MMA Nation - Features

Is The UFC Making All The Right Moves?

2012-01-30T20:25:55Z

Nate Wilcox and Luke Thomas debate whether or not the UFC is at an inflection point in their business in this video chat with transcript.

Looking at three seemingly random events that happened in the world of the UFC last week, I made the argument that the UFC was at an inflection point and was making key changes to their business model in response. Luke Thomas challenges my assertions in the following video discussion. Video and transcriptions of excerpts follow (sorry for the sound and video being out of sync):

Nate Wilcox: This decision to cancel that pay-per-view, that's' what tells me they know they're at an inflection point and they're looking back at the results of the last two years of their business and that they've made some changes which is good. That's the sign of a winning fighter, winning team, winning organization is to make adjustments mid-game and what you saw in 2010-2011 was a steady erosion in their pay-per-view numbers. Going back to 2007-2008, you had a period where they had a floor of 360,000 buys for the crappiest, weakest foreign pay-per-view they put up there. I mean, Rich Franklin vs. Wanderlei Silva at UFC 99 got 360,000 buys.

Luke Thomas: It would never do that today.

Nate Wilcox: No, two years later they'd be happy to get 360,000 buys for a title fight card, maybe a multi-title fight card. Now you look at Frankie Edgar-Gray Maynard getting 225,000 maybe less?
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Nate Wilcox: The pay-per-view is where they get 75 percent of their revenue so that's very big, especially for a company that's got a lot of debt overhung. They've got a lot of payments to make and they've pushed their revolving credit almost to the limit so their cash flow has always been tight. This is a company that lost 43 million dollars before they were a hit on Spike TV and they've never really gotten out of that financial hole. I mean, the Fertitta brothers and Dana White have apparently cashed out a lot of money for themselves, but they chose not to put that money back in the business and that leaves the business with that overhang of debt.

Luke Thomas: Explain the debt thing for people that may not know. They'll say, "Well they did put stuff back in the business. The shows are better than ever in terms of the live event production. Fighters make more than ever, that's gotta count. The UFC product itself in terms of the online digital quality and the infrastructure, just on the PR side, I know for a fact, they've built out the infrastructure in an enormous way," so when you mean, "they still have that debt," what is that floating debt that you're talking about?

Nate Wilcox: Well they took out a 500 million dollar loan a few years back and they have not paid down the principal of that. They've been making interest payments and they've got a 50 million dollar line of revolving credit and according to the Standard and Poor's report or whatever, they've drawn that out almost to the limit, like to within the last five million dollars of it and that's very important for a business because that's how businesses pay their bills is with revolving credit. Businesses aren't like your household accounts.

You don't just sit there and go, "Well I've got this much in my bank account. I'm gonna just spend that and not any more," businesses have payrolls, investments and expenses. It's very common for businesses to have revolving debt to use to pay their payrolls and any ongoing expenses and they've been very good in investing in the business. I'm not saying they haven't invested in the business. They spent a fortune on lobbying New York, trying to get it regulated in New York State. They spent a fortune trying to expand into Europe. They expanded into Australia. They've expanded into South America. They dabbled into the Middle East with Dubai.

Luke Thomas: And of course North America, Canada as well as Mexico.

Nate Wilcox: They haven't done an event in Mexico, but they're pushing the product in Mexico. They're laying the groundwork. If Mexico were safer, It hink they would have already gone to Mexico but the situation is such that they've invested into the cost of growing the business but they could have taken the money that they paid themselves with, and by that I mean I'm talking Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White and put that back into service the debt and they possibly, no one knows because it's a private company, could have substantially cut down the debt overhang but they haven't done that.

They've been cashing out as they go according to reports I've read from MMAPayout and other places so what that means is there's significant pressure on them to remain at a high profitability. That's all I'm saying. They need to keep the pay-per-views at a nice profitable level and the reality is, they could drop down to 100,000 pay-per-views and be profitable for all but the biggest pay-per-views. As long as they don't have a Brock Lesnar or a GSP on the card, they can do quite well for themselves at a much lower level of pay-per-view. The problem is that the fighters have come to expect ever increasing returns and higher pay-offs on the pay-per-views and you get a better caliber of athletes when there's more money to it so they're kind of on a treadmill where they need to keep growing to do what they do. The growth has been built into their business plan so it's not like they're a mature business like the WWE that is in a position to deal with declining pay-per-views.
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Nate Wilcox: The decision to start testing athletes when they sign the contract shows that they're sending a signal to their athletes like, "Look, we're not gonna play cute. If you're roided balls out, we're gonna crack down. It's not just the incompetent, underfunded athletic commissions you have to worry about. We too are going to be watching you guys and trying to crack down on the steroid use."

Luke Thomas: I'm a little all over the place on this one. First of all, the test, I really only believe that randomized drug testing works although what's funny about it is I'm kind of conflicted. I also feel like this test is like the ultimate dummy test. You're gonna catch the absolute tards on this one because it's essentially no different than a drug test for your employer you may have should you work for the government or somewhere that's sensitive to those issues and it's easy to skate around.
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Nate Wilcox: The decision to run the op-ed in the Las Vegas Review Journal after SOPA and PIPA had already been pulled and the bills are not moving forward and the response to that, the reason I bring it up in this context is the fan response to that, if you remember our last instance where we talked about UFC versus ESPN and the way Dana White is so successful at getting his fans to rally around him whether he's going against ESPN or going against a rogue fighter like Ken Shamrock or Tito Ortiz, almost inevitably, Dana White and the UFC get the support of the fans overwhelmingly.

However, the SOPA instance, not only was their website hacked, but this was one of the only instances where you see the MMA media and the fans not taking the UFC's side on this and to me this shows you've got two good steps where they're adjusting their game, they're recognizing a new environment where they need to make adjustments but this third one, they walked into a hornet's nest, they stepped on their dick. However you want to put it and it didn't go well and they got their website shut down and it got a negative response and for somebody that's done public affairs at the corporate level for a decade and a half, I know something like an op-ed in a major newspaper is something way in advance.

I guarantee they scheduled that op-ed to appear long before the SOPA blackout happened on the 18th but they didn't adjust it after it was pulled. I've never seen a company come out in favor of unpopular legislation that's already been defeated. I'm mean, what the fuck? There's no point in doing that. That gets you nothing. The only possible benefit I can see from running that op-ed in the paper is saying, "Hey, Harry Reid, we appreciate what you did on behalf of us and the content industry but there are ways to do that without endorsing legislation that Harry Reid himself has already pulled. There's no point. It's one thing to be the first man over the line and get shot down, but there's no point in being the last man to die for a mistake. It was just stupid. It was bad public affairs practice all the way around.

Luke Thomas: One, I read the op-ed by Lawrence Epstein. Dana's not mentioning SOPA, not even on twitter. Dana realizes this fucking issue is toxic and they don't want him or Lorenzo Ferttita, two important faces of the company, Dana moreso than Lorenzo obviously, even addressing these issues and they'll address any other issue like fighter pay but they don't want them touching this one and I don't blame them at all. That would be my first recommendation, do not mention SOPA publically at all, even when asked and Lawrence Epstein is a super important figure in Zuffa but as far as fans are concerned, he's a faceless name basically so there's that. Let me tell you, the op-ed, Lawrence Epstein is a really bright guy but it's a bad op-ed. It's basically an entire defense saying piracy is bad and therefore because piracy is bad, therefore we support SOPA and SOPA is the mechanism to solving the bad things that piracy causes namely killing innovation and joblessness.

