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WWE attacks UFC in company statement over Brock Lesnar title win
By Zach Arnold | November 16, 2008
UFC’s stranglehold on the PPV marketplace really must have people inside WWE upset:
Critics have noted that many of the fights on the UFC pay-per-view ended in the first round, leaving UFC producers scrambling to fill the three-hour event with content. The dearth of hearty competition left many viewers to watch less prestigious under-card fights and only served to bolster claims that UFC pay-per-view events can often be a “crap shoot” in regards to filling the full three hours.
Topics: Media, MMA, Pro-Wrestling, UFC, WWE, Zach Arnold | 59 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Amen to that WWE. You obviously have an agenda, but you just spoke the pure plain and simple truth.
This ufc was much better then recent evens — when an undercard feels it is being ignored, usually the fighters perform better, especially in a big fight atmosphere. I hope Big Nog wins the title.
And if I may add some, my basis for judgement solely revolves around the fact that every WWE card ensures they have almost all their superstars on it, thus providing their fanbase premium events every time out. Something UFC hasn’t been able to achieve ever since going from the one PPV every three months to one every month.
Hmmmm….
Vinny Mac trying to get a tiny portion of the spotlight from the UFC and all their media coverage. It isn’t going to work.
That undercard was solid. Sometimes they put together a main card with the expectation for quick fights, only to see them all go to a decision. Other times, it is the opposite. This isn’t the WWE, and Zuffa can’t predict the length of their undercard fights. Florian/Stevenson & McCrory/Hazelett are 50/50 fights in my eyes. There is no way to have predicted they would be over in the 1st round.
Strong words from a company that regularly had pay per views goes off the air a half hour early.
Big Bill Bob: It isn’t the UFC’s fault that all those fights ended early. Would you prefer the PRIDE/DREAM way where they just have huge gaps in between fights to fill in time on LIVE PPVs? Thankfully the trimmed tape delayed PPVs PRIDE had in North America were bearable.
I do agree with your point that UFC cards are getting weaker though. PRIDE only had 10 events per year, including Bushido and tournaments, so that made it easier to stack their cards. Their top guys also fought more frequently. The UFC should cut down the number of PPVs they put on and put out more Free TV offerings so that PPVs can be more stacked. But unfortunately due to the laws of supply and demand, we’ll never see Zuffa do that. I got to hand it to them that they made their brand so powerful that people will continue to buy whatever crap they put out.Zuffa doesn’t care about offering a top to down stacked PRIDE experience if they can offer you less per card and get no less than 300k buys in the US and 200k in the UK guaranteed.
I don’t think Pride card were more stacked. They had many cards that had a lot of stars on them, but with bad match-ups. The number of high quality cards a year for Pride wasn’t that high.
Well, if there was any doubt about my post in the other thread about Big Bill Bob’s actual intentions, I think his comment in this thread just re-confirms it. Do not feed the trolls.
On a serious note, Vince McMahon is a petty, desperate, vengeful man who jumps up and down for joy when one of his PPVs draws 200,000 buys in the U.S., a number that would make UFC officials vomit. McMahon should go back to contributing to and then exploiting his wrestlers’ deaths for profit, and leave MMA alone.
I agree with Ivan on both points.
Since this is a thread about Vinny Mac… Does anybody know if there was ever a decision on Raven sueing the WWE about the type of contracts they signed to wrestlers?
On another note, here’s how stupid and out of touch WWE is: Instead of pushing the obvious angle that one of our former wrestlers (excuse me, I mean “WWE superstars”… excuse me, I mean “entertainers”) just went into the UFC and won their title in his 4th career MMA fight, and this must mean that tons of other WWE wrestlers could easily do the same thing if they wanted to (this is an ignorant belief that a lot of fans are going to have as a result of Lesnar’s win), they are instead ringing a completely empty and hollow note about MMA fights ending quickly.
If anyone needed more proof of WWE being out of touch with reality, there it is.
45— It’s still pending in court. From a legal standpoint, there is absolutely no basis on earth that could be used to justify the status of WWE wrestlers being “independent contractors” when they are told where to work, how to work, who to work against, what to wear when they’re not even working, etc. The only possible way that they could get the Scott Levy suit thrown out is if they can do so because of a statute of limitations running out.
