And so it begins. Or, perhaps it should be said: “And so it has finally happened.” As a longtime proponent of MMA, it is an often forgotten fact (dismissed as a notion of comfortable equitability, toward the end of granting a kind of safe harbor from which to criticize the sport of boxing) that Dana […]
And so it begins. Or, perhaps it should be said: “And so it has finally happened.” As a longtime proponent of MMA, it is an often forgotten fact (dismissed as a notion of comfortable equitability, toward the end of granting a kind of safe harbor from which to criticize the sport of boxing) that Dana […]
Yesterday morning, Roach entered a gym in Macau for an open workout scheduled ahead of Pacquiao’s clash with Brandon Rios this Saturday. Shortly after entering, Roach got into a heated altercation with Brandon Rios’ trainers, Robert Garcia and Alex Ariza, regarding gym time. When Rios’ crew refused to leave despite their time being up, Roach called Garcia a “piece of shit,” setting into motion a back-and-forth that would result in Roach being kicked in the chest, called a “faggot” repeatedly, and having his Parkinson’s disease mocked and laughed at by Rios and his crew of troglodyte cohorts.
Now, while some of the blame for this altercation can be placed on Roach for his overly-aggressive approach (and somewhat insidious use of the term “Mexican motherfucker”), to act as if Garcia and Ariza’s childish mocking of a boxing legend’s incurable disease is anything less than despicable, abhorrent behavior is to sell the incident short.
Fuck you, Robert Garcia. Fuck you, Alex Ariza. Fuck you both to Hell. May your tiny, tiny genitals be severed from your bodies and fed to the meanest, junkyardiest dogs this planet has to offer while the rest of you is cast to the boats.
After the jump: A second angle of the confrontation, as well as a little backstory on the rough history between Roach and Ariza.
Yesterday morning, Roach entered a gym in Macau for an open workout scheduled ahead of Pacquiao’s clash with Brandon Rios this Saturday. Shortly after entering, Roach got into a heated altercation with Brandon Rios’ trainers, Robert Garcia and Alex Ariza, regarding gym time. When Rios’ crew refused to leave despite their time being up, Roach called Garcia a “piece of shit,” setting into motion a back-and-forth that would result in Roach being kicked in the chest, called a “faggot” repeatedly, and having his Parkinson’s disease mocked and laughed at by Rios and his crew of troglodyte cohorts.
Now, while some of the blame for this altercation can be placed on Roach for his overly-aggressive approach (and somewhat insidious use of the term “Mexican motherfucker”), to act as if Garcia and Ariza’s childish mocking of a boxing legend’s incurable disease is anything less than despicable, abhorrent behavior is to sell the incident short.
Fuck you, Robert Garcia. Fuck you, Alex Ariza. Fuck you both to Hell. May your tiny, tiny genitals be severed from your bodies and fed to the meanest, junkyardiest dogs this planet has to offer while the rest of you is cast to the boats.
A second angle of the confrontation, as well as a little backstory on the rough history between Roach and Ariza, is below.
For those of you who think this was an isolated incident, think again. It turns out that, for a time, Ariza was the strength and conditioning coach for Pacquiao until he was fired on Roach’s advice. Yahoo’s Kevin Iole has the scoop:
“Ariza is just an [expletive],” Roach said. “He never did a thing for Manny. Manny always worked on his own. Alex just stretched him, and that was the extent of his job. I told Manny, ‘You’re paying this guy a lot of money just to stretch you.’ What fighter in the world, what professional athlete, can’t stretch himself?’ And Manny agreed and said, ‘I’m going to go back to the old way.’
“Alex is just a pain in the ass. My cornermen, Buboy [Fernandez], he used to cut off and go up in the ring. He cut Buboy off and would start yelling instructions over me. My cutman, Miguel Diaz, refused to work the corner if Alex was in the corner because he wanted to be the cutman also. If he would have just done his job, he would have been OK, but he wanted to do everyone else’s job.
Now let’s bring things back to the “racist” allegations being thrown Roach’s way in/as a result of this video.
