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Everyone in the business treats each other like a mark and the fans get the same treatment as well
By Zach Arnold | June 25, 2010
I could have been describing professional wrestling based on the title of this post. In a sense, I think that’s why you see such endearment from wrestling fans towards MMA in terms of feeling as if they can relate to what happens in the business.
I’ve used the term astroturfing on the site before (click on the word to search the archives).
Cage Side Seats says the information leak is related to a lawsuit.
fyi — in light of the fact that the goal is to make it looked ‘hijacked’ we won’t blur the round number on the clock.
This just adds a whole new element to what Jordan Breen said about all the higher-ups involved in the MMA industry being obsessed with MMA web sites/message boards and acting like, well… “bitches in a beauty salon.”
The second part of that Middle Easy article refers to allegedly having a marketing firm use employees as fake fans on message boards. Note to Zuffa and Spike — you don’t need to hire UFC fans on message boards. There are plenty of defenders already online. There were plenty of UFC defenders online in 2006, especially with all the insane UFC vs. PRIDE threads that dominated every message board at the time.
Speaking of everyone working each other over, that seems to be the only storyline in the media for tomorrow’s fight between Fedor and Fabricio Werdum in regards to when is Fedor going to the UFC.
A passage from Sherdog radio last Wednesday between Jack Encarnacao and Lutfi Sariahmed. The topic is about the contradictory statements we’ve been getting from Fedor in multiple interviews and hijinx involving translators as to what’s actually said versus what is the official word, so on and so forth.
LUTFI SARIAHMED: “This whole thing on both sides requires a certain amount of PR, no doubt. You talked about the promoter speak on the UFC and Dana White’s side. Same happens with Fedor and the M-1 camp. So, whatever is actually going on, no one really knows. The big issue here is what exactly Fedor’s talking about when he comes out with these comments that he came out and… are there negotiations going on? I’d be hard-pressed to believe that there’s anything substantial given that he still has two more fights under his contract, Fedor does with Strikeforce starting with this fight on Saturday against (Fabricio) Werdum. But there may be some sort of discussions regarding just a starting-off point and I don’t think that’s out of question at all. But, it comes back to the very same issue we’ve been talking about for seemingly years now. This idea is that it’s not just about money for Fedor and the UFC, Dana White, it seemingly is that’s it. It is 95% about the money. They have no idea why if they’re going to throw all this money at Fedor that he can’t just go sign and there we go, that’s it. Now, are things changing at all? Maybe. He seems to insinuate that they are. But… the stance that I’ve taken on this the last year or so now has been the same. I mean, talk to me when pen is put to paper and Fedor is in the ring or in the cage, I mean it doesn’t… Outside of that, I can’t really go too nuts either way.”
JACK ENCARNACAO: “Yeah, I definitely feel what you’re saying, I mean, I think to some degree what you’re saying is true in that you know what’s really going on, no one knows. But I at least was thought I could draw the inference that there wasn’t active negotiations any more with the UFC. Perhaps to acknowledge such a thing would be to acknowledge tampering with a valid Strikeforce contract, I’m not necessarily sure of that because perhaps the you know the nature of the deal with Strikeforce allows him to explore other opportunities. Something tells me that if he wants to fight in DREAM, he’s going to fight in DREAM and the Strikeforce deal would not preclude that. The UFC might be a different situation. In Fedor you know, that’s just going to be the discussion about him. Do you think that, Lutfi, the role Fabricio Werdum plays in all this is completely overlooked? I mean, it’s two things to me to discuss Werdum’s chances in the fight and to give him a chance in the fight. Do you know what I mean? I think that people assume just because they don’t think Werdum can beat Fedor, they’re not going to acknowledge him at all. I mean, all the press is about Fedor and the UFC and that seems like a year-old issue.”
LUTFI SARIAHMED: “But, I mean, I think that speaks volumes to what Strikeforce is doing with Fedor, though, too. Because…. listen, they’re trying to push Fedor all they can. But at the end of the day, what do you have? You have Fedor taking on Brett Rogers, maybe a little bit before he was ready or supposed to. Not maybe, probably definitely. You have him taking on Fabricio Werdum, who has been maybe borderline Top 10 at Heavyweight at his best but he has some significant holes in his game and then probably by the end of this the biggest fight you’re going to get is with Alistair Overeem and how much pull are you going to get from an Alistair Overeem fight here in the States? Hardcore fans are going to love it, sure, but… how much of a boom, how much of a rise did Alistair Overeem get in terms of his popuarlty, in terms of his name off the Rogers fight? So with all that said, with all that being taken in, I’m not surprised at all that 95% of the discussion is surrounded upon ‘all right, Fedor is back, what about Fedor/UFC discussions?’ because no one really thinks Werdum has a shot against him and I can’t say that I completely blame them and that’s also why when you look at this situation, you have to think, well, maybe at some point M-1, Fedor, they decide to finally pull the trigger because at least part of this has to be about the competition as well and let’s be frank, we knew going in that Strikeforce would have three fighters for him: Overeem, Rogers, and Werdum in some order. Those were the three we were discussing as soon as the deal was signed. All right, deal was signed, and three fights are done, do they have anybody else? Not really. So what exactly is he going to do?”
JACK ENCARNACAO: “Fight Herschel Walker.”
LUTFI SARIAHMED: “I think that more than anything else, Jack, is the biggest discussion surrounding Fedor and the UFC. I think that the most interesting discussion. What happens after the Overeem fight? Because…”
JACK ENCARNACAO: “I mean, that fight sounds like a big pain in the butt to put together. I don’t know what it is…. I just have cynicism about those camps coming together. I don’t really know what it is. It’s a no-brainer fight, but to me that sounds like one of those fights that like you’ll think will be the next step after the Werdum fight and then it will be forever and then another opponent will end up getting handed to Fedor because they can’t make the deal. That’s just a general sense I have.”
