« Strikeforce, Texas, drug testing, and some oddities; Mo out a year | Home | Transcript of Mayhem Miller’s ‘don’t be scared, homie’ challenge to Nick Diaz; Update: Diaz/Noons II booked »
Did UFC do enough to make the sale for UFC 118?
By Zach Arnold | August 24, 2010
I’m mostly referring to their Countdown show last night, but perhaps you might be interested in the question on a broader basis.
Will MMA fans take James Toney seriously enough to pay for his UFC 118 fight?
As I pointed out in the MMA Memories article this morning, the Edgar/Penn II fight is secondary in marketing compared to the ‘boxing vs. UFC’ fight with James Toney vs. Randy Couture.
The idea behind promoting the fight is simple. James Toney is legitimately insane, made a name for himself in boxing, and Randy Couture is one of the most popular cross-over figures the UFC has. He’s coming off of filming the movie The Expendables, he’s “Captain America,” and it’s two 40-somethings who are well-known symbols from their respective sports who will fight each other to prove… something. What that something is, nobody is sure of. The major Achilles’ heel in promoting this fight involves two steps:
1) Does the general public think that Toney has any chance of pulling off the upset?
2) Can Toney get the public to hate him enough to want to pay to see him get his ass kicked or will they be amused by his antics but not moved enough to pay to watch him fight?
After watching last night’s Countdown show, I feel like UFC has done a remarkable job in promoting Toney to the best of their abilities but that they may not be able to sell enough people on him being a serious threat. Which means, did they convince enough people that Toney will get his ass kicked and that everyone will have fun watching it? I think the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’
Toney’s Trainer Respects Couture, but Expects ‘Knockout in the First’
Watching the glee on the faces of Randy Couture and Ron Frazier (Xtreme Couture) was like watching someone who has a secret and that secret is bad news that they are going to deliver to a person they either really hate or are amused by. I laughed when the narrator on the Countdown show said, “James Toney has already won the war of words.” It would help if we understood half of what he saying. Thanks to UFC’s various jump cuts and subtitles (along with closed captioning), you could understand what he was saying.
“There’s nothing he can do that can stop me from kicking his ass. I promise you. … How do I feel about fighting a 47-year old man? I hope he gets SSI. It’s time for him to collect it. … I’m in a real man’s sport. … “Ain’t nothing stopping me. Can’t nobody in MMA or UFC or anybody else can beat me. You know that. … I’m coming to knock every single y’all’s block off your shoulders.”
UFC tried their best to push the angle that Toney was receiving legitimate MMA training from Trevor Sherman.
“We have a plan for Randy and that plan is to unleash James. And that’s it. We’re just going to put some skills in his tool belt that he can use that he can use and make him a little more effective. But, make no mistake, that will be James Toney that fights Randy Couture, not some concoction that we’ve put together in the gym.”
Both Couture and Frazier took absolute delight in the fact that they are facing Toney.
“If anybody came off the streets with six months experience in this gym looking for a fight, we call that being green-lighted. That means everybody gets to take their turn beating him up. [Toney] can say whatever he wants to say. It’s not going to bother Randy Couture. He’ll settle it once they get into that Octagon and they lock that cage door.”
Couture has, for months, admitted that it’s a freak show fight and he’s happy to oblige.
“Now we finally get to see two top flight guys from the two different sports and answer some questions for a lot of people. The hardcore fans, the boxing, they’re all going to come together to watch this fight. James or any other boxers that think they’re just going to walk in there with their boxing tools and be terribly effective are sorely mistaken.”
“It’s tough when you go to a construction site with one tool,” exclaimed Frazier. “When you have a screwdriver and it calls for a hammer, you got problems.”
John Arthur, Toney’s manager, put it this way: “It’s the crossroad. It’s like, who’s going to be the best? Who’s going to be there?”
What’s been amusing is how many people in boxing have been predicting Couture destroying Toney and shaking their heads at the fight happening, while many MMA fighters are predicting Couture winning and seeming thrilled at the prospects of seeing it happen.
Topics: Boxing, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 8 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
There’s some weird part of me that is really going to hate seeing Toney being beaten down (not that I’m watching this card). He definitely might catch Couture, but odds are that he won’t. The guy’s already at the end of his boxing career, so where will he go from here?
P.S. – Herschel Walker just announced on a local news station that he’s fighting in October. I don’t know if that’s out yet on the MMA news scene.
He was on the news talking about something totally different and they asked him what else he has going on. He replied that he has an MMA fight in October.
I sent you an e-mail yesterday. let me know if you got it. If not, contact me using the contact form.
Got it!
I wonder if they are going to try and get that show on CBS….
Should be interesting to see what happens.
I really don’t think it would have the headliner to make it on CBS. Walker would be a nice undercard fight for a show like that, but Diaz is likely too much of a wild card for CBS to take a chance on.
Maybe they should put together Walker/Griggs….
“Maybe they should put together Walker/Griggs”
Griggs would absolutely obliterate Walker. He’s might not be much of a prospect, but he is legit experienced fighter who is not awful.
They’ll need to bring in another guy off the street for Herschel.
A lot of boxers talk smack about MMA fighters…. But when the fight is signed, they all take the side of the MMA fighter in winning the fight.
I don’t think Couture is a guaranteed victory here. He should win, but it’s not a guarantee.
This reminds me of Hughes/Royce fight. It was a fight that needed to happen, but you cringed at the thought of Royce winning and setting the sport back 5 years.
If Royce had won, people would be talking about how the fighters in the past were so much better then the fighters today. But with Hughes winning, it forever closed the discussion on how advanced the sport had gotten.
For this same reason, I really hope Couture doesn’t not faulter. He needs to show that 1-dimensional boxers have no place in MMA.
“A lot of boxers talk smack about MMA fighters.”
I can also say that a lot of boxers don’t look down in any way. I’m talking about boxers in the gym and not necessarily talking to media.
“I don’t think Couture is a guaranteed victory here. He should win, but it’s not a guarantee.”
My sentiments exactly.
No, Gracie-Hughes did not need to happen. It was a surefire victory for Hughes so Zuffa could taunt their superiority over the SEG era. As if Tito destroying Shamrock the next month wasn’t enough.
As for Couture-Toney, no they did not do a good job of selling this. But honestly, there’s no way they could have done a good job selling it.
#1 If you’ve seen MMA for more than 20 seconds you’ll know it is a grappler’s sport and some guy coming in bragging about how little time he’s put into learning grappling pretty much makes it a lock he’s being taken down immediately and defeated in 2 minutes or less.
#2 James Toney is not a boxing megastar. You have to be pretty heavy into the sport to know who he is. He’s accomplished, yes, but he’s also washed up. This would be like if boxing was making a big deal about running a boxing match featuring Pedro Rizzo against Hasim Rahman. MMA fans would be shitting all over that fight, talking about how pathetic boxing is for even attempting such a thing and how it’s yet another sign of THE DEATH OF BOXING~! But here, it gets excused, even praised as “an interesting match up”.