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UFC 100 (7/11 Las Vegas)
By Zach Arnold | July 11, 2009
Reports: Sherdog | Observer | Jake Rossen | MMA Torch | MMA Weekly | MMA Junkie | Bloody Elbow
Post UFC 100 editorial note
I have to go through about 20-25 audio and video clips to analyze and transcribe comments and remarks. Hang with me and I promise I will get some new articles and material here and at MMA Memories in the next couple of days. It’s not hard work but it’s work that takes some time to get done in a meticulous fashion.
One favor needed — I wanted to play the audio from Off The Record in Canada with Dana White. However, when I went to the web site of the show and tried to play the clip, it gave me a message that it couldn’t play ‘in my region.’ I’m just looking to download or play the audio so I can transcribe anything news-worthy said in the interview. If you can help out on this front, please contact me personally. Thanks.
Personal thoughts on the show – thought it wasn’t a bad show overall. Although I will say that right after the PPV telecast ended, I did receive a few messages from people (casual, hardcore, across the spectrum) who thought the show sucked. I disagree with that notion, but then again I’ve spent the last couple of weeks writing articles on most of the fights on the card so I’ve had tunnelvision, admittedly.
As for the commentary on Brock Lesnar and his antics in the cage, look… this is a guy who used dogfighting references on the UFC 100 Countdown show on Spike TV and no one blinked an eye. (If you recall, he was talking about being taken off a leash when describing how he would go after Mir.) You know what you’re going to get with Lesnar. He’s the company’s ace right now, with St. Pierre as the second biggest ace. Everything has fallen right into place for Zuffa.
UFC’s RSS feed is broken
Which is why headlines from their web site aren’t showing on the left sidebar.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 140 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Even as a child, my coaches would tell me to keep playing until the ref stops you. What Henderson did was no different. The reasoning behind it means nothing. He continued to fight until the ref stopped him. As a fighter, he did what he was supposed to do.
Also, one of the problems about so many sports in America is how sterile they have become. Football players can’t celebrate. Hockey players can’t fight. Baseball players can’t throw at a player who did something wrong.
It’s nice to see a sport without those social restrictions. MMA is that sport right now.
If Brock Lesnar is a crazy lunatic, let him be that guy. As long as he isn’t attacking people 5 minutes after the fight is over, it’s all fair game. Not everybody has to like every fighter. And at the end of the day, the UFC is still putting out the best guys to fight each other. Which is the most important thing.
On a side note, not enough praise has been given to Dana White for how he handled Brock Lesnar. He went straight to the problem as quickly as possible. By the time Lesnar was on ESPN or the Press Conference, he had changed his tune. Most other commissioners would have never had such a hands on approach to resolving the problem.
Most commissioners aren’t at every single game, either, 45. You’ll see that kind of control though with the sports that do have those sorts of officials at every event, like NASCAR.
Alan,
You can admit you’re wrong. No one will think less of you.
I guess it would depend on what you mean by “wrong.” There’s a difference between “massive PPV buyrates and huge profitability” (which this kind of classless behavior will almost certainly help) and “being respected by the mainstream” (which this kind of classless behavior won’t help and will almost certainly hurt).
Regarding the Ali comparisons, boxing was already established as one of the biggest sports in the United States for decades before Ali ever laced up a pair of gloves.
And now for some video game talk!
Here’s a quote from MMAWeekly’s story (http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=9152&zoneid=13) about the UFC’s threats against fighters (even non-UFC fighters) in order to keep them out of EA Sports’ MMA video game.
“Making fighters choose between the game and the UFC was a casualty of the “war” he declared on EA.
“What we’re trying to do is, we’re doing deals with fighters,” he [Dana White] said. “The great thing about this business is, the UFC brand, plus stars, equals success for everybody. Now a fighter who fights in the UFC lives inside that brand forever. You can live inside that brand forever. So when we do a video game, you’re a guy in the video game for (expletive) ever. You stay in it forever and you can be a guy in there and you get paid off of that forever.”
So, the UFC has now gone from just stretching the truth into outright lying. Fighters in the UFC’s video game aren’t going to “get paid off of that forever,” because they signed away their video game rights FOR FREE. As both Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta acknowledged in interviews after the AKA debacle last year, the UFC’s video game contracts with fighters were LIFETIME, EXCLUSIVE contracts that were for FREE. (Cue the people who typically say, “Of course Dana White is lying, because he’s a promoter” and ignore the irony of the fact that many of the same people who say that also take White’s word as gospel on many important issues.)
Like Lorenzo Fertitta, Dana White also continues to outright lie about EA’s MMA game by saying that EA just started working on it as a reaction to the sales success of UFC 2009: Undisputed.
Again, the launch and sales success of UFC 2009: Undisputed came in May 2009. EA Sports has been working on an MMA video game since 2008, and multiple media outlets wrote about it in 2008, including MMA Payout and the Wrestling Observer.