First of all, the idea that piracy does that is facetious to begin with but even if it did, SOPA is not the answer. Darrel, representative Issa's OPEN act is much better in that regard and we saw this with the Megaupload situation that in conjunction with New Zealand authorities, we can go over to that country, seize that fucker's assets and try him on American law. The idea that we now need SOPA, think of the power you can add in doing that and now you have more power. SOPA has nothing to do with stopping piracy. It's about, as [Clay] Shirky pointed out, raising the cost of moderating amateur usage in communities, making it so onerous that they get out of the business altogether. That's what it's about. Basically it's about these Hollywood and recording industries stopping you, the amateur, from producing and basically just becoming a consumer.
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Nate Wilcox: Dana White did err on the side of responding to this indirectly when he tweeted about the website being hacked and was very dismissive. He was like, "I'm not in the website business. Who gives a shit?" Dude, you're in the website business. You sell pay-per-views via your website. Your website has credit card information stored on it. Now the attack was just a redirection, when you typed in UFC.com it sent you somewhere else.

Nothing else happened to their website, it just told DNS routers, "Hey, look at this server if you want to find UFC.com," and it wasn't UFC.com. Their website information, there's no reason to believe that was ever threatened however if you're a customer of the UFC, and you see the website's down, you tend to be a little concerned and when the response of the company President is, "I'm not in the website business. Who gives a fuck?" Dude, you're in the website business. You're doing business in the 21st century, you're in the website business and that was bad public relations on Dana White's part and that got him into, because the hacking was in response to the SOPA editorial, that drew Dana White into the issue and this is something where Dana White for the first time found himself against his fans who are on the side of someone they have an even closer relationship with and that's Google.

Why UFC On Fox 2 Is More Important Than UFC On Fox 1

2012-01-26T18:18:33Z

If you thought UFC on Fox 1 was the most important UFC event in some time, think again. The failure or success of Saturday night's fights means a lot more for the future of mixed martial arts than anything Cain Velasquez or Junior dos Santos could ever do.

There may have been more media hoopla for Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos. With the heavyweight title on the line, there may have been a greater bounty up for grabs. But as it pertains to the future of the sport as well as the UFC brand's health, Saturday's second UFC on Fox event is significantly more important than the first.

There are two basic reasons for this claim. The first deals with more abstract potential benefits and legitimization. The second is concrete and serves as a stress test of the UFC-Fox matchmaking model.

There is the potential for real image blandishment for MMA on Saturday should the UFC underscore the connection between collegiate wrestling and mixed martial arts. Let's look at the numbers. Of the six fighters competing on the Fox broadcast, four wrestled in college (Phil Davis, Rashad Evans, Chris Weidman, Chael Sonnen). Of those four, three earned All-American honors (Davis, Weidman, Sonnen). Of those three, one (Davis) was a NCAA Division I national champion (there were two national champions on the card before Mark Munoz withdrew due to injury). This is arguably the highest level of athletic pedigree on a MMA fight card ever for over-the-air broadcast television in North America.

Amateur wrestling, if nothing else, is respected as a legitimate athletic endeavor. Those who reach its pinnacle in America's colleges are revered for their skill, athleticism, toughness and tenacity in the training room. The image of MMA fighters as true athletes has certainly come a long way, but there is still a cognitive gap between the casual public's impression of the caliber of athlete involved in MMA and the actual caliber.

Obviously a lot rides on the actual performances of the fighters involved. A little over 60 seconds of action doesn't say much about MMA. 60 minutes of fight action has the potential to say quite a bit. A dull fight between hesitant if talented former amateur wrestlers would do little in the form of positive contribution. However, the right kind of output with the right kind of awareness campaign by the UFC could pay huge dividends.

The UFC can't overdo the connection between the two sports. Even among sports enthusiasts, wrestling isn't a popular spectator sport. Trying to tie the two sports too closely would also be disingenuous about the true amount of overlap. While many of the sport's top athletes cut their teeth in wrestling, many did not. There's absolutely a finesse to faithfully articulating the relationship between the two sports that doesn't overstate the case.

All I am suggesting is mentioning in passing the significant and accomplished amateur wrestling backgrounds of the main card competitors would be a major disservice to all parties involved. There's photos and footage of all the former wrestlers in their glory college years. Show them. Tell their story. Help the public better understand the quality of competitor before them. The UFC has no problem touting their fighters' athletic backgrounds for lobbying purposes. It's hard for me to see the downside on an actual event broadcast.

The second basic reason why Saturday's fight is more important than the first UFC on Fox was made ably by Dave Meltzer recently on Jordan Breen's Press Row podcast. Meltzer notes the architecture of this card could upend or solidify the very aim of this UFC-Fox deal. His argument is simple. On paper, this UFC on Fox 2 card is an ideal scenario for the UFC in terms of matchmaking and setting up future pay-per-view sales. The audience is being presented with two number one contender bouts. The aim of the Fox deal, ostensibly, is to showcase fights like this: those full of significance whose participants could greatly benefit from the added exposure to set up lucrative pay-per-view title fights in the not too distant future.

If Saturday produces huge ratings, there's real validation of the model. If it bombs, UFC will have to go back to the drawing board to figure out what kind of product they're reasonably able to put on Fox and generate interest.

Suggesting in advance the fight won't do high ratings because the card lacks major star power misses the point entirely. The object of the 'big' Fox platform is to showcase those fighters who need an injection of mass exposure but have all of the other raw material to be a pay-per-view draw. Placing already proven commodities on the Fox cards to jack the ratings is an artificial cover and could dramatically undercut the UFC's pay-per-view base.

The UFC is basically now left to luck on Saturday night. The promoter can only do so much to stack the deck in their favor. The rest of the fight game's magic is serendipity. UFC brass are following their Fox game plan by booking the right fights at the right time and placing them in front of the right audiences. They've done all they can reasonably be expected to do.

What's left are the known unknowns. Will the casual audiences show up? If they do, what kind of fights will they be treated to? Will they understand the quality of action they're watching? And will they buy pay-per-view events in the future that feature Saturday's eventual winners?

Those are important questions. They're also an order of magnitude of importance above the 'what's the deal with this MMA or UFC stuff?' queries the casual audiences watching the first UFC on Fox were asking themselves.

First impressions matter, but so do second chances. When the debuts are over, it's time to deliver. And deliver Saturday better.

Scott Coker: Tate Vs. Rousey Is Female MMA's Most-Anticipated Fight In Three Years

2012-01-25T18:00:59Z

Strikeforce President Scott Coker knows when it comes to his company's product, women aren't simply part of the show: they are the show.

Strikeforce President Scott Coker is making the media rounds to promote his organization's upcoming March 3rd card at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. Competing for the Strikeforce women's bantamweight title, champion Meisha Tate will defend against challenger and bronze medal-winning Olympian Ronda Rousey. To hear Coker tell it, Tate vs. Rousey is part of Strikeforce's continuing commitment to women's mixed martial arts, but also an important milestone in that genre of the sport.

