We had some logistical problems catching up with UFC 148 and missed a few of the early fights on the card, which we are now, ahem, ‘acquiring’ by any means necessary. The complex logistics were the result of CryTuff HQ moving from the sweltering, hip-hop soundtracked urban decay of Southern Connecticut to the crisp Andean air of salsa-dancing Colombia. I found a bar online advertising that they were showing the fights. Said bar is in Parque Lleras, where the young, rich, and gorgeous of Medellin go on weekend nights to pound their poison and shake their booties. Being old, broke, and ugly I hardly fit in, but the place did have the fights on, and they were in HD. First then, two cultural observations about Colombian nightlife. Adult males NEVER wear shorts (adult females routinely wear shorts, skirts, and halter tops consisting of roughly 2 square inches of fabric, but that’s another story), and it’s perfectly normal for an adult male to order the goofiest, fruit juiciest girly drink on the planet. Machismo, it seems, ends somewhere this side of alcohol selection.
However, to the fights we go. First, props to Cung Le for getting a UFC win. Patrick Cote might not have come in with the greatest game plan to stop what everyone knows Le is going to do, but it was still a solid win against a solid opponent. Le is 40 years old, has a Joel Silver produced movie on the way, and has been in the fight game something like forever. To see him with the desire to fight in the UFC, at his age and after what he has accomplished, shows a guy who just likes the competition. He’s not going to get a title shot or a huge pile of cash, but even after having his face pushed around by Wanderlei Silva he still wants to fight. Props to Mr. Le, long may you run.
On to Mr. Jenna Jameson and Forrest Griffin. Post-fight, Dana White said Griffin and Mr. JJ ‘looked old.’ Really, Dana? Ya think? As in, how many fights has it been since Forrest DIDN’T look old? As for Mr. JJ, thanks to the interwebs I now know that he debuted in UFC 13, and that on the day of said UFC tilt the #1 song in America was MMMBop by Hanson. So, yeah, Dana, a bit long in the tooth, that pair. Then again, Mr. White, it was YOU who decided to put that fight second on the card, yes? The fight was gruesome (in a bad way), boring, and an example of everything that’s wrong about the UFC. More about that, anon.
On the top of the card we had the most hyped fight since, at least, the last time Rashad Evans fought Bones Jones. It went more or less as I expected (the rest of my CageWall picks were predictably abysmal), with Anderson Silva waiting for his chance to strike and taking cold-hearted advantage when it arrived. My favorite bit of the fight was that Spider essentially won by ducking. How many times have we seen him bob, weave, and feint his way to a devastating punch or kick? It must be incredibly annoying for opposing fighters. ‘Damnit, I swear there was a 185 pound Brazilian right there a few seconds ago. Where did he . . . OUCH!!’ After Chael Sonnen’s ill-advised attempt at a highlight reel spinning back fist he wound up sitting on his ass, ripe for what had to be a devastating knee to the chest and a flurry of head strikes to finish the match. For purely schadenfreude reasons I would have preferred the fight to have lasted a bit longer, as would a few million insulted Brazilians, so Spider could have pounded on ‘The American Wanksta’ some more, but it was probably stopped at about the right time.
Which brings us to the 30,000 foot look at the UFC and how the money and competition clash right now for Anderson Silva. It is worth reminding ourselves that the goal of Dana White & Co is not necessarily to put on the best fights between the most qualified fighters in the game. What DW + Co want is big fat gate receipts and insane numbers of people paying for the PPV package at home. That’s why we get Forrest Griffin and Mr. Jenna Jameson at the #2 fight on this card, when any of half a dozen fights from unwatched UFC 147, looked at purely from a quality of competition standpoint, stomped all over the Griffin – Mr. JJ ‘battle.’ This means that DW + Co have to walk a fine line. In the long run they DO need good, competitive fights, which means bringing along young talent to compete with the superstars. But in the short run a fight like Griffin v Mr. JJ, because it includes two widely known fighters, becomes a ‘name’ fight that puts asses in the seats and rings the till at the PPV checkout. It does eff all to make the UFC a better, more interesting competition for any but the most casual fan, but it makes Zuffa money.
All of which puts Anderson Silva in an interesting, and fairly rare position. I hate the term ‘cleaned out the division’ but in Silva’s case he has not just cleaned out the 185 division, he has disinfected it, polished the copper fixtures, repainted it a jaunty cornflower blue, and sandblasted the exterior of the 185s. Reading the MMA web sites it would seem Hector Lombard (assuming he beats Tim Boetsch), Mark Munoz, Alan Belcher or Michael Bisping are the fighters people are saying are next up for the Spider. In other words, the UFC seems to be serving up 185s whose last kicked in anger in a win over Chris Leben (Munoz), a loss to Sonnen (Bisping), and a win in Bellator vs Trevor Prangley (Lombard). By the way, Wikipedia informs me that Mssr. Prangley most recently beat someone named George Stork in May of 2012 at a fight in Worley, Idaho.
Put yourself in Silva’s shoes for a minute. You’ve just made Dana and his merry band buckets of money. Your ‘brand’ is at an all time high, and you managed even to refrain from your usual dickishness before and after the fight. As a side note, to give an idea who much Spider has advanced recently, most fighters look like NASCAR cars in their T-shirts, taking a couple of shekels from anyone who will fit on the fabric. Silva entered this fight wearing his own Spider logo, a Nike swoosh, and a Burger King add. Clearly his brand is doing quite nicely if Nike and Burger King are paying him enough to keep everyone else off that precious cotton real estate. So what, exactly, is the upside for Silva fighting Bisping, Munoz, or Lombard? Nothing that I can divine, which puts him in that rare position where Zuffa needs his fame and name more than he needs Zuffa. Other than a serious long shot ‘superfight’ against GSP or an even longer shot move up in weight to 205, if I were Silva a year or two selling shoes and burgers would look a lot more interesting than putting a gold-plated legacy on the line against low-draw (and presumably low-payday) opponents like the UFC has in Middleweight now. I could be wrong, of course, maybe Silva is champing at the bit for a bite of Bisping, but I suspect that’s the last we’ll see of Spider in the cage for quite a while.
Watching UFC in Columbia, nice! Were there any other people interested in UFC 148 while you there? Thanks for the post btw. Interesting points. I don’t necessarily agree with your take though on the Tito vs Griffin fight. I think it was definitely worth of a number two slot. The Main Event slot? No way. I would then totally agree, but easily a co-main for the last fight of one of the sport’s legends. Even if they are no longer top of their weight class, it’s still great to see these veterans compete, imho.
As for Silva’s next opponent, you hit the nail right on the head that his popularity is at an all-time high, which means it’s time to get seriously paid. He will definitely be fighting again soon I would think, and he did mention he still wants to fight at the post-fight presser. The UFC got paid big too, and they will also want to capitalize on his popularity. Just today Lorenzo Fertitta tweeted: “Let’s hear from the masses. Who should silva fight next? #bones, #Gsp, #rashad, winner of Munoz/Weidman on Wednesday?”. He then tweeted “Bisping too” because he forgot Bisping, but strangely no mention of the Lombard-Boetsch winner or Alan Belcher.
@Jason Simon, I’m with you on the seniors tour! I thought it was a great fight, I hate Tito and anytime I can drive by his gym ( it’s located in an industrial park that’s 200m from where I buy some of my scrap metals) and scowl, snikkering to myself “you suck Tito” I’m a happy dude! In fact it may make sense to start a no “T” replacement, clean, over 40′s league. Catering to this ever aging population with money to blow on shit like golf and lawn bowling? I would watch Randy smash Tito up in a few years when he turns the big 4 0!
this leads to my other thought, regarding business and all…@Crytuff, you kind of complained yourself right through the answer to what I think your getting at? Bottom line: mainstream makes money, period! If tall billing a sub par fight doesn’t suit a real fan as yourself, look at that for a moment? Did any one at Zuffa or the UFC in general make a dime off of you? Your a fan, I get it, me too. But these guys are in this make lots of cash every time. People bitched when Fox got in on this but why Zuffa and the powers that be went along? I was heart broken when the WEC got bought out. I’m cautious in that when these monster companies get ahold of such it can get vanilla’d out. But the level of competition should ultimately climb, why you might ask? The root of all evils of course, the money! It’s just the natural way of big things to grow, and die (Pride?)
We the long time, hard core fans that used to buy the Video tapes of Gracie, poring through all the obscure cage fighting websites looking for anything more, are not the guys paying the bills now. Look at world class wrestling. I don’t watch it but if your looking for a pure, competition with grueling dues too pay! I love and participate in BBJ. I go to many events yearly and if I weren’t so old and out of shape would love to compete too. But your hard pressed to find this on mainstream TV, and aside from small time sponsors there no money in it for anyone. These pure competition sports don’t and won’t appeal to a big enough market to ever catch on…Now look at Football (soccer for us) everyone from 3 to 90 years old living in major met cities to villages in the middle of no where, without fucking power or running water loves this shit! Now that’s marketting
I’ve been to one live event and I’m too lazy to drive to a bar so I always order my PPV online at the UFC.com site direct (I’m also paying crazy money for this smoking fast cable internet so streaming HD video is a small perk) My point is most of us hard core fans don’t pay, and if I could get it the way I wanted it, I would love to save the $44.95. But PPV and live venues aint where it’s at either, it’s on the main stream networks like ESPN, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS et-al…They can pay the huge sums because they are so diverse in programing, and appeal to a much larger slice of the market. Sorry mate, we picked a sport that’s catching on and this is the price we pay now, which aint’ so bad…really?
I stand by what I said earlier this week, Anderson Silva should retire now with the belt. He can always come back and nail top billing and a title shot any time. (Randy did a few times and he’s doing pretty good nowadays) Anderson should do like Manny and run for office, become the next king of Brazil!
Cheers!!!
@JS – I guess both of you guys enjoyed the Mr. JJ – Forrest fight more than I did. I WAS eating at the time, so maybe I wasn’t paying the most attention. I’ll try and watch it again.
@NR – Agreed on all counts. The point I was trying to make is that Silva is in a special spot right now. The promotion needs HIM for a change, not the other way around. We’ll see what happens, but I agree with you that in a lot of ways Silva should retire tomorrow. As you say, he can always unretire for a massive payday.
Thanks for reading, guys, fun stuff.
Tito’s final fight should have been in the #2 position in the card. It just should have been there five years ago when he managed to draw Rashad. Other than Ryan Bader he hasn’t won a fight since 2006, if Wikipedia is right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito_Ortiz
@Captain – couldn’t agree more.
Good article… but I have to join the chorus of guys who enjoyed Tito and Griffin at co-main. Not a brilliant fight but entertaining, because Tito managed to threaten Griffin in every round, including some big hits. Pity he doesn’t have the gas to keep it up all through the round. I do enjoy watching the legends fight – I think most people want to see big names fight, as opposed to a more “relevant” fight between two lesser known fighters. I don’t see that it matters where the “relevant” fight is placed, anyhow. If you’re keen, you’ll be watching the #3, #4 and #5 fights on the card so you won’t miss them…
@Akra – well the ‘chorus’ right now is 3-2, so I’m not sure you have much of an advantage
I understand that the Ortiz fight was sort of like a testimonial match in European football. He’s earned it, so fair enough. To use another example. How many of us really wanted to see Frank Mir fight JDS? That fight was as predictable as the sunrise.
My point is only that we have to have new legends as well, and while you’re right, the fights lower on the card (and the UFC on Fuel/FX/etc) are where you see the upcoming legends, if the UFC wants those fighters to get exposure at some point they have to move up and get it.
In any case, thanks for reading.
@CrytTuff: I’m totally with you on keeping the card open to new up and coming talent! I love when your surprised by some new face that rocks his opponent, so much so you jump up and Google him to get the low down! This fight was a bit different for me because as I said before, I hate Tito and knowing this was his last time in the octagon made me happy! But yeah we don’t need to see Mir, or Chris Leban, Yushin Okami, Jason Macdonald, hell I’m even over Clay Gueda now too! But you know how the marketing goes and most likely those so so fights are just old contracts getting finished up!
As much I like them both I’m hoping Hughes and Penn are looking to finally hang it up…
Not sure how I’m feeling about Rich Franklin, can’t see him ever getting his game to improve enough for another poke at Anderson but he’s not a threat anymore at 205 so don’t know where he’s going?