Tag: MMA News

Two-time UFC champion Tim Sylvia holds the highest knockout percentage among the world’s premier heavyweights. The 32-year-old product of the Miletich Fighting Systems camp has delivered 16 of his 28 career wins (57 percent) by knockout or technical knockout. His percentage is followed by Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic (52 percent), Ben Rothwell (50 percent), former UFC titleholder Andrei Arlovski (47 percent), Aleksander Emelianenko (44 percent), UFC Hall-of-Fame Randy Couture (29 percent), Gabriel Gonzaga (27 percent), Fedor Emelianenko (21 percent), Fabricio Werdum (21 percent), Heath Herring (17 percent), Josh Barnett (15 percent) and interim UFC heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (8 percent).

Affliction is a new organization coming up, and World Victory Road is a relatively new organization. Should new organizations even think about competing with the UFC?

No, they shouldn’t. They can’t operate within a vacuum, because what every promotion does, even to a small extent, is going to affect them, but they can’t worry about competing with UFC.

They have to try and make sure that:

a) They can put together a great product, in a fashion that is going to draw people to watch it and is available for people to watch it.

b) All their i’s are dotted and all their t’s are crossed, and everything is laid out and set up, so that someone like UFC couldn’t come along and try and find some way to throw a wrench into it, hijack it, challenge it by running programming against it or just simply going behind the scenes to whoever and making a few handshakes, and (say), “Hey, make sure this thing doesn’t go off.”

You’ve worked with many promoters in your career. Why is it so hard for new organizations to get traction?

They don’t secure the viewership first and basically they just spend way too much right off the bat.

Of course, you’re going to lose money when you start, but some of these guys, I think they come in not with the understanding of how long it’s going to take them to recoup that investment, and they don’t have a nest egg that’s large enough to hang in there, especially at the level they’re trying to do it at.

According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, UFC 83, which featured Georges St. Pierre v. Matt Serra, drew 525,000 buys based on the first industry estimate of the event. Early estimates typically rise as more numbers come in and the event is reportedly tracking ahead of both of Randy Couture’s fights from last year which did 540,000 and 520,000 respectively.

Many sources relying on google trends and other internet traffic based methods of predicting pay-per-view buys had predicted that the event would come in average to below. Based on the strong storytelling behind GSP-Serra and anecdotal evidence, MMAPayout.com correctly predicated that the event would surprise to the upside. MMAPayout.com has since learned that the highly praised Countdown show for the event drew an above average 782,000 viewers.

Adam Wagner (MMAmania.com): So are you saying that a lot of these fighters who we see on television as the faces of the UFC, do you think that behind the scenes, they are commenting on that type of thing but are just afraid to say it?

Tito Ortiz: Of course they’re commenting on it. There are all kinds of guys … Georges St. Pierre, I know he’s very disgusted with the UFC, but it’s just one of those things where they give him little small things that he thinks are great. He gets a brand new Hummer, like “Wow, I get an awesome new Hummer” (and it) costs 50 grand, and all of a sudden I gotta pay taxes on it, and I gotta pay for gas, and dutta-dutta-duh.