Nate Diaz is getting the next shot at Benson Henderson’s lightweight title. Well, the next shot after Frankie Edgar gets his shot in August, but you know what I mean.In Diaz’ mind, however, neither the current UFC champ or his challenger are the best l…
Nate Diaz is getting the next shot at Benson Henderson’s lightweight title. Well, the next shot after Frankie Edgar gets his shot in August, but you know what I mean.
I’ve been training with Gilbert and Jake (Shields) for years. They’ve shown me a lot. These are guys I look up to. Me and Gil been battling it out in here for years.
There’s no one better than him. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s the best 155′er on the planet and I think he deserves to be right there in the UFC holding the UFC belt. He’s the man.
This is nothing new in the Cesar Gracie camp. Nate also believes that older brother Nick is the best fighter in the world.
I don’t agree that Nick is anywhere near the list of top fighters in the world right now. Not after his loss to Condit, anyway. If Nick comes out of retirement, comes back from his current questionable licensing status and is able to beat both Condit and Georges St-Pierre? He’ll get consideration for the top of that mythical pound-for-pound list. But right now? No way.
I do believe that Melendez is the top lightweight in the world, however. I’ve had him ranked No. 1 on my USA Today rankings ballot for several months now.
The argument can be made that Henderson, as the kingpin of the UFC lightweight division, has faced better competition over the past year and thus is deserving of the top ranking. But I’ve seen Melendez utterly dominate all competition he’s faced over the past three years, while Henderson lost to Anthony Pettis and, at least according to the judges, barely edged Edgar.
There’s only one real way to find out who the best lightweight in the world is. Unfortunately, with Melendez stuck in a terrible Strikeforce deal, we won’t get the opportunity to find out how he’ll fare against better competition for at least another year.
Welcome to our newest Friday feature here at Caged In: A single, solitary look back at the five biggest news stories of the last five days. We’ll put a bow on the work week and, for the most part, lead you into fight night more knowledgeable than you w…
Welcome to our newest Friday feature here at Caged In: A single, solitary look back at the five biggest news stories of the last five days. We’ll put a bow on the work week and, for the most part, lead you into fight night more knowledgeable than you were when you crashed into your bed on Thursday night.
If you’ve been hiding under a rock on this fine Thursday morning, you likely missed this news (which I received via email bright and early this morning):
WHAT: Media Conference Call hosted by Spike TV to announce major talent deal involving Bellator Fi…
If you’ve been hiding under a rock on this fine Thursday morning, you likely missed this news (which I received via email bright and early this morning):
WHAT: Media Conference Call hosted by Spike TV to announce major talent deal involving Bellator Fighting Championships and TNA Wrestling
WHO: Kevin Kay, President Spike TV Bjorn Rebney, Chairman and CEO, Bellator Fighting Championships Dixie Carter, President, TNA Entertainment
WHEN: Thursday, May 10 at 2:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. PT
What could Bellator and TNA Wrestling—both of whom are owned by media giant Viacom—possibly be announcing during a joint conference call?
No, we’re not going to find out that Kurt Angle has finally, for real this time, decided to try his hand at mixed martial arts after five years of coming up with amazing excuses as to why he couldn’t actually do it.
The story is this: Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal has signed a dual contract with Bellator and TNA.
Lawal’s deal with Viacom was actually signed three weeks ago, but Zuffa retained matching rights to any new contract offers Lawal received despite firing him.
What does this news mean? How does it impact mixed martial artists going forward?
In truth, this deal won’t have much of a lasting impact on MMA. The number of legitimate mixed martial artists who want to try their hand at pro wrestling is very small. Lawal was a huge fan of professional wrestling growing up and always wanted to try his hand at the pseudo-sport, but there was never any chance of that happening while under contract to Zuffa.
With Bellator, things are different. They’re both under the same corporate umbrella, which means there’s an opportunity for cross-promotion. The UFC was also under that same corporate umbrella, at least in terms of television deals, but Dana White makes it a personal point not to have his product confused with pro wrestling.
Bjorn Rebney has no such qualms. In fact, I’d say that he’s welcoming those confusions, at least judging from this news. It’s a smart move for Bellator. They need all the exposure they can get, and if TNA and their meager 1.2-1.6 million viewers each week can help them get the eyeballs they need, then more power to them.
Lawal cannot fight until the fall due to his drug failure suspension from earlier this year, so expect to see plenty of him in a pro-wrestling ring this summer.
