Mosley Stuns Margarito, Wins by TKO in the 9th!

Why is it that this gets a top story feature on the site and a mention here, but Fedor’s 1st round KO of Andrei Arlovski at Affliction: Day of Reckoning is nowhere to be found?  ESPN has it on their front page…

De La Hoya must have left at some point since he was also at Affliction’s event, which Golden Boy co-promoted.

The reason it’s on ESPN is because Sherdog, which is the most popular MMA site, is affiliated with ESPN. To my knowledge, I don’t think Sporting News is affiliated with any MMA site.

In the MMA world, the Fedor deal was big, but in the real sports world, it wasn’t that big. When you see the buyrate for that Affliction show, you’ll know why. More people want to know about this fight than a Fedor fight. Now, it’s not going to be fair when next weekend, 850k homes will buy GSP vs. BJ Penn, and this site probably won’t have much about it, and it will outdraw probably all but one or two fights all year long.

Sites like this will eventually pick up on the UFC when their demos start matching up a bit more. But also, sports is weird in that you have to be around for years upon years before you’re taken seriously, where in other entertainment, a new crappy TV show will be all the rage, as well as an indy film. It’s a bit odd

I watched this fight last night and it really was a beating.  Mosley was incredible.  Before the fight started it looked like it was crazy in the Staples center.  After the first round it got so quiet it was almost disturbing.  The crowd must have been 99.5% for Margarito

First let me say that I think that Fedor is the biggest thing in MMA, but I’m also an avid boxing fan so yes there is a little bias on my part.  MMA is great for TV, and I’m sure that most of it’s fighters train very hard, but everytime I watch a MMA fight I have flashbacks of the imfamous "Bum fights" where homeless guys were paid $25 to beat up on each other.  So I’m happy that Shane Mosley is getting good press after an awesome showing.

Crowd was definitely all Margarito. Shane got booed heavily. And yeah, it was weird, because it was such a juiced crowd so ready to go nuts, but then Shane so dominated he took the starch out of everyone. He deserves a world of credit – went into an away stadium and pulverized his man start to finish.As for MMA, what can I say? I have nothing against it, but I don’t write about it.

Holy Smokes….who cares about Boxing/Wrestling?? To me you are   wasting your to me writing about a sport that nobody cares about… To see if i am right, why dont you try  a poll on the blog…. Also Modman, ESPN gets paid to put boxing on the front page so theres your answer.

Agent Zero is that ur eye  cue? ZERO. 20,000 plus watched it the largest attendance ever at the Staples center bigger than Lakers or any other event they had CLOWN.

Large c u writing over at HBO…GOOD STUFF….You think the Cotto-Margo re-match will come off? I don’t think it should now, think Tony needs a long break and a tuneup to build himself back up before he could get ruined.

Best quote of the night from Merchant" Oscar got payed 5 million by Affliction to attend and promote the Fedor-Arlovski card, you couldn’t pay me 5 million to go to that stuff" CLASSIC MERCHANT!

roheblius, MMA is the fastest growing sport and is covered by most large sports sites.  I know Sherdog is affiliated with ESPN and that TSN isn’t affiliated with an MMA website.  My point here is to try to draw attention to that and change it.  We have some great MMA bloggers on this website who have been trying to encourage Sporting News to add a section for MMA.  Fedor/Arlovski was big in the MMA world and deserves coverage…and GSP/Penn definitely deserves the coverage, but neither will get it from TSN, who has definitely dropped the ball on MMA.

indyfan8500, I’m not a big boxing, tennis or golf fan but I still feel they should be covered on a sports website as big as TSN.  So should MMA.  My problem isn’t with Mosley/Margarito being covered, but with the lack of any mention of the other big fight of the night.

No Mas Large.tsn,  you don’t, but why doesn’t TSN have anybody on their staff who does…other than Mottram, who just mocks the sport.

Agent Zero00, I was saying that ESPN had MMA on their front page in addition to boxing.  Sites like ESPN & Yahoo Sports have recognized the sport of MMA, TSN should as well.

cpd, I didn’t think you were still around here.  Were you rooting for Arlovski in the Fedor fight?  Freddie Roach was training him.

