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Dana White explains why UFC’s production team will run the WEC PPV in Sacramento
By Zach Arnold | April 19, 2010
From our friends at USA Today:
“The way I look at it is, it’s a Zuffa promotion, and this is the team for pay-per-view. Obviously when the WEC is on Versus, they have their team and everything else, but this is the pay-per-view team.”
The USA Today interview is a fascinating one in regards to how the UFC President views UFC’s non-stop schedule. He doesn’t believe the amount of PPVs the company is doing is too many. In this Yahoo Sports article, Mr. White has some interesting comments about Gus Johnson. Steve Cofield says that a “real” sports league like the NFL or the NBA would have fined Nate Diaz for his role in the post-match Strikeforce melee last Saturday night.
The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that UFC has booked EnergySolutions Arena on 8/1 for a Versus show. UFC 117 will reportedly happen in Northern California. That’s the PPV event with Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen. Oracle Arena in Oakland is a good venue candidate for the show. Regarding the Utah event, DaMarques Johnson wants to fight on that show.
Anderson Silva a week after the Abu Dhabi debacle? “I think I fought well.”
George Sotiropoulos was underestimated going into his Australia fight against Joe Stevenson. I expect the same reaction when he fights Kurt Pellegrino at UFC 116. Don’t count out George here. I like both guys a lot, so it will tough to root against either man.
Other media notes
- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Scott LeDoux retires from Minneasota combative commission
- MMA Junkie: Where in the world is Josh Barnett?
- The Los Angeles Times: Movie theaters turn to live event screenings (like UFC) to fill seats
- Star Local News (Plano, TX): King Mo joins the list of champions from East Plano to dominate sports
- The Colorado Springs Gazette: The road that Cowboy Cerrone has taken from Colorado Springs to WEC PPV semi-main eventer
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, WEC, Zach Arnold | 26 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Dana’s excuse might be acceptable if the WEC team were put in place on the UFC on Versus cards.
I thought the same thing.
Yeah, that is strange that Dana is just taking a “Oh well, he wouldn’t do that here” stance on Diaz. I didn’t expect him to get suspended or fined or anything, but he could at least say he was embarrassed of him and make him apologize.
I’m lost on what the difference is between filming a PPV and filming a Versus show. Does he think that staff is going to get confused and keep throwing to commercial break?
Are they really going to main event with Sonnen vs. Silva? They’re just asking to get burned again. That show may get bested by WEC’s numbers.
But I am super excited about Sotiropoulos vs. Pellegrino. Both guys are on fire right now and this could be FOTY for sure.
1. Dana likes to crap on SF.
2. It would not have happened in the UFC. The UFC has a strong operations team with many years of experience. Perhaps more important, fighters either respect or fear Dana. Meanwhile, Coker shows himself to be indecisive and a pushover.
Some sort of punishment is needed, perhaps an AC fine. I am not sure how the UFC can go about doling out punishment short of delaying Nate from fighting (which hurts them too). There’s a difficulty in punishing someone who performs infrequently.
As for the WEC TV team, my hunch is that they’ve been replaced so that Todd Harris doesn’t go and ask Urijah to retire after he loses his 3rd of 5 fights.
Dana’s lukcy that nobody was watching back at UFC 45. That would have been an absolute disaster too on TV. State Troopers hit the cage to break up that fight. I remember sitting in the arena not far from that thinking ‘this could get real bad’.
“Perhaps more important, fighters either respect or fear Dana.”
BINGO, imo.
Remember when Rashad/Evans started going at it in the crowd at 100? I remember Lorenzo Fertitta stepping between them and saying “What are you doing?”. That threw ice water on the situation immediately, and that was in the crowd, which is much less controlled than the post-fight cage.
A brawl in the UFC cage would only last as long as it took UFC brass like Dana or Lorenzo to step between them. Even the Diaz brothers would know better than to continue fighting at that point.
Wait, who?
I think Dana White has some smart people working under him who make the strategy and develop a gameplan. So he has access to those brains. But I don’t think he is the one developing the concepts and ideas.
I do hope they do get rid of the WEC Lightweight Division. Pointless division.
I know there are many fans out there that do look at MMA as a sanctioned street fight, but those people are idiots. Either MMA is a sport, or it is not. If it isn’t, then in my eyes it should be regarded with about as much credibility as backyard wrestling and bum fights.
If it a real sport, Zuffa should suspend Nate Diaz. And I say this as a guy that likes the Diaz brothers’ ghetto antics.
I really disagree with UFC’s current take on PPV. I think they are going to doom themselves on PPV the way WWE did by running too many shows. If they think 300,000 buys per month with one or two bigger shows works then fine.
But I think it is smarter to run 6 -8 shows per year and have them be in the 600-700 range with one or two million buy shows per year.
In the other months you put a PPV level event on Spike, Versus or broadcast.
The real problem with running so many PPVs and having the number of buys average lower is that fans aren’t seeing the up and comers. Shane Carwin, Cain Velasquez and JDS have not gotten proper build ups beause they’ve been destroying guys on cards that aren’t widely seen. Those guys cleaned out the old generation of Heavyweights. If that had happened on basic cable or free TV people would be going crazy waiting to see those guys fight Brock and each other.
You can write this off as not a big deal or being whiny right now. But wait a few years when the audience that tunes in for big fights doesn’t know any of the new guys. That is going to hurt business long term.
