On his first day on the job as Bellator president, Scott Coker didn’t have a lot of answers, but he did provide some hints as to his mentality and changes that could be expected in what he called Bellator 2.0.
If you’re looking to know how Bellator’s direction will be changing with former Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker replacing Bjorn Rebney at the helm, the answer, like Scott Coker is prone to saying, is that it’s up for discussion and we’ll be better equipped to answer that question in a few weeks.
Without directly saying so during a conference call Wednesday evening, the overriding theme from Spike TV President Kevin Kay was that Bjorn Rebney’s vision of constant tournaments to create title contenders was no longer a direction they wanted to go. Scott Coker’s vision, which was to utilize more latitude when it came to matchmaking and talent, and constantly try to find fights that the public would want to see, was more effective going forward.
“As we move away from the tournament structure to a more traditional format, that’s where Scott comes in,” said Spike TV President Kevin Kay. “He’s an incredibly forward thinking sports executive.”
“My plan is to go from a tournament format to a more traditional format, to more of a superfight format,” said Coker, in his first day at his new job after what he described was a very quick negotiation period. “We will do tournaments when the situation makes sense. I think a tournament can make sense, but it has to be the right time and the fighters have to be right.
“The mission is to showcase the best and most exciting MMA fighters in the world and a have a place where advertisers will be proud to be along with us.”
“As Bjorn put it in his comments, this is a discussion we’ve been having of tournaments vs. a different way of going,” said Kay. “When Scott became available, this was the right time to do it.”
“The job is very clear, it is to put the big fights on Spike TV and move the needle as best as we can,” said Coker.
Coker did say that using talent not under contract, and working with other organizations, like he did with Japanese groups while running Strikeforce would likely be part of his battle plan going forward.
“If we can put a fight together that makes sense and that can move the needle on Spike TV, we’re going to do it,” he said. “Some of the fighters we had in the past we didn’t have ownership of.”
Neither Coker nor Kay would commit regarding the pay-per-view aspect of the business, but both felt the company’s debut event on May 17 in Southhaven, Miss., was a successful building block.
“I’ll stand by that 100,000 number (of buys), and tell you that is a dead on accurate number,” said Kay.
Coker, whose contract with Zuffa and non-compete clause as a promoter ended in March, said one of the reasons he didn’t have a lot of definitive answers is because this all came together so quickly.
“I got a call from Kevin very recently,” said Coker. “We sat down and talked. When I look at Bellator, they have a great team in place, great fighters, great TV platform. There is a commitment to MMA at Viacom. This might be a good place to reboot, to start Bellator 2.0. That was really it. The commitment they had made me feel like I should go for it. This has been a martial arts journey for me. I spent my whole life dedicated to martial arts, doing martial arts, teaching martial arts, and promoting martial arts. I did miss it. My golf game improved, but retirement is overrated and keep that in mind. I loved what I did. This is my 31st year in the business.”
But even on the first day on the job, there is drama, as the fighter most responsible for that number, Rampage Jackson, was talking retirement hours earlier.
“I did read the comments,” said Coker about what Jackson said. “I know we’ll be reaching out to his management and having conversations in the very near future. Quinton has been a legend in the sport and we’d like to work out the kinks in that deal and whatever the issues are, and I’m sure we’ll be able to do that.”
Coker hinted that he’d prefer a deal to be able to build more loaded shows than having the pressure of churning out weekly shows during a season, which was the Bellator format under Rebney.
“I’m not sure I can answer that right now,” said Coker. “To me, my vision is more continuity. Maybe not every week, but build big superfights, As far as the season, I think it should be a year-round sport. It shouldn’t have a season, but that’s something I have to sit down with Kevin and Bellator. I’ll have a better understanding tomorrow.”
But Kay noted, for now, that the plan is to run on July 25, and then start the fall season with weekly Friday night shows starting Sept. 5.
Coker a few times mentioned his life’s journey, which started out working backstage on martial arts shows in his home city of San Jose, Calif., in 1984. He started promoting, coming up with the name Strikeforce, the next year, and continued to promote through 2011. Over the next two years, he had a run as essentially a figurehead in the Zuffa machine in the latter stages of the Strikeforce brand.
Back in the 90s, he started taping long shows that were edited down for multiple taped television shows on ESPN. He then moved to MMA in 2006, and became the most successful live event promoter in the U.S., outside of the UFC, and turning his home town into the No. 2 MMA live event city besides Las Vegas.
He’s learned a lot of lessons over those decades, and if there was something substantial stated, it was that his role is to find talent, and make them into stars, and not all fighters, even if they can win a lot of fights, are going to be stars. Coker was fortunate when he started MMA that he had two city residents, Frank Shamrock, a former UFC champion and an incredible self promoter, and Cung Le, a uniquely skilled ethnic hero to the Vietnamese and Asian community, that Coker had groomed for a decade, to build around. There was also a steady stream of talent that area gyms were turning out during that period like The Diaz Brothers, Gilbert Melendez, Daniel Cormier, Josh Thomson, Scott Smith, Luke Rockhold and Jake Shields.
“I look at the MMA industry now, and there’s a lot of fights out there,” said Coker. “I’ll tell you what, when we were starting Strikeforce, you had Pride, the IFL, Affliction, Elite XC, there was a lot of product out there. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It comes down to the fighters, and that’s what we’re going to develop, world class fighters and put those fights on TV. We had a great platform with Showtime. The platform here is in three or four times as many homes. This is a star building business. It’s not just about the league, it’s about building stars and making fights that you want to see, building fights that move the needle. Not all fighters move the needle, and we’ll do the best to move the needle for the network.”
On his first day on the job as Bellator president, Scott Coker didn’t have a lot of answers, but he did provide some hints as to his mentality and changes that could be expected in what he called Bellator 2.0.
If you’re looking to know how Bellator’s direction will be changing with former Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker replacing Bjorn Rebney at the helm, the answer, like Scott Coker is prone to saying, is that it’s up for discussion and we’ll be better equipped to answer that question in a few weeks.
Without directly saying so during a conference call Wednesday evening, the overriding theme from Spike TV President Kevin Kay was that Bjorn Rebney’s vision of constant tournaments to create title contenders was no longer a direction they wanted to go. Scott Coker’s vision, which was to utilize more latitude when it came to matchmaking and talent, and constantly try to find fights that the public would want to see, was more effective going forward.
“As we move away from the tournament structure to a more traditional format, that’s where Scott comes in,” said Spike TV President Kevin Kay. “He’s an incredibly forward thinking sports executive.”
“My plan is to go from a tournament format to a more traditional format, to more of a superfight format,” said Coker, in his first day at his new job after what he described was a very quick negotiation period. “We will do tournaments when the situation makes sense. I think a tournament can make sense, but it has to be the right time and the fighters have to be right.
“The mission is to showcase the best and most exciting MMA fighters in the world and a have a place where advertisers will be proud to be along with us.”
“As Bjorn put it in his comments, this is a discussion we’ve been having of tournaments vs. a different way of going,” said Kay. “When Scott became available, this was the right time to do it.”
“The job is very clear, it is to put the big fights on Spike TV and move the needle as best as we can,” said Coker.
Coker did say that using talent not under contract, and working with other organizations, like he did with Japanese groups while running Strikeforce would likely be part of his battle plan going forward.
“If we can put a fight together that makes sense and that can move the needle on Spike TV, we’re going to do it,” he said. “Some of the fighters we had in the past we didn’t have ownership of.”
Neither Coker nor Kay would commit regarding the pay-per-view aspect of the business, but both felt the company’s debut event on May 17 in Southhaven, Miss., was a successful building block.
“I’ll stand by that 100,000 number (of buys), and tell you that is a dead on accurate number,” said Kay.
Coker, whose contract with Zuffa and non-compete clause as a promoter ended in March, said one of the reasons he didn’t have a lot of definitive answers is because this all came together so quickly.
