Archive for March, 2009

There’s been a few articles this week around the circle jerk of MMA blogdom reviewing the value or lack of value in rating MMA fighters. Interesting arguments placed against ratings are that lower ranked fighters do tend to beat higher ranked fighters on occassion, that top fighters don’t fight each other every other month, and that not everyone is under the same promotional umbrella. I found these ideas, as you might expect by the picture that goes with this article, nothing short of hilarious. It shouldn’t come as any surprise then that the person who wrote the article has no real long term background watching MMA or even any sports at all, but has spent years watching pseudosports instead, because people who have actually watched sports for any given period of time with some seriousness know the problems with rankings, but still understand their necessity. 

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You may initally be confused why I follow a piece about UFC 95 and 96 with a picture of Kelly Pavlik. Give me a moment to explain: Kelly Pavlik is touted often as the kind of guy to bring back interest in pro boxing to the young fans of MMA, whomever it is you think they are (as a side note, can you really argue with that when the internet is alight with praise for Koscheck: Mediocre Kickboxer?). Pavlik is close to a fight with former 154lb titlist and star of the biggest failure in the history of reality TV, Sergio Mora. This has come with little complaint from boxing fans in the US, and its a bit odd. Consider then that Kelly Pavlik has made only two defenses of his middleweight crown against the murderer’s row of Gary Lockett and Marco Antonio Rubio to no real negative response. I can’t help but think of the recent interview on The Daily Show between Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart and the faux-wonderment in Stewart’s repeated questioning of who exactly Jim is doing his show for.

This is not to say that Dan Rafael is working on behalf of the boxing promoters to “save the sport” no matter what the cost or the reality, but consider then Anderson Silva. He fights the somewhat worthy Thales Leites in a few weeks, and no one seems to really be bothered that he hasn’t fought someone considered universally to be a top 5 middleweight since last February. 

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I don’t necessarily like to play the “I told you so” game, but, well, you know. A few months back, I put this outstanding piece of copypasta up that detailed the outstanding past work done by the minds behind MMA’s newest money pit fight promotion. Imagine my surprise when this thread appeared on the UG today to discuss an anonymous fight promotion’s absurd demands on contracted talent. It didn’t take long for the posters there to make the necessary connections either. Now while I’ve never been the kind of writer to say that so-and-so should go out of business or make wild predictions about coming failures, man, who knows? I hope Wilson Reis has better management than the poor guys on the undercard.

For K-1, 2008 was almost exactly what they needed.  As 2007 came to a close, a stagnating old guard and a much despised Grand Prix champion had combined to decrease any interest in the once great organization.  But over the course of 2008, K-1 made great strides to turn things around.  Led by Badr Hari, a new crop of young, exciting talent stepped up and began taking the lead for the company.  And heading into the 2008 Grand Prix, beloved veteran Peter Aerts made it his personal mission to knock Semmy Schilt off his pedestal – and succeeded.  The year capped off with a spectacular Grand Prix that even Hari’s unprofessional disqualification could not tarnish.  With interest returning and an easy Hari v. Bonjasky rematch set up, K-1 looked good.

Then, with just a few hours left in 2008, something strange happened.  Badr Hari, Heavyweight champion, Grand Prix runner up and poster child of the new generation, fell, and fell hard.  To Alistair Overeem.  When Hari made a public challenge to MMA fighters, this was obviously not the expected result.  Instead of showing K-1’s superiority, the complete opposite had come true – one of K-1’s best had been easily handled in K-1 rules by an MMA fighter with significantly less kickboxing experience.  It was a strong blow to K-1’s perception as the home of elite fighters.

Which brings us to K-1’s upcoming kick-off event for 2009 on March 28.  The main event of this card is one that is not getting nearly the attention it deserves – reigning K-1 Grand Prix champion and arguably the #1 ranked kickboxer in the world Remy Bonjasky defends the honor of the company against the invading Alistair Overeem.  While it’s true that K-1 is not the organization it once was and that Dream is no Pride, this is still the kind of cross-promotional super fight that has not been seen in some time.  Harking back to the days of Silva v. Cro Cop 1, this one should get you excited to be a fan.

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Falling square in the middle of the pack, tonights UFC 96 event featured strong fighters in interesting bouts and lesser names in less interesting ones. However, it has inspired some talk about what makes a “weak card,” and so it would seem a good jumping off point (following UFC 95 and the announcement of UFC 99) to review why they are touted as being weak to begin with.

