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Some shake-my-head level stories brewing in MMA

By Zach Arnold | July 22, 2010

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The MMA scene in Vancouver is all but dead. No, the fan demand isn’t dead — it’s ridiculously strong. What’s dead, however, is regulation. Josh Gross of Sports Illustrated said the insurance cost for UFC to run in Vancouver was in the $20 million range. That’s right, $20 million dollars.

Speaking of Josh, he now says that Scott Coker is open to booking the rematch between Fedor & Fabricio Werdum in Russia. We’ve heard for weeks from Strikeforce complete denials that a fight would happen in Russia and now all of a sudden things are changing fast. The gang that can’t shoot straight on any level. Actually, I laugh at the idea of this fight happening in Russia because Scott Coker on Monday said that there were only ‘material issues’ to be addressed regarding Fedor fighting against in SF. If by material you mean running a show in the land of Putin, then sure, why not? It was Evgeni Kogan of M-1 who told Eddie Goldman that a rematch would not be happening in Russia, but rather in the States… Where’s Calvin Ayre and the Bodog babes in the military tanks in St. Petersburg when you need them?

Mike Chiappetta at MMAFighting.com reports that Tito Ortiz will face Matt Hamill on October 23rd at the Anaheim Pond (Honda Center) as the likely semi-main event for the Brock Lesnar/Cain Velasquez card. For Matt Hamill’s camp, this is a great fight to take. He’s got a very good shot of winning. So, I don’t shake my head at that. I do shake my head at someone calling this a 50/50 fight. What I do shake my head at is Tito’s camp (and maybe UFC). For Tito, I can understand the allure of this fight — it’s in his home area and everyone will be watching, which in turn means a lot of money. If he wins, then he continues to keep the image as a major star. If he loses, this is probably it — his swan song. For UFC, it’s a curious match to book because I’m not sure what their future plans are for Matt Hamill. If this is a vote of confidence for Matt in hopes to build him up again, OK. All indications were that Tito would either face Forrest Griffin in a rematch or Rich Franklin. Rich is recovering from injuries, so that fight was unlikely to happen in 2010. I guess without Forrest, they were left with this, but it’s a very curious selection.

One moment that won’t cause you to shake your head is Massachusetts eliminating their double weigh-in policy for MMA. Shouldn’t have been on the books in the first place.

Topics: Media, MMA, StrikeForce, UFC, Zach Arnold | 14 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

14 Responses to “Some shake-my-head level stories brewing in MMA”

  1. EJ says:

    That 20 million number is about as believable as the rumored 70 million the UFC paid for Pride, the idea that Zuffa would pay anywhere near that to run 1 show is ridiculous on all counts.

    • nottheface says:

      I am sure the 20 million is the correct number, but I am also pretty sure that what Gross and others are failing to report is that the 20 million in insurance they were probably required to carry and not the actual cost of carrying said insurance.

      • ttt says:

        i would agree with the above as someone working in insurance. at that amount you could build yourself a nice insurance company or self-insure.

  2. robthom says:

    I wonder if vancouver and new york are right and everyone else is wrong?!

    They seem pretty convinced.

    Maybe we should just go ahead give up on this whole human cockfighting thing after all before we waste any more time and resources on it.

    But until then, War Hammill!

  3. Michael Rome says:

    Is nobody capable of distinguishing between out of pocket cost of insurance and the amount they were required to put up to indemnify the city?

    • 45 Huddle says:

      Most fans aren’t bright.

      They are the same fans that think when somebody has to post a $1 Million bond, that they are actually putting in $1 Million.

      Or they think because station casino is doing bad financially, that somehow that is going to effect the UFC.

      Sadly, those are very simple business concepts that should be covered in 1 high school level business course.

      • Mr. Mike says:

        It’s not that they are not bright, which is innate intelligence, but ignorance. For some reason, our schools don’t teach a lot of things.

  4. Mark says:

    Yeah, there’s no freakin’ way UFC would pay $20 mil to run one show. They wouldn’t break even in that unless it was a show that did 700K buys. If they got told they were being shook down for that much cash, they’d just pull up the tent stakes and fly everybody to Vegas for a surprise show. It would be way cheaper to refund everyone’s money and just cancel the show since the gate couldn’t have been more than 15-20% of that figure.

    I guess Ortiz-Hamill is slightly interesting to build since Hamill was Ortiz’s golden boy out of the TUF 3 cast. But that was 4 years ago and so much has happened in MMA that that isn’t remotely relevant to anything fans care about anymore. Now it’s viewed as washed up Tito fighting a C-level 205er. And Hamill is a good enough wrestler to stuff all of Tito’s weak takedowns and knock him out. I am shocked Ortiz took this fight. What does he have to gain in status even if he beat Hamill? It’s a lose-lose situation for him. But I guess since he’ll get a cut of the buyrate he just took it to get some of that Lesnar money since he knew he would sell less than half if he headlined on his own.

  5. Steve4192 says:

    I can’t believe Strikeforce is actually considering going to Russia. Did they learn nothing from ‘BodogFIGHT: Clash of Nations’?

    • Nicholai says:

      They got to crawl on there knees just to please a certain russian fighter. I wonder what M1 will demand next.

  6. 45 Huddle says:

    Ortiz wants to be on a Lesnar card because he gets a cut of the PPV.

    Rumors are that Shields got $80k/$80k.

  7. Michael Rome says:

    Shields blew the free agency something fierce. He should have never shown up on WEC. His dad obviously didn’t know what he was doing in that situation, he could have created a bidding war if he made Showtime feel like they had a shot at getting him. Instead he just pissed them all off by being chummy with Dana.

    • Steve4192 says:

      I believe $80K/$80K makes Shields the third highest paid WW in the UFC, behind only GSP and Hughes. That’s not too shabby once you put it into perspective. Anyone who expected him to pass up the current champion’s contract or the long-time champion’s “golden parachute” contract was fooling themselves.

  8. EJ says:

    I don’t think he blew anything, Jake isn’t a draw and wasn’t going to get paid anymore than that he’s simply being paid what he’s worth.

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