In this interview with MMA Nation, Coker discusses the positive drug tests of Muhammed Lawal and Cris Santos, whether woman in MMA can break through on ability alone, if he'd remove a fighter from the organization for missing weight, the return of Daniel Cormier and boxing's Andre Berto vs. Victor Ortiz II.

Full audio and transcription below:

Luke Thomas: Alright joining me right now to talk Strikeforce: Tate vs. Rousey which takes place March 3^rd, 2012 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, by the way, tickets are already on sale the President of Strikeforce, Scott Coker. Scott, how are you?

Scott Coker: I'm doing great, how are you?

Luke Thomas: I'm doing good. I know it has to be a frustrating week for you. You had Cyborg obviously had some issues, that wasn't just this week but Cyborg had some issues with the athletic commission testing positive for steroids and yesterday, Muhammed Lawal, indicate to me your level of frustration at this point.

Scott Coker: Yeah, it's always frustrating when your star athletes and guys or females you're looking to get back into the cage right away but these things are governed by the state athletic commission and we're gonna support the commission and we're gonna let the due process fall out and fall through and we're gonna follow it up from there. Fighters do have rights and they can appeal and go through that process and we'll see what happens.

Luke Thomas: Lawal's an interesting case. Cyborg, I think many people were kind of not necessarily surprised but Lawal I think people were very surprised because here's a guy with international wrestling experience who took very rigorous testing from WADA and never had an issue and then came up with this new test result after his January 7^th fight. Are you a believer that it's possible to have false positives in athletic commission testing?

Scott Coker: Boy, I'll tell you. I just don't know the process in which the Nevada State Athletic Commission does their sampling so I really can't comment on that but what I can comment on is I talked to Mo's manager, Mike Kogan and they're claiming that there's nothing they took that was inappropriate so like I said, let's let them deal with the commission and we're gonna support the commission. That's always been our position in Strikeforce. I think it's gonna be a process, I guess is my point.

Luke Thomas: About matchmaking, these two were popular figures in your organization that headlined fights before, Lawal obviously and Cyborg. How do you go forward losing two possible headlines who could be out for up to a year? What do you do now? Do you promote guys you wouldn't necessarily fill in that role? Do you lean on your figures? What's the process?

Scott Coker: Well I think we have a certain amount of TV dates that we have scheduled for Showtime and each one of these fighters would have definitely fought once or twice before the end of the year but we're just gonna fill their slots until they're ready to come back, until the commission clears them. We're gonna just continue moving forward and putting on great fights.

Luke Thomas: There was a news release I got yesterday from Zuffa and it was about, basically saying that once people sign with the larger company, they'll be drug tested immediately before they even fight their first fight as an effort to maybe curb these tests that we've had later and promote a culture of drug free use but there was a statement made by a former President of WADA, Richard Pound, and these are his words not mine, quote, "It's complete illusory and obviously intended to be that way. They're just trying to do enough to keep congress off their backs," end quote, obviously his words not mine. How rigorous is the testing in athletic commissions in your judgment?

Scott Coker: Well, since I've been a promoter for the last 25-28 years, we've always been governed by the state athletic commissions and I know Nevada and New Jersey and now California have had some of the strictest commissions to do the type of testing they do so to me, I think that to say the commissions aren't doing enough and for WADA to jump on them, for me, it's kind of like, look, they've been doing this a long time. They govern the boxing and MMA and we're governed by the state athletic commissions and the state of California or Nevada or New Jersey or wherever you go to or whatever state you're promotion, you're governed by those states so to me, it's always seemed like a process we're used to doing and a process that from time to time, if there's an athlete that was on some steroids or were cheating then they were caught and the process would happen and they can go through suspension or appeals and eventually they'd be allowed or not allowed to fight again.

In the states that we're fighting in, we're governed by the department of consumer affairs, I wish it was put together, if you remember why the athletic commissions were put together, it's to protect the athletes from the promoters and the promoters are protecting themselves from the athletes and the consumers are making sure they're getting a fair show. That's where we're being governed and I think they're doing a good job and I think that to get ahead of the curve like what Zuffa announced yesterday, I think that's just one more positive step.

Luke Thomas: Talk to me about Lorenz Larkin now. It seemed like he would have lost, I don't want to say no matter what but it looked to me like Lawal was clearly the better fighter. What does it do to him now that Lawal is in this kind of state of flux given this test. Again, Lawal's people are probably gonna fight it and maybe they'll be successful and we'll get back to where we were two days ago but how do you view Larkin's progression? Does that loss against Lawal still set him back or are you going to give him a little bit of a reset button?

Scott Coker: I think that I have to speak to Keith Kizer first because I think this loss might get taken off his record by the Nevada State Athletic Commission and then as far as I'm concerned, Lorenz, whether he lost to King Mo or not, will still have more opportunities. I still think the guy is talented, he's still young and King Mo fought him perfectly and did what he had to do, and you know the result. To me, I still think he has a tremendous amount of potential and talent and I think it kind of resets the button.

Luke Thomas: Let's talk about the fight you're here to promote, the Tate vs. Rousey event, main event Miesha Tate vs. Ronda Rousey, helluva fight really. Ronda Rousey, listen, Miesha Tate and Sarah Kaufmann have been very vocal about their dislike that, not that Ronda isn't a tremendous competitor, but she kind of talked her way into the main event. Let me ask you, they recognize her ability, so what's wrong with talking your way into a title shot?

Scott Coker: Well I think it happens all the time whether it's boxing or MMA. These girls are very attractive girls but the one thing about both of them is these girls are dangerous. They're both very explosive, they're great fighters, they're great mixed martial arts fighters and it's been a long time, it's been since 2009 since we had a female main event on the big Showtime fight card. We've had fights on the challengers, the female tournament, but it's the first time since the Cyborg-Carano fight since we've had a fight of this magnitude. I think it's the most highly anticipated female fight in the last three years in female mixed martial arts.

Luke Thomas: This fight's different in a number of ways obviously but in an organizational standpoint, what are your differences between that event, the Cyborg-Carano fight and this Tate-Rousey fight? The Carano-Cyborg fight, Gina Carano's obviously the most popular star and there was a real big contrast but as you mentioned, there's a bit of similarity between Tate and Rousey. How do these two fights differ and how are they similar in your mind?

Scott Coker: Well Cyborg is Cyborg, she's got an appropriate name and Gina was a girl that came from a very, very good and experienced kickboxing background, got into mixed martial arts and Gina was the girl next door while Cyborg was, I always said, "Could you imagine me at the 911 domestic violence call at that house?" The Cyborg I know is always picking up her husband after her fight with a congratulatory salute to the crowd with her husband up on her shoulders. She's a beast as a girl so if you look at them, they're totally different but in this fight, you have both girls who are very attractive but like I said, they're both very dangerous. Ronda, she might have talked her way into this fight, which is great for female mixed martial arts, I still think that this girl, with her Olympic experience and the amount of mat time she's had with judo and professional competition definitely deserves a shot and I think Miesha will have her hands full.

