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Mixed Martial Arts - Rashad Evans vs Michael Bisping


Horus Ex Machina

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I think that the Fedor/Couture situation is a big step closer to the end of the promoter lead era for the sport. The sport is going to hit a critical mass at some point when the fighters become bigger than the organisations and the balance of power will shift. UFC needs to grow up and adjust or it will become redundant. DW is a smart cookie but will his ego get in the way off the evolution of the company? We can already see that PPV numbers are becoming more and more affected by who is headlining the card. Another indicator that fighter recognition and therefore power is on the rise.

Look at it this way. Jardine got 8k plus 8k to fight and beat Liddell. Now we all know (those of us with half a brain) that he is on way more money than that. He receives a salary and bonuses as a UFC fighter but he is tied in to his crappy TUF contract for three years. Would you consider $16k a reasonable bonus for a fighter to headline a PPV event? With this sport growing and these numbers becoming more readily available it is not going to be too long before fighters refuse to go on TUF because of the shitty contract up for grabs. Only a handful of fighters have ever gone on a three year streak and tbh if a TUF fighter put one together he would probably be Champion by then and still picking up his crappy TUF salary. It is another indicator that UFC can not expect to continue to treat fighters the way they do.

Look also at fighter's relative worth to organisations. Babalu was a make-weight for his last fight. Less than 1% of watchers tuned in because he was on that card. So UFC can pay him FA because he is making FA money for them. He signs for Elite and suddenly he is news. He can easily headline a card for them and bring in cash for them. Now he can say to Elite that he is making money for them and he can get, let's say 5x the money from Elite than he did from UFC. Same story for Nick Diaz or Frank Shamrock or Brock Lesnar or any number of fighters. They are not worth anything to UFC so it is not worth Zuffa signing them but they are worth money to other promoters.

What does this mean to UFC? I think that they should concentrate on setting up supercards. They should only sign fighters who are Champions or in the Top Ten in the world. They can set themselves up as the real elite organisation and forget this blanket coverage which is diluting their product and filling their roster with low paid mediocrity at the expense of highly paid stars. Make the UFC belt the ultimate goal in the sport. It has been for the past year or so, it is in danger of losing that status in the next year. Which belt is worth more, the one Fedor/Randy/Barnett contests or the one Timmy/Congo/Vera contests? A Filho/Kang/Lawler title scene stands up to the UFC MW division. Let's not even bother with the LW, most of the top talent is not in the UFC. UFC does have the LHW and WW divisions locked down but with their status and spending power is that enough to justify continuing to act like dictators in a free market?

I am gutted that Fedor and Randy are not in the UFC but if it opens up the sport to allow more fights between the top fighters then it is worth it. MMA's biggest danger could soon be the boxing model of too many meaningless 'World Title' belts. The UFC can step in to avoid that but only if they open their eyes and treat fighters like professionals rather than minions.

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Don't underestimate special forces training. Royal SAS, Seals, Force Recon, Rangers, all recieve extensive, long term, and well financed training. These are soldiers who aren't being sent off to die in the front lines, but rather to execute missions that thier superiors would rather not leave to chance.

But they will not win against a professional MMA fighter in an MMA fight. No more than a professional fighter can expect to do the things Spec Ops do.

maybe not your average grunt, but in a fight with thier lives on the line I would go even money on a special forces trained man.

The point made by the guy on Human Weapon had nothing to do with a fight in the ring but rather an actual combat situation that would likely leave the loser dead. So this is rather off-point.

I thought we were talking about Randy Couture vs Military Guy here in a televised, non-lethal fight? Where did killing potential enter the equation?

And I said Human Weapon was full of shit because it was totally favored towards the hosts instead of the people they fight. If you watch the Karate episode the big guy outweighed his opponent by 20-30 pounds, and he slugged his opponent in the face twice with his fists (Strictly illegal in a Kyokushin Karate fight). But the ref let it slide, and the audience was visibly pissed off.

Then he proudly states at the end "I just fought a national champion black belt to a tie". Yeah, because you were bigger than him AND you cheated.

I didn't address how practical those martial arts are in a life or death situation at all. And if you actually buy into the idea that Human Weapon is talking about how to become a killing machine instead of how to become a professional fighter, you and I are watching completely different shows.

