CHARLES JAY
Commentary on MMA history….as it’s happening

REASONABLE PEOPLE TO ABC: TAKE YOUR RULES AND SHOVE THEM

Congratulations to Dana White for giving a simple and solid “No” to the idea of adopting the evil, execrable, atrocious, awful, odious, obnoxious, insolent, imperious, iniquitous, insidious, contemptible, detestable, deplorable, dictatorial, doctrinaire, diabolical, offensive, overbearing, putrid, perverse, nefarious, abhorrent, miscreant, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, rotten, wretched, loathsome, haughty, heinous, hideous, horrid, horrific, horrible, flagitious, foul, vile, stupid, silly, supercilious and and downright authoritarian rules that the Association of Boxing Commissions (ABC) tried to shove down the throats of mixed martial arts promoters, and mixed martial fans, in a July meeting where the members quite obviously had nothing better to do with their time.

OK - we shouldn’t get too carried away. First of all, let’s explain, for the sake of clarity, that the ABC is not a government agency, nor does it carry any of the powers that such an “authority” might be expected to have. It is a trade organization, although it is worth noting that there are a couple of things in particular that are dangerous about this crew - that it consists of a bunch of state regulators, political appointees in most cases, who listen to a few misguided people and take all those ideas back home with them, and that legislators in Washington, who just can’t keep their noses out of the affairs of a private industry, are listening to them.

And on the table was a proposal to change the weight divisions that currently exist in mixed martial arts, to include a number of “junior” and “super” weight classes, just like boxing. A total of fourteen in all.

This statement came from Nick Lembo, who was instrumental, along with Larry Hazzard, in adopting what are known as the “unified rules” of MMA that the sport is conducted under: “Major MMA jurisdictions like Nevada, California, Ohio, Florida, Quebec and New Jersey need to have an involved role when contemplating serious MMA rule changes. Unless everyone is on board, the ridiculous result would be having different weight classes in different jurisdictions for the same fighters in the same sport.”

The ABC clearly was doing some busy work here. I don’t know what they were trying to accomplish, other than engage in an attempt to tell the UFC who’s boss. It’s interesting that the states like Nevada, Florida and California, who have hosted a lot of UFC events and will continue to do so in the future, were not represented at the meeting which produced such foolishness. Can anybody say “ex parte”?

I don’t want to portray the UFC as an innocent victim here; indeed, they will play the political card when they have to. But we will call them on it when that happens.

Hey, fair is fair, on both sides of the coin.

The UFC may have taken on some of the characteristics of a monopoly, but it’s a LEGAL monopoly. It has not gotten where it is by breaking legitimate laws and engaging in acting that violate the spirit of, say, the Sherman Act. It may bend the rules, but it doesn’t necessarily break them. They run their own ship, they run it well, and they don’t necessarily need anyone’s help to make it better. Sure, it would be great if their position of having more than 80% of the marketplace (and probably even more than that, with the demise of Elite XC and the IFL), but it has to be done by someone who has earned their way into that place, not one who artificially gets there. No one needs to be “ruled” into existence or “ruled” out.

The UFC, whether you like it or not, has demonstrated itself to be a shining example of self-governance, something that boxing has failed to do. It is private regulation of a sort, for sure. And let’s not make any bones about it - what you have here, as long as they insist on calling their championships “world titles,” is a company that is, at once, both sanctioning body and promoter. If you don’t want to fight for what they’re offering, you can get stripped of your title and it’s pretty much as simple as that.

But you know what? There is recourse for fighters, if they feel they’ve been wronged that way. All they have to do is take the UFC to a civil court, and beat them. That remedy doesn’t have to be legislated into existence. They’d have to win in court anyway, and there usually isn’t a goddamn thing most athletic commissions are going to do to help a fighter in a case like that. So what does it matter?

I was once heavily involved in all the goings-on surrounding the proposed federal boxing legislation (or at least in opposing it), that in which John McCain, who happily took money from people he had regulatory domain over through his Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, sought to exercise some moral, and legislative, authority over a sport (boxing) where such an activity, even by those loose standards, would have been scandalous. What I found was that the ideas McCain was getting, and which he sought to muscle through with the aid of a series of fixed and phony hearings, came from people who had an agenda. In other words, they had a bone to pick with somebody, they thought they had been screwed somewhere and were going to get revenge, or they simply wanted power within their own circle, or a larger circle, and were going to use McCain’s proposed bill to get it.

No difference here. The rules changes and weight divisions are largely the product of the well-known referee John McCarthy, who apparently has an ax to grind now with the UFC. And what better way to upset that applecart than to make the UFC go and restructure their titles and weight divisions. In other words, to roll over and say “Yes master.”

Except that it doesn’t work that way.

The UFC’s liaison with athletic commissions in none other than Marc Ratner, who as a former president of the ABC knows full well what I’m about to tell you: that the ABC has no official standing with anybody, nor do they have the juice to snap their fingers and create weight divisions that everyone - indeed, ANYONE - has to follow. It is a trade organization, with voluntary membership, that operates as a non-profit and offers “guidelines” for rules and regulations, many of which can either be followed or ignored.

In Dana’s case, he chooses to ignore them.

