are drunk out of their minds and acting as if they’re at a Toughman show.
Take Sacramento for example. That crowd was great for the first event (Matt Hughes vs. GSP in November of 2006). The ticket prices were also cheaper for that show than they were for the Tito Ortiz vs. Rashad Evans event (which is riduclous). Plus, factor in that Ortiz pulls in a lot of casual spectators and not necessarily hardcore fans.
I like that fans MUST CHEER for that which is technically good, like Hermes Franca’s guard being passed 300 times without any serious attempt to finish on behalf of Sherk. Unbelievably sanctimonous crap. You should at least have some sense of self awareness when you write this.
I love how there’s a double-standard online in which if you boo technique, you must be a redneck mark, yet if you support a guy from The Ultimate Fighter, you’re just a ‘TUF noobie’ who knows no better.
In soccer, there has been the exact opposite problem. Teams that papered houses in the past found that fans who got free tickets had no involvement in the game, and developed an expectation that tickets would be free, driving down the value of tickets in general.
If you can get in for free, why pay?
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However, I think that to some degree, bringing in fans to a live event for free can win you more knowledgeable fans in the long run. It’s hard to say. Personally, I learn a lot more about any given sport from watching it on television than I do watching it live. The live experience is event driven entertainment. The television experience is also entertainment, but tends to play up the sport aspect.
For the criticism that Rogan gets, you have to admit that a million or so people are learning what a leg kick is, learning to appreciate the techniques required to pass guard, and understanding wrestling and judo submissions every time UFC is on Spike.
Maybe the couple thousand freebies in Sacramento just learned how to boo.
I’ve said this before, butI think part of the booing phenomena has to do with the carnivalesque atmosphere of UFC shows. Its the biggest party in town whenever it shows up. I mean, just look at all the Q-List celebrities that the are saddeningly a prominent part of UFC broadcasts. The paid crowd is, it seems to me, composed mostly of people who want to party who have the money to do so. Meaning, they don’t know shit about MMA. They are the people that are going to boo when it hits the ground.
You’ll also notice that less well-known fighters are booed more often than big names or main event fighters, reinforcing my point – the rich party folk might not boo Chuck because they know who he is; he’s the reason the party exists in the first place…but they won’t have a problem booing Chris Lytle if he goes for a takedown.
The yanks screw things up pretty bad.They should come over to Japan,Ireland and England and see the respect the crowd give to the fights.
You’re putting words in my mouth, here. I didn’t say you had to cheer it. Just don’t boo it.
For what its worth, as far as “smart” papering goes, the UFC gave most of its tickets for 73 out at local military bases.
This is approaching the realm of the absurd. My base rebuttals to several points.
-People know more about the sport than they’re given credit for. Listen to the crowd when BJ Penn is using his rubber guard against Hughes in their rematch. Its MOLTEN. The problem is making people care about the fighters. You can’t bring people in at random, no matter how good they are, and expect them to garner interest like a BJ Penn would in that situation. Demanding that the UFC make it so is a no win proposition. You push the undercard too much, you take away from the headliners. You push the headliners too much, people complain its a one match show. Wasn’t the whole “LESSONS OF 2006” thing that the key is pushing one “main event program” at a time? That its the big names that sell PPVs, not guys that no one has heard of?
-Everyone complains about the booing during the Sherk bout, but not about the cheering and hot crowd for a really boring fight between Tito and Rashad. Does anyone consider why that might be? Furthermore, why does anyone “have” to like Sean Sherk/Hermes Franca? I heard just as many hardcore longtime fans complain that the fight suck as newbies. If watching Sherk fight to win a decision entertained you, great. Don’t demand that everyone else in the world be ooohing and ahhhing at Sherk getting the double leg takedown a hundred times and never even marking Franca’s face in 25 minutes of total control.
