While a big deal has been made about the positive impact of the new health insurance policy that Zuffa has given their fighters there is one possible negative side affect that I haven't heard mentioned- will this cause more fighters to pull out of scheduled fights?

There is no doubt that health insurance is a great thing for the fighters and the long term viability of the sport. However, now that the fighters know that they don't have to shoulder as much of the cost of their medical treatment as they used to it makes it much more likely that they will want to get any medical treatment taken care of before the fight in which case they will have to postpone or cancel any upcoming fight that they are scheduled for.

From what I understand the insurance only covers injuries suffered in training, not during a fight. If a guy has an arm or leg injury that before they would have just fought through they are now taking a big monetary risk by just "toughing it out" and waiting until after the fight to see a doctor. It only makes financial sense for the fighter to have it taken care of on Zuffa's dime rather than their own.

I don't want to make it sound as if I am criticizing a fighter for wanting to do this, it makes perfect sense and if I were in their position I would probably do the same, but it may cause more headaches for Zuffa brass than they had previously considered. The UFC is already dealing with injuries to 3 of their 7 champs (plus Georges St Pierre but his is apparently healed) and the next 4 numbered cards have all had their main events impacted due to fighters getting hurt. We all remember cards like UFC 108 which seemed to be cursed from the day it was announced. I wonder if we will have to deal with more of these types of events in the future.

We as fight fans hate seeing a card get shuffled due to injury, especially if we have purchased a ticket to the event (not to mention spending money on travel and hotel) but I think it's probably something we're going to see more and more of in the future. In the long term the health of fighters is obviously the top priority and will make for a better sport but there may be some unintended consequences to deal with because of it.

 

Coming on the heels of his apology via Twitter to the hearing impaired Tito Ortiz has gone a step further and apologized to the rest of the world who are able to hear him speak. Speaking exclusively to Fathead.com Tito issued this teary-eyed statement:

 

It has came to my attention that over the last several periods of time my usage of the American language has been less than ideal. Well, all I can say is from the depths of my heart. And I'm sorry. My intentions were to never harm anybody. Well, you know buddy, when I was saying those things about "Hammer" The Hamill, Matt, I in honesty never thought he would hear those things. I mean, what you don't hear can't hurt you, right? Well, apparently word got to him about and my statements and I feel very ungood about it. So I'm here today, really, just for my fans. Yesterday I just found out I have a ruptured voice box but I'm still here giving this interview. So once again, well, my sincerest and apologies to everyone. Thanks buddy.

 

Tito Ortiz will take on Matt Hamill this Saturday night at UFC 121 in Anaheim, California. Hopefully for his sake he has better luck in the cage than he does behind a microphone.

 

Wow, what a shame. After Jake Shields puts on the most impressive victory of his career over an MMA legend someone decided to let Mayhem Miller come in the cage asking for a rematch and then all hell breaks loose. It was an exciting, back-and-forth fight with Henderson starting like a bat out of hell and almost knocking Shields out in the first minute. Shields was able to recover and control the fight from the second round on with his amazing BJJ and takedown skills against the bigger Henderson. It was by far the most competitive fight of the evening with all 3 title fights going the distance. And then disaster struck. With the Diaz brothers and Gilbert Melendez in Shields' corner Jason 'Mayhem' Miller shows up in the cage asking Shields for a rematch. Miller is acting aggressive from the start and the pushing and shoving ensues. Fists started flying, bodies all over the place, kicks, punches, etc., and then CBS cuts the feed. Only those in the arena know the extent of what happened but the fact of the matter is this was a black eye to the sport as a whole. Gus Johnson said "sometimes this happens in MMA" but I can never recall something like this happening, and especially not on network TV. After the long, drawn out decisions and the lack of overall star power on this card one has to think this will be Strikeforce's final foray onto the network airwaves, with Mayhem Miller's juvenile act serving as the final nail in the proverbial coffin.

 --photo via www.strikeforce.com

 

Yesterday was an embarrassment to the sport of MMA. From Matt Hughes and Renzo Gracie staging one of the least competitive Ultimate Kickboxing matches in recent memory to BJ Penn failing to show up at the arena to Anderson Silva repeating his completely lackluster performances from UFC's 90 and 97 the entire event made me ashamed to be a fan.

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I was going to post this in the comments to one of the other articles but I was afraid it would get lost in the shuffle and I think it's an important point that needs to be heard. I haven't heard this anywhere else and I think there is one very important reason why UFC fighter pay cannot be compared to that of any other sport.

