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WEC PPV media notebook
By Zach Arnold | April 22, 2010
Before we get into the WEC notebook, check out this long article at Open Secrets about the money UFC has poured into political lobbying efforts in Washington D.C. Interesting of note is some of the reasoning for the political lobbying, including boxing legislation and where MMA falls into it. The article, unfortunately, has the Zuffa Myth (that the Fertittas “cleaned up” MMA and brought in new rules instead of Quebec/New Jersey athletic commissions). You can’t win them all, I suppose.
Onto the notebook on the eve of this Saturday’s WEC PPV in Sacramento…
- The Cleveland Plain Dealer (Chuck Yarborough): Urijah Faber thinks his grappling game can neutralize Jose Aldo’s offensive attack
- Steve Cofield: Is Urijah Faber telling the truth about his feelings on fighting Jose Aldo?
- Gareth Davies (London Telegraph): Urijah Faber says that he still believes that he’s invincible in the cage
- The Sacramento Bee: Trainer Thonglor Armatsena bolsters Urijah Faber’s striking skills in the ring
- News10 ABC (Sacramento): Arco Arena in Sacramento expected to be sold out for Saturday’s WEC event
- Marcos Breton (Sacramento Bee): Urijah Faber continues a Sacramento tradition
- The Sacramento Bee: Urijah Faber says he’s durable and has never been unconscious (that might change on Saturday night)
- Mike Chiappetta: Ben Henderson & Donald Cerrone promise thriller in WEC 48 re-match
- Dave Meltzer: Can Henderson and Cerrone reprise classic?
- The Las Vegas Sun (Brett Okamoto): Dana White has plans in store for UFC & WEC, says all television “is going Internet”
- The Fresno Bee: Despite Dana White in control, Reed Harris enjoys the rise of WEC on TV & PPV
- Ray Hui (MMA Fighting): Dana White says WEC 48 will look just like a UFC PPV
- The Miami Herald (Armando Alvarez): Mike Brown thinks that he can get a Featherweight title shot if he beats Manny Gamburyan on Saturday night
- MMA Mania: Mike Brown says going on PPV is where the money can be made and is best move for WEC’s future growth
- Leland Roling: There are some problems Mike Brown could have in his fight against Manny Gamburyan
- TSN (Canada): Scott Jorgensen looking to take care of unfinished business on Saturday night
- Josh Gross (Sports Illustrated): Zuffa to learn if fans’ wallets will open for WEC on PPV
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, WEC, Zach Arnold | 16 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I don’t really have much interest in this card. I never got into the guys in WEC. They’ve had some good scraps over there, don’t get me wrong. And I’ve probably been to about 10 WEC events live. But it just doesn’t do it for me. I’ll watch if it’s on and I’m home. But I don’t go out of my way to see it or follow it. Something has always felt cheap and lacking. It’s always felt about a step up from amateur MMA to me. I enjoy Tuff-n-Uff shows every bit as much (usually more) than WEC.
That said, I hope this PPV does horrible numbers. I’m hoping under 100k. Maybe that will start to dissuade Zuffa from running 20 PPVs per year. They’re running 17 this year (16 UFC + this stupid thing).
Are you crazy? What is possibly more interesting that the UFC has produced recently than Cerrone-Henderson? That was more than a “good scrap”, lots of people believe that was one of the best fights ever.
I can’t believe anybody would write the WEC off as “a step above amateur fighting” after seeing 3 title fights in a row (and probably 1 more coming up in Machida-Shogun) that were a bunch of guys fighting not to lose a JD and not giving a damn that the fans were bored to tears. If you’d rather watch that over a bunch of fighters out to prove something then something is wrong with you.
Dana gets money from this so it’s okay to like it, you know.
Step up from amateur? Now that’s funny!! Just because they are small, doesn’t mean they are funny. It’s just going to take time for them to catch on more to the general public. Same thing happened with UFC 35 (Penn/Pulver). Fans weren’t ready for Lightweights to headline. Look at the division now….
You know it’s not just that they’re small. Many of those guys aren’t that well rounded. I see a lot of sloppy technique on WEC shows. That’s actually good in a lot of ways because it makes the fights unpredictable. I very much enjoy watching amateur MMA fights.
A lot of times the best fights are between two B-level guys because they have exploitable holes in their games.
But I’m not paying $50 to watch that.
There’s something really lacking about WEC to me. Maybe I’m not explaining it well. But to me at 6pm on Sunday night after hiking or canoeing or whatever I did all day I’ll sit down and watch WEC on Versus as I make and eat dinner. But it is not good enough to get me to sit down at 7pm tomorrow and dedicate three hours and $50 to it.
I think it’s a combination of a few things…
1) The division is still working itself out. The technique is probably where the Lightweight Division was 3 or 4 years ago for many of the fighters. That should only increase as time goes on.