-There is no correlation between cheaper tickets and either drawing more money drawn or having a better crowd. Period. None. The idea that people watching at home on TV would dislike a match more because the crowd is booing is incredibly simplistic. The fact is that people come to see fights to see fights, not see exhibitions of wrestling. Credit to the Japanese crowd for not pelting the ring during some of the truly awful bouts that were held in the earlier days of PRIDE, but why the Americans should have to sit on their hands during an awful bout is beyond me.
I mean, just look at all the Q-List celebrities that the are saddeningly a prominent part of UFC broadcasts. The paid crowd is, it seems to me, composed mostly of people who want to party who have the money to do so.
You realize some of them have been watching MMA forever, right? Kevin James has been watching MMA for an eternity. You can see Shaq in the crowd at like Superbrawl 5. Besides, major fight crowds have always, always been about being seen more than the fight itself. You think every person that went to De La Hoya/Mayweather has volumes of tape sitting around? The kind of people that can spend $10,000 on a ticket generally aren’t that type of fan.
When you charge $250 for the average ticket, fans feel entitlement. They feel not that they have an obligation to be good fans, but to act any which way they want. They are, afterall, spending 5x what it costs for, say, a football game. Also, once you elevate a ticket to a status symbol, you’re going to get people who are going just to floss, and chances are likely they’re assholes.
Football games are often more expensive than you may think, but overall this is money.
You’ll also notice that less well-known fighters are booed more often than big names or main event fighters, reinforcing my point – the rich party folk might not boo Chuck because they know who he is; he’s the reason the party exists in the first place…but they won’t have a problem booing Chris Lytle if he goes for a takedown.
Of course! They bought the PPV to see Chuck Liddell, not Chris Lytle! The only people that buy PPVs on the basis of the undercard are hardcore fans, and the UFC is a bit beyond trying to cater to them in order to survive.
Another thing to consider in the arm chair promoter discussion is that the show was originally planned for Atlanta, but that fell through for various reasons. So its not like the UFC thought going back to Sacramento so soon was a good idea, despite the fact that as I recall the crowd was amazing for the first show there last November.
At the end of the day, this is much ado about nothing.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The correct way for the UFC to stop booing is to reward fans by having Ali Sonoma walk around the ring topless after rounds when nobody booed.
Duh.
You’re putting words in my mouth, here. I didn’t say you had to cheer it. Just don’t boo it.
Why? Who says you can’t speak disapproval at a fight? If I pay $150 to be entertained, hell man, I better be entertained. If it wasn’t for me and everyone else in the seats buying PPVs and DVDs and tickets to live events, there would be no shows in the first place, and none of these guys would have a venue to ply their craft. You don’t think the fans that paid money to see Diego Sanchez/Josh Koscheck had a right to be pissed off that they danced rather than fight after paying exorbitant sums of money?
My solution is simple. If you caught booing, security will escort you to the cage to see if you can do better. Booing to me is disrespectful to these fighters who put their bodies on the line to entertain and compete. American fans could learn a thing or two from the Japanese fans.
This whole, “Its disrespectful!” line is ridiculous. Booing happens at virtually every event in the world that is substandard, from crappy movies to theater and so on. This reminds me of the announce crew at the UFC trying to make excuses for the downright horrible Severn/Shamrock II fight, where the crowd hated the fight because they didn’t see the strategy of two men so afraid of each other they circled for half an hour.
If people knew so much about the sport in America, people would call MMA Mixed Martial Arts. They wouldn’t label it ‘ultimate fighting,’ which almost everyone does in the sports media and on talk radio.
Well, let me speak in regards to discounting or papering crowds…
In the history of combat sports, papering events is a promotion-killer and there’s rampant evidence of this in your favorite sport, professional wrestling. The most prominent example of this was with the Von Erichs and World Class in Dallas when they used to run the Sportatorium. When business lagged, they started offering coupons in the local papers where fans would get in for free but ‘pay for parking’ to watch the shows. As more and more papering occured, it diluted the fanbase and what you ended up getting were really poor fans. The crowds continued to shrink and the message was loud-and-clear – the product isn’t worth paying to see a ticket for because the promoter doesn’t believe you should pay to see it.
