UFC 139: Who Does the UFC Want to Win, Cain Velasquez or Junior Dos Santos?

The UFC is a sports organization, but it’s also a business. The UFC no doubt hopes that some fighters are in the limelight more than others. The heavyweight title bout between champion Cain Velasquez and challenger Junior Dos Santos is no exception&mda…

The UFC is a sports organization, but it’s also a business. The UFC no doubt hopes that some fighters are in the limelight more than others. The heavyweight title bout between champion Cain Velasquez and challenger Junior Dos Santos is no exception—it’s just that the line isn’t as clear-cut as it is with most fights.

In many high profile fights, there is a definite “good guy” and a definite “bad guy.” To put it in terms that exclude any sort of moral entanglements, there is usually a fighter who is better marketing-wise who will generate more money for the UFC with a victory.

For example, it was fortuitous for the UFC when Andrei Arlovski managed to defeat Tim Sylvia at UFC 51. Arlovski had a lot of hype behind him and had a marketable look (the long hair, the vampire fangs and the muscular physique). Sylvia, on the other hand, was kind of flabby and had no real charisma to speak of.

A more recent example would be Anderson Silva‘s victory over Yushin Okami at UFC 134. While Silva isn’t the biggest draw amongst champions, Okami’s unpopular style and inability to speak English (which Silva doesn’t speak either but at least he is more exciting) would draw even less attention and therefore pay-per-view buys.

Unfortunately, Velasquez vs. Dos Santos isn’t as easy to figure out as either of these fights or perhaps any fight in the UFC’s history—at least after it was announced that the fight would take place on the FOX network.

Before the fight was scheduled to be on FOX, it was relatively easy to figure out who the UFC would want to win.

Cain Velasquez is being billed as the UFC’s first “Mexican” heavyweight champion and has stolen the considerable amount of thunder from Brock Lesnar. Thus, it would be beneficial for the UFC’s expansion efforts into the Mexican and Latin American markets if Cain Velasquez defeated Dos Santos.

Having a Mexican heavyweight champion would be an enormous catalyst for the UFC’s expansion into the aforementioned markets and stealing potential boxing fans away from the last bastion(s) of boxing would put yet another nail into the decrepit sport’s coffin.

While a Dos Santos victory would help the UFC’s renewed expansion efforts in Brazil, those efforts hardly need help; the UFC is planning to sell out a 100,000 seat arena there in 2012. There are plenty more Brazilians to help them do that besides Dos Santos.

However, the fact that the fight will now take place on FOX changes the dynamic considerably.

Now that the fight is on FOX, there is considerable pressure for the fight to be exciting, palatable to the unwashed MMA masses in the same way that first fight between Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar was.

While Velasquez has very good striking, his forte is wrestling—which also happens to be the biggest question mark surrounding Dos Santos. Thus, Velasquez must smother Dos Santos with wrestling in order to maximize the odds that he will be victorious.

Unfortunately, wrestling is the hardest martial art in mixed martial arts for the “casual fan” (who will no doubt be watching since the fight is free on FOX) to understand. A 25-minute long wrestling clinic could spell disaster for the UFC’s debut on FOX.

On the other hand, Dos Santos has amazing striking abilities and is one of the very best technical boxers in the UFC. If Dos Santos is to win, it will likely be by a knockout (perhaps by using his fearsome uppercut).

Amongst the “casual fan,” the knockout will always be king. If the fans tune into the UFC on FOX and see a slugfest that ends with an epic knockout, they will walk away pleased…but not if the knockout is so quick that they feel unfulfilled. If the fight is too short the finicky casual fans will be dissatisfied!

Therefore, there is no easy answer to who the UFC wants to win this fight.

What matters more is how the fight is won. If the fight is over too soon, or is a long “lay and pray” fest, then the UFC’s image will be in peril. If the fight is won after a contest of epic proportions, then the UFC will reach new heights and Cain Velasquez and Junior Dos Santos will become akin to living gods.

 

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UFC 135: 4 Reasons Why Josh Koscheck Is a Terrible Fight for Matt Hughes

It has recently been rumored that welterweight wrestling star Josh Koscheck will face former UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes at UFC 135 in place of the injured Diego Sanchez. This bout could mark a sad end for one of the greatest champions in UFC…

It has recently been rumored that welterweight wrestling star Josh Koscheck will face former UFC welterweight champion Matt Hughes at UFC 135 in place of the injured Diego Sanchez. This bout could mark a sad end for one of the greatest champions in UFC history.