To my understanding (which is somewhat limited on account of my “whiteness”), calling a person of Mexican descent “a Mexican” does not inherently qualify as racist. In the interest of fairness, however, I will say that Roach’s use of the term sure sounded racist, if only because of the context in which he was using it.
Calling someone with Parkinson’s disease “a stuttering prick” and “a faggot” before repeatedly mocking their disease, on the other hand, is a revolting act worthy of a swift and brutal punishment. While my previous suggestion of castration/scaphism might be a little on the extreme side, can we all agree that a good old fashioned kneecapping is in order for both Ariza and Garcia?
Oh, and the worst part? This isn’t even the first time that Rios & Co. have been caught mocking Roach’s Parkinson’s on camera.
You know what, fuck it. Fasten each and every last one of Rios’ crew to a boat and let the insects feast on their insides.
We’re not sure if you’ve heard about this yet but UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre hung onto his belt this past Saturday at UFC 167 with a controversial split decision win over Johny Hendricks and then kinda, sorta announced a retirement, of sorts. The story hasn’t got much attention so first off, we wanted to make sure you knew about that.
In any case, UFC president Dana White is intent on bringing GSP back to fight Hendricks again and, according to a new report from Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole, who is in Macau to cover the Manny Pacquiao/Brandon Rios boxing match this week, “Rush” told “PacMan” trainer Freddie Roach that he’ll never fight again if he doesn’t have him in his corner.
Roach said he has yet to speak to St-Pierre on the telephone, but said the champion texted him.
“He said, ‘I’m not going to fight again unless you are in my corner,'” Roach said. Asked to clarify if that meant on fight night, as well, Roach said, “Absolutely.” To this point, Roach has never been in a UFC fighter’s corner on the night of a fight.
Roach, always eager to promote himself, also said that he “pretty much came up with the game plan” for St. Pierre against Hendricks. So…good job?
We’re not sure if you’ve heard about this yet but UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre hung onto his belt this past Saturday at UFC 167 with a controversial split decision win over Johny Hendricks and then kinda, sorta announced a retirement, of sorts. The story hasn’t got much attention so first off, we wanted to make sure you knew about that.
In any case, UFC president Dana White is intent on bringing GSP back to fight Hendricks again and, according to a new report from Yahoo! Sports’ Kevin Iole, who is in Macau to cover the Manny Pacquiao/Brandon Rios boxing match this week, “Rush” told “PacMan” trainer Freddie Roach that he’ll never fight again if he doesn’t have him in his corner.
Roach said he has yet to speak to St-Pierre on the telephone, but said the champion texted him.
“He said, ‘I’m not going to fight again unless you are in my corner,’” Roach said. Asked to clarify if that meant on fight night, as well, Roach said, “Absolutely.” To this point, Roach has never been in a UFC fighter’s corner on the night of a fight.
Roach, always eager to promote himself, also said that he “pretty much came up with the game plan” for St. Pierre against Hendricks. So…good job?
I wrote elsewhere today that St. Pierre may very well want to go ahead and stay retired. He’s anxious, can’t sleep and suspects that aliens are fucking with him. Plus, he’s almost gotten knocked out two out of his last three fights and has been at it for over a decade.
I don’t know what’s more worrisome — St. Pierre believing that he’s been abducted by extra-terrestrials or him believing that Freddie Roach knows anything about MMA and should therefore be designing his game-plans and cornering him during fights.
(“So if you win, your salary doubles from $22,000 to $44,000? And if it’s the best fight on the card, they give you a $50,000 bonus? Wow. That’s adorable, man.”)
Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s record $41.5 million guarantee for facing Canelo Alvarez in September elicited a series of reactions from the MMA community. Some fighters like Tito Ortiz made ridiculous comparisons (“What am I doing different from [Floyd Mayweather Jr.]?”). Others, like current UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones knew it was more politically expedient to downplay any direct comparison between revenues in boxing and MMA (“Boxing has been around over 100 years…The foundation is set and the money is there. MMA is so new.”). But the question looms large — why is it that boxing can boast stratospheric paydays whereas MMA’s purses are deliberately obscured from public knowledge?