That’s the major risk in papering events, especially for UFC which is charging $300-550 USD for prime tickets. If I’m one of the paying customers for UFC 73, I’d be furious to find out that 40% of the crowd got in for nothing. Are you kidding me? What kind of message does that send to loyal paying customers?
Papering, long-term, is terrible business. It’s one thing to do directed papering (towards the military, towards charities) but when you paper for the sake of papering to just fill seats, it’s a joke. It’s bad business.
I’m not going to argue that the UFC at this stage is immune to the effects of paper crowds…but, as the most recently released payrolls indicate, paid gate almost always exceeds – occasionally by a depressing amount – the disclosed salaries for the fighters. There are enough people with money that want to be seen at UFC events, not to forget that the UFC is hardly a local show that needs gate to survive, anyway.
But long-term, yeah. It’s bad business, especially as the hype the sport as a whole has generated starts to fade.
“The biggest myth about the booing is to me the notion that it is caused by ignorance of the sport. There was definitely a time when that happened. I remember going to UFC events in 2001 and 2002 where you would get booing as soon as it hit the ground, even if the guys were moving for submissions and it was an action fight. That’s not what you get most of the time any more. Fans will react to guard passes, submission attempts and the like. The booing isn’t that the fans don’t know what’s going on – it’s that they expect action every last second and have no patience at all. Some of the biggest booing this year has been for slow standup as opposed to ground action. So I don’t think education is going to have any real effect.”
I have to disagree here.
There was plenty of action in the Sherk vs. Franca fight and the Sacramento fans still booed. A lot. You’re explanation is likely correct: the fans paid a lot, so they wanted a lot. But ultimately, that’s the same boorish mentality of booing the ground game at large (or showing up to a comedy club and booing because you don’t like the comedian’s set list).
To show up to a fight and boo fighters that are clearly putting forth tremendous effort is classless. As much as it pains me to say it, when you purchase tickets for a fight you HOPE the fights will be entertaining and you hope the fighters will give their all, but you’re not entitled to action. Period. You’re entitled to what they give you. If they are clearly running from each other or holding on on the ground ad nauseum or committing fouls like fence grabbing repeatedly, then a vocalized sour attitude might – MIGHT – be in order.
And that’s as much a part of the education process. Watch enough MMA fights and you’re bound to see some snoozefests. It’s inevitable. In fact, it’s part of the game. That doesn’t mean either fighter is struggling mightily or putting forth 100%. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes.
Moreover, the boos may be for stand-ups, but that is incredibly rare. The overwhelming majority of the boos are still reserved for the ground game. Newer fans have a relative understanding of an arm bar or triangle choke, yet have never rolled a day in their life. They have no idea how difficult it actually is to catch someone in a triangle. As such, they don’t understand any of the set-ups, hand fighting, collar control, etc. that go into setting up submissions, all of which are interesting. All they want are flying triangles and Imanari-like leglocks applied. They still want the KO, just in grappling form.
Education is still a huge part of the process. For a sport that takes so much dedication, so much discipline, so much mental toughness, and asks so little of the fans (their only responsibility is to watch), it seems to me you’d better have an incredibly good reason to boo. The fighters are owed that much, and by “much” I mean least common demoninator.
And D.Capitated, your posts are so overblown, it’s like your being graded. Are you a ESPN spy or something?
DCrapitaded you are hilarious. You think because you coughed up $150 that you have the right to boo people who spend every day of their lives training for that moment? Like they want to go out there and be lackluster in front of millions? Like jason said in a previous post…If you dont think they are doing their best, you get in that cage and do better. “I better be entertained” -LMAO, who the hell do you think you are?
And it’s worth mentioning that booing is partly the product of gang-mentality. I have watched plenty of PPVs with friends that know less than shit about MMA, and they don’t scream ‘BOOO’ when the fight hits the canvas.
