I’m really starting to feel a kinship to the Fightlinker. First of all, I like his gimmick name. That’s a name that kills a man in an alley, and though as an MMA enthusiast I abhor street fight behavior that isn’t done by Steven Segal on TBS, if Kimbo Slice can evolve, then Fightlinker can certainly devolve. I’ve also remembered that the linker is from the great white north, Canada. I have a soft spot for Ottawa. I even finished this week’s podcast, loved the humor this week, and found we agreed on fighter rankings.
Rankings are silly and arbitrary. Anyone can do them. They hold no real value. Unless you put men up against each other you won’t know, and booking matches is more of a feel thing. A guy “feels” top five. A match up with this guy “feels” appealing. One of my favorite pastimes is to listen to a Sherdog podcast and hear some obsessive fanboy caller from their forum hassle editor Josh Gross for ten minutes. I keep wishing that Gross would snap and tell the guy the rankings were put up just to get site traffic because people are marks for that nonsense, but he never does. One day that poor guy is gonna go postal, and you’ll all be left with his chubby buddy TJ. Oh well.
The point is me and Fightlinker, I’m realizing we got more in common then perverse humor. My problem now becomes he’s more productive on his site. I had notes for an article on paper, and he’s so quick I had to find out from Luke Thomas’ Bloody Elbow how smart Fightlinker was. The guy took a short paragraph to give an overview on several points I thought up, and all I could think to do was cross out a few of my notes, and write in, “Must Stop Fightlinker!” I pray I get stopped by the police and they find that cryptic message on me.
Lead in mambo aside, I came out hard against Dana White yesterday. I did the message board/angry blogger thing that in any other case would serve only as a rant to make me feel better. It’s like Olberman’s closing words towards Bush: They can be so elegant, but does G.W. actually sit around watching K.O. and crumbling papers in anger? On the upside, if anyone else picked up on my rant and put it on one of the many MMA community sites, it’s a 50/50 chance in MMA you can have the ear of the UFC President for a few minutes. I feel almost vindicated with my accusations and righteous sarcastic taunts knowing somewhere in Vegas it’s possible to to hear Dana White mumbling that “some Johnny P a**hole don’t know what it F’n takes!â€
But today, inspired by the Fightlinker, I wanna scale back to have some perspective. It’s been brought up, and I agree, that everyone just had to have those Pride fighters. We all had to see the best matchups. And those Pride guys were use to getting funny money like a bachelor party at Scores. So how do you convince a group of roughly 10 fighters individually that they really aren’t worth the inflated prices they were getting from smiling and bowing men with guns to their heads from Asian Corleones? Especially because as much of a self-important jerk as White might sound, there are a lot of start ups, some “fly by nightâ€, with money marks willing to pay at least half the guys more then they were even getting in Japan. So what’s an egotistical drunk on power president to do? If you factor in he has long time employs like Liddell and Couture that were aging, and you make the leap that Fightlinker did (adding TUF fighters, good call), it’s a headache for everyone.
I’ll just post the important part of what Fightlinker said so you don’t think I’m stealing all the thunder:
The UFC is paying PRIDE guys based on their perceived rankings - Shogun, CroCop, and Wanderlei were all signed and paid mega bucks based not on their drawing power but on the idea that they were three of the top fighters in the world. This is lucky for them because the average Joe six pack has never seen a PRIDE event and often times never heard of these people. It’s very interesting that the UFC decided to base their pay on talent-level - it shows a certain respect for the sport that I don’t think was noticed by many people.
But this is also where the UFC is getting into trouble - UFC fighters see these guys with little to no draw coming in and making 10 times what they are. It’s understandable that some friction is created, especially when these mega-buck fighters end up getting tooled by TUF alumni (who are in turn being tooled by serf-like contracts).
I don’t know how you negotiate those waters without losing a few more Pride fighters and hearing the rumblings when a restart of the UFC owned version didn’t come through. I am surprised they haven’t brought maintains like Couture in and re-uped their deals just for good will. I also think Dana White’s gotta be hoping gyms, coincidentally like Randy’s Xtreme Couture, will develop these TUF participants into headliners faster, although in any sport you can’t just jump in. You need a few years to progress properly (see my Ben Rothwell rant).
I submit that while everyone, me included, has a right to feel angry with Dana White over the way he handled Couture’s case personally in the last month and ESPECIALLY after the fact, there should be less heat on for the atmosphere created this year in MMA. A lot of factors play in. He didn’t end up getting the right cards, he may in some cases have played a hand or two wrong, but he didn’t go all in with a pair of threes. I think we as fans have a degree of culpability in this. Everyone who had to have Cro Cop, Wandy Silva, Big Nog, and any of the high priced new acquisitions has to shoulder some blame before yelling at Dana White.
Unfortunately Dana White can’t escape anyone’s comments without some sort of retribution. After complaining about where the mainstream coverage was on Thursday, someone as ESPN News did track down Randy Couture for a phone interview. After he reiterated his statements in the letter and explained the disrespect, the anchor (I believe Brian Kenny) read quotes from White off the statement on UFC’s homepage. Unbelievable! That’s all I can say. The man runs a business, practically an industry, that attracts more viewers 18-34 then anything but football, and he’s bragging about bitch-slapping a Hollywood agent. Even the ESPN anchors gave it a cringe. It was embarrassing. Let’s forget that it’s not the agents’ fault Couture wasn’t treated accordingly by UFC, why would you blame him in almost a cartoon-like statement where you allude to physically assaulting him? Does that make you a “manâ€? I wrote an article months back (March) on him calling another promoter a “fag” and a “bitch” on national radio. It doesn’t play well to everyone. You’re a business man, not a fighter. Rampage can be charming doing that, not you.
The mental image I get is an over aggressive pudgy Dana hitting a man out of nowhere and causing an uncomfortable seen, basically like everything in the second half of Scarface. I’m not saying you snort anything up your nose Dana, just that you’re as rational as Tony Montana.
E-mail John Philapavage at johnnyp@mmaopinion.com
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