It’s interesting to note that in WWE’s legal response to the Levy lawsuit, they did not even attempt to offer one rationalization for wrestlers being independent contractors. They just said that they’ve never been called employees before and that the statute of limitations had expired in Connecticut.
Their motives are obvious: After years of treating wrestlers like pieces of meat to be discarded when their bodies are about to finally give out on them (or if they die while under WWE contract, exploit their deaths in storylines to put more fan hatred on a heel wrestler as they did with Eddie Guerrero’s death), god forbid they should now have to supply those wrestlers with health insurance or retirement plans.
I was a huge ECW mark as a kid/teenager. Growing up near NY, I got the MSG Network, so I followed the organization during it’s prime years. Raven (Scott Levy) during 95 and 96 was one of the best and most believable characters I have ever seen. It’s nice to see him challenge the establishment.
The sport of MMA isn’t perfect, but when compared to the WWE, there is little to complain about. I have always thought the two smartest wrestlers of the last 20 years have been The Rock & Brock Lesnar. Both made their money during a huge upswing, and both got out ASAP so they didn’t get destroyed by the business.
I’m no longer a Pro Wrestling fan. I think this happened for three reasons:
1) I was a huge ECW fan, and when they started to go south, I lost my drive as a fan.
2) I was addicted to Pro Wrestling as a kid. That addiction has been replaced by MMA.
3) Death – Seeing all my favorite Pro Wrestlers die at such a young age really turned me off to the “sport”. I had a hard time supporting or watching something that I knew lead to so death. Those feelings were only cemented when I read Bret Harts book a while ago.
Dave, I get the impression some of these people would take a bullet for Dana White, so your not joking about diehard. Ivan, call me a troll but I state an opinion and back it up with some relevant facts. Trolling by definition is doing something deemed offensive by others.
If I offend you, I guess I need some sensitivity training to deal with the delicate men of FightOpinion.
I fully agree WWE should have said that any of their wrestlers could step in at any time and succeed, because it appears to be the truth. The heavyweight game has changed completely from boxing to MMA as people naturally or unnaturally evolve larger.
For example David Haye had his first fight over the weekend at heavyweight and dominated an already established heavy, but that was a man of equal or lesser size. Once Haye steps in there against a Klitschko mainly Vitali I can see him having a terrible time even though he is undoubtably the vastly superior gifted fighter for all attributes other then size.
Big men just win nowadays by beign big and having afew necessary fundamental tools at their disposal. Not a bad thing, just abit mundane.
45: Yes the marquee names had more one-sided fights in PRIDE than the UFC unfortunately. But it’s easier for me to get pumped seeing a whole bunch of these guys on a card rather than seeing what looks to be UFN quality on a PPV. Thankfully UFC 91 exceeded expectations. It was an entertaining card. The PRIDE problem of having the one-sided matches is partly the fault of PRIDE having Barnett, Cro Cop, Wanderlei and some others fighting crazy schedules. I think three times a year is the ideal balance.
If the UFC had only 10 PPVs a year by putting all 3 UK events on Spike and healthy marquees fighting three times a year, they could more than easily make main card PPVs exclusively have guys who are top 10 in the ufc in their division. Make the best 50 fights on UFC main cards (5 x 10). TV and PPV undercards could get the rest. But this is a fan pipe dream of course. It’ll cost Zuffa money to do this. The extra revenue they’d make per PPV wouldn’t make up for the lost revenue for the 2 lost UK PPVs or the extra salary money to have marquees fight more often.
Big Bill Bob,
The notion that size trumps skill in MMA is laughable. Furthermore, the notion that any WWE wrestler could find success in MMA is patently ludicrous.
If you believe it to be true in boxing, then that’s one thing since boxing is a one-dimensional discipline. However, that does not carry over to MMA. The best heavyweight fighter in MMA is one of the smallest if not the smallest heavyweight in the world. He is listed at 6’0 and 230 lbs, although his actual height may be closer to 5’10. Just last year, he defeated a 7’2″ 330 lb Goliath in under 2 minutes. The fact that you even broached this issue tells me that you’re an MMA newbie coming from either boxing or pro wrestling, and you have much to learn about this sport.
Dave2,
Would it be better if the UFC just match all off these “UFN quality” fighters with cans so they can pad their record like Pride did with their fighters? I guess it would seem impressive if these so called average fighters had a record of 15-1 with 10 straight wins against sub par competition. Pride created the illusion of top fighters fighting a stacked card because of their padded records with cans.
