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Five big items of fallout from the two NYE shows
By Zach Arnold | January 1, 2012
Very sad & discouraging to hear the news about 30-year old DEEP fighter Tomoya Miyashita dying on New Year’s Eve. He had fought one round of cancer (seminoma) and then was diagnosed with leukemia and lost the battle. He had a personal blog online at Ameba where he commented on his struggles and also posted pictures of those in the fight community who came to visit with him.
Steve Cofield & Cagewriter.com/Yahoo Sports team discuss Brock’s UFC retirement
1. Expect a legal war between UFC & WWE over Brock Lesnar
Dave Meltzer claims that the Brock ‘retirement’ rumors were floating around all week long. If that’s the case, I find it kind of odd that Dana White wouldn’t know it was coming. Nevertheless, I’m sure UFC had an inkling in their back of their minds that this was a possibility.
WWE right now is desperate to bring back an old name and Brock fits the bill. The problem? He’s not going to generate the same kind of buzz that The Rock did and if Rock can’t heavily move the PPV needle for WWE, Brock won’t either. Which means we could easily see Vince McMahon overvalue Brock and pay him more than he’s worth. It also means that UFC, not wanting to lose any of their PPV customer base, will fight tooth and nail in court to prevent Brock from going back to WWE.
From UFC’s perspective, it’s totally understandable why they don’t want Brock heading back to Vinceworld. If Brock averages 1M PPV buys at $55USD versus Jon Jones drawing 400,000 buys at $55USD, that gap is $33 million dollars. Even if UFC only gets half of that after distributors take their cut, that’s $16.5M USD. That money pays some real bills.
Ask yourself this — if UFC goes to Vince and asks for, say, $10M or $15M in order to allow him to go back to WWE, is Brock worth it? The idea, of course, is that Brock would be a Wrestlemania headliner. If WWE goes ahead and puts their ‘PPV big shows’ on their WWE network in 2012, then the move does not make much financial sense. At that point, it’s likely that we would see Brock and WWE go to court to try to get out of the UFC deal.
What makes the situation so ironic is that WWE is now likely going to be Brock’s legal tag team partner. Brock was able to pry loose away from WWE because he wanted to wrestle in a different country. He doesn’t have that legal out this time around. It helps to have WWE legal on your side but UFC is quite a strong court opponent as well.
2. Alistair Overeem is on his way to becoming the biggest global MMA star
He is, by far, the biggest non-Japanese name UFC has on their roster that they could draw a substantial house with in Japan given his K-1 background. In Europe, Overeem is also well-known. With a win over Brock Lesnar, the US mainstream media tried their best to ignore him after his win over Brock and instead focus on Brock retiring. That will work for a couple more days, at best.
Overeem is the perfect guy to be an ace for UFC in a lot of ways. If he can beat Junior dos Santos (a challenge indeed), Zuffa will hand someone as their ace a fighter who is experienced, confident, extremely talented, and very articulate when doing the media rounds. It’s unfortunate that K-1 is dead because I would have loved to have seen him continue his kickboxing career on a high level. Nonetheless, I’m pleased to see him faring well in MMA and silencing his critics.
3. Fedor is as beloved in Japan in 2012 as he was in 2005
The most remarkable, yet predictable development this week between the UFC & Inoki NYE shows was the revival of Fedor’s star power. On a fight card that was literally promoted as a one-match show, it ended up becoming a one-man show and that man was Fedor. I’m not just talking about his fight performance against Satoshi Ishii, either. In the press and amongst the fans, the Inoki NYE show was all about Fedor’s return to Japan. He got an incredibly positive reaction from the fans who still romanticize about the PRIDE days. While nostalgia acts tend to fade quickly, Fedor has a few advantages in his favor that will allow him to be a headliner in Japan for as long as he wants to be one.
Japanese matchmaking usually breaks down into three categories: native vs. foreigner (always been most successful formula), native vs. native, and foreigner vs. foreigner. Because the purses in Japan have gotten smaller, much of the top flight foreign talent is with the UFC. Native vs. native fights tend to have a high burnout ratio and they can be more damaging for promoters in Japan than other formulas. Foreigner vs. foreigner is the worst scenario.
