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Talk Radio: Cleaning up the trashy aspects of The Ultimate Fighter and trying to rehabilitate the show’s image
By Zach Arnold | June 7, 2010
Have noticed that this season’s version of The Ultimate Fighter seems more… tame? The MMA Nation radio show crew thinks it’s become tamer and that it’s part of a broader campaign by both Spike TV and the UFC to repair the image of the show in an attempt to not have tabloid TV shows mock it so much.
LUKE THOMAS: “The reality though is one of the things that I feel like that I have been very vindicated on is The Ultimate Fighter reality show. And the reason why I say that is because several seasons ago, there was this big push to have what I would call ludicrous and outrageous behavior featured on the show and MMA fans would rush to the rescue of the UFC and say, ‘well listen Luke, it’s a reality show! They got to have this stuff on there!’ Which is partly true. It’s partly true that as a reality show there is a little bit more to the story than simply putting on good fights. They have to show some kind of personality clash. OK, fair enough. But the argument I made was the level to which they were doing this was unnecessary and really beyond unnecessary, counterproductive. You know showing guys consuming each other’s bodily fluids, you know, I’m sorry, that damages your brand. You know, what you say and do in this life matters. It matters in this life. You have to own that. OK, you have to own that. And I believe what this season has demonstrated is that, yes a little bit of personality clash helps but ultimately the core of that show, the core of the appeal to that show… folks want to see good fights. That’s what folks want to see. They want to see really entertaining fights. Now, up-and-coming professionals will give you some mixed bags but I think generally-speaking the guys on that show, you know Jamie Yager’s last performance notwithstanding, fight pretty hard. You know, they fight… Kris McCray will have fought five times in six weeks. That is a lot of fighting, man, that’s a lot. That’s some Travis Fulton frequency of fighting.”
Luke mentioned this topic for a few reasons, but what triggered his reaction on Sunday was due in part to the likes of the Bob Barrs of the world bringing up the ‘heart-ripping cage fighter’ story as a way to attack the UFC in the press.
Are you really going to be able to smarten up people who don’t want to be smartened up?
LUKE THOMAS: “And the reason why this guy ripping this guy’s other heart story is relevant is because I think somewhere along the line, you know we had Spike TV’s Brian Diamond on here before he joined the show and I interviewed him and he was saying, ‘look, if it happens in the house, it happens in the house.’ OK, but you know, there are ways to sort of influence behavior one way or the other and ultimately there’s a way to you know in the editing process deliver certain product one way or the other and they were leaning on the side that they thought that kind of stuff helped them. I don’t think it did and the push-back I got for months, if not years about this, saying it was necessary, I don’t think that’s true. I think that’s demonstrably not true. I think it’s demonstrably and patently false for that show to succeed it needed that stuff. It was not true then and it’s not true now. In my view, this season has been more entertaining than many others and the time spent in the house is of marginal significance. That doesn’t say that in the future there won’t be more you know, listen, some guys are going to get out of hand, I get it. I’m not saying that you will never ever see ever again guys getting out of control, I don’t think that’s the issue. But, in this day and age, when people don’t even really know what the sport is still called, think about that for a second — people don’t really know that it’s called, you say well they call it ultimate fighting, some people don’t even know to call it ultimate fighting. OK? That’s how far beyond the curve.”
JAMES KIMBALL: “The sport is just UFC to a lot of people.”
LUKE THOMAS: “Or I’ve heard folks call it ultimate boxing, I mean they don’t really know, they think it’s some cheap derivative of something else, some sort of modern-day facsimile put together to put ratings, you know, this sort of weird thing. And the reality is in a day of age where folks have uninformed, open opinions and when I say open I mean open to manipulation, to their own biases, to other biases, to headline biases. An article about a guy ripping another guy’s heart out with the imagery of guys doing what they did, was it season six, seven, and eight in The Ultimate Fighter house, with Junie… that was the season there. … The point being is, there was never a need to do that and now when you have people in the press and in sort of average modern day America unable to digest a headline without being force-fed some context, you know, having stuff like that attached to your brand, you know you’re going to get conflated, you’re going to send very wrong impressions to new audiences. And you could say, who’s watching Spike, who’s not watching Spike. My brother made one of the best points about The Ultimate Fighter that I thought was rather poignant. I don’t know if it’s 100% factually true but it’s sort of largerly correct. He said I knew The Ultimate Fighter turned a corner when I stopped seeing updates on E’s The Soup. Think about that. They’re no longer on The Soup. Right, that’s how much you had degraded your brand on that show. You were being mixed in with Jerry Springers and pregnancy tests and babies’ daddies and what guys were doing in the house and you want to tell me that doesn’t damage your brand? Are you insane? Are you insane? I think somebody at Spike TV finally said, ‘well, listen, we should push the envelope but that’s probably a little far.’ And at a time when folks can be manipulated to think about certain high-profile situations even though it has nothing to do with the UFC and in now way is the UFC responsible in sort of real life about it, from a news standpoint they are conflating their product with the worst imagery that they can possibly do. “Well, not possibly, but pretty bad imagery I should say. Pretty bad imagery when you have guys acting like absolute savages and even if they are savages you are electing to show it, and this whole notion ‘well we got to be honest to the product’… WHAT?! You’re putting mice in a laboratory. What honesty is there? The whole thing is manufactured. The very identity of the show is manufactured. There is no higher calling to honesty. The very concept is manufactured. The very house is manufactured. The guys on this entire apparatus is manufactured. To have some sort of higher calling to truth and justice is nonsense. It’s nonsense.