We could talk about the structure of modern boxing where there is competition between promoters (Bob Arum, Golden Boy, etc.) and TV networks (HBO, Showtime, etc.), which drives boxing purses up. Or we could focus on the formula for self-promoting fights that Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. derived tremendous benefit from. The fact remains that with its limited 20-year history, MMA has much more in common with the monopolistic and mafia-controlled boxing of the 1950s and ‘60s than it does with modern boxing.
What the industry tends to ignore is that the passage of time is not what leads to progress. It was five years ago in 2008 that Jon Fitch was tossed overboard by the UFC for refusing to sign away his likeness rights away in perpetuity. While managers and fighters could have drawn a line in the sand, squared up with Zuffa and said “You’ve taken enough from us,” their response to the likeness rights situation was completely muted.
Thus, the precedent was set. MMA managers acting out of fear negotiated with the UFC by giving up something in exchange for nothing.
(“So if you win, your salary doubles from $22,000 to $44,000? And if it’s the best fight on the card, they give you a $50,000 bonus? Wow. That’s adorable, man.”)
Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s record $41.5 million guarantee for facing Canelo Alvarez in September elicited a series of reactions from the MMA community. Some fighters like Tito Ortiz made ridiculous comparisons (“What am I doing different from [Floyd Mayweather Jr.]?”). Others, like current UFC light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones knew it was more politically expedient to downplay any direct comparison between revenues in boxing and MMA (“Boxing has been around over 100 years…The foundation is set and the money is there. MMA is so new.”). But the question looms large — why is it that boxing can boast stratospheric paydays whereas MMA’s purses are deliberately obscured from public knowledge?
We could talk about the structure of modern boxing where there is competition between promoters (Bob Arum, Golden Boy, etc.) and TV networks (HBO, Showtime, etc.), which drives boxing purses up. Or we could focus on the formula for self-promoting fights that Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr. derived tremendous benefit from. The fact remains that with its limited 20-year history, MMA has much more in common with the monopolistic and mafia-controlled boxing of the 1950s and ‘60s than it does with modern boxing.
What the industry tends to ignore is that the passage of time is not what leads to progress. It was five years ago in 2008 that Jon Fitch was tossed overboard by the UFC for refusing to sign away his likeness rights away in perpetuity. While managers and fighters could have drawn a line in the sand, squared up with Zuffa and said “You’ve taken enough from us,” their response to the likeness rights situation was completely muted.
Thus, the precedent was set. MMA managers acting out of fear negotiated with the UFC by giving up something in exchange for nothing.
*****
Boxing was corrupt in the ‘50s — the mafia having gained control of the industry during the prohibition of the sport from 1830 to 1920 — and most fighters were simply objects to be used and discarded. (Of many available examples, 110% of Joe Louis’s purses were committed to other people, and the IRS still needed to be paid on top of that).
There were still people who pushed back, playing the dicey game of making certain compromises while maintaining a larger strategic aim. One such man was legendary trainer Cus D’Amato, understood to be the driving force behind world champions Floyd Patterson, Jose Torres and Mike Tyson. In Confusing the Enemy: The Cus D’Amato Story, a new biographical novel by Scott Weiss and Paige Stover, the strategy and tactics of D’Amato throughout different eras of boxing are explained — ideas that still apply to the embryonic mixed martial arts game today.
From 1949 to 1958, the International Boxing Club (IBC), led by Jim Norris, ruled the major divisions of boxing. From fixing matches to slicing and dicing up the fighter’s purses, Norris and the IBC ruled the roost with the compliance of shadowy organized crime figures in the background.
As Cus D’Amato groomed Floyd Patterson to be heavyweight champion of the world, he avoided opponents who were controlled by the IBC. Jim Norris of the IBC wanted a 50% interest in Floyd Patterson in exchange for headlining cards at Madison Square Gardens; D’Amato had no interest in serving Patterson up to the IBC on a silver platter.