Congratulations to Sugar Shane Mosley,I knew he could pull-off an upset.Mosely likes to fight he ‘s more of a fighter than a boxer, has good power & speed &  can take a punch.He can box when he need’s to & gives you rounds,But most of all he’s smart in the ring knows how to adjust.Margarito throws looping punches,doesn’t keep in with the jab and takes to many shots.What work for Mosley was the body attack with straight right hands. I’m convince he will do the same thing again to either Margarito or Cotto on a return go.

Agent Zero, man you just don’t give up do you? What are you, twelve years old? If you’re so uninterested in boxing, don’t read my pieces about it. I mean, why on earth would you take the time to write a comment on a piece by someone who clearly cares deeply about boxing to tell him that "no one" cares about boxing. I understand that "you" and your frat-boy fantasy league buddies do not care about boxing. But both fighters last night made 2.5 milly a piece for a night’s work, and that’s before gate percentages. Plus, as CPD pointed out, it was an all-time record crowd at the Staples Center. Clearly, somebody cares about boxing. Just not you. Your very stupid point has been made.CPD, glad to see you back. Don’t know about Cotto/Margs. Don’t know about Margs right now. This loaded gloves thing is some serious crap he has to answer to right now. Did you see that Golden Boy is going after Floyd for Shane now? Man, that fight has been like seven years in the making. It would be amazing if Shane’s win last night put him in line for that kind of payday. I hope it happens. Winner fights the winner of Pacquiao/Hatton (in other words, Pacquiao).In conclusion, I’m down with MMA being covered here or anywhere. It’s not really my thing, but I dig it and have no hate for it whatsoever.

Actually Agent Zero, we’ve been seeing great traffic and overall response to our boxing coverage in TSB.  There’s obviously a desire out there for coverage.  I’m not a fan myself, but I can appreciate that other people are.  Feel free to skip over the boxing coverage if you’re not a fan, but I don’t think we’ll be pulling back on it anytime soon.

@ModMind – I’m with you. I actually run my own MMA/boxing/wrestling blog, so I definitely understand the appeal.

But I also understand why Mosley/Margarito means more to a website than Fedor/Arlovski does. It’s simply more newsworthy to more people. Now if Fedor/Arlovski did 500k buys, you’d have your argument. But did it even do 50k?

As far as promotion, I’m not so sure sites like these should be in charge of making sure to get the word out there. That’s Affliction and UFC’s job. Now if these sites are just deciding not to work with those sites, then that’s their decision, and hopefully they’ll come around. Especially because GSP and BJ Penn will be just as big as Pacquiao/Hatton when it comes to PPV buys.

You think GSP Penn will do over a million? I think Pacquiao/Hatton will come in at around 1.25 mill. Even if it does 800 large or so, though, the point remains, that’s a lot of buys, there’s a lot of interest. I did a lot of coverage on Jones/Calzaghe here cause it involved two big stars and yet that thing did just over 200k. 

roheblius,  I think the argument is still valid (and TSN actually did end up covering Fedor/Arlovski, although it was just placed directly in the hard-to-find news listing for "Other Sports"…I didn’t find it until the next night although it appears to have been posted around the time of my original post.).  The fact is, in the MMA world Fedor/Arlovski was a big deal considering they are 2 of the Top 10 Heavyweights in the world and Fedor is a top P4P fighter.  There’s plenty of stuff that isn’t super popular covered on TSN, such as MLS. 

I’m not denying that Mosley/Margarito is more significant overall considering it was a big fight and had huge attendance numbers.  I’ve have no problem with boxing getting the bigger headline, I’m just trying to encourage coverage of the sport of MMA.

As far as promotion, if that’s your argument then why cover the NFL, MLB, NBA or college sports?  TSN is a sports website, MMA is a sport.  TSN should be covering sports.  Just like all sports, the organization itself should be (and does) promote its events, but sports news outlets cover the events before and after they occur.  Why should it be different for MMA? 

I was just trying to make a point.  I got plenty of negative reviews on my comments on the actual Mosley/Margarito article for doing so.  I was hoping to get some MMA fans to join in and show TSN what they’re missing out on, but now it’s almost like I have to debate my argument to those fans too so I guess my plan failed/backfired. 