Were the writers at MMA Payout and the Wrestling Observer blessed with psychic powers that enabled them to write about EA’s MMA game and some of the specific fighters that signed to appear in it (Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, etc.) the year before EA even started working on the game?
EA Sports’ MMA game was officially announced at E3 2009, but it’s not the least bit uncommon in the video game industry for a company to wait until a major game is about one year away from release and then announce it at E3.
As further evidence that EA’s MMA game was in development last year and that Zuffa knew it was in development last year, the aforementioned MMAWeekly story also quotes Randy Couture as he speaks in great detail about the fact that he signed to appear in EA’s MMA game in 2008, and that this was one of the major bones of contention between Couture and Zuffa when he was negotiating to return to the UFC… last September. Did Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta just forget about that before they started telling members of the media that EA only started working on its MMA game because of the success of UFC 2009: Undisputed?
Also, to those who played the usual “attack the writers” game when numerous MMA writers reported that the UFC was threatening fighters to keep them out of EA’s MMA game, Dana White makes no bones about it and flat-out says in this MMA Junkie article (http://mmajunkie.com/news/15490/ufc-president-dana-white-says-ea-sports-responsible-for-current-mma-video-game-war.mma) that any fighters other than Randy Couture who appear in EA’s game “will not be in the UFC.”
I might if I knew what the hell the Tyson/Hogan trajectory was. Is it like the Sugar Ray Leonard/Lance Armstrong trajectory?
Ivan,
Why do you even watch MMA? It doesn’t seem like you enjoy it at all.
As for the video game thing. I doubt EA started to work on the game after the UFC Undisputed was released. But there is likely a lot of truth to the fact that they met with EA and they didn’t want anything to do with the sport.
EA isn’t exactly a fan favorite amongst gamers.
Dave Meltzer absolutely killed all the whiners:
http://www.f4wonline.com/content/view/9918/
–A ton of interesting reaction to last night. I’m going to give my old boxing speech with a little bit of a twist. Anyone who has ripped on every athlete who at times shows unsportsmanlike like behavior can say anything they want about Brock Lesnar and that’s fine. For those who think that it is going to mean more people will tune out UFC than people he has hooked as fans who want to see him get beat, you are probably as dead wrong as the people who said the same thing about Ali. For those who think Lesnar was a disgrace to the UFC for doing WWE antics, read a real history lesson of how the sport got popular. Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie doing WWE interviews, and the funny thing is nobody was more arrogant on his interviews than Gracie, but he was small and beat big guys at first so he backed it up and became the first legend. Shamrock and Tito in 2002 saved UFC when it was one step from death. Did they save it because they were the top two fighters in the world on that night and all these sports fans wanted to pay to find out who was really No. 1?
No. They saved it because they went on “Best Damn Sports Show Period” and cut pro wrestling promos on each other and with no television at all, 150,000 people bought their PPV match, and the UFC owners realized that there was potential in this money losing outfit.
The real history that all the UFC historical retrospectives left out, was that it was the TV shows the two weeks before the Leben vs. Koscheck fight on Ultimate Fighter that was the real building blocks for the success of the sport, not the Griffin and Bonnar fight as has been reported in many places over the past week. Leben vs. Koscheck in a taped match in front of a dozen people in a warehouse like gym drew a higher rating than Griffin and Bonnar did.
In no way do I want to diminish that Griffin-Bonnar was the perfect fight on the perfect night and in the long-term helped more, because they delivered the great fight as opposed to just the great hype that delivered television ratings, but disappointed in the end. What was Matt Serra before Montreal? What was Frank Mir and Michael Bisping this past week? Play some tapes of Ali’s promos for Frazier.
There are a lot of very good reasons not to like Brock Lesnar. But whatever media and Hardcore backlash there is against him, which admittedly is some of the most entertaining stuff in a long time, is because he’s a former WWE wrestler, not for anything he did. Tank Abbott flipped off fans, and said he was sexually aroused when watching a replay of his match with Paul Varelans. Was Lesnar doing it anymore than Tito Ortiz and his Gay Mezger is my bitch T-shirt, or his grave digging, and take Ortiz out of the history of this sport (and some people are attempting to do that as we speak), and 2006’s records never exist. Take 2006 out of the sport’s history and you’re at a completely different level of interest, media acceptance and CBS, Showtime, and others never get into this game in the first place. The most important fight in getting mainstream interest was a crap third fight with Ortiz and Shamrock. Buy rates mean something to company profitability, but in the media world, ratings are king, because it’s a world they understand. What very slowly got the mainstream media into MMA, and as Dana White likes to remind me, took me from one place in life to another, is the media couldn’t deny the ratings of the Ortiz-Shamrock match in 2006 on Spike when in 18-34 males it beat several games of that year’s World Series. Was that the two best fighters in the world vying to see who was really No. 1? No, it was just a match that the two combatants and the promotion made people want to see more than any other match up to that point in history. And those viewers seeing that crap fight were so turned off by it, that a few months later, when the natural build led to Ortiz vs. Chuck Liddell, the company’s bank account grew like never before.