Roadblock is absolutely on point. I would like to note for the record that I’ve been saying that same thing about the inherent difficulty of creating stars on PPV for years though. LOL
Seriously, boxing did this around 2005-2006. HBO had some really profitable years then putting fights that had no right to be on PPV there. Eventually the 200,000-300,000 or so hardcore fans that always buy starts to dry up as the names start to change on the top of the bill and they’re forced to do more free live shows.
But its a long term thing. No one is going to remember anyone saying this now 3-4 years ago. Hell, they definitely won’t remember me saying it, since I just hate the UFC or whatever. LOL
Gotta go with Roadblock here. Well said.
Liddell vs. Franklin is a perfect example of a card that has no business being on PPV. And yet they crammed it in there anyways.
Anybody check out Sherdog’s rankings that were just released? Man, those guys really must hate the UFC for cutting their credentials again, because they have done everything they could to ignore the proof that is in front of them.
1. Mousasi is still ranked, at #8 in fact. Heck, he should have been #9 or #10 in the world TOPS after beating Babalu and never beat anybody better sense. After losing to King Mo the way he did, he has no business in any credible Top 10. Him staying in, and Lawal coming in bumped Bader out.
2. Dan Henderson at #5 at Middleweight. In the last 2 1/2 years in that division he is 2-2 with no Top 10 wins. He has no business in the Top 5 at this point. Especially with how old he looked.
3. The Lightweight Rankings. The real laughing stock of their entire rankings. Still putting Aoki and Alvarez in the Top 5. We all know who the top 5 are… In no particular order… BJ Penn, Frank Edgar, Gray Maynard, Kenny Florian, and Gilbert Melendez.
The last Strikeforce card proved that what happens in Japan is typically a few steps below what happens in America. The fighters are not as good, smaller, and then all come over here and look horrible. It’s happened with all of DREAMS top guys in Mousasi, Zaromskis, and Aoki. And yet these guys, including fighters who are inferior to them, are being ranked overly high.
I guess I expected too much from such a bad website. And I knew this was coming after listening to Breem justify some of his rankings during Beatdown After The Bell. They just can’t see beyond their own Japanese fanboy ways.
“The Lightweight Rankings. The real laughing stock of their entire rankings. Still putting Aoki and Alvarez in the Top 5. We all know who the top 5 are… In no particular order… BJ Penn, Frank Edgar, Gray Maynard, Kenny Florian, and Gilbert Melendez.”
I know after seeing so many of these DREAM guys fail so miserably (For the record – I thought Gomi, Aoki, Aurelio, Uno et al would get tooled) and it’s probably really just an illusion created by the separation/lack of talent cross-over, but I really think Eddie Alvarez is a top 5 LW. I think he could do some damage in the UFC, especially now that we’ve seen Maynard, Sherk, Griffin and Edgar decide they’re wrestle-boxers.
But again, I’m probably wrong.
Alvarez has such a wide open style, much like Huerta…. That I don’t think he would do too well against those top level UFC guys. I was watching his Bellator fights a few weeks ago, and he is sloppy at times.
First fight I saw of Alvarez was him getting owned by The Goat. That always comes back into my mind. And more recently, him being beaten by Aoki.
I find it tough to rank the 5 fighters mentioned above, but he would definitely be in the Tyson Griffin class and he is a huge threat. If only he could get a big win on his resume, Roger Huerta probably won’t vault him into most peoples’ top 5.
Being a lightweight who gets beat up by Thompson isn’t the worst thing in the world. I mean, hell, Thompson beat up Paul Daley last year and people still rate that guy somewhere in the top 6-7 of the welterweight division.
I’m with Alan – losing to the GOAT isn’t that big of a shame.
Eddie was a tiny 170lber – he’s like 5’8 compared to Thompson’s 6’1 and I thought that alone made a world of difference. They didn’t look like they belonged in the same weight class at all and the reach was a pretty big obstacle.
The Aoki thing is a different story, I don’t even recall the fight exactly. But didn’t Aoki pull out some crazy guard pull to heelhook move? That was more a function of an over aggressive Alvarez bulldozing in on a guy and closing the distance for him.
We’ll see soon enough, but if he beats Neer and Huerta I think he will be reasonably ranked (especially if he finishes Roger).
Alvarez is talented, but I definitely think there is some truth to his over-aggressiveness causing him problems against top of the line fighters. Hell, Kikuno damn near beat him with a neck crank because Eddie just came charging in with no regard for defense. I think the comparison between him and Huerta is spot-on.
Iole is now echoing what was started by 45 Huddle:
“It’s disappointing that Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White didn’t see fit to take action against Nate Diaz on his own. Nate Diaz is a UFC-contracted fighter and White should have done the right thing and not waited for the commission to act.”
I imagine the non-action has to do with the fact that Dana is trying to sign Shields.
It only get’s better with Sherdog…
http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/CBS-Strikeforce-Watched-by-29-Million-Stays-Above-Male-Demo-Average-24008
“CBS: Strikeforce Watched by 2.9 Million, Stays Above Male Demo Average” is the name of the article. Of course written by Loretta Hunt. Or she could put a positive spin on such a horrible rating.
Complete garbage….
This is an excerpt I found floating online from BJ’s book. No wonder the Pillsbury Dough Boy was so angry about it being released.
BJ Penn, discussing Dana White’s reaction to his decision to leave the UFC after defeating Matt Hughes at UFC 46.
Gotta say I agree with Alan’s point. Josh Thompson has beaten som e above average fighters, he just seems to “lay an egg” on certain nights whether it’s because of skill level or something else.
I still don’t think him or Aoki should be top though. Mine would be; Edgar, Penn, Florian, Melendez, Maynard. In that order.
Good looks on posting that excerpt David M. Always fun to see a White outburst.