Luke Thomas: Maybe this is getting to esoteric or off the beaten path but it's on my mind so I'll ask you. I'm reading a book now by David Brooks of the New York Times called The Social Animal and in the book, he talks about basically, even the most intelligent guys are bound by their evolution of genetics from the Pleistocene era, which is to say they predominate their thinking subconsciously with just how women look and in a sport where 90 percent of the audience but a huge percentage of the audience is male, can a female break through on ability alone?

Scott Coker: Well I think that they can. I think Cyborg proved it, I think Gina before her proved it and I think Miesha proved it and Ronda is gonna be the up and coming star that has her shot on the 3^rd to see if she can hang on this level and when you think about female fighting, for myself, we've always supported female fights. In 2006, when mixed martial arts became legal in California, we promoted Carana vs. Elaina Maxwell which is the first sanctioned female fight in the history of California MMA and before that, Strikeforce was a kickboxing league before MMA was legalized in 2006 and we had so many great fights and I come from a culture in the martial arts school where you train with females, you spar with females and it was no different having a male or female around you training all the time. Females have always been a part of Strikeforce and keep in mind, the Cyborg-Carano fight was still the second highest-rated show on Showtime in the mixed martial arts Strikeforce show since we started three years ago.

Luke Thomas: Let's transition if we can a little bit. One thing that's been on my mind and I can't sort of figure it out, I know I speak for many fans when I say I'm happy to see the undercard bouts airing on Showtime Extreme. It's a wonderful addition, but why can't we get live video technology for your press conferences and your weigh-ins? Not that it would make a huge difference but I think there's a hardcore audience that has a pretty large demand for it and Zuffa already does it with UFC stuff, but we wouldn't even need that. You could just use basic UStream technology. Are we gonna get that live access to press conferences and weigh-ins in 2012?

Scott Coker: That's certainly something I can talk to them about but you have to just come out and come to the fights and check it out.

Luke Thomas: One sort of thing that was on my mind from UFC 142 was Anthony Johnson and what was kind of interesting was here was a guy that had some considerable ability although I don't think he fought that well in that particular event, but third time having issues with his weight cut. Let me ask you about Strikeforce. Strikeforce doesn't have the number of fighters on their roster as the UFC but would you take a punitive action in a proactive way against a fighter who had weight cut issues and here's what I mean: athletic commission are gonna do what they do for Lawal and for Santos but that's a different issue that Strikeforce as an organization taking a role. What is your view on a fighter who has habitual problems making weight?

Scott Coker: It's a real problem and you're counting on the fighter to be professional and to show up in shape, put on a good fight, do his best and I think making weight is the first step of that process of the fight weekend. To me, if you can't make weight, you have to question the professionalism of the athlete and if this is something that happens over and over and over, I think that maybe the relationship with the fighter is not gonna be a long career in Strikeforce or UFC because they're counting on you to do what you signed up for and it's a contract. You have a contract that you signed saying, "I'm gonna be at this fight weight," and when that doesn't happen, it creates a lot of problems for the promoter, the fighter and the TV networks. It's a real big issue.

Luke Thomas: Lay it out for me from the promoter standpoint, you get news the weigh-ins are Friday and you get news on Thursday, "Hey, your co-main event guy who's been selling this fight, there's just no way he's gonna make it," what goes through your mind?

Scott Coker: Oh boy, it's a series of, "Oh God here we go." Now you've got to talk to the other camp which is the biggest issue, you've got to let the commission know. For instance, if the fighter is too heavy, even if the opposing camp wanted to do it, the athletic commission won't let you do it. Then, the fight's off at that point and it can become very ugly and I've seen it happen a couple times in my promotion career that the fighter came in so heavy that the fight would not be allowed by the athletic commission and the fight was off.

Luke Thomas: One more question about this entire event you're having, we're talking about Tate vs. Rousey March 3^rd, the next Strikeforce event on Showtime, Nationwide Arena is a place your organization has been to a lot and had some success. What is so great about that venue and that city that allows you to keep going back there?

Scott Coker: Well I tell you we're very excited to come back here. We went that last year with the Dan Henderson fight and did very well and did very well on Showtime and if you look at the community here especially that weekend when the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic is here, you can have 175,000-200,000 athletes coming into town to compete and these are athletes from all different martial arts from traditional karate and judo and body building and fitness and gymnastics, virtually I think they have 125 different categories that somebody can compete in and so I think there's a lot of synergy there and if you look at the Ohio State wrestling pedigree they came out that turned into MMA with all the guys like Coleman and Randleman and there's a big, big wrestling and MMA community in town and they've always supported us and we've been thankful.

Luke Thomas: There was big story on ESPN about UFC fighter pay, I don't want to get into it, it's been done and done over 1000 times but I'm kind of curious, it looks to me unless I'm missing something, Strikeforce doesn't have the same kind of discretionary bonus system, at least not to the same extent. If you could break it down for fans, how does pay for fighters differ in terms of between the way the UFC does it and the way that Strikeforce does it?

Scott Coker: Well, basically, I think the only difference really is we're not a pay-per-view product. We are a Showtime Television product and the bonuses for the pay-per-view swing upside that some of the fighters get in the UFC, you wouldn't have in Strikeforce. I think we pay our fighters very well to say that and I think if you talked to Gilbert Melendez or Jake Shields before, a lot of the guys that are fighting for us now, the pay, these guys are making a good living but the pay-per-view structure is a little different in the UFC and when you think about Showtime, we're a license fee-driven product and that means the subscribers on Showtime like mixed martial arts, therefore Showtime provides a license fee to Strikeforce per event and we have to create a budget for the fighters which we do and I think, like I said, it's a very fair portion and the fighters get paid according to popularity, TV ratings sometimes and the star power. This is a sport that's very driven by the individual and to me, if you're the main event, you're gonna make more money than the undercard fighter fighting on Showtime Extreme cards. It's very similar to the UFC but I think we're not in the pay-per-view business.

Luke Thomas: Can you give me an update on Daniel Cormier? I know it's still wishy-washy on when he will return but can you give me a little firmer idea?

Scott Coker: We're hoping, boy, we're hoping for a lot of things but that's a hard question to answer because every time I think of an update, it always seems to be changing. I know their coaches are concerned and want him to fight at 100 percent so we're in a holding pattern right now for Daniel to come back. That was a tournament that started February of 2011 and we're looking forward to putting on the main event and moving forward.

Luke Thomas: Last question before we let you go, I know you're a boxing fan as well. Next big fight on Showtime, the rematch between Victor Ortiz and Andre Berto, who do you like to win?

Scott Coker: Boy, I tell you, that's a fantastic fight. In fact, I'm gonna go check it out in person because when I watched in on TV last year it was unbelievable, it was Fight of the Year or wasn't it nominated for Fight of the Year?

Luke Thomas: Yeah I think so, Ring Magazine I think had it Fight of the Year.

Scott Coker: Yeah, it was an unbelievable fight and I'm excited to go, but I'm gonna take Berto in this fight. I'm gonna take Berto.

Luke Thomas: Interesting. Do you think the loss to Mayweather may have set Ortiz back a little bit?

