Author: Matt Saccaro

Do Dana White’s Antics Help or Hurt the Growth of MMA and the UFC?

Dana White’s increasingly inflammatory and pernicious antics are making the UFC look bush league—unworthy of a deal with a major network such as Fox. This isn’t about White’s frequent swearing. This isn’t about his choice of attire&mdas…

Dana White‘s increasingly inflammatory and pernicious antics are making the UFC look bush league—unworthy of a deal with a major network such as Fox. 

This isn’t about White’s frequent swearing. 

This isn’t about his choice of attire—trendy T-shirts—that some might say is unbefitting an executive. 

This isn’t even about his notorious disdain for certain media members. 

This is about White’s attitude toward the fans and toward criticism of the UFC’s product. 

Recently, the main event of UFC on Fuel TV 9 fell apart. Rising Swedish star Alexander Gustafsson was supposed to face Gegard Mousasi in the latter’s long-awaited UFC debut, but the fight never came to pass. 

A cut above Gustafsson’s eye kept the Swede from being cleared to fight by the Swedish MMA Federation. 

An intriguing main event with established fighters disappeared in the stroke of a pen on a medical form. 

The UFC lost a main event, and fans lost the only meaningful fight on the card.

UFC brass scrambled to find a replacement and ultimately put the unheralded, unheard of, desperately outmatched Swedish journeyman Ilir Latifi opposite Mousasi in the main event. 

Let that sink in. 

The UFC likes to call themselves the “Super Bowl of MMA,” yet a 7-2 (one NC) fighter that had no significant wins and no name value was deemed good enough to main event one of their cards. True, these were trying circumstances, but the world’s largest and most prestigious MMA promotion should be better prepared. 

An obvious solution to losing a main event is to bump up the co-main event or to otherwise shuffle the card around to make it satisfactory at the very least. 

This couldn’t be done with UFC on Fuel TV 9; the talent on the card was lacking. It was a classic “boxing card’ in the sense that the main event was the only reason to watch; the undercard was less than nothing special. 

When fans vocalized their thoughts to Dana White over Twitter, he berated them:

This isn’t the first time the UFC president has lashed out at unhappy fans. 

UFC 152 featured a flyweight title fight between Demetrious Johnson and Joseph Benavidez. Paying customers weren’t too thrilled with the match, and they made their thoughts known in the form of boos and Internet jeers.

White was characteristically recalcitrant. 

“Let me tell you what: If you didn’t like that flyweight fight, please, I’m begging you, don’t ever buy another UFC pay-per-view again,” he told MMAJunkie.com after the event. 

He continued his incisive rant against the fans, saying “Don’t ever buy another one…I don’t want your money. You’re a moron, you don’t like fighting, you don’t appreciate great talent, or heart, if you didn’t like that flyweight fight.” 

White’s intransigence is concerning. 

When Vince McMahon puts on a terrible wrestling pay-per-view, he doesn’t call the fans idiots. When a boxing match fails to deliver, the promoters don’t take to Twitter to sling insults with trolls or even legitimate commenters. 

Comparisons with other fields aside, we can all agree that telling fans not to buy or watch your product is a peculiar business strategy. Callously insulting your fanbase isn’t the best strategy for long-term growth, either.

White is hurting the brand’s image when he goes off on tirades against his paying customers. What other major company or corporate figurehead does that?

This is not to say that White is inherently bad and needs to be replaced. White’s frequent swearing, choice of clothing (remember his “dickhouse” shirt?), giving away free tickets and positive use of social media (#Hunt4UFC contests and the like) have earned him many fans and more than 2.5 million Twitter followers. 

If speaking and dressing like a regular person rather than a pretentious CEO made him such an uncouth barbarian, would he have been invited to speak at the prestigious Oxford Union Society back in 2010?

White is a unique character and telling him to act like an anodyne drone wouldn’t be constructive. His personality, while polemic, isn’t the problem.  

White plays the “cool rich guy” gimmick well. It works. It appeals to the UFC’s key demographic of 18 to 34-year-old males. Who would a young, testosterone-laden man better relate with and prefer more, a stiff like Bud Selig or a cussing, informal character like White?

But White being ornery and dissing the fans—the people that are carrying and supporting his company in the form of television views, PPV buys and merchandise sales—is inexcusable and can only be harmful. 

When enough of the fans are angry, like they were after UFC on Fuel 9‘s main event vanished, White needs to look at his own organization for the blame. The audience is never at fault for not happily accepting an inferior product.