SSchrager stated about boxing just above your post, "we’ve been seeing great traffic and overall response to our boxing coverage in TSB.  There’s obviously a desire out there for coverage."  If MMA fans on this site showed that there’s a desire for MMA coverage in larger numbers, TSN would be more likely to do something about it.  That was all I was trying to do…show that there’s an interest and that competing sites that carry the same content, such as ESPN, provide MMA coverage.

I’m glad that TSN did post a short article about the Affliction card and I guess I just picked a bad time to decide to make a point.  I should have just stayed quiet and maybe I would have eventually stumbled across that article and could have been pleasantly surprised at TSN for covering MMA.

GSP/Penn will do probably do at least 800k.  UFC (not MMA in general, UFC specifically) pay-per-views on average do better than boxing.  Boxing has a couple of BIG events in a year like the Mayweather/De La Hoya fight, but UFC maintains consistent numbers.  The 3 part series on SpikeTV, called "Primetime", promoting the GSP/Penn fight will help the numbers some as well.  Even if GSP/Penn ends up being a disappointment in PPV buys, it’ll still top Jones/Calzaghe’s 200k. 

No doubt, ModMind, GSP/Penn will absolutely top Jones/Calzaghe, as well it should, because Jones/Calzaghe was a farce. I would like to say this about the relative health of UFC’s PPV cards – they do well because they are stacked with big fights. People get much more bang for their buck and they know it. This is to its credit obviously, but it’s also a financial issue. MMA guys, even the stars, do not expect to make what the De La Hoya’s and Mayweathers of the world rake in for a night of fighting.Someday, however, they will expect exactly that, because as you well know and I am well aware, MMA is growing in popularity every day. But when the day comes that GSP and BJ would both expect to walk away from a high-profile fight with 20 or 30 mill in their pockets, UFC will find itself in the same PPV bind that boxing is in, where one decent fight per card is all that any promoter can afford.

I think it goes beyond just big fights or stacked cards.  UFC fans have learned that lots of the time a fight between two guys they might not even be familiar with can turn out to produce a Fight of the Night or an amazing KO.  I do agree with you regarding fighter pay, and when that day comes it’ll be interesting to see if the factor I mentioned still makes MMA a better bang or if fans end up feeling the same as they do about Boxing now.

As for Jones/Calzaghe being a farce, I’ll have to take your word for it.  I’m not a boxing fan and the only fight that’s drawn my interest in my adult life was the 3rd fight of the Marquez/Vazquez trilogy because of HBO’s great promotion for the fight and the fact that it looked like it would be a war rather than what I usually see from boxing, which is rather boring with nobody trying to finish a fight.

Man if that’s what you’ve seen of boxing lately, you haven’t been paying very close attention – lot of ridiculous fights in the last two years. What I often see of MMA is dudes rolling around on the mat trying armbar each other, which is not exactly riveting stuff either.

You’re not going to get anywhere with me on the boxing-is-boring-and-MMA-is-exciting front. I’ve watched enough MMA to know the sport pretty well, and it just doesn’t compare as an athletic spectacle to boxing in my mind. I don’t really want to have this argument here with you, because it’s so old and played out and all it really boils down to is one person’s opinion versus the other – the sports are very different. Some people are more into basketball than football. Me, I’m way more into boxing than MMA.

I agree with you that right now MMA is able to put on PPV cards that give viewers a lot more bang for their buck than boxing does. I maintain that when MMA stars start expecting massive money every time they step in the octagon, the sport will encounter the same kinds of problems that boxing has now.

Marquez/Vazquez was Showtime, by the way, although something tells me if they do it a fourth time, HBO will swoop in on it with a whole lotta dough.

Everytime I’ve turn on boxing, I just see guys holding onto each other looking gassed and constantly having to be restarted by the ref.  To me, fighting for position on the ground and trying to secure an armbar or other submission is much more riveting.  MMA combines the athletics of boxing with the fact that you have to defend agains takedowns and then have a ground game.  Boxing is one element of a larger skillset in MMA.  But you’re right, it does boil down to the individual’s opinion and it’s just as useless trying to convince an MMA fan like me that boxing is better as it is trying to convince a boxing fan like you that MMA is better.