What made Fedor/Ishii so intriguing is that the fans treated it for what it was — foreigner vs. foreigner. However, they decided to consider Fedor as a native hero coming back home, so it became native vs. foreigner with Ishii being the outsider (and rightfully so). I didn’t see numbers for the gate released on the newspaper sites, but I know on TV the number 25,000 was claimed. Yeah, OK. Nonetheless, the Inoki 2011 NYE show will go down as the show where Fedor made his triumphant return back home to where he made his bones. Good for him for finding the perfect landing place for the end of his career.
M-1 is quoted as saying that Fedor will fight in Russia either in March or April and then have a fight in Monaco.
Read the comments section where I address criticism towards Fedor for the Inoki show not drawing well.
4. Satoshi Ishii’s career prospects as a high-level MMA fighter have been neutered
Satoshi Ishii says that his fight with Fedor yesterday was his last match in Japan and that he will aim his sights to emigrating to the States in order to fight in the UFC. Delusional.
Ishii got promptly hammered in the daily newspapers for his showing against Fedor. Words like ‘humiliating,’ ‘crushing,’ and ‘rock bottom’ were used. I wouldn’t say it was bad as the beating he took last year in the press when he got booed loud by the fans against Jerome Le Banner… but it’s close. If Inoki wanted to protect Ishii, the press would have held back some of their fire. For the second year in the row, they haven’t held anything back.
The Japanese MMA game desperately needed someone to fill the void as the ace that the country could rely upon to enter the real world of MMA. Ishii’s career failure has consequences far beyond just his own financial situation. Fairly or unfairly, his demise impacts a lot of people.
5. Antonio Inoki’s shadow war on NYE and the results it produced
On Christmas Eve, I talked about Inoki’s shadow war on NYE and the annual 1/4 Tokyo Dome show that New Japan has produced for many years. While DREAM did not get Tokyo Broadcasting Support for the Saitama Super Arena event, you would have to classify the show as a win for Inoki’s vision of blending MMA & wrestling fights together.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that I approve of the vision. I’d be just fine separating the MMA & wrestling fights from each other. However, I’m not offended by the mixture of the bouts on a single card, either. The anger & frustration from both foreign MMA fans online & the hardcore Japanese DREAM fans was brutally palpable, almost borderline hysterical. I get it. MMA is a sport, pro-wrestling is not. Newsflash: in 2012, pro-wrestling is still covered as a sport in the sports section of media outlets in Japan. The fans may know what’s up in regards to the differences between MMA & pro-wrestling but it’s still all a ‘fantasy fight’ to them just like it always has been to Antonio Inoki. Plus, the numbers are against the hardcore fans. For casual Japanese fight fans, hardcore/casual pro-wrestling fans, and a decent portion of Japanese MMA fans… they didn’t mind the mixed matchmaking concept at all.
In many ways, Inoki won the NYE battle in terms of the creative direction that the Japanese fight industry is headed towards. None of the DREAM guys (Aoki, Kawajiri, Takaya) got any serious media play in the newspapers or on TV. They simply don’t draw heavy fan support and that’s not because they’re MMA fighters, it’s because they just don’t appeal to the masses. The wrestling bouts on the NYE card drew solid headlines in the press. A smiling Sakuraba and an excellent Josh Barnett showing drew way more attention than Aoki got for making his friend Satoru Kitaoka gurgle on his own blood.
Aoki is a very interesting character for a lot pf reasons. No matter how violent he gets on New Year’s Eve, the masses in Japan largely ignore him. He can break someone’s arm in a disgusting manner, he can make his friend taste his own blood… and nobody cares. Aoki was teamed with Inoki for the last two weeks to do the media rounds to promote the NYE show… and Inoki got all the attention. Fedor got all the attention. Aoki? Largely meaningless to the public. In many regards, Aoki is viewed with much more respect by the world MMA community than he is in Japan. It’s quite a remarkable situation. Only a few Japanese fighters have experienced that. The one that comes to mind is Tsuyoshi Kohsaka. He was in RINGS early, he went to UFC, he came back to RINGS and still was second dog to Kiyoshi Tamura.
Back to Inoki for a second… The fans yesterday popped as much for the wrestling fights as they did for the MMA bouts and the wrestling matches Inoki often books are nowhere near the same in quality as NOAH or New Japan matches are. In many ways, I felt like the fans cheering for Sakuraba in a tag match and Josh Barnett pulling off what he did to Hideki Suzuki was a sentimental tribute to the days of UWF. I’m not ready to predict that the Japanese MMA scene will transform back to the days of the UWF in the 1980s but there’s a strong possibility that we could end up seeing Inoki pushing a UWF-style product to come on a large scale to fill that void between traditional Japanese pro-wrestling and pure MMA. In that sense, he may have very well gotten the last laugh yesterday.