The UFC derives the vast majority of their revenue from Pay-Per-View buys. Obviously we have no idea exactly what the percentage is but I think it's a safe guess that over half of their revenue is from PPV. And the reason they make so many millions from PPV is because of the stars who sell fights- Brock Lesnar, Georges St. Pierre, Chuck Liddell, BJ Penn. The casual fans (which makes up most of the PPV buying fanbase) tune in to see these big names. The guys like Gray Maynard, Jon Fitch, and Gabriel Gonzaga are completely interchangable parts, no matter the breadth of their skills. In other words, these guys mean very little to the overall bottom line of Zuffa LLC.

The reason the big 4 sports leagues pay such a high percentage of their revenue to the players is because even the marginal guys (the 4th starters in MLB, the sixth man in the NBA, the backup left tackle in the NFL)  on the teams can make a big contribution to the success of their team and therefore they are worth much more to their respective teams. The more success a team has the more money they make (I know this is a simplistic view but for the most part this is the case) so they have a reason to stack their roster from top to bottom with the very best players possible. This is not necessarily true in MMA, or specifically, the UFC. While it would be nice to have the top 25 guys in each weight class, realistically as long as they have the top 2 or 3 then that is all that matters. There is no reason for the UFC to pay millions (or even mid to high six figures) to a guy like Fabricio Werdum or Dan Henderson if they don't provide a reasonable threat to the #1 fighter in their class, there is no monetary gain to keeping those guys around, in fact it would only cost the UFC money in the long run.

I don't want to come off as being anti-fighter, I agree that the guys at the bottom should be getting more but at the same time I don't necessarily think they deserve 50-60% of total revenue like the athletes in other sports get. The UFC and other major sports leagues operate on very different playing fields (both literally and figuritively) so I think comparing the two is an exercise in futility. It's no more fair to compare the UFC to Major League Baseball than it would be to compare the UFC to Google or McDonald's.

In the days and weeks leading up to last weekend's UFC 108 there were many an MMA pundit predicting doom and gloom for this card's buyrate. BE's own Michael Rome predicted 260-325,000 buys, which have been one of the lowest numbers in recent UFC history. However, it appears that the world's premier MMA promotion completely blew away those projections, if a pair of reports released this week are to be believed.

According to an article on Ringsidenews.com Dana White expects a buyrate in the 400-500,000 range.

On The PPV Numbers: “We were looking at (projected PPV buys) and … our norm is around 500,000, and we think we’re going to fall somewhere between (400,000 and 500,000),” White told reporters. “We’ll see what happens.”

And according to MMAPayout.com their projections indicate a buyrate of 440,000.

A weighted average statistical regression analysis of two different variables - viewership in Countdown to UFC and live gate revenue across 30-40 events – was used to derive a linear equation that allows us to input UFC 108’s respective Countdown viewership (559,000) and live gate revenue ($2 million) in order to determine an expected buyrate figure for the event:

• Countdown Prediction: 488,000
• Live Gate: 400,000
• Weighted average: 444,000 buys

What does this all mean? If true there could be a few factors:

1. Rashad Evans' exposure to the huge TUF 10 audience may have earned him a lot of new fans.

2. The combination of the bad weather across the nation and it being the day after New Year's means there were a lot of people sitting at home Saturday night with nothing to do.

3. The decision to start airing some preliminary fights on Spike is finally paying dividends as this Spike prelim show drew the largest audience yet.

We should get a more accurate estimate from Meltzer any time now but from what we can gather right now this show was a huge success even with all the bad luck that seemed to follow it. Perhaps next time everyone will choose their words more carefully when claiming the UFC has lost momentum.

 

 

   I'm gonna be in Vegas November 20-23, at first I was planning on going to the fights but now that BROCKLESNAR has dropped out I'm not sure if I'll actually be going (depends on what kind of deal I can get on a ticket) but I'll definitely be at the weigh-ins and watching the fights somewhere. If any of my fellow Bloody Elbow readers are gonna be there I'd love to meet up and share some drinks and conversation. Either email me through my profile page or we can discuss it in the comments.

 

Photo via www.411mania.com

The November 7th Strikeforce card has suffered its first casualty, according to MMAWeekly.com:

A Nov. 7 fight that was bound to determine a contender to Strikeforce 145-pound women’s champion Cris "Cyborg" Santos is off.

Sources informed MMAWeekly.com on Tuesday that the showdown between Erin Toughill (10-2-1) and Marloes Coenen (16-3), scheduled for the undercard of Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers, is off the card.

Toughill had to withdraw due to an undisclosed medical condition.

Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come as Strikeforce has had trouble with fighters dropping out of fights before. Diaz and Overeem are two names that immediately come to mind, with all the big names on this card and the exposure it will get being on CBS Strikeforce can't afford to have this event run anything but smoothly.

 

I normally wouldn't quote the whole thing but since you have to sign up to read this some people might not want to do that, here is his new post:

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A lot has been said about whether or not CBS can make Fedor a star in the US and what the best way to market him is.  I have devised a plan so flawless that I'm surprised MMASuPreMaCy didn't think of it earlier.