Why is this being marked as the end, let alone sad?

Read and find out!

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UFC: Will the UFC’s Rampant Growth Ultimately Cause Its Destruction?

The UFC has battled numerous foes since its inception in 1993, and even more since the Zuffa buyout in 2001. All those who directly fought the UFC all failed. However, there is still one enemy the UFC needs to be wary of—itself.The UFC has grown …

The UFC has battled numerous foes since its inception in 1993, and even more since the Zuffa buyout in 2001. All those who directly fought the UFC all failed. However, there is still one enemy the UFC needs to be wary of—itself.

The UFC has grown significantly from 1993 to 2001 and astronomically from 2001 to the modern day. From a backwater “sporting” event has come the very sport of the future, soon to be featured on network television.

In its wake, the UFC has left a slew of dead promotions. Organizations such as the IFL, EliteXC, Affliction, the once mighty Pride Fighting Championships and, most recently, Strikeforce have either been crushed by or incorporated into the Zuffa juggernaut.

As the UFC sits only two months away from its FOX network debut and has seemingly entered a global age, it appears as though there is nothing in the MMA world that could possibly topple the UFC’s hegemony over the sport.

This is a flawed notion.

Throughout its growth, the UFC has planted the MMA seed in the United States and in various countries across the Earth. Now, other MMA organizations are flourishing thanks to the UFC’s popularization of the sport.

This is not too much of a problem domestically because the UFC has the U.S. market totally captivated, and the UFC brand name is stronger than an uppercut from UFC heavyweight contender Junior Dos Santos.

However, internationally, this may be a future issue for the UFC.

By igniting the flames of MMA in foreign countries, the UFC has added more destinations that they must visit each calendar year. Unfortunately, MMA fans are not known to be the most patient or forgiving group. Only one UFC event in 365 days just isn’t enough for many fans outside the United States.

Thus, other organizations will rise up to fulfill the demand for MMA that the UFC has created. This is no more apparent than in the case of the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts (or BAMMA) in the UK, a promotion popular enough that a good case is made by Jonathan Shrager for them to be on Spike TV.

In fact, promotions are springing up all over Europe to meet the demand for MMA. It is inevitable that one of these promotions will rise above the others and become the premier organization on the continent.

This process can also happen organically, that is to say, without the UFC ever having visited. Such is the case with the brand new One Fighting Championship (or One FC) out of Singapore. They have only held one show thus far, but they hope to become the “UFC of Asia” and there are several reasons why they might.

The point is, the UFC is increasing the popularity of MMA worldwide. With the ability to hold only so many shows a year due to a finite roster, other promotions will rise up and eventually secure their sector of the world. We will one day have a promotion with total superiority over Europe as well as one with total superiority over Asia.

The UFC may lose local superiority to promotions like BAMMA or One FC because the smaller promotions will put on more shows for their audiences, meaning that these events these promotions hold may garner more attention than the UFC’s events when the UFC is holding the events out of town.

Nevertheless, fighters don’t torture themselves throughout training camp and put their bodies at risk to be champions of BAMMA or One FC, they do it to enter the UFC. That fact will never change.

The UFC also has a significant head start (in basically every department) over any such upstart.

None of this is to say that a BAMMA-type promotion will destroy the UFC or eclipse it in global popularity—that would be heretical. When the UFC comes to town, it will dominate the MMA scene and the smaller promotion will be an afterthought.

To put it bluntly, it’s very unlikely that a regional promotion will escape their continental bounds and engage in a prolonged competition with the UFC.

However, there is still another possible scenario that could give rise to a competitor.

MMA is touted as the “fastest growing sport in the world” by practically everybody. What is to stop a wealthy group or individual from seeing the money train go by and trying to jump on?

This has been tried before by Kurt Otto and Garret Shamus with the IFL, Gary Shaw with EliteXC/ProElite and Affliction with Affliction Entertainment. These ventures were analogous to Ted Turner’s acquisition of professional wrestling company WCW in the sense that they didn’t end well.

Even though the ProElite venture ended in failure and in the departure of Gary Shaw and his son “$kala” (a.k.a. Jared Shaw) from the MMA business, the corpse of the organization has been reanimated by a far more fearsome foe—Viacom.

Viacom is one of the world’s leading media conglomerates and, according to cagepotato.com, they own 20 percent of the resurrected ProElite.