Fortuitously, the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) and the US Senate began putting heat on the IBC. D’Amato walked into Jim Norris’s office for a sit-down to get Floyd Patterson the big fights he deserved: “By keeping this fight out of the Garden and off of network television, we’re both leaving money on the table…How long are we gonna keep this up? Neither of us is getting where we wanna be.”
D’Amato and Norris worked out a compromise, but it was clear that the IBC was losing ground. When Rocky Marciano vacated the heavyweight title, D’Amato used the hard sell — bluffing a potential Patterson-Marciano fight with another promoter — to negotiate for Patterson to fight for the world title in November of 1956 for the staggering sum of $150,000. Eventually, the IBC was declared a monopoly by the courts and ordered dissolved.
D’Amato had earned scorn for opposing the IBC monopoly because his tactics kept both Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres inactive or facing unranked opponents. In the end, however, he prevailed, not just in that both Patterson and Torres became champions, but because in retirement, their careers extended beyond boxing: Patterson became chairman of the NYSAC and Jose Torres a respected writer and author.
*****
With the right representation at the right time, a talented MMA fighter can secure a better deal. PRIDE champion Fedor Emelianenko went from earning paltry purses of $15,000 to $20,000 under Russian Top Team manager Vladimir Pogodin to clearing $200,000 per fight plus win bonuses throughout 2004 thanks to agent Miro Mijatovic.
Fedor had been unhappy with Pogodin for quite a while, as Pogodin had been skimming money off the top. Mijatovic promoted Fedor’s fight against Yuji Nagata at Inoki-Bom-Ba-Ye 2003, giving Fedor a purse of $150,000. PRIDE was so terrified of the prospect of losing their heavyweight champion — and more importantly, the threat of competition from a new promotion — that the yakuza (organized crime) who ran PRIDE held Mijatovic hostage at gunpoint in order to extort the rights to Fedor of him.
Throughout 2004, Mijatovic was part of the management team that guided Fedor to record purses ($200,000 per fight plus win bonuses) and the PRIDE Heavyweight Grand Prix title. When the PRIDE brass attempted to bribe Mijatovic at the end of 2004 in order to control Fedor’s earnings, he refused and was dumped from Fedor’s management team by Vadim Finkelstein. The rest of this story, including PRIDE’s demise is, as we say, history.
The lesson throughout eras in combat sports is simple — when you control the consensus heavyweight champion, you can control the sport. This was not lost on Cus D’Amato, and it certainly wasn’t lost on Miro Mijatovic.
*****
Just about the only force that can reform MMA involves government intervention, the same way the US Senate investigated boxing. California attempted change in 2012 through Assembly Bill 2100, which was designed to prevent promoters from claiming unreasonable future merchandising rights, prevent unreasonable restrictions on fighters’ seeking outside sponsors and prohibit other onerous contract provisions.
While the legislation was doomed from its inception due to a variety of factors, the anti-AB2100 speakers are worth noting because of what they tell us about the current MMA landscape. Ronda Rousey adopted Zuffa’s stance and spoke out against the bill due to the simple matter of self-preservation: In 2012, she was champion in the sinking ship known as Strikeforce; in 2013, she became the champion of the newly-created women’s bantamweight division in the UFC. Matt Hughes, who spoke positively about Zuffa’s influence on the sport to the California Assembly, was rewarded for his loyalty by being hired in January 2013 as the UFC’s VP of Athlete Development & Government Relations.
The Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into Zuffa’s acquisition of Strikeforce fared no better than AB2100, with the case being closed in February 2012. It’s hard to believe that the Feds got a clear picture of the current MMA scene — limited leverage for negotiation; zero transparency into a promotion’s financials; no legit rankings for organizational titles; and no agency on the part of fighters no matter how big they are.
The irony is clear: Name brand Zuffa fighters with the most to gain from Federal intervention into MMA are conditioned from all sides to maintain a code of silence that diminishes their position.