If people knew so much about the sport in America, people would call MMA Mixed Martial Arts. They wouldn’t label it ‘ultimate fighting,’ which almost everyone does in the sports media and on talk radio.
They’ve been calling it that since the advent of the sport in the early 90s. Besides, given the fact that the current MMA boom is a pretty recent development, how can you anticipate sports writers or talk show hosts to suddenly be acclimated to all the stars and nuances?
Well, let me speak in regards to discounting or papering crowds…
In the history of combat sports, papering events is a promotion-killer and there’s rampant evidence of this in your favorite sport, professional wrestling. The most prominent example of this was with the Von Erichs and World Class in Dallas when they used to run the Sportatorium.
You’re talking about a “sport” in which all the storylines and conclusions are pregenerated, and in this case, was a territorial organization operating chiefly in a single location without much national TV and totally without PPV. Not only that, but WCCW had a number of its biggest stars physically die in comparatively rapid succession. Blaming their end totally on papering is facetious, as is comparing their business model to any major player in MMA.
That’s the major risk in papering events, especially for UFC which is charging $300-550 USD for prime tickets. If I’m one of the paying customers for UFC 73, I’d be furious to find out that 40% of the crowd got in for nothing. Are you kidding me? What kind of message does that send to loyal paying customers?
How many $550 customers are reading MMA websites on a daily basis and checking attendance numbers? The answer is “not many”. You realize that the people in the very expensive seats may not often have the same interest as the fans watching at home on PPV, right?
Papering, long-term, is terrible business. It’s one thing to do directed papering (towards the military, towards charities) but when you paper for the sake of papering to just fill seats, it’s a joke. It’s bad business.
What “bad business” would the UFC have avoided by not papering in various people for UFC 73? You mean that providing extra income in sales of t-shirts and drinks is a dumb thing to do? If the seats were $40 in the upper bowl, who is to say that that they would necessarily be significantly more full? Or that those coming would have spent equal amounts on concessions?
“Wrong, wrong, wrong. The correct way for the UFC to stop booing is to reward fans by having Ali Sonoma walk around the ring topless after rounds when nobody booed.
Duh.”
Why does it have to be AFTER the round? Just send her right in there during the round. If the fans are booing, that means nothing is happening anyway and it would be safe for her to go in.
The papering is bad for business argument is a chicken and egg problem. Did papering kill the product, or was the product so bad they had to paper? Comparisons to pro wrestling don’t work, especially reaching into the territorial days, because MMA/UFC shows are much less frequent and spread over a national market. If the UFC pissed off some paying customers in Sacramento who figured out the guy next to them got in for free, so what? They won’t be back for a year or so in all likelihood.
Outside of Las Vegas and new markets, UFC will have to continue to paper for the forseeable future, which is fine because unlike old time pro wrestling, the business model isn’t built on live gate. Thats why whereas wrestlers used to get a % of the live gate, todays top UFC stars get a % of the PPV. The only reason the UFC really cares about live gate and attendence figures is for marketing purposes. Thats why they pushed so hard in Columbus for the biggest MMA crowd in North American history. Thats why they pushed so hard for arena records in Ireland and England.
Perception is reality and while people on this board may care that half the crowd was papered and booing, its more important for the UFC to run shows in packed major arenas. The only alternative is smaller venues or half full arenas, which makes the UFC look small. Papering is really a production expense to show people in the media and at home on PPV that the UFC is a big deal.
I think this has all been blown out of proportion. We’re talking about a show that came to the market late after ATL fell through on the heels of a very successful show 6 months ago and a lineup that was stacked to the internet fan but suspect to the casual fan. The show will do 400,000+ buys, the media that was there will think it was a sellout, the casual fans at home will think it was a sellout, the UFC will be estatic… and the internet fan base will sit on their high horse and talk about fans disrespecting fighters (by paying them to do what they love) and learning something from the Japanese (who have their own cultural equivalents of booing).