LUTFI SARIAHMED: “I mean, that’s fine, but at that point, Fedor still needs that last fight. So even if it’s not against Overeem, we’re still talking about a fight against somebody before he’s free of that contract.”
JACK ENCARNACAO: “Yeah, that’s absolutely true and it’ll be interesting because there hasn’t been a peep out of Strikeforce relative to what’s going to happen next with Alistair Overeem. The supposition, of course, is that they’re going to wait to see the Fedor/Werdum fight and get the Fedor/Overeem fight happening. But you know I thought that would be the rules of engagement from the beginning. You know, if he was ready to fight Fedor, he didn’t have to beat Brett Rogers a guy Fedor beat to be any more ready for Fedor, so that kind of opened up the possibility, at least in my mind, that Overeem would have several fights in Strikeforce that weren’t the Fedor fight. We will see. It all kind of takes shape on Saturday. Maybe Werdum wins and you know the sky turns purple and hell freezes over and everything we ever thought we knew about MMA gets turned on its head. That’s the kind of thing that happens every now and again in the sport that kind of keeps us dialed in to a degree even to fights that we think are open and shut cases, I’d say.”
Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, UFC, Zach Arnold | 12 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Looking at the emails is fun. You get names tied to things that way. Chris Blechschmidt, BTW, is now working for Bellator.
The first part of this post is a non story. As someone who has worked in the marketing world for 11 years (7 on the web), what zuffa did is standard practice. Every company out there with any real web presence does viral/astroturfing/fake fan marketing on blogs, boards, etc.
It doesn’t have much to do with being obsessing over MMA web sites/message boards, it’s just a part of their marketing plan. Hell, companies I’ve worked for have done the same thing and even paid customers to write blog posts.
As far as the Fedor stuff goes, at this point either he goes to ufc and then there is something to discuss or he doesn’t, fights a few more meaningless fights and then retires. I guess I’m just burnt out on all of the “what will fedor do next/will he go to ufc/is he still the best/etc” talk.
As far I can see this is just another form of ‘viral’ marketing…When movies like Dark Knight and Cloverfield do viral stuff it’s cool, but when the UFC does it it’s bad? Ok, that’s maybe an unfair comparison, but c’mon, it’s just a bit of ‘leaked’ footage.
Iit’s fair game, and nothing new/shocking.
You have to ask yourself why anyone would go to the (presumably very difficult and potentially career-damaging) effort of leaking a clip of TUF in the first place…what does anyone stand to gain from it?
The whole thing is they don’t need to do it anymore. They’ve been dominant for 5 straight years: who the hell do they need to convince online to watch the pay per views? They have God knows how many hours a week of national television time. And they already control internet information because all the MMA “media” marks repeat what they say verbatim anyway. So why do you need to infiltrate Sherdog? Especially when there are already dozens of hardcore fanboys repeating your talking points for free anyway?
I mean, even if you’re just sending them to places like Fight Opinion with the majority of posters being unfriendly to Zuffa, what good does that do? Has 45Huddle or EJ or Roadblock (not saying they’re astroturfers) ever swayed one single poster who had an argument against UFC? If you don’t like them you don’t like them, the opposition would just be wasting time arguing with them.
Look at the whole Fedor issue (which I’m sick of discussing) as an example: every single person online still holds the same position on him not signing with UFC that they did the day he signed with Strikeforce. So if this is true it’s the biggest waste of money they’ve ever made since re-signing Tito.
And as a parallel to where they were 6 years ago (since lots weren’t around to see it): remember online they were clowned non-stop on message boards and PRIDE was held up as the major leagues of MMA. Remember all the jokes where someone would say when something wasn’t going to happen “That’s as likely to happen as the UFC has of having a main event that delivers”? That was when paying people to come online and make it look like you had more defenders than you really did was worth it. Now Strikeforce and Bellator should be hiring people to do that.
It amazes me how people will get all worked up about anything from Zuffa, even though its a standard practice from, oh, 99.9% of all companies. I’m leaving the other .1% because somebody, somewhere is probably selling something who doesn’t have a computer.
This is a sad non-story right before a major card. Aren’t there better things to cover.
When you look at it from the viewpoint of the insular online MMA community, how could it not be a big story? You’re either saying, if you’re a site owner: “Hey, the UFC could be trying to hijack my website’s comments section to discredit me.” Or if you’re just a poster: “Hey, maybe these people who I’ve been talking to online aren’t real.” Everybody always suspected it, since there are some people who care about UFC’s business line way beyond the point of reasoning for a person who doesn’t work for them, but now that it’s confirmed it is of interest.
I am not surprised by this.
All this does is confirm everyone’s suspicions.
However, I think the part of this story that the blogs are missing is that Zuffa is not the only culprit. The IFL did the same before they went out of business, and Bellator is doing it today. There are ‘fans’ on every forum whose sole purpose seems to be shouting from the rooftops about the relative merits of one promoter. Of course, this should come as no surprise since both of those companies aggressively recruited employees from the Zuffa front office.
This sort of thinking just further discredits the internet MMA community.
In effect, yes. If everyone is on the take, then where are the real fans?
If all they did was leak fight footage and have a few people say “hey everybody, you need to see this, check this out” in an attempt to get people interested in watching the show, I have no problems with it. That’s no different than any other ad really.
(That’ll be $5 Dana)
Did I just go into a Sherdog time warp?, because these same accusations have been made about the UFC for years. People trying to troll anyone who defends Zuffa by claiming they are being paid to do it and in 2010 this is somehow news?. No offence Zach but there are alot of real news out there to report on but this topic doesn’t fit into that group.