Suprise, Suprise

Given it is only my second day of having this blog and I was using yesterday to vent on some outstanding MMA issues that have been around for sometime.

And today, ironically, Donald Trump throws his hat into the MMA ring by backing Affliction. He made a very vanilla statement about MMA, its athletes, and that he would like to be a "major promoter" for MMA. Other than the fact that his hair disturbs me and he once made a comment that he would date his daughter Ivanka, you cannot deny that this guy has loads of money along with better marketing skills than Cuban (not to mention Cuban can kiss HDnet airing Affliction goodbye).

Can he make Affliction a huge success? There is no doubt that he has some serious ties to NBC through the success of The Apprentice and he will more than likely broker Tito Ortiz to Affliction's roster of fighters. If anyone is immediatley threatened it has to be EliteXC. If Trump can somehow broker a deal between Affliction and NBC (this is all premature speculation of course) than the network would have benefitted from Gary Shaw's MMA experiment and more than likely have a much more legitimate fight card.

Does this cause any problems for UFC? Not in the near future. If anything it proves that the hard work of Dana White and the Fertitta brothers has made MMA grow into something that can make serious money.

Will Affliction become serious competition for the UFC down the road? My prediction would be that IF Affliction can build its brand (it's current website for the Tim Sylvia/Fedor Emelianenko fight is terrible) and create a 145 lb weight class, it may be able to muscle out WEC and then get Dana to play nice for some cross promotions. BUT, if fighters begin splitting up into all of these different organizations and become too widespread - MMA will deflate faster than it grew.

UFC Blabber

As UFC has become a flagship for one of the largest growing sports in the world, a lot of attention has been paid to organization President Dana White. Message boards have become rampant with fans posting about the treatment of fighters in the UFC and how White has put himself as the face of the UFC. This is a look at Dana White and the UFC from one fan's perspective both his positive and negative aspects.


Number 1. Dana White is the P. Diddy of MMA. He is recognized with the UFC like Diddy to Badboy, and has placed himself in all of the videos, sound bytes, and websites. They both have clothing lines to push and one can only hope that UFC will never have its own fragrance (I can hear the commercial now, "Chuck Liddell presents: Iceman cologne, nothing is as cool as the Iceman." And Dana White would be spritzing himself in the commercial).
Dana, like Diddy, promotes himself just as much as the organization (see his Men's Health Article in June/July 2008 Issue), but this may be a current necessity.

Number 2. White is the only true guaranteed constant that the UFC has. There has to be a staple in the sport who can speak on behalf of the organization and grooming someone to be the face of the organization takes time. Joe Rogan is an excellent announcer - the Marv Alberts of MMA (minus the sodomy of course) - and Randy Couture was the ambassador of the sport, until all of the recent legal rigmarole. Couple this with the fact that at least three of the current champions speak English with a heavy dialect or no English at all, White has had to be the man in front of the camera as neither Rampage or Penn are great in front of the camera.

Number 3. The UFC cash distribution. First of all, athletes in a sport that is this young (in its current form) rarely make millions. Period. I do not pretend to know the ins and outs of all of the pay structure of the UFC, but it should grow as the sport grows. And as the UFC has gotten bigger and bigger the superstars should get paid more and more. White handles this subject so poorly in interviews that it irks me to read them and is cause for channel change when discussed via television interview. No one will ever think that the fighters are well compensated as long as their trunks look like a Nascar. I have never seen a boxer with "Condom Depot" on the backside of his trunks.

Number 4. White has done leaps and bounds for the sport but needs to grow up with the sport too. There will be a definite ceiling for the organization if White cannot stop cursing without cause (TUF opening show "are you F%*%ers ready?") and getting into public squabbles with contracted fighters. This may burn him sooner than later. He is already losing grip on the heavyweight division (I honestly dont know if UFC is the premier heavyweight class in MMA) and if a side show company like EliteXC can land a couple of highly recognizable names to place on network television, they will gain a big fan base. Don't think so, remember how many people PAID to watch Tyson fight a no namer on PPV and network TV costs the viewer nothing.

Number 5. Where to from here? Landing Bud Light as a sponsor and upping the ante with the Harley Davidson logo angle during the pre-fight check were brilliant business moves. UFC is bigger than it has ever been before and has a great slate of fights for 2008. Now what? If you do not keep the light burning bright at the other end of the tunnel it can get dark pretty quick.

Number 6. Lack of accessible information for fans. The UFC website publishing a couple of stories a day to their site and has video for upcoming fights, but there are no great sites for UFC fans outside of UFC.com. ESPN and Foxsports coverage of the sport is abysmal, while most other sites are forums where two or three intelligent posts are washed out by a mass of radical opinion and sniping.

UFC is clearly the world leader in MMA, but heavy is the head that wears the crown. Dana White will have some very big decisions to make in the next couple of years as many other sports have risen only to fall because they could not adapt to their own growth. As a fan I hope that Dana and company can make the right decision to keep the UFC growing, but only time will tell.