2) Strength. I think some of what you see is a lack of strength. Some of the bigger weight classes, the guys are strong enough to control the action. The lighter the guys get, it is much harder to do that at 145 and 135, which means it can easily create more scrambles and appear that there is less technique.
I have said in the past that I was not a big fan of the Bantamweight Division. It is only recently that the division has started to grow on me. Even now, some of the guys look like children with muscles which makes it harder to take them seriously.
Plus, I think as the sport moves forward, the size of the average Featherweight will get bigger. To the point that a guy like Urijah Faber would be entering the sport at Bantamweight and Benevidez would be entering at Flyweight.
Are you crazy? What is possibly more interesting that the UFC has produced recently than Cerrone-Henderson?
Are you asking what fights were “better” or what fights were more interesting? I mean there were like 50 fights in the UFC that were more interesting.
More interesting fight to watch I meant.
I dunno. I’m different than a lot of people in that I don’t care about most fights like this. It was alright, but I wasn’t worked into a frenzy over it. I’ve seen equally decent title fights in second rate promotions with other guys I can’t remember off the top of my head (though I’m sure I can dredge up an example if you want). I was more interested by watching BJ Penn dismantle a great challenger in Diego Sanchez or seeing Rashad Evans beat a fairly credible light heavyweight in Thiago Silva.
You are the only person on the internet who likes a Rashad Evans fight better than a Ben Henderson fight. Also since everybody complained that neither man deserved the #1 contender slot since both of their last fights was a loss to Machida. Cerrone and Henderson will be beaten by practically everybody in the UFC’s Lightweight division, but like Clay Guida or Jorge Gurgel at least their losses will be fun to see go down, and they’d get the Wanderlei/Lytle/Leben excuse losses pass for exiciting the fans.
Tokoro-Cullum was an exciting fight too. Would you pay to see that rematch? I know I wouldn’t.
There has to be a certain level of excellence before I am willing to shell out cold hard cash. Cerrone & Bendo are entertaining, but they aren’t particularly good. They would both get chewed up by gatekeepers like Clay Guida, Cole Miller, and Mac Danzig. They wouldn’t even be remotely competitive with the guys at the top of the UFC LW division.
Yes, I would pay for a good DREAM card. I like exciting fights, I don’t give a shit about starpower or namebrands.
And Aoki got embarrassed by Melendez, that doesn’t mean his fights in DREAM and PRIDE weren’t incredibly entertaining. I’m looking at the fight in front of me, not “what would happen if….”
If you’re judging what fights you’d find acceptable to purchase by an imaginary ranking system you need to spend less time on the internet.
Talent level definitely needs to be to a certain level for it to matter. Cerrone and Henderson are at least at that level. Plus, people are complaining about the fight like it’s the main event on PPV. It’s the 3rd biggest fight on the card rankings wise. And certainly is worthy…
Unrelated…
Went to Bellator last night. Interesting show that I noticed a few things…
1) More kids in the crowd (8 to 15 boys) then I have ever seen before at a MMA show. This has to worry Vince McMahon as it seems like MMA has taken it’s place for some of it’s key demographic.
2) They had a weird format. They did 2 undercard fights. Then the 4 live fights. Then 2 more undercard fights. And with Hornbuckle being the real main event in most people’s eyes, that means that fight was the 5th of 8th fight on the show. Weird way of doing things.
3) The arena wasn’t as packed at their two other Mohegan Sun shows for the 1st season. Some of that might have to do with Lyman Good not fighting…. And he had a good crowd of fans for his fights. Maybe a crowd of 3,000 at the most and I highly doubt all of those were paid tickets.
4) Hornbuckle was the only guy who came off impressively live (in my opinion). The rest didn’t look “UFC Caliber”. I don’t see anybody beating him in the Welterweight Tournament. Mayube Askren has an outside chance but he is likely to get caught in a sub.
5) The guy who came off decently on TV but not so much live was Steve Carl. I’m still not sure what the guys strong areas are. Huge gaps in his grappling and striking. He might have won that fight by the slightest of margins, but he presents absolutely no danger to the rest of the guys in that tournament.
Overall, just decent fights. Watching a bunch of guys lose in a few minutes isn’t always exciting when it is just due to poor matchmaking. The tournaments just aren’t filled with anywhere close to the same talent levels from slots 1-8….
Interesting stuff.
As for the main event coming on before a couple more fights, that often happens when TV is involved. I judged a boxing show last month that was televised on Fox Sports and the televised fights (main and co-main events) were the third and fourth fights of the night, on a card that had eight total fights.
That’s actually not a bad idea if you’re worried about crowd burn-out. Especially if you’re in Bellator’s situation and really need your main eventers to look as big of stars as possible. It’s more respectable than adding in canned cheering like you’re WWE Smackdown.
I’ve seen that a bunch of times with boxing cards too and at an IFL show.
One or both of those fights may have featured a popular local fighter who brought a hundred or couple hundred people out to see him. Putting that guy/those guys on after the broadcast kept their fans in the building.