UFC Ongoing Thread (1 Viewer)

[Casey Trowbridg]

On a different subject, aside from the UFC 88 predictions polls I linked in a prior post, in the sidebar on our website we've got a poll asking about Couture Vs. Lesnar. Right now, Lesnar has nearly twice the number of votes that Randy has. I don't think it means much of anything because the sample size is still pretty small but I do find it a bit interesting.

 

[JoshRas]

very good post Casey! A lot of things I havent thought about. A few things I disagree with.

The WEC is great with their schedule but lets remember that the depth is simply not there. Their guys do put on great fights but typically outside of the title bouts, its 50/50 if I have ever even heard of the guys. I think the UFC markets their fighters better, we get to know them either through more exposure or shows like TUF. It invests you more emotionally. For example, outside of the Faber/Pulver fight, I have ever never got the adreneline rush that I do watching a WEC title bout like I do with the UFC title bouts.


The UFC has so much depth that they can put on a lot of shows. From 87, 88, the Fight Night, 89 and 90 all have 4-5 several good to great fights on paper and most of them even more. If they went down to 1 per month, all we would ever see is the top tier guys. Which of course would be great match ups but we would NEVER get to see the guys below them who turn into the future stars.

I dont think going from September to December is a good thing. So the WEC puts on a great show, great, we have to wait 3 months. Total momentum killer.


I think one reason that the UFC has got so big is due to the free shows. If you never let the casual fan, see the product, they will never go out and order a PPV. For example, if a casual fan is on the fence about ordering UFC 90, they get to watch UFC 89. Assume 89 is a pretty solid show, they promote A Silva, then the fan thinks, "hey maybe I should order the PPV next week."

The cost does get high...for the HD for me is $55. I split it with 2 friends, with my wife and their significant others, 6 people get 3 hours of entertainment. Thats cheaper than going to see a movie for 6 people. Add in probably $20 for snacks and youre at $75, plus, you can pause and you can converse more than at a movie theater.

If youre ordering it by yourself, it gets spendy for sure. But then you can just order the shows you REALLY REALLY want. then you get the free UFC's, Fight NIghts and TUF. So you probably get 8 shows plus 20+ episodes on TUF.


A few of the shows, like the proposed 91 card before Lesnar/Couture looked a little week but lets remember they never really announced the card and who was going to be on it, so there is a chance it might have not even got to the serious planning stages. With 5 weight classes, we will just about get a championship bout every card. then no title fights on an occasional card. Even this weekend, no title bout but Liddell/Evans has HUGE implications, Liddell wins he most likely gets a title shot. Plus there are several other great fights on the card.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Josh, you made some good points that I want to respond to so here goes.

1. This is the most important. Don't confuse depth with name recognition. There is a difference between the 2. The WEC has talent depth that doesn't have name recognition. Affliction has name recognition but not a lot of depth, and the UFC has a fair amount of both for what they're doing now.

2. On depth of the WEC. It is a mistake to compare the WEC to the UFC when it comes to determining depth. The UFC has been on PPV since 1993, it has been under Zuffa control since 2001 and has been on SpikeTV since 2005. The WEC has never been on PPV, has been under Zuffa control since December of 2006 and has been on Versus (a much lower profile network) since June of 2007. So all things considered I think what that promotion has been able to accomplish in really a short amount of time is remarkable. I think comparing it to the UFC which has had a head start and far better resources is comparing apples to oranges. A more fitting though still not perfect comparison would be comparing the WEC to EliteXC. EliteXC has 2 bankable stars in Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano and Kimbo's star is pretty much only viable if he keeps winning.

3. A lot of your arguments are valid from your point of view. The trouble is that when I wrote my original post explaining why the UFC is in serious danger of over-extending itself and watering down the market with shows, I didn't really consider your feelings on the subject. Please don't take that the wrong way, the fact is that I didn't really consider my feelings on the subject either.

We are not the people who are going to determine when enough is too much, to steal the words of Yogi Bear.

You are a knowledgeable fan. You read about what is happening in MMA online, and you come here and talk about it (and maybe other places as well) and you probably have a good idea of every match that is on Saturday's UFC show even if you couldn't list them all off the top of your head. I'm obviously in that same category at worst and realistically a category or 2 beyond that devoting much of my time to combat sports and a website on the subject.

