Amid the week-in, week-out drumbeat of drug testing, commission incompetence, television ratings, and all the growing pains that have come with the corporatizing of mixed martial arts, sometimes, you want to remember why you started following the sport in the first place.
So, while we'll get into Bellator ratings, Nick Diaz fallout, and all the usual stuff in this week's edition of Fightweets, an out-of-the-box reader question on which fights you'd show to a non-fan in order to make a fan out of them caught my attention. So with that, let's get started.
Five fights to turn someone on to MMA
@Patkawesome: Fun bar question: What five fights do you show a non-MMA fan to make them a fan
Oh man. So hard to narrow this down to just five. But, off the top of my head, in no particular order:
*Nick Diaz's second round submission over Takanori Gomi, PRIDE 33, Las Vegas, Feb. 24, 2007: Yes, this is now technically a no-decision because this fight also marked the first of Diaz's infamous three pot busts in Nevada. But if the Nevada Athletic Commission can just make up new rules as they go along and ignore others when it suits them, so can we: I will always consider this a Diaz victory. If the wild, rock 'em sock 'em opening round doesn't turn someone into a fight fan, they'll probably never become one. Then the twists and turns of the finishing sequence in the second, with the doctor checking Diaz for what turned out to be a cracked orbital bone, and Diaz coming out after the time-out and finishing Gomi with a gogoplata, was one of the great endings in the sport's history. Eight years later, the fight remains pure magic.
*Diego Sanchez unanimous decision over Karo Parisyan, UFC Fight Night 6, Aug. 17, 2006, Las Vegas. I actually made new MMA fans out of this fight back in the day, as I sat them down and made them watch this fight when they asked what the fuss about this newfangled sport was all about. A wild 15 minutes that seemingly came out of nowhere on a sleepy Fight Night card went a long way toward developing Sanchez's reputation and earned Fight of the Year honors from several publications. If you've never seen this fight, look it up on UFC Fight Pass.
*All of Ronda Rousey's quick wins, played on a loop. I'm counting this as one fight since it adds up to about the length of a regular fight.
*Anderson Silva vs. Chael Sonnen 1, UFC 117, Aug. 7, 2010, Oakland. For the better part of four and a half rounds, Sonnen pummeled Silva, putting what was already at that point the longest title reign in UFC history in grave peril. Then Silva baited Sonnen into a fifth-round submission, made all the more dramatic by the fact Sonnen mocked Silva's ground game in the leadup to the fight. This is the one to show to demonstrate to people who don't understand the ground game and just how intricate and dangerous things can get when you're on the mat with someone who knows what they're doing.
*Matt Hughes vs. Frank Trigg 2, UFC 52, April 16, 2005, Las Vegas. There's a reason why this fight was the first named to the UFC Hall of Fame fight wing. I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent here. Before I got into MMA writing and was a fan of the sport like anyone else, I'd watch the UFC PPVs with my friend Bob, who has since passed away. Bob and I had been fans since UFC 3. We were jaded by that point, and to on top of that, we weren't particularly fans of Hughes. But after Hughes broke Trigg's choke, picked him up, and ran him across the cage for a monster slam, we ended up yelling and high-fiving each other. That excitement caused byHughes-Trigg's finishing sequence was the point at which you realized this new-age, unified rules era of MMA just might work after all.
That's five. I probably could have just as easily made it 50. What would you add to this list?
Bellator Dynamite ratings
@RuckerYeah: Bellator show had lower ratings than usual. What's to blame?
First off, let me tell you what's not nearly as much to blame as everyone seems to think: College football. Tito Ortiz vs. Stephan Bonnar last year was on a college football Saturday, and it set what at the time was Bellator's ratings record. If promoters put on a fight fans want to see, fans will make the time to watch it.
I've already gone on at length with my take on whether combat sports should mix on the same show, so there's not much to add there, other than to note that the kickboxing neither significantly dragged on the show's segment-by-segment ratings nor added to them.
Ultimately, Scott Coker put on the old-school sort of Japanese-style spectacle he loves to see. While there's a hardcore audience that will always long for the return of PRIDE, it's not big enough to move the sort of big ratings Spike executive now expect from their tentpole events. While they've talked about making Dynamite an annual event, if it does return, hopefully it will be more focused than the all-over-the-place affair we saw last weekend, and will have a hook at the top of the show to draw casual fans.
