Dana White comments on many topics
By Zach Arnold | December 13, 2006
By Zach Arnold
The Orange County Register posted a news story discussing the results of the UFC Fight Night weigh-ins, along with a lot of multimedia audio clips with press writers interviewing UFC fighters and staff. The biggest interview posted on the site is one with Dana White. Here are some of the things he had to say in the audio interview…
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Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 15 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Wednesday media headlines
By Zach Arnold | December 12, 2006
K-1 announced Ken Kaneko vs. Andy Ologun (Bobby Ologun’s brother) in a HERO’s (MMA) rules match for their 12/31 Osaka Dome show.
If you haven’t already, make sure to e-mail us with your questions for the radio show.
Now, onto today’s media links.
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Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Mirko not fighting on NYE
By Zach Arnold | December 12, 2006
Here are the article links. Anyone who knows Croatian and can translate could help us out in a big way.
- MMA Weekly: Mirko Cro Cop gone from PRIDE 12/31 Saitama event
- Vecernji List: Mirko out due to ligament injury
- Jutarnji: Key word for Mirko absence is ‘ligament’
Plus, here’s the post that has set off the rumors about Fedor not fighting on the 12/31 Saitama event.
Quick question: If you were in DSE’s shoes, what would you do if both Fedor & Mirko were not available for the 12/31 show? Would you double-down and get super-aggressive to put on a big bang? Would you scale the show down and use a lot of Japanese fighters (like Kondo)? Or would you cancel the show and cut your losses?
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Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Zach Arnold | 14 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
CSAC meeting on 12/18
By Zach Arnold | December 12, 2006
By Zach Arnold
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Armando Garcia, head of the California State Athletic Commission, has made quite a name for himself in MMA circles this year. The latest news is the suspension of Josh Thomson due to what was labeled as an offensive t-shirt. A t-shirt that offended the commission boss results in a suspension.
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Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, StrikeForce, Zach Arnold | No Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Tuesday media talk
By Zach Arnold | December 11, 2006
This is one of those news cycles that seemingly never ends. If you haven’t already, check out our latest radio show. Use the link on the sidebar to access it.
Today’s links: Eddie Goldman interviews Nick Lembo, more on the UFC buying WFA contracts, RINGS 10-year DVD-BOX collection set to be released, and more UFC talk.
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Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
A lot to chew on
By Zach Arnold | December 11, 2006
By Zach Arnold
First off, I want to thank everyone who has sent us e-mail so far for questions to answer on the radio show. Please keep sending in your mails. Thanks.
I guarantee that there will be at least one news link here that will either excite you, anger you, or annoy you. There’s a lot to chew on and a lot of discussion material. I was gone from the computer for a few hours and when I came back, I was flooded with tons of mails and messages. This has been a very busy day.
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Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Taking your questions
By Zach Arnold | December 11, 2006
We will be taping a new edition of Fight Opinion Radio this week, and we’re looking to do some mailbag material. Send us any sort of questions and/or intriguing topics that you would like to discuss this week on the show. Send them to me in e-mail at [email protected]. Please list your name and the town/location you are from when submitting your question(s).
Also, if you are interested in helping us out proactively on the web site, read this.
Topics: All Topics, Fight Opinion Radio, Zach Arnold | 1 Comment » | Permalink | Trackback |
Monday media notes
By Zach Arnold | December 10, 2006
We’ll get a head start on Sunday night. Just a quick thought… PRIDE aired Quinton Jackson’s powerbomb KO of Ricardo Arona on their new FSN show on Sunday night. Is Rampage (given the WFA is finished) the so-called “big” acquisition that Frank Trigg was talking about in his Sherdog interview? It would make sense…
On Monday, K-1 announced a fight between Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto and 2004 Athens Olympics gold medal-winning wrestler Istvan Majoros (Hungary) for their 12/31 Osaka Dome show.
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Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, Pro Elite, UFC, Zach Arnold | 48 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
UFC on 60 Minutes
By Zach Arnold | December 10, 2006
By Zach Arnold
Transcript and video of the segment here (or use this Daily Motion video link). Eye-opening things from the segment: An assertion that UFC could be worth $100 million USD and the IFL valued at $150 million USD. Plus the following quote:
“Uneducated gorillas that liked to go in there and basically kick the crap out of each other,” says Dana White, a former amateur boxer who thought the fights might be just the thing to draw an audience that advertisers often want most – men, ages 18 to 34. That group has been disappearing from TV audiences. White convinced investors to buy a league, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. He adopted rules for the safety of the fighters and got 21 states to sanction the fights.
