From this nice article in The News-Enterprise about Chad Corvin's recent signing with the UFC,

That changed Tuesday as the 23-year-old Elizabethtown resident signed a contract with Ultimate Fighting Championship, the largest mixed martial arts promoter in the world.

“It was out of nowhere, because I hadn’t (fought) in almost a year,” Corvin said. 

. . .
Corvin’s trainer, Josh Johnson, received an e-mail from the UFC asking if Corvin would be interested in joining the league.

This signing suggests that the UFC is now actively signing prospects in order to undercut the attempts of any rival organizations from developing their own talent.  

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While every card in every organization has its share of winners and losers, the bizarre circumstances and shocking conclusion to the EliteXC event last night has resulted in far more losers than usual.  Lets take a look at the big losers from last night, and where they go from here:

Kimbo:  Last night's loss badly damaged his image, and his hopes of a huge payday after EliteXC are basically gone.  While he may continue his MMA career, especially if EliteXC actively attempts to rebuild him on the backs of cans, he might be better served to move into movies and other entertainment forms.  Pro Wrestling would play into his vicious appearance while covering up his lack of skill.

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Fronted by Luke Thomas.

Joe Lauzon's blog during TUF 5 provided good entertainment: he gave insight into the inner workings of the house and the relations between the fighters, as well as plenty of interesting tidbits they could not or did not show in the episodes.  Pulver had a blog too, off on some random site outside the main forums and websites.  Short of those two, I personally cannot remember any other fighters or coaches actively blogging on a weekly basis about the TUF experience on that season or prior.

Fast forward three seasons.  For TUF 8, I have so far seen blogs from at least multiple fighters as well as one coach.

MMAJunkie: Ryan Bader and team Mir coach Ken Hahn

Fiveouncesofpain: Phillipe Nover

UFC.com: Junie Browning

CagePotato: Efrain Escudero

MMARated: John Polakowski

MMACanada: Kryzzyzdff Soszdzzki

Fightticker: Eliot Marshall (thanks szucconi!)

And those are only the ones I saw today; I also seem to recall seeing a blog by George Roop as well as an interview with Dave Kaplan, a couple interviews with injury-ousted TUFer Antwain Britt, and MMAWeekly's exit interview, today with Tom Lawlor.

This overwhelming supply of house insight has been caused by two factors.  One obviously is the proliferation of major MMA websites, all trying to provide as much quality content as possible.  But the other factor paints an ugly picture for the future of The Ultimate Fighter.  That exposure that everybody points to as being payment for being on TUF?  It ain't so valuable anymore.

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Fronted by Luke Thomas.

This weekend has brought an absolute storm in the blogoland, with rumors flying of Randy coming back to face Lesnar at UFC 91, in what will almost certainly be a title match, as the first fight in a three-fight deal.  This matchup, and the other rumors about Randy's return, suggest all sorts of interesting possibilities.

Scenario 1: Couture beats Lesnar

If Couture beats Lesnar, this sets up two possible matchups for Randy.  First is the unification match with the winner of Nogueira/Mir.  The second and more interesting matchup is the rumor of a fight with Fedor:

The long-rumored heavyweight superfight between UFC champion Randy Couture (16-8 MMA, 8-5 UFC) and WAMMA champion Fedor Emelianenko (28-1 MMA, 0-0 UFC) is currently being discussed for an as-yet-unspecified date in January or February of 2009.

I suggested in a previous fanpost that the matchup would never happen.  Both my own and other people's analysis has been that the UFC would never build up Fedor just so he could fight elsewhere.  But the UFC has access to better numbers than any of us.  Its quite possible that they have run the calculus and concluded that the UFC is now untouchable by any upstart company grabbing top fighters: the cost of the top fighters would make it impossible to build brand equity and achieve break-even before going under.  I figured it would be a few more years before this would be the case, but the struggles Affliction has encountered suggest that perhaps the day is already here.  If it indeed is, the UFC doesn't have to worry about Fedor going elsewhere, because he costs too much for upstart promotions to survive his paycheck. 

If a Randy/Fedor fight comes to fruition, the winner of Nog/Mir might be able to fight Werdum in the meantime.  Afterwards, the title could be unified, or Randy's piece of the title could be retired if Fedor wins and then leaves.