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Complete side note. About every year or two I get back into Diablo 2 for a week or few. Never lasts long, but I tend to leap into it hard when I do. Anyway, there's a D2 trading site with its own established currency. Its well run enough that scams are rare and most trading goes smoothly. I've built up a substantial pile of their 'forum gold'. Which is pretty much worthless for anything but D2 items.

But on their off-topic forums I've found another pasttime potentially. Apparently people gamble with the 'forum gold' on MMA fights. (not enough boxing fans apparently and wrestling is of course fixed, so its one of the only options). Not sure if I'll engage myself since I'm still new to the sport, but just giving a heads up that I might in the future stop by here for your 'professional' opinions and lay some bets down based on that advice. :)

And also to make the observation that these are most likely 12 year old video game geeks (me being a 25+ year old video game geek) getting an early introduction to gambling. I find that amusing.

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I think that the Fedor/Couture situation is a big step closer to the end of the promoter lead era for the sport. The sport is going to hit a critical mass at some point when the fighters become bigger than the organisations and the balance of power will shift. UFC needs to grow up and adjust or it will become redundant. DW is a smart cookie but will his ego get in the way off the evolution of the company? We can already see that PPV numbers are becoming more and more affected by who is headlining the card. Another indicator that fighter recognition and therefore power is on the rise.

Look at it this way. Jardine got 8k plus 8k to fight and beat Liddell. Now we all know (those of us with half a brain) that he is on way more money than that. He receives a salary and bonuses as a UFC fighter but he is tied in to his crappy TUF contract for three years. Would you consider $16k a reasonable bonus for a fighter to headline a PPV event? With this sport growing and these numbers becoming more readily available it is not going to be too long before fighters refuse to go on TUF because of the shitty contract up for grabs. Only a handful of fighters have ever gone on a three year streak and tbh if a TUF fighter put one together he would probably be Champion by then and still picking up his crappy TUF salary. It is another indicator that UFC can not expect to continue to treat fighters the way they do.

Look also at fighter's relative worth to organisations. Babalu was a make-weight for his last fight. Less than 1% of watchers tuned in because he was on that card. So UFC can pay him FA because he is making FA money for them. He signs for Elite and suddenly he is news. He can easily headline a card for them and bring in cash for them. Now he can say to Elite that he is making money for them and he can get, let's say 5x the money from Elite than he did from UFC. Same story for Nick Diaz or Frank Shamrock or Brock Lesnar or any number of fighters. They are not worth anything to UFC so it is not worth Zuffa signing them but they are worth money to other promoters.

What does this mean to UFC? I think that they should concentrate on setting up supercards. They should only sign fighters who are Champions or in the Top Ten in the world. They can set themselves up as the real elite organisation and forget this blanket coverage which is diluting their product and filling their roster with low paid mediocrity at the expense of highly paid stars. Make the UFC belt the ultimate goal in the sport. It has been for the past year or so, it is in danger of losing that status in the next year. Which belt is worth more, the one Fedor/Randy/Barnett contests or the one Timmy/Congo/Vera contests? A Filho/Kang/Lawler title scene stands up to the UFC MW division. Let's not even bother with the LW, most of the top talent is not in the UFC. UFC does have the LHW and WW divisions locked down but with their status and spending power is that enough to justify continuing to act like dictators in a free market?

I am gutted that Fedor and Randy are not in the UFC but if it opens up the sport to allow more fights between the top fighters then it is worth it. MMA's biggest danger could soon be the boxing model of too many meaningless 'World Title' belts. The UFC can step in to avoid that but only if they open their eyes and treat fighters like professionals rather than minions.

Well, atleast it's giving Dana's monopoly of power into the ropes.

Dana is now bashing Fedor. Thats low man. really low.

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Don't underestimate special forces training. Royal SAS, Seals, Force Recon, Rangers, all recieve extensive, long term, and well financed training. These are soldiers who aren't being sent off to die in the front lines, but rather to execute missions that thier superiors would rather not leave to chance.

Yeah, no. No fucking way does the military man win the fight unarmed. With a knife, sure. With a gun at 800 meters, of course. (And so, in real life, yes they win. In a ring, no. Never without that training.

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