Scott Coker: Yeah, you know what? It's almost like a pick ‘em and I'm taking Berto because I think it's gonna go back and forth. It could go to three fights but I think Berto is gonna win this next one. I just have a hunch.

Interview transcribed by Brian Hemminger. Follow him Twitter: @GotAHemmi.

Has UFC Hit An Inflection Point?

2012-01-24T18:04:59Z

Three recent events indicate that the UFC has reached an inflection point in their business cycle: the decision to cancel UFC 145 in Montreal; the decision to test new UFC fighters for PEDs before signing them; and the UFC's continued stubborn advocacy of SOPA even after it failed.

Its obvious that the UFC has entered a new phase of its history with the move from Spike TV to Fox/FX/Fuel and the loss of their two biggest pay-per-view draws Brock Lesnar and welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre. This is a critical phase in which the trajectory of the business for the next 18 months to 3 years will be determined.

Three unrelated events over the last week have made me suspect that the UFC might have hit an "inflection point" in the life of their business. For those of you who didn't take calculus, an "inflection point" is the point on a curve where it changes direction. For a fight promotion like the UFC an inflection point is a critical point in time that determines whether the next phase of the business will be one of growth, stagnation or decline.

The recent three events that may hint at the direction of the UFC's fortunes in the near term were:

The decision to cancel the planned March 24 UFC 145 pay-per-view from Montreal
While its a retreat, it's the most positive sign of all. This is the first time ever that the UFC has cancelled or postponed an already announced (pay-per-view) PPV. Since at least UFC 108 when the planned Rashad Evans vs. Quinton Jackson headliner was replaced by Evans vs. Thiago Silva, the promotion has pressed forward with numerous weak events after losing their planned headliner.

This is a classic case of swallowing their pride and doing the right thing for the business. After a three-year period in which even the weakest UFC sold 350,000+ PPV buys, the UFC's string of weak headliners in 2010 and 2011 saw their base fall to just over 200,000 PPVs.
The decision to begin testing fighters for performance enhancing drugs (PED)
The UFC has long relied on a strategy of pushing any responsibility for testing MMA fighters onto the athletic commissions of the states in which they compete. UFC President Dana White has often publicly commented to the effect that MMA is one of the most toughly regulated sports for PEDs due to the testing by athletic commissions. The fact that the UFC has long done its own testing in jurisdictions like Texas, Australia and England with little or no public regulation went unmentioned.

The recent announcement that the UFC will now test new fighters for PEDs before signing them is a long-overdue admission that there is too much to be done to clean up the sport to leave it to the athletic commissions. This willingness to confront PED use by fighters directly is a sign of a maturing business that's willing to confront difficulties before they explode.
The decision of the UFC to continue to publicly endorse SOPA after the failure of the legislation
Of course for every two steps forward, there's a big step back. The UFC has long supported the movie and recording industries in their lobbying efforts to crack down on Internet piracy. That's understandable since they believe that illegal streaming of their PPVs is seriously hurting their business. Unfortunately they supported the recent SOPA/PIPA legislation and continued to publicly do so after the bills were withdrawn in the aftermath of a massive online protest led by leading websites such as Reddit, Google and Wikipedia. UFC executive VP Lawrence Epstein wrote an op-ed in the Las Vegas Review Journal last Sunday continuing to advocate for the already defeated bills. I have to wonder what their strategy was in advocating for hugely unpopular legislation that had already been defeated.Regardless of their intentions, the result was that they came to the attention of a number of hackers who brought down UFC.com for much of Sunday. Even more ominously, online responses to the op-ed indicate that this is one issue where the UFC does not have the support of their fan base.

All-in-all these moves reflect an organization that is making moves to attack serious issues that present long-term threats to their business. Only time will tell if these are the right moves. Luke Thomas and I will discuss these points in our next video chat so put your thoughts and questions in the comments and we'll respond.

UFC On FX's Mike Easton: 'I Hit Harder Than Anyone In The Division'

2012-01-20T17:55:31Z

In this interview with MMA Nation Radio on 106.7 The Fan, UFC bantamweight Mike Easton talks about his second foray in the Octagon (this time against Jared Papazian) and why he believes he is the hardest puncher in the entire bantamweight division.

UFC bantamweight and Washington, D.C. native Mike Easton returns to the Octagon tonight after making a victorious UFC debut at UFC on Versus 6 this past October. Originally slated to face American Top Team's Ken Stone, Easton now faces late replacement Jared Papazian, making both fights for Easton in the UFC against last-minute replacements. According to Easton, however, that couldn't possibly make a difference to him.

In this interview from MMA Nation Radio on 106.7 The Fan, Easton discusses a wide variety of topics (listed below), but makes the assertion he's the hardest puncher in the entire UFC bantamweight division. Against a forward-charging brawler like Papazian he might just get the chance to prove it.

Full audio below:

Among other topics, Easton discusses the following:

U.S. judo Olympian Rhadi Ferguson helping with strength and conditioning for all of his UFC camps.
Spending his entire camp in Camp Springs, Maryland and not at Alliance Gym in San Diego. However, Brandon Vera did fly over to help.
Why training on the East Coast grittiness is better for fight camp training.
Just how different the 'UFC experience' is from previous fight experiences.
Using Dominick Cruz's footwork in the first round of his fight at UFC on Versus 6 against Byron Bloodworth to get his feet 'under him' after a two-year layoff.
Not worried about having a camp around one fighter throughout the entire process.
What he knows about his opponent Papazian.
A health update on UFC bantamweight Dominick Cruz and whether Easton will have a role on the next season of 'The Ultimate Fighter'
Meeting WBA and IBF Lamont Peterson and admiring his accomplishments as a fellow Washington, DC

UFC Vs. ESPN 2: Did Chris Lytle Permanently Harm His Health For Fight Night Bonuses?

2012-01-20T16:50:59Z

In this video blog, SB Nation editors Luke Thomas and Nate Wilcox discuss ESPN's report on UFC fighter pay, who is right, if the report was fair, whether UFC's response was over the top and more. In part 2 they discuss which fighters should be paid more, the plight of Chris Lytle, what it would take to form an MMA union and the need for transparency in the MMA business.

In the aftermath of ESPN's TV and online series about alleged lacking fighter pay in the UFC, Luke Thomas and I discuss the story, fighter pay and the UFC's aggressive media response. For those that missed part 1, you can watch the video or reach the transcript here. Video and transcript as it relates to this part of the discussion below.

In today's discussion, we consider a number of new points but focus on the career of now-retired UFC welterweight Chris Lytle. For a fighter of considerable but not championship ability who admits to wrecking his body to win bonuses (bonuses, mind you, that will put all of his kids through college and then some), did the discretionary bonus system serve or hurt him? We consider the difficult situation:

Nate Wilcox: I'm gonna segue right to the online response, though. It's just totally predictable. Dana White gets into a conflict with another public figure, of course Dana White's audience is gonna root for Dana. Dana knows how to set up a conflict such that his audience perceives that as a big win and they had the thing about ESPN paying fighters which is all kinds of a misnomer.