Lesnar beats the crap out of Cheick Kongo in his rebound fight.

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Fronted by Chris Nelson

Over on Five Ounces of Pain, Sam Caplan has a nice piece throwing the "Muhammad Ali Act should apply to MMA" argument under the bus. However, in article and in the comments section, a discussion regarding the notion of the "living wage" has Caplan arguing that all UFC fighters should be paid enough that they be able to make a good living doing nothing but fighting:

However, a union would have the power to go to the UFC and set a higher-standard for minimum payments. Furthermore, a union would have the power to go to a promotion and negotiate things such as improved health benefits

. . .

A fighter should be happy with $26,000 a year? Only someone who lives with their parents would say such a thing. Maybe a 22-year old fighter should be happy with that, but what about a 30-year old fighter with a wife and kids?

Bloody Elbow's own Michael Rome neatly rebuts the moral arguments for a living wage:

Unlike many of the working poor who have structural pressure keeping them down, or come from broken homes or other terrible situations that make success hard, fighters have made a completely voluntary and unique choice to make a living while fighting. They made this choice with the clear knowledge of how much fighters make, nobody is hiding the ball from them, and there is nobody forcing them to do it. This is the perfect example of a market tradeoff where information is nearly perfect for both parties, there’s no reason to interfere.

However, both of these arguments address the issue from the wrong frame.  The central issue with the living wage is not that it set the fighters against the promotions.  The central issue is that it penalizes talent in favor of experience.

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Fronted by Chris Nelson

The next IFL chip has fallen, and in this case it is IFL Featherweight Champion Wagnney Fabiano to the WEC, according to Brazilian website Tatame:

Considered one of the best lightweight fighters of the world, the IFL champion Wagnney Fabiano signed with WEC, to fight in bantamweight division.

. . .

"Faber is the best of the world now. To beat him, I think you have to be in a good shape. He’s an expert fighter and he has a good gas, it’s complicated to beat a guy like him. You have to set a good game plan and be calm and watch the elbows, because if you hits you can chane a whole fight", said the Nova União athlete

While the WEC will need a fight or two to introduce Wagnney to their audience, a Faber/Fabiano fight would be yet another quality matchup for Faber, which is one of the keys to increasing the WEC's exposure. Competitive matchups involving Faber and Torres are catnip to hardcore fans and provide incredible excitement to the casuals.

Over the past year, the WEC has done a fantastic job aggregating the top featherweight and bantamweight talent. When the WEC middleweight and light heavyweight divisions move over to the UFC and free up more room on the WEC cards, the WEC may be able to develop the same level of dominance in the featherweight and bantamweight divisions that the UFC has achieved in the welterweight and light heavyweight divisions. Shooto is WEC's primary competition at featherweight and bantamweight, with a similar level of talent in the two divisions. None of the major organizations competing with Zuffa have featherweight or bantamweight divisions of note.

If Faber and Torres can take the WEC to the next level, the WEC may be able to afford payouts to challenge the advantages Shooto fighters receive by staying in Japan. One wonders though, even if they could, would the WEC want to fill up their divisions with so many Japanese fighters?

Over the past few days, a new rash of Fedor/Randy news has started the blogosphere talking, starting with the couple's canoodling in LA, followed by Vadim's statements to Sherdog reiterating their willingness to work with the UFC.  That was followed by Randy's statements on Adam Carolla's show, saying he believed his paycheck for that fight should be $6-10 million.

Pramit Mohapatra over at FightTicker did a fine job of debunking Randy's claims as to reasonable pay:

At $50 a pop, 700,000 PPV buys gives us $35 million in PPV revenue. Give the PPV broadcaster half and the promotion ends up with $17.5 million.

Now, UFC 87 (with an announced attendance in the neighborhood of 15,000) made a reported live gate of $2.2 million. Let's be generous and say that Randy-Fedor garners a live gate of $3 million.

. . .

(Without all costs) factored in, Couture's estimate of a $12-20 million total payout for both him and Fedor seems very unrealistic.

However, that still leaves open a couple of questions: what would be reasonable pay and terms for that fight to take place in the UFC?  And will those terms prevent the fight from ever happening?

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