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More reaction to Lorenzo Fertitta and his new UFC role

By Zach Arnold | June 19, 2008

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Sorry about getting this up late online today, but I have a lot of on my plate (thankfully, all MMA-related). Not a whole lot of news today…

  1. Total MMA: Big for one’s britches (a must-read article)
  2. Politicker NV: Lorenzo Fertitta now fighting full-time (interesting insight)
  3. The Las Vegas Review-Journal: Ultimate challenge for Stations exec
  4. Fightlinker: Bloggers agree – Lorenzo with the UFC means big things to come
  5. The New York Daily News: Assembly KOs bill legalizing MMA
  6. The Associated Press: MMA legislation stalls in New York
  7. The Glen Falls Post-Star (New York): ‘Ultimate fighting’ bill delayed
  8. The Albany Times-Union: MMA takes a dive in NY
  9. The Canadian Press: MMA fighter Jesse Taylor dismissed from reality TV show after drunken escapade
  10. MMA Junkie: Amir Sadollah vs. C.B. Dollaway to crown TUF 7 champion
  11. Sherdog: Promoting MMA – an interview with Joseph Cavallaro
  12. The Fight Network: Chris Horodecki waits on IFL

Topics: IFL, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 18 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

18 Responses to “More reaction to Lorenzo Fertitta and his new UFC role”

  1. Ultimo Santa says:

    The one thing hindering UFC’s credibility: the cage.

    If it were a ring, 90% of the nay-sayers (ie. menopausal women and senile old farts) would think of good ol’ boxing instead of cockfighting when MMA is presented.

    So the marketing tool that made UFC famous in 1993 is now hindering it’s progress (at least to a degree) in 2008.

  2. Jeremy (not that Jeremy) says:

    You really think that chain link fencing is the make or break issue for MMA?

    There’s no specific connection between cockfights (or dogfights for that matter) and fencing.

    ===

    Total MMA conveniently ignores baseball and football, where the dominant leagues run their own shows, and only the amateur side of the sport is regulated in any particular way. The same is true of the NBA, which has significant rules variations when compared to college or international basketball.

    Soccer has had it’s problems with the threat of breakaway rogue leagues for the better part of two decades. There have been significant threats in Europe that the largest teams would break away from their domestic associations and form a single league. It can be regarded that the English Premier League was motivated by the same greedy motives by the largest teams to seize television revenues for themselves and essentially run things on their own terms. It’s a significant accomplishment that so far soccer has managed to prevent this situation from occurring, but there are significant “accommodations” that have been made to prevent it to date (to whit, the revised and expanded UEFA Champions League format).

  3. D. Capitated says:

    The NFL and MLB run each team? Really? So, who are these team owner people?

  4. Jeremy (not that Jeremy) says:

    And the owners run the league.

    There’s a reason baseball has an antitrust exemption.

  5. D. Capitated says:

    Exactly. So, what you’re saying is that MLB isn’t an amalgam of various independent owners/promoters because it is an amalgam of various independent owners/promoters?

    Maybe I’m missing something here, but Dana and Lorenzo seem to be inferring that they want the UFC to be “bigger than soccer”. The business model for professional soccer anywhere in the world as a whole and for the UFC are like night and day. They’re not even worthy of actual comparison.

  6. Ultimo Santa says:

    “You really think that chain link fencing is the make or break issue for MMA? There’s no specific connection between cockfights (or dogfights for that matter) and fencing.”

    Maybe not, but that’s the *perception*. Caged people = caged animals, which = cockfighting and/or dogfighting.

    The people voting whether to allow or disallow MMA in a state likely have never seen a fight, and have no idea what the rules are.

    The just see a cage with two guys in it, and have read all the informative mainstream newspaper articles that start with “Ultimate Fighting should be banned: it’s a bloodsport where biting is legal and there are no gloves OR rules!”

  7. Rollo the Cat says:

    The Totalmma article is another example of hate blogging. Total waste of the few minutes it took me to read.

    Dana is so right about the internet “journalists”. I wouldn’t give most of them the time of day either.

  8. Dave says:

    Rollo —

    While I agree that Alan’s article is pretty negative, I don’t agree with all of it, but you have to give it some mind. While it is complete Dana White conjecture, it is more absurd than usual. I think I’d rather see a world where a few dudes get pissed and vent in an intelligent fashion than a bunch of cowering little bloggers hiding behind their EliteXC and Zuffa press credentials while just copy and pasting news from other sites and putting some spin on it.

    Would you rather everybody be like Kevin Iole and write press releases in their own name?

  9. IceMuncher says:

    “The just see a cage with two guys in it, and have read all the informative mainstream newspaper articles that start with “Ultimate Fighting should be banned: it’s a bloodsport where biting is legal and there are no gloves OR rules!””

