« Ultimate Fighter Heavyweights finale (12/5 Las Vegas) | Home | Ka-boom: Dan Henderson heads to Strikeforce »
Joe Rogan’s interesting comment about Roy Nelson and Elite XC
By Zach Arnold | December 5, 2009
So, during Roy Nelson’s ring introduction on The Ultimate Fighter tonight, Rogan was praising Nelson as a ground fighter who has faced a high quality of opponent. He mentioned Elite XC for some reason and bluntly said that Elite XC was known as the promotion that paid it’s fighters to stand up. We know about what happened with Jeremy Lappen (who is going to be running California’s amateur MMA scene) and stand-up gate, but I never expected UFC to bring it up (especially so randomly) on television.
Regarding Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz III… that is an ugly fight that I think will draw a cold PPV buyrate. The fight that would have made the most sense was Liddell vs. Kimbo at 215 pounds, but you can’t have either as a coach. When I heard the announcement of Liddell/Ortiz III, it reminded me so much of WCW booking from a decade ago.
If I could get a tightly-edited 2 hour broadcast instead of a sloppily-produced 3 hour live broadcast, I’ll take the taped broadcast any day. Comparing the K-1 produced show at Yokohama Arena on TV versus the UFC show at the Palms… holy $*Q&! Zuffa’s production team really could use some time off to study how Fuji TV produces a show. Wow.
I really thought tonight’s show could have been a good launching point to build momentum for next week’s Memphis PPV. Instead, I didn’t even feel like UFC was even giving a good faith effort in hyping up the Memphis show outside of the boilerplate interview segment with Penn and Sanchez. Just an incredibly lackluster build-up for the event.
Someone in the comments section mentioned this but it was a thought I was pondering tonight… remember when UFC announced Lorenzo Fertitta joining the company as an “earthshattering” announcement? How would you consider his job performance right now?
I cannot recall a fighter grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory like I did with Houston Alexander did on Saturday night. I was laughing out loud when Kimbo Slice nearly finished him off with a choke.
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 68 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I would actually like to see Henderson vs Fedor, that fight (if Henderson would get past Mousasi, which is a close fight) would be huge!
If UFC 100 was the biggest american mma event thus far, Hendo vs Fedor would top it.
Alan, i think it’s more then fight money, i think he wants the best exposure for his brand, Clinch Gear. I think that played a key part.
I see that Kimbo got $25K for the Alexander fight. What a come down for him. 🙁
He got $165K for the Bo Cantrell fight.
This damned recession is hitting everyone hard.
Anders L, do you by any chance have a fifth of vodka next to your keyboard? Saying Fedor vs Hendo would be bigger than UFC 100 is just ridiculous. I really don’t think Strikeforce will draw more than 1.6 million pay per view buys to see a HW who has fought twice on US soil fight a middleweight, outside of the UFC.
RE: Clinch Gear, the UFC didn’t ban it until Dan left the UFC. If he had resigned with them, Clinch Gear would still be in the UFC, where it would certainly get more exposure than on Strikeforce.
You really think that Kimbo only got 25k? im pretty sure he would have got a undisclosed bonus.
Great news about Henderson and Strikeforce, they still need to bring in a couple more LHWs though.
The 25K makes it obvious that he’s not on a standard contract for TUF. The only question to ask them is who is footing the rest of the bill. Dana could be telling the truth that the UFC didn’t pay for him to be on TUF…
First of all, those ppv numbers you are quoting comes directly from the UFC through Kevin Iole, think that says enough about how valid those numbers are.
Secondly, why would it be ridiculous? The exposure Fedor is receiving through CBS quickly is making him a household name, Dan Henderson with his resume, if he goes in and put some good showings, anything is possible.
Third – and last. I do think Clinch Gear exposure was a part of the agreement, there is quite the difference to be on CBS then on SPIKE.
You didn’t answer whether you have a fifth of vodka next to your keyboard, though.
FWIW, I have never put too much stock in the reports of rumored PPV numbers for UFC 100. Maybe they did that number and maybe they didn’t.
@ Alan…they probably didn’t pay “Kimbo”, but structured a deal with his management company for the rest of it ala Fedor…except without the sneaky ruskies.
Sherdog.com: How did the UFC’s banning of your clothing brand, Clinch Gear, from their events affect renegotiations?