“I got a call from Kevin very recently,” said Coker. “We sat down and talked. When I look at Bellator, they have a great team in place, great fighters, great TV platform. There is a commitment to MMA at Viacom. This might be a good place to reboot, to start Bellator 2.0. That was really it. The commitment they had made me feel like I should go for it. This has been a martial arts journey for me. I spent my whole life dedicated to martial arts, doing martial arts, teaching martial arts, and promoting martial arts. I did miss it. My golf game improved, but retirement is overrated and keep that in mind. I loved what I did. This is my 31st year in the business.”
But even on the first day on the job, there is drama, as the fighter most responsible for that number, Rampage Jackson, was talking retirement hours earlier.
“I did read the comments,” said Coker about what Jackson said. “I know we’ll be reaching out to his management and having conversations in the very near future. Quinton has been a legend in the sport and we’d like to work out the kinks in that deal and whatever the issues are, and I’m sure we’ll be able to do that.”
Coker hinted that he’d prefer a deal to be able to build more loaded shows than having the pressure of churning out weekly shows during a season, which was the Bellator format under Rebney.
“I’m not sure I can answer that right now,” said Coker. “To me, my vision is more continuity. Maybe not every week, but build big superfights, As far as the season, I think it should be a year-round sport. It shouldn’t have a season, but that’s something I have to sit down with Kevin and Bellator. I’ll have a better understanding tomorrow.”
But Kay noted, for now, that the plan is to run on July 25, and then start the fall season with weekly Friday night shows starting Sept. 5.
Coker a few times mentioned his life’s journey, which started out working backstage on martial arts shows in his home city of San Jose, Calif., in 1984. He started promoting, coming up with the name Strikeforce, the next year, and continued to promote through 2011. Over the next two years, he had a run as essentially a figurehead in the Zuffa machine in the latter stages of the Strikeforce brand.
Back in the 90s, he started taping long shows that were edited down for multiple taped television shows on ESPN. He then moved to MMA in 2006, and became the most successful live event promoter in the U.S., outside of the UFC, and turning his home town into the No. 2 MMA live event city besides Las Vegas.
He’s learned a lot of lessons over those decades, and if there was something substantial stated, it was that his role is to find talent, and make them into stars, and not all fighters, even if they can win a lot of fights, are going to be stars. Coker was fortunate when he started MMA that he had two city residents, Frank Shamrock, a former UFC champion and an incredible self promoter, and Cung Le, a uniquely skilled ethnic hero to the Vietnamese and Asian community, that Coker had groomed for a decade, to build around. There was also a steady stream of talent that area gyms were turning out during that period like The Diaz Brothers, Gilbert Melendez, Daniel Cormier, Josh Thomson, Scott Smith, Luke Rockhold and Jake Shields.
“I look at the MMA industry now, and there’s a lot of fights out there,” said Coker. “I’ll tell you what, when we were starting Strikeforce, you had Pride, the IFL, Affliction, Elite XC, there was a lot of product out there. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It comes down to the fighters, and that’s what we’re going to develop, world class fighters and put those fights on TV. We had a great platform with Showtime. The platform here is in three or four times as many homes. This is a star building business. It’s not just about the league, it’s about building stars and making fights that you want to see, building fights that move the needle. Not all fighters move the needle, and we’ll do the best to move the needle for the network.”
UFC 173, which featured T.J. Dillashaw’s upset bantamweight title win over Renan Barao, is estimated at doing between 200,000 and 215,000 buys on pay-per-view based on a variety of independent sources.
The number is about what would have been expected given the industry trends and neither main event fighter having strong name recognition. Most likely, the co-main event, where Daniel Cormier submitted Dan Henderson to put himself into the light heavyweight title mix, had the most interest of any fight coming into the show.
With the plethora of free UFC televised events, the consistently large pay-per-view numbers from the mid-2006 to 2010 period are only going to be hit when the public sees an event as major. Now more than ever, the biggest shows have remained strong, but shows without a strong main event or deep card, are seeing people pick and choose. The 200,000 to 230,000 range is where the featherweight and bantamweight title matches, as well as some lightweight title matches, have been doing over the last two years when they are the singular headlining fight.
While no numbers are available at press time, the most recent pay-per-view, UFC 174, held this past Saturday with Demetrious Johnson’s flyweight title defense against Ali Bagautinov, would be a shock to even hit the UFC 173 numbers. The show had far too much working against it, with a completely unknown challenger, and being three weeks before the year’s biggest event.
With a double headliner of Chris Weidman’s middleweight title defense against Lyoto Machida and Ronda Rousey’s women’s bantamweight title defense against Alexis Davis, UFC 175, on July 5, in Las Vegas, would be expected to be the biggest pay-per-view event so far this year. It has the advantage of two title matches with champions who have done well on pay-per-view, and a strong holiday weekend date. But it would not be expected to hit the kind of numbers UFC 168, which also featured title defenses by Weidman and Rousey, did. That show topped 1 million buys, but Weidman’s defense was against former champion Anderson Silva, and Rousey’s was against arch-rival Miesha Tate, built up by a strong season of The Ultimate Fighter.
The only other show announced for this year that is likely to do major numbers would be the Sept. 27, show headlined by a Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson rematch. Their first meeting is believed to have cracked the 300,000 mark. At that time, Gustafsson was not expected to have much of a chance with Jones, who had been almost untouched as champion. Instead, it was the consensus best light heavyweight title fight in history. Jones won a decision in a fight that led to plenty of debate over who should have taken the decision. The result was Gustafsson’s star rose appreciably even in losing. It wouldn’t be a shock for the rematch to double what the first match did.
The prelims for UFC 174, moved to FX from its usual home on FS 1, did a 0.64 rating and 784,000 viewers. The number was up from the 0.53 rating and 697,000 viewers for the prelims before UFC 173, but a direct comparison is misleading. FX is a far higher rated station overall than FS 1, and is also available in about nine million more households. On the flip side, any station move for a regular show, even to a higher rated station, is going to cost some viewers.
Last week’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter, airing on June 11, did 445,000 viewers on that night, and another 288,000 viewers via DVR viewership between June 12 and June 14. The number is along the lines of the current season average of 476,000 viewers for the Wednesday night premieres on FS 1, and 284,000 viewers via DVR of the first episode over the next three days.
The numbers don’t include any numbers from the repeat airings of the show.
All ratings numbers are courtesy of A.C. Neilsen research.
UFC 173, which featured T.J. Dillashaw’s upset bantamweight title win over Renan Barao, is estimated at doing between 200,000 and 215,000 buys on pay-per-view based on a variety of independent sources.
The number is about what would have been expected given the industry trends and neither main event fighter having strong name recognition. Most likely, the co-main event, where Daniel Cormier submitted Dan Henderson to put himself into the light heavyweight title mix, had the most interest of any fight coming into the show.
With the plethora of free UFC televised events, the consistently large pay-per-view numbers from the mid-2006 to 2010 period are only going to be hit when the public sees an event as major. Now more than ever, the biggest shows have remained strong, but shows without a strong main event or deep card, are seeing people pick and choose. The 200,000 to 230,000 range is where the featherweight and bantamweight title matches, as well as some lightweight title matches, have been doing over the last two years when they are the singular headlining fight.
While no numbers are available at press time, the most recent pay-per-view, UFC 174, held this past Saturday with Demetrious Johnson’s flyweight title defense against Ali Bagautinov, would be a shock to even hit the UFC 173 numbers. The show had far too much working against it, with a completely unknown challenger, and being three weeks before the year’s biggest event.
With a double headliner of Chris Weidman’s middleweight title defense against Lyoto Machida and Ronda Rousey’s women’s bantamweight title defense against Alexis Davis, UFC 175, on July 5, in Las Vegas, would be expected to be the biggest pay-per-view event so far this year. It has the advantage of two title matches with champions who have done well on pay-per-view, and a strong holiday weekend date. But it would not be expected to hit the kind of numbers UFC 168, which also featured title defenses by Weidman and Rousey, did. That show topped 1 million buys, but Weidman’s defense was against former champion Anderson Silva, and Rousey’s was against arch-rival Miesha Tate, built up by a strong season of The Ultimate Fighter.