Yes, Dana White single-handedly adopted the rules that are in place — according to CBS. That’s right. The Zuffa Myth is back in full force. Line #1, Mr. Nick Lembo. Notice that I am not the only one paying attention to this.
More thoughts on the TV segment from UFC Junkie.
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Topics: All Topics, IFL, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 37 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Sunday media links
By Zach Arnold | December 10, 2006
A fight in Louisiana to keep MMA from being banned, famous Japanese baseball player Kiyohara will appear at K-1’s Osaka Dome event, and another boxing writer indicates that UFC could be a “fad.”
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Topics: All Topics, Boxing, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 8 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Champions & Contenders
By Tomer Chen | December 9, 2006
By Tomer Chen
Combat sports such as Boxing and Mixed Martial Arts, just like team sports such as Baseball, Football & Basketball, have always relied on the prestige of a recognized championship (or championships) to be the centerpiece of their products. Fans want to see who will win the World Series, Superbowl or Stanley Cup and be the king of the hill in their respective sport (at least for the next year in the case of team sports). In combat sports, however, the presence of sanctioning bodies (such as the IBF, WBA, WBC & WBO) or promotional organizations (such as UFC, PRIDE, KOTC, IFL and so forth) creates a great deal more obscurity of the ‘true’ champion (in most cases, at least). With this obscurity tends to follow a cry for some form of clarity within the ranks of the various weight classes.
In Boxing, there are 17 weight classes going up from Strawweight to Heavyweight, a significant increase from the 6 original weight classes as of 1900 (Light Heavyweight had its first champion in 1903 with Jack Root and Flyweight had its first champion in 1916 with the legendary Jimmy Wilde, which rounds out the ‘recognized eight’ of Flyweight, Bantamweight, Featherweight, Lightweight, Welterweight, Middleweight, Light Heavyweight & Heavyweight). There were 3 weight classes that existed for a brief period earlier in the 20th century and then came back in the second half of the century (Junior Welterweight, Junior Lightweight & Junior Featherweight), but as a whole, 9 of the 17 weight classes became ingrained in the Boxing world in the latter half of the century. What was once 8 single champions (with the National Boxing Association (NBA) and several state commissions being the only ones to create small schisms at the time) has now become at least 3-4 ‘major’ champions in any weight class (IBF, WBA, WBC and maybe the WBO being the ‘top’ of the alphabet soup of the sanctioning bodies). So, in the course about 80 years, Boxing went from 8 champions to 51 or 68 champions.
Of course, that number is based strictly on the theoretical maximum allowed, but that does not factor in the possibility of unifying the different belts under one champion or even having more champions (through the relatively recent invention of the ‘Interim’ champion and ‘Super’ champion) as well as various magazines champions and rankings (most notably The Ring magazine’s championships). Nonetheless, as the basic numbers show, the Boxing world has become a lot more complicated in determining who the ‘real’ champion is in a weight class. And, unfortunately for most of the fans of Boxing, it does not seem to be getting better as champions are continuously being stripped of belts or being awarded belts at a moment’s notice by the sanctioning bodies (who sometimes break their own rules in order to get something that would benefit them the most).
On the other hand, MMA has not had the sanctioning body influence come into their fold. Instead, they create contracts for their fighters and create promotions such as UFC, PRIDE, KOTC, IFL, SHOOTO, Pancrase, BodogFight and so forth. Whereas the sanctioning bodies merely want to collect their sanctioning (licensing name) fees (as often as possible, preferably), the promotions are more interested in trying to develop superstars who can bring in huge buyrates and gates for the organization by making their own set of champions. Their champions, therefore, have a comparatively smaller pool than Boxing’s because an organization like the UFC or PRIDE will not place their champions into the pathway of a top contender who is not signed under them for an extended term (similar to Don King’s policy on granting title fights to fighters only if he got options on them). Whereas you can ‘grease the palms’ of the sanctioning bodies and mandatory contenders to allow bigger fights to happen for belts, you can’t buy out the UFC or PRIDE as such since if they lose the belt, they risk having it dishonored like Riddick Bowe throwing away the WBC belt into a garbage can instead of fighting Lennox Lewis or even in the world of MMA, B.J. Penn fighting at K-1 Romanex shortly after dismantling Matt Hughes to win the UFC Welterweight Championship. As such, the pool of potential contenders for an organization is reliant on who is willing to sign a binding contract at the rates offered in the hope of getting good sponsorship money and hopefully a title shot eventually. While on one hand you can have a great talent pool such as UFC’s Welterweight division, you can have a mediocre or even poor division such as UFC’s Heavyweight division by relying on only contracted fighters. In this regard, the title picture is based on the amount of money offered by the promotion and so the quality of the division and belt are linked to who is willing to bite the bullet and accept the contract.