The reason the UFC fighters have records that aren’t exactly stellar is due to their being matched up against top competition. Any of these UFN caliber fighters would probably be a marquee name wrecking cans in Japan if they were released from the UFC. Case in point: Scott Smith, Robbie Lawler, and Nick Diaz. These guys were considered UFN caliber fighters when they were released for losing in the UFC. Now they are headliners for other organization.
It’s really hard to determine what the PRIDE product would have looked like if everyone was ‘clean’ and not using performance-enhancers (EPO, HGH, etc.) Just look at the performance difference of some of the ex-PRIDE guys outside of the organization right now. It’s impossible to tell who really was good because of their pure talent versus who was good because they were jacked up on a cocktail of drugs.
Fair enough cyph, I have no defensive reply to that statement because it is 100% accurate, and I am a relatively new fan of course.
I guess the next real litmus test for a beefed up wrestler crossing over into MMA will be that Bobby Lashley guy. He looks like a monster, and the problem with these wrestlers is how accustom they are to hauling around 300lb + men, so laying on an opponent all fight long doesn’t sound like it would be so hard.
I don’t think Pride card were more stacked. They had many cards that had a lot of stars on them, but with bad match-ups. The number of high quality cards a year for Pride wasn’t that high.
Why don’t you give a percentage? Hey, maybe list out all these bad cards lacking in ranked fighters fighting one another. I’d like to see the list. And please, none of this “well they were proven 5 years later to be overrated” garbage either. Wouldn’t look so good to put, say, UFC circa 2005 under that light.
Pride created the illusion of top fighters fighting a stacked card because of their padded records with cans.
Any prime examples of guys with inflated Diego Sanchez/Roger Huerta style records you’d like to point out? I suppose Wanderlei would be a good one if such a horrifically protected roid head wasn’t in a #1 contender bout in the UFC occuring in 5 weeks.
It’s possible that in some cases, changes in camps and trainers may have had a positive or negative effect as well.
Individual careers aren’t as simple as storylines, even when the storyline is a drug culture. Some people are going to fit into it, and others aren’t.
Some guys from Pride will beat a couple cans and then get knocked silly, and some will turn around and become UFC superstars.
WWE’s comment is just silliness though.
Zach, I was under the impression that EPO was prohibitively expensive, do you think it’s widespread in MMA?
If so, do you think they’ll ever begin to test for it in the next few years due to the cost of the tests or just sweep it under the rug?
I love how D Cap likes to snipe at my comments.
Wandelei Silva in Pride fought:
Kanehara: 16-22
Oyama: 7-11
Otsuka: 4-13
Iwasaki: 0-1
And of course, many other fights with smaller fighters like the double massacre of Sakuraba.
The fact that Wanderlei is 1-1 in the UFC proves how top competition hurts a fighter’s record. Should I bring up Mirko Filipovic’s record (1-2) in the UFC VS his record in Pride? Or how about Dan Henderson (1-2)? Perhaps Shogun (0-1)?
And before you start arguing again, my original point was about Pride cards that created an illusion of being “stacked”
Top fighter 1 VS Top fighter 2
Top fighter 3 VS can
Top fighter 4 VS can
Top fighter 5 VS can
Top fighter 6 VS can
You could say it’s a “stacked” card. But is it really?
Designer drugs are expensive, but look at some of the money that PRIDE was paying out to top fighters — hell, look at Affliction. If you can make more than $300,000 a fight and you have a team with multiple guys doing that, then what’s to stop a trainer from going out and buying the best sauce?
cyph – PLEASE. Stop with the effing stats. You cherry-pick numbers worse than the Republican party.
Who destroyed Chuck Liddell’s aura of invincibility with a R1 KO? A PRIDE fighter.
Who is the current UFC Heavyweight Champion? A PRIDE fighter.
Who is the man that Dana White calls the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world? A PRIDE fighter.
Who is the undisputed best fighter in the world right now? A PRIDE fighter.
And yes, what you wrote is true – some PRIDE fighters have not done as well in the UFC.
At this point, trying to quantify whether PRIDE or UFC is ‘better’ is impossible to do with win/loss records. Fighters are older, some have improved, some have regressed. New stars have emerged.