 

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TUF 18: A Co-Ed Version of the Ultimate Fighter Will Be a Black Eye for MMA

The 18th season of The Ultimate Fighter will be the lowest common denominator in terms of entertainment and, because of that, it will damage MMA’s image. “Watch men and women GET IT ON in the cage and in bed on this season of the Ultimate Fighter,…

The 18th season of The Ultimate Fighter will be the lowest common denominator in terms of entertainment and, because of that, it will damage MMA‘s image. 

“Watch men and women GET IT ON in the cage and in bed on this season of the Ultimate Fighter,” might as well be the tagline for the upcoming season that features male and female fighters living in the same house during the show’s duration.

The UFC is mixing testosterone, estrogen and alcohol together and hoping this concoction creates ratings. The brand will be damaged no matter how successful this gamble is.

The UFC likes to purport that they’re “as real as it gets” but TUF 18 is as gimmicky as it gets—and not because there are female fighters but because they’re insisting on putting the females in the same house as the males. 

UFC lightweight Yves Edwards made a joke on twitter, calling this season “TUFOrgy.”

Putting female fighters on the show would’ve been a great leap forward for women’s MMA and for female athletes in general. Putting female and male fighters on the show but in separate houses still would’ve helped women’s MMA via increased exposure. Putting female and male fighters in the same house helps the UFC’s ratings and only the UFC’s ratings.

It’s a desperate attention grabber, just like the last few seasons of the show attempted (unsuccessfully) to try to drum up buzz for the dead horse of a franchise that is TUF. “Come watch TUF 17, we have a trash talker who doesn’t belong in this weight class! Come watch TUF 15, the fights are LIVE,” and so on.

The UFC is basically telling you to not watch the show for its athletes, watch it for the sophomoric humor, drama and sex. Who cares about the eventual fight between the coaches, Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate/Cat Zingano? Who cares about the fact that women’s MMA will be showcased on a larger television platform than ever before?

By doing this, the UFC is hurting its own image and the sport. Its showing that its brand isn’t about athletics, but about entertainment. The show isn’t about giving talented females their much deserved chance in the limelight, it’s about sexualizing them for attention. Nothing good will come from TUF 18 because of this.

 

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Why Wins from Chris Weidman and Johny Hendricks Would Be Good for the UFC

Victories for Chris Weidman and Johny Hendricks would be of greater benefit to the UFC in the long term than victories for Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre. Yes, you read that right. It’s actually better that the established names lose in this…

Victories for Chris Weidman and Johny Hendricks would be of greater benefit to the UFC in the long term than victories for Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre. 

Yes, you read that right. It’s actually better that the established names lose in this case—it’s a matter of age and roster circumstances. 

Silva and GSP are the UFC’s two longest-reigning champions. Silva has defended his UFC middleweight title 10 times, while St-Pierre has defended the UFC welterweight championship eight times. 

St-Pierre has been champion for five years, Silva for nearly seven. 

Unfortunately, Silva and St-Pierre’s facilities with unarmed violence cannot stop Father Time. In all sports, older competitors must eventually give way to the younger ones. This applies more to the 37-year-old Silva than to the 31-year-old St-Pierre.

Chris Weidman, who will be facing Silva at UFC 162 in July, is nearly a decade younger than the Brazilian. Silva might say he has six more years in him, but that’s unlikely. And even if he sticks around, it’s practically guaranteed that his talents will wane as he gets older. Not many fighters can perform at an elite level in their late 30s and early 40s (unless their name is Randy Couture).

Weidman winning would be better because he can be marketed for longer; his sell-by date is much further down the line than Silva’s.

Alas, the same can’t really be said for GSP and Hendricks since there’s only a two-year age difference (31 and 29, respectively).

But there’s more to the issue than age. Each weight class has unique circumstances—circumstances that would improve if Weidman and Hendricks won their fights. 

Anderson Silva was the only middleweight fighter fans knew or cared about until Chael Sonnen came along and spiced things up by nearly defeating him. But then, “The Spider” dispatched Sonnen in the long-awaited rematch and interest waned again. Who cares about the lesser fighters that contested their way to the top only to be masterfully beaten down by a bored-looking Anderson Silva?

Just compare the buyrates of Silva’s fights to see this phenomenon in action. The two highest draws were Silva-Sonnen II (925,000) and Silva-Belfort (725,000). Some of Silva’s other fights didn’t pull half these numbers.

 It’s time to rekindle interest in the middleweight division. 

A Chris Weidman victory can do that. Weidman winning would shake the rust out of a division that’s remained relatively stagnant and boring for quite some time. Fans will finally have interesting, unpredictable title fights instead of a slew of contenders that fans know aren’t a match for the champ. 