“It should be that [the state athletic commissions] all follow one set of rules,” McCarthy was quoted in one internet story. “Wherever you go, it’s the same. That’s what you need to have — consistency for not only the fighters, (but also) the officials and the fans of the sport.”

The problem is that the state commissions don’t really matter in this regard. What matters is what the UFC, and the other promoters, choose to do. It is not any state’s place to mandate that a fight which takes place for a light heavyweight title should now be called a middleweight fight, as would be the case if they had their wish. The scope of their “authority” goes about as far as determining whether there is to much of a weight difference between two competitors so as to make a bout unfair (and I would even challenge that). The private company, promoting the fight, can call it anything it wants, and unless it is violating advertising laws by committing fraud, there is nothing anyone should have to say about it.

There is a post-script to this story. Lembo, who has maybe more experience in this than any regulator in the country, has now been named the head of the ABC committee that will deal with MMA. The other members of that committee are Jim Erickson of North Dakota Armando Garcia of California; Keith Kizer of Nevada; Dale Kliparchuk of The River Cree Combative Sports Commission in Canada, Joe Mason of Colorado; and Mike Mazzulli of the Mohegan Athletic United (Connecticut). I know several of these guys, and I’m sure they’ll do a good job.

As long as they know that when it comes down to it, the only effective regulation is ultimately self-regulation, and that the people who put their money up are the ones with the most at stake.

CHARLES JAY
Commentary on MMA history….as it’s happening

MMA ADVERSARY REMOVED FROM NEW YORK STATE PAYROLL
Stevens’ ouster is good news for MMA interests
August 2, 2008

In a recent New York Post story discussing the firing of Ron-Scott Stevens, who had been the chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission, it was speculated by George Willis, the writer of that piece, that Stevens’ attitude toward MMA, which has not yet been passed in New York but inevitably will be, was a factor in the decision by Governor David Patterson to replace with with Melvina Latham.

Stevens was quoted in Willis’ story as saying, “It’s not my role to say whether I like it or not. My role is, if it’s passed by the legislature, to regulate it properly.”

That’s a tough thing to do when the whole world knows you have a pre-disposition against it. It’s the kind of thing that would leave him open to constant attack, some of it justified, over decisions that may seem controversial or unfair against an MMA operator. And that might be the kind of thing that is expected out of someone who is part of the boxing culture, as a matchmaker for so many years as Stevens was.

People in the boxing business were happy with Stevens because under his leadership, there were more fights conducted in New York. As such, he was a guardian of the interests of promoters. From another perspective, however, the kind of perspective someone like me is most interested in, he was something of a disappointment.

What you must understand is that it is very rare for someone with any experience in the industry itself to be in a position where he would actually be a regulator. Stevens had a chance, with the advantage of this boxing background, to do some things to affect an improvement across the board in the way of efficiency on the part of state boxing commissions. And he could have, with considerable gravity, made some good points related to policy, among them the most pertinent of all - that the federal government, corrupt as it is, has no business whatsoever regulating the boxing business.

Yet on whatever occasion he was called upon to address committees in Washington, Stevens turned into what the late Morton Downey Jr. may have referred to as a “pablum puker,” extolling the virtues of the prospective omnipotence of government as lord and master of the sport, and advocating the appropriation of powers that it had over no other sporting industry in this country. In other words, he had evolved into just another politician. This kind of thinking has nothing fresh about it; it is, in fact, old, tired, stale and submissive to a certain authoritarianism.

But I’m not sure we should have been at all surprised; after all, Stevens was an authoritarian himself. He is the commissioner who once stepped way beyond his boundaries to suspend Evander Holyfield for medical reasons, making it reciprocal among all member commissions of the ABC (Association of Boxing Commissions) merely because he didn’t like the nature of his performance against a fringe heavyweight contender named Larry Donald. And just for the record, Donald went on to box a draw against Ray Austin in a title eliminator in his next fight, then lose a majority decision to then-unbeaten Nicolay Valuev in Germany, which means he probably won the fight. Meanwhile, Holyfield, who Stevens was not able to keep down permanently, won four straight fights before losing a title fight to Sultan Ibragimov, and one of his victories along the way was a knockout over Vinny Maddalone, who Stevens coddled several times during his reign by letting him fight against vastly inferior opposition that, if we are going to use current commission standards as a barometer, had much less business being in the ring than Holyfield ever did.

As for the quote from Marc Ratner (former Nevada State Athletic Commission director who is now the UFC’s chief ‘regulatory liaison’) that “He (Stevens) actually said, ‘It’s not a gentlemanly sport,” that sounds like a canard. Stevens trying to pass off mixed martial arts as too barbaric would be somewhat laughable, when I reflect on my lasting image of him - and something that should carry a certain amount of instruction for you as well.