As for Inoki celebrating himself yearly on the big NYE stage…
I totally understand the mass confusion he creates. A lot of times, nobody else in Japan knows what he’s doing either. I remember several years ago when Brock Lesnar headlined the worst-drawing Tokyo Dome event for a wrestling card (October 2003), Antonio Inoki had someone come out during his ring introduction as a character from the Edo period with a basket on their head. Inoki loves to celebrate history, he loves obscure references, and he loves to talk about history that revolves around his whole life & career. HDNet should be embarrassed that they called Tiger Jeet Singh a terrorist but… it is what it is. Jeet Singh and his son were brought in for the Inoki segment because Tiger was Inoki’s top gaijin rival and Tiger’s tag partner, the late Umanosuke Ueda, died last week at the age of 71. Ueda’s photo was the one they focused on during the interview. Ueda brought ‘weapons’ into the fold in Japanese wrestling with the sword and the bamboo stick. So, when all this crazy talk starts happening during an Inoki skit, I sympathize with the legions of people who have zero clue what the hell he is talking about. Maybe 20 people on the planet could watch that skit and put 2 + 2 together. Scarily, I’m one of those people and it makes feel really, really old as a human being… even when I’m not. Inoki talks about his past days in the Showa era as if it yesterday and not, say, 40 or 50 years ago.
Inoki is Inoki, Japan is Japan, and the prospects of a pure MMA product working again on a consistent basis in the post-PRIDE era without any sort of network TV support is dead on arrival.
Topics: DREAM, Japan, M-1, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 33 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Happy New Year!
“Satoshi Ishii’s career prospects as a high-level MMA fighter have been neutered”
No, Satoshi Ishii’s career prospects as a draw in Japan have been neutered (and they were on life support to begin with). His career prospects as a high level MMA fighter depend on how well he performs against high level opposition at the weight class he intends to compete at – if he puts together a string of solid wins against 205ers outside the UFC, gets hired by the UFC, and performs well against top ten opponents, he will be a high level MMA fighter with a decent career as such, no matter how anyone in Japan feels about him. Losing to Fedor in a heavyweight match has absolutely no effect on his prospects for that career path.
You may argue that Ishii isn’t good enough to succeed on that career path, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but his fight with Fedor did not affect it one iota.
“In many ways, I felt like the fans cheering for Sakuraba in a tag match”
What the hell was going on in that match, anyway? It seemed like half the time nobody was selling anything, and the ending looked extremely muddled.
“HDNet should be embarrassed that they called Tiger Jeet Singh a terrorist but… it is what it is.”
HDNet should be embarassed about pretty much everything that came out of Kogan’s mouth during that show. Racist jokes, complete ignorance of even the names of basic moves (from someone who claims to be “a grappler”) and some of the worst attempts at kayfabe prowrestling announcing I have ever heard.
Actually I can’t imagine Zuffa is terribly eager to hire someone who Fedor just destroyed whether he’s UFC-level or not (which I believe he has the potential to be; he’s one hell of an athlete who trains extremely hard). There aren’t very many “good” LHWs outside of Zuffa so I’m not sure who he should be fighting, and he apparently has go-away heat in Japan (also known as “X-Pac heat”). If he got a win over Glover Teixeira I think Zuffa might offer him a Strikeforce contract or something, but there aren’t many high-level free agent LHWs like that out there.
If he wins enough though, I think he could get in, especially if he’s willing to come in as a late replacement and take a low starting-salary. The UFC hired Ryan Jimmo for Christ’s sake and he’s one of the most boring fighters in the sport, simply because he won so much. That he has no drawing power is besides the point. My prediction is he gets a few wins against journeyman-level talent in the U.S. and possibly Brazil then and goes to Bellator where LHW is their weakest division and he might actually have some success.
Also if Ishii had beaten Fedor I think Dana White would offer Ishii a contract simply as a matter of schadenfreud so M-1 couldn’t have him. I think if there’s one grudge that Dana White holds above all others in MMA, it’s against Fedor’s backers. His career trajectory sure as
fuckwould have been altered there.Wow
they called Tiger Jeet a Terrorist!
Racist Twats!!
how can HDNet get away with that, here in the UK they would be in trouble for saying
shitlike that.I’m one of those guys too Zach, I knew it was TJS from the onset, wasn’t that his son Ali Singh who was in the WWF 10 years ago too?
