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What is the big deal about Affliction in MMA?
By Zach Arnold | November 1, 2008
I’ve long asked the following question: How has a man (Tom Atencio) been able to get so much PR by accomplishing so little in the fight business? This is a man who ‘ran’ one MMA show last July and lost money on it. Yet, this guy continues to get a lot of PR coverage — and for what? Sam Caplan points out the obvious:
Affliction is failing to learn from the cardinal sin committed by both the IFL and EliteXC, which is that you cannot underestimate the complexity of the fight promotion business and that you must let experienced MMA people captain the ship. Why Affliction thinks it can succeed where so many others have failed is unknown, but if they want to survive long term, it needs to hire a full-time MMA person to serve as both its public face as well as its operations manager.
I hear Jeremy Lappen is currently available.
Topics: Affliction, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 114 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
MMA had its chance to build itself like boxing off network television and blew it. Cant blame boxing for garnering more interest from an older generation of people when it had its chance before coming the niche sport it is now. Apparently the 4-6 million viewers for MMA wasnt enough to sustain it, compared to whatever boxing used to do. If anything I forsee more boxing coming back to network television after beign soured on MMA. But whatever this is now digressing terribly and I think this is a record 100 comments for a post LoL.
Perhaps I am more suited to the Sherdogian sandbox, atleast there is some rational like minded individuals.
Perhaps I am more suited to the Sherdogian sandbox, atleast there is some rational like minded individuals.
First time you’ve made sense. LOL.
hehe, np I will leave the elite minds of fightopinion to ruminate. Fact of the matter is there is not a single MMA event for the rest of this year you will be readily able to view or order other then UFC. So just to reinforce my original statement, UFC gots shit locked down.
Let me correct myself, there isnt anything on other then Zuffa branded products. :}
Strikeforce is a Zuffa-branded product now?
“No one has actually refuted anything I said.”
Samscaff are you the “sam” that was posting earlier in the thread? If you are then this is what you said that I responded to:
“Accordingly, it was also the most entertaining organization in the world. Not to mention had the best production quality.”
Most entertaining and best production quality are statements that are completely opinion, freakshow fights and pro wrestling entrance antics aren’t what is most entertaining or considered good production values to everyone. I loved Pride but a lot of that stuff I fast forwarded over because I was wanting to see actual fights not fireworks, laser shows and giant video screens.
As far as the best fighters go, well that was also opinion too, yea a lot of people said Pride had the best talent but unless the fighters are actually fighting each other to prove which is the best it is still just opinion. Having the best fighters doesn’t mean that you have the best matchmaker either for that matter nor does it mean that you have the most entertaining fights, there is a lot more that goes into being the best organization than just having a lot of high level talent under contract. There is nothing wrong with liking Pride and the product they presented, hell I liked it myself but they are long dead and gone now so perhaps it’s time to let go of their nuts and get over it.
“Fact of the matter is there is not a single MMA event for the rest of this year you will be readily able to view or order other then UFC.”
That would of been a better point if Strikeforce: Destruction wasn’t set to air on HDnet on November 21st. I am assuming that you meant Zuffa instead of UFC because there will be two WEC events in the next two months too.
There was a thread on the UG a while back about the PPV Buys. Boxing has a lot of great buys. But the problem with boxing is that their biggest PPV Sellers are: 1990’s Heavyweights, Roy Jones Jr, & Oscar De La Hoya. Everything else typically gets under 350,000 PPV Buys. RJJ & ODLH are on their last leg. The Heavyweight Division is nothing right now.
Doesn’t mean the sport is going to die, but it doesn’t help that nobody has replaced these stars. Not to mention that potential boxing fans of today are now watching MMA, so it could still be a slow death for the sport of boxing… At least here in the states.
Boxing is way too top heavy. If they don’t have the big stars, they will have nothing. Golden Boy will retire. Floyd Mayweather Jr. recently retired. Hopkins will retire after 1 more fight. Roy Jones Jr. and Calzaghe are on the way out soon. Business wise, boxing is in a sad state.
When boxing aficionados say, ‘don’t worry, There’s DLH-Pacman and RJJ-Calzaghe’ and then you think, ‘gee whiz, three out of four of those guys are near retirement!’, that sucks. And I think Hopkins vs. Pavlik didn’t draw well. Not that it matters because Hopkins, a man close to retirement, just beat the up and comer. What a mess. What’s going to fix boxing [in America. The UK and Europe might be another story]?
Boxing has always been top heavy, and frankly, so is MMA. The difference is that MMA’s fighters are more active in general at the moment. Seriously though, lol about Floyd being “retired” and no mention of Cotto/Margarito.
jdavis, see all my earlier posts. My point is made there.
Cotto & Margarito can’t get to 400,000 PPV Buys. Every “star” right now is 350,000 or under. Not good.
Cotto & Margarito can’t get to 400,000 PPV Buys. Every “star” right now is 350,000 or under. Not good.
Together they did 500,000.
I figure I should throw out these two last points about UFC/Zuffa.
UFC is impacting fights and making fighters become low level boxers by enforcing strict roster cuts on loses and admonishing those who fail to entertain, making fighters go out cautiously to trade economical punches rather then wasting the energy required to take their opponent down or go for any variety of finish.
Zuffa is also over-saturating themselves with a supposed upcoming weekly live UFC show ontop of their current 34 monthly ppv and fight nights (including WEC), meaning there would be a total of 86 shows each year. The room for expansion beyond that seems virtually non-existant with Zuffa cramming their product down peoples throats who may eventually grow sick of it.
Unfortunately you can’t compare this to stick and ball sports or boxing considering their decorated and rooted history, my bad for attempting it (and microsoft, even though its the only other monopoly i could think of), but hopefully things keep expanding for MMA and UFC considering they do the best job….but in my personal opinion there is still room for more quality MMA to stimulate any saturation.