While the MMA media postulate on the success or failure that was UFC on FOX 3, there is a huge story that has gone ignored by almost everyone.Leading up to the card, there was only one question on everyone’s mind: Could Alan Belcher handle Rousimar Pal…
While the MMA media postulate on the success or failure that was UFC on FOX 3, there is a huge story that has gone ignored by almost everyone.
Leading up to the card, there was only one question on everyone’s mind: Could Alan Belcher handle Rousimar Palhares’ leg locks? It was a question that Belcher fielded twice at the open workouts and once more at the pre-fight press conference. It was a question he heard so often that he had a rehearsed answer.
If anyone paid attention to the pre-fight stories, you’d have expected Rousimar Palhares to grab hold of Belcher’s leg and rip it clean off. It wasn’t even a question of “if”, it was almost as if it was predetermined that Alan would go back to Mississippi missing a limb.
“Well, I knew that if I’d fight on the ground it would be a mistake because even though you saw me fight on the ground and defend the leg locks pretty easy and was pretty close to submission on him, it would still be a mistake to try and force that.”
He added, “I knew that if we got to the ground I was confident that I could stop whatever he had. I didn’t know that I would beat him on the ground but I was pretty confident. I dreamed about proving something but never let that get to me to where that was what I was focused on. My main objective was to get the win.”
The fact that Rousimar Palhares is such a “one-trick pony” actually worked to Belcher’s advantage. Instead of having to game plan for a fighter with multiple ways to victory, he and his coaches only had to plan for leg locks.
“Sometimes you have to guess a little bit about what your opponent’s gonna do and how they’re thinking about fighting you. But he fights everyone the same. It definitely made it easy for me. It made a really hard fight easy to train for and an easy one to win because I was so focused and I respected so much what he could do.”
The way that the fight played out, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Belcher, a BJJ blackbelt, planned to attempt his own submissions on the Brazilian Top Team representative. What should be surprising is the ease in which he transitioned between all of them.
“I didn’t train specifically for him to do that stuff because I didn’t think that he would do that kind of takedown. But the kind of takedown that he did with his head on the outside, head out twisting a leg…whatever you wanna call that position…I wasn’t going to let him hold me down. I sometimes go to their back or get them in that kind of ‘bananasplit/twister position’. It’s called the ‘truck’ and I do that in training all the time. It’s a really good move that I do there.”
He’d add, “the crack down is often how anyone can get me down. It’s a pretty high percentage for getting people to sit down on their butt. But it leaves you open for back attacks, guillotines, twisters…stuff like that. I’m pretty good at that kinda stuff and I have a lot of moves on the ground. I train with a lot of high level grapplers and BJJ fighters. I got my twister game tweaked up by Eddie Bravo a couple years back. I get people with that stuff all the time.”
The term “biggest fight of your career” gets thrown around often and for the most part, it is accurate. However, for Belcher, the biggest fight of his career was when his almost ended due to an eye injury. Now following the biggest fight of his career, Belcher sees things with perfect clarity.
“I came into this fight with a lot of focus and I was really in the zone, more than ever. I did my job and now I feel I just need to continue what I’m doing. I know it’s gonna take a few weeks to sort things out and talk to the UFC. They’re probably gonna wanna wait and see what happens at some of these other fights. Right now I’m just trying to enjoy this victory and enjoy time with my family and recover mentally and physically.”
Riding a huge win on network television over someone that everyone considered to be the top submission grappler in the division, Belcher reflects on this enormous win. He mentioned at the post-fight press conference that everyone counted him out and even joked that UFC President Dana White was one of those naysayers.
“Dana came to me and he admitted to me that he was excited about the fight and how it was a great fight. But he thought that Rousimar was just a beast on the ground and he was tearing people’s legs apart. When it went to the ground he thought it was over. I kinda laughed. Then he said ‘once you escaped everything and stayed inside his guard, I was thinking what is he doing? Why doesn’t he back up?’ I was like ‘it sucks eat your words sometimes don’t it?'”
I bet he won’t do that again.
If we’ve learned anything from the last three years of Alan Belcher’s career, it’s that we can never count “the Talent” out in any situation.
From having his career potentially cut short from an eye injury to now a contender, Alan has made everyone a believer in what he can do in the middleweight division. At just 28 years old, we’ll continue to see the evolution of Belcher for years to come.
If Saturday was any indication, we’ll be seeing him challenge for a title soon.
Matthew Roth is a Lead Blogger for Bleacher Report. All quotes were obtained first-hand.