We watched people piss in beds and piss in fruit and jack off on sushi, and guess what, more people still watched last night’s PPV than any non-boxing event in history most likely. But some guy cutting a WWE-style promo, which Frank Mir and Michael Bisping both did better than he did on television over the past week, is going to turn off more people than he turns on. Hell, if guys in WWE were cutting WWE style promos as good as Mir, Bisping and Lesnar, WWE would be the one whose business would be turning around. When you actually think about the argument, it’s almost absurd.
Could it hurt sanctioning in New York and Massachusetts? It’s a weird world we live in and anything is possible. In a logical world, that punch Dan Henderson threw was 100 times worse, but you never know how things can mushroom. But I’m guessing it will have no effect. But you never know.
If you are consistent in your beliefs, that’s cool. If you’re a reactionary fool on this one, calm down and look at the world, and sports in general. When boxing people say what Lesnar did was worse than anything Mike Tyson did, I’m baffled. Did he bite a man’s ear off? Did he threaten to eat any children? He cut the best and most talked about promo of his life and what will be the single most talked about promo of the year. And that’s bad? Why, because he came from WWE? Why don’t they blame the University of Minnesota while we’re at it. Is anyone aware of how Lesnar acted as the U of M wrestling matches during his junior and senior year when they had dual meets against the other powers and fans booed him out of the small gyms? Dana White can say Lesnar was acting, and he has to, but he was just being himself, ratcheted up a few notches, because he is in the sports business, which is why he trained his ass off. But he’s in the entertainment business, which is why 1 million or more people plucked down $45 last night.
Why is he now the biggest PPV draw in the world since Oscar De La Hoya is now retired? And by the way, when Oscar De La Hoya set his record two years ago, answer this question: Was the reason he set the record because he had an adversary who was or wasn’t playing a villain role on purpose to drum up interest in his match?
Because Lesnar became a celebrity from WWE, and because of that, a lot of people like paying to see him fight, either to beat people up, or to get beat up. Who drew more new fans to the sport this past year, St. Pierre, Anderson Silva, Fedor or Lesnar?
Some great athletes really aren’t nice guys. But that doesn’t diminish them as athletes, nor hurt their sport one iota. In the plethora of stories, how many people mentioned how many new fans Lesnar has made for UFC with his fight with Mir and fight with Couture getting hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers? One of the key reasons UFC 100 is going to set records and has already started setting them even before the first PPV returns have come in, is because Brock Lesnar came from WWE and he can really fight. Guess what? The fact that some people look their noses up or have nervous breakdowns about the latter part of the statement is exactly the emotional reaction that makes him so valuable to the sport in the first place. No, it’s not the WWE. You have to really be able to fight.
What Lesnar did by ripping on Bud Lite, particularly come so soon after the Dana White/Loretta Hunt deal, was absolutely bad for the company. That’s the company’ss leading sponsor, and if I was Dana White, I’d be furious over that one. That was stupid, but I doubt Lesnar was aware of the White/Hunt thing and how everything went down from that. He was just trying to be funny, and actually, if it wasn’t the lead sponsor and the timing wasn’t absolutely horrible, it would have been funny. Hell, that was the one thing he said that almost the entire crowd cheered and laughed at live. But that line also had zero impact on fans paying money to see him beaten the next time he fights.
But for every MMA fan who criticizes Lesnar’s behavior as bad for the sport, it was not even within an earshot of the two worst things of this past week. Just in the last few days, what did Quinton Jackson do a reporter? And then the professional fighter as opposed to a blowhard pro wrestler nearly got into a fight with another fighter at the show last night? Has Lesnar ever got in a situation while at ringside at a UFC show that he ever nearly came to blows with someone? And it’s not like Jackson had a spotless track record over the last year. Or what if Lesnar did what Dan Henderson did, which was something a whole lot more significant?
But it got nowhere near the reaction. It’s all about emotion and frame of reference. GSP is a babyface that people wanted to see win, and they were happy to see him do the right game plan to achieve his victory. Dan Henderson was there to shut up a loudmouth Brit who was obviously playing a role. And he shut him up, and then shut him up once time extra for bad measure. Lesnar was a heel people wanted to see lose, and were furious to see him succeeding with a game plan that was working. All of those elements were part of the emotions of the night. The goal, in the end, is to make people care.
The history of what has drawn the biggest PPV numbers, what made the sport and saved the sport is a lesson very much worth examining for anyone arguing about what is good or bad for the future of the sport. That duality of the reaction of the crowd live, and a large percentage of those who complained about Lesnar’s tactics (but not all), says something pretty significant about MMA and its fan base.
That’s not even a bad thing. But it’s simply accepting the truth of what all of this is, as opposed to people who live in the world of pretend. And then somehow complain about pro wrestling.