They conflated a number of things. ESPN is the TV channel, not the promoter so it's kind of like blaming Spike TV or FOX for the UFC's business practices which is neither fair nor reasonable. Nevertheless, that went over huge with the UFC's online fanbase and it's always entertaining seeing a master lion-tamer at work and Dana knows how to wind up his audience, how to throw them some red meat, how to give them something to cheer for. Dana's their boy and the masses were roaring in approval.

Luke Thomas: Dana White knows his audience better than anyone knows their audience really. It's kind of impressive. I have to admit, he's got them down. The one thing I would say, though, is I don't know to what interest it serves to rally your own base but it's kind of instructive to think about the UFC fanbase, I think they're, someone said this online and I can't remember how it was but it was a very interesting and clever point, but UFC fans, they rally around the UFC like Dallas fans rally around the Dallas Cowboys.

It's the hometown team and someone on twitter didn't say this but this kind of occurred to me when I thought about that, when James Toney fought Randy Couture in Boston, UFC 118 I think, when Couture was pounding on him, hadn't quite finished him yet but was pounding on him, you could hear people in the crowd chanting, "UFC! UFC!" That was crazy. It was crazy. Even if a major MMA fighter in his prime crossed over to boxing, you wouldn't hear people go, "Boxing! Boxing!" They're not loyal to boxing in that way or maybe they are but they don't conceive of themselves.

I describe it all the time but there's a UFC club. There's an MMA club and there's a zeitgeist and it's a counterculture thing and you're either in it or you're not in it. You and I are kind of halfway in and halfway out but it was really interesting to see how easily the UFC could, and let me be clear about this, that isn't to say they don't have some good points. They've got some great points. I thought the ESPN Friday Night Fights thing was a very bad point, but I think some of their other points are pretty great if for no other reason you can say, "If you wanna get paid, pretty easy to figure out where you want to get paid." I don't mean that they're talking meritoriously and convincing people with snake oil arguments, I just mean that, and someone told me this too, a television executive.

Do you remember the first time, the very first time out of nowhere the UFC had their prelims on ION? Do you remember that? I think it was when Phil Baroni fought Brad Tavarez. A television executive told me, How many did they pull for that? They pulled between 700,000-800,000? He goes, "Let me explain something to you. You can look at that number, 700-800 thousand and go, ‘Wow, UFC really pulls how many millions on Spike normally, that's a pretty low number.' That's the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is ION is a place no one knows about and they got 700,000 people to tune in like that on a channel that they may not even have, that may not even be in HD."

They have an incredible grip on their own audience and I think you saw that reflected in the online response but again, that goes back to the question of, it's something you said, how will state senators in New York look at it. I'm assuming by the freedom of expression thing, you're not looking at them but the larger opinion influencers and people like that, I don't know how much it reached them to be perfectly honest. For example, Deadspin covered the Edson Barboza spinning back kick, they didn't cover this. Sports by Brooks, Big Lead, those are blogs but what about the other ones? New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, nobody, there wasn't a scandal here which is why the UFC acting like this is a scandalous article just seemed to me out of bounds. Your take?

Nate Wilcox: I'd have to agree with that but again, it goes into my parallel channels thing. You've got to remember in today's information economy, you've got different audiences in different channels. It's not like they took out TV ads on ESPN to slam ESPN. They weren't going after their television audience to counter, they were going to their own online audience. People that don't know the UFC that saw that story, they're not going to go to MMA Mania or MMA Fighting or whatever to go look for Dana's response. They're not following Dana White's twitter account so it didn't happen in those universes to those people. I think it's good to rile up your base to be honest. It helps people stay loyal and gets them to pay attention. It certainly didn't hurt them with their own fanbase.

One other point I want to make, who is the UFC competing with for their fanbase? Fighters. And so who are they fighting over money with? Fighters. I think it's very important to continue that dominance and say, "We are the stars with this audience. This is our audience." If Jon Fitch wants to have a war with us over video game rights online, we're gonna crush him and humiliate him and his own fans are gonna turn against him and root for us so I think that's of some value to the UFC.

Luke Thomas: Well weigh in on the claims then. I'll ask you up front. I've already stated mine. I do believe, mostly, there's not a big story here. I think most guys get paid well but we don't really know because there's no numbers but I'll ask you, are UFC fighters paid appropriately?

Nate Wilcox: I think some are and some aren't and some of that has to do with their management, their persona, their marketing and their fighting style and to some extent that's fair. Jon Fitch isn't worth as much in the marketplace as GSP because he's got this reputation as a boring fighter so I think that's fair.

On the other hand, I think your point about Jon Fitch or Thiago Alves or Shane Carwin that fought for the title but never got the title, never became a big star but competed with the big stars, I think those guys are coming out on the short end of the stick. I'd like to see those guys get paid more so that they, someone like Jon Fitch can retire in relative comfort after sacrificing his body for a number of years to advance the interests of the promotion.

Those are the guys I think that are getting screwed. I think your point about the low paid fighters is absolutely right. These are not quite entry level fighters but some of them are semi-pro. It's entry level going full time and so let more people try and let more people sacrifice. You can't tell musicians, "Oh, you can't live in your car and move to New York or LA and try to make it as a big star," that's part of the deal. I don't see people picketing South by Southwest here in Austin going, "Oh, you're not paying the talent! You're not paying the talent!" People figured they paid the talent when they paid the ticket and it's up to the talent to negotiate with the promoters and so people never have a great deal of sympathy from people they see as entertainers or stars whining about money.

The substance of the story, I think they misfired with what they were trying to do in so many ways. It's hard to respond to it on the substance. I've turned in proposals to prospective clients before that had massive math errors in them and I can tell you I've never gotten a deal one time when I've done that so when Gross turns in this story and botches the median income of the UFC fighter, the difference between per fight and per year is so huge. That's like saying the average American income and giving the per month figure instead of the per year figure and it's just terrible. It's hard to respond to the substance because there wasn't a lot of substance to the story.

Luke Thomas: I would say like I said before, certainly the guys at the top are getting paid. There's no doubt about it. Georges St. Pierre is certainly the top of the top but 4-5 million per fight? Listen, you're doing alright and even guys making a million to fight or $750,000 to fight, that's still, you're fighting 3-4 times a year, you're making great money. There's no doubt about it and obviously, the health insurance is another issue that I think certainly helps all fighters, even if it's only accidental. That is a ways you can keep more of your disposable income and worry less about your health both short and long term. Again, we don't know the numbers.

My sense, I think the overreliance on discretionary bonuses, listen, any kind of financial or economic arrangement has a lot of benefits and some costs. No system is going to be perfect. There's a lot of benefits to the discretionary bonus system even to the fighters. You can make a lot of money just by going out there, you can promote the fight, you got the fans interested, you did all that you were asked to do, maybe you said some crazy things, maybe you were fired up anyways and you let your personality show, it wasn't even an act. You go out there and bomb on this guy, it was a huge event, you made a status as a contender and you got paid for it, God bless that guy. That's a great thing and he should be paid as much as the UFC's willing to pay him.

That discretionary bonus is what saved Pat Barry. Remember after the fight with Antoni Hardonk? Guy's eating rice with ketchup? Has the performance of his life at least in the UFC's eyes and hey, he goes to the bank with a six figure big ass check that saved him. That's a great story too but I think a guy like Chris Lytle is kind of interesting.

