Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Nobody gave Holly Holm much of a chance. She came into the fight as much as a 20-to-1 underdog. And then, she took less than six minutes to shock the world as she landed a second-round head kick knockout over Ronda Rousey to cap off UFC 193.
Photo by Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Nobody gave Holly Holm much of a chance. She came into the fight as much as a 20-to-1 underdog. And then, she took less than six minutes to shock the world as she landed a second-round head kick knockout over Ronda Rousey to cap off UFC 193.
Photo by Brandon Magnus/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Stop me if you’ve heard this song and dance before: Ronda Rousey has an upcoming pay-per-view match and her opponent is hyped up to be her toughest challenge ever. However, a few seconds into the fight, Rousey wins an uncompetitive mismatch.
That exact scenario is going to happen again at UFC 193. The Ronda Rousey problem for Dana White is simple: there’s not a 135-pound woman in the world that can beat her or even give her a serious fight.
Photo by Brandon Magnus/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Stop me if you’ve heard this song and dance before: Ronda Rousey has an upcoming pay-per-view match and her opponent is hyped up to be her toughest challenge ever. However, a few seconds into the fight, Rousey wins an uncompetitive mismatch.
That exact scenario is going to happen again at UFC 193. The Ronda Rousey problem for Dana White is simple: there’s not a 135-pound woman in the world that can beat her or even give her a serious fight.
So how much longer are casual fans going to fork over $50 to watch Rousey arm bar another helpless woman in one minute or less?
Soon, if we’re not there yet, a UFC match featuring women will no longer be newsworthy and fans are going to want exciting, competitive matches – where, you know, the opponent actually has a chance of winning.
Unless White stops hiding Rousey from the heavier Cris Cyborg, the PPV numbers are are bound to start falling. And with her being the UFC’s top draw, that’d be a gut-punch to the business part of the sport.
Of course, this all speaks to Rousey’s greatness. She’s a one of a kind pioneer of sorts in that she’s about a decade ahead of any other woman at her weight. Thus, she’s unbeatable against other 135-pounders.
But ultimately, people – particularly casual fans – watch fights to be entertained. Watching Rousey destroy inferior competition will only be entertaining for so long.
Dana White, this means the money train is going to start slowing way down unless you solve the problem at hand.
UFC 193: Rousey vs. Holm takes place this weekend on November 15, 2015 at the Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia.
The Conor McGregor story is about to hit its peak and what sucks is I think he’s fake. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching the guy. It was cool to think there was a badass walking around the planet with unmatched bravado and the skills to back it up. It was kind of like […]
The Conor McGregor story is about to hit its peak and what sucks is I think he’s fake.
Don’t get me wrong, I love watching the guy. It was cool to think there was a badass walking around the planet with unmatched bravado and the skills to back it up. It was kind of like Conor was a Chael Sonnen who could actually win.
But there are three telltale signs that Conor will be a flash in the pan with the all too familiar meteoric rise to the top followed by a quick fall to retirement.
First, Conor went to shake Jose Aldo’s hand. Whether you’re a fan or not, deep in your heart, you know this was a sign of weakness. Conor’s been talking trash to this man for a year now – like serious, disrespectful stuff over and over again and now he sees Jose in the gym and goes to shake his hand? I lost respect for Conor.
Even worse, Conor collapsed his mental edge. He seriously freaks these guys out because his trash talk gets inside their head and makes them question the monster that is Conor McGregor. He was making Jose have doubts about himself and now Jose knows for sure that Conor fears him.
Keep in mind, it’s not that he shook his hand, it’s that he shook his hand after a year of completely disrespecting him over and over again. Conor can spin it however he wants but that was weak.
Secondly, someone on TUF said the Irishman was completely different off camera and he lost a lot of respect for him. There’s really no reason to make that up and it completely falls in line with the handshake thing. The Notorious wouldn’t have shook Aldo’s hand.
Last, ever notice how Conor doesn’t brag so much about his abilities to fight but rather his ability to make money and be a headliner?
After the fourth or fifth time he talked about the numbers, I started wondering about his fighting skills. I’ve never heard an MMA fighter focus so much on being the marquee or compare themselves to other fighters in terms of how much money they can make.
If you listen to Conor talk, it’s clear he’s more concerned with generating interest and dollars over winning.
The only way all this goes away is if he beats Jose Aldo and, as much as I want it to happen, I now don’t think he will. I think Aldo will destroy him.
He’s definitely a high caliber fighter but Conor hasn’t proven himself to be elite. Beating Chad Mendes was a nice win but it doesn’t make you a champion. So far the only thing Conor’s shown to be the best at is talking.
UFC 194 is about a month away — slated for Saturday, December 12, 2015 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
And in case you are wondering, McGregor really doesn’t like the word “interim.”
(Hey, at least one of us is getting some shut-eye. via Getty.)