–In the top 100 things being searched for on the Internet on Google as of a few hours ago:
2. Lesnar vs. Mir
4. UFC 100
7. Rena Mero
9. Lesnar interview
11. Fedor
13. Dan Henderson vs. Michael Bisping
16. Georges St. Pierre vs. Thiago Alves
18. Henderson knockout
20. Jonny Jones vs. Jake O’Brien
39. UFC post fight press conference
41. Mark Coleman vs. Stephan Bonnar
59. UFC results
68. Shane Carwin
95. UFC 101
99. Brock Lesnar UFC 100
That’s not a sports list. That’s everything in the world. Gatti’s wife is No. 1. Aside from stuff related to Gatti and UFC 100, there is nothing else in the top 100 related to sports.
–UFC 100 was also the No. 1 topic talked about yesterday on Twitter
–Coverage of Lesnar was also the No. 1 news item of the day on Yahoo! at one point today
45 Huddle— Putting aside the fact that I could ask you the same thing about any non-UFC brand of MMA, I do enjoy watching MMA, and that includes the UFC. I just don’t approve of many of the business practices that take place within the MMA industry, and I don’t hesitate to criticize if I feel that criticism is due, whether it’s the UFC’s many questionable business practices, EliteXC’s many questionable business practices (the biggest of which was “StandGate”), Jay Larkin’s attitude when he was running the IFL, etc.
Regarding EA Sports, I don’t doubt that EA Sports would have told the UFC three years ago that they didn’t want to make an MMA game. That’s what Dana White says in that MMAWeekly story— that EA Sports wanted nothing to do with MMA three years ago and said it wasn’t even a sport.
That was three years ago. Peter Moore left Microsoft in July 2007 to become the new president of EA Sports, and less than a year later, EA Tiburon’s work on an MMA game was underway.
And believe me, you don’t have to tell me that EA “isn’t exactly a fan favorite amongst gamers.” As I’ve said before, I think that EA Sports MMA 2010 is unlikely to be as good as UFC 2010 in terms of actual gameplay quality, because EA Tiburon doesn’t have the pedigree of making high-quality combat-based video games that UFC game developer Yuke’s Media Creations has. EA is offering a much better deal for the fighters (paying them actual money for the one-game, non-exclusive use of their likenesses instead of threatening them into signing away the lifetime exclusive use of their likenesses for free), but in terms of the actual gameplay, it’s going to be hard for Tiburon to top what Yuke’s has built.
I’ve also spent years ripping some of EA’s business practices, most recently on the new Next-Gen Online before the clueless management of Future USA killed it and turned it into Edge Online. The NFL’s decision to give EA a monopoly on football games has single-handedly killed something that used to be one of my favorite things to do every fall with my friends: Play football video games. With no competition, it’s not just that the NFL 2K series died an instant death, it’s also that the level of innovation in Madden from year to year has become laughable (because without competition, EA has had much less incentive to innovate). I’m sure EA would have been in court for anti-trust violations if not for the fact that their contract is with the NFL, and the NFL has an anti-trust exemption.
So believe me, I know all about EA’s BS, and I spent years writing about it. That still doesn’t make it right for the UFC to be threatening fighters, many of whom aren’t even in the UFC and have never been in the UFC, in order to keep them out of EA’s MMA game.
David M— Again, there’s a difference between “massive PPV buyrates and huge profitability” (which this kind of classless behavior will almost certainly help) and “being respected by the mainstream” (which this kind of classless behavior won’t help and will almost certainly hurt). It makes sense that Dave Meltzer wouldn’t understand that difference, given the fact that he has spent the majority of his life covering pro wrestling and covers MMA exactly the same way that he covers pro wrestling.
As Alan C. said earlier in this thread, “Professional wrestling had big buyrates and huge ratings and was still treated as the scum of the earth.”
Dave Meltzer proves why he is one of the best.
The UFC is in the best position they have ever been in. And yet from reading many of the comments online, you would think they are ready to go out of business.
Meltzer says: “That duality of the reaction of the crowd live, and a large percentage of those who complained about Lesnar’s tactics (but not all), says something pretty significant about MMA and its fan base.”
He is taking a shot at the MMA Fanbase without directly saying it. At least that is my interpretation of what he is saying.
Ivan,
The major difference between the UFC and WWE is:
1. ESPN is covering the UFC. It doesn’t cover the WWE.
2. The telecast came across as a sports telecast.
3. While the hardcore fanbases (which are smaller) can be the same fans…. The casual fans are much much different. Just go to each event, and it’s not the same crowd at all.
EA has changed a lot in the last three years, personnelwise, in terms of the variety of games they’re offering, the quality of the games, their willingness to just straight up shut down bad projects instead of whistling them done and releasing them anyway, and other things as well.
The “big bad EA” that people think of more closely resembles Activision at this point than the EA of today. One can only hope that they’ll continue moving in a positive direction, because they were in a really bad spot for a long time.
The mainstream can “engage in adult activities” for all I care. The minute I start worrying about what’s on the top40 or figure out what a Gucci bag is, I’ll let you know.