But most of the people who will watch UFC 88 this weekend aren't going to know any of the fights on the show outside of the main event and any other that the UFC may happen to mention in a commercial for the show. As an example, I am looking forward to Martin Kampmann Vs. Nate Marquardt on Saturday, I think it will be a good fight and I'm turning in to a real fan of Kampmann. I'm also annoyed that Jason Lambert Vs. Jason MacDonald and Thiago Tavares Vs. Kurt Pellegrino are dark fights not guaranteed to make the air.

But for a vast majority of people who will watch that show on Saturday they have no idea those 3 fights are even going to take place, they won't know about the Kampmann Vs. Marquardt fight until they see it in the graphic or until the guys head to the Octagon and they'll have no idea on the other 2 fights unless they air.

The fact is, for most people it is main event or bust. The main event sells the show, it gets them interested and all of the other stuff all the other fights are things they have to sit through until GSP or Chuck Liddell show up.

So as the UFC 91 card became available, you and I might have said things like Florian Vs. Stevenson are going to put on a show, Gabriel Gonzaga is usually pretty interesting and on down the line. But if most people had looked at the headline fight and saw Brock Lesnar Vs. Cheick Kongo that would have been the end of that right there. So you telling me that you're impressed with the depth of the UFC shows now doesn't mean much because you know too much. In that sense, your knowledge works against you and again, I mean that as a compliment.


Let me try it another way. Do you remember how excited we all were when Fight Night 13 was being put together earlier this year for April 2? Remember how there was an outcry for the show to be 3 hours long because of all the good fights that wouldn't be able to air if it were only 2? Well, all of that talk meant nothing as the show did a 1.1 rating with an average audience of 1.3 million viewers (I looked it up because I couldn't remember off hand) and that is on the low end of what the SpikeTV specials have done, in fact I don't recall another UFC card doing a worse rating than that. So for all the depth we thought that show had and for all of the name fighters it supposedly contained, the rating was nothing special as compared to other cards. The hardcore ravings didn't mean much to the general public.

Here are the UFC's bankable stars, the guys who have a proven track record of moving business in the eyes of the casual fans: Chuck Liddell, Georges St. Pierre, Forrest Griffin, Quinton Jackson, B.J. Penn, Matt Hughes, Randy Couture, Rich Franklin and Brock Lesnar. Wanderlei Silva hasn't had to prove he's in that group yet as his fight against Jardine was the third most high-profile fight at UFC 84 and he fought Chuck Liddell on a show headlined by Hughes and GSP so how much he means is not clear. Anderson Silva isn't in this group yet, his March fight against Dan Henderson did one of the lowest buyrates of the year and if you take out the shows from England it did the lowest. Being on Spike helped his cause somewhat but we won't know to what extent until after numbers for the Cote fight come in.

So for the vast majority of the UFC audience the fact that they get to watch UFC 89 for free on Spike isn't going to make them any more likely to order UFC 90 the next week. In fact, it will probably satisfy them enough that they feel like they can skip UFC 90 and save their money for UFC 91 just a few weeks later. Even though I think UFC 90 will have a pretty good and entertaining card when all is said and done, it being sandwiched between a free show and a show with a huge main event is going to hurt the buyrate because most people are going to pick and choose and with a main event featuring Patrick Cote who may be a good fighter but means nothing to most people, that's the one that will get left out.

So even if you as a hardcore fan are willing to watch all of these shows even if guys from the above mentioned list are no where to be found, it doesn't mean much because there are more of the main event or bust types than there are of you.

Dave Meltzer has been chronicling the business side of MMA since the beginning of the UFC and also deals with the casual Vs. Hardcore question in both MMA and Pro Wrestling (MMA and Pro Wrestling are more similar than people who are fans of one, the other but not both would like to admit). here is a piece that Dave wrote looking at UFC's expansion plans for next year and the risks involved.

 

[JoshRas]

whew, lots of good points again. I guess depth/name recognition go hand in hand,. I probably dont get vested in a fighter until I have seen him at least once, and it would have to be something crazy like Houston Alexander destroying Jardine to get a fighter for me, up that quickly.

To me, as a hard core fan and a person willing to spend $300-$500 on PPV shows a year, the more the better. Only a couple of times have I felt that cards were looking thin. two off the top of my head were 72 and 85. I didnt even bother with 72 and 85 I watched at a bar. Im sure there might be one or two others in there but for the most part, I have felt very satisfied going into a card. Usually when my expectations are at their lowest, it turns into a great night and vice versa.