The UFC’s steeply declining ratings for their FOX network specials have been one of the hottest topics going this week. The first FOX show in November, featuring a heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, did 5.6 milli…
The UFC’s steeply declining ratings for their FOX network specials have been one of the hottest topics going this week.
The first FOX show in November, featuring a heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos, did 5.6 million viewers according to Nielsen ratings. The show was heavily promoted during all FOX broadcasts, including National Football League and Major League Baseball games.
The second show in January, featuring a light heavyweight contender bout between Rashad Evans and Phil Davis, did 4.6 million viewers. There was less promotion for the event during sports broadcasts on the network, but advertising was still visible.
Last Saturday’s show with Nate Diaz and Jim Miller did just 2.4 million viewers. It still scored well in the highly coveted 18-49 male demographic but finished dead last against other programing in its time slot. It was also one of the least-watched MMA broadcasts in network television history.
It seems like a cause for alarm. And perhaps it is. There’s no real way to spin the numbers into a positive angle, so I won’t even try. But UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta says he’s not worried by the sharp decline in numbers, especially given the competition they were up against on Saturday night:
“If The Avengers did [a box office of] over $200 million for the weekend, unfortunately for us, there were a great number of our potential viewers sitting in a movie theater somewhere,” he said. “Or, they were out that night celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Listen, I’m not trying to make excuses. Hats off to HBO and Bernard Hopkins. That’s a great job and a great number they pulled. But when you say, ‘Are we concerned,’ I’d say no. We’re excited.
“We had a situation where 2.5 million people, which I would say is still a substantial number, got to see what I would say was a tremendous product. All four fights were great fights and in the main event, Nate Diaz showed he’s potentially a breakout star who down the road could move the needle for us on pay-per-view. The playbook is playing out for us exactly the way we wanted it to.”
Fertitta is right in noting that the UFC was going up against big competition last Saturday. But there are still lessons to be learned from the declining FOX ratings.
1. Stars are still the thing that draw casual viewers: I was just as excited as the next hardcore fan for the fight between Jim Miller and Nathan Diaz. I think I was equally as excited for the rest of the fights on the card, too. All of them were intriguing and must-sees for me.
But I don’t represent the casual audience. Not by a long shot. I’ll watch any fights I can get my hands on, and there are a lot of you out there who feel the same way. But we represent a small slice of the potential viewing audience for MMA on network television.
In order to capture that audience, you must either headline a show with fighters that have name value or with something like the heavyweight title fight. It has to be a can’t-miss event, where you get folks talking around the proverbial (and literal) water cooler in the days leading up to fight night. That’s why the Dos Santos/Velasquez fight worked so well; it was hyped as one of the biggest fights in the history of the sport. It didn’t play out that way, but it didn’t matter—by that point, the audience had already tuned in.
A lot of you will groan at this suggestion, but taking someone like Tito Ortiz and placing him in the headlining bout on FOX is the ideal situation. You don’t want to cannibalize your PPV’s—where you get the majority of your income—by headlining every network event with a title fight featuring huge stars. But putting someone like Ortiz or Forrest Griffin in that situation is just about perfect. Neither of them will be headlining a UFC pay-per-view any time soon, but both of them have the name value to draw in fans.
Once you’ve attracted that audience, you can expose them to younger fighters you want to build into stars by having them fight on the undercard.
2. Advertising is key: As I mentioned above, there was very little advertising to be found for UFC on FOX 3. The previous shows were highlighted multiple times during major NFL games; I don’t think I saw a single commercial for Nate Diaz vs. Jim Miller running during FOX television shows in the weeks leading up to the fight.
Part of that can be blamed on the season. There aren’t any NFL games on FOX that can be used as a vehicle to promote your fights, and baseball is relegated to the weekends. But you still have to push the shows heavily on your network.
Find the sitcoms or long-form, hourly shows that do your best ratings among a wide demographic. Use those shows to push that you’ve got a chance to see some of the brightest young stars in the sport competing for free on Saturday night. It won’t be as effective as running ads during NFL games, but it’s better than nothing.
The fourth FOX show in August is scheduled to be headlined by the debuting Hector Lombard vs. Brian Stann. Now that we’ve seen the rating for the Diaz/Miller fight, I believe that to be a mistake.
The UFC wants to push Brian Stann as a mainstream star, and FOX is a great vehicle for doing that. And I believe Stann has the potential to be one of the UFC’s most marketable stars. But he’s not on that level yet, and people won’t tune in to see Stann taking on a fighter that nobody outside of the hardcore fan community has heard of.
