Faber/Pulver II: Forget me, how will anyone care?
Posted by Alan Conceicao on November 26th, 2008
It seems like just a couple days ago that I railed on the fact that Couture/Liddell IV will exist and be a #1 contender’s fight. Well, okay, it was. However, the madness with rematches hardly ended there. Sam Caplan broke the story yesterday that another rematch is forthcoming. The logic is there, I suppose. The first fight these guys had shattered all the WEC records for television audience and live gate. Of course, what’s happened since has hardly helped matters. Both men suffered KO losses and did so in front of a TV audience back to the typical .5s they had gotten before. The title belt they contended for? Gone. Theoretically, this will be a #1 contender fight of sorts, but for god sakes, its obvious Pulver doesn’t belong in one.
Pulver is 1-4 in his last five. He’s been KOed hard twice. He took a beating in the first fight between the two in which he was throughly shut out on the cards. The storylines coming in were that of an emerging talent in Faber looking to take on the greatest challenge of his career in former lightweight champ Pulver. The human interest now is seemingly one of redemption for both, but in cases like this, its rarely a combination that ends up creating stunning turnouts or mainstream interest. As is, they combined for another IFL/WNBA sized rating last time out in separate bouts. Why expect droves to turn out for this?
The easy potential answer is that the WEC’s old management is finally gone and replaced with Joe Silva and his crew. They are probably looking more at creating a high profile walkover for Faber to set up a rematch with Brown, and Pulver represents exactly that. If this is what we should expect in the future for the WEC matchmaking wise, I can’t say its the best kickoff to 2009.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Alan, hater of fun!
November 27th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Wasn’t this the same line of thinking that attacked Liddell-Silva when it happened? That fight sure wound up being a clunker both in entertainment value and box-office wise.