DCrapitaded you are hilarious. You think because you coughed up $150 that you have the right to boo people who spend every day of their lives training for that moment? Like they want to go out there and be lackluster in front of millions? Like jason said in a previous post…If you dont think they are doing their best, you get in that cage and do better. “I better be entertained” -LMAO, who the hell do you think you are?
I’m a paying customer watching a sporting event where, supposedly, people will be competing to win in a sport that I care about. This garbage about “Sherk/Franca was great” needs to be squashed immediately. What was great about it? That he was in side mount? That he attained mount multiple times and yet threw few meaningful punches, elbows, or attempted submissions? And yet the crowd often cheered for the Tito/Rashad hugfest immediately after. What is the lesson learned from that? Please, spare me talk about “ignorance of the fans.”
To show up to a fight and boo fighters that are clearly putting forth tremendous effort is classless. As much as it pains me to say it, when you purchase tickets for a fight you HOPE the fights will be entertaining and you hope the fighters will give their all, but you’re not entitled to action. Period. You’re entitled to what they give you. If they are clearly running from each other or holding on on the ground ad nauseum or committing fouls like fence grabbing repeatedly, then a vocalized sour attitude might – MIGHT – be in order.
Oh, no one is saying that there isn’t the possibility of action. Its just that if I had paid for a ticket for Rumble On The Rock and saw Jake Shields lay on a guy while his corner yelled, “Do nothing! Ride it out!,” I’d be pissed and for good reason. If I want to see that, I’ll watch video of Monson at ADCC.
And that’s as much a part of the education process. Watch enough MMA fights and you’re bound to see some snoozefests. It’s inevitable. In fact, it’s part of the game. That doesn’t mean either fighter is struggling mightily or putting forth 100%. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes.
And whether or not its “how it goes”, people still paid money and still wish to recieve entertainment value for it. If they get a crappy or inadequate show, they have all the right in the world to be pissed.
Have any of you people ever been to an NFL game?
Booing is not an MMA-specific problem. Almost all American sports fans have booed at one time or another, usually quite often. You get a lot of stupid people, add alcohol and you get booing. Lots of it. Not to mention fighting in the crowd.
You can’t do much about preventing morons with too much testosterone into events, but you can choose to not sell alcohol (or less of it, like many venues do, when they stop selling beer midway through a game).
I was at UFC 73. The problem is not booing in general because I feel that fans should boo when the fights are boring. However, the problem was that there was definitely not-MMA fans there. They were booing the Gurgel fight which I felt was the best fight of the night. This indicates to me that there were fans there that did not what the F*** an exciting MMA fight is. Why paper the event if you’re only going to bring the atmosphere down? I went there for the UFC live atmosphere and I can guarantee you that I will never ever pay over $300 again for the two tickets I bought. The atmosphere sucked…big time.
Reporters wrote that fans at Sacto were schizo. No they’re not. The applauds were from the fans and the random booing were from non-fans. There were too distinct groups out there. Most people buy tickets to live events so that they can enjoy the event with other fans out there. If you find out that half the stadium is filled with ignorant rednecks, then what’s the chances that you will recommend your friends to go to another live event? Plus, after you pay 300 bucks for tickets, then you find out that half of the audience got tickets for free and they don’t even like it! UFC screwed up big time. Papering events may look good on TV, but that’s the quickest way to destroy their live event fan base.
Have any of you people ever been to an NFL game?
Booing is not an MMA-specific problem. Almost all American sports fans have booed at one time or another, usually quite often. You get a lot of stupid people, add alcohol and you get booing. Lots of it. Not to mention fighting in the crowd.
You can’t do much about preventing morons with too much testosterone into events, but you can choose to not sell alcohol (or less of it, like many venues do, when they stop selling beer midway through a game).
Well, baseball has had far worse problems with crowd control. I can’t think of a significant number of UFCs where the fighters entered the stands and went after the crowd. God, I can’t imagine people here going to see their local team, and seeing hundreds of hecklers yelling virtually every abusive thing imaginable to the opposition, then reporting about it.