I don’t blame the HDnet guys for being so overall clueless, but the professionalism shown after 6 hours of being on the air was laughable, atleast they didn’t call them Arabs, but Terrorist’s could also be seen as one in the same.
Also, it was Kogan with those comments, and Michael Kogan has one of the filthiest mouths I’ve ever heard do pbp, especially during the numerous K-1 events I’ve seen him on over the years. But overly pollitical correctness bothers the hell out of me everyday in life, so while his comments are bad I;m not losing sleep on it.
Yes, Tiger Ali Singh was in the WWF for a couple of years. Now he basically travels around with his dad. It’s not like he needs the money. The family is extremely wealthy and has a huge estate in Milton, Ontario outside of Toronto. They even named a school after Tiger Jeet Singh. And it all started with a downtown Toronto gift shop back in the 60s. If you want to know more about Tiger Jeet Singh, check out the National Film Board documentary TIGER!
Zack, great work as always.
as for your point number 5 of a sort of UWF revival – they tried it with BattleArts and its gone. Inoki can only do so much.
Ed. — Inoki always finds a money mark to pay the bills. That’s the difference. If he wants to do something, someone somewhere will listen.
Zach, this is something that MMA fans in the US just cant get to grip with no matter how much you try and explain it to them.
Newsflash: in 2012, pro-wrestling is still covered as a sport in the sports section of media outlets in Japan. The fans may know what’s up in regards to the differences between MMA & pro-wrestling but it’s still all a ‘fantasy fight’ to them just like it always has been to Antonio Inoki. Plus, the numbers are against the hardcore fans. For casual Japanese fight fans, hardcore/casual pro-wrestling fans, and a decent portion of Japanese MMA fans… they didn’t mind the mixed matchmaking concept at all.
“…but it’s still all a ‘fantasy fight’…”
^^
Well thats an interesting concept to wrap your mind around.
I never though about it like that.
A real fight is still my preffered “fantasy” fight, but thats a fascinating (and somewhat true) concept.
1) Lesnar isn’t going to hold up in court very well due to his previous issues with leaving the WWE. He has a history of this, and the judge isn’t going to give him the benefit of the doubt as much this time around.
2) Dos Santos vs. Overeem will do big business. JDS got huge coverage on FOX. And Overeem just headlined a PPV with Lesnar. Fans are talking about the UFC like the sky is falling with PPV Buys. Jones will do 400,000+ minimum per show. Their Heavyweight Belt will always do good numbers. And GSP will be fighting in 2012, and against a built up challenger with an interim belt. That fight will do big business. Add in Cruz/Faber as TUF coaches, potentially Silva/Sonnen 2, and FOX as a feeder to the PPV main events…. And things are looking solid for the UFC. They won’t do record business for a little while…. And some PPV numbers for the little guys will be down…. But the sky isn’t close to falling.
3) Fedor needs to either cut to Light Heavyweight or start fighting Heavyweights again to be taken seriously in North America. Fighting internationally might suit him for now, but the real money is in America. Henderson, Monson, and Ishii basically brings back Fedor to what he was doing from 2005 to 2008…. Which is fighting guys we all know he should beat…. Except he still lost to Henderson
4) Ishii just isn’t very good. His management should be ashamed of themselves for putting him in there with a bigger and much more experienced opponent like that. Unless they knew he doesn’t have a future no matter what…. And then it would have made sense that they were just cashing in…. Instead of trying to go the slow route which they didn’t see as ever coming along.
5) I’ve had HDNet for a few months now. Between the live fights and Inside MMA, I have been less then impressed. It’s amateur hour throughout. Inside MMA is unwatchable. “The Voice” is funny to listen to at first but gets old quick. The production value is 2nd rate. There is little in terms of great fights to really get excited about. It makes Bellator look World Class by comparison.
Between the UFC’s 30+ cards, The LIVE Ultimate Fighter, UFC Tonight, Strikeforce, and Bellator…. I don’t see room for such a 3rd rate product like HDNet in my schedule….. Unless I’m really bored with absolutely nothing to do and just want the HDNet fights on in the background….
“Fedor needs to either cut to Light Heavyweight or start fighting Heavyweights again to be taken seriously in North America.”
Dont break your own heart Huddle.
Fedor seems like a nice man, but he is no longer an MMA fighter.
You can stop holding that torch for Fedor in relation to MMA in any realistic fashion.
