While Jacob Volkman might be in hot water over his latest attempt at political humor he is not the only member of the Zuffa family involved in politics.

According to The Center for Responsive Politics Jon Huntsman's top three campaign contributions come from Fertitta owned businesses.

Huntsman's top contribution totaled $29,500 from Fertitta Entertainment while Station Casinos and Ultimate Fighting Championship both donated $29,000 for the number two and three spots respectively.

The Center for Responsive Politics offers this disclaimer regarding the contributions:

The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Remember that Steven Soderbergh action flick that Gina Carano was slated to star in?

Well, here is the latest photo from the set of Haywire (formerly known as Knockout, because, let's face it, Knockout is way too MMA gimmicky for Hollywood to bank on) featuring Carano in a Tomb Raider wet suit laying the beat down on her co-star Ewan McGregor.

Haywire (rumored budget of $25 million) does boast some big name actors, such as the aforementioned Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas and Bill Paxton, plus Soderbergh knows how to make a decent film. Though it does have, *gulp* Channing Tatum (or is it C-Tate? I can never remember) in it. Tatum's ability to ruin any promising project is quickly becoming well documented.

Carano last fought for Strikeforce in August of 2009, where she lost to Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos. 

Scott Coker recently spoke on his belief that Carano would return to fighting in 2011. 

Strikeforce: Overeem vs. Werdum coverage

While it is quickly becoming cliché to demand that cage side judges be given monitors to watch fights -- I can almost recite Jordan Breen's traditional post-fight controversial judging rant from memory now -- and considering the events on Thursday night, I decided to engage in an experiment: watching a round cage side while staring at a monitor vs. watching without a monitor. 

The verdict? 

Your own personal HD monitor is a much better way to watch the fight. You pick up all the ambient sound of being near a live fight but you see it in 1080pi, which is such a richer visual field than -- well, reality. In this writer's humble opinion the "issue" of whether judges should have monitors is academic. 

Sticking with the theme of monitors cage side I noticed that the announcers table had a giant Compustrike monitor providing instant stats for each fight. 

I know there is a debate in the MMA community about how useful Compustrike is as a statistical tool (everyone seems to have a Chi-square test crush on Fight Metric) but I thought it was an interesting peek behind the curtain for the Showtime play-by-play staff. 

SBN coverage of Strikeforce: Feijao vs. Henderson

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COLUMBUS, Ohio --  Jorge Gurgel may have been the second to last fight on the undercard but the crowd at Nationwide Arena treated the Ohio native like a feature bout. 

Ever since The Ultimate Fighter season two fans have been wanting to see Jorge Gurgel use his Jiu-Jitsu skills and tonight they finally got what they were looking for. 

In forty-four seconds Gurgel submitted Billy Vaughn. It should be noted that Vaughn took the fight on short notice but the fight was far from an even affair as the first clinch led to a quick guillotine choke and easy victory for Gurgel.

Gurgel told the jubilant  crowd how happy he was to celebrate this victory with his new wife and thanked his students in attendance.   

SBN coverage of Strikeforce: Feijao vs. Henderson

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I wanted to add a little bit more of opinion/analysis to the story I posted regarding AOL's licensing agreement with The Sporting News.  

While no one at AOL, MMA Fighting nor The Sporting News is talking about upcoming staff issues but it has been widely reported that the vast majority of Fanhouse writers will be let go in the coming months. 

Before we delve into what this means specifically for MMA Fighting (http://www.mmafighting.com) it is first important to understand the deal with The Sporting News and why it happened. Essentially, Fanhouse was losing money and AOL gave up on running it's own sports property and are now licensing out the Fanhouse property to The Sporting News. This allows AOL to reduce its costs (they do not have to a run a staff) while stabilizing revenue (The Sporting News pays them for the brand) though they cede some editorial control. 

Ben Koo has an excellent in-depth story covering the issues at Fanhouse and to summarize his post, as well as the early consensus, Fanhouse never established a strong brand due to constant changeover in management. The property itself was losing money, which most believe was a direct result in the changeover from a web-centric model to a traditional newspaper model. Fanhouse revamped it's staff with marquee writers whose contracts were costly but also required Fanhouse to pay extra in expense costs such as travel for on-site reporting.  

That analysis might spell trouble for the staff of MMA Fighting. Typically the site sends a video reporter, videographer, feature writer and photographer to major MMA events. Plus they are paying writers/bloggers to cover the event from the office. 