After a trip to Washington, where he gave useless testimony before a House subcommittee, Stevens rushed back to New York for a show at the Madison Square Garden Theater on Match 3, 2005. During the intermission he actually received a plaque in the ring from promoter Sal Musameci, presumably for allowing Musameci to put “house fighters” in with creampuffs on a regular basis; then the crowd sat back and watched a near-tragic mismatch between one of the guys Musameci was pumping, Timor Ibragimov, and Ronald Bellamy, a fighter from North Carolina who had a virtually artificial 14-1-4 record. Bellamy was billed as being 41 years old, but he may have in fact been much older, considering that he is the brother of former NBA player Walt Bellamy, who was SIXTY-SIX at the time. The end result of this travesty was a knockout loss by Bellamy, followed by a trip out of the Garden on a gurney.

Should Stevens’ dislike for MMA have factored into his firing? Yes. MMA, which has demonstrated a better safety record than boxing thus far, should be legal, and when it indeed passes its final hurdle, promoters should be able to put on shows without being unfairly prejudiced, whether consciously or sub-consciously, by someone who might be protecting another sport - one which is perceived as a rival - at their expense.

Even if we give Stevens the benefit of the doubt about his feelings about MMA not being material to the politicians who engineered his ouster, they may have been very material to the disposition of his duties, because those feelings would have affected the way we would regulate it. As an operative in the boxing industry for many years, he may have made things more difficult for those he may turn to for future employment, i.e.,boxing promoters. That’s where he came from and that’s where he may well go back to.

Perhaps it should have happened sooner.

By Charles Jay
Commentary on MMA history…as it’s happening

The UFC, which has put its tentacles into legislatures on the state level, is now entering the battlefield on a national basis. They have hired a Washington lobbying firm, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, in order to state their case on the Hill.

This reflects on something I was telling my buddy Zach Arnold a long time ago; that sooner or later, there were going to be louder noises about national regulation coming from the various states, funneled through something called the ABC - the Association of Boxing Commissions - a trade association which is just that, an association of nearly every boxing commission in the country. And if you’ve paid attention, you know that these boxing commissions, which sometimes come by another name, such as an “athletic commission” or in the case of Michigan, an “unarmed combat commission,” are chiefly enlisted to regulate boxing. They have boxing people in control, and have often seen the sport of mixed martial arts through that prism. Since they are generally products of government bureaucracy, they are embedded in a culture that encourages more and more regulation, not to mention one of political patronage, so you can bet that in this atmosphere, there is always going to be the possibility of those in control using the power granted by the state to influence things in the favor of one entity or another.

To be fair and balanced about this thing, the UFC has been perfectly willing to play that “game” to its advantage within states, as some of its lobbyists, whether on the national level or the local level, have been able to freeze out a promoter or two, sometimes by virtue of the very laws that are able to pass in the legislature, or some careful “nudging” of state officials to impose sanctions upon promoters that may or may not even be legal. That is something you can be assured we’re going to examine here in the coming days, but the point is that they are light years ahead of their competitors in this regard. I know something about how boxing regulation works, perhaps as much as any writer ever has in the United States, and if you care to Google “Charles Jay Operation Cleanup” you can partake in as much of its 800-plus pages as you can dig up; that is, if you are so inclined.

MMA is going to become a political football.

This comes from the UFC press release:

“UFC is at the point where they are one of the fastest-growing sports leagues, and we want to make sure members of Congress are aware of the changes MMA has undergone,” said Makan Delrahim, a former top Justice Department official who is now a lobbyist at Brownstein Hyatt.

Well, that lobbyist is behind the eight-ball already. Because guess what? They could care less what changes MMA has undergone. In fact, the “changes” the sport has undertaken actually make it a MORE attractive target for people who are of the mindset to regulate anything that walks, simply because they see more money in it. When you look at the summaries surrounding the establishment of the new commission in Michigan that included provisions for MMA, for example, there was hardly a word about how much safer regulation would make the sport, but rather, how much money could be realized from it. Comparisons were made with the neighboring state of Ohio, which has hosted UFC events.

You see, it’s not about what good little boys the UFC have been by tidying up their act. It’s about how much THEY can profit off it.

And so there is going to be a move to include mixed martial arts not only in the existing legislation that involves boxing, the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act, as well as an effort to resurrect the Professional Boxing Amendments Act to encompass mixed martial arts as well. If John McCain is elected president, he may have other things on his mind, but if he pushes for this bill, it might have a better shot at passing. That would be something to worry about. Thus far every incarnation of his legislation has failed (in fact, I have been part of those efforts to defeat it), and in large measure, there was the heavy participation of lobbyists who were retained by the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association.

I must say that I fall on the side of the UFC and their lobbying efforts in this specific case. What was written last week on MMAPayout was true, in that “Inclusion of the UFC under the two aforementioned boxing reform acts would basically turn the standard UFC fighter contract on it’s ear.” But unlike boxing, the sport of MMA has not done a half-bad job at self-regulation, and besides, if there is a restraint of trade in a UFC contract, that is certainly something that can be contested through the civil courts. Taxpayers don’t need to foot the bill to protect fighters, do they?

As we often say, stay tuned. Now these guys are really in my wheelhouse.

By Charles Jay

I was thinking the other day - What would I do if I was just sitting down to start an MMA organization and wished to avoid the kind of mistakes that were made by people in the boxing world? Clearly boxing has hit quite a few potholes, and mixed martial arts, for the most part, has been an effective counter-strike to that kind of paradigm.