(I’m more excited for Fedor vs. the Undertaker these days anyway.)
“Dos Santos vs. Overeem will do big business. JDS got huge coverage on FOX.”
Really? I say 400,000 tops. They are both good fighters but they’re both dull as hell personality wise. Casual fans just won’t care.
It was funny seeing JDS in the cage after the Overeem win…he was just hanging around in the background like no one gave a crap. People watching at home probably thought he was one of the doctors on staff. All eyes were on Brock with his retirement garbage.
Uh… dude…. he got an out-of-court settlement for everything he was asking for from the WWE in his countersuit. The WWE basically caved in completely because they feared that’s what would happen in court and they wanted to avoid a legal precedent. So what on Earth are you talking about?
Fedor, by which I mean M-1, has no interest in fighting in America. Also there is some money to be had in his native Russia where he has a tv deal and can draw 20,000 people to a show while fighting overmatched opponents. He is never cutting to LHW as that is something he could have done at any time, and his only two options in North America are Bellator (can’t afford him and have gone on record saying they won’t even try to get him) or Zuffa (wants nothing to do with him).
Furthermore M-1 is owned by a St. Petersburg money-mark named Sergey Matvienko (he is the real majority owner, not Vadim Finkelstein or anyone else). Money marks tend to be okay losing money as long as they’re entertained. He’s basically Fedor’s patron, just like another Russian billionaire is to the New Jersey Nets.
Showtime want’s to make a deal with M1 so they say and I would assume part of that was a Fedor fight.
They probably want to hit Russia, The US and then Japan again at New Year.
Do you have a source on that? I’ve heard the exact opposite, but could be wrong.
Showtime Sports Vice President Stephen Espinoza joined MMAFighting.com’s MMA Hour Radio Show where he made the following comment:
“We are in discussions with M-1 to continue our relationship and we actually hope that we are going to be contiuning for at least another year. And things looks good that we are going to be able to do so.”
http://www.fightjerk.com/2011/12/showtime-m-1-contract-talks-still-work.html
Diaz-Condit will get the Primetime treatment on FX and as dumb as Nick Diaz comes across in interviews, he is still a very interesting character and has the potential to become a huge draw.
“…if UFC goes to Vince and asks for, say, $10M or $15M in order to allow him to go back to WWE,…”
That would be my favored option.
The Brock can take his scumbag fanbois back to WWE with him, and the UFC still gets a cut.
Almost like it was a UFC event.
But I can also see why they wont want to do that.
They dont want the ADD kids getting distracted back towards WWE.
(I do.)
“I would have loved to have seen him continue his kickboxing career on a high level.”
Everybody keeps making a bunch out of Overeeems k1 career.
I was never really been impressed by it.
If I recall correctly, he got a arguably lucky KO over Badr. Then lost the rematch.
Then won one of those wonky 1 night GP’s by beating Aerts after Aerts had just been through a knock down dragout war with Shilt or someone?
yeah it was mildly impressive that he was good enough to fight in K1 (although apparently Bob Sapp was too), but are we really “missing” all that much?
Personally I think his time would be better spent mixed fighting, and I’m glad that he chose that instead.
“native vs. foreigner (always been most successful formula), native vs. native, and foreigner vs. foreigner.”
I think you left out Foreigner vs. Native.
🙂
Ishii’s NOT Japanese?
Thats nice for Fedor, I surely dont begrudge someone for making a living.
But I still would have been “more” interested in Fedor vs. the Undertaker.
(Honorless Gaijin that I am.)
“Ishii got promptly hammered in the daily newspapers…”
Sounds like they wont forget all that flirting with the UFC over Dream in his lifetime.
He probably really has painted himself into a corner.
Well, there also OneFC.
“…Inoki’s vision of blending MMA & wrestling fights together.”
Its interesting.
Reminds me of a Pride card.
Sans Prides handful of upper echelon fights mixed in.
They just need to add more of those.
(Well, from a western perspective. Or do they reeally need to at all.)
“I’m not ready to predict that the Japanese MMA scene will transform back to the days of the UWF in the 1980s…”
Maybe that IS what the Japanese fight scene needs.
To get back to its roots and re-up the popularity and seed money from there.
Maybe its just to much to ask to try and resuscitate the later permutation of it.
Instead of trying to desperately patch that roof, fix that mold and replace all that bad plumbing, knock it down and build back from the foundation.
Thank you, RST!