“So, this is all sort of a round-about way, it sounds like I’m criticizing Spike TV but I’m actually not. I think they thought that’s what they needed and I think ultimately they realized they didn’t and I’m very glad that they have made the changes that they have, that they have downgraded that as a component to The Ultimate Fighter reality series.”
JAMES KIMBALL: “Even to further that point, maybe they’re turning the corner and you know really paying attention to the product that’s on Spike TV… I mean, their most marketable, maybe most known fighter in the sport is going to you know have his presence on the show this upcoming season, Georges St. Pierre. I was a little bit upset when he was announced as a coach because of that, because I think The Ultimate Fighter in past years has been like you said a bit degrading and you know they should keep you know Georges St. Pierre separate from some of the stuff that we saw in the past. But maybe now they’re leaving the house you know in the past and they’re just going to focus on the fights and bringing in the best guys in the sport and maybe you know turn the tables and you know re-invigorate their brand, so yeah it makes sense for them to do it.”
LUKE THOMAS: “I mean think about that. In many ways, maybe St. Pierre is a way for them to further rehabilitate that brand because I think only now folks say, ‘wait a second, I’m not seeing The Ultimate Fighter updates on The Soup.’ I mean, think about this — The Soup made a mockery of the show. You can say way, ‘well, folks can laugh about it if they want, that doesn’t mean it impacts the product’ but in a way it kind of does. If you’re watching two guys, one of them being Dave Kaplan say ‘c’mon man, knock me out’ Remember that? He was sitting drunk on the corner and he had a guy try to knock him out. It was Tom Lawlor, try to knock him out. Are they really going to take them later on when they try to fight seriously? I mean, maybe they will, but maybe just maybe by doing that you have it put an impediment to actually understanding it on the terms that it should be understood.”
JAMES KIMBALL: “Right, the people that turn into those shows will automatically associate that with the UFC or MMA or whatever the moment they think of it. There’s no other way around it. The people that watch those type of shows when they see guys knock each other or you know behaving poorly will automatically think of that. They’re not going to think about great athletes and you know the form of competition that it is. There’s no way that people that watch you know VH-1 and E! are going you know are going to appreciate the sport for what it really is.”
LUKE THOMAS: “Of course not and the other issue is, I would just like to say and this is a personal, obviously I have a bit of personal vendetta here which is why I’m doing this… I couldn’t believe the resistance I was getting intellectually to the ideas that I was floating at the time and I don’t see anybody continuing to push them. Did you notice in the absence of drama people say, ‘I need more drama! What’s with all these fights! They put two fights on an episode, how am I going to live?’
JAMES KIMBALL: “Right, and the ratings speak for themselves. They’re just in line with all the other seasons, you know aside from Kimbo Slice being on, but the ratings are just under 2 million you know an episode. They’re right in line. It’s obviously you know proves that you know fights is plenty. Fights are plenty.”
LUKE THOMAS: “If you’re fights are good, your show is good. How could you have good fights and a bad show? You have to try to [wanted to say expletive] that up. Now again, I suspect this will not be the last we see of this abhorrent behavior. I’m sure before the season’s out God knows what could happen, you know, whenever folks graduate from the show they lose their mind a little bit. I’m not ruling out. But if it’s one episode as opposed to like four or five, you know, and if it’s just guys wrecking a house…”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |
I don’t think being on The Soup damaged UFC. Very few people who watch E!, which is a station for women to get updates on Hollywood gossip in between awful reality shows, are going to watch UFC anyway. I can’t believe someone has ever thought “Well, I was going to watch UFC, but after seeing some guy I don’t know punch a hole in a door I think I’ll pass.” If they showed these clips on Sportscenter maybe you’d have a point.
But I don’t think Spike manipulates things as much as some people believe. Guys know they have to act obnoxious to get airtime, so really Spike doesn’t have to say anything since that’s common knowledge for any reality television show. And there’s a lot of guys who go out of their way to be comedy acts like Tom Lawlor whether he’s on a reality show or not, so they would act stupid anyway. Reality television attracts nothing but attention whores, Spike just has to roll film.
And the seasons that were the most serious, especially Season 4, absolutely bombed in the ratings. Fans just interested in the fights will just wait for the fight to show up on YouTube, so you’re left with the majority of viewers who only want to see drunk idiots break things. Real MMA fans know Half Pint Brawlers has far more dignity than TUF and ignore it.