* One of the things one would do is try to stage more COMPETITIVE FIGHTS. You just can’t have an atmosphere where you have “laydown” fights in front of a TV audience. You can’t promote fighters and make matches strictly on the basis of an agenda. Insulting the audience in that way is something you may never be forgiven for. When you are in front of a TV camera, you have to put your best foot forward, to borrow an oft-beaten phrase. The opponent-types just won’t do. There are always going to be favorites and underdogs, but theoretically, you always want to go into a fight not knowing for sure which side is going to win. That practice has gone out the window in boxing, but it has been preserved to a considerable extent in the UFC.

* I’d be looking to avoid the very SILLY PUBLICITY STUNTS. Everybody likes excitement, but there is a tendency to go overboard and to stay there. As far as the pre-fight and post-fight press conferences, boxing has already beaten the “spontaneous” altercation to death. But I see this coming to MMA, like at the press conference after Kimbo Slice’s fight. Gary Shaw of Elite XC has certainly been around to witness a lot of these in boxing, and although I’m not making any accusations, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think he or his charges may have instigated some of them. Believe me, if he sees that it is effective, he’s likely to keep encouraging it. So you might as well get ready for it.

These days in boxing, the extra-curricular brawl is almost obligatory. The culture of mixed martial arts seems to have been to inject a little more dignity into the proceedings. Over-aggressiveness at the press conference usually doesn’t enter into it. But maybe that culture is about to be changed, and not for the better, I might add.

* I’d want to steer clear of the idea of the SANCTIONING ORGANIZATION in the sense that it is applied in boxing. I will definitely go into this in more depth at a later time. For the moment, let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that we are talking about the kind of “governing body” that is “open for business,” so to speak; not an independent board but a rogue collection of individuals whose sole purpose is to generate sanctioning fees (and large ones at that), which would customarily lead them to doing things that may facilitate the best interests of the promoter but be in conflict with the best interests of the sport.

Mixed martial arts admittedly has its own issues with the UFC and its contemporaneous role as promoter and sanctioning body. But as of yet, this idea of the so-called “independent” organization that is a de facto extension of the promotion has yet to infiltrate the world of MMA (I haven’t examined WAMMA enough to say anything yet). However, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen soon. As a by-product of building and steering certain fighters toward a desired status (Kimbo?), DO NOT discount the possibility that you are going to be seeing them in the near future, when a transplant from the boxing industry, who understands how impressive an alphabet soup title might sound, wants to get things done by going through that kind of “channel.”

* I would commit myself to engaging in a little LONG-TERM THINKING. In boxing, it is much more about getting the money NOW. It’s all about taking the money and running with it. From what I have observed in boxing over the past 25 years, very few people in that business have operated in such a way as to lay the groundwork for the future development of the sport, not just for their own particular enterprise. That’s called a contribution. It means you’re giving a little, and most folks in boxing only want to take. They want to exploit the moment at hand and couldn’t care less about what happens five minutes into the future.

That, as I see it, and I don’t think I’m being harsh, is the fundamental difference between the UFC and an outfit like Elite XC. The UFC could have done a lot of things in an exploitative fashion. They could have injected a lot of clowns into their organization and turned it into a cartoon. They could have continued to put over Tank Abbott, but he didn’t represent their idea of what the MMA athlete should be. They could have padded Brock Lesnar’s slate with a bunch of crowbars and lesser-lights in order to work their way up to some phony crescendo. They could have created a a whole bunch of WWE-style personas and had them screaming at each other at press conferences and on the air. They could have signed Kimbo if they wanted, and BELIEVE ME, if they really wanted, they could have outbid anyone for him. They could have done a lot of things to make a cheap buck here and generate a cheap thrill there.

But they didn’t. And you know why? It isn’t because they never thought of any of that stuff, but because they knew that after the bomb went off and dust cleared, they would still have to be around. In other words, they had long-run interests to worry about.

And before we go any further, all you’d have to do is go back into my archives to know that I’m not an operative or a shill for the UFC.

But whether you’re an interested party or not, you can tell that in the UFC, they love the sport. They LIVE the sport. The guys at Elite XC do not love the sport. They do not live the sport. I have to believe that if the quick money was in arm-wrestling contests, that’s where they’d be. And they would probably bring somebody like Kimbo with them.

Their interests are at odds with true fans of MMA in that as far as they’re concerned, it’s strictly a business proposition. That’s really the only kind of sensibility that could create a Kimbo Slice. It’s about lining pockets in the short run, and to hell with the long run.

Than again, that’s precisely what can be expected of an organization that was started by a couple of slimy scumbags out to pull a stock scam. According to a recent article in Barron’s, the organization’s founders, Florian Homm and Todd Ficeto, bilked investors for millions of dollars in a pump-and-dump scheme that netted them - you guessed it - some quick cash and let bewildered shareholders pick up the pieces (more on that to come).

If you’re a REAL mixed martial arts fan, is that the kind of mentality you’re board with?

What kind of sport is this going to be?

By Charles Jay

I am convinced that the fans who constituted the resurgence in mixed martial arts were attracted for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it had an aura of legitimacy that, at least on the surface, was lacking in another combat sport - boxing.