*****
When Cus D’Amato first met 13-year old Mike Tyson, he was clear about his vision for Tyson’s future, “If you listen to me, I can make you the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.”
In an excerpt from Mike Tyson’s new autobiographyUndisputed Truth, Tyson reminisced on how D’Amato began conditioning him to overcome his fears, “Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning,” D’Amato tells him. “But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you.”
Tyson overcame his fears to win the undisputed heavyweight title. No one knew better than Cus D’Amato that having the premier heavyweight in boxing meant that D’Amato could change the way the game was played, just as he had done before with Floyd Patterson. Tyson’s management team of Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton helped solidify his financial status behind the scenes. But when Cus D’Amato and Jim Jacobs passed on, Tyson was rudderless in rough seas and succumbed to the vile influences of boxing, including Don King’s machinations.
Today, of course, the lessons from those bygone eras of boxing have been lost on today’s MMA fighters and managers. Instead of building up a fighter from the ground-level with emotional intelligence and a strong sense of self-worth, we see Ronda Rousey insecure to the point where she believed she’d be cut from her coaching gig on The Ultimate Fighter. We have Georges St-Pierre delicately trying to articulate his feelings about not being supported by Zuffa for attempting to get Johny Hendricks to go through with the VADA drug testing Hendricks had already agreed upon. We see Jon Jones being thrown under the bus by the Zuffa brass over the cancellation of UFC 151 in a way that diminished his market value by inciting the fans to further hate him.
Fighters and managers might win battles like getting a women’s division in the UFC or Jon Jones (supposedly) out-earning his NFL brothers, but they have lost sight of the war. In another five years, the only difference will be the influx of many new contenders to push out the current crop of Zuffa fighters, the same way Jon Fitch and Yushin Okami were kicked to the curb in 2013.
Instead of waiting for the sky to open up and the gods to bestow change upon the MMA landscape, fighters and managers have to look at ways to organize and start pushing back in a strategic manner at the right junctures. If more men like Cus D’Amato come along, they can outfox and out-hustle the dark forces of the industry, perhaps improving the sport (or forever changing it, as Miro Mijatovic did with PRIDE) for generations to come.
When Melvin Guillard steps into the Octagon this weekend to face Ross Pearson at UFC Fight Night 30, his career may hang in the balance. He’s lost four of his last six fights, a troublesome situation given that the UFC has released some big-name …
When Melvin Guillard steps into the Octagon this weekend to face Ross Pearson at UFC Fight Night 30, his career may hang in the balance. He’s lost four of his last six fights, a troublesome situation given that the UFC has released some big-name fighters this year.
Should he lose to Pearson, he may very well end up receiving his pink slip along with his check, adrift on the seas of free agency.
Guillard has fought 20 times in the UFC, losing eight of those bouts since 2005. He’s been a fighter who has been up more than down, at least until October of 2011, when his latest skid began.
Yet he has all the tools needed to turn the ship around, win his second fight in a row and perhaps even make a run at the title if he can just be consistent from here on out. After all, he’s done it before.
After Guillard saw a three-fight win streak snapped by a submission loss to Nate Diaz in 2009, he came right back and reeled off five victories, including a TKO over Evan Dunham. He has the athleticism and the power, but there has always been something missing when it came down for the final run.
Call it dedication, focus, discipline; it may or may not be any of these things, but he’s never been able to bring it all together as a cohesive whole on a consistent basis.
Once upon a time I likened Guillard to Zab Judah: a boxer who once upon a time looked to be the future of that sport. He was incredibly fast, explosive and a devastating puncher.
Then it all unraveled, thanks to a single loss. From that point forward, Judah was up and down in his career. He managed to win belts in divisions that were void of truly excellent fighters, but he never remained consistent, except in his inconsistency.
Guillard may not have won a belt in the UFC, but he could probably be a champion in any number of lesser organizations. Early in his career, he fought 10 times in 2003, winning nine bouts, seven via KO/TKO.