Now it’s about perceived entertainment value – NOTHING MORE.
The fact that Wanderlei is 1-1 in the UFC proves how top competition hurts a fighter’s record.
He lost, what, 3 of his last 4 in PRIDE? And now he’s a win away from a title shot? I guess that top competition really hurt him.
Should I bring up Mirko Filipovic’s record (1-2) in the UFC VS his record in Pride?
Sure. Its a better record within the UFC than some of the guys fighting last night.
Or how about Dan Henderson (1-2)?
Sure! Tell us about all the scrubs Henderson built his record on that the UFC would never touch.
Perhaps Shogun (0-1)?
He’s so bad, they’re replaying a scrub fight from PRIDE 31 that went wrong! I’m glad the UFC is so different than PRIDE.
Wanderlei Silva lost to Chuck Liddell cyph and it wasn’t a bad loss either. There’s no shame in losing to Chuck despite his recent performances. And Wand demolished Jardine by the way. He’s no joke. And he was already on the decline prior to going back to the UFC. All those wars have taken a toll on his body.
Don’t bring up Cro Cop. The sport passed him by after the game started to evolve beyond a certain point and he didn’t keep up. You can bring up Gonzaga and Kongo but I can bring up Overeem. Cro Cop has been figured out. He has to evolve his game or let the sport pass him by.
Hendo: He lost to Rampage and Anderson Silva, two former PRIDE fighters that you shouldn’t feel shame losing to. Let’s see how he does with Franklin.
Shogun: He only had 1 match. At least let him redeem that poor performance.
Do you seriously consider Wand, Hendo and Shogun ‘UFN quality’? Seriously?
How did a WWE statement about UFC turn into yet another UFC vs. PRIDE war? I guess people are channeling their inner WWE vs. WCW message board feuds from the mid-90s or something.
Pride had stacked cards for their Final Conflict and Shockwave cards. A few of their later Bushido card were stacked. And these had good match-ups. However, some of the shows for the early part of the year were just bad. I will provide a few examples:
1. Total Elimination 2004 – Card featured Fedor, Nogueira, Cro Cop, Schilt, Herring, & Kharitonov. And it didn’t have good fight on paper.
2. Pride 31 – Card featured Hunt, Nogueira, Shogun, Barnett, Overeem, Kharitonov, Werdum, & Rampage. On paper, the majority of the card was junk.
These are two quick examples I found. There are many more. People tend to forget that Pride had some really pitiful and boring cards. If the UFC ever did that, they would be laughed off of PPV.
“How did a WWE statement about UFC turn into yet another UFC vs. PRIDE war? I guess people are channeling their inner WWE vs. WCW message board feuds from the mid-90s or something.”
My thoughts exactly, only it would be like having a WWE vs. WCW debate in late 2002, almost two years after WCW went out of business.
I think maybe you should create a thread called “UFC vs. Pride Debate Goes Here” or something like that. Then all of the petty, cliched “UFC vs. Pride” debates that have nothing to do with the original topic in other threads could go there instead. It would let people get those debates out of their systems without it clogging up other threads.
Trying to fill a 3 hour time slot? Hey Vince do you remember WWECW: December to Dismember or what the fuck that piece of shit was called? You forgot that ended early.
Speaking of which, you know how many buys that event drew in the United States? 55,000. The UFC was drawing better PPV buyrates than that in the pre-Spike TV era.
I like watching the undercard fights. What alternative does Vince suggest? I remember PRIDE 33 showing nine main card fights (no undercard) live in a 3 hour slot I think though and that was awesome. Though DSE might have been given leeway to go over three hours for that card if they needed the time. Or at least I’d assume since they showed all 9 fights live.
Pride definitely had more stacked cards, and for that matter so did the UFC pre-TUF. UFC 52 was the apex.
brock…heavy-weight-champ? hahahaaa..freak-show
Yeah, here we go again.
All the pride idiots coming out of the woodwork, just looking to relive some old glory days that never really existed. Throwing around all the old phrases like “stacked cards”, “top ten” and “Anderson Silva was a Pride fighter”
hey…to the clowns who said some of that dumb stuff. Anderson barely fought in Pride and if that’s an excuse to call him a “Pride fighter”….then Wanderlei Silva and Josh Barnett were originally “UFC Fighters” then.