If there is an organization that can outspend Zuffa, it’s Viacom.

Does this mean that the UFC is destined to lose?

Hardly. No one on earth knows more about the MMA business than the brain trust of Dana White and Lorenzo Fertita—that alone is worth Viacom’s billions.

But this does not mean that the UFC can grow complacent! The UFC has created a lucrative business that didn’t exist before—MMA—and whenever that happens there will always be those trying to imitate the rise of the industry’s leader.

By creating the wider market for MMA the UFC has created competitors, but it has so far managed to put them all under their thumb by simply knowing more about the fight business. In the end, knowledge of the fight business is more important than just throwing money at things.

The UFC is therefore like the trunk of an giant MMA tree, it is the center of the tree and other branches (promotions) come from it, but they could not exist without it and could therefore never eclipse it in size or importance.

 

Follow @mattsaccaro

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC on FOX: Does the Growth of the UFC Brand Hurt the Growth of MMA?

Tell someone on the street that you follow MMA and they’ll look at you in confusion. Tell someone on the street that you follow the UFC and they’ll immediately understand. All MMA fans have experienced this phenomenon and it illustrates one import…

Tell someone on the street that you follow MMA and they’ll look at you in confusion. Tell someone on the street that you follow the UFC and they’ll immediately understand. All MMA fans have experienced this phenomenon and it illustrates one important point: The UFC brand name is stronger than the sport itself.

How did this happen?

The UFC has grown by leaps and bounds since its start in 1993. As the first organization of its kind in the ’90s, fans really didn’t know what to call what was going on inside the cage aside from a name reflecting the promotion’s name. There was no such thing as “mixed martial arts” in the beginning since not a lot of fighters mixed martial arts.

People, ignorant of the martial arts world, instead just saw mixed rules fights and called it “ultimate fighting” or “cage fighting.” Many people still use those terms today.

Aside from semantics, the fact that the UFC was the “original,” and therefore the most famous and recognizable brand in the sea of MMA promotions, was crucial in forming the brand’s strength in the United States. Most people hadn’t heard of Extreme Fighting or Martial Arts Reality Superfighting (MARS) but they had heard of the UFC.

Once Zuffa purchased the company in 2001, the practice of strengthening the UFC brand (especially via merchandising) was taken to new heights. The UFC and the UFC’s brand strength soared for the next 10 years. The UFC eclipsed MMA just as Kleenex eclipsed tissue or Band-aid eclipsed adhesive strip.

 

Just recently, the organization has signed a historic deal with FOX that will feature UFC programming on a major network for the very first time.

Critics of the UFC have maintained that calling MMA the “fastest growing sport in the world” is factually wrong; according to them the growth is only by one organization—the UFC.

While much of the growth has been by the UFC (and this is proven by the fact that “MMA” isn’t widely known—except among educated types who think of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—but UFC is), MMA itself has grown significantly and will continue to grow alongside the UFC.

Five years ago organizations like Bellator Fighting Championships, Shark Fights and Tachi Palace fights couldn’t exist. Now, thanks to the fact that the UFC has expanded the popularity of MMA in the United States (meaning that there are more MMA gyms and fighters), these promotions can thrive.

This process that has happened in the United States can and will happen to the countries that the UFC is expanding to. Did a significant portion of the populations in the UK or Germany know about MMA or train in it? Thanks to the UFC, the MMA scenes in these countries are expanding.

Even Sweden, who has no significant martial arts heritage like the U.S. has wrestling or Japan has Judo, has a sizable MMA promotion in the Superior Challenge organization.

Just observe the adjacent Superior Challenge video. It features fighters Jeremy Horn and Thales Leites, two fighters whose names were made by the UFC. The competition in the UFC grew too great for both men, but they were able to go and provide a good fight for a smaller promotion and therefore help build MMA.

Poland, too, has its MMA with KSW (or Konfrontacja Sztuk Walki, if you must know the full Polish name). These are but two of the MMA promotions whose existence was made possible by the UFC planting the MMA seed; there are many more that are far too numerous to list.

Even the MMA media has changed. Years ago, articles such as Jonathan Shrager’s “10 Reasons Why BAMMA Could, and Should, Be on Spike TV” probably wouldn’t have been written; why write an article about a “minor league” promotion when people wouldn’t read it because it wasn’t about the UFC?

However, thanks to the UFC’s growth, even promotions that are minor when compared to the UFC are more well-known they would’ve been before.