Henderson: Well, at least I’ll be able to have Clinch Gear on in the cage when I fight for Strikeforce.
The banning didn’t really affect anything though. When the UFC called and said that we could no longer sponsor (other fighters), that we were banned from the UFC, I wasn’t mad at all.
It was more funny to me than anything that they would do that. Dana has stated to me that it was nothing personal and that there were no hard feelings at all. If there were no hard feelings, why would they ban a clothing line?
We already had a deal; we were paying for the right to sponsor guys just like every other sponsor was. For them to come back and say just because Dan hasn’t re-signed a deal yet, we’re banned.
http://www.sherdog.com/news/articles/Exclusive-Why-Henderson-Chose-Strikeforce-21378
Thanks for the link Fluyid, good to hear from Henderson himself, always polite and professional.
Scott Coker talks.
http://mma.fanhouse.com/2009/12/07/scott-coker-talks-dan-henderson-dana-white-and-fedor/#cntnt
Alan, this is the second time this month that you’ve brought up “Hoezler Reich” on this site, just based on the results I’m finding doing a web search, and you’re one of only three results…I’m now realizing that’s probably because you misspelled it, but nonetheless, wtf.
The signings in the last year have been largely ridiculous, the TUF coaching thing is just the latest in a long string of moves that make you wonder what happened to the braintrust. How do you manage to turn Forrest into a 350k draw? Pair him with Ortiz. The guy practically guarantees 500k, and Ortiz is one of the biggest draws (per his own self-promotion) in the history of MMA, somehow putting them together is PPV poison.
The matchmaking in WEC is of lower quality than it was as well (although someone needed to be disciplined for that decision, replacing a quality guy like that was a mistake).
They’re not helped by having so many major fighters injured or in disputes right now, but someone is having some really bad ideas and no one is telling them that they are bad.
If the competition wasn’t so anemic right now this would be a great time for someone to capitalize.
I’ve brought them up because it looks ridiculous to see the UFC allowing them to advertise, and apparently most everyone agrees with me on the internet. Do you take issue with that view? Because I think it begging for more problems with the media and general perception than not merging the WEC or having Tito Ortiz headline a PPV.
I don’t know if I would run Henderson-Fedor. There is absolutely no upside to that fight. The same people who want to see it are watching Strikeforce anyway. If Fedor wins he’ll get snide “oh wow he beat a Middleweight….” post-fight comments. And if he loses (and you can never discount that sneaky right hand of Hendo’s) you’ve got an epic disaster of a guy who fights 50 pounds lighter than Fedor beating him. He could come back from losing to a HW, but losing to a Middleweight would kill him forever. And not only would Fedor never recover, but Strikeforce after promoting him as the best Heavyweight in history would never recover either.
Glenn Trowbridge. Tony Weeks. Dave Hagen. Those are the three judges who scored Kimbo Slice vs. Houston Alexander in favor of Kimbo.
For Trowbridge, it’s another in a long line of bad decisions.
For Weeks, it’s more evidence that he should stick to being a boxing referee (he’s actually a good one).
For Hagen, who scored the fight 30 to 27 in favor of Kimbo, it’s cause for an investigation.
For those of you bitching about the Kimbo-Alexander scoring, here is the fightmetric report.
http://fightmetric.com/fights/Slice-Alexander.html
It shows rounds 1 & 3 as virtual draws and round 2 as a clear win for Kimbo. In that kind of fight, the only score that would have been ridiculous is 30-27 Alexander. If one judge felt Kimbo eked out a both of those extremely close rounds, then 30-27 Kimbo is perfectly understandable.
I swear some of you guys bitch just for the sake of bitching.
Yeah, the first round was such a “virtual draw” that the statistics from that very page show Houston Alexander landing three times as many strikes in the round as Kimbo. That wasn’t particularly hard to do, given that Kimbo did almost nothing in the whole entire round, landing only four strikes in the entire five-minute round (all of which were jabs).
As I said before, how do you win a round without doing anything other than getting leg-kicked by your opponent repeatedly? Slice landed almost nothing in the first round, while Alexander landed numerous good leg kicks. If neither fighter is being particularly aggressive, but one of them is actually landing numerous strikes and the other isn’t, how can the fighter who wasn’t landing the strikes win the round? Alexander wasn’t doing much, but Slice was doing far less.