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Quick news items to read in a post-UFC 95 world
By Zach Arnold | February 24, 2009
- There will be a new edition of Fight Opinion Radio in a day or two available online. Yes…
- This is Nottingham has an article on Dan HGH Hardy wanting to face Marcus Davis next.
- Mike Chiappetta, who covers/covered MMA for NBC Sports, has a new article on ESPN.com about the growing influence of black fighters in the sport.
- Muhsin Corbbrey, who fought in Elite XC, will start his boxing career.
- How does a company who sponsors fighters in MMA manage to make ends meet? An interview with MMA Warehouse management.
- Zac Robinson has the latest on New York Assemblyman Bob Reilly’s political shenanigans to keep MMA from being legalized in the state. Get this — he commissioned a poll of 438 people to determine whether or not MMA should be legalized and 312 said no. As a former statistics geek in college, the absurdity of using a sample size of 438 for a political discussion on the possibility of a state regulating a multi-million dollar industry scares the hell out of me.
- MMA agent Ken Pavia has now signed Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver into his army.
- BJ Penn’s camp is not interested in fighting Kenny Florian… on June 13th in Germany. Penn’s management wants the fight set for a later date.
- Michael David Smith has an interesting interview with Leonard Garcia about his upcoming fight against Mike Brown this Sunday night. Yes, there is a WEC event this Sunday night… here is the card line-up for that event.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, UK, WEC, Zach Arnold | 22 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
BJ Penn annoys me. He has enough energy to ask for a Welterweight Title fight. Enough energy to complain for weeks afterwards. Yet he can’t find it in himself to defend his Lightweight Title within a year? I wil be happy when a Lightweight beats him down… And that guy actually makes for a good champion.
Thomson vs. Melendez 2 on the next Strikeforce card. Horrible matchmaking. Really shows the lack of depth Strikeforce has, despite getting all of those EliteXC contracts.
So, UFC 99 is Franklin/Silva and Mirko/Some Guy. Somehow, I’m not seeing this selling out a 20,000 seat arena in a market that will have had the UFC on TV at 11PM for all of 5 months.
That’s what happens when they try and stack cards so much. UFC 98 has Lesnar/Mir, Hughes/Serra, Sherk/Edgar. And then UFC 100 has GSP/Alves, Evans/Jackson, & Henderson/Bisping.
I think there is no choice but for UFC 99 to suffer to a certain degree.
Zuffa can get away with putting on mediocre cards in Europe for a little while. Some fans will buy tickets because it is something new. However, once that wears off, they will have to start to deliver better cards. I think we have already seen that effect in the UK, with Sanchez/Stevenson only getting a $1 Million gate.
[…] and now we’ve got the world’s laziest champion. 45 Huddle over at FightOpinion summed it up nicely: “He has enough energy to ask for a welterweight title fight. Enough energy to complain for […]
I don’t think Sherk/Edgar is what would put UFC in Germany over the top and drive major ticket sales. I mean Germans have at least seen Uno fight thanks to Shooto and K-1 Hero’s telecasts on Eurosport, but again, not the guy I want to set an arena show around.
I have to agree with 45 here. BJ’s shenanigans are tiresome.
If he doesn’t want to fight Kenny Florian, let Kenny fight for an interim title. Personal preference would be with anyone other than Sean Sherk, but that’s just me.
If BJ keeps hemming and hawing past the summer, just strip him of the belt.
Stripping one of your biggest stars of a belt because he wants to fight in August instead of June is crazy talk. And interim titles? What is this, boxing?
BJ has historically never been a stable fighter or champion. We know this. And Dana shouldn’t put up with his nonsense.
I’m not saying strip him if he wants to fight in August; what I’m saying is strip him if he’s still hemming and hawing about fighting Florian come the summer.
A signed bout and commitment is all I’m looking for here.
Regarding Bob Reilly’s poll, you will also notice that they claim that the original call list of 8,500 people was a representative sample of all demographics but they make no mention of whether the actual respondents are an equally representative sample.
Well gee Bob, if you called those people in the middle of a weekday afternoon, I suspect you will get a disproportional amount of retirees and stay at home moms no matter how representative your call list was.
Hell, just using land-line phone records skews the data immensely against the young technology savvy crowd. Most of the people I know abandoned their land-line telephones ages ago in favor of their cells. The only people I know who have kept their land lines are stodgy old folks who don’t trust that newfangled cellular technology.
“Somehow, I’m not seeing this selling out a 20,000 seat arena ”
For the first UFC card EVER on the European continent? They could have Mac Danzig versus Denis Siver as the main event and it would still sell out.
They might have problems with subsequent European cards, but the novelty of the UFC on continental soil will be more than enough to sell out that first show, regardless of who is on the card.
What happened to randy in germany, i would think mirko v. randy would help fill an arena.
Fertitta to be out of the casino game?
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/02/23/ap6085056.html
How is thompson-melendez bad matchmaking?? Or does it show the lack of Strikeforce’s depth?? You cant seem to make up your mind.
You are mixing up apples and oranges. Either Strikeforce does not have talent depth (of course somewhat true) or they are bad matchmakers. While not mutually exclusive, you (45) seem to be mixing up your criticisms. Or is just any criticism okay with you?
Bad matchmaking because they just fought. It was a one sided fight to had no disputes. It’s like Faber/Pulver 2. Really no point in having it.
As for the lack of depth…. This is also the case. The fact that they could not find legit challengers to Thomson or Melendez forced them to make this immediate rematch. If they had more depth on the roster, this would not be the case.
lol at Thomson-Melendez being “bad matchmaking” while UFC 95 was a great card
And I’m pretty sure it takes more “energy” to have a full training camp and then have a fight than it does to “complain” about your opponent’s corner cheating.
Also, it has been three days since UFC 95 and since Zach asked the question in a headline, “Dan Hardy sponsored by HGH InFusion at UFC 95 – will anyone in the media notice or care?”
I think we have our answer as to whether the MMA media is going to cover this.
Faber-Pulver 2 is like Thompson-Melendez 2????
You have got to be f-ing kidding me. The only difference is that Pulver has been shot for years, while Melendez has the potential to be an all-time great and is still very young…and extremely talented…and in his prime.
Terrible comparison. Sure, they did fight somewhat recently, and it was one-sided, but that was a HUGE shock to everyone, and I do not expect that again, personally.
1. Both fights went 5 rounds.
2. Both fights had a clear cut, dominant winner.
3. Both rematches are happening in a relatively quick time span, despite no real changes amongst the fighters.
4. Both fights were used to get good crowds.
Wow, it’s like exactly the same thing.
Except that Faber was the favorite in both encounters, and Thomson actually came in as a significant underdog to Melendez.
robert: Randy will apparently be coming off a movie shoot so he won’t have time to do a proper training camp for that event.
LW Interim Title Fight: Florian vs Sanchez. Huerta would be another decent option, but he’s got hollywood eyes too.
Fun fact: when I tried to put together top 10 at each weight class based on who had fought in what promotions last, the only ones that I could find ten fighters deep for were UFC and WEC. Part of that is my fault for not digging deeper to classify fighters further down the list for their weights, but most of these smaller promotions are timesharing guys with other promotions, and none of them have a regular stable of fighters. EliteXC was closer than anyone had been in quite a while.
Most of the organizations below the UFC aren’t going to have large dedicated rosters and so they won’t have rankings of that sort. I don’t know why that is particularly surprising or even matters. I don’t see the guys at maxboxing attempting to determine who the top ten lightweights under the Golden Boy Promotions banner are.