Next generation stars
@MacPherson9999: Who are gonna be the UFC's big A-list stars in 2 years? Yair? PVZ?
So the thing about this is, it's almost impossible to predict who's going to break through and become the superstars who carry the business. If you go back just three years, Rousey was in Strikeforce with the door to the UFC apparently slammed tight and Conor McGregor was toiling in Cage Warriors. Anyone who told you they predicted back then that Rousey and McGregor would be the sport's biggest draws are basically lying.
A few years prior, before Georges St-Pierre and Silva became the A-list pay-per-view draws, far too many predicted the UFC would sink without Chuck Liddell, Ortiz, and Randy Couture.
The only common factor among all of the sport's lasting top draws is that they all got it done when it counted in the cage during their primes. Beyond that, there's no set formula for who crosses over into the mainstream and who doesn't. All the carefully crafted image making in the world, not to mention actually being the most talented fighter on the planet, hasn't lifted Jon Jones into that rarified, GSP-and-Silva air as a draw.
So with that in mind, who will be the next one? Sure, it could be someone already up-and-coming in the spotlight like Paige VanZant, but it's just as likely it is someone who today is training an absolute anonymity. If you doubt that, again, unless you were a hardcore Irish MMA fan, three years ago, did you have any idea who was Conor McGregor?
Mighty Mouse wants to fight in Las Vegas
@NateH47: @MightyMouseUFC is mad that Diaz hearings have more viewers than his PPVs I guess.
Ooh, burn. Yeah, there's a bit of gamesmanship involved in Demetrious Johnson saying he wants his next flyweight title defense to be on Super Bowl weekend in Las Vegas. Henry Cejudo, who announced he won't fight in Nevada until changes are made in the commission in the wake of Nick Diaz's suspension, is on the short list for the next shot at DJ. So no doubt Mighty Mouse is engaging in a bit of mental warfare.
But that said, for all the grief Johnson has taken for his comments, as of now, exactly three UFC fighters -- Cejudo, Leslie Smith, and Aljamain Sterling -- are refusing to fight in Las Vegas. That's out of approximately 500 fighters. So approximately 99.5 percent of the roster isn't going to boycott Nevada on behalf of Diaz (who himself has never been inclined to look out for anyone except his crew, it should be noted). DJ is simply the only fighter so boldly expressing what seems to be a majority view among fighters.
WSOF tourney
@MorganWaltzUFC: Who would you like 2 see fight in WSOF 8 min lightweight tournament? Anyone besides Palomino really stand a chance w/ Gaethje?
First off, let's just take a minute to appreciate the best fighter without a Wikipedia page, WSOF lightweight champion Justin Gaethje. His moment in the sun isn't going to last forever, certainly not as long as his fight style resembles a hyperactive kid playing a fight video game, all forward motion and no defense. As much as I'd like to think of Gaethje's run as the WSOF equivalent of Donald Cerrone in the WEC -- an all-offense striker who later turned into a well-rounded championship contender, I'm guessing he'll end up more like Jamie Varner, who never quite made the adjustment.
As for who from the Nov. 20 tourney in Seattle could defeat Gaethje, I mean, no one really stands out as an imminent threat. Maybe if Islam Mamedov really is legit, he can compete? Maybe Mike Ricci could grind Gaethje's style to a halt? And guys like Brian Foster and Brian Cobb have puncher's chances against a guy who leaves himself open to getting rocked. Other than that, though, if WSOF had a better option for Gaethje than Luis Palomino, they wouldn't have gone straight to a rematch.
Fedor to Japan
@Dr_Kwame: Is Fedor fighting in Japan good or bad?
Excuse me for using the laziest cliche going, but, it is what it is. Fedor Emelianenko and his team have always been first and foremost about the money. It wasn't an accident that Fedor suddenly had the itch to return as soon it became clear there was a big market for retro MMA. He was going to go to the highest bidder all along. Nobuyuki Sakakiraba needed to make a big splash in his return to MMA promotion, and he wasn't going to make any bigger splash than bringing back The Last Emperor for a traditional New Year's Eve card.
Fedor's bank account wins. Sakakiraba wins. Spike and Bellator win, since they will air his fight, but aren't on the hook for his budget-busting fight purses. Fans who were more concerned about Emelianenko's legacy than any of the above-listed parties? Not so much.
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