Casual fans, average fans, mainstream fans, are all about stars, not great fights. They like great fights, they’ll take a great fight over a bad one, but if given the choice between watching to nobodys have the fight of the year and watching two stars fight a boring fight, they’ll take the stars.
Causal fans aren’t interested in the “sport” or the “art.” They don’t sit around talking about what a spectacular guard pass that was by Sherk. They like the personalities. They hate Tito and want to see him get his ass kicked. They love Chuck and think he’s invincable. They’re not into MMA because they roll, they’re into it because its the hot thing. This isn’t isolated to MMA, its true across sports, but to a lesser degree as you get more mainstream.
Until everyone grasps this disconnect between casual fans and hardcore fans, the frustration will continue. That’s why all the internet polls said nobody wanted to see Ken v. Tito 3 and then it drew a record rating. That’s why the fans live loved Tito v. Rashad, and crapped all over Gurgel’s fight and Sherk-Franca (which I thought was spectacular).
AS-
On a side note, Gurgel’s fight with Saraiva was the fight of the evening IMO.
Adam,
And to be fair, my understanding from those that were there live is that the crowd was hot for Gurgel-Saraiva for the first two rounds, but died in the third round when the two were exhausted.
I like the idea of using TUF as an education vehicle.
And instead of “papering” seats as you called it why not lower ticket prices a bit? I have yet to go to a live event because minimum ticket prices are always $50. It just isn’t worth $50 for me to see it in person with crappy seats and a crappier view than PPV. Plus, I can have friends chip in on PPVs and my price goes down further. I know plenty of people that feel the same way.
Since I haven’t been to a live event I do not know if t hey have the usual crowd handlers like other sports. If not they need one. If so they need to start encouraging fans to cheer for their fighters when the pace slows. Tell them that boos aren’t going to make them change their game plan but knowing that the crowd is behind them might give them confidence to step it up a bit. Sure it is BS but it should still help.
I do not have a cure for the USA chants but I do have one for the people yelling racial slurs. Kick them the F out. Since when do arenas allow this crap?
I like the point brought up by Chis; that overseas there exists a lot more respect for the fighters and for the sport. Because of this people don’t boo (or act like drunk redneck americans). I was at UFC 73 in the third row and heard mad booing. At the same time I heard people complaining about the boo-birds. So you really do see both sides of the coin at UFC shows. People who appreciate the sport and fighters and realize that they would get their butts kicked if they stepped in the cage versus ignorant fools who feel entitled to boo whenever they don’t see bloodshed.
I think the differences in crowds from different countries should be analyzed. What does it say about america and americans when we boo a minute into a fight. Looking at PRIDE shows; they’re a million times more respectful.
The Dynamite show in LA didn’t seem to have many people booing even though it seemed like a lousy event. However, most of that crowd was Asian American; a far cry from the white male (age 20 – 35) dominated UFC events. The UFC spefically targets this demographic and the booing is really the roosters coming home to roost.
1) The Gurgel/Saraiva fight had booing throughout. It wasn’t that great of a fight, either. There were moments, but other fight of the nights (Guida/Griffin, Griffin/Edgar, Huerta/Garcia, Huerta/Dent, etc.) were much better. It was merely the only fight that went the distance that was worthy of the honors. If Edgar hadn’t been prematurely stopped, who knows how much longer it would have gone on. The first round was awesome.
2) Sherk/Franca is the usual example of uneducated fans booing, simply because they don’t know what they’re seeing. I’m sick and tired of that shit. I’m a blue belt in BJJ, and understand what the hell a guardpass is. That fight was horrible. It had way less to do with Sherk’s amazing technical ability and more to do with Franca’s horrible conditioning and awful gameplan. Sherk made NO SERIOUS ATTEMPT to finish the fight. He actually held on to Franca for dear life at several points throughout the fight… yes, HELD ON. That’s it. No punches, no nothing. It takes two to make a boring fight, and Franca was too gassed/unconditioned to actually do anything, so I blame him as well, but this shit about “only uneducated fans booed Sherk/Franca” has got to stop. They booed because it sucked. Get over it.
