The Ultimate Fighting Championship is the pinnacle for the sport of mixed martial arts, pitting one combatant against another with a winner take all kind of attitude.
That attitude is one of the features that attracts fans to the sport, with big personalities creating controversy inside, and outside of the cage.
As the popularity of the sport rises into the main stream, the top promotion may have to rethink it’s relaxed stance on some of the controversy outside of the Octagon.
In a recent radio show this past Saturday night, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, gave his opinion on the recent controversy involving Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson and announcer Joe Rogan.
Jackson received a lot of flak for his recent post-fight interview with MMA Heat host, Karyn Bryant, for some inappropriate behavior at the end of the interview. Check the link HERE for a recap on the incident and Bryant’s response.
Rogan, meanwhile, offered up some choice words for CageWriter.com reporter Maggie Hendricks, who posted a brief history of Jackson’s reporter abuse on the UnderGround forums. CagePotato.com put together a nice recap, and comment piece, on Rogan’s remarks. It got to the point that UFC President Dana White even issued a statement on the situation involving Rogan.
In Meltzer’s radio spot (transcription provided by FightOpinion.com), he goes on to say that the head of the UFC should pay head to the fate of the WWE after it began losing sponsors due to offensive material.
“This is one of those things where it’s, you know, there’s a chance that this just blows over, actually a good chance this blows over and nothing happens. But if the wrong group, you know, sees it, you know, they could easily lose sponsors over this, easily.”
“And it’s just like, it’s kind of like um… I mean it’s one of the things and this thing is going to happen and I can tell you this with 90% certainty that unless, you know, Dana (White) & Lorenzo (Fertitta) realize as they get thing more popular and play in the big leagues that they’re going to have to play in the big leagues. I mean, their attitude is very, very similar to Vince (McMahon) in the ’80s, you know, I mean Vince in the ’80s was like, ‘I’m Vince and I’m having nothing but success,’ and he had a couple of periods where he got taken down bad, real bad because of that attitude and, you know, nearly lost his business once over it. You know, lost some TV stations over it because of that, key TV stations in key TV markets because of that arrogance. And they are big as Vince was then, you know, in the sense of they’re not so big that they’re impenetrable to all this. You know, again, if they’re on NBC and this happens, you know, that spotlight’s a little bit too big and they’re going to, again, if you know anything about sponsorships…
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“In ‘99 when WWE was on fire, I mean they were doing 6’s (cable ratings), they had, you know, one or two sponsors [leave] and it was the domino effect and Vince had to go in there and go, ‘we’re toning down,’ they had to, they had no choice because they were going to lose all their sponsors and that’s the reality of this world. And this is one of the reasons the product is what it is now.”
“These guys (UFC) are doing really well, you know, Edge (Shaving Gel) is jumping on board and Dodge has jumped on board, they’re getting real sponsors and they’re getting real credibility and… you know, you get a woman’s group after you and start playing these tapes of [Rampage] and then it comes out that you never punished him and then you got this announcer (Rogan) saying this, it could all go down, I mean this domino effect goes down real quick.
“They’re just stupid to let it happen. They need to make a move before it’s too late instead of after because after, you know, once the snowball starts going, man, it’s real hard to stop that snowball. If you stop the snowball when it’s still a snowball, then it’s not an avalanche. It’s pretty easy to stop, but when it becomes an avalanche and then you start trying to do damage control and realize you made a mistake, man, it often can be too late. But, we’ll see how it plays out.”