The only other show announced for this year that is likely to do major numbers would be the Sept. 27, show headlined by a Jon Jones vs. Alexander Gustafsson rematch. Their first meeting is believed to have cracked the 300,000 mark. At that time, Gustafsson was not expected to have much of a chance with Jones, who had been almost untouched as champion. Instead, it was the consensus best light heavyweight title fight in history. Jones won a decision in a fight that led to plenty of debate over who should have taken the decision. The result was Gustafsson’s star rose appreciably even in losing. It wouldn’t be a shock for the rematch to double what the first match did.
The prelims for UFC 174, moved to FX from its usual home on FS 1, did a 0.64 rating and 784,000 viewers. The number was up from the 0.53 rating and 697,000 viewers for the prelims before UFC 173, but a direct comparison is misleading. FX is a far higher rated station overall than FS 1, and is also available in about nine million more households. On the flip side, any station move for a regular show, even to a higher rated station, is going to cost some viewers.
Last week’s episode of The Ultimate Fighter, airing on June 11, did 445,000 viewers on that night, and another 288,000 viewers via DVR viewership between June 12 and June 14. The number is along the lines of the current season average of 476,000 viewers for the Wednesday night premieres on FS 1, and 284,000 viewers via DVR of the first episode over the next three days.
The numbers don’t include any numbers from the repeat airings of the show.
All ratings numbers are courtesy of A.C. Neilsen research.
While winners Demetrious Johnson and Rory MacDonald are clearly top-of-the-line fighters, UFC 174 overall was the rare case of a UFC pay-per-view show that had little interest going on, and when it was over, gave viewers who skipped the show little reason to second guess that decision.
UFC 174 had a lot working against it when it came to public interest.
It was three weeks since the last UFC pay-per-view. It’s another three weeks before the biggest show of the year.
From a marquee standpoint, Ali Bagautinov, who was the challenger for the flyweight title in the main event, was probably the least known headliner on a pay-per-view show in the modern era. Champion Demetrious Johnson had never drawn on pay-per-view on his own. There were no major stars on the undercard. It could be easily argued that the most well-known fighter on the card was Andrei Arlovski, who hadn’t fought in UFC in six years.
Dana White likes to say that you can’t judge a show until after it happens. The problem with that is on a pay-per-view show in particular, when spending significant money to see the show is involved, people judge whether they are going to buy it or not before. But very often, these type of shows deliver. You only have to go back to UFC 173 for a show with a main event with little star power that delivered an unexpected title change and the end of one of the most impressive streaks in MMA history. When that show was over, whether you were excited coming in for the show, there was plenty of excitement coming out.
Saturday night in Vancouver had none of that. The main card had either one-sided fights, or a close fight where the first two rounds resembled an extended intermission. And that fight ended up as the latest in the weekly frustration of current MMA scoring.
Johnson’s combination of speed, conditioning and technical brilliance did open up questions as to where he stood in the mythical pound-for-pound rankings. He’s currently ranked No. 4 in the UFC ratings, behind Jon Jones, Jose Aldo and Cain Velasquez. But fans were leaving the Rogers Arena while a title fight was taking place, something that almost never happens at a UFC event. That speaks volumes.
Even scarier was the measurable public apathy. The night of a UFC pay-per-view show, UFC Google searches generally range from 200,000 to 500,000. A weaker show may fall under the 200,000 mark and a big show will top 500,000, and sometimes even hit a couple of million when you have the pay-per-view shows that flirt with the 1 million buy level.
Last month’s Bellator show topped 100,000 buys. UFC 174 didn’t register on Saturday, and the lowest registering searched for item was 20,000 searches. That is an unheard of level for a pay-per-view event. Basically that means few cared coming in, and nothing that happened on the show when word got out made them care any more. It would not be a surprise for this to wind up as the least purchased UFC pay-per-view event since the company exploded in popularity in 2006. And if it’s not, it would be a shock for it not to be at least close to the bottom level.
The UFC, in running so often, has become very patterned since you pretty much have to be when there are constant shows. The advertising is almost always based on the title fight if there is one on the show. In almost every case, the title fight is the most important. On this show, to the live crowd, the main event was Rory MacDonald vs Tyron Woodley, but that’s also because MacDonald was a native of British Columbia.
The co-main event, a key fight is the deep welterweight division, wasn’t strong enough from a marquee standpoint to pick up the slack as far as selling the show to a mainstream audience.
But the key thing to take out of Saturday was that MacDonald came across like a bonafide star. He looked so good against Woodley, in dominating him standing for three rounds, that he had to open up questions as whether he deserves the next welterweight title shot, and if he’s the best guy right now in the division.
The winner of the Robbie Lawler vs. Matt Brown fight is in line to face Johny Hendricks in the fall. If by some remote chance the two stink up the joint in a fight, which given who we are talking about is not something you should bet on, or if the winner gets hurt, which can happen, MacDonald is completely viable as the next title contender. And if not, he should be no more than one more win away.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen judging decisions that make you shake your head like Rampage Jackson over King Mo Lawal and Will Brooks over Michael Chandler on the May 17 Bellator show. And then there was last week’s Ross Pearson vs. Diego Sanchez decision that simply defies any logic. In all three cases, those decisions were on the judges and not the system.
With Arlovski vs. Brendan Schaub, it was the textbook case of the main flaws of the ten point must as it’s currently used.
The first two rounds had little action, so much so that I thought you could easily call them both 10-10 rounds. While a 10-10 round is allowed, judges are strongly encouraged never to use it. Having spoken to judges on many occasions, even when they feel a 10-10 round is warranted, the pressure is strong that they will almost always pick a winner. In my own mind, I’d have liked to have scored the fight 30-29 for Schaub with two 10-10 rounds, but given the way fights are scored, I had it 30-27, but was very aware in coin-flip rounds like one and two, it was possible to go with Arlovski in one or both and he could win.
In round one, both men landed five significant strikes. Schaub had a 10-6 edge in significant strikes in round two, but none of those strikes were all that significant. Round three was Schaub all the way, and not close. For the fight as a whole, Schaub was the easy winner, which is why people were in disbelief when Arlovski’s hand was raised. Judges Sal D’Amato and David Therien scored the close rounds for Arlovski, and the nature of the scoring meant that overrode the one-sided Schaub round, where he had a 15-1 edge in significant strikes.
As long as we have this system, we will have fights like this.
Let’s look at how Fortunes Changed for Five stars of Saturday night’s show:
DEMETRIOUS JOHNSON – The only flyweight champion in UFC history put on a performance that may have been lost on a lot of fans, but wasn’t on insiders. Most expect his next opponent to be John Dodson (17-6), who knocked him down twice and won two of five rounds in their Jan. 26, 2013, meeting. Dodson does have the power to end a fight, but Johnson (20-2-1) is technically at another level and feels like he’s improved more of the two since the first meeting.
But Dodson finished John Moraga and is the logical contender. Johnson made it clear he wouldn’t turn down the challenge, but didn’t seem excited by the prospect of it either.
“Obviously, it’s up to the UFC,” he said. “Sean Shelby and Joe Silva do a great job matchmaking. They found Ali Bagautinov out of Russia. There are a lot of challengers I need to fight. There’s a guy in the division with a win over me and Zach Makovsky. I’m looking for new challenges.”
The former is Brad Pickett (24-8), who beat Johnson via decision in 2010 when both were bantamweights. But Johnson is 27 and is a very different fighter than he was four years ago. Pickett is 35. Pickett didn’t look like a title threat in his flyweight debut, a win over Neil Seery. But Pickett can prove that wrong with a win over Ian McCall on July 19 in Dublin, Ireland. Makovsky (18-4) would be in the mix with a win over Jussier Formiga on Aug. 2 in Los Angeles.