There are more narratives and therefore more fights to be sold with Weidman winning and Silva losing. Will Silva go on the comeback trail? Who will he fight to work his way up? Is Weidman really the next big thing or was his win a fluke? Fans will tune in to see the answers to these questions.

This argument also applies to Georges St-Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks. However, admittedly, a GSP loss might not be as beneficial as a Silva loss. 

St-Pierre is one of the UFC’s best draws. He drew over 50,000 fans at the Rogers Centre in Canada, and his buyrates have always been above average at worst and great at best.

A GSP comeback trail could sell some pay-per-views, but that’s the problem. There might not be a GSP comeback trail. The champ’s trainer, Firas Zahabi, recently spoke about how much longer St-Pierre would be in the sport, and let’s just say it didn’t sound like he’d be fighting four or five more years. 

However, GSP losing to Hendricks would give the UFC the chance to build up a series of fighters in the division rather than use one and only one as the division’s selling point. “Hey, look, it’s GSP vs. some guy who isn’t GSP” would be replaced by “Hey, look, two equally matched competitors who have defeated a bunch of really skilled guys are about to fight!”

Johny Hendricks, the resurgent Demian Maia, Carlos Condit and others could collectively fill the void that a post-defeat GSP retirement would create.

Silva and GSP have become dominant so long that fans have accepted them as givens, as forces of nature in MMA that would always be there. But this is wrong. Time stands still for no man, even the toughest ones. Young lions eventually have to vanquish the champions of old and brave swaths of contenders while carrying the UFC’s banner through the Fox era. 

Chris Weidman and Johny Hendricks are these young lions. Their victories will help bring the UFC to its destiny, not keep it locked in the past.

 


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TUF 18 Coaches: UFC Needs to Make Up Its Mind: Sports or Sports Entertainment

The UFC has gone from “as real as it gets” to “as gimmicky as it gets” with The Ultimate Fighter 18.Ronda Rousey is coaching the show’s 18th incarnation against the winner of Miesha Tate vs. Cat Zingano. That’s a major step forwards for women’s MMA. Un…

The UFC has gone from “as real as it gets” to “as gimmicky as it gets” with The Ultimate Fighter 18.

Ronda Rousey is coaching the show’s 18th incarnation against the winner of Miesha Tate vs. Cat Zingano. That’s a major step forwards for women’s MMA. Unfortunately, the rest of the season’s premise isn’t as positive. 

Season 18 will be the first to feature female fighters prominently, but the season will also have male fighters…male fighters who will be living in the same house as the females. 

UFC lightweight Yves Edwards took to twitter to make a joke at the expense of season 18’s premise: 

 

 

Edwards may have been kidding, but his words ring true. Season 18 isn’t going to be about the struggles of women in MMA nor is it going to be about the fervent determination that female fighters are noted for displaying. 

It’s going to be about sex and drama. 

“Well of course! Sex and drama are just good TV; sex sells,” you say?

Sex does sell and drama is a requirement on television shows, or else nobody would tune in. However, the UFC wants to consider themselves among the elite sports organizations in the world. The Ultimate Fighter 18 proves that they aren’t. 

The NFL doesn’t need a worse version of The Real World with fights to get people to watch their programming. Meanwhile, the UFC has increasingly had to resort to gimmicks to get people to watch their “sport.”

First off, they gave Chael Sonnen a title shot against UFC light heavyweight champ Jon Jones.

Sonnen’s trash-talking shtick is notorious. It doesn’t just step over the “pro-wrestling” line, it long-jumps over it. In fact, Sonnen even used/stole a wrestling promo from the legendary superstar Billy Graham. 

What’s worse about giving him a title shot is that he’s coming off a loss in a different weight class. A guy who just lost to Anderson Silva was deemed good enough to go up a weight class and fight for the title.

Admittedly, the UFC was in a bit of a pinch match-making wise. Jones’ original opponent, Dan Henderson, got injured and, according to Dana White, no other contenders were willing to fight Jones. Sonnen stepped up, but Jones refused to fight him on such short notice. The event was subsequently canceled.

Had the UFC only booked Sonnen-Jones because of the tricky circumstances, it would’ve been acceptable. However, after Jones defeated Vitor Belfort at UFC 152, the UFC announced that they were putting Jones opposite Chael Sonnen on The Ultimate Fighter and giving him a title shot at the end of the season. 

Dana White‘s rationale on the decision wasn’t particularly endearing. Sonnen was given the shot because he was the only fighter willing to fight Jones after Henderson pulled out of UFC 151.