I agreed in my previous post MMA will encounter the problems, I just wondered if the difference in how MMA fights play out will keep the undercard interesting to fans despite it lacking the "stacked" formula the cards have presently.

My mistake on Marquez/Vazquez.  I have HBO & Showtime and often end up mixing up what aired where.  If they do it a 4th time, that’ll probably be the next boxing fight I watch…they earned my respect in the last fight and didn’t make me disappointed that I tuned in.

You should have checked out Margs Mosley if you wanted to see someone going for the kill. Tony Margarito is known to be a very dangerous cat and when Mosley got him hurt, he pulled out the sword son. It was matadorlicious to the extreme.

I’m a fan of both so I don’t have an issue with boxing fans who think their sport is athletically superior because it is simply opinion. MMA fans are the same way. I think that a great boxing match and a great MMA fan are both incredible spectacles. I saw last year’s two biggest matches for each sport and while De La Hoya/Pacquiao felt more like something special when it started, Lesnar/Couture, at the end, seemed like just as big of a deal. In a sense, they were similar. Older guy gets dominated by the younger guy. Obviously, the size differences were there. But similar stories were told. And with all that great promotion and with the biggest start in all of boxing, De La Hoya/Pac still only did about 200k more in PPV buys. Where they clean up is in the gate because they can charge higher prices.

I don’t think Pacquiao/Hatton will do 1.25 domestically. Hatton/Mayweather, with some really good promotion did only like 800k here in the US. Is Pacquiao more over as a star than Mayweather was back then? I don’t think so. That fight will do huge business in the UK to make up for it though. I think GSP/Penn will do at least 800k and we’ll see Wednesday on the go home show of UFC Primetime how much more than that it will do. I think it has a good chance to do over that.

The UFC still has a little ways to go as far as getting respect in the industry though. You saw how Jim Lampley covered the hand wraps issue. Even though he and Merchant looked like curmudgeons when talking about De La Hoya working with Affliction, they covered that deal like you should. The UFC wouldn’t have done the same thing. They don’t mention the other shows, the other champions, and certain issues that could hurt their sport, and that’s their prerogative, but if you want to be taken seriously, you can’t only show the good and hide from the bad.

To echo Modmind’s original—and MAIN—point:

If TSN is the sporting resource it purports to be, it needs to start giving MMA its due coverage (unless it wants to lose/miss out on a serious chunk of reader/member-ship). 

I know, from my own experience, that my friends, my family, my friends’ friends, my rugby team and their friends, my brother and HIS friends, my army buddy and HIS friends—just about everyone I know either directly or indirectly—is completely absorbed by MMA (UFC primarily), and its ascension as a VERY compelling, highly-entertaining, incredibly popular sport, which hosts equally-exciting events, is not to be denied. 

No one I know has paid for a boxing PPV in YEARS, yet there have been countless MMA PPVs purchased by my friends in the past few years (usually as a major Saturnight night "event"/party, too). 

Now, maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t think so. I tend to think the interest I’ve seen among the people I know is the RULE, not the exception. 

And, until SN starts covering MMA appropriately, formally, we’ll continue to go to Yahoo to get any of the information we want/need on it.

Modmind is not alone as an SN member who craves more (some? any?)MMA coverage on the site.

I don’t disagree with you at all. But MMA definitely is still on the uphill climb. They still aren’t regulated in New York. They need to continue to educate and find ways to market the sport to the masses. New York media (well, maybe just the Times) is so behind in their thinking when they write that boxing is safer because of the boxing gloves. The only thing boxing gloves allow is for the fighters to not break their hands while throwing hard punches. Thus, they can pepper the heads of their opponents 300 times a fight. Where as in MMA, that’s never going to happen.

