(Video courtesy of DailyMotion/JMMANow)
You know an intro is questionable at best when it has fans clamouring for more Stemm and a metrosexual gladiator.
Saturday night the UFC debuted its new “Evolution” video montage that will kick off every pay-per-view event for the unforeseeable future, or at least until fans bitch and moan enough that Dana White gets sick of hearing them and gives in and changes it. The concept was good, but superimposing classic UFC moments over top of an industrial CGI set made it look like the outtakes from a dime-a-dozen video game.
Fans have been split on whether or not they like the “upgrade,” but the ones who seem okay with it are the ones who never really cared one way or the other.
Dana revealed last week that the intro cost “an obscene amount of money” to make, but unfortunately the piece of avant-garde visual “art” ended up looking like a hot mess, rather than a Jackson Pollock. Money well spent.
A few observations:
– I wonder how many veins popped out on Ken Shamrock’s head when he saw that he was used prominently in the promo, considering how he is basically living fight-to-fight and paycheck-to-paycheck after losing his lawsuit against Zuffa.
– No Shogun, no Machida, no Frank Shamrock, no Mark Coleman, no Dan Severn and no Dan Henderson, yet we have Lesnar in the video, twice? Seriously?
– Wouldn’t it have been less cheesy to have them appear to be fighting in a Roman colosseum?
– Couldn’t they have forgone Hans Zimmer in favor of someone under the age of 50 who may actually know what MMA is, like say the Dust Brothers.
– Does anyone else get a “Wide World of Sports/SportsCenter vibe from this?
As much as I wasn’t a big fan of the Gladiator, I much prefer the old intro to this new incarnation. Maybe it’s the Pavlovian response I have when I hear the opening bars of Optimus Bellum Domitor and I get pumped up to see fights. The new score just doesn’t have the same effect.
It reminds me of few years back when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) decided to rewrite the theme for it’s historic landmark Saturday night staple, Hockey Night in Canada. Fans were pissed since the original had become a part of the sport’s culture, but they eventually got over it like they do with most things, except new Coke and Obama.