What nobody after the fight brought up was Johnson, who seems to be a step above the rest of the division, moving up to face T.J. Dillashaw, the new bantamweight champion. It’s early for Dillashaw, who has contenders in his own division. Johnson dropped a good deal of muscle to move down, but he was a good enough bantamweight to challenge for the title years ago. Another shot, when he’s now clearly in his prime, looks to be his biggest potential challenge.
RORY MACDONALD – Ever since MacDonald, at, 20, beat Carlos Condit for two rounds before tiring and losing, there has been talk of him as the heir apparent in the welterweight division. Because he moved to Montreal to train at the Tristar Gym, the home of Georges St-Pierre, it led to labeling him the heir apparent.
Now 24, the moniker has been a curse, in that while people know who he is, any kind of stumble labeled him as overhyped, given the comparison to one of the greatest in the sport’s history.
But Saturday, MacDonald (17-2) showed the form teased when he blitzed an undersized B.J. Penn. With GSP out of action, and with no certainty he’ll return, MacDonald is carrying the mantle for the country of Canada as its new biggest star. It’s unfair to expect him to equal what GSP did inside the cage, and even more how GSP made Canada for several years the per capita strongest country in the world for UFC. But Saturday proved him as a major player.
Barring an injury to the Lawler-Brown winner, MacDonald looks one fight away from a title shot. The way the division shakes out, the only logical next opponent except champion Johny Hendricks, would be the winner of the Aug. 23 fight with Hector Lombard (34-4-1) vs. Dong Hyun Kim (19-2-1)
TYRON WOODLEY – After an impressive performance against Carlos Condit, there was significant talk of a rematch of the 2005 Big-12 championship match of Woodley vs. Johny Hendricks as a UFC world title match.
Hendricks won that one. But today, that seems a long ways away. Woodley (13-3) suffered a double whammy loss.
Not only did he lose his spot in the title chase, but lost in a manner where it will take a number of strong performances to rehab him.
As the division is shaking out, there are the have’s, which will be Hendricks, the Lawler vs. Brown winner, MacDonald, and the Lombard vs. Kim winner. With Condit out, this will put Woodley looking likely at either the Brown-Lawler loser, the Lombard vs. Kim loser, Jake Ellenberger or Demian Maia in step one of what is likely to be a long road back to where he just was.
RYAN BADER – Bader (17-4) mixed up his striking and wrestling in almost walking through a lethargic Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante, winning an easy 30-27 decision. The former Ultimate Fighter winner remains a fighter who is good enough to beat almost everyone, except the top level guys.
There was some impromptu matchmaking going on at the press conference where Bader and Ovince St. Preux (16-5), who stopped Ryan Jimmo, agreed to a fight. Bader came in ranked No. 9, and St. Preux was No. 12. St. Preux will move up with his win. It’s a good fight for St. Preux to break into the top ten. For Bader, the best opponent to try and challenge would be Phil Davis (12-2), since that would be his best bet to get closer to a top five ranking. But St. Preux, Davis and Jimi Manuwa (14-1) all look to make the most sense as Bader’s next opponent.
Given the usual UFC matchmaking of putting winners against guys coming off a win, with Davis and Manuwa coming off losses, that puts St. Preux as the favorite.
ANDREI ARLOVSKI – From 2003 to 2005, Arlovski was one of the most feared heavyweights in the game. He combined a submission game from sambo, excellent takedown defense and strong boxing to dominate what was a very weak crop of UFC heavyweights.
Arlovski (22-10, 1 no contest) was never the same after a shocking title loss to Tim Sylvia in 2006, a fight he was on the verge of winning in the first round, when he caught a shot and it was lights out. Since then, he’s fought more cautious, and has never regained his prior form. At one point, he lost four in a row, and was knocked out in three of them. He has yet to live down the glass jaw moniker, but it’s been nine fights since the last time he was finished.
His return to UFC at the age of 35 gives the company someone who older fans recognize. He was winning on smaller shows in recent, going 7-1 with 1 no contest since a knockout loss to Sergei Kharitonov in the Strikeforce Grand Prix.
He was cautious, and never hurt Schaub once. It’s hard to take his latest win seriously and there were no flashes of the old Arlovski to cling to in the fight. There are fights that could be made as almost nostalgia fights from another era with the likes of Frank Mir, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira or Gabriel Gonzaga. But all are largely fights to see who people will start talking about how the loser should retire. Arlovski seemingly guaranteed himself a second fight in UFC, and probably against someone with a name. If he doesn’t perform a lot better in that one, the nostalgia return may be over.
While winners Demetrious Johnson and Rory MacDonald are clearly top-of-the-line fighters, UFC 174 overall was the rare case of a UFC pay-per-view show that had little interest going on, and when it was over, gave viewers who skipped the show little reason to second guess that decision.
UFC 174 had a lot working against it when it came to public interest.
It was three weeks since the last UFC pay-per-view. It’s another three weeks before the biggest show of the year.
From a marquee standpoint, Ali Bagautinov, who was the challenger for the flyweight title in the main event, was probably the least known headliner on a pay-per-view show in the modern era. Champion Demetrious Johnson had never drawn on pay-per-view on his own. There were no major stars on the undercard. It could be easily argued that the most well-known fighter on the card was Andrei Arlovski, who hadn’t fought in UFC in six years.
Dana White likes to say that you can’t judge a show until after it happens. The problem with that is on a pay-per-view show in particular, when spending significant money to see the show is involved, people judge whether they are going to buy it or not before. But very often, these type of shows deliver. You only have to go back to UFC 173 for a show with a main event with little star power that delivered an unexpected title change and the end of one of the most impressive streaks in MMA history. When that show was over, whether you were excited coming in for the show, there was plenty of excitement coming out.
Saturday night in Vancouver had none of that. The main card had either one-sided fights, or a close fight where the first two rounds resembled an extended intermission. And that fight ended up as the latest in the weekly frustration of current MMA scoring.
Johnson’s combination of speed, conditioning and technical brilliance did open up questions as to where he stood in the mythical pound-for-pound rankings. He’s currently ranked No. 4 in the UFC ratings, behind Jon Jones, Jose Aldo and Cain Velasquez. But fans were leaving the Rogers Arena while a title fight was taking place, something that almost never happens at a UFC event. That speaks volumes.
Even scarier was the measurable public apathy. The night of a UFC pay-per-view show, UFC Google searches generally range from 200,000 to 500,000. A weaker show may fall under the 200,000 mark and a big show will top 500,000, and sometimes even hit a couple of million when you have the pay-per-view shows that flirt with the 1 million buy level.
Last month’s Bellator show topped 100,000 buys. UFC 174 didn’t register on Saturday, and the lowest registering searched for item was 20,000 searches. That is an unheard of level for a pay-per-view event. Basically that means few cared coming in, and nothing that happened on the show when word got out made them care any more. It would not be a surprise for this to wind up as the least purchased UFC pay-per-view event since the company exploded in popularity in 2006. And if it’s not, it would be a shock for it not to be at least close to the bottom level.
The UFC, in running so often, has become very patterned since you pretty much have to be when there are constant shows. The advertising is almost always based on the title fight if there is one on the show. In almost every case, the title fight is the most important. On this show, to the live crowd, the main event was Rory MacDonald vs Tyron Woodley, but that’s also because MacDonald was a native of British Columbia.
The co-main event, a key fight is the deep welterweight division, wasn’t strong enough from a marquee standpoint to pick up the slack as far as selling the show to a mainstream audience.
But the key thing to take out of Saturday was that MacDonald came across like a bonafide star. He looked so good against Woodley, in dominating him standing for three rounds, that he had to open up questions as whether he deserves the next welterweight title shot, and if he’s the best guy right now in the division.
The winner of the Robbie Lawler vs. Matt Brown fight is in line to face Johny Hendricks in the fall. If by some remote chance the two stink up the joint in a fight, which given who we are talking about is not something you should bet on, or if the winner gets hurt, which can happen, MacDonald is completely viable as the next title contender. And if not, he should be no more than one more win away.