I think sites like CBS Sportsline and Yahoo! have definitely been solid in their coverage and early adopting. I just don’t think that we even know yet what the scope of MMA is as a major sport when it comes to coverage. We die hards want more coverage obviously. But also, the sports writers aren’t entirely hip to it yet. Total MMA by Jonathan Snowden should be must reading for any writer who may be involved in covering MMA as well as a subsciption to the Wrestling Observer.

Can I throw a plug in here for my man Ariel Helwani and his site mmarated.com? Great site, great writer, MMA-obsessed dude who breaks a lot of news.

Large, I got to disagree with you on holding. Excessive Holding is illegal and you could check any rules of boxing book 4 proof of that. The game of infighting is becoming a lost art cuz fighters just wanna hold. Holding sure when you hurt you tie up but when you constantly holding it is ILLEGAL. SSM just threw the overhand right then body and then hold HE DID IT ALL NIGHT. I don’t remember fighters such as Duran,Hearns,Leonard, and Hagler throwing 2-3 shots then hold constantly do you? The ref was right on with Berto he was warned numerous times through 3 rounds and then the point was taken a way and guess what happened after that we had a great fight with infighting outside fighting with ebb and flow.

As far as MMA every person has there own tastes and I’m not even gonna debate the topic, The problem I have is with the MMA fans who think Boxing is dying and that MMA is the greatest thing ever. Boxing has been around forever and MMA is new to the scene say 100 years from now then MMA fans can talk.

roheblius, you’re right about the Times stance on MMA. Also, on that topic, Cage Potato is sponsoring a petition that you can sign online in support of legalization of MMA in NY. If those of you who support MMA haven’t already signed it, I urge you to. The Cage Potato link is
http://www.cagepotato.com/got-five-seconds-help-cagepotato-lift-mma-ban-new-york

As far as sports writers go, there are some who do a fine job on the sites you mention.  But my suggestion involves writers who do have a great understanding of the sport (see wilcoxon’s blog on TSN for an example).  Adapting the sports writers from a different sport will find us with writers who might not fully understand or care about, but bringing in aspiring writers with a passion for the sport could give TSN a nice MMA section.  Some of the MMA blogs on this site receive close to 1000 views regularly for a post – and this is a personal TSN blog that in most cases is getting very little advertisement from the site itself.  Even if TSN were just to post small news articles like the one they did on Fedor/Arlovski and format the rest of the section around articles from those blogs we’d have a good starting point.

Don’t know what happened there…I didn’t try to make anything an active link.

Man, I have to say, I’m a little amazed that this piece about the Mosley/Margarito fight has turned into a forum for the MMA crusaders. I guess because itwo guys go at it in a ring/cage people have decided that there is some innate comparison to be made and competition between boxing and MMA. But in that there are two teams trying to score on each other in some way, there is some innate comparison to be made between basketball and football too. Or baseball and cricket. People used to get all worked up about who would beat who in a fight between an MMA guy and a boxer, but the answer always boils down to – if it was a boxing match, the boxer would win, and if it was an MMA match, the MMA guy would win. It’s like, who’s better at racket sports, a tennis player or a badminton player? There is no answer, because though a racket is involved in each, the rules are very different. My point is – you guys may as well leave these sorts of comments on all the NFL and tennis and all the other sports posts here as well. I think you agree that boxing is a popular sport – it makes massive amounts of money and does great PPV numbers. I certainly agree that MMA is also a popular sport, but I don’t know why the angst about its coverage in the media has to be aimed at boxing as though the two were in some sort of battle. You guys go on about how your friends NEVER watch boxing but love MMA. That’s because they’re YOUR friends. My friends, and colleagues, NEVER watch MMA, or very rarely. They’re just not that into it. I think this is often the case – people are either much more into than the other. So… there really isn’t that much competition in the end.  

I apologize for helping in turning this into a thread about MMA. I love boxing just as much as MMA. I just found a few opportunities to add my two cents. My repiles have nothing to do with hating on boxing in order to show love for MMA. I love them both. I blog about them both. We can get back to boxing.

Who does Mosley fight next? Do we get Margarito/Cotto again like Arum said? Or do we get Mosley/Cotto now?

