It was on this day three years ago that Affliction held its second and final MMA event, “Day of Reckoning” in Anaheim California. It’s not that the event did poorly at the box office or that it didn’t feature great fights, because the show took in $1.5 million and with names like Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Vitor Belfort, Matt Lindland, and Josh Barnett, the line-up rivals any UFC card today. The problem was that the owners of the company tried to pay fighters whatever their asking price because they were friends with most of them, having sponsored them for years.
Case in point, when you are paying Tim Sylvia $800,000 to get KO’ed by Fedor (who only netted $300,000 for the feat), you may need a new business model.
The event, whose main event was broadcast as a pay-per-view with the undercard shown on HDNet, featured some exciting fights and some dramatic finishes by Emelianenko, Belfort, Barnett and Nogueira.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/PRIDEFC17)
(Video courtesy of YouTube/odasidazenith)
Both of the promotion’s events earned approximately half of what they took in, which basically bled the company dry. When its main event fell through a few months later, thanks to a positive steroid test by Josh Barnett, Affliction wised up and decided that it was a t-shirt company, not an MMA promotion and pulled the plug, but not before throwing Barnett under the bus first by blaming him for the demise of Affliction’s MMA venture.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/AfflictionVideos)
As the promo for the event stated, “It took only 36 seconds for [Fedor] to take down a giant,” and it took just over a year for Affliction Entertainment to close up shop. “Affliction: Banned” was held July 19, 2008 at at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The third event, Affliction: Trilogy was to take place at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California on August 1, 2009 and was to feature a main event tilt between Barnett and Emelianenko.11 days before the event, the California State Athletic Commission announced that “The Babyfaced Assassin” was not granted a license for the bout due to a failed drug test. On July 24 Affliction, who was previously banned as a UFC sponsor because of their MMA promotion, announced that it had cancelled the event and that it was returning as a UFC sponsor.
Day of Reckoning”