One thing that I helps the UFC is that its a big party/buddy sport. People get together with friends often and watch it and it turns into a social event. At least in my circle and I think boxing was probably like that in its hey day.

Another thing helping the UFC is it has very devoted fans. When I went to the weigh ins at 87, I was amazed how many people seemed to be as obsessed as I am. Then the crowd at the event was rabid and knowledgeable about the sport.

I think the sport/UFC is going more and more mainstream and moving away from being an event every month or so to a more consistent. Hell, if baseball can have a teams play 6 nights a week for 6 months, MMA can go every 3 weeks.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

This has been an interesting and fun discussion. I'm curious if anyone else has any thoughts.

The UFC is definitely a social gathering type of sport, I'm not sure if Boxing was back in the day but it was/to an extent still is for WWE. Actually, a lot of bars and stuff have stopped showing WWE events in favor of UFC events.

Want to know why?

It has nothing to do with being able to fill the venue or anything like that.

It is because people tend to buy more stuff (food and drinks) for UFC than WWE shows.

That has nothing to do with anything but is kind of amusing at least to me.

Depth and name recognition do go hand-in-hand but they are not so tied together that you can't have one without also having the other. If I sign Tito Ortiz, Frank Shamrock, Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano to my company and fill the rest of my promotion with people. I have name recognition but I don't necessarily have depth. If I take Urijah Faber, Jens pulver, Jose Aldo, Leonard Garcia, Mike Brown, Waggney Fabiano, Micah Miller and Josh Grispi, I have a featherweight division with a lot of depth even though to most people a majority of those fighters aren't well known. Making those fighters become names is part of the trick and that is one reason why I unlike many am in favor of the WEC cutting the Light Heavyweight and Middleweight classes out entirely.


Don't compare MMA to baseball. The baseball comparison (Dana White tries this one only he uses football instead which is even worse) falters because while Baseball teams do play 6 night's a week for 6 months or so (counting spring training to the post season it is March to October so probably 8 months) but after that it goes away for 4 straight months and you get nothing but news about transactions.
Plus, in baseball you're not being asked to plunk down $44.95 for a pay-per-view everytime you want to see Yankees-Red Sox or Cubs-Cardinals.

Look at the NFL draft. It does a big rating every year even though it involves no actual playing of football. Why? Because it comes 2 months after the last game was actually played and another 2 or 3 months before the next actual game is to be played. It stands out as a special event, if you move the draft to the week after the Super Bowl interest in it would take a serious, serious hit. Offseasons help build a longing for the next season, the NFL doesn't lose any momentum by taking February to August off.

The Olympics, think of how less important the Olympics would be if they all of a sudden decided to have them every year.

Ultimately, the laws of supply Vs. Demand can't be avoided. If you supply more than the market demands than the value of your product decreases. If you supply less than what the market demands then your product is worth more. Plus, as I said before when it comes to supplying a sport like MMA, the more talent you have to hire to fill out shows the more you have to reach to find talent. Not everyone can fight, and not everyone that can fight belongs in the UFC but as you expand the number of spots you need to fill you get guys that don't belong if for no other reason than that's all that's available. Get enough of the guys that don't belong and people will see it. And remember hardcore fans don't set the market because they're taken for granted as the group that is going to buy/watch no matter what. They wouldn't be hardcore fans if that weren't the case.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Weigh-in Results for UFC 88

The Parisyan Vs. Yoshida bout was canceled due to a late injury to Parisyan.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

WEC 36 has been postponed from Sept. 10 to Nov. 5 due to Hurricane Ike.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Just in time for UFC 88, I have updated the Power Rankings. You can find all 5 divisions listed here and the specific columns here

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

If you're interested my live UFC commentary is here

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

I've set up a feedback poll on UFC 88 which you can find here

I was completely surprised by the end of the Liddell-Evans fight. Only Chuck was caught more off guard with the abrupt finish than me.

 

[Mikah Cerucco]

The Liddell-Evans fight reiterated for me one of the many differences from Boxing. In Boxing, you get hit and go down, you have 10 seconds to recover from that. In MMA, you get hit, go down, and you have 205lbs of unleashed fury on top of you.

I can't say if I was greatly surprised, but it was definitely a "wow" ending.