To put this in perspective Yahoo -- a site with four times the on-line reach -- typically sends a feature writer and photographer with one office writer/blogger.  

On the surface the continuation of such staffing seems cost prohibitive given the context of high costs and losses leading AOL to abandon Fanhouse in favor of a licensing agreement. Thus, one could reasonably conclude that a staff reduction or at the least a content reduction will occur at MMA Fighting. 

However, there is a potential bright spot for the staff. The Sporting News does not currently employ a dedicated mixed martial arts writer. Thus if MMA Fighting is able to show that they are profitable with the current staff and cost structure little may change. 

On the flip side one could logically conclude that the editorial staff at The Sporting News doesn't understand the on-line value of mixed martial arts coverage and changes may be inevitable. 

It will be very interesting to see what happens in the coming months. 

MMA Payout recently detailed a the latest Zuffa credit report from Standard and Poor's. 

Two points stuck out as particularly interesting: 

The report reinforces that 75% revenues are event-related; PPV buys account for nearly 60% of all PPV event revenue while gate and sponsorships account for the rest.

The remaining 25% of revenue comes from live and taped broadcasts on SpikeTV, merchandise, and digital media revenue; much of that is broadcast revenue, but an emerging portion is merchandise and digital media.

...

Debt: $50 million credit facility expiring in 2012; $425 million term loan due in 2015.

Standard and Poor's revenue percentages that are described above allow us to reverse engineer Zuffa's revenue for 2009 by using Dave Meltzer's reported pay-per view buys for UFC events in 2009, which came in at an estimated 8.055 million pay-per view buys.

Unfortunately there is no way for us to know how many of these buys were high definition versus standard definition, which in turn will hurt the accuracy of our math (not to mention that this doesn't include restaurant and bar purchases, which pay different rates) but we can at least look at the range of possible pay-per view revenue. 

If all PPV purchases were in high definition at $54.95 then the estimated pay-per view revenue would be $442.6 million. If all purchases were in standard definition at $44.95 then the estimated pay-per view revenue would be $362.1 million. 

By applying Standard and Poor's percentages we can calculate total revenue using the following method:

Estimated PPV Revenue = 60% of event revenue 
Thus;
Estimated PPV revenue / .6 = Event revenue
$442.6-362.1 million / .6 = $737.7-603.5 million
Thus;
Event revenue = 75% of Total Revenue 
Thus;
Event revenue / .75 =  Total Revenue
$737.7-603.5 million /.75 = $983.6 - 804.7 million

Zuffa's estimated total revenue for 2009 would fall within the range of $983.6 million to $804.7 million. 

Obviously, these figures are not exact and I wouldn't expect anyone to take them as gospel. But they do offer a more tangible perspective on Zuffa's financial situation.

Cheat sheet of conclusions after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

This fanpost was promoted to the front page by Donna.  

In Part I we looked backwards so it only makes sense to use Part II to look forward and examine the big stories that might be right around the corner. 

Luckily for us, Kevin Iole of Sports Yahoo took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss THE YEAR 3000! Random blog tributes to Coco aside, we do talk about the potential big stories for the next six months. 

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

In Part I we looked backwards so it only makes sense to use Part II to look forward and examine the big stories that might be right around the corner. 

Luckily for us, Kevin Iole of Sports Yahoo took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss THE YEAR 3000! Random blog tributes to Coco aside, we do talk about the potential big stories for the next six months. 

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

In Part I we looked backwards so it only makes sense to use Part II to look forward and examine the big stories that might be right around the corner. 

Luckily for us, Kevin Iole of Sports Yahoo took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss THE YEAR 3000! Random blog tributes to Coco aside, we do talk about the potential big stories for the next six months. 

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

Fanpost promoted to front page by Donna.  Our little boy is all growns up!

IT"S WKR'S 100th PODCAST -- Woo Hoo!!!

In words of Bilbo Baggins, "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

Confetti, fireworks and the One Ring of Doom aside we have a very special two part podcast this week with two very influential guests. Today we are joined with Josh Gross of Sports Illustrated to take a look back at the past five months and try to take stock of what all has happened in one of the busiest quarters in MMA's young history.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

Don't forget to check back on Wednesday as we have another very special guest!

IT"S WKR'S 100th PODCAST -- Woo Hoo!!!