You know, I had no idea what the UWF (in terms of Japan) even was until a few years ago; I got hold of some old tapes of shows with Akira Maeda, Sayama and others…I was fascinated by the technical skill that was shown.
Okay…pretty clear a lot of those matches were works, but it was groundbreaking in that the nuts and bolts of wrestling and martial arts were being brought together without all the showy moves and fooling around.
You watch and listen to the crowds at those shows…they are appreciating what they see and are paying attention.
UFC commentators and fans are often going on about “entertaining” fights, and I’ve always said that if it’s a real fight, the fighter should be all about winning it, not blowing the fight because he’s worried it won’t be entertaining.
To me, skill set against skill set, intelligence, strength, technique–that is entertainment.
[…] har kommit väldigt tråkiga nyheter ifrån Japan idag där FightOpinion rapporterar att den 30 år gamla DEEP-veteranen Tomoya Miyashita avlidit på nyårsafton efter en […]
Will Overeem be the next star? Maybe. Cain was supposed to be, that didn’t work out even though he was the first to beat Brock. Overeem is 31 years old and has just as much a chance to fail as Cain did.
Did the Japanese embrace Fedor? Definitely not. No network in Japan would even air the fight and Meltzer reported that the event only had about 7000 tickets sold. Fedor used to get huge TV ratings in Japan, now he’s been forced onto PPV. That’s not the definition of popular.
First off, Fedor’s fight was announced a couple of weeks before the show took place. It’s not like the promoters did a very good job with the whole card itself.
As for the reaction to Fedor once he got booked? Very positive for him. I tell it like it is. I’m not a fan of the old PRIDE management by any sort of your imagination.
Pinning the blame on Fedor (and not Kato and Shinoda) for the show not airing on TBS is just silly. If TBS was interested in airing the show, the discussions would have been done in late September in order to work with Dentsu to get the ad money going and the campaigns set up.
You’re barking up the wrong tree on this one.
If IGF could get some better wrestlers under their wing why not run IGF vs Dream under U-Style rules.
Could be exciting stuff.
A few questions for you Zach (hopefully you see them):
Do you think Zuffa would just take a $5 mill settlement for Brock?
Do you think Zuffa and WWE would hold a legal war over a guy that just quit in front of a million people?
Just some answers
1. I actually think they settle things just fine. I don’t think Zuffa will look for over 7-8 mill buyout.
2. I don’t see Overeem being a high level draw in the US. However, I also think Overeem will be blasted out of the ring against Dos Santos.
3. Fedor is doing the right thing for Fedor. Stay overseas, make big paydays, win against lower class competition. Good for him. He earned his status in Japan, and now he’s cashing in.
If Ishii can continue to get better, he might be a good top tier mid carder at HW or 205 one day. I doubt it though.
$5 million as a settlement? Hell no, we’re starting at $10M and going much higher. Zuffa plays hardball. They control the PPV market now, not Vince. Zuffa’s the one drawing 400,000 or more domestically for shows. Why should they have have sympathy for Vince?
I don’t think it’s sympathy for Vince. Rather I think it’s cashing in a definite $5mill for a guy who is clearly not a top fighter anymore.
Any news on the amount of buys yet?
“Tomoya Miyashita”
I may avoid bad news, because I dont deal well with it.
But you are the same human being that I am!!
(As we all are, and never more and never less!)
RIP Friend.
To me it depends exactly what is the deal with Brock’s contract if he’s on his last fight then things will be settled very easily with the WWE paying off the UFC.
If on the other hand Brock has 1 or more fights on his contract than he and the WWE are both SOL. Dana and Lorenzo won’t break a contract for anybody look at what they did to Couture.
So it all comes down to exactly to what is left on Brock’s current deal, that will decide whether there will be a fight or not and i’m curious to find out what the real deal is myself.
The only way I see Brock going to the WWE is if Dana gives him a “thanks for all the buyrates” present no-strings-attached release. Otherwise, he will make Vince pay through the nose to offset the buyrates he would lose on a final Brock fight.
And Vince is not going to pay millions of dollars that would erase the Wrestlemania gate. They need the money with no other show selling and the Network costing them 60 million this year. So it will be a case of “how much is worth it?” And unless Dana is in a good mood, grateful to Brock or even grateful to Vince for the Spike deal, he’s going to want millions.
great article and recap of the Brock and NYE stuff. I’ve never been up to date and have always wondered about Inoki and all this business. thanks.
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