    “The one thing hindering UFC’s credibility: the cage.”

    See if you can spot your inconsistency.

  10. D.Capitated says:

    I do admit that its kinda funny to see Rollo end up agreeing with Alan even though he apparently doesn’t realize he’s doing it.

  11. Dave says:

    Shhh, D., don’t give it away.

  12. Mateo says:

    I just saw an MMA segment on this show called Sports Science on Fox Sports. It dealt with this football player who got a serious spleen injury. They brought in an MMA fighter to show how a punch to the spleen causes internal injuries.

    You know that punching dummy that is at the training house on the Ultimate Fighter? Well they had one of those for the experiment, only with a plastic sheet over the torso. They then filled the dummy up with replicas of internal organs.

    They then had the MMA fighter punch the left side of the tackling dummy as hard as he could. Then the replica spleen started bleeding. This was disgusting stuff.

  13. Zach Arnold says:

    The fighter doing the punching was Bas Rutten, and the football player was Chris Simms (who had his spleen removed a couple of years ago).

  14. Jeremy (not that Jeremy) says:

    There was a similar series on Discovery during the past year with Tito and Randy. It was a good show, worth looking up on the internets.

    Baseball isn’t a competitive market because the owners collude. Soccer is in fact regarded the same way (see the Bosman ruling). Sports in general are run as collusive trusts.

    The difference between a trust and a single entity is only a legal distinction (a single entity can’t collude with itself). The way that they behave is the same.

  15. CharibOfJustice says:

    I haven’t posted here in a while but I wanted to say that piece over on Total MMA was total junk. Granted it’s an opinion piece but it is so ludicris and uninformed it literally had me shaking my head in disbelief.

    It was not a must read, it should have been a must avoid because it was just the inane ramblings of some fanboy.

    There are many, many, issues in that “opinion” piece but really annoys the hell out of me is Alan Conceicao’s lack of any substantive research.

    Alan, Lorenzo Fertitta has a long long history in the fight game, the entire family does. The man also has proven that he’s more than able to run multi-million dollar companies and make them grow.

    Lorenzo Fertitta was the former commissioner of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Do you know what the NSAC is? Do you know what it does?

    He stepped down from that position after he bought the UFC with his brother. He promptly got MMA and the UFC sanctioned in the state of Nevada by the NSAC, which in turn got them on regular payperview cable again. I don’t know if you remember or were even a fan back then, I was. You couldn’t even or the UFC or even watch MMA on cable television. It was satelite tv or you were getting copies from someone. It was banned after Sen. John McCain went after the sport. MMA was on it’s last legs here in the US until the Fertida’s bought out SEG for something like 2.5 million dollars.

    Oh and the commissioner of the NSAC after Lorenzo, it’s somebody you might have heard too. A guy by the name of Marc Ratner. You ever heard of him? Guess what, he’s with the UFC now too. Alan, Ratner and Ferritida know more about promotions and the fight game it their pinkys than you do in that entire Junior College educated brain of yours.

    Also, let’s not forget the that Lorenzo has an MBA. And not only is he incharge of Station Casinos with his brother but he also purchased and ran a couple of other companies like Gordon Biersch and Expedia.com? In fact, what Lorenzo and his brother are known for is taking the money out of Station Casinos and investing it by buying other companies and making more money from them than they ever could have from the casinos alone.

    In short Lorenzo’s got way more experience and shown way more in results than you ever have.

    Buy the way smart guy, their intial investment of 2.5 million to buy the UFC from SEG, how much is the company worth now?

  16. D. Capitated says:

    How has the “You’ve never ran a sub 5 40! You can’t criticize!” ever worked as a legit argument anywhere? My mind…its boggled.

    The part about Lorenzo Fertitta owning Expedia is pretty funny too.

  17. CharibOfJustice says:

    Actually that wasn’t the entirety of argument, the majority of my argument which was the rest of my post which you somehow missed citing was.

    That line asking what Alan has done or is capable of doing besides offering a poorly researched opinion piece was really a glib response to his question, “What history as a fight promoter does Lorenzo Fertitta have?”

    Obviously if you had read my entire post and understood it, you know where I stand.

    Gordon Biersch and Expedia.com were two of the UFC’s earliest sponsors. If you were actually following the sport back when Zuffa took it over, you should have noticed how quickly you saw those two companies involved. More so with Gordon Biersch and their sponsorship of fighters like Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell, and Robbie Lawler.

    That wasn’t a coincidence.

  18. D. Capitated says:

    Well, Lorenzo doesn’t have a history as a fight promoter. He has a history being on the NSAC, which doesn’t promote fights. So, where is Alan incorrect?

    As for Expedia, you said that he “purchased and ran it.” Uhh, really?

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