Where champions were once expected to face the top contenders of their divisions and be fighting champions, recently there have been numerous examples of champions who were granted numerous exemptions from fighting more than maybe once in a year (if that). One example is WBO Featherweight Champion Scott Harrison, whose last fight was over a year ago in a title defense against Nedal Hussein and was granted numerous leaves on his next defense due to potential criminal misdeeds. Finally, the WBO recently claimed they were stripping the inactive champion of his belt. Another example is WBA & WBC (Lineal) Cruiserweight champion O’Neil Bell, who actually unified the belts but decided to rest on his laurels (and subsequently lost his IBF Cruiserweight Championship when he failed to face mandatory Steve Cunningham). Whereas in most eras there would have been a serious backlash over his failure to defend his newly formed crown (he’s the second lineal Cruiserweight champion after Evander Holyfield), you do not hear too much complaining from anyone (fighters, sanctioning bodies or the media) because they realize that even if he technically is ‘the man’ at Cruiserweight, the physical belts (but not The Ring belt) will be yanked from him if he continues to stay inactive much longer. For me, having the champion get his belt(s) taken away rather than having him lose it in the ring is a rather weak way of moving the activity of the champion. True, there were a number of inactive champions in the past, particularly Heavyweight champions such as Bob Fitzsimmons, Max Baer & Jim Braddock who wait 1-2 years to defend their crowns, but at least they show some intention of fighting eventually. In the case of Bell, besides an interest at one point to enter the Superfighter Tournament (several 4 rounders at HW), he has shown no real desire to re-enter the ring. If he intends to be inactive with no hope of re-entering the ring in the future, he should probably just declare his retirement and vacate his crown rather than holding the Cruiserweight division hostage. To contrast the apparent lack of defenses made by a number of champions, there are (relatively) recent examples of fighting champions in Boxing such as Bernard Hopkins with others such as Larry Holmes & ‘Marvelous’ Marvin Hagler a few years earlier.
In MMA, it is generally pointed out that for all the fights that Fedor Emelianenko and Wanderlei Silva have had, they number of title defenses made by both of them thus far (2 for Fedor at HW and 4 for Silva at MW (LHW)) have been rather poor for the length of their reigns and the amount of opponents they’ve faced since winning their belts. Whether or not it is PRIDE trying to maintain long term champions is a tough question to answer, but nonetheless it has led to criticism of the fact that an opponent would have to beat the champion twice to win a belt (such as Ricardo Arona, who beat Silva in the semi-finals of the 2005 Middleweight Grand Prix, although the time frame of the bout was 5 minutes shorter than the standard championship bout). In addition, the decision to have Takanori Gomi face Marcus Aurelio in a ‘warm-up’ non-title fight only to get choked out and having Aurelio beat him again in order to win the physical belt is also regarded as an example of iffy booking by management. It should be noted, however, that in the earlier years of Boxing, champions sometimes lost non-title bouts in the same weight class as their belt, and sometimes didn’t even grant the opponent who beat them rematches for their crown. Tito Ortiz’s latter part of his Light Heavyweight title reign was also regarded as being rather poor (with him only defending once a year against Ken Shamrock in 2002 and Randy Couture in 2003).
It is often argued that a champion should always place their belt on the line when stepping into the ring/cage (unless they move up or down in weight classes, of course). Matt Hughes would be an example of such a champion who placed his belt on the line in all of his fights when he was champion (besides the Royce Gracie bout which was a catch weight bout and the Joe Riggs fight when Riggs failed to make weight for the belt to be on the line). Although not everyone may be a fan of Hughes’ attitude towards opponents outside of ring, it is generally regarded that he was a fighting champion who took on the best of his division and came out on top for the most part. It is this respect for his guts that generally gives Hughes recognition as one of the greatest if not the greatest Welterweights in MMA history (up until this point).