Ivan-I respect your opinion but I don’t think we need to worry so much about the elusive mainstream. Do you deem boxing to be mainstream? At the end of the day, Brock is good for business. He gets eyes to TVs, and ratings = networks take notice. The more TV networks interested in mma, the bigger the pie gets.
Fighting is never going to be viewed as something “mainstream” like golf because it is a violent, vicious, brutal sport in which caged men beat the fuck out of each other. MMA will never be something douche bag TV critics will be able to sip a glass of merlot to while watching. Who does watch are 18-34 year old males. There is a reason that after the fight, espn.com and cnnsi.com had Brock’s face pasted as their main story, and sportsline.com had him as their number 2 story (I assume foxsports had Brock front and center). Mainstream recognition, i.e. having old douche bag TV commentators who have to get up 5 times a night to pee and who wouldn’t know an armbar if it tore their shoulder out, talk about mma, doesn’t matter. Those people are never going to be mma fans; they are too old and too set in their ways. The most important thing is that amongst the current generation MMA is already mainstream, and it isn’t going anywhere but up.
45 Huddle— I agree with you that the audiences are quite different nowadays. That wasn’t the point I was making. The point I was making is that there’s a difference between “massive PPV buyrates and huge profitability” and “being respected by the mainstream,” and WWE during the boom period ten years ago is a good example of how a company can attain the former without attaining the latter. They’re two separate things.
And if anything, the fact that Lesnar’s antics and Henderson’s actions were shown on ESPN SportsCenter is only going to hurt more in terms of mainstream respect. Vince McMahon does far more classless things in a week than some people do in a lifetime, but the vast majority of those things aren’t exposed to mainstream audiences because they’re not replayed on ESPN SportsCenter or covered by the mainstream media.
Jeremy— I agree with you that in its efforts to overcome EA, Activision has more or less become EA (and not in a good way).
David— Of course I don’t think that boxing is “mainstream,” but it certainly was decades ago. It was one of the top three biggest sports in the United States (along with baseball and horse racing, of all things) in the first half of the 20th century.
The UFC has the stated goal of turning MMA into the biggest sport in the world. That, by definition, is not going to happen unless it becomes “mainstream.” Personally, I don’t think it’s realistic to think that MMA can ever become THE biggest sport in the world for all the reasons that you’ve stated, but it’s not unreasonable to think that it could become part of the Big Four or maybe someday even the Big Three in the United States.
Just in case there’s anyone out there still unsure whether EA’s MMA game is something that just came into existence after UFC 2009: Undisputed sold so many copies… in addition to the Wrestling Observer and MMA Payout reporting on the game in 2008, so did IGN all the way back in May 2008, a full year before UFC 2009: Undisputed was released.
http://sports.ign.com/articles/873/873358p1.html
As Steve Barry wrote on MMA Convert (http://www.mmaconvert.com/2009/07/12/dana-im-at-war-with-ea-right-now/), “It’s just another example of Zuffa bending the truth to spin an ugly situation in their favor. And quite frankly, it’s starting to get old especially when the majority of people listening don’t know any better.”
About EA not being quite as shitty as before, they came out with two excellent, and highly innovative (yes, I know what innovative means, I’m not mistaking for a synonym of “good”)games last year with “Dead Space” and “Mirror’s Edge”. So ME was a bit of a diamond in the rough (too much trial and error and inexact platform jumps) but still was very innovative. Unfortunately I don’t think EA will go in the “arthouse” genre of games for a while, except for sequels and remakes of said games.
Speaking of pushing fighters to the moon, Nick Diaz is fighting, ONCE AGAIN, on the next Strikeforce card, against Joe Riggs. Good lord, they’re gonna burn him out. Is Strikeforce making sure Nick Diaz stops smoking pot by making him fight every two months or something? That’s a hell of a way to sober someone up, by making them fight and take drug tests every two or so months. Maybe Strikeforce should sign Amy Whinehouse and have her fight every two or so months. It might sell a few tickets.
I agree that he shouldn’t be booked to fight every two months (nor should anyone else), and as I’ve said before, enough with these catch weight fights already!
So let me get this straight just for the record the UFC goes to EA and wants to partner with them to make a new MMA game. EA tells them to fuck off and that they won’t have anything to do with them then they partner with THQ and begin work on UFC Undisputed.
2 years later after the UFC breaks a million ppv buys, EA is making calls about doing an MMA game and somehow Zuffa is lying and spining things?.
Seriously this evil Zuffa act is the thing that is getting tired, simply put EA came late to the table and now wants to play ball fuck them. Just like Dana said i’m beyond tired of these late comers to the table that just want to make a buck off the sport without taking any risk.
Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White have both said publicly that EA Sports decided to make an MMA game because of the sales success of UFC 2009: Undisputed. That is not even stretching the truth on their part. It is an outright lie.