But belts in lesser organizations do not possess the luster, the gravitas that a UFC title holds.
And right now, a title shot isn’t even on the radar for Guillard, especially if he loses to Pearson this weekend.
Some fighters have always fought best when their backs are against the wall. Tito Ortiz, who was on an enormous losing streak, defeated Ryan Bader to save his job in the UFC. But Ortiz was a former champion and an established name for the company; to think that Guillard may get the same kind of preferential treatment as Ortiz is unlikely.
In all probability, he needs to defeat Pearson in order to remain a UFC fighter: victory or dismissal.
And so goes the professional career of Melvin Guillard—always on the precipice of either greatness or failure.
(Mayweather, seen here wearing a jacket he swiped off his stewardess.)
In the not-so-distant past, Floyd Mayweather has referred to MMA as a “fad for beer-drinkers” and “animals” that was started by white people who couldn’t hack it in boxing. Granted, it wasn’t an Adrien Broner-level attack on the sport (and basic human logic), but it wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement either. But now that the 36 year-old champ is fresh off his latest title defense over Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, he seems to be changing his tune in regards to our beloved sport. And thank God for that (*lifts leg* *farts*).
In an interview with Fight Hype published earlier today, Mayweather revealed that he was interested in managing MMA fighters in the near future. Because if there’s anyone who could potentially put an end to this whole “MMA fighters get paid in peanuts” debate, it’s the guy who made 40 million dollars for his last fight:
I want to promote MMA fighters. You know, Al Haymon is looking to manage MMA fighters. Even though Al hasn’t came on record and said it, but I want Al to manage MMA fighters. I think I can take it to the next level.
I don’t mind doing business with Dana White. Dana White’s a cool guy. I’ve been knowing Dana before he got involved in MMA.
(Mayweather, seen here wearing a jacket he swiped off his stewardess.)
In the not-so-distant past, Floyd Mayweather has referred to MMA as a “fad for beer-drinkers” and “animals” that was started by white people who couldn’t hack it in boxing. Granted, it wasn’t an Adrien Broner-level attack on the sport (and basic human logic), but it wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement either. But now that the 36 year-old champ is fresh off his latest title defense over Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, he seems to be changing his tune in regards to our beloved sport. And thank God for that (*lifts leg* *farts*).
In an interview with Fight Hype published earlier today, Mayweather revealed that he was interested in managing MMA fighters in the near future. Because if there’s anyone who could potentially put an end to this whole “MMA fighters get paid in peanuts” debate, it’s the guy who made 40 million dollars for his last fight:
I want to promote MMA fighters. You know, Al Haymon is looking to manage MMA fighters. Even though Al hasn’t came on record and said it, but I want Al to manage MMA fighters. I think I can take it to the next level.
I don’t mind doing business with Dana White. Dana White’s a cool guy. I’ve been knowing Dana before he got involved in MMA.
Al Haymon, of course, is Mayweather’s personal advisor and a legendary boxing promoter/advisor who manages everyone from Austin Trout to Danny Garcia.
Fight Opinion recently published a fantastic article detailing the dichotomy that exists between MMA and boxing, the main point of which argues that MMA fighters in general will continue to be “underpaid” when compared to their boxing counterparts until they decide to form a fighter union or something of the like. And in order for that to happen, a strong external force — be it a politician, a rival promotion, or sports management company — would need to be introduced into the equation. Since we can cross the first two options off the list, that leaves MMA fighters with one choice: to somehow wrangle in a big name agency to essentially go to war for them. The problem is, most big name agencies simply don’t see where the money to be made in MMA is.
Not yet, at least.
With the UFC landing more network deals, original programming and broadcasting rights across more and more countries by the day, it’s become quite obvious to people like Mayweather that there is some money to be made in this sport. The question now becomes: Is Floyd Mayweather the man to give the MMA pay scale a much-needed overhaul? Probably not, but that doesn’t make the prospect of seeing some big names (and even bigger bankrolls) getting in on this MMA “fad” any less interesting.
When 