So here's Chris Lytle, a guy who's won more bonuses than anybody else and the good side of that, I spoke to him before his fight with Hardy and he got a bonus there too by the way. He had two homes, not big homes, but two homes, he was gonna put all his kids through college and I think he bought himself a tiny, tiny boat. Middle class, upper middle class life but not driving around in a Mercedes or anything like that. He's still a guy with Midwest appeal but here's the reality.

In that interview, I asked him "how much longer are you going to do this?" He hadn't indicated at the time he was gonna retire and he was talking about just how difficult it was just to get out of bed. He had to go to the chiropractor consistently because he was constantly in pain. The guy has wrecked his body and he wrecked his body because he had an incentive to wreck his body. Now the health insurance is great because when you're fighting you're covered at least for many things. It's not comprehensive but it's good, but what about later?

Fighting, to compete at the highest level, fighting requires an intense focus. Some guys can develop multiple skills at once. They can learn to be a self promoter. They can learn how to fight. Some guys have natural acumen to deal with long term issues and the UFC does some stuff at those Fighter Summits once a year to be like, "Hey guys, you've got to think long term," no doubt about it but that's just not sufficient and I wonder, maybe Chris Lytle will be just fine. It sounds like he's got his on his shoulders, like he's already talking about paying for his kid's colleges, that's okay, but his quality of life at 65 is gonna be fantastically diminished.

There's a local radio show here called ‘The Junkies,' and they've got a bit, every week there's a new athlete, not even boxing and MMA, there's a new athlete declaring bankruptcy and you look at the guy's initial contract, it's 150 million for six years and the guy is now completely broke. This happens all the time and that's after 150 million. Maybe the argument is it doesn't matter how much you give ‘em, they go broke, but I just wonder, this incentive model, guys will grasp for money that they wouldn't be able to get through ordinary achievement and by ordinary achievement, I mean, "I'm gonna work my way up to contender status, fight for a title and do that."

Lytle knew he was never gonna fight for a title so he decided to just sling the dogs and it made him a lot of money but it cost him big time and I think that incentivizing performance is great. I just wonder if the current way we do it is the best way and the one final note on that, look at these twitter bonuses and stuff, another great way to get fans connected with their favorite fighters, to get fighter's names out there to help promote the fight, no doubt about it but listen, some of these guys aren't gonna have these skills and they're not going to develop them, they're not going to know anybody to help them develop them, it's just not gonna be there and you can say, "Well you've got to learn and it's no different than the fight game." It is different than the fight game.

They're fighters. Their object is to win. They could be the best fighter in the world or a really talented fighter and not have the time or really the skills or the help to develop that other side of the business. They're gonna naturally be discriminated against by someone who's just amiable and jovial to begin with so again, I think a lot of benefits to the discretionary bonus structure but a lot of downsides. Last thing I'd say about, "Do you think fighters make enough money?"

It's kind of funny, we just had a Josh Gross piece and an Outside the Lines piece with not a lot of figures in them and Zuffa comes back and they say, "These figures are right. These figures are wrong," but they don't want to tell us, they don't show us the papers . Zuffa may be right about everything.

Everything that Lorenzo Fertitta may have said on that show was correct, everything, but if we live in a world where we don't have transparency, I think people including fighters are always gonna be inquisitive. If you close off the wall, people are gonna wanna know what's behind door number two, even if behind door number two is an ass-kicking. You can't shut that off. That is a natural human instinct. I understand why Zuffa wants to keep their company private. They have many reasons to do that but just like I told you before, any kind of arrangement, if that's your arrangement, okay, fine, but you have to deal with the consequences of people like ESPN and fighters asking, "Hey, I may make $150,000 a year and that's pretty great, but aren't I supposed to be making $500,000 a year?" They're always going to want to know if they can make more and why aren't they making more?

Nate Wilcox: Can't argue with that. I think your point about Chris Lytle is excellent. I feel like the NFL, someone like Jim Otto, a famous Hall of Fame Oakland Raiders center who ended up with his leg amputated in his late 60s I believe. The guy had so many knee surgeries, so many hip surgeries he lost his leg. This is a guy who's never going to carry his granddaughter to bed again. That's a big deal.

That's a huge cost and it is kind of a sick system to some extent where you're incentivizing these guys to do even more damage than necessary for them to win their fights to thrill the crowd, take more brain damage, break your hands more, break your knees, break your feet and the training these guys undergo is so brutal. It's the most intense for any sport and I have no reason to doubt it. Look at guys like Shogun Rua with multiple ACL replacements, GSP goes from a strained MCL to a torn ACL, from one leg to the next within six weeks. A lot of back injuries, a lot of nasty stuff.

Shane Carwin's on his third back surgery in the last two years and this is a young guy, a 30-something guy. That's not setting him up for a life of great health down the road. Wanderlei Silva, would you like to give him a life insurance policy? This dude is not set for long term health. Admittedly, the UFC is better than their competitors. Dana White has been a very vocal critic of the way the Japanese basically killed Kazushi Sakuraba in the ring and here's a guy who's just turning 40 and already visibly diminished and he's still out there fighting.

Luke Thomas: Health insurance is a great thing. It's a very good thing. There's no criticism in that sense.

Nate Wilcox: Sure, but it certainly could be better and it's not everything. One of the good things about a union is, and I'm not endorsing unions but one good thing that unions do is provide pensions and health care for older members of the union. I think that would be a good thing. What's the dude's name, Rob Maysey? I think if this Rob Maysey were trying to form an organization that basically was just like a life/health insurance policy for retired fighters. I think that would be of immense value.

You could even partner with the UFC on something like that. If you just set up a fund and the fighters contributed to it, you got a partner that's an insurance company or a life insurance company that cuts the deals and everybody could make money and the fighters would be better off. That would be a win-win. I'm not quite sure what his agenda really is because he's taking on, it's like the WAMMA belt. You can't declare, "We're gonna have a fighter's union," with no buy-in from any big name fighters and active opposition from the UFC. It's hard for me to fathom what his agenda is which makes me question his credibility.

Luke Thomas: Let me make one point about unions and we'll close the show here in just a few minutes but the one thing about unions, everyone's like, "Oh fighters should unionize. That's what needs to happen," and there's a lot of different ways why it won't happen on of which was laid out today by Ben Fowlkes, guys like Rashad Evans and guys like GSP and Brock Lesnar's gone but guys who are super well-compensated, these guys have insurance, they have comprehensive insurance because they can afford it out of pocket or they're married or whatever and they've got great suits and great cars, great lives, great homes and great fans, whatever. They don't really have an incentive.

They don't need a union. They're well taken care of so why do they risk their neck out for somebody else and I did Jordan Breen's press row and I said, "You know what it would take for the situation to change? It would take the level of which Tito Ortiz was disgruntled but they'd all have to be champions and it would have to be across many weight classes." That's the kind of atmosphere you'd have to have and we're not even approximating anything like that but the one thing I would say is that there's a little bit of unrealistic like, "Fighters should unionize."