Both are fight sports utilizing weight classes and handing out championship belts.  Both do not receive major coverage on TSN.  And TSN has even caused the direct comparison to begin with: the couple of times that MMA has been covered by TSN (Kimbo, Fedor/Arlovski) it’s been dumped into the boxing section of "Other Sports" news.  We (the MMA bloggers) actually emailed TSN a while back making our case not for an MMA section but for a Combat Sports section covering MMA, amateur (college) wrestling and boxing.  If this had been a boxing event on a completely unrelated date from any MMA event, I wouldn’t have even said anything in the first place…however, with both sports not receiving substantial coverage on TSN, a title fight in boxing received coverage while a title fight in MMA did not: this was the reason for my post.

I don’t talk about my FRIENDS watching MMA, of course they do…you’re usually friends with people who share common interests.  But I work in an office building with a lot of people I don’t even know and many others who I’ve only known in a professional capacity.  We don’t work in anything related to sports and there’s nothing else that would lend itself to a bias one way or another towards MMA.  When I overhear "water cooler" talk that I’m not even involved in (meaning I’ve made no influence in the topic), I have yet to hear a boxing conversation but have heard numerous discussions of MMA.

The two aren’t in battle (unless you’re name is Larry Merchant or Jim Lampley), but TSN chooses to ignore a legitimate fight sport while covering another legit fight sport.  I have no problem with boxing being covered (and I haven’t made an attack on boxing at all, only voiced my opinion on why I don’t usually like it and even cited a fight I did like) and I definitely acknowledge that the two fanbases mostly don’t cross, but why can’t TSN recognize another legit sport with just as much, if not more, popularity?  It’s not at all a competition against boxing, it’s just a point that MMA is a popular sport that should be covered by TSN.  Having 2 title fights on the same night with only one seemingly (the MMA post was buried in the other sports news section and took a bit of digging to discover) covered by TSN just happened to make for a good platform for making the point. 

Every legit sports site is going to cover MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL and Nascar…posting regarding lack of MMA coverage on those articles doesn’t make sense.  The coverage of these 2 title fights that happened on the same night was an appropriate place to bring up the topic.

All right, all right – we’re talking about two different things. Obviously I don’t speak for TSN in any way and have nothing to do with that decision. I’m just responding as a writer who did a lot of work at an event in a sport I love and now I’m confronted with the response of… "what about MMA?" What about MMA? I don’t care. I don’t care about the Super Bowl either, or monster truck rallies. This was a boxing piece about a pretty huge fight. You want to get up in arms about the lack of MMA coverage, write the powers that be at TSN – I have nothing to do with it. Then again, if this is the conversation that’s going to be had here, so be it. It’s not that big a deal. I’d rather talk about the fight, but I got a million other places to do that. Different water coolers than the ones you frequent, no doubt. 

The response of "what about MMA?" is not directed at you, it’s directed at TSN.  We have written the powers that be and received no response, I just thought I’d try a more public forum (I posted on the non-TSB article regarding the Mosley/Margarito fight as well).  SSchrager commented on here in response to Agent Zero complaining about boxing, so obviously TSN is paying attention to user feedback on TSB at least, so it seems that this was a good place to do it (and to add to my argument above, both events were event promoted by Golden Boy which just adds further to an association and this being a proper place to post my point).  Maybe it’ll make a difference, maybe it won’t…

I’m sure you did work hard on the piece, TSB in general has seemingly come a far way since when everyone was in an uproar about it, and your piece as well as others I’ve read on here make me think TSB has actually become a good thing for the website. 

I do have a question about something that I actually mentioned in my very first post.  I’ve since read, in regards to Larry Merchant’s comments about Affliction, that De La Hoya was not at the Mosley fight – that he went to Affliction and Schaeffer (sp?), from Golden Boy, went to the boxing event.  Yet, in your article you said Oscar was spotted ringside.  Which is right?

I can’t say that I saw Oscar ringside. But he was definitely announced. He got booed like crazy. Whether he was actually there or not, I can’t say. But Michael Buffer announced him as being there when he was reading the list of celebs. The booing, man – it’s tough because I think Oscar actually cares about what Mexicans think of him. And they can’t stand him. Then again, maybe he wasn’t even there to hear it. Maybe they just read his name.