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CSN Bay Area jobs out Bellator on their Boston telecast
By Zach Arnold | May 7, 2010
We know the pitfalls of doing a deal with Fox Sports Net/Comcast Sportsnet — there are pre-emptions for sports programming. You win some affiliates, you lose some affiliates every week. That happens.
But what if an affiliate as big as CSN Bay Area decides not to air your show and they had no live programming for pre-empting your show? A swift kick to the balls. CSN BA fans were treated to taped programming that included “G-Mag,” which is a SF Giants baseball weekly taped show. CSN BA has aired all previous Bellator events in their scheduled time slot. Instead, Bellator’s biggest show got demoted to the 1 AM time slot.
(On a side note, why does Bellator FC ring announcer Michael Williams sound and feel so similar to IFL ring annoucer Tim Hughes?)
This was Massachusett’s first major regulated MMA event on TV (at least of the “major” promotions) and there was little national press for it. And yet, UFC’s debut in Boston already has good heat and will have explosive heat by show time in August.
ESPN’s MMA Live debut on ESPN2
This was a mostly UFC-oriented show. They know where their bread is buttered. It was largely the same program format as their web broadcast, except with a couple of twists.
There was an interview with Scott Coker on the show and I almost felt sorry for him. His three questions dealt with Fedor re-signing with Strikeforce, Alistair Overeem PED accusations (something Cole Konrad won’t be accused of), and Jake Shields appearing at the (WEC) Zuffa PPV on 4/24 in Sacramento. Coker said that after Fedor’s first fight in SF, his management wanted their fight contract re-worked and he said factors that slowed down the process included “the language barrier” and “(time) distance.” Regarding PED accusations against Overeem, he brushed those aside and said that Overeem trains really hard and does a lot of weight-lifting. Regarding Jake Shields at the Faber PPV, Coker explained that Shields’ contract was “unique” because the Elite XC contract had no “champion’s clause” in it, but there was a period of negotiation going on right now betweens Shields and SF. In almost a half-hearted voice, Coker said that “we’re hopeful” in regards to getting something signed with Shields. He did not sound confident. He sounded defeated.
One of the twists to the MMA Live show was the addition of a Sports Science segment which was focused on the power of leg kicks in MMA and why leg kicks are so important. (I hope that all MMA judges watched this segment, especially the judges from the first Shogun/Machida fight.) Brandon Vera did the demonstration of karate kicks vs. muay thai kicks on a dummy in a cage. The end result is that karate kicks are a third-of-a-second faster than Muay Thai kicks (27% faster overall), but the Muay Thai kicks generate much more power. (Karate kick generated 66 Gs of acceleration, the Muay Thai kick generated 80 Gs of acceleration due to “kinetic linking” which involves energy shooting from the ground into the hips and legs to create a rotational velocity of 2,000 degrees per second with 2,600 pounds of force.)
Overall, there’s going to be a lot of MMA Live shows on ESPN pre- and post- UFC events. It’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Here is the video commercial for Fedor coming to the HP Pavilion on June 26th:
Topics: Bellator, Media, MMA, StrikeForce, UFC, Zach Arnold | 3 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I am constantly missing out on the 1st 30 minutes of the show. I either miss it completely or get a replay during the weekend so I can see the 1 fight I missed.
Last night was the first time the Mariners have played baseball on a Thursday in the past three weeks. The last three Bellator was preempted for Oregon Beavers minor league baseball.
FSN is a fail for MMA. UFC, Pride, and the IFL all didn’t benefit from FSN. If I extended my sports package, I’d be able to watch it live, but on my normal FSN it played last night on 5 1/2 hour tape delay at 10:30PM. I just stayed off the internet and watched the show on delay.
I thought the Imada fight was f’n awesome and the small crowd was great. It was one of the only fights I can remember in recent history where the crowd reaction added to the drama of the fight.
Alvarez looked great as well. The production is nice. They just need to find a steady time slot.