It’s not even a case of bad information or ignorance on their part, because as Randy Couture explained in detail in that MMAWeekly story, the fact that Couture was signed to an exclusive contract to appear in EA’s MMA game was a bone of contention in Zuffa’s negotiations to get Couture to return to the UFC in September 2008… over eight months before UFC 2009: Undisputed was released.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164224.html
Zuffa signed their deal with THQ in January of 2007 shortly after EA turned the UFC down. Guess what happened after that?, i’ll tell you UFC 66’s buyrate came out over 1 million. Then the UFC was covered on ESPN for the first time ever and Chuck Liddell became a main stream star.
Funny how after all of that happens a year later EA is talking about an MMA game when they originally told the UFC to go screw themselves. Face the facts Ivan, these guys smelled money and tried to pull a fast one once they saw that the UFC was about to become really big.
I’m glad Dana and Lorenzo are telling them to fuck off now, because just like Spike we need to support those who took a risk on the sport before there was huge money to be made.
Jesus, Meltzer’s ramblings are embarrassing. Asking us if Tank Abbott hurt the sport? Uhhh, yeah? Asking if Tyson hurt boxing? You’re crazy if you think think otherwise. Brock Lesnar was a highly searched term on Google! What is that proof of other than noteworthiness? Arturo Gatti’s wife is the most highly searched out there, and she is charged with his death!
He even seems bitter that the fans haven’t embraced Brock Lesnar. He is completely lost.
Lost in the “old man who thinks he’s a cheeseburger” way, or lost in the “going to hell” way?
Both are funny, but only one reflects badly on you, so choose wisely.
Saw coverage of UFC 100 on Canadian TV. And guess what the whole focus was about? And I quote: “But Lesnar’s antics overshadowed the event…”, with cuts of Lesnar sputtering at the camera, yelling at a bloody Mir, dissing Bud Light, and talking about getting on top of his wife. And finally, Lesnar apologizing at the press conference.
Is that how we want our historic UFC 100 to be summed up in the mainstream media?
I would put him squarely in the camp of “old man who thinks he’s a cheeseburger”, were I to be picking between the two. I don’t consider it fully accurate: more that he is perhaps eating what he imagines to be a cheeseburger and is instead an uncooked lump of cow liver.
The defenses are erratic and don’t actually get to the heart of most people’s criticism. He’s beating the crap out of the strawman that people think Lesnar will bring about the end of the UFC by blasting them with wonderous facts about how he has made so much money. Its a big like defending Carrottop’s comedy by saying he gets Vegas bookings and had a feature film while asking if his visual gags are worse than Lenny Bruce using the N-word.
Jesus, I can barely type. That should be “Its a big joke:”
Is that how we want our historic UFC 100 to be summed up in the mainstream media?
The attitude is that it doesn’t matter as long as people pay for the events. I think that’s completely clear. The UFC could have someone die in the cage in front of a million households and I wouldn’t be shocked if it was pushed back to talk about the sport’s overwhelming support by large tracts of the bloggers out there.
People have become way to fixated on MMA becoming mainstream, while it has blown up in popularity its never going to be as popular as team sports. Too violent for our generation and anything based on the PPV model will never overtake the big sports outside of 1-2 events a year.
But I will say, Brock’s win and continued success will garner much more attention to the sport then any other athlete. He is a cross-over curiosity and maybe potential star. The only reason why ESPN bothered to cover UFC 100 was because of the anniversary achievement but especially because Brock was involved.I fully expect them to only give very brief coverage of future UFC events until Brock fights again.
I also wanted to add that Brock’s quick rise makes the sport look bad. Not because he is a former pro-wrestler but because it shows that the talent pool is really shallow in MMA.
IMO Brock is not some anomaly, there are a bunch of former Soviet wrestlers that we couldn’t even name who would do the same. MMA fans always believed that they are watching the baddest men on the planet, but even after more then a decade of developing varied skill sets a “one dimensional” martial artist, especially wrestlers, can come in and dominate.
It kinda kills the hype.
“Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White have both said publicly that EA Sports decided to make an MMA game because of the sales success of UFC 2009: Undisputed. That is not even stretching the truth on their part. It is an outright lie.”
Well it sure is a coincidence that EA only officially announced their game after it became clear from sales forecasts that the UFC game was going to do big numbers.
EA have already cancelled a few games in development this year. The EA MMA game would have been joined that list too if UFC’s game was a flop.
@ Alan, # 39 \”However, and its a big however: I have no idea whatsoever how you argue that Brock Lesnar is going to inspire any new fans to watch MMA beyond the wrestling ones he brought in when he debuted last year.\”
a friend of mine called me up the day of the show having seen bits of the countdown special and was very excited about seeing this fight. hes never watched pro wrestling and his mma exposure had been limited to one random EXC show, but wanted to come over to watch this match.
he had a great time, loved the show, and i guarantee he will be buying ufc ppvs in the future.
your opinion about lesnars ability to draw new fans is tainted by viewpoint re: post fight antics.