The first and most obvious aspect is that there were no title fights. Title fights aren’t in and of themselves always great (Dave Menne held a UFC title once! So did Matt Serra), but they’re typically the best fighters in the promotion at that given weight. Second, there’s a distinct lack of star power, even among the prelim fighters. Gray Maynard may be better pound for pound than Chris Lytle, and so might be Jim Miller, for that matter, but people are more willing to entertain watching Chris Lytle because of his sloppy kickboxing, “finishing” style. Finally, weak cards often feature mismatches. WEC 39 last weekend provided a -1300 favorite in Jose Aldo, a fact rarely repeated on other websites when recapping his KO win. This weekend, we have Brandon Vera fighting a balding, chubby, clearly overmatched foe. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming out of this weekend’s solid and entertaining WEC show, the big talk once again revolved around the company’s flagship Featherweight division.  Since gaining a higher profile through Versus and the Zuffa purchase, the Featherweights, and particularly former FW kingpin Urijah Faber, have been the focus of the company.  As a result, Faber has been the biggest ratings draw for the company – the first Faber v. Pulver fight last year drew a record 1.4 rating, while the rematch this January drew a 0.65 – a significant drop, but still the second highest rated Versus event in WEC history.  So it should be no surprise that at the end of the show the talk was not about up and comer Jose Aldo or even truly about new FW champ Mike Brown himself.  The talk was, once again, about Urijah Faber and his pending rematch with Brown.

While there has been some question if Faber deserves such a quick rematch, this is a move that perfectly captures WEC’s matchmaking style.  And it’s a style that their parent company could learn something from.

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UFC 96 is nearly upon us, and the appeal of the event seems nowhere near universal among bloggers or casual fans. The event was, to an extent, thrown together at the last minute; Rampage Jackson was reportedly offered good money to fight on short notice for the PPV. The undercard is somewhat ragtag, featuring a number of former TUF stars in varying states of career disarray or success and a heavyweight fight between a former contender/current gate keeper and a hot but entirely untested prospect.

Being entirely honest, the quality of the card isn’t exactly an outlier; UFC 95 featured no major names at the top of the card. UFC 97 is headlined by what is expected to be a mismatch (Leites/Silva) with a feature bout of two potentially washed up light heavyweights (Shogun/Liddell) and then some very less than inspired matchmaking (Does anyone really want to pay to see an IFL washout? Or Antoni Hardonk?). UFC 99 is completely devoid of major star power, trading that on the idea that people in Europe (and on PPV stateside) will spend good money to watch journeymen from developing nations.

And yet while most everyone can agree to the idea that we as fans would be better off with many of these cards on Spike TV, or really, any TV outlet, the question must be asked; Would we be better off?

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So someone has leaked info about the Strikeforce TV deal and the internet is abuzz. Unfortunately, it is not abuzz with anything intelligent being said. To further explain, Strikeforce is getting roughly the average of $500,000 a show for 3 years to produce 40 shows. Some will be big shows. Some will be small shows. To compare how they’re paid compared to, say, everything else in combat sports, some numbers:

IFL on FSN  - $20,000/show

ESPN2 Friday Night Fights - $30,000/show

Solo Boxeo Tecate on Telefutura - $90,000/show

Showtime Championship Boxing - $300,000/show

HBO World Championship Boxing - $anywhere from 150K - 1.2 million, depending on the fight

In short, Strikeforce is being paid more than boxing promoters are for costlier world title fights in boxing by the same network to run events. Noticably more. This, by the way, does not prevent Strikeforce from running a PPV. How bad a deal does that sound for a company with next to no debt? That hasn’t blown their wad buying small organizations for 5 times their actual value? That made money running on networks nobody watched for piddly money? As long as they continue along the same path as before and can repeat some of the ratings successes, Strikeforce has a license to print money.

EDIT: One of the folks over at Bloody Elbow decided to remind me that comparisons to boxing numbers don’t work, since MMA organizations have costs outside that of what boxing companies have. Which is true when talking about Zuffa, since they love to have control of the production aspects. The thing is that it is not true when talking about Strikeforce, because the model being followed here is exactly that of boxing. Showtime Sports is and will be the distributor of PPVs, will be running the production, picking announcers, and all the rest. Strikeforce just has to show up to the venue.  But I’m sure you guys knew that already, right?

That it is a “max” is of course true and assumes that Strikeforce will be able to generate some EXC-esque ratings for CBS, otherwise CBS almost assuredly has an opt out clause. But then, there’s a reason why I put in the “if” as to whether or not they’d be able to sustain what’s already been done.

At the edge of the elite of the light heavyweight elite lies one of MMA’s great enigmas: Keith Jardine. Jardine comes in this weekend’s title bout nearly a 3-1 underdog to former champion Quinton Jackson, a fact punctuated by Rampage’s brutal victory over long time nemesis Wanderlei Silva. MMAth dictates the winner should clearly be Jackson, having just defeated a man who knocked Jardine out in less than a minute. And yet things are not actually that simple.

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In the history of pay per view combat sports, there have been many disasters historically. Some would point to UFC 30. Many to YAMMA. Some perhaps to one of the many less than thrilling boxing cards produced in recent years. One “triumphs” above all others; Mia St. John vs. Christy Martin.

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