The UFC may be growing faster than MMA, but that doesn’t mean MMA won’t reach astounding heights as well. As the UFC becomes truly international in scope, it will have to host more and more shows across the globe each year.

Due to this fact, the largest promotions in each nation will fill the void in the UFC’s absence. These promotions will become large enough to be well-known, but small enough to never threaten the UFC’s hegemony.

The UFC is thus the great redwood whose saplings (Superior Challenge, KSW, BAMMA and others) have populated the landscape, but will never top the original; MMA is the UFC, not the other way around.

 

Follow @MattSaccaro

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

UFC on FOX: Will Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos Begin MMA’s Golden Age?

It has recently been announced that the main event of inaugural UFC on FOX event will be a heavyweight title fight between champion Cain Velasquez and challenger Junior dos Santos.Saying this fight is important is the understatement of the century sinc…

It has recently been announced that the main event of inaugural UFC on FOX event will be a heavyweight title fight between champion Cain Velasquez and challenger Junior dos Santos.

Saying this fight is important is the understatement of the century since the fight may well kickoff a new era for the UFC and MMA.

What is this era? MMA’s Golden Age.

A “golden age” can be a somewhat nebulous idea, especially when there is such rampant nostalgia for the days of Pride Fighting Championships and legends of old still pervading the MMA community.

Some, such as Bloody Elbow’s Matthew Roth, believe that the Golden Age was the heyday of Pride, and it went into its death throes at UFC 132 with the crushing defeat of Wanderlei Silva at the hands of Chris Leben.

Roth stated that this year could mark “the death of the Golden Age of Mixed Martial Arts,” since the bulk of “veteran fighters have slowly become worn out and unable to compete at the highest levels,” and will eventually disappear from MMA as a whole.

A more erroneous claim could not be made.

The Golden Age of MMA is not about to die, but about to be born!

The UFC will soon make its debut on the illustrious FOX network which will be headlined by an epic title bout between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos. This broadcast will reach millions and convert a legion of people into MMA fans.

In addition to this, these new fans will not be forced to bear the weight of ideological baggage from the Pride vs. UFC debates of old.

With only one clearly superior organization, debates such as that are over; how can there not be a Golden Age for MMA when the UFC espouses the virtues of the sport across the earth to more fans than ever before?

Furthermore, the athletes that will enter the sport will be of a higher caliber. Jon Jones is a phenom at only 24 years old. Why? Because he has NFL-caliber athleticism (he has a brother who plays for the Baltimore Ravens).

Soon, even more athletes will choose to pursue the purest form of competition, MMA, over more arbitrary sports like football. Thus, the incoming crop of fighters will be far superior to the legends of old in every way.

This fact has an added benefit besides increasing the level of competition: Fans will be able to see these prospects enter the UFC from Day 1 and follow the entirety of their dominant careers.

This will create super-legendary fighters since tens of millions will have known them from when they were 0-0 in the UFC until they retired.

Wanderlei Silva may be a legend, but how many were following him since his debut? With the UFC’s anticipated rampant growth due to the FOX deal, more eyes will be on more prospects who have more talent. The fact that people will watch the stars “grow up” will give the fans an increased connection with the fighter, one that few stars ever achieve.

Therefore, it is practically undeniable that MMA’s golden age is at hand. The level of competition will rise since the athletes will get better than they ever have been and with only one supreme organization; the UFC will run the sport like the NFL runs football.

The Golden Age of MMA is indeed at hand. Big fights await the fans, big paychecks await the fighters, and big dreams await the athletes of tomorrow. In the words of UFC announcer Bruce Buffer, “IT’S TIME!”

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MMA: The Lamest Event Names in Each Major American Promotion’s History

Before the MMA was “with it” in terms of marketing, each promotion gave their shows a slew of hilariously bad names. Unfortunately, this trend was the worst in the United States and it lasted for over a decade.For some reason, it took the UFC (and othe…

Before the MMA was “with it” in terms of marketing, each promotion gave their shows a slew of hilariously bad names. Unfortunately, this trend was the worst in the United States and it lasted for over a decade.

For some reason, it took the UFC (and others) a long while to figure out that titling the event after the main event fighters was fine with everybody. There didn’t need to be a lame, cliché, over-the-top name attached to every event.

Some names weren’t too bad but some were cringeworthy back then and are even worse when looked back upon now.

Each promotion had their own events that were egregiously bad—what are they? Read on and find out!

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