Let this shit go. Pride lost. They put on some decent fights over the years, but they were crooked, didn’t run weigh ins, no drug testing and ran a very high number of jabroni matches featuring guys like that Mexican masked wrestler. That crapola was doomed to die sooner or later, it wasn’t treating MMA like a sport at all.
Speaking from a real mma fan, I would personally be happy seeing Wanderlei only fight twice a year if it were legit opponents, rather than five times a year where four of his opponents were undersized Japanese boys with names like Kanehara, Otsuka and Iwasaki. Who gives a shit about that. I don’t.
Pride is dead. You fanboys lost. Don’t nutjobbers like yourself have something else to obsess over now? Like a Star Trek convention or one of them there bakuban balls thing????
Peace and out.
Fake Dana White is my new favorite poster.
..so let´s take drugs and become a good mma-fighter..bullshit..who really cares in pro-sports?..not me,´cause everone takes´em!..and it makes shows exiting!!
anyway, can someone please tell me, what brocks skills are ?
He’s Ron Waterman, except a better wrestler and probably a better striker.
Also, the dude who in another thread compared Lesnar/Couture to Randleman/Erikson is pretty spot on. KO punch even landed in roughly the same place.
Wow, there are so many Pride fans here. My point stands: Pride put on “stacked” cards that were no more than their elite fighters fighting cans. Can you even argue this type of match making VS the UFC’s? I was a Pride fan once, and I can admit that. Why can’t the rest of you?
Billy Bob… You are completely ignorant to what MMA is. Lets take a look at UFC 91. All but 1 fight ended early, but the UFC showed every fight scheduled that evening. People don’t want fights to go to decision in MMA. Literally every match was entertaining even if the casual fan didn’t know who a lot of those guys were, they do now. The UFCs production never faltered even though an unusual number of fights ended in the first or early second round. They started the recap at 10 mins til the hour like they always do.
Also, Brock Lesnar isn’t a good MMA fighter because he wrestled in the WWE, he is a good MMA fighter because he was a national champion collegiate wrestler. Brock isn’t just a beast, he is a beast with top REAL wrestling pedigree. More WWE stars might be able to compete because they are big and athletic, but unless they have any previous fighting pedigree they won’t have anywhere near the sucess lesnar has had in the same timeframe.
Ultimo, Anderson Silva is better described as a Pride washout. It’s one of the only places that he went where he wasn’t immediately successful.
It’s the biggest question mark on his career.
Zach,
D Cap and the rest of the Pride defense force turned this into a Pride VS UFC debate. No where in my posts did I wrote that Pride fighters suck. I merely stated that Pride fighters didn’t have such a good record in the UFC, not because they suck, but because they were matched up with top competition in the UFC.
Of course, the PDF reactionary trigger finger automatically assumes anything written about Pride fighters meant that they had to go to the defense, and ten posts later, full flame forward with their pitchforks. Pride FC, the things you bring out in your fans. We’ll miss ya.
Fake Dana White would be better if he talked like Dana White. That would be wicked awesome.
I guess I’ll have to reserve judgment until the PPV numbers come in, but my guess is that UFC realizes they have a real cash cow with Lesnar.
It will be interesting to see the match-ups he’s put in as champion if he manages to successfully defend against Mir/Nog. While he once again showed that he is legit, I still think there’s a few fighters that would be able to exploit the holes in his game that they want nowhere near him. I would imagine we might see some of these guys who “aren’t big draws” get the Werdum/Jardine/Machida treatment so they can be kept out of the picture.
If the UFC was in japan and Pride was in the US, than all the current pride nuthuggers would be obsessing over the UFC instead. People who can’t let go of Pride just want to sound cool by enjoying something obscure and foriegn. They are the same people who love soccer in the US just because they want to sound worldly to their friends.
Anderson Silva had 5 PRIDE fights and only 2 UFC fights when he won the UFC belt. That shows that PRIDE had solid talent and wasn’t a smokescreen joke that UFC fanboys make them out to be.
i think wand, shogun etc were missing the headstomps on the ground..like myself..dana pleeaase !!! i would forget about pride then
lol, cyph is a pretty good gimmick poster too. Probably my favorite to argue with, since I know essentially what he’ll argue. Its all good though. I can’t wait for that totally un-PRIDE like end of year show and January PPV with the markedly not-at-all like PRIDE co-main of Coleman/Shogun.