In recent weeks, we’ve seen judging decisions that make you shake your head like Rampage Jackson over King Mo Lawal and Will Brooks over Michael Chandler on the May 17 Bellator show. And then there was last week’s Ross Pearson vs. Diego Sanchez decision that simply defies any logic. In all three cases, those decisions were on the judges and not the system.
With Arlovski vs. Brendan Schaub, it was the textbook case of the main flaws of the ten point must as it’s currently used.
The first two rounds had little action, so much so that I thought you could easily call them both 10-10 rounds. While a 10-10 round is allowed, judges are strongly encouraged never to use it. Having spoken to judges on many occasions, even when they feel a 10-10 round is warranted, the pressure is strong that they will almost always pick a winner. In my own mind, I’d have liked to have scored the fight 30-29 for Schaub with two 10-10 rounds, but given the way fights are scored, I had it 30-27, but was very aware in coin-flip rounds like one and two, it was possible to go with Arlovski in one or both and he could win.
In round one, both men landed five significant strikes. Schaub had a 10-6 edge in significant strikes in round two, but none of those strikes were all that significant. Round three was Schaub all the way, and not close. For the fight as a whole, Schaub was the easy winner, which is why people were in disbelief when Arlovski’s hand was raised. Judges Sal D’Amato and David Therien scored the close rounds for Arlovski, and the nature of the scoring meant that overrode the one-sided Schaub round, where he had a 15-1 edge in significant strikes.
As long as we have this system, we will have fights like this.
Let’s look at how Fortunes Changed for Five stars of Saturday night’s show:
DEMETRIOUS JOHNSON – The only flyweight champion in UFC history put on a performance that may have been lost on a lot of fans, but wasn’t on insiders. Most expect his next opponent to be John Dodson (17-6), who knocked him down twice and won two of five rounds in their Jan. 26, 2013, meeting. Dodson does have the power to end a fight, but Johnson (20-2-1) is technically at another level and feels like he’s improved more of the two since the first meeting.
But Dodson finished John Moraga and is the logical contender. Johnson made it clear he wouldn’t turn down the challenge, but didn’t seem excited by the prospect of it either.
“Obviously, it’s up to the UFC,” he said. “Sean Shelby and Joe Silva do a great job matchmaking. They found Ali Bagautinov out of Russia. There are a lot of challengers I need to fight. There’s a guy in the division with a win over me and Zach Makovsky. I’m looking for new challenges.”
The former is Brad Pickett (24-8), who beat Johnson via decision in 2010 when both were bantamweights. But Johnson is 27 and is a very different fighter than he was four years ago. Pickett is 35. Pickett didn’t look like a title threat in his flyweight debut, a win over Neil Seery. But Pickett can prove that wrong with a win over Ian McCall on July 19 in Dublin, Ireland. Makovsky (18-4) would be in the mix with a win over Jussier Formiga on Aug. 2 in Los Angeles.
What nobody after the fight brought up was Johnson, who seems to be a step above the rest of the division, moving up to face T.J. Dillashaw, the new bantamweight champion. It’s early for Dillashaw, who has contenders in his own division. Johnson dropped a good deal of muscle to move down, but he was a good enough bantamweight to challenge for the title years ago. Another shot, when he’s now clearly in his prime, looks to be his biggest potential challenge.
RORY MACDONALD – Ever since MacDonald, at, 20, beat Carlos Condit for two rounds before tiring and losing, there has been talk of him as the heir apparent in the welterweight division. Because he moved to Montreal to train at the Tristar Gym, the home of Georges St-Pierre, it led to labeling him the heir apparent.
Now 24, the moniker has been a curse, in that while people know who he is, any kind of stumble labeled him as overhyped, given the comparison to one of the greatest in the sport’s history.
But Saturday, MacDonald (17-2) showed the form teased when he blitzed an undersized B.J. Penn. With GSP out of action, and with no certainty he’ll return, MacDonald is carrying the mantle for the country of Canada as its new biggest star. It’s unfair to expect him to equal what GSP did inside the cage, and even more how GSP made Canada for several years the per capita strongest country in the world for UFC. But Saturday proved him as a major player.
Barring an injury to the Lawler-Brown winner, MacDonald looks one fight away from a title shot. The way the division shakes out, the only logical next opponent except champion Johny Hendricks, would be the winner of the Aug. 23 fight with Hector Lombard (34-4-1) vs. Dong Hyun Kim (19-2-1)
TYRON WOODLEY – After an impressive performance against Carlos Condit, there was significant talk of a rematch of the 2005 Big-12 championship match of Woodley vs. Johny Hendricks as a UFC world title match.
Hendricks won that one. But today, that seems a long ways away. Woodley (13-3) suffered a double whammy loss.
Not only did he lose his spot in the title chase, but lost in a manner where it will take a number of strong performances to rehab him.
As the division is shaking out, there are the have’s, which will be Hendricks, the Lawler vs. Brown winner, MacDonald, and the Lombard vs. Kim winner. With Condit out, this will put Woodley looking likely at either the Brown-Lawler loser, the Lombard vs. Kim loser, Jake Ellenberger or Demian Maia in step one of what is likely to be a long road back to where he just was.
RYAN BADER – Bader (17-4) mixed up his striking and wrestling in almost walking through a lethargic Rafael “Feijao” Cavalcante, winning an easy 30-27 decision. The former Ultimate Fighter winner remains a fighter who is good enough to beat almost everyone, except the top level guys.
There was some impromptu matchmaking going on at the press conference where Bader and Ovince St. Preux (16-5), who stopped Ryan Jimmo, agreed to a fight. Bader came in ranked No. 9, and St. Preux was No. 12. St. Preux will move up with his win. It’s a good fight for St. Preux to break into the top ten. For Bader, the best opponent to try and challenge would be Phil Davis (12-2), since that would be his best bet to get closer to a top five ranking. But St. Preux, Davis and Jimi Manuwa (14-1) all look to make the most sense as Bader’s next opponent.
Given the usual UFC matchmaking of putting winners against guys coming off a win, with Davis and Manuwa coming off losses, that puts St. Preux as the favorite.
ANDREI ARLOVSKI – From 2003 to 2005, Arlovski was one of the most feared heavyweights in the game. He combined a submission game from sambo, excellent takedown defense and strong boxing to dominate what was a very weak crop of UFC heavyweights.
Arlovski (22-10, 1 no contest) was never the same after a shocking title loss to Tim Sylvia in 2006, a fight he was on the verge of winning in the first round, when he caught a shot and it was lights out. Since then, he’s fought more cautious, and has never regained his prior form. At one point, he lost four in a row, and was knocked out in three of them. He has yet to live down the glass jaw moniker, but it’s been nine fights since the last time he was finished.
His return to UFC at the age of 35 gives the company someone who older fans recognize. He was winning on smaller shows in recent, going 7-1 with 1 no contest since a knockout loss to Sergei Kharitonov in the Strikeforce Grand Prix.
He was cautious, and never hurt Schaub once. It’s hard to take his latest win seriously and there were no flashes of the old Arlovski to cling to in the fight. There are fights that could be made as almost nostalgia fights from another era with the likes of Frank Mir, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira or Gabriel Gonzaga. But all are largely fights to see who people will start talking about how the loser should retire. Arlovski seemingly guaranteed himself a second fight in UFC, and probably against someone with a name. If he doesn’t perform a lot better in that one, the nostalgia return may be over.
In talking about the UFC’s new deal with Invicta to start airing its events live on Fight Pass, Dana White said that they were in discussions with a number of companies to add live content, and that those discussions include other combat spo…
In talking about the UFC’s new deal with Invicta to start airing its events live on Fight Pass, Dana White said that they were in discussions with a number of companies to add live content, and that those discussions include other combat sports.