“Every one of these guys that are bitching about a title shot now, we’re offered a fight and turned it down,” he told MMAWeekly. “They refused to fight Jon Jones. Now, they’re bummed out because Chael stepped up on eight-days notice and he’s gonna coach The Ultimate Fighter and fight him.”

A light heavyweight title shot was given to a man who hadn’t fought at light heavyweight since 2005 because of a non-existent code of honor—and the hope that Sonnen’s trash talking would reinvigorate the show’s ratings.  

This fight just started the trend.

Former lightweight champ Frankie Edgar lost two fights in a row and then dropped to featherweight and received an immediate title shot versus Jose Aldo, which Edgar lost. It was a shameless attempt at a cash-grab, the match being billed as a “super-fight.”

Edgar was the only other contender at featherweight that the fans remotely cared about after Urijah Faber dropped to bantamweight (and Edgar has never been a great draw, so that says a lot about the other featherweight fighters), so they booked him in a fight with Aldo. 

But the handing out of title shots to undeserving fighters gets worse. 

Nick Diaz was given a title shot at welterweight champ Georges St-Pierre despite losing his last fight and coming of a year-long suspension. Why let a loss and a suspension get in the way of a good feud and a big payday? It’s not like Johny Hendricks was the rightful claimant to the No.1 contender spot, right? 

That’s three nonsensical title shots.

Returning to the NFL comparison, the NFL didn’t bypass the victorious playoff teams and put the Jets and the Patriots in the Super Bowl this past February because they thought the prominent rivalry between the two teams would garner better ratings.

That’s because the National Football League is peddling the sport of football. Sure, the media and even the league itself will promote “storylines” each week. Ultimately, there’s an architecture that makes sure the two best teams always compete in the Super Bowl.

The UFC has attempted to create the guise of such a structure with their official rankings, but it’s a hollow gesture. The promotion is no longer pushing the sport of mixed martial arts. As of late MMA in the UFC has morphed into a nebulous sport/sports-entertainment hybrid. 

Three fighters who were coming off losses got title shots, two of those title shots were given to fighters who were entering weight classes where they either hadn’t fought (Edgar) or hadn’t done anything significant in nearly a decade (Sonnen).  

The chicanery is continuing with TUF 18.

Making the TUF house co-ed is bringing the show to a new low. TUF was always about entertainment, but now the sport-side will be a tacked on addendum. “Watch the sex and drama this week on TUF—and yeah there’s a fight in the last few minutes but that’s not important!” 

Furthermore, when you look at TUF 18 in the context of the history of the show, it’s increasingly obvious that the UFC has had to resort to gimmicks to keep the decrepit show going. 

Ratings have been anemic since the The Ultimate Fighter moved to FX. “TUF: LIVE” failed to captivate the audience, so the UFC resorted to throwing trash-talker Chael Sonnen in against the future-of-the-sport Jon Jones. The ratings were better, but still not near what the show was doing on Spike TV.

The co-ed TUF house is just another cheap stunt to try and get another year of life out of a failing show that’s badly in need of retooling or outright execution.

This is unfortunate.

Women in MMA are finally getting their big break, only for their TUF season to not be their TUF season. The season is being shared with men and will almost definitely be sexualized to capture a bigger audience. 

Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate/Cat Zingano deserve more. Female fighters deserve more. The sport deserves more. And even the UFC deserves more, for the longer they claim to be in the same league as the NFL and its ilk while emphasizing entertainment over sport, the more ridiculous they’ll continue to look. 

There’s nothing wrong with sports entertainment. One could argue that Pride—a now-defunct promotion that rivaled the UFC—was on the sports entertainment side of the line with their elaborate entrances and freakshow fights. 

It’s just that the time has come for the UFC to pick a side and stay on that side. They can’t hire James Toney, give title shots to fighters coming off loses, and make “Real World: The Octagon” while still proclaiming they’re bigger than the NFL and just as legitimate.

 

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5 Ways the UFC Can Add More Flavor to Their Events

The UFC’s events have grown stale and generic. Minor events on FUEL TV have the exact same boring, flat look as major pay-per-view and Fox cards. Shows held in far-off lands are indiscernible from those held in typical locales like Las Vegas.&nbsp…

The UFC’s events have grown stale and generic. 

Minor events on FUEL TV have the exact same boring, flat look as major pay-per-view and Fox cards. Shows held in far-off lands are indiscernible from those held in typical locales like Las Vegas. 

But it’s not only the events that are too similar to one another. The fighters have this problem as well. 

“Muscles, shaved head, tattoos, shorts loaded up with ads, black gloves” describes a stunning amount of fighters on the UFC’s roster.

Because of these two issues, recent fight cards tend to form one amorphous, largely forgettable blob in the minds of fans. The various UFC on FUEL, UFC on FOX, and UFC on FX cards might as well be a giant katamari of bad tribal tats, “I respect him, he’s a great opponent” interviews and Bud Light ads. 

How can the UFC spice up their product? Read and find out!

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Are Sexist, Sensationalistic Headlines Going to Be the Norm for Women’s MMA?

For most writers, the main takeaway from UFC 157 was Ronda Rousey’s superlative grit and athleticism—the keyword being most. There was one individual, a writer for The Examiner by the name of Eric Holden, who was enamored by something differ…

For most writers, the main takeaway from UFC 157 was Ronda Rousey‘s superlative grit and athleticism—the keyword being most. 

There was one individual, a writer for The Examiner by the name of Eric Holden, who was enamored by something different: The champion’s post-fight celebratory meal. Or, as he said it, the putting of “hot meat in her mouth.”

The original article was deleted after concerted protests on twitter by various members of the MMA community, so it can’t be linked to. Fortunately, MiddleEasy.com was forward-thinking enough to take a screenshot of it.

The full headline read: “Ronda Rousey put hot meat in her mouth to celebrate UFC 157 victory.” The body of the piece revealed that Rousey ate some buffalo wings after defeating her opponent, Liz Carmouche. 

So, do you get it? Buffalo wings? Hot meat? As far as execrable double entendres go, it doesn’t get much worse than that. The writer eventually apologized and admitted that he got paid by the click, which explains the inflammatory headline. These facts make it easy to just dismiss this as a standard case of Internet click-bait run amok. 

However, such a title is part of a deeper problem that women’s MMA might not ever shake: The problem of sexism and discrimination based on looks. 

Ronda Rousey almost got her head ripped off by a rear-naked-choke-turned-neck-crank but then, minutes later, she was victoriously parading through the cage after dispatching Carmouche with an armbar. Rousey was resolute and fervent in her efforts, as was Carmouche. Both athletes showed the determination and will-to-win that female fighters have a reputation for.

But women being great fighters doesn’t sell. It doesn’t drive clicks, sex does.

Rousey—a champion, an Olympian and one of the world’s greatest and most dangerous female athletes—had to be sexualized and reduced to a punny headline.

While Mr. Holden apologized for his actions (although his history of employing such racy headlines makes the apology a bit dubious), what’s to say that when Rousey or another female fights again that some other writer won’t seek the easy-money headlines like Holden’s and continue to mitigate what women do in the cage?

But this is only part of the WMMA problem. 

The other aspect is the way that female fighters are marketed. Since Zuffa (the company that owns the UFC) purchased Strikeforce and got into the WMMA business, they’ve proven to be clumsy and unimaginative with promoting female fights. 

Remember the commercial for Ronda Rousey vs. Miesha Tate? It was basically, “Hot chick vs. Hot chick. Watch the fight.”

Remember the commercial for Ronda Rousey vs. Sarah Kaufman? “Leather-bound hot chick vs. Leather-bound hot chick. Watch the fight.” But this time the advertisement was laughable.

They threw Sarah Kaufman in a tight, white leather outfit that was…unflattering. Kaufman is a talented individual but isn’t suited to play the role of the lethal, sexy bombshell.

In fact, most women in general can’t fit into that mold—the role of the “bad ass” hot chick who’s legitimately talented, the fight promoters’ holy grail. The mold that Ronda Rousey fits into, and the one that women’s MMA pioneer Gina Carano fit into.

Zuffa did a better job promoting Rousey vs. Carmouche. They commissioned a post on the famed viral media site BuzzFeed with facts about both Rousey, Carmouche and several other fighters. They also commissioned one featuring the ins and outs of MMA lingo, also featuring Rousey and Carmouche.

Carmouche‘s unique background also enabled Zuffa to ditch selling the fight as just a catfight with armbars and omoplatas. Carmouche served in the Marine Corps, and she is the first openly homosexual fighter in the UFC.

Is Zuffa learning its lesson on how to promote women? Or were they just afforded a good opportunity in the form of an athlete with an endearing personal history in Liz Carmouche?

This question will be answered when Rousey doesn’t fight someone with such an inspiring background or fights without the grudge match angle that her seemingly-inevitable rematch with Tate would have. 

And until this question is answered in a satisfactory way (read: not sticking Rousey‘s opponents in leather), the question of whether the UFC’s great WMMA experiment will be successful shall remain unanswered, for how can we really say that Zuffa/UFC and the fans hold female fighters in the same regards as male fighters when the women constantly have to be sold on their looks and their looks alone?

 



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