@ 101, 45huddle: “Even as a child, my coaches would tell me to keep playing until the ref stops you. What Henderson did was no different. The reasoning behind it means nothing. He continued to fight until the ref stopped him. As a fighter, he did what he was supposed to do.”
there is a difference based on intent. if you get, say, bumped in a hall by someone who isnt paying attention versus getting bumped by someone who puffs themselves out and wants to bump you, youre going to feel differently about what happened even thoug you were bumped in both occasions. intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter — and a significant number of years behind bars. to say what henderson did is okay when he explicitly stated he did it with bad intentions is sticking your head in the sand.
@ 98, Alan: “You’re right. I forgot all about that time Ali threatened George Chuvalo’s dad, told the fans to fuck off, and then trashed the sponsors of the event. Or that time he dropped Foreman in Zaire and made sure to him him again when he was down to make sure he wouldn’t get back up before the ref could jump in. Oh, wait.”
dont forget that ali called frazier a monkey repeatedly and unapologetically in the leadup to the manilla fight. ali knew the strong implications of calling a black man a gorilla and just because they shared the same skin color made it neither right nor less psychologically effective. if he was a white man saying this, esp. in todays world, he would be thrown in front of a firing squad. its wrong to look at ali as if he never said anything (more than) questionable..
“I also wanted to add that Brock’s quick rise makes the sport look bad. Not because he is a former pro-wrestler but because it shows that the talent pool is really shallow in MMA.
IMO Brock is not some anomaly, there are a bunch of former Soviet wrestlers that we couldn’t even name who would do the same. MMA fans always believed that they are watching the baddest men on the planet, but even after more then a decade of developing varied skill sets a “one dimensional” martial artist, especially wrestlers, can come in and dominate.
It kinda kills the hype.”
Someone is new to the sport, wrestlers have always done well in MMA Lesnar is no different than Couture and Hughes.
The difference is his size, speed, and learning curve puts even those 2 hall of famers to shame. Brock is a freak, there are no others out there like him if there were we would know it it isn’t hype it’s reality he’s that good.
EJ— Oh my god, you mean to tell me that EA got more interested in the sport after they saw that there was money to be made from it? Unbelievable! You mean like the Fertittas did after the first Ortiz-Ken Shamrock fight?
Dana and company bought the UFC way before that fight ever took place that’s the first point.
The second is that EA had their shot to make an mma game and passed to try and complain about how evil Zuffa is because they told the to go to hell is ridiculous.
Simply put don’t try to make EA the victim and try and re-write history to make the UFC look bad. Becasue you lose more credibility with every one of your conspiracy laiden post in regards to Zuffa.
“Someone is new to the sport, wrestlers have always done well in MMA Lesnar is no different than Couture and Hughes.
The difference is his size, speed, and learning curve puts even those 2 hall of famers to shame. Brock is a freak, there are no others out there like him if there were we would know it it isn’t hype it’s reality he’s that good.”
The point was that the sport should have evolved from a decade ago, Lesnar has become a top 3 heavyweight in a year by beating an all time great and a former UFC champion (and both Couture and Mir had worked for years to improve other aspects of their game) by only using wrestling, his size, very basic BJJ defense and only one type of punch.
That doesn’t say much for MMA, and who’s to say that guys like Artur Taymazov, Bakhtiyar Akhmedov, Mijaín López, Khasan Baroyev etc who are just as big and better wrestlers, wouldn’t do the same?
Oh yeah, I forgot. They don’t have the WWE hype.
Amateur wrestling > MMA
Again you miss the point, Lesnar isn’t just an amateur wrestler he is a freakish athlete with a huge learning curve that hasn’t been seen in this sport maybe ever. Lesnar isn’t just a wrestlers he’s showed improving stand up and ko power that you can’t teach. He’s also learned submission defense at a rate that is incredible add to that his great top control and you have an mma phenom.
And if any of those guys you mentioned can make it in mma, please let them try but don’t try and make ridiculous comparison’s. There have been plenty of amateur wrestlers embarrased in the cage and schooled by lesser fighters than Mir. There is only 1 Brock Lesnar, after UFC 100 that is pretty clear by now the rest is just noise.
EJ— I didn’t call anyone evil and I didn’t present any conspiracy theories. Everything that I’ve written about the UFC/EA situation was simply stating facts, which were backed up by multiple sources that I cited. They may not be facts that you like, but they are facts nonetheless.
I also wouldn’t blame the UFC if they decided to tell EA to go to hell in the upcoming contract negotiations of 2011 (when the THQ deal expires). Somehow, I doubt that’s the position they would actually take, much like they’re probably not going to tell ESPN to go to hell in the upcoming contract negotiations of 2011 (when the Spike TV deal expires).
But the fact is, telling EA to go to hell at the negotiating table is not what Zuffa has done here. What Zuffa has done is threaten current UFC fighters, former UFC fighters, and fighters who have never even fought in the UFC, in order to force those fighters into turning down actual money that EA is offering them for the one-game, non-exclusive rights to their likenesses, or else face the publicly promised consequences that they will be fired by the UFC / never re-signed by the UFC / never signed by the UFC in the first place.