UFC President Dana White strongly hinted Thursday at a media scrum before UFC 174 that the deal with Invicta events airing on Fight Pass is just the beginning of working with other promotions.
“We’re going to keep adding content to this and that was one of them,” White said. “They don’t have a television deal and women’s MMA is very important to us. The girl who runs that show (Invicta promoter Shannon Knapp) is sort of a one-woman band, trying to do everything she can. We thought it would be good for Fight Pass. We’re not invested in it. We don’t own a piece of it.”
He also said while the UFC would help promote the shows, they would not be producing them. “No, it’s her show,” he said.”
No date has been announced for the first event, but Knapp and Marshall Zelaznik, UFC’s Chief Content Officer, had pegged the late summer for a first show. But White indicated they are talking to other companies as well for Fight Pass content. While he wouldn’t elaborate on it past that, he did indicate it was not limited to MMA.
“You might see a lot of combat sports and other things,” White said. “We’re out doing a number of deals, including non-MMA, there’s tons of potential.”
White, who hinted at a possibility of the sport of wrestling when it was brought up, did rule out one thing.
“No, no pro wrestling,” he said.
White attended a recent major legitimate wrestling promotional event, the “Beat the Streets” show in Times Square a few weeks back that featured some of the best U.S. wrestlers against international competition. UFC has also sponsored Grapplers Quest submission wrestling events during UFC Expos in both Las Vegas and Toronto.
The retirement of Chael Sonnen, after testing positive for a pair of banned substances, is hard to take seriously due to the sudden nature of it. But the wheels in motion of what happened came from knee-jerk reactions without considering all aspects of a very serious issue.
Usually when a top fighter retires from the sport, the reaction is to fondly look back at their successes, and talk of their failures as either character building, or if at the end of their careers, part of the inevitable circle of fighter life.
But as much as Chael Sonnen was a major figure in the MMA world from the night he took over the press conference after his upset win over Nate Marquardt more than four years ago, which led him to challenging Anderson Silva for the middleweight title in one of the sport’s most memorable fights in history, it doesn’t feel like the time or place to do that.
I keep having this lingering thought in my head. One year from now, when UFC is running its 50-plus events a year with nowhere near enough drawing cards to fill the headline positions in the first place. A phone call or text is going to be made.
It’ll either be Dana White calling West Linn, Ore., after a main event injury to a light heavyweight or middleweight in a main event slot, or there’s a major show and an open slot with nobody healthy with a name. Or, more likely, an injury will take place, Sonnen will see the opportunity, and volunteer, as he’s done so many times to step in. There’s the interview about not going out on his own terms the way he wanted to. And he’s clearly going to remain in the public eye as a television presence for the company.
He may even believe today that he is retired. Or he may already be waiting for the problems to blow over. Sonnen may even remember the perfect interview from his childhood in the mid-80s cut by Stan “The Man” Stasiak, a former area pro wrestling headliner, and at the time, a pretty much retired television announcer for Portland Wrestling, the show Sonnen grew up watching on Saturday nights. It’s something along the lines of having one good night left.
It is possible, for health reasons, that Sonnen may be best served retiring. But the way it happened, while in the middle of training for a big fight on the year’s biggest show, and then suddenly he retires a day after testing positive for two banned substances, makes me feel this is hardly a thought-out decision, and more a temporary changing of the narrative.
Sonnen was likely to be suspended by the Nevada Athletic Commission anyway, so he wasn’t going to be fighting for several months. The majority of fighters when they say they are retiring, mean it at the moment they say it. But when reality sets in, if there’s a big money fight that can have their name attached to it, the profession doesn’t seem so bad. And in Sonnen’s case, he’s not leaving because he took a physical beating that made him question if it was worth it.
I keep coming back to a radio show I did with Sonnen several months ago when the subject of fighting while no longer on testosterone replacement therapy was brought up. Sonnen said that he was working with doctors on ways to boost his natural testosterone production so he would be able to function well, and continue his career. He said that so far, he was feeling good. He also said he would reserve the right to contradict that statement a few weeks or months down the road. He specifically brought up that if this didn’t work, he may have to retire.
Translated from vague references, I took that to mean he’s on HCG to try and hopefully produce enough testosterone that he could train hard enough and live a normal life without using testosterone. He never said it. I just figured it. HCG is a banned substance in most drug tested sports, including this one.
Unlike most in the media who celebrated the Nevada commission, and the UFC in general, banning TRT outright in late February, my response was more measured. Yes, I wish it had never been approved in the first place. I was very skeptical of the real need by some of the fighters on it. And of those who I felt probably did need it, I assumed the legitimate medical reasons to need it was because they had damaged their endocrine system through years of anabolic steroids. In other words, cheating, so if the damage from cheating weakens your body, c’est la vie. But there were also exceptions, most notably Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva. Where Sonnen fell on that ledger, I can’t responsibly speculate on. Many will likely offer their opinion based on things like if they find him entertaining, or hated his act, or just hate all drug use to where everyone on TRT was a cheater and love the idea that they got a big fish.
The idea that nobody in this sport would be approved for TRT was fine with me. Because of the ability to abuse the system on TRT, it probably should be banned. The rare case of someone who needs it, I can accept as being akin to the 5-foot-6 super talented high school basketball player who wants to play Division I. Life isn’t fair, sports aren’t fair, and sometimes your physical limitations don’t allow you to progress to the major leagues.
The problem was for the few. Sonnen, Dan Henderson, Silva, Vitor Belfort and whoever else had been using it consistently for years and were still headline players. Whether their reasons for initially needing TRT were legitimate years ago when they started or not, after many years straight of taking exogenous testosterone, your body is not going to produce much testosterone on its own. The commissions allowed and approved a situation that compromised the endocrine system in these fighters even more over the long-term.
On that day when it was banned, the issue was, nobody thought of those few fighters. It was just an easy thing to do. Everyone was happy. Nobody thought that there were only a handful of fighters that this applied to, and that this was not a real substantial move to clean up the sport. But it looked like that to the public. And it was an easy response to a controversial and confusing issue.
Anything other than year-around constant unannounced drug testing of every fighter under contract is going to leave gaping loopholes for PED usage. And even that system, as cumbersome and as expensive as it would be, would have limited success in regard to the highest-profile fighters. Those with money and celebrity to get the right connections to use substances and have the best advisers will usually be one step ahead of testing.
It was appalling that nobody in power considered that there could be significant health issues from having people who relied on TRT for years to just go cold turkey. There was no discussion with any doctors of how to handle those few. From a media perspective, the idea was that they were drug cheats so it doesn’t matter would hold water if the regulatory bodies had not approved of what they were doing in the first place.
When the word came out that Sonnen had failed a drug test for Anastrozole and Clomiphene, my reaction was, well, once people realize getting off years straight of testosterone and the side effects, they’ll understand usage of drugs like that were kind of a given. But that didn’t happen. It was more about how the drugs are on the banned substance list and Dennis Siver got suspended for testing positive for HCG, the very drug Sonnen later admitted he had been using.
The reason Anastrozole and Clomiphene are banned is the same reason masking agents and diuretics are banned. They are not anabolic agents or growth hormones. Taking a masking agent doesn’t make you bigger, stronger or faster. Anastrozole isn’t going to help your bench press. What it is going to do is suppress your female sex characteristics from taking over after a male hormone crash from getting off testosterone. It’s there to prevent the crash that can include development of gynocomastia, essentially swollen nipples that in worst cases can create small pockets that appear to be almost like small female breasts. It’s to prevent a crash that leads to depression, a lack of drive, losing muscle tone and getting a softer and more feminine aspect to the physique.
Why they are banned is because males generally are using those drugs to combat side effects of steroid use. Like with masking agents, the idea is, why would you need them unless you used steroids in the first place? So even if we didn’t catch your steroid use because you are clever enough to time your cycle right or beat the system, we’ve got a second chance to get you by nabbing you for the drugs used after a cycle is completed.