In words of Bilbo Baggins, "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

Confetti, fireworks and the One Ring of Doom aside we have a very special two part podcast this week with two very influential guests. Today we are joined with Josh Gross of Sports Illustrated to take a look back at the past five months and try to take stock of what all has happened in one of the busiest quarters in MMA's young history.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

Don't forget to check back on Wednesday as we have another very special guest!

IT"S WKR'S 100th PODCAST -- Woo Hoo!!!

In words of Bilbo Baggins, "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

Confetti, fireworks and the One Ring of Doom aside we have a very special two part podcast this week with two very influential guests. Today we are joined with Josh Gross of Sports Illustrated to take a look back at the past five months and try to take stock of what all has happened in one of the busiest quarters in MMA's young history.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

Don't forget to check back on Wednesday as we have another very special guest!

The second part of the WKR podcast features  Karyn Bryant of MMA Heat to discuss  her experiences at Shine Fights this past weekend. Basically, we try to get a feeling for what exactly happened with the Shine Fights crew and how their event was canceled by the North Carolina Athletic Commission in addition to Don King's last-minute court ordered injunction. Luckily for us Karyn was on the scene (check out her video interviews) to provide some perspective on what was going on behind the scenes.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

As promised, Sergio Non of USA Today stops by to talk about The Ultimate Fighter and all it's reality show glory (how many times have you heard "I'm not here to make friends! I'm here to win!). Non points out that The Ultimate Fighter was really never about finding or developing top prospects per se. It's really about making good reality television for Spike and marketing for the UFC.

After our conversation with Sergio we talk with Karyn Bryant of MMA Heat about her experiences at Shine Fights this past weekend. Basically we try to get a feeling for what exactly happened with the Shine Fights crew and how their event was canceled by the North Carolina Athletic Commission in addition to Don King's last-minute court ordered injunction. Luckily for us Karyn was on the scene (check out her video interviews) to provide some perspective on what was going on behind the scenes.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

As promised, Sergio Non of USA Today stops by to talk about The Ultimate Fighter and all it's reality show glory (how many times have you heard "I'm not here to make friends! I'm here to win!). Non points out that The Ultimate Fighter was really never about finding or developing top prospects per se. It's really about making good reality television for Spike and marketing for the UFC.

After our conversation with Sergio we talk with Karyn Bryant of MMA Heat about her experiences at Shine Fights this past weekend. Basically we try to get a feeling for what exactly happened with the Shine Fights crew and how their event was canceled by the North Carolina Athletic Commission in addition to Don King's last-minute court ordered injunction. Luckily for us Karyn was on the scene (check out her video interviews) to provide some perspective on what was going on behind the scenes.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

As promised, Sergio Non of USA Today stops by to talk about The Ultimate Fighter and all it's reality show glory (how many times have you heard "I'm not here to make friends! I'm here to win!). Non points out that The Ultimate Fighter was really never about finding or developing top prospects per se. It's really about making good reality television for Spike and marketing for the UFC.

After our conversation with Sergio we talk with Karyn Bryant of MMA Heat about her experiences at Shine Fights this past weekend. Basically we try to get a feeling for what exactly happened with the Shine Fights crew and how their event was canceled by the North Carolina Athletic Commission in addition to Don King's last-minute court ordered injunction. Luckily for us Karyn was on the scene (check out her video interviews) to provide some perspective on what was going on behind the scenes.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.

As promised, Sergio Non of USA Today stops by to talk about The Ultimate Fighter and all it's reality show glory (how many times have you heard "I'm not here to make friends! I'm here to win!). Non points out that The Ultimate Fighter was really never about finding or developing top prospects per se. It's really about making good reality television for Spike and marketing for the UFC.

After our conversation with Sergio we talk with Karyn Bryant of MMA Heat about her experiences at Shine Fights this past weekend. Basically we try to get a feeling for what exactly happened with the Shine Fights crew and how their event was canceled by the North Carolina Athletic Commission in addition to Don King's last-minute court ordered injunction. Luckily for us Karyn was on the scene (check out her video interviews) to provide some perspective on what was going on behind the scenes.

You can download the episode here, subscribe to our RSS feed here and check us out on iTunes. The streaming version is below and you can open up a new window to listen here. Send feedback to watchkalibrun@gmail.com or follow us at Twitter @WatchKalibRun.