Now there are more boxing figures moving into the game. Gary Shaw, as you know by now, is the man who is essentially behind the operations of Elite XC. Jay Larkin, who oversaw sports, specifically boxing, at Showtime, still heads up the shell that is the International Fight League. Art Pellulo, a Philadelphia-based promoter whose past has been explored by this reporter and others, is now planning to put on shows. He’s got Kim Couture on his initial program.

Listen, I don’t hate these guys, and I’m not saying they’re evil, but I spent quite a bit of time working in boxing and I know what the basic operational philosophy is. Without trying to sound too purist, the attitude I have found in MMA is one where the ball continues to be moved a little closer to the goal line, so to speak. Well, there’s some “yardage” that is about to be lost. Don’t get me wrong; some of the guys who come into this thing will like the sport and will generally add to the atmosphere. But there are others who have not, and will not, be a friend to the real MMA fan.

A while back, I wrote a piece that appeared on FoxSports.com that focused on the insurgence of mixed martial arts in the hearts and minds, not only of a new, younger audience, but those audiences that already existed for boxing and were “up for grabs,” if you will, not unlike independent voters might be in an election.

In talking to people in preparation for writing the story, even those with a connection to boxing, what I got was a basic sentiment that there was a problem in boxing feeding fans what IT wanted, not what the fans wanted, and that MMA was thus far serving as good counter-programming to the kind of “agendas,” both on the part of the promoters and the powers-that-be, that had a tendency to alienate fans. For example, when discussing the way the UFC operated, Tim Graham, who was then a writer for the Buffalo News, said, “They basically control their product, and they can put on the very best matchups possible and give the fans what they want on a very structured basis. So from a business standpoint, it’s everything boxing isn’t.”

Some time before that, I wrote a story on Boxing Insider about what I diagnosed the main problems with boxing to be. Part of it was the self-absorbed approach of pushing fighters who had no real market value, to the point where the engineering of a record was more important to them than pleasing the audience. In fact, the customer was, in effect, being asked to pay the freight for developing the “commodity.” That resulted in a substandard product that less and less people really wanted to buy, and it went from there.

That’s not the most fan-friendly marketing logic.

The influence of these entities is inevitable, and in fact this has already begun to permeate the MMA industry. No more glaring example exists than the exploitation of the MMA fan with the so-called “phenomenon” of Kevin Ferguson, otherwise known as Kimbo Slice. With the Kimbos of the world, the sport moves in a different direction. And “Kimbo’s Bimbos” - fans who are falling for his “greatness” hook, line and stinker - are the fans who are going to be addressed more and more in the future. They tend to be moved less by great skill and great competition and more by spectacle, even if it is less than legitimate. That means you may be seeing a different product - a lesser product - as time progresses.

I don’t want to pick on Kimbo specifically, but he is in fact the poster child for what my message is about. It’s not so much Slice/Ferguson himself, but the shift in philosophy he represents, that I have a problem with. In the world of boxing, promoters have often been known to deal in illusion. If and when Kimbo gets blown out, presumably by a real fighter, you have to believe the opportunists around him will manufacture another “star” out of whole cloth to take his place.

As things go down that slippery slope, will you be there to slide with it?

Charles Jay
Commentary on MMA history….as it’s happening
JUST “SLICE” OFF SOME OF THAT RESPECTABILITY

I’m relatively new to this, which is why this may sound like a revelation, but it’s occurred to me that there are two groups of you out there - the folks that started to follow mixed martial arts in part because of what it was NOT, and those who are following it in the hope that it will become something else.

If you are part of the latter group, I’ll probably get some hate mail from you at the end of this particular piece.

I say this is the wake of Kimbo Slice’s win against someone named James “The Colossus” Thompson, a fight which, surprisingly, had a few twists and turns. Of course, maybe I should not have been so surprised, since I didn’t think that even the purveyors of this thing would be so brazen as to sell a complete tank job over to CBS in the hope of putting Kimbo, whose real name is Kevin Ferguson, over. Even so, I can tell you it wasn’t exactly their intention for Ferguson to be life-and-death (figuratively speaking, of course), going into the last round.

The fight was competitive, due to Ferguson’s obvious limitations, but as UFC president Dana White expressed on ESPN’s SportsCenter the next day, the sport certainly didn’t put its best foot forward on that night. I don’t think he would have necessarily been happy if it HAD, but that’s another discussion for this week….

I had people calling me about the blood and gore almost immediately after the fight. They had never seen a mixed martial arts event before, and this was their impression as to how it usually is. They won’t watch it again. Yeah kids, this may come as a shock, but not everybody gets off on the more disgustingly graphic aspects of life.

Mixed martial arts, which had been far out of the mainstream when it was conducting its Wild West shows in the early 1990s, had a long, arduous road in making its way into the consciousness of an audience outside of its own cult. When MMA moved into what I might call its “reform” era, which, I think is fair to say, was after Zuffa LLC took over the UFC and sought to make it, in the words of Sumner Redstone, a little more “socially responsible,” part of the marketing push was that the sport was not going to go the way of boxing, with fighters being created in phony fashion and pushed up the ladder against “opponents,” ultimately at the expense of the fans.

The UFC managed to do this quite well, while simultaneously maintaining the kind of “in-your-face” attitude that drew the demographic it was looking for. That’s quite an accomplishment.

Using their success as a springboard, other promoters naturally entered the fray. One of them had the opportunity to usher the sport to a new level with the first-time-ever exposure on broadcast network TV. Let’s face it; this was going to get a lot of attention because CBS had been advertising it as far back as the Final Four. Nobody in this sport, and I mean NOBODY, had ever gotten that much free promotion before that many eyeballs.

Not only was it a huge opportunity, it was a big responsibility as well. It was a chance to take a big step forward, toward widespread acceptance from the mainstream media, perhaps dreaded by some, but nonetheless necessary to improve the state of mixed martial arts on all levels. Instead, there was a lot of rejection. I’m not sure the promoters of this event really cared, but for a lot of people who had put in a lot of work over the years trying to build something, that work went out the window. Remember, athletic commissioners - some of which have not yet approved MMA in their jurisdictions - were probably watching this. What do you think they thought? How many gross cauliflower ears, exaggerated for effect, do you think they’re interested in dealing with?

Well, if their opinion was shaped in any way by the media coverage after the event, I’d be a little worried. Look - the event was a ratings success by any measure; what was there, 4.5 million viewers at its peak? Not to mention a lot of people watching it in bars, etc.? That’s a big audience. You may argue that if the UFC draw a million or so fans to a pay-per-view show, that audience means more money. And maybe the residual effect of this CBS spectacle will boost those numbers. Maybe not.

But to the casual fan, and more importantly the media, which is more judgmental, not necessarily interested in nuance, and always looking for a punch line, this sport may well have gone back to its “Stone Age” in the space of one three-hour period. This CBS telecast did not dispel the ugly stereotypes the nay-sayers had about mixed martial arts. It reinforced them. So with Ferguson’s victory came long-term defeat.

Or haven’t you read about it?

Personally, I’m willing to accept the sideshow - and maybe even get some laughs out of it - because I know how to identify the real thing. I feel sorry for those who can’t.

And I feel sorry for the sport if they don’t.

(I’ll be back with more tomorrow)

By Charles Jay

Well, now that Tito Ortiz is about to embark on this post-UFC world, I thought it might be useful to get a sense of his perception of this industry and his place in it. I know he’s been a critic of the UFC - a severe critic in fact - and while he makes good points, as I have referred to in previous pieces, i have been around long enough to know that fighters often see things only one way. And it is never from the perspective of the promoter. When a fighter leaves his “comfort zone,” sometimes there’s a whole new outlook on things.

So I took a few quotes out of a recent interview Ortiz did with the magazine MMA Worldwide; statements that are more or less “evergreen” in nature, meaning they were not necessarily going to be affected by his latest, and final, fight in the UFC, which resulted in the loss to Lyoto Machida. My comments relative to his quotes are underneath.

ORTIZ: “A fighter just starting out can make anywhere from $2000 to show and $2000 to win which doesn’t even cover food for training camp!”

Well, I’ve got news for him. It’s something called “paying your dues” and that’s the price that goes with starting a career. And I’m surprised he’s not in touch with it. If it was easy everybody would do it. Boxers fight for short money all the way up the ladder; never enough to pay the rent, and they have to take “straight” jobs to make ends meet until they can get to a point where they can even make $2000, which is usually associated with a high-line six-round or medium-range eight-round fight. Of course, they do it because it is understood that they HAVE TO. If Ortiz’s numbers are correct (and I have reason to believe they are), novices in the UFC have it comparatively easy. When Ortiz first came along, he didn’t have to wade through a lot of contenders before getting his shot at making real money. So what does he, or other fighters in his situation, have to complain about?

ORTIZ: “I personally make about $210,000 per fight plus the revenue of the pay-per-view and that’s not guaranteed, so if the pay-per-view is horrible, then I make nothing but the $210,000. The UFC will end up clearing anywhere from $10,000,000 to $30,000,000! It’s just one of those things that I see as a fighter that’s been in this game for over 11 years and it shows how nothing is given back to us fighters.”

There is some intellectual dishonesty in that statement. Not necessarily about the UFC revenues; that’s a wide scale he laid out and it could be anywhere in between all that. What I’m talking about is where he says ‘it shows how nothing is given back to us fighters’. Well, in fact it is, if he’s telling the truth about getting a cut of the pay-per-view. There is plenty given back, but it’s contingent upon the drawing power of the athlete. In other words, if you put asses in the seats, you are going to get paid more. If you do NOT put asses in the seats, your market value is diminished. Thus, if the pay-per-view is “horrible,” Ortiz isn’t entitled to much of anything, is he? And if there IS a big pay-per-view, as many have with his involvement, he needs to make sure he’s taken care of. If he is as much of a “businessman” as he describes himself elsewhere in the interview, he would’ve negotiated a better back-end deal for himself, and if he didn’t, not only is that no one’s fault but his own, but it doesn’t say much for what he can do for himself in his post-UFC career.

ORTIZ: “For a company in this business to move forward, you have to push the superstars rather than make the president a superstar; if the superstars make money, then the company earns more.”

Well, yes and no. Stars drive the game more and more as time passes. But the UFC has not only pushed its brand, it has managed to overcome some of the conventional wisdom of a lot of people who watch the pay-per-view business by putting the brand up front and making it more important than the participants. Fighters enjoy the benefits of signing with this machine but complain when they find out the machine is bigger than they are. Dana White was simply following the lead set forth by likes of Eric Bischoff and Vince McMahon in professional wrestling, and it has worked for him and, presumably, the organization. At this point, there is no excuse for fighters not putting themselves in a better bargaining position from the start, because there are more entrants in the field; more viable outlets they can sign with and assert their worth. This isn’t softball. No one gives you anything. You have to TAKE it.

ORTIZ: “The UFC isn’t going to let me grow anymore, and to grow, I need to go somewhere else….If I do go to Elite XC, maybe they’ll hear me out and understand my business model.”

I see a bit of a contradiction there. If it’s really HIS business model, he doesn’t need an Elite XC, or HDNet, or Golden Boy. He needs investors to make this his independent promotion. But he’s still invoking brand names, isn’t he, as if that is what is going to drive the engine anyway. For someone decrying the branding practices of promoters he’s showing quite a bit of brand awareness in that regard. Somewhere along the line the fighter must understand that he’s going to make an amount of money that is relative to his drawing power. That’s the strength of making a back-end deal on a pay-per-view, and I mean potentially for both sides. It’s a perfect “put up or shut up” proposition. Why do you think promoters in both boxing and mixed martial arts, on the local levels, give fighters tickets, often in lieu of purse money? Because if people really want to see them, they’ll buy the tickets from them. Fighters who want to be the brand have to BE THE BRAND, if you know what I mean.

ORTIZ: “I had so many things against me growing up where I should’ve failed; I should’ve been in prison, I should’ve been a drug addict. I should’ve been dead, and I was able to persevere and achieve what I have today.”

And we commend him for that. Don’t think we don’t wish him the best of luck. But the learning curve is about to start all over again.

Charles Jay
Commentary on MMA history…as it’s happening
A PROMOTER WHO REALLY CAN

The International Fight League (IFL) is either dead or dying - depending on who you talk to. What they’re doing and how they’re doing it clearly hasn’t worked. But maybe the team concept works better the way Donofrio Entertainment is doing it.

At the Palace of Auburn Hills, outside Detroit, which might indeed wind up hosting the NBA Finals again this year, promoter Joseph Donofrio is putting on his “2 Countries, 1 Cage” event on June 28. It’s Team USA against Team Canada, and while it may not answer any age-old questions about which country is better, it still offers a taste of what it’s like to fight for a team when there is truly something on the line.

Actually, we should mention that one of these events has happened already - on April 26, Team Canada emerged victorious, so Team USA wants a little revenge, and the fans - 5000 of them, which in case you’re not aware is pretty damn good for a local MMA show - have essentially mandated it be brought back.

Twenty fights are on the agenda for this next promotion, which is probably going to be better than the first one. This is not a big pay-per-view show, or even a little pay-per-view show. These are promoters trying to build a local fan base in the Detroit area, brick by brick, or, to use the analogy that is indigenous to the area, part by part by part. In doing so, they’re pulling out all the stops for this one, with a full schedule of pyrotechnics, 100-foot catwalks, heavily-decorated “escorts” who will take each fighter to the cage.

And of course, I’m always interested in “world-class ring girls,” which they’re promising.

Hey, can I get a tape of that last show?

Donofrio has also put on some boxing cards in and around Detroit, and he’s in a great venue here, as the privately-owned Palace does some real good cross-marketing with its season-ticket holders on events outside of basketball. They understand how important it is to get customers inside the building. They’ll likely have plenty of them here.

Donofrio puts boxing first, according to the press release, and maybe that will change in the future, as he gradually discovers that there’s probably a better consumer market for MMA. But he’s part of a growing trend of boxing promoters who have been expanding over to mixed martial arts, as they realize that the mechanics of a promotion are very similar. Some exhibit more naked opportunism than others, basically looking to package and sell a bill of goods in order to make a “score,” sometimes taking no real risk in the process, almost as if carpet-bagging (I’m not naming any names).

But it is good to see that some of the promoters are perfectly happy to work for it; to build the base from the ground up, by selling tickets to real, live fans.

How refreshing.

By Charles Jay
Commentary on MMA history…as it’s happening
DROPPING LIKE FLIES?

Kelly Perdew, a West Point graduate and winner of the “Apprentice” reality show in 2004 who has been the president of the ProElite organization that has as one its arms the Elite XC promotion, has announced that he is leaving to join up with a fantasy sports site called “Rotohog.” No, he’s not going to run his own fantasy baseball team. He is going to run the site, or at least act like he is.

Perdew apparently is getting a lot of mileage out of his tenure with Donald Trump. I don’t know how much of a “ceremonial” position he had with ProElite; Gary Shaw has been more or less the “face man” for the company as it did its promotional business, and has made the deals with the venues and the fighters.

What’s interesting is that Perdew left the MMA company, which would on the

surface of things appear to be on the cusp of some major success with its deal to be aired on CBS, for a fantasy sports site. And I don’t want to disparage that, but it’s a site that has an awful lot of competitors, including CBS itself, who are dealing with essentially the same concept.

Funny, when you think of it, that Perdew has now been involved with”reality,” then Kimbo, and now “fantasy,” and when you think about it,they’re all pretty much the same.

The key here, I guess, is that, according to the big announcement, he’s going to a “well-funded fantasy-sports website.” That means, one supposes, that they were able to convince some investors to throw some cash into this new venture in what I imagine has to be a saturated marketplace for fantasy sports leagues, whatever kind of “twist” they offer, as in the case of Rotohog, which is incorporating aspects of “trading” as in the stock market (seems like purely a stock play to me).

I’m wondering if what it also means is to imply that, somehow, ProElite is NOT particularly well-funded. Of course, the rumors have persisted that Elite XC is not doing very well, and the joy over this CBS deal has turned into quite a bit of uncertainty after Sumner Redstone, the executive chairman of CBS Corporation, doesn’t really want MMA on the airwaves and is none too happy that Les Moonves, the CEO of the CBS Network, made the decision to put it on (first show is May 31).

Meanwhile, the IFL, which is said to be hemorrhaging money, has let a couple of key people go - Keith Evans and Lisa Faircloth. Let’s put it in perspective for a moment: they held the positions of Vice President of Operations and Director of Events, respectively. Maybe I’m stupid. But I have spent quite a bit of time in and around promotional organizations and I think that in terms of day-to-day management, that pretty much covers most of the ballgame, doesn’t it?

Jay Larkin is still the CEO, but the former Showtime executive is probably a little beyond doing things that are “little picture,” so to speak, and so what we’re looking at is a somewhat scaled-down, rudderless ship.

And I don’t have to have been around boats much to know that a rudderless ship usually sinks.

Charles Jay
Commentary on MMA history….as it’s happening
TITO - NOW WHAT?

I’m not expecting Tito Ortiz to emerge victorious in his fight against Lyoto Machida at UFC 84, for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is that the UFC will do everything in its power to make sure he leaves the organization tainted in some way. Perhaps its was a mistake for him to speak out with such vitriol before his last fight with the UFC, because this is not going to be a clean getaway. This isn’t professional wrestling, where when it comes down to it, winning or losing isn’t the real story. In the MMA business, as it should be, the results of fights impact on the rewards for, and stakes on, subsequent fights, so a defeat unquestionably puts him in jeopardy of being “damaged goods.”

Sure, Tito loves his reputation as a “bad boy.” But it’s not too wise to bite the hand that is feeding you at the moment, because that meal can turn poisonous. And for someone who continually refers to himself as a “good businessman,” that’s pretty bad business.

Look, the UFC is not stupid. They understand that after helping to create Ortiz as a “brand” (a word that can’t be overused within the context of talking about all this), they are seeing something of value depart. That has the potential of helping the competition, which, from their perspective, takes away from their considerable piece of the pie. So if they are in a position to affect the degree of value Ortiz actually leaves with, they are going to take advantage of the opportunity. That’s part of the rationale in putting Ortiz against Machida, who has gone undefeated in twelve MMA fights and holds wins over Rich Franklin and B.J. Penn, among others. Machida could well be someone very marketable for the organization, and there aren’t too many better ways to “put him over” than to use him in a winnable fight against someone often referred to as a “living legend.”

I would never say that it was in Ortiz’s best interests to stay with the UFC. I have no idea one way or the other. But in going “independent,” well, he’s not doing it under the best of circumstances.

He is not on top of the game. He is not on top of HIS game. He’s not a champion, and there is dispute about how long it has been since he’s been a championship-level fighter. He’s most likely on the other side of the hill, and has not looked good for a while.

Here he is being used as a stepping stone. Of course, he can pull off an upset, which would allow him to deal from a lot more strength, wherever he goes from here. But if he doesn’t beat Machida, where will he be positioned on the world scene?

It is perfectly understood on this end that pay-per-view is a name game, or more accurately put, since the UFC has changed the parameters a little, a “brand” game. In the world Ortiz envisions for himself, the fighter is the brand who will carry the strength, not the promoter.

There’s nothing wrong with that kind of thinking. But I have seen boxing follow that model for years, and I can tell you that fading stars are behind the eight-ball, because invariably they have to be matched with opponents who are designed to keep them viable for a little while longer. That doesn’t promote overall quality, and fans, who have multiple choices in that big pay-per-view menu these days, aren’t likely to have a whole lot of patience for too long with that kind of thing. It really takes two to tango, and you can’t just trot Ortiz out there against anybody. He’ll need competition to challenge him, and that could reduce his shelf life.

And what compounds the problem is that an organization hungry for a star to call its own may find it counter-intuitive to kill what they consider a golden goose. Then they’ll try too hard to protect their product in order to prolong it. And how many fights does this guy really have left in him?

So good luck, Tito. The UFC may have short-changed you, but they’ve also done a lot of the heavy lifting. You didn’t pay a high ticket price on the way in, but you could wind up paying through the nose on the way out.