Probably the biggest factor that creates a lack of title defenses by champions is money, plain and simple. Why risk your title against the top contender who couldn’t draw flies into a house when you can risk it against someone who can fill up seats in the arena and thus bring a larger guarantee to the table? A champion will, more often than not, accept an offer to face an Oscar De La Hoya or Mike Tyson-level drawing card even at below a 50-50 purse split because of the potential revenues they can make off guarantees, gate receipts and buyrate cuts than they could against the best quality opponent out there. Sometimes the best drawing opponent in the division (or nearby divisions) is the same as the best quality opponent, but if they aren’t, a champion will, understandably, go with the bigger name opponent. However, so long as they maintain a competitive schedule and do fight the quality opponents when they find a relative lack of big drawing opponents rather than sit on the belt(s), there really is not too much harm in booking the big money fights. It is only when the champion is booking himself for big money paydays and not quality of resume wins that questions to their legacy can be founded.
A Floyd Mayweather Jr. who spent his last few peak years fighting 2-3 times a year on less than spectacular or very good opposition for a quick buck may hurt his long term potential to be regarded in the same pantheon of the ‘Sugar’ Ray Robinsons, Muhammad Ali’s and Henry Armstrong’s of the Boxing world. Money is good, but in order to justify one’s ego, fighting the best is necessary. ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard, while making many millions fighting opponents, took on the best of his era (Benitez, Hearns, Duran & Hagler) and was able to say to the world through beating most of them ‘Yes, I am that damn great!’ and justify his historically high rankings in the Pound 4 Pound lists.
The concept of interim champions and mandatories is a topic that often makes even the most ardent supporters of combat sports shudder. Interim champions are generally regarding as mandatory challengers for the main champion in a weight class who were given a belt as a ‘consolation prize’ for having to wait for the champion to give them their title shot. Interim champions often defend their ‘belts’ (really, claims to be the number one contender) until the main champion returns from his exemption period or will (more often than not) be awarded the vacated title. Juan Manuel Marquez recently KOd Jimrex Jaca in a ‘defense’ of his Interim ‘title’ as an example of how the sanctioning bodies allow fighters to pay sanctioning fees on technically non-belt belts in order to increase their own income. There have been cases, however, where the Interim champion was stripped of his mandatory status or was not even issued mandatory status by the sanctioning body in question. There are even times where title eliminators, the very essence of number one contendership bouts (mandatory status), may not actually lead to a mandatory number one contender. The World Boxing Council (WBC), for example, states in its rule 1.21 b) vii:
The WBC Board of Governors may, after a final elimination bout, and upon a 2/3 voting of the Board of Governors, retire recognition to the winner of such bout as official mandatory challenger based on lack of merits or performance in its sole discretion, or if it serves the best interests of the sport. In such scenario, the WBC will order the an additional final elimination bout;
Essentially, the WBC says that if it doesn’t feel you threw enough crisp jabs in your elimination bout, you can be denied your mandatory status by a vote and they don’t even have to give a reason why. A recent example of the application of this provision is the mandatory rematch between James Toney and Samuel Peter although Peter was awarded a Split Decision by the judges. Essentially, the ultimate judge of whether or not you get the title shot is the sanctioning body and not your actions in the ring. Super champions are a final area where a sanctioning body will essentially say ‘Hey, you’re holding belts in my body another, so what I’ll do is strip you of the physical belt, give you a Super champ status that you can use by paying our fee and we’ll all win!’. It’s simply another way for the sanctioning bodies to collect additional fees, by having a ‘Regular’ champion and an ‘Undisputed’ or ‘Super’ champion. Their logic behind this is mainly that the unified champion will probably have less defenses, so giving the main belt to someone else would allow them to collect more sanctioning fees since it’ll (likely) be defended more often.
I believe that a lack of a true consensus ranking system hurts both Boxing and MMA as sports. While in the case of Boxing many casual and hardcore fans rely on the word of The Ring magazine’s weekly rankings, I think that it, like the numerous sanctioning bodies, is prone to bias and imperfections. A less biased system would involve some sort of ranking based on the quality of wins and losses, such as Boxrec.com’s. For example, if Manny Pacquiao is ranked the #1 Junior Lightweight and he losses to #17 Gary St. Clair, that should hurt him more than losing to #2 Marco Antonio Barrera. On the other hand, beating Barrera should raise Manny’s stock more than beating #7 Alex Arthur. Of course, in practice, this system is also prone to flaws based on the initial ranking calculations (as can be seen in Boxrec’s case with a number of questionable quality fighters being alongside or even above the truly tested quality fighters) and how to value the quality of the win (brutal KO versus controversial Split Decision, etc.) or loss. Nonetheless, it would reduce the impact of individual bias from entering the equation. Unfortunately, the sanctioning bodies will never let it happen as that would require recognition of competing champions (such as the WBC having to recognize Wladimir Klitschko, Nicolay Valuev or Shannon Briggs in their own rankings as a potential contender that would force unification bouts and reduce the amount of potential fees they could get as a result and not just as another titlist, if that). Nor will the UFC or any other organizations get on board for this because of the same reason (they want to be regarding as number one).
So, overall, I think that the worlds of MMA & Boxing will have to make significant changes in order to gain universal recognition of their champions and contenders in the big picture (both in the mainstream media and by the hardcore fan base). It should be noted, however, that UFC has gained significant market share over the years by being the pioneer promotion in the North American MMA market and has made MMA associated with Ultimate Fighting (and thus the UFC). In that regard, the UFC is the mainstream promotion of champions in (at least) North America, even if they do not hold all the top champions and contenders of all the weight classes. However, given that several weight classes in the UFC do not have the vast majority of the top contenders and champions available potentially (Welterweight is really the only very solid weight class that can claim itself as the Welterweight division of the world with some very solid claim), there will naturally be a contrast between the mainstream belief that Sylvia, Liddell, Silva, St. Pierre and Sherk are the best in their weight classes out of everyone and the hardcore fans who will know about fighters such as Fedor Emelianenko, Wanderlei Silva, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Mirko ‘Cro Cop’ Filipovic, Takanori Gomi and how they would pose serious threats to most of the current UFC champions.
Topics: All Topics, Boxing, MMA, Tomer Chen | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Fight Opinion Radio: Episode 35
By Zach Arnold | December 9, 2006
We waste no time this week talking about the politics of the two major Japanese MMA events on NYE. How much heat will there be on Fedor & Cro Cop by various Japanese power brokers given their recent business manuevers?
Our special guest this week is Josh Barnett, who addresses fact from fiction as far as the rumors regarding his future in PRIDE (and the future of PRIDE as an organization). Also, Josh gives us his take on the BodogFIGHT event from Vancouver last weekend and whether or not BodogFIGHT will be a serious player in the MMA industry in 2007.
Also on the show this week is a preview of the upcoming Ultimate Fight Night event that will take place next week in Southern California. Plus the world-famous grab bag. You can check out our new MySpace monster account at http://www.myspace.com/fightopinionradio. The army of readers is growing quickly!
Music on our show this week is provided by Retaliate Rules.
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Podcasting Links
- iTunes subscribers – click here.
- Yahoo Podcast subscribers – click here.
- Podcast Alley subscribers – click here.
The 35th edition of Fight Opinion Radio is now online and available to download. Here are your options for listening to the show:
Broadband (MP3) | Dial-up/Streaming
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Topics: All Topics, BoDog, Erin Bucknell, Fight Opinion Radio, Japan, Jeff Thaler, K-1, Luke Nicholson, Media, MMA, podcasts, PRIDE, UFC, Zach Arnold | No Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Saturday media splash
By Zach Arnold | December 9, 2006
- MMA Weekly: Frank Shamrock vs. Phil Baroni being promoted for April of 2007
- The Calgary Sun: Pub puts sleeper hold on WWE (venue isn’t airing WWE PPVs due to losing money and interest, but UFC draws big now for them)
- Fox Sports: The Weekly Tapout – Diesel keeps motoring (plus more from Riggs here)
- Observer: Kurt Angle speaks (again)
- Sherdog: StrikeForce 12/8 San Jose Arena event results
- Ken Pavia (agent): The Pav Says…
- SLAM! Sports: Tito Ortiz adjusts to underdog role
- Doghouse Boxing: UFC doesn’t need boxing, it needs Dana White
- The Albuquerque Tribune: Mandatory drug testing for athletes by New Mexico state Athletic Commission starts on January 1, 2007
- UFC Mania: UFC Fight Night at Miramar
Topics: All Topics, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | No Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |