UFC 144 was top-to-bottom one of the greatest fight cards in the last 365 days and it’s definitely a lock for fight card of the year (although, to be fair, we’re only two months into 2012 so far). The card simply had it all. The first fight o…
UFC 144 was top-to-bottom one of the greatest fight cards in the last 365 days and it’s definitely a lock for fight card of the year (although, to be fair, we’re only two months into 2012 so far).
The card simply had it all.
The first fight of the night set the tone with an epic knockout. Chinese prospect Tiequan Zhang was laid out flat by Issei Tamura in a stunning upset.
Later, there was a veritable brawl between Riki Fukuda and Steve Cantwell that saw the Japanese fighter earn a decision victory.
After that, the card got even more thrilling.
In a back and forth affair, Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto was submitted for the very first time in his career by the unheralded Vaughan Lee.
We also got to see Takanori Gomi return to the winning column in a competitive match that saw him come back from being hurt and earn a TKO.
And all that was just on the preliminaries!
On the main card the most exciting moments included Anthony Pettis’ masterful KO of Joe Lauzon, Hatsu Hioki’s domination of Bart Palaszewski, Tim Boetsch’s insane comeback TKO over Yushin Okami, Mark Hunt’s KO of Cheick Kongo, and the epic duel between Frankie Edgar and Benson Henderson for the UFC lightweight championship.
No other card can boast not only the amount of star power and significant matchups that 144 had, but also the entertainment value of the said fights.
It’s definitely one of the best head-to-toe fight cards in the history of MMA. Of that, there is no doubt.
Even dead, Pride casts a shadow. Ever since the rivalry between Pride and the UFC, people have questioned which organization had better rules—rules that produced a more exciting and more realistic contest.Outspoken welterweight Nick Diaz did…
Even dead, Pride casts a shadow.
Ever since the rivalry between Pride and the UFC, people have questioned which organization had better rules—rules that produced a more exciting and more realistic contest.
Outspoken welterweight Nick Diaz did an (in)famous interview with Ariel Helwani in which he gave his take on the issue and pulled no punches. To him, Pride indisputably had better rules while the UFC’s rules were conducive only towards “running away” from the fight and lay and pray.
Despite the fact that Pride has been dead for years, its memory and influence still linger across Internet forums and message boards where the Pride vs. UFC war is still being fought.
The issue of the rule debate was also inflamed in light of UFC 143, where some (including Bleacher Report’s own Jonathan Snowden) accused Carlos Condit of running away from Nick Diaz but still winning.
This has made Diaz even more of a poster boy for rule changes in the UFC.
Is there truth to their words?
Some.
Some of what they say is nothing but pathetic nostalgia for a long-dead organization that is never coming back.
But some of what they say is in fact true; there are problems with the UFC, and implementing some rules from Pride could help.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of MMA fans are “casual” fans who don’t necessarily appreciate the intricacies of the sport. They’d rather see a brawl like Forrest Griffin-Stephan Bonnar I than a technical-masterpiece performance like Condit’s victory over Diaz or any of Jon Fitch’s victories.
Even some “hardcore” fans don’t appreciate the tactics that the UFC’s rules allegedly promote.
The general argument is that the rules and judging criteria endorse wrestlers to take a fighter down, keep top position and hold the opponent there without doing anything.
They also say that the judging over-emphasizes takedowns rather than submission attempts (see: Demetrious Johnson vs. Miguel Torres).
The solution that they propose is the implementation of the Pride rules, namely yellow cards, kicks/knees to the head of a grounded opponent, the removal of elbows on the ground and different judging criteria (judging the entire fight rather than individual rounds).
The yellow card is perhaps the most plausible solution. It is basically a penalty for stalling that a referee can give to a fighter which ultimately ends in a purse deduction. Fighters can take hits in a lot of places, but not in their wallet.
Yellow cards would make sure that fights were faster-paced and that stalling or “lay and pray” was kept in check.
The removal of elbows on the ground would theoretically also deter “lay and pray” since wrestlers wouldn’t be able to smother fighters and prevent the fight from being stood up by landing elbows.
However, the removal of any technique severely waters down the purity of the sport. How can it be the “sport of fighting” if basic, effective techniques like elbows on the ground aren’t allowed?
For the same reason, knees/kicks/stomps to the head of a grounded opponent need to be added to the UFC’s rules.
It would give strikers an edge and would make wrestlers think twice about going in for a takedown. Also, more fights would be finished because there would be dozens more opportunities to land a (legal) fight-ending blow.
However, this solution (knees/kicks to the head of a grounded opponent) is the least feasible.
MMA is still not well understood by most of American society, the events on FOX notwithstanding. The UFC needs to try and remove the “bloodsport” stigma, and people getting their heads stomped on won’t help matters.
Concerning judging criteria, any change won’t help if the judges are still clueless about MMA. The only way to fix that is for people who trained in/grew up watching MMA to eventually become judges. Once that happens, we’ll see less poor decisions.
Ultimately, the rules in the UFC aren’t as bad as Diaz and people on the Internet make them out to be (people on the Internet exaggerating? Imagine that) but they can definitely be improved.
Unfortunately, things aren’t that simple.
While Pride could basically do what it wanted because of the lack of athletic commissions, any major change to the UFC’s rules would have to be cleared by the various athletic commissions. Overhauling the unified rules of MMA would be a task that wouldn’t be worth it for the UFC; They’re the only game in town, and they know it.
New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin has done more than take the sports world by storm. He has shown MMA fans just how unimportant the sport is in the mainstream. However, this isn’t to the detriment of the UFC. It just shows that the traditiona…
New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin has done more than take the sports world by storm. He has shown MMA fans just how unimportant the sport is in the mainstream.
However, this isn’t to the detriment of the UFC. It just shows that the traditional ball sports still occupy a significant, crucial and massive role in American society—a role that the UFC is apparently nowhere near reaching, the deal with FOX notwithstanding.
Lin’s success story with the Knicks has swept the nation. If you walk up to a random male and say “Linsanity,” they’ll know what you’re talking about.
All this fanfare and the guy didn’t even win a title yet.
If you were to ask the same stranger and who Jon Jones is, you’ll likely be met with an awkward stare, even though Jones, too, is an incredible athlete.
In fact, Jones has accomplished more in MMA (winning the UFC light heavyweight title and being the youngest UFC champion) than Lin has in basketball. Yet society doesn’t recognize him anywhere near as much.
Even from New York, Jones doesn’t get the amount of attention that Lin does in the same media market.
Another example is UFC middleweight standout Chris Weidman.
Weidman grew up on Long Island, became one of the world’s top wrestlers and submission grapplers and most recently won a fight against Demian Maia on FOX in front of millions. But he doesn’t get acclaim on the level that Lin does.
Even if you combine all of the mainstream media attention ever received by Jones and Weidman it still doesn’t even come close to what Lin receives in a day.
While Jones and Weidman are lucky to get an article tucked away in the Newsday sports section for besting another man in the purest form of competition, Lin gets covers on Time magazine and Sports Illustrated for throwing a ball into a hoop.
Unfortunately, the majority of the population simply doesn’t know or care about what happens in the UFC.
While this will inevitably change, the UFC and MMA still have a long, long way to go until the sport is finally as mainstream as the other major sports.
Once we see a fast-rising fighter get the same amount of attention that Lin is getting, then we’ll finally know that the UFC has made it.
Until then, we can only speculate how the UFC will make that happen.
“It’s too bad we’ve got to get old.”Brock Lesnar is gone. Anderson Silva is nearly 37. The UFC’s biggest draws are going or graying. Soon, they’ll be a thing of the past. Will there be men to fill their large, money-filled shoes?There is much…
Brock Lesnar is gone. Anderson Silva is nearly 37. The UFC’s biggest draws are going or graying. Soon, they’ll be a thing of the past. Will there be men to fill their large, money-filled shoes?
There is much talk of the UFC’s unabated growth, but such talk is a pipe dream rather than reality if the UFC can’t find someone to replace the big-name fighters they will inevitably lose.
The biggest draw was Brock Lesnar.
He may be a controversial figure in MMA, but his loss was an enormous one. Despite his questionable abilities, he was an incredible draw. He was the only fighter to help bring in one million or more PPV buys on three separate occasions!
Most recently, his UFC 141 fight with Alistair Overeem garnered approximately 800,000 buys. That’s an impressive feat for a fighter who hadn’t fought for over a year.
Lesnar retired after that brutal loss to Overeem, leaving the responsibility of drawing PPVs to two other men: welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre and middleweight champion Anderson Silva.
St-Pierre and Silva have some high-grossing events to their names. St-Pierre has headlined several cards that have received over 500,000 buys, and the best performing card he headlined received over 900,000 buys!
Silva, too, is no stranger to getting events to have over half a million buys. However, the largest amount of buys that he has drawn is significantly lower, at around 725,000.
Outside of these superstars, there are other fighters who are still around that have been good draws, such as Rashad Evans and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Tito Ortiz. (Evans vs. Jackson did over one million buys, Evans vs. Griffin did over one million buys and Ortiz vs. Liddell II did over one million buys.)
However, St-Pierre, Silva, Evans and Jackson are all getting older. Silva will be 37 in April, St.Pierre will be 31 in May, Evans will be 33 in September and Jackson will be 34 in June.
It’s difficult to tell what will happen when these men are finally gone.
One of the UFC’s greatest abilities was to take a fighter who was mediocre at best and to get fans to think that same fighter was an unstoppable world-beater (such as Andrei Arlovski, who was 7-3 but then somehow became the world’s most dangerous heavyweight, as well as numerous other cases).
The UFC’s marketing—the “UFC hype machine,” as some call it on the Internet—has always been at the core of the brand’s success.
If the UFC could make the mediocre fighters of yesteryear into nigh immortals, what could they do to the fighters of today who are legitimately the toughest men in the world?
Quite a lot.
But hype is only part of the story; the fighters have to meet the UFC halfway, and both of them have to meet the fans halfway.
If a fighter is talented but has no personality to speak of and his style isn’t that pleasing to fans (read: Jon Fitch), he’ll be buried. If a fighter like this were to succeed and make it to the top of the division, though, no amount of hype could turn him into a draw.
This notion is all the more important in light of Carlos Condit’s win over Nick Diaz. Condit has become a hated man thanks to just one “safe” performance. What if he beats St-Pierre in a “boring” victory and becomes the new poster-boy for not taking risks? It would be disastrous (thankfully, though, it’s an unlikely scenario).
Then there are fighters like UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, who most recently drew approximately 480,000 at UFC 140 and then about 520,000 at UFC 135.
Jones has the talent and the personality (love him or hate him—what you think about him is a separate issue) to be a draw once he becomes more well-known. And it also helps that he’s being pushed beyond belief; he’s appeared in a commercial for Bud Light as well as for one of the UFC’s commercials on FOX.
He will become the face of the company as long as he keeps winning, and he’s young enough for them to build the franchise around him for the next decade or so.
But that only replaces one of the three biggest draws.
The gaping holes in the UFC’s bank account left by Lesnar’s retirement and the retirement of St-Pierre, Silva et al. can’t be filled by just one man.
The truth is, the UFC may have a problem on their hands. They seem to be lacking young fighters with the sheer charisma, force of personality and potential to become a truly great PPV draw like the ones that came before them.
Will Rory Macdonald really be able to outdraw Georges St-Pierre? Will Jon Jones be able to outdraw Brock Lesnar? Will Ronny Markes be able to outdraw Anderson Silva?
The outcome is looking doubtful if the UFC doesn’t do something.
Fortunately, though, the UFC’s overseas expansion may alleviate these issues by bringing the UFC brand out of the tired United States and into new markets.
The FOX deal, too, is also tied in with the greater issue of replacing the big draws. FOX events can be used almost like commercials for PPV events. What is not to say that the younger fighters will establish a big following on FOX and become massive draws when they fight on PPV?
Thus, the question of whether or not the UFC can replace its big draws is conflated with many other issues and cannot easily be answered in a sentence or two.
The simplest answer and the only one that’s certain is this: The UFC will always have big draws, but it’s unknown just how big they will be relative to the more recent draws of Lesnar, St-Pierre and Silva.
All pay-per-view estimates are unofficial statistics provided by the MMApayout.com Blue Book.
The real heroes of MMA are the fighters at the bottom; the men who toil and sweat not for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but for the chance at fame and for the sheer love of fighting, men like West Virginia’s Ryan Shank.Shank is a 5-0 amateur fighte…
The real heroes of MMA are the fighters at the bottom; the men who toil and sweat not for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but for the chance at fame and for the sheer love of fighting, men like West Virginia’s Ryan Shank.
Shank is a 5-0 amateur fighter who was scheduled to make his pro debut this weekend at the North American Allied Fight Series (NAAFS) in Cleveland, Ohio.
The trials and tribulations of big time professional fighters like Georges St.Pierre and Anderson Silva are well known, but the plight of local, regional fighters aren’t discussed as extensively because it doesn’t garner page views, clicks, and therefore advertising revenue.
But the struggles and triumphs of men like Shank deserve to be covered.
So what is the hardest part of a burgeoning pro fighter’s job?
“Cutting weight,” Shank joked when he spoke with Bleacher Report.
“Just getting—when there’s not a fight on the horizon, going to the gym and busting your ass…just working hard to work hard and improve. I think a lot of guys have trouble with that. I don’t know, I’ve never had that problem myself. I try to approach each workout as a learning experience.”
Shank has been learning about the martial arts for quite some time. His passion started with wrestling, but was further kindled by Pride Fighting Championships.
“I’ve wrestled since the 6th grade” he said.
“I would remember watching Pride, like coming home from school and Pride would be on FOX sports net and I just really really liked it.”
Pride got him focused on MMA, but it was an injury that ultimately helped Shank choose MMA as his path.
“I wrestled two years in college and I knew I wanted to do it after I got done wrestling but I was hurt almost all last year and I didn’t get to wrestle much and I just spent most of the time watching jiu-jitsu videos and fights and stuff and thought ‘why not just go for it?’”
Unfortunately for Shank, he lived in West Virginia, which doesn’t exactly have a reputation as a hotbed for mixed martial arts. In fact, the state just had their first professional MMA event earlier this year.
A state with sparse MMA training has the detriment of offering little in the way of training partners.
“The amount of training partners is kind of a trouble. I do have 3 or 4 regular guys that I train with that are good. But, ya know, only one or two are fighters. So it’s not like I get to train with them everyday. It’s not like I’m at a gym with a fight team or fight team practice,” he said.
At this point, some might just scoff at his problems and tell him to go to a bigger, better training camp. But that’s part of why life as an up and coming fighter is so difficult; decisions like that aren’t easy to make.
“I’m kind of in that process right now. My best friend lives in New York and we’re possibly gonna move in and get an apartment up there and go to either like Renzo’s or Serra-Longo and train up there.” he said.
“What’s making it hard is you know, for me, New York City is an expensive city to live in. Loyalty is a big thing and I don’t want to leave the people who were there from day one—even though I would try to come back here to West Virgina as much as I could. Just leaving the familiarity of where your from…to just pick up and leave and go to a new city with new training partners and you don’t know if it’s gonna work out and if you’re gonna gel with the guys in the gym or butt heads. It’s just the unknown. I guess it scares a lot of people.”
The fates of all regional and local fighters are part of the unknown. That is why the amateur fighters are the real heroes in a sense. Ryan Shank and his ilk help to grow the grassroots of the sport and are the very future of the sport.
When they fight, there is no guaranteed paycheck for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are no big “fight of the night” bonuses, there are no locker room bonuses. There is a pittance that barely covers training and travel expenses if it covers them at all.
Yet men like Shank endure to fight another day and, in spite of all odds, rise up to become something more.
Yet Shank will have to wait. Another struggle fighters in his position face is fights being delayed or outright canceled.
As mentioned above, Shank was scheduled to make his debut Saturday but, several days after the interview was conducted, Shank announced via twitter that his opponent was injured and had to pull out.
Before departing, Shank wished to thank the people who made his life as a fighter possible.
“All my training partners, my trainer Butch Hiles, he’s really helped me along in BJJ, Combat Corner for sponsoring me. Even though right now it’s just gear, that’s still money saved and that’s a tremendous help for someone who’s just started to get into making money to fight.”
The first UFC event on Fuel TV is over.Jake Ellenberger defeated Diego Sanchez and solidified his place in the top echelon of the division. There were other happenings on the fight card that turned what seemed like a low-level, unimportant event o…
The first UFC event on Fuel TV is over.
Jake Ellenberger defeated Diego Sanchez and solidified his place in the top echelon of the division.
There were other happenings on the fight card that turned what seemed like a low-level, unimportant event on Fuel into something that was truly memorable.
What were the memorable moments from Omaha? Read on and find out!