Professional unionization is a skill. There are people in this world, SEIU, Teamsters, they know how to rally people, organize labor. If you look at the history of baseball, baseball players didn't know how to unionize. It was actually guys who had been helping other unions and run their own unions come across to baseball and say, "Guys, you're getting taken for a ride here," and guide them through the process of unionization and collective bargaining and the rest. That's what's gonna have to happen here. If you go to court, you need a lawyer.

If you want to unionize, you need to have people who know how to have union work so it's not just the fighters being like, "Hey, we want more money. Hey, we want pensions," it's them also finding people who have vast, deep experience with unionizations guiding them through, coalescing and putting this in motion and I think if you're asking fighters with or without incentives, even if it were the situation like I described before where it's like five Tito Ortiz's and they're all champions and they're all super unhappy which we're not even close to.

Even if that were the case, they wouldn't know how to unionize. You would need that plus professional help from people who know how to do this kind of stuff and until we have that, it's a pipe dream. Before we close the show, any final thoughts about the future of fighter pay? Will it change and if so how? How do you see the next five years in terms of fighter compensation and the way in which this issue moves forward?

Nate Wilcox: I think you'll continue to see, those that do well will do better and those that aren't doing particularly well will continue to struggle. I think low entry pay will go up some and the top, any pay-per-view stars that emerge will be very well compensated and will break records as far as being the best paid fighters ever. As far as the middle, I'm not expecting to see get a lot of bump and especially things like ancillary rights in terms of video game licenses. I think they'll still continue to get screwed over in those ways.

I did want to, I had to comment, the idea of Tito Ortiz forming a union, like Tito could call in Jenna Jameson for a weekend. They could probably totally write some union rules and I'm sure they're both big parliamentary procedure buffs, that's some rich stuff right there. That is an amusing picture.

Saturday Night Live, if they bothered with MMA fighters could do a lot of sketches on MMA fighters trying to organize a union. Could you see Tito, Rampage, Chuck Liddell, Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock all in one room trying to get their union on, that would be something.

One last thing about unions, a lot of these fighters are not politically disposed to be sympathetic to unions in the first place. Plenty of them would do anything if it's to their advantage regardless of what their ideology is, but if you're Matt Hughes or Pat Miletich, some right wing guy from the Midwest and you've heard stories all your life about these corrupt unions, are you going to bring in some sharpie from the SEIU to organize how your shit's gonna work? I don't see it happening and there's good reasons to be leery of unions. Would you call in somebody from the Teamsters to help you organize your pension fund? Like really?

UFC Vs. ESPN: Who's Right, Who's Wrong, Who Freaked Out And Who Blew The Story

2012-01-19T17:48:45Z

In this video blog, SB Nation editors Luke Thomas and Nate Wilcox discuss ESPN's report on UFC fighter pay, who is right, if the report was fair, whether UFC's response was over the top and more.

In the aftermath of ESPN's TV and online series about fighter pay in the UFC, Luke Thomas and I discuss the story, fighter pay and the UFC's aggressive response. Video and transcript follow. This is part 1.

Luke Thomas: As everyone knows, we previously discussed the pro wrestling MMA issue and it generated a lot of controversy of course and one thing that's generated controversy without you or me weighing in on it, which is why we are here is this ESPN story in conjunction with an ‘Outside the Lines' video piece about UFC fighter pay.

Josh Gross who's had a contentious, and still does, relationship with UFC President Dana White, wrote a piece suggesting that there is a case to be made UFC fighters, at least at the low end do not receive enough money, they are not properly compensated particularly given the profits that Zuffa makes and of course Zuffa fired back in extraordinary fashion this past weekend and now Monday as well. Nate, I'll open up the floor to you as is customary, your take on the story and that includes the video and the written piece. What did you think about it?

Nate Wilcox: Well, after reading the pieces online and there were two pieces, one, that fighter pay hurts and the second was the Josh Gross piece. The first one was the teaser that let everyone know that the story was gonna happen. I have to say that the first one was relatively mild. It had the Monte Cox footage and the Ken Shamrock footage. You knew it was gonna be a little bit juicy. You just see Ken Shamrock and he's beet red and his hair's long and stringy and greasy and he's crazed and he's ranting and you're like, "Whoa, this is gonna be at least a hoot and a half if not informative," but then the Josh Gross piece was like your standard Josh Gross-Rob Maysey "Anonymous sources, let's go after the UFC" and I'm a fan of Josh Gross. He's one of the founders of the MMA journalism world and many props to Mr. Gross but I thought he kind of stepped on his tail a little bit with that story.

That went on for a day or two where's the reaction to that and it finally airs and Dana was having Twitter beef with Dan Rafael, excuse me, "Twitter discussion" with Dan Rafael of ESPN and I was a little underwhelmed by the ESPN video story. I thought it was a decent little magazine piece but it certainly didn't merit the flipout from the UFC at all and it seemed like it was on a different track, a parallel track from the Gross story. It was its own story and it didn't have the same failings as the Gross story, the Gross errors of the Gross story. What was your take on it?

Luke Thomas: I think I'm pretty much in agreement with that. I thought the video was pretty even-handed. I didn't think it was that, and we'll get to this in just a minute, but in my personal life in PR and working for some scumbags here in DC, I've dealt with way worse stories and I've dealt with way worse stories being put in front of way more important audiences and I'm sure you have too, we'll get to that in just a minute. I thought the written piece, I think my general takeaway is there is probably a story to be told about fighter pay.

I wonder about guys who are good fighters, great fighters maybe who lack the promotional skills to win promotional bonuses, who lack the flashy kind of ability to win in dominant fashion, who just aren't charismatic but they're extraordinarily talented and they put themselves through rigor and they make an okay living but not a great one and I wonder over time if they're properly compensated but I don't think entry level guys are really damaged that much. I think the entry level pay is just fine. Obviously the guys at the top are very well taken care of I think on balance, UFC fighters are probably paid okay, we'll never know, but I thought the piece failed in a couple of places and that includes the video and the written statement.

First of all, there were just plain some factual errors in the first report Gross put out, most notably he said the yearly take on median income is between 17 and 20 thousand. That was the median income per fight. I think that's a pretty big error and I'm also a very big fan of Josh Gross, I like him very much and I think his work is typically in the highest order but that is an unmistakable error.

I thought the corroborating evidence was pretty thin and we're dealing with a situation where there isn't much, but if there isn't much and you're gonna make a heavy charge, you better do what you can and I felt like, they didn't include Ken Shamrock and Ricco Rodriguez in the video piece, the leaned on them and that's a very different thing and I think Rob Maysey is doing some very important work but I don't think he had the right numbers either quite frankly. It didn't seem to me like he had a much better grasp because they're not known, than Josh Gross and I thought these are some important charges.

The claims you're making are serious, not the most serious ever, but they deserve to be taken seriously and there just wasn't a lot of evidentiary weight to what was being offered. They didn't consult the Labor Economist, they didn't consult anybody in the sports business world. Was there no one in the Sports Business Daily who might understand the mechanics of athlete compensation was included on this and I'm not sure why not? And the video piece, Ricco Rodriguez was on celebrity rehab with all due respect to Ricco Rodriguez. I understand he was the UFC heavyweight champion, but he is a guy, if you're a lawyer, he's