Where this doesn’t apply here is that the men on TRT are already known to have been on essentially a multi-year cycle. In other words, you’re catching them for something you already know they did and they were allowed to do.
When the commission banned TRT, they should have done so with a doctor who would recommend a treatment program for these athletes to avoid the crash and help get them back to as close to normal as possible. Had they done so, those drugs, or those similar like HCG, likely would have been part of the equation.
For all the knocks on Dana White’s appearance Tuesday on Fox Sports 1 in the media, he was one of the very few people talking about the subject that had a clue what he was talking about. Whether his number of five out of more than 500 was accurate depends on nitpicking. Far more than five UFC fighters have been approved for TRT in the last several years. Of those, some aren’t fighting in the organization any longer, some have retired, and some have stopped using. As best I can tell, on Feb. 27, when TRT was banned, that number this applied to was either fix or six active UFC roster fighters.
That said, after all these years, it does feel like UFC and Bellator have relied too much on underfunded and often ill-informed athletic commissions on a major problem that plagues this sport, as it does any sport where speed, power and explosiveness are in demand.
And as for Sonnen, his attempt to deflect the issue on a discussion of in-competition and out-of-competition drug testing was ill-advised. The substances he tested positive for, because they are used to catch steroid users, are banned in or out of competition. And I can’t get my head around the idea that he was using them without letting the athletic commission know ahead of time. Quite frankly, the day the commission announced the ban, they should have told those few fighters that they needed to be on those drugs for their own health as a recommendation, and not buried their head in the sand and just issued a ban without discussing with doctors the physical repercussions on those they had given prior exemptions.
The retirement of Chael Sonnen, after testing positive for a pair of banned substances, is hard to take seriously due to the sudden nature of it. But the wheels in motion of what happened came from knee-jerk reactions without considering all aspects of a very serious issue.
Usually when a top fighter retires from the sport, the reaction is to fondly look back at their successes, and talk of their failures as either character building, or if at the end of their careers, part of the inevitable circle of fighter life.
But as much as Chael Sonnen was a major figure in the MMA world from the night he took over the press conference after his upset win over Nate Marquardt more than four years ago, which led him to challenging Anderson Silva for the middleweight title in one of the sport’s most memorable fights in history, it doesn’t feel like the time or place to do that.
I keep having this lingering thought in my head. One year from now, when UFC is running its 50-plus events a year with nowhere near enough drawing cards to fill the headline positions in the first place. A phone call or text is going to be made.
It’ll either be Dana White calling West Linn, Ore., after a main event injury to a light heavyweight or middleweight in a main event slot, or there’s a major show and an open slot with nobody healthy with a name. Or, more likely, an injury will take place, Sonnen will see the opportunity, and volunteer, as he’s done so many times to step in. There’s the interview about not going out on his own terms the way he wanted to. And he’s clearly going to remain in the public eye as a television presence for the company.
He may even believe today that he is retired. Or he may already be waiting for the problems to blow over. Sonnen may even remember the perfect interview from his childhood in the mid-80s cut by Stan “The Man” Stasiak, a former area pro wrestling headliner, and at the time, a pretty much retired television announcer for Portland Wrestling, the show Sonnen grew up watching on Saturday nights. It’s something along the lines of having one good night left.
It is possible, for health reasons, that Sonnen may be best served retiring. But the way it happened, while in the middle of training for a big fight on the year’s biggest show, and then suddenly he retires a day after testing positive for two banned substances, makes me feel this is hardly a thought-out decision, and more a temporary changing of the narrative.
Sonnen was likely to be suspended by the Nevada Athletic Commission anyway, so he wasn’t going to be fighting for several months. The majority of fighters when they say they are retiring, mean it at the moment they say it. But when reality sets in, if there’s a big money fight that can have their name attached to it, the profession doesn’t seem so bad. And in Sonnen’s case, he’s not leaving because he took a physical beating that made him question if it was worth it.
I keep coming back to a radio show I did with Sonnen several months ago when the subject of fighting while no longer on testosterone replacement therapy was brought up. Sonnen said that he was working with doctors on ways to boost his natural testosterone production so he would be able to function well, and continue his career. He said that so far, he was feeling good. He also said he would reserve the right to contradict that statement a few weeks or months down the road. He specifically brought up that if this didn’t work, he may have to retire.
Translated from vague references, I took that to mean he’s on HCG to try and hopefully produce enough testosterone that he could train hard enough and live a normal life without using testosterone. He never said it. I just figured it. HCG is a banned substance in most drug tested sports, including this one.
Unlike most in the media who celebrated the Nevada commission, and the UFC in general, banning TRT outright in late February, my response was more measured. Yes, I wish it had never been approved in the first place. I was very skeptical of the real need by some of the fighters on it. And of those who I felt probably did need it, I assumed the legitimate medical reasons to need it was because they had damaged their endocrine system through years of anabolic steroids. In other words, cheating, so if the damage from cheating weakens your body, c’est la vie. But there were also exceptions, most notably Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva. Where Sonnen fell on that ledger, I can’t responsibly speculate on. Many will likely offer their opinion based on things like if they find him entertaining, or hated his act, or just hate all drug use to where everyone on TRT was a cheater and love the idea that they got a big fish.
The idea that nobody in this sport would be approved for TRT was fine with me. Because of the ability to abuse the system on TRT, it probably should be banned. The rare case of someone who needs it, I can accept as being akin to the 5-foot-6 super talented high school basketball player who wants to play Division I. Life isn’t fair, sports aren’t fair, and sometimes your physical limitations don’t allow you to progress to the major leagues.
The problem was for the few. Sonnen, Dan Henderson, Silva, Vitor Belfort and whoever else had been using it consistently for years and were still headline players. Whether their reasons for initially needing TRT were legitimate years ago when they started or not, after many years straight of taking exogenous testosterone, your body is not going to produce much testosterone on its own. The commissions allowed and approved a situation that compromised the endocrine system in these fighters even more over the long-term.
On that day when it was banned, the issue was, nobody thought of those few fighters. It was just an easy thing to do. Everyone was happy. Nobody thought that there were only a handful of fighters that this applied to, and that this was not a real substantial move to clean up the sport. But it looked like that to the public. And it was an easy response to a controversial and confusing issue.
Anything other than year-around constant unannounced drug testing of every fighter under contract is going to leave gaping loopholes for PED usage. And even that system, as cumbersome and as expensive as it would be, would have limited success in regard to the highest-profile fighters. Those with money and celebrity to get the right connections to use substances and have the best advisers will usually be one step ahead of testing.
It was appalling that nobody in power considered that there could be significant health issues from having people who relied on TRT for years to just go cold turkey. There was no discussion with any doctors of how to handle those few. From a media perspective, the idea was that they were drug cheats so it doesn’t matter would hold water if the regulatory bodies had not approved of what they were doing in the first place.
When the word came out that Sonnen had failed a drug test for Anastrozole and Clomiphene, my reaction was, well, once people realize getting off years straight of testosterone and the side effects, they’ll understand usage of drugs like that were kind of a given. But that didn’t happen. It was more about how the drugs are on the banned substance list and Dennis Siver got suspended for testing positive for HCG, the very drug Sonnen later admitted he had been using.
The reason Anastrozole and Clomiphene are banned is the same reason masking agents and diuretics are banned. They are not anabolic agents or growth hormones. Taking a masking agent doesn’t make you bigger, stronger or faster. Anastrozole isn’t going to help your bench press. What it is going to do is suppress your female sex characteristics from taking over after a male hormone crash from getting off testosterone. It’s there to prevent the crash that can include development of gynocomastia, essentially swollen nipples that in worst cases can create small pockets that appear to be almost like small female breasts. It’s to prevent a crash that leads to depression, a lack of drive, losing muscle tone and getting a softer and more feminine aspect to the physique.