The real question here should be, how can the UFC prevent boring snoozefest fights? (answer: yellow cards) Yeah, there is rampant booing, and it’s uncalled for sometimes. But trying to claim booing should NEVER happen? I don’t care if I’m there for free, if I’m watching a fighter try to ride out a decision, I’m going to boo.
Yeah yeah, Sherk would kick my ass in a fight. Grow up and try a little sophistication in your arguments.
I think it’s safe to say that most people who regularly check MMA blogs such as this are more of the “diehard” fan mentality. That’s great but can we please be realistic for a second here? With mainstream popularity will come a mainstream audience. Just like everyone else I love MMA with a passion and I want to see the sport continue to grow and evolve. But ever since UFC 71 I’ve seen so many accounts written from bloggers and writers who treat MMA as their child. They want to control every aspect down to whether or not fans can boo. This is ridiculous to me. As someone said earlier there is booing at every single NFL, MLB, and NBA game. Booing is part of American sports culture that fans use to express their displeasure with what they’re seeing. As much as it may pain some of us to see what we consider to be beautiful technique get shown disrespect in the form of booing, it is not the end of the world. I happened to be in attendance at UFC 73 and I wasn’t apalled at the fans who booed Sherk. Yes his control on the ground was masterful but he never tried to finish Franca. That frustrated a lot of fans and you can’t blame them just because they don’t hold the same values and appreciation that you do. It’s pretentious to think that all fans must understand and appreciate what we the “enlightened” ones do. In the end blogs and message forums and everything else are great outlets for us to obsess over and dissect our passions, but let’s do it with a grain of salt. Booing Sherk is not the end of the world.
Booing in other sports usually has to do with something nefarious or inherently wrong going on. A bad call from the ref, a flagrant foul, a called strike when it was clearly a ball, etc.
In MMA, what is it that these guys are doing wrong?
Rollo says: As an immediate remedy that fans can take to stop booing at events, I would give an example from a pro wrestling match I attended decades ago. Newer, Impatient fans had begun to chant “:boring” at the matches, anytime there was either a lull or even just when there wasn’t a high spot being performed. They showed no appreciation for the finer aspects of the performance.
Yeah … Steve Lombardi holding Conquistador No. 2 in a headlock for eight minutes was such highly refined art 😉
I have to disagree. Go to a college football game and listen to the home crowd boo their own team after a 3 and out. What did A-Rod do “wrong” in NY? See the notorious booing in Philly of their teams.
Who says booing is bad? I’d rather be loved than hated, but I’d rather be hated than treated indifferently. I’d rather hear boos than silence. People hating me can make me money, people not giving a damn can make me unemployed. People thinking I’m boring, hating me because of it, and wanted to see me lose can make me alot of money.
Some people seem to think it would be more respectful and in the best interest of business if they just shot the shows in empty warehouses or perhaps in front of handpicked crowds based on contributions to the online MMA community. I think putting these athletes on the biggest stage possible, both live and on television, is the greatest form of respect a promoter can show for what they do.
The Dynamite show in LA didn’t seem to have many people booing even though it seemed like a lousy event. However, most of that crowd was Asian American; a far cry from the white male (age 20 – 35) dominated UFC events. The UFC spefically targets this demographic and the booing is really the roosters coming home to roost.
Last I checked, white males here in the US were the biggest and most demanded demographic there is in the world of media. Who are they supposed to be targeting? Eskimos over the age of 65?