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You guys have all heard of the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? Basically you name an actor or actress and try to connect them to Kevin Bacon in as few steps as possible. For instance, George Clooney. Clooney was in 'Ocean's 11' with Brad Pitt who was in 'Sleepers' with Kevin Bacon. Easy enough, right? So I got to thinking about an MMA version of the game, except instead of movies we'd be talking about fights. Obviously it won't be as easy in MMA with the different weight classes but I think Randleman is a good choice since he has fought at both HW and LHW. So I'll give you an example- Nate Marquardt, a middleweight. Marquardt has fought Anderson Silva who has fought Forrest Griffin who has fought Shogun Rua who has fought Randleman. How about Caol Uno, impossible right? Nope. Uno- BJ Penn- Lyoto Machida- Vernon White- Pedro Rizzo- Randleman. I'm going to throw a few other random names out there and if anyone is bored enough you can try to make the link (if there is one):

• Kimbo Slice
• Royce Gracie
• Tom Lawlor
• Don Frye
• Mayhem Miller
• Bob Sapp

And you guys are free to pick different ones if you want, I just thought this was something fun and interesting to pass some time and help us learn about the history of the sport as well. Have fun!

 

There has been a lot of discussion about what exactly the UFC's plan is for TUF 10 contestant Kimbo Slice. Kimbo and Dana White have both stated that he will be fighting in the UFC again, most likely in December. Whether that will be at the TUF 10 finale or UFC 107 has not yet been determined. If the fight is at the TUF finale the best guess is that it will be against another contestant on the show, most likely one of the lesser competitors. If it is at UFC 107 the name Houston Alexander has been brought up and Kimbo has stated he is willing to cut to 205. Either way the idea is to match Kimbo up with someone who will stand with him hoping to get Kimbo a highlight reel KO to generate some buzz for a big-money matchup for Kimbo sometime next year. With who you might ask? Enter The Iceman.

 

Chuck Liddell hasn't fought since April 18th at UFC 97, a loss to LHW title contender Mauricio 'Shogun' Rua. At the time Dana White was pushing the idea that this was Chuck's last fight. Unfortunately for him Chuck didn't necessarily see it that way. So what are you to do with a fighter who doesn't want to retire and still has fights left on his contract yet is clearly past his prime? Well, first of all you give him some time off and land him a spot on 'Dancing With the Stars'. Then what? This is the question Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta, and Joe Silva are struggling with. Before DWTS was confirmed there was some talk of Chuck vs. Rich Franklin at UFC 103 but obviously that didn't pan out. Then it was decided Chuck would take an extended break to film the TV show. That put the question of Chuck's next opponent on the back-burner for a bit but eventually the question would still need to be answered.

 

For those of you who have been living under a rock since spring the news that Kimbo Slice would compete on The Ultimate Fighter broke on June 1st. In the third episode he was chosen to fight Roy 'Big Country' Nelson and was quickly smothered. That fight pretty much proved what we already knew- Kimbo is a raw fighter with no ground game and a decent punch. But he does do one thing better than almost any other MMA fighter- bring in viewers. The casual audience can't get enough of the street fighting legend and the UFC knows this. The question is what is the best way to squeeze the most money out of the Kimbo train before he is hung out to dry. They can't risk putting him in there with guys like Nelson who will quickly take him down and sub or TKO him on the ground. The guy isn't an elite fighter and most likely will never have the skills to compete at the highest levels of the sport but that doesn't mean he can't be an important part of Zuffa's business plan with the right marketing and matchups. If only there were a fighter that loved to stand and bang, wasn't overly fast or technical, and had the same type of name recognition as Kimbo......

 

A Chuck Liddell vs. Kimbo Slice matchup makes perfect sense, not only for the UFC but for both fighters as well. If (and this is admittedly a big IF) Kimbo can take care of business in December, against a guy that will be hand picked as the best possible matchup for Kimbo, this will set up one of the biggest fights in UFC history. Not big as far as title implications go but big in the sense that it will more than likely deliver one of the two biggest buyrates in company history. If Kimbo wins it will just make him that much bigger of a name and legitimize him to an extent most likely guaranteeing him at least two or three more fights in the UFC. If Chuck wins it will probably put him one victory away from a final shot at title. If Kimbo loses then it will not surprise anyone and will probably chase him from the promotion, proving he does not belong. If Chuck loses that will be three in a row and will tell him once and for all it is time to hang up the gloves. My only hope is that they don't make this the main event as it is not worthy of that status, as the co-main of a card featuring an Anderson Silva or BJ Penn title defense it makes perfect sense. I'm rooting for Kimbo to win his next fight as I think this would be wildly entertaining and bring in hoards of new fans like UFC 100 did. Good luck Kimbo, let's make this fight happen!