The Big Shows Give Big Problems; Others Give Solutions
By Josh Stein on May 30, 2008
Anyone who is paying attention to modern MMA can see that the biggest names in the business are not consistently offering a top shelf product. Elite XC put together a card that pits their champions against mediocre fighters and will make for a less than entertaining night aimed at getting attention, not at putting out a high quality product.
The UFC put on one of their best events ever, which had three interesting light heavyweight matchups, the debut of a man many consider a future phenom (Shane Carwin, just so we’re clear) and the biggest matchup that they can offer at 155 pounds.
Still, as I scroll down the cards of upcoming events, I found something bizarre.
The UFC is promising to put out shows that are far from interesting, namely it’s utterly uncreative UFC 85 card which consists of two interesting matchups on the entire evening (Davis vs. Swick and Vera vs. Werdum) and it’s unpromising TUF finale card which is headed by two fighters hardly at the top of their game, while the only two interesting matchups it has to offer (McFedries vs. Eastman and Lister vs. Horn) will remain in the middle of the card and will probably not be broadcast but for the grace of God.
So I am damned to look for incredible fights on the outskirts of the MMA world, but what I found is that I don’t actually have to look, because everybody else seems to actually care about putting out top notch fight cards.
The WEC card is impressive, and I don’t think that anyone will dispute that. The fact that they filled the card with former and current champs shows that they really want the attention they’ve been getting by piggybacking off of UFC 84. Zuffa’s baby, the WEC featherweight division, is relatively unpromising besides Faber and Pulver, but that fight alone is enough to make me salivate a little. And the fact that I get it free as part of my current plan makes me very happy.
However, it’s once I get to Japan that I start to see some fun stuff.
On June 8th, Sengoku will air its third card, bringing back Kazuo Misaki, pitting former UFC heavyweight champion Maurice Smith against Olympic gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida and putting former ADCC winner Mauricio “Pe De Pano” Cruz back in the ring to show of his submission savvy. While these aren’t the kind of matchups that most Americans care about, there’s going to be a quality of fight on the entirety of that card that we don’t see when the UFC tosses together a mismatch like Hughes and Alves and expects us to take it seriously.
The Dream 4 card that will come shortly after is the second most promising card of the summer so far to me (and, don’t worry, the first is coming shortly, and I’m sure some of you know what it is). The return of top tier submission warrior Shinya Aoki and the Kang killer Gerard Mousasi are nice things to watch, but it’s the fact that the card is stuffed full of exciting fighters from top to bottom that makes me more forgiving about Dream pitting Aoki and Mousasi against opponents they are going to massacre (though it will be fun to see them fight anyway). The fact that jiu-jitsu legend Ronaldo Souza will be fighting an accomplished veteran like Jason “Mayhem” Miller and the note of Kazushi Sakuraba showing up to fight K-1 vet Melvin Manhoef make this card fun, and there will inevitably be more interesting matchups that will come later.
The top card released so far has five arguable top ten heavyweights on it and is put together by a t-shirt company. The Affliction card is going to be fun to watch not just because Fedor will inevitably return to prominence when he decimates Tim Sylvia, but because they managed to slip a bout between Josh Barnett and Pedro “the Great One” Rizzo on the card. The fight between the two former UFC heavyweight champs will undoubtedly be fun, because both men are coming off of wins against Jeff Monson (Rizzo knocked Monson out in September of last year, and Barnett beat him by decision on the last Sengoku card earlier this month).
But it’s not just that Afflictions top two fights feature four of the biggest names in the history of heavyweight mixed martial arts (though one has a nostalgic, and mildly dusty, ring to it), it’s that they filled the rest of the cards with fights between fighters who are legends in their own right.
Fedor’s kid brother Aleks will take on former UFC top contender Paul “The Headhunter” Buentello and Andrei Arlovski (the man who crushed Buentello’s title dreams with the legendary “ghost punch”) will be fighting former IFL staple Ben Rothwell, who was an arguable top ten fighter for a while.
At the bottom of the card is a matchup that will offer some icing on the cake to old junkies like me: Minotoro Nogueira (the littler one) will be fighting former UFC top contender and Lion’s Den warrior Vernon “The Tiger” White. While this won’t be on most people’s radar, my nostalgia kicks into overdrive when I talk about guys like that because both have fought some of the greatest fighters in the sport and both have been considered among the ranks of the top fighters in the sport.
That said, I want to remind anyone that if they are worried about the boring and overpriced UFC product that seems to be in store for us, Affliction (and many of the other shows) will be trying to give us our money’s worth.
Personally, I look forward to the Fedor vs. Sylvia fight, and I await the return of the Rock, Pedro Rizzo, and his fight with the most enigmatic fighter he has ever stood across the cage from (when Rizzo and Barnett met at UFC 30, Rizzo handed Barnett his first loss ever, KOing him in the second round). It’s going to be an interesting summer, and I hope that everyone enjoys it.
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I’m afraid i don’t agree with everything here. I certainly don’t think these two fights will be that interesting: McFedries vs. Eastman and Lister vs. Horn. Eastman has shown his lack of talent again and again in the octagon and horn has been a fairly dull fighter for quite some time. As an aside is it just me or do fighters with short arms and big muscles seem to have difficulty in general in MMA: Eastman, Sherk (recently), Monson.
People seem to like critisicing EliteXC and the UFC for just about anything, as if it was demonstrating some kind of expertise. Personally I am looking forward to the robbie lawler/Smith fight and even the Baroni spectacle, because it’s going to be good entertainment. I do agree that having Hughes headlining is a bit of a miss, and that Werdum V Vera is going to be a cracker of a fight and most probably the best fight on the card. I haven’t heard of the Japenese guys you mention, sorry and can you please explain why the Hughes/Alves fight is such a mismatch?
Check out Fightlinker’s list of the casualties from the UFC 85 card. It’s pretty ridiculous how many fighters were injured or otherwise and had to pull out. I’m actually pretty impressed that the UFC managed to pull together a relatively good card considering all the crap they went through.
http://fightlinker.com/blog/?p=2372
With that said you’re right that there’s a lot of great cards elsewhere to look forward to. A good time to be a fan of MMA indeed.
Bob, you’re only making my point more, and while I agree with what you say about Eastman, I don’t agree that Horn has been boring. He’s a fun fighter to watch, for those of us who like submissions.
Spark plug fighters don’t generally have trouble in MMA, though they often lack versatility. Sherk was a champion for a while, and a top tier guy for a long time. There are a handful of other, more obscure examples, but there are so few fighters with that build in MMA, their population at the top is about propoertional.
Hughes/Alves is a mismatch because Thiago hardly has the grappling credibility to make this a fight. They want a striker v grappler matchup, but really this is going to be Matt Hughes doing what he always does: take him down, hit him a little and submit him.
The fight shouldn’t headline because Thiago is hardly a serious rising star in this division (really, I don’t understand why people think he deserves this fight more than Davis, or a handful of other top 170 pounders) and while he has potential, it’s not good to put him in with a fighter like Hughes. And even if Hughes wins, who cares? He can’t fight GSP, so the best they can say their doing is establishing a top gatekeeper, and that shouldn’t be the kind of fight that headlines a card.
Bob, if you haven’t heard of the Japanese guys I’m mentioning, that’s fine. These are guys, though, that are top ten fighters in their divisions and some of them are considerably better than the guys fighting in the American market. (Aoki, for instance, is probably the best submission fighter at 155 pounds, and Jacare is certainly one of the top two at 185)
The Affliction card, though, really is a high quality product, whether you only recognize the names of the relatively recent UFC fighters on it or not. The fact that Arlovski, Sylvia, Fedor, Barnett, Aleks and Rizzo are all on this card says alot for the quality of this product and gives us at least 4 fights that I care about.
I’m surprised that so many known fighters are on the first Affliction card, but will people still buy it? I’m afraid we’ll have another epic PPV failure ala Bodog.
I think with the Sylvia vs. Fedor is worth the PPV, I will buy it on that alone. I also think I am not alone in the fact that I want to see Fedor finally fight someone that is a proven fighter. It has been too long since he has, and it could hurt him.
I think the Hughes card will produce solid fights. Just because the fights don’t consist of guys with big names, does not mean they wont be exciting.
I recently talked to Matt Hughes and he will be ready for the fight. He is doing two a days and is in great shape! Look to him to be pre-GSP form!
I’d like to see Affliction try to maintain stacking cards as heavy as Banned if they run one or sometimes even two events per month like UFC does. Could you imagine if UFC only ran a card every 2-3 months? You’d get Silva vs Henderson, GSP vs Serra, Penn vs Sherk and fights with Wanderlei Silva, Franklin and Tito Ortiz all on the same event!
While I wouldn’t complain about the card, I would experience big-event withdrawl. Its fun to watch small shows, but its good to see a big promotion consistently. Couture has what, $100 million or so to spend? That should be plenty for a years worth of MMA. I hope he doesn’t blow all his money like Calvin Ayre did. Patience is the key. The market is filled with monthly shows so Affliction needs to fill voids. Anytime the UFC is out of the country, Affliction can be there to give us those big fights. That’s how they can get their foot in the door. I’m afraid a couple of back to back huge shows will just hurt them. Offer some free TV events, cheap admission, and find new venues where MMA is new.
Shane, I’ve got no problem with them running better cards with more time between. My problem with the UFC is that they could be giving us great cards all the time, and they put out a crappy product with events like UFC 85 and the TUF finale. Affliction is putting out a killer product and that makes me really happy.
Brandt, I agree with you on what Afflictions gameplan should be, and I think that’s what they’re gonna do.
If Affliction survives after 2 to 3 event’s ofcourse. I don’t think I will buy the ppv. I just can’t pay money to watch Tim Sylvia fight after I’ve seen his Fights with Jeff Monson and Andre Arlovski 3. He just dosen’t sell it for me.
That reason could hurt the buyrate alone.
Know the WEC fight cards and Dream Card’s are where I’m enjoying the most. You can’t go wrong with Shinya Aoki vs Anyone and Jason Miller vs Ronald Jacare.