Kobe Bryant who is arguably the best player in the NBA got booed for recieving the MVP trophy at the All Star game in Philadelphia. If we want to stick to “The City of Brotherly Love” Donovan McNabb (QB of the Philadelphia Eagles) was regularly booed for his first two seasons with the Eagles when he was doing nothing wrong except adjusting to being a rookie quarterback in the league who would eventually lead his team to the Superbowl. Philly sports fans are notoriously rough so let’s move to baseball where two of the best players of this generation, Ichiro Suzuki and Alex Rodriguez, are booed and subjected to racist taunts in almost any ballpark that isn’t their own. It isn’t just in MMA.
If you re-read the sentence that you quoted from me (by the way, how do you do that?) I said that booing is used by American fans to express their displeasure with what they’re seeing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s anything wrong. There are plenty more examples but the larger point that I’m trying to make is that we MMA fans can not expect or demand that all fans appreciate the same aspects of the sport that we do. Over time I do believe that the general population will become more educated about the beauty of the ground game and the nuances of our sport. But it won’t happen overnight and I do think it’s a bit of an over reaction to consider it to be such a crisis. There will always be booing at American sporting events. Sherk exhibited beautiful technique against Franca but he never tried to finish the fight. Or if he did then he never came close. This upset many fans so they booed. On the flipside I don’t know if that came through on the telecast but they cheered when Hermes attempted to pull submissions from the bottom.
UFC 71 was a breakthrough moment for MMA coverage amongst the general population but I think too many diehard fans expect the instant gratification of having everyone come on board with the same standards and appreciation for fights that we have ourselves. This isn’t just in MMA. In anything that moves from underground to mainstream appeal there will be the diehards who were there from day one who either resent the lack of knowledge that new fans posess or those who hold some sense of superiority over the “noobs” for not having been down as long. I think the suggestions you made in your article are all great suggestions. I’m just addressing the sentiment that many have expressed that there’s something “wrong” with booing. If you’re talking about the overall concept of booing ANYTHING then I can see your point. But I don’t think the booing that is displayed at MMA events are any different or more problematic than the booing at any other sporting event.
Guys, seriously, go to some NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL games. You’ll hear the racist chants, you’ll see beer being thrown at other fans, you’ll see women flashing their breasts, you’ll see people getting arrested, you hear people BOOING. And many times the fans are booing their OWN TEAM.
Booing is NOT a phenomenon in MMA. Get out a little and watch some other sports besides MMA and you’ll see that.
Booing and heckling isn’t even an American phenomenon. God, did you guys miss the piece on HBO Sports two years ago about how black soccer players are treated in Europe? Effigys are burned and hung in stadiums, bananas are thrown on the field, “monkey sounds” are made by spectators, and nationalist soccer clubs chant for them to be removed from the sport and their continent. The blinders on everything here are astonishing. Have many of you even watched another sport?
I like the idea of actually showing TUF contestants training! Instead of showing barely adult men wrecking a house and trying to fight each other on the patio they could show the training. The first season showed some training but really only when something “interesting” like Nate Quarry getting injured. I’m far more interested in the training and the fighting, not the drama. If I wanted to watch drama I would watch “Americas Next Top Heroin Addict” on a channel not devoted to mens programing. Maybe they should have two different shows, one with the training and fighting and the other with the drama and crying.
You know, I get that people would want the fans to be more educated and stuff, but I really don’t see millions of people getting totally into seeing two guys roll or spar with headgear on.
“God, did you guys miss the piece on HBO Sports two years ago about how black soccer players are treated in Europe? Effigys are burned and hung in stadiums, bananas are thrown on the field, “monkey sounds” are made by spectators, and nationalist soccer clubs chant for them to be removed from the sport and their continent.”
I remember that. Soccer fans are the friggin’ worst in the world. German fans in particular are still notoriously racist.
Much is also said about how “educated” Japanese fans are; they’re not educated, they’re just more polite than Western fans (and maybe slightly more accepting of grappling in general). They have booed boring fights before. And they can certainly be just as racist as Americans (especially when it comes to black people), they’re just not as in-your-face about it as Americans can be.