I like Michael Bisping, but he looked way out of his league against Rich Franklin. Who knows why. Lack of skill? Jitterbugs?

I always enjoy seeing Dan Henderson, but the guy he was fight was built. His back muscles look like he could do 20 pull-ups straight. He also had interesting kicks, though they didn't do much damage here. I like guys who have that big lower base as opposed to having all the weight upper body, then scrawny legs.


My memory of Matt Brown is that he didn't live up to his hype on The Ultimate Fighter. He seems to have some skill, but also seems to leave a lot on the table. I heard them say how strong he is in escaping a standing guillotine, but at the same time, I see him do a lot of things that seem to indicate a lack of strength (he's quite easily taken down). Maybe it's not strength. Maybe it's balance. It may also be his fighter smarts. Again, I can't put my finger on it, but it seems he has a lot of opportunities in his fights to do x or y, but he waits until z presents itself, even if he loses the fight first. I could have also done without the homer audience boos which IMO supported Brown only because he's from the U.S. The guy who won deserved to win. Big Thumbs up to Joe Rogan for saying that he thought the guy won the decision. I've seen a lot of people have a lot negative to say about Rogan, but for my money, he's the best in the MMA business. He knows the fighters, knows the sport, and does a great job telling the audience what it needs to know.

Nate Marquardt is a beast. 'Nuff said.

 

[Andres Munoz]

Mikah, Rich Franklin fought Matt Hamill, not Michael Bisping. Bisping is the british dude who won the Ultimate Fighter (can't remember which season).

WOW, that Chuck Lidell knock-out was SICK! Chuck just dropped like a sack of potatoes. No need to ground and pound. I'm sorry to say this but I think Chuck might be done. He was on his way to the title but after losing like this...I don't know. I love the guy but he doesn't seem to be the guy he used to be. So who's next in line to fight Forrest? The "Rampage" rematch or Rashad Evans? With this win, Rashad HAS to be the #1 contender for the title right?

The Brazilian guy fighting Henderson is one tough motha'.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Micah, you need to go back and listen to Rogan again because he didn't say he thought Kim won the decision, he said he thought Matt Brown had won it.

Also, it was a bad night for Rogan because he also said that Rashad Evans knocked out Sean Sherk and he also forgot the day of the Brock Randy fight.

Andres, I wouldn't have given Rashad the next title shot based simply on him winning. Like if you told me before Saturday's fight that Rashad was going to win and get the next title shot, I wouldn't have agreed. But the way he won, may have helped his cause. I still think Machida and Jackson are probably ahead of him.

I wonder if it isn't time for Chuck to venture up to heavyweight. He's 38 years old, 39 in December. Cutting weight is never easy but I'm sure it gets harder with age.

 

[Andres Munoz]

Casey, don't you think Rashad deserves it just a little more than Machida, given the oponents he's beaten? But then again, I can't recall too well the ones Machida has beaten so you probably have a good point there.

 

[Mikah Cerucco]

I don't have it to go back and listen to, so I'll take your word on it. Going back probably wouldn't help anyway as I don't have perfect hearing. I did notice Rogan's error on the date, but IMO, that's a small error. I didn't really need him to tell me that anyway. What I more enjoy is his background on the fighters and his knowledge of MMA fighting.

Anyway, as it relates to Chuck, I have no problem saying his best days are behind him. Could he win another big fight? Sure. There's always a puncher's chance. But you don't see many boxers consistently excelling at Chuck's age for good reasons. Striking is Chuck's bread and butter.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Andres, sometimes it isn't about who you beat to get a title shot. Machida is hated, Forrest is loved...money.

However, sometimes how you win is even more important than who you beat and even more important than if you're loved or hated.

That's why...Dana White announced at the press conference last night that it would indeed be Rashad who gets the next shot at Forrest. If he had decisioned Liddell, I don't think he would've gotten it ahead of Jackson or Machida but with a highlight reel KO, that's what happens.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

UFC 88 Salaries

Don't feel too bad for Liddell, he made more than the next 3 highest paid fighters combined.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Evan Tanner, a former UFC Middleweight champion has been found dead at the age of 37.

 

[Andres Munoz]

Pretty shocking news about Tanner. RIP my man.

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

Affliction: Day of Reckoning = canceled

Apparently, the announcement that Ozzy Osbourne would be performing didn't increase ticket sales.