The “victim” here, as you put it, is not EA. If anything, it’s the fighters who are being threatened. As Meltzer recently wrote, a significant percentage of fighters who are actually in the UFC, the biggest MMA organization in the world, are financially struggling. For the vast majority of those who are not in the “Super Bowl of MMA,” things are even worse financially, and they don’t work for an MMA promotion that has hundreds of millions of dollars in gross revenue every year. Now, faced with the prospect of getting paid for the non-exclusive rights to their likeness in EA’s MMA game (without signing away the lifetime rights to their own likeness, as many UFC fighters did), these non-UFC fighters are being threatened into turning down the money from EA so that they don’t get blacklisted by the UFC.
What facts are those Ivan?, the fact that EA turned down a good deal with the UFC because they didn’t think it was a sport?.
Was it the fact that EA started talking about an MMA game after the UFC got a million buys and ESPN coverage and was already signed to THQ?.
Or was it the fact that EA was being shady behind the scenes trying to screw with UFC talent trying to damage their relationship with fighters appearing in the game?.
Now unless EA does some groveling I don’t see the UFC doing anything with them anytime soon. The UFC is big on loyalty they already had a chance to sign with ESPN and decided to re-up with Spike so that argument doesn’t hold water as usual.
Zuffa has every right to deal with EA just like they deal with Affliction and Elite XC. You try and compete with them you get fucked over simple, you might not like it but that’s what’s lead to them becoming the powerhouse that they are.
Simply put, fighters have to realise what is more important making a couple of bucks up front or making big bucks longterm. Look at what chasing money has done to guys like AA or Sylvia, these guys chased the money and now have no career to speak of. That should be a warning for anyone stupid enough to not think longterm and it’s what has given the UFC the edge over everyone else.
The UFC’s renewal with Spike TV may have had a lot to do with loyalty. It may also have had a lot to do with the fact that Spike TV was offering them over $100 million to renew and was willing to let them keep control of production…
Also, I love the logic that EA Sports offering money to fighters to appear in an MMA video game = “screwing” with fighters. The UFC threatening fighters into signing away the exclusive lifetime rights to their video game likenesses for free = apparently not “screwing” with fighters.
In response to your question of “what facts?” Here they are in case anyone has forgotten.
Here’s a quote from MMAWeekly’s story (http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=9152&zoneid=13) about the UFC’s threats against fighters (even non-UFC fighters) in order to keep them out of EA Sports’ MMA video game.
“Making fighters choose between the game and the UFC was a casualty of the “war” he declared on EA.
“What we’re trying to do is, we’re doing deals with fighters,” he [Dana White] said. “The great thing about this business is, the UFC brand, plus stars, equals success for everybody. Now a fighter who fights in the UFC lives inside that brand forever. You can live inside that brand forever. So when we do a video game, you’re a guy in the video game for (expletive) ever. You stay in it forever and you can be a guy in there and you get paid off of that forever.”
So, the UFC has now gone from just stretching the truth into outright lying. Fighters in the UFC’s video game aren’t going to “get paid off of that forever,” because they signed away their video game rights FOR FREE. As both Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta acknowledged in interviews after the AKA debacle last year, the UFC’s video game contracts with fighters were LIFETIME, EXCLUSIVE contracts that were for FREE. (Cue the people who typically say, “Of course Dana White is lying, because he’s a promoter” and ignore the irony of the fact that many of the same people who say that also take White’s word as gospel on many important issues.)
Like Lorenzo Fertitta, Dana White also continues to outright lie about EA’s MMA game by saying that EA just started working on it as a reaction to the sales success of UFC 2009: Undisputed.
Again, the launch and sales success of UFC 2009: Undisputed came in May 2009. EA Sports has been working on an MMA video game since 2008, and multiple media outlets wrote about it in 2008, including MMA Payout and the Wrestling Observer.
Were the writers at MMA Payout and the Wrestling Observer blessed with psychic powers that enabled them to write about EA’s MMA game and some of the specific fighters that signed to appear in it (Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, etc.) the year before EA even started working on the game?
EA Sports’ MMA game was officially announced at E3 2009, but it’s not the least bit uncommon in the video game industry for a company to wait until a major game is about one year away from release and then announce it at E3.
As further evidence that EA’s MMA game was in development last year and that Zuffa knew it was in development last year, the aforementioned MMAWeekly story also quotes Randy Couture as he speaks in great detail about the fact that he signed to appear in EA’s MMA game in 2008, and that this was one of the major bones of contention between Couture and Zuffa when he was negotiating to return to the UFC… last September. Did Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta just forget about that before they started telling members of the media that EA only started working on its MMA game because of the success of UFC 2009: Undisputed?
Just in case there’s anyone out there still unsure whether EA’s MMA game is something that just came into existence after UFC 2009: Undisputed sold so many copies… in addition to the Wrestling Observer and MMA Payout reporting on the game in 2008, so did IGN all the way back in May 2008, a full year before UFC 2009: Undisputed was released.
http://sports.ign.com/articles/873/873358p1.html
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