To whom it may concern (attn: L Fertitta),
Before we even get started, we here at CagePotato wanted to first congratulate your promotion on an absolutely stellar night of fights this weekend. On paper, Fight Night 77 looked as if it would be one of the best FN cards in the UFC’s history, and we’re happy to admit that it largely exceeded our already heightened expectations from top-to-bottom. A credit is due to both Sean Shelby and Joe Silva for their continuously amazing efforts.
Now that we’ve sucked you off enough to possibly earn our credentials back, we feel the need to raise our concerns about what has become an increasingly discouraging aspect of both your Fight Night and pay-per-view cards: The pacing.
(Hey, at least one of us is getting some shut-eye. via Getty.)
To whom it may concern (attn: L Fertitta),
Before we even get started, we here at CagePotato wanted to first congratulate your promotion on an absolutely stellar night of fights this weekend. On paper, Fight Night 77 looked as if it would be one of the best FN cards in the UFC’s history, and we’re happy to admit that it largely exceeded our already heightened expectations from top-to-bottom. A credit is due to both Sean Shelby and Joe Silva for their continuously amazing efforts.
Now that we’ve sucked you off enough to possibly earn our credentials back, we feel the need to raise our concerns about what has become an increasingly discouraging aspect of both your Fight Night and pay-per-view cards: The pacing. We know that your organization has never exactly taken well to (or even objectively recognized) criticism, but we’re also not the first ones to complain about this issue, so we figured we’d give this a shot.
With a six fight main card kicking off at 10 pm EST, you were already pushing the limits of plausibility in regards to your allotted time slot. Throw in the fact that the first fight of the night kicked off at 6:45 and you were pretty much guaranteeing that only hardcore fans would be sticking around to witness the non-title, wholly unnecessary trilogy fight featured in your main event — unless you honestly believed that the “casual” demographic you so often pine after would honestly stomach 6 hours of mixed martial arts competition consisting by large of unknown prospects, in which case, I’ve got a Nigerian prince who could really use your help.
Thankfully, your FS1 undercard managed to clip along at a nice pace, with three out of the four fights wrapping up inside the distance (don’t even try to deny the sigh of relief you surely breathed after seeing Clay Guida get choked out in 30 seconds). That the people’s main event — otherwise known as the “featured prelim” — ended in a tight 2 minutes thanks to some negligent refereeing led us to believe that maybe, just maybe, the main card would continue to carry the momentum.
And after a slow start, it did, with the final four bouts all resulting in finishes — two of which ended in the first round. Of course, not many of us actually managed to catch those final bouts because you, in your infinite wisdom, opted to once again fill whole blocks of time with absolute nonsense.
Let’s talk about your two most egregious failures, shall we? First up, the FOX studio.
With all due respect to Karyn Bryant, Dominick Cruz, and whatever other former/current fighter they usually rotate between, we have no use for them (exception: Kenny Florian and his awesome hair). It might make the sport look more “legitimate” to have an analyst team, but the truth is, none of us really care to hear whatever mumbling, stuttering fight recap you think passes as analysis these days, especially when it’s being applied to a fight we literally just watched 5 minutes ago.
Unless you’re going to get Robin Black in there to break down footwork and fight mechanics with fancy graphics, we really don’t need to hear Yves Edwards tell us that Pat Cummins should’ve shot for more takedowns on Glover Teixeira as opposed to, you know, getting the living f*ck beat out of him on the feet.
And you see, analysis like this isn’t just a boring, pointless way to kill time in the middle of an already overlong broadcast, it’s a symptom of a much bigger issue: You treat your audience like they are children.
Can we please abandon the notion that MMA is going to become this universally-accepted, globally-f*cking-dominated sport like soccer or basketball? Believe it or not, there are people out there who simply don’t cater to violence no matter how pretty a package you dress it up in, and will therefore never understand the “art” of mixed martial arts. MMA is and will always be a niche sport to some degree, which is what makes its fans so passionate about it — and by “passionate,” I mean “able to tell a counter hook from an armbar.*”
Basically, we don’t need an analyst team to baby us through a fight we just saw replayed some 10 times following the fight itself. That’s what Brian Stann is for, and that’s what he consistently does (with far more eloquence than your analyst team, I might add) every time he is behind the mic.
It’s this lack of respect (or maybe understanding) for your fanbase that brings us to Glaring Issue #2: The blatant, overwhelming self-promotion that pervades your broadcasts.
Look, I get it, you gotta get paid at the end of the day, and who in their right mind would turn down free advertising? However, when said self-advertisements start to distract from — and at times, dominate — the actual broadcast, it kind of kills the idea that you’re interested in anything other than milking us for every last dollar we have.
A prime example: After seeing Pat Cummins get obliterated by Glover Teixeira in Saturday’s co-main event at roughly 12:30 am, we fully expected that Dan Henderson and Vitor Belfort would be lined up and ready to enter the arena. What did you do instead? Oh, only followed up a five-minute recap of their fight history (acceptable) with a 10-minute, mini-Countdown episode/advertisement for UFC 193: Rousey vs. Holm.
How. F*cking. Dare. You.
Are you honestly so deluded that you think there are fans out there who would stay up until 1 a.m. to watch a regional Fight Night card while simultaneously being unaware that Ronda Rousey — the most popular fighter in your promotion and a supposed “once in human history” athlete — is fighting next weekend? Or is it that you simply don’t care? In either case, we’ll take a page from your book and repeat ourselves again (with a phrase that Joe Rogan loves to use, no less): How dare you.
Let’s say I was a (professional) musician. If I had even the smallest amount of gratitude for my fans, I wouldn’t show up to a gig at a small town concert hall and take time out of my setlist to tell them about how next week’s show at the Bellagio IS GONNA BE THE *REAL* SHOW TO CHECK OUT. It’s insulting, for starters, and completely disregards those fans of mine who maybe can’t afford to pay, I dunno, $70 twice a month to see me fill an arena. Because, to me at least, my fans are not mindless sheep who I have to guide from profitable endeavor to profitable endeavor. They’re actual human beings who I should thank for showing up, or at the very least, let know that I am prioritizing above anyone else for at least one night.
But rather than taking the time to even be grateful for those of us who stayed up well past the hours of reasonability to see Belfort do exactly what we all knew he was going to do to Hendo, you instead opted to try and sell us on what’s going down *next* week. As if we weren’t aware. As if the event we were currently watching didn’t matter. As if we’re idiots — which to be fair, many of us are, but not when it comes to remembering fights.
More and more nowadays, it seems as if your broadcasts are becoming these giant, overpriced salads that force us to sift through leaf after leaf of store-bought, iceberg lettuce to find a piece of ham, a slice of turkey, a f*cking crouton — anything worth sinking our teeth into. So I beg of you, Lorenzo, Dana, or whoever is behind these increasingly bloated cards, to wake the hell up and realize who your fans are. I know everyone’s a critic (especially us), but if you maybe once responded to said criticism with anything more than a Twitter tirade and a “business as usual” hurumph, maybe, just maybe, we’d be more understanding.
As crazy as it may sound to haters like Uproxx’s Jessica Hudnall, Ryan Bader should be looking at a title shot right now. He’s won five straight in a weight class that is nearly impossible to do so in, he’s done so over increasingly impressive competition, and he’s looked more and more well-rounded with each performance. On the heels of a one-sided decision win over returning former champ Rashad Evans, it seemed as if Bader was all but guaranteed to be the man to face the winner of Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier (which FYI, will be Jon Jones).
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the modern era of the UFC, it’s that Reebok Fight Kits are terrible. If there’s a second thing we’ve learned, it’s that title fights are *never* guaranteed. As such, Bader has once again been passed over and instead booked against his toughest opponent to date…
As crazy as it may sound to haters like Uproxx’s Jessica Hudnall, Ryan Bader should be looking at a title shot right now. He’s won five straight in a weight class that is nearly impossible to do so in, he’s done so over increasingly impressive competition, and he’s looked more and more well-rounded with each performance. On the heels of a one-sided decision win over returning former champ Rashad Evans, it seemed as if Bader was all but guaranteed to be the man to face the winner of Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier (which FYI, will be Jon Jones).
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the modern era of the UFC, it’s that Reebok Fight Kits are terrible. If there’s a second thing we’ve learned, it’s that title fights are *never* guaranteed. As such, Bader has once again been passed over and instead booked against his toughest opponent to date…
Last night’s edition of UFC Tonight broke the word that Bader will take on Anthony “Rumble” Johnson in the main event of the UFC’s first FOX card of 2016, which goes down on January 30th at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
After coming up short in his own title bid against Cormier, Johnson bounced back by bouncing Jimi Manuwa‘s head off the canvas repeatedly, scoring a second round knockout and a “Performance of the Night” bonus in the process. Aside from the loss to Cormier, Johnson has been undefeated in some 9 fights dating back to his last stint in the UFC.
If you’re wondering how Bader feels about what should be an unfortunate development for anyone who appreciates having brain cells, well, he’s taking it about as well as one can. (via Fox Sports)
It’s more palatable that it’s Jon Jones coming back and getting it than the whole (Alexander) Gustafsson situation coming off a knockout loss and all that.
For me, it looks like I’ve got to beat all these guys in the top five to get a shot. For me, having a big main event on FOX and fighting Anthony Johnson and he’s ranked No. 1 and that’s where we want to be. Obviously, I wanted to title shot but that’s not happening. The next best thing is this fight.
I’ll give Bader this much: I don’t think I’ve ever heard a fighter call a match with Rumble “the next best” option to *anything*, unless that next best thing was “wearing a Reebok Fight Kit.”
See, I had a plan for that joke all along!! How is it that I get paid so little to do this?!!