Why they are banned is because males generally are using those drugs to combat side effects of steroid use. Like with masking agents, the idea is, why would you need them unless you used steroids in the first place? So even if we didn’t catch your steroid use because you are clever enough to time your cycle right or beat the system, we’ve got a second chance to get you by nabbing you for the drugs used after a cycle is completed.
Where this doesn’t apply here is that the men on TRT are already known to have been on essentially a multi-year cycle. In other words, you’re catching them for something you already know they did and they were allowed to do.
When the commission banned TRT, they should have done so with a doctor who would recommend a treatment program for these athletes to avoid the crash and help get them back to as close to normal as possible. Had they done so, those drugs, or those similar like HCG, likely would have been part of the equation.
For all the knocks on Dana White’s appearance Tuesday on Fox Sports 1 in the media, he was one of the very few people talking about the subject that had a clue what he was talking about. Whether his number of five out of more than 500 was accurate depends on nitpicking. Far more than five UFC fighters have been approved for TRT in the last several years. Of those, some aren’t fighting in the organization any longer, some have retired, and some have stopped using. As best I can tell, on Feb. 27, when TRT was banned, that number this applied to was either fix or six active UFC roster fighters.
That said, after all these years, it does feel like UFC and Bellator have relied too much on underfunded and often ill-informed athletic commissions on a major problem that plagues this sport, as it does any sport where speed, power and explosiveness are in demand.
And as for Sonnen, his attempt to deflect the issue on a discussion of in-competition and out-of-competition drug testing was ill-advised. The substances he tested positive for, because they are used to catch steroid users, are banned in or out of competition. And I can’t get my head around the idea that he was using them without letting the athletic commission know ahead of time. Quite frankly, the day the commission announced the ban, they should have told those few fighters that they needed to be on those drugs for their own health as a recommendation, and not buried their head in the sand and just issued a ban without discussing with doctors the physical repercussions on those they had given prior exemptions.
Coming off the company’s least-watched Saturday night live event that reached a national audience seven days earlier, UFC’s ratings rebounded this past weekend by doubling the previous show.
UFC Fight Night clearly established Benson Henderson, with a little help from Diego Sanchez, as a bonafide television ratings mover, even though he no longer has the UFC lightweight title. The main card, going head-to-head with the Sergio Martinez vs. Miguel Cotto pay-per-view boxing show, did a 0.82 rating and 1,217,000 viewers in the 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. time slot. The previous week’s show, in the same time slot, headlined by Stipe Miocic vs. Fabio Maldonado, did 609,000 viewers.
It was the third-largest audience to watch a UFC Fight Night show on FS 1. It trailed only the opening night show with Chael Sonnen vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (1.78 million viewers) that was far more heavily publicized as the night of the FS 1 launch, and the Feb. 15 show (1.40 million), headlined by Lyoto Machida vs. Gegard Mousasi. The latter Fight Night had numbers boosted greatly by following FS 1’s most watched event ever, a NASCAR race that drew 3.5 million viewers as a lead-in.
Currently, live UFC Fight Nights average 817,000 viewers.
The show peaked during the Henderson vs. Rustam Khabilov main event, with 1,562,000 viewers for the quarter hour from 12:45 a.m. to 1 a.m.
The whole night was a strong showing for UFC and the station. The prelims from 8-10 p.m., headlined by Sergio Pettis vs. Yaotzin Meza, did a 0.61 rating and 812,000 viewers. It was the second highest-rated Fight Night prelims, trailing only the 881,000 viewers for the prelims on the night of the station launch on Aug. 17. Prelims had been averaging 364,000 viewers since the launch of the station.
With the strong audience there for the main event, Fox Sports Live, the station’s nightly news show, which didn’t air until 1:04 a.m., did 608,000 viewers, the fifth-largest audience the show has ever drawn. Most of the show was devoted to analysis of the UFC card.
The numbers were a big surprise, especially coming off the prior week. UFC did get a break by not facing an NBA playoff game, but they did go head-to-head with the Stanley Cup finals. The game was over long before the main event went in the ring, but it went against much of the show including the entire prelims. It was the second straight weekend where the prelims drew well above average numbers, but this week’s prelims were up from 560,000 the week before.
Henderson has had a lot of exposure on FOX, with strong audiences in lightweight title defenses against Nate Diaz and Gilbert Melendez, as well as a third network headliner on Jan. 25 against Josh Thomson after he had lost the title to Anthony Pettis.
The night before, Bellator, in a show built around pushing a battle of heavyweight sluggers Eric Prindle vs. James Thompson, did right at the company’s season average with 668,000 viewers for the first summer special show. Prindle vs. Thompson, the most promoted fight on the show, airing in the semifinal spot, peaked at 904,000 viewers.
Bellator did a unique promotion built around the idea of two huge sluggers who would stand and throw wild bombs until one went down, even to the point announcer Jimmy Smith told fans not to expect much in the way of technique. The fight ended up being short, but it was decided when Thompson immediately took down Prindle and finished him on the ground.
All ratings are based on A.C. Neilsen research.
Coming off the company’s least-watched Saturday night live event that reached a national audience seven days earlier, UFC’s ratings rebounded this past weekend by doubling the previous show.
UFC Fight Night clearly established Benson Henderson, with a little help from Diego Sanchez, as a bonafide television ratings mover, even though he no longer has the UFC lightweight title. The main card, going head-to-head with the Sergio Martinez vs. Miguel Cotto pay-per-view boxing show, did a 0.82 rating and 1,217,000 viewers in the 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. time slot. The previous week’s show, in the same time slot, headlined by Stipe Miocic vs. Fabio Maldonado, did 609,000 viewers.
It was the third-largest audience to watch a UFC Fight Night show on FS 1. It trailed only the opening night show with Chael Sonnen vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (1.78 million viewers) that was far more heavily publicized as the night of the FS 1 launch, and the Feb. 15 show (1.40 million), headlined by Lyoto Machida vs. Gegard Mousasi. The latter Fight Night had numbers boosted greatly by following FS 1’s most watched event ever, a NASCAR race that drew 3.5 million viewers as a lead-in.
Currently, live UFC Fight Nights average 817,000 viewers.
The show peaked during the Henderson vs. Rustam Khabilov main event, with 1,562,000 viewers for the quarter hour from 12:45 a.m. to 1 a.m.
The whole night was a strong showing for UFC and the station. The prelims from 8-10 p.m., headlined by Sergio Pettis vs. Yaotzin Meza, did a 0.61 rating and 812,000 viewers. It was the second highest-rated Fight Night prelims, trailing only the 881,000 viewers for the prelims on the night of the station launch on Aug. 17. Prelims had been averaging 364,000 viewers since the launch of the station.
With the strong audience there for the main event, Fox Sports Live, the station’s nightly news show, which didn’t air until 1:04 a.m., did 608,000 viewers, the fifth-largest audience the show has ever drawn. Most of the show was devoted to analysis of the UFC card.
The numbers were a big surprise, especially coming off the prior week. UFC did get a break by not facing an NBA playoff game, but they did go head-to-head with the Stanley Cup finals. The game was over long before the main event went in the ring, but it went against much of the show including the entire prelims. It was the second straight weekend where the prelims drew well above average numbers, but this week’s prelims were up from 560,000 the week before.
Henderson has had a lot of exposure on FOX, with strong audiences in lightweight title defenses against Nate Diaz and Gilbert Melendez, as well as a third network headliner on Jan. 25 against Josh Thomson after he had lost the title to Anthony Pettis.
The night before, Bellator, in a show built around pushing a battle of heavyweight sluggers Eric Prindle vs. James Thompson, did right at the company’s season average with 668,000 viewers for the first summer special show. Prindle vs. Thompson, the most promoted fight on the show, airing in the semifinal spot, peaked at 904,000 viewers.
Bellator did a unique promotion built around the idea of two huge sluggers who would stand and throw wild bombs until one went down, even to the point announcer Jimmy Smith told fans not to expect much in the way of technique. The fight ended up being short, but it was decided when Thompson immediately took down Prindle and finished him on the ground.