In an ideal world, I would take the Ortiz/Griffin fight that’s scheduled for UFC 148 and move it to the headlining slot at UFC on FOX 4. Losing the fight won’t lessen the impact of UFC 148 one bit; that card has two title fights, and one of them—the rematch between Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen—is one of the most anticipated fights in UFC history.
I’m looking forward to seeing Ortiz and Griffin a third time, but I’d be willing to bet that few fans are buying the PPV just to see that fight. Take it, move it to the main event on FOX and highlight Stann vs. Lombard as the co-main event.
As I said, Saturday’s rating is not the end of the world. But it does need to be an eye-opener if the UFC wants to have a long and successful partnership with FOX.
Last week’s suicide of famed football star Junior Seau brought the topic of the long-term effects of concussions back to the forefront of the sporting world.In truth, it’s a discussion that hasn’t gone away over the past few years, and rightly so. The …
Last week’s suicide of famed football star Junior Seau brought the topic of the long-term effects of concussions back to the forefront of the sporting world.
In truth, it’s a discussion that hasn’t gone away over the past few years, and rightly so. The February 2011 suicide of former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson, and the medical confirmation that Duerson suffered from a neurodegenerative disease linked to concussions at the time of his death, was one of the first major NFL cases to unfold in the public eye.
And hundreds of former NFL players (including names such as Jim McMahon, Dorsey Levens and Jamal Turner) have filed suit against the league, claiming that the NFL deliberately withheld information regarding concussions that was critical to player safety.
Research into CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) has made plenty of headway in recent years, but it will be a battle fought well into the future. Fans of the National Football League hate to see the game they love changed at a fundamental level, and yet those changes seemingly must be made in order to protect the long-term futures of the players we tune in to see each Sunday afternoon. We’re already seeing plenty of calls for the NFL to take more action in protecting its players.
And what about mixed martial arts? We’ve yet to see any high-profile CTE cases emerge from the sport. But given the violence inherent in professional cagefighting, it seems highly unlikely that we’ll go another 10 years without some kind of concussion-related tragedy occurring.
With that in mind, should we start taking steps to prevent these kinds of things from happening down the road? Dr. Johnny Benjamin, the medical columnist for MMAjunkie.com, says we should. He proposes that fighters such as Pat Barry, who suffered his second knockout loss in under a year, should take a year off from fighting in order to let his brain heal:
The year off would provide an opportunity for his brain to heal without the continued insult of smaller (sub-concussive) blows that are a routine part of MMA training. Highlight-reel KTFOs and “Knock Out of the Night” performances get most of the attention for obvious reasons, but if you only focus on these events, you’re missing the real story.
One of the things that we are learning in concussion management is that all of those routine head knocks that no one ever thinks about actually accumulate over time and are very, very important. The brain has an “injury meter,” and every time it takes a significant jolt, the needle rises.
Current thinking is that there is a continuum based on accumulated force directed at the brain. At some point (currently poorly defined) symptoms occur (concussion), and as the accumulation of force grows, temporary (MTBI-minimally traumatic brain injury) then permanent damage (CTE-chronic traumatic encephalopathy) occurs.
I strongly support this idea, and I think it’s something that needs to be looked at by the various athletic commissions that sanction the sport. I’m not a doctor (I was a medic in the Army, but that’s hardly the same thing), but logic dictates that taking time off to heal an injured brain is a good thing to do. In a perfect world, fighters who suffer two knockouts in under 12 months should be forced to sit on the sidelines for a year.
Forcing a fighter out of action for a year or more seems like an impossible thing to enforce. Yes, it hampers their ability to make a living. Most professional fighters aren’t making money if they aren’t fighting. There are guys who get a monthly paycheck from a sponsor even if they aren’t fighting, much like an employee of a regular company would.
But those cases are not the norm in mixed martial arts. Still, I consider long-term health and living a more important factor than current monetary status.
The UFC could help. They could issue monthly paychecks to fighters who are suspended for knockouts while keeping those fighters involved in promotional events for the company. Barry is a perfect example of a guy who could go out and do other things for the company while also giving his brain time to heal.
As we’ve seen in the NFL, there is no easy solution to this problem. And as I said above, it hasn’t even developed into a problem in mixed martial arts. Not yet.
But I’d rather look into solutions for the problem now than look back 10 years from now and wish we’d paid attention.
Nate Diaz is getting the next shot at Benson Henderson’s lightweight title. Well, the next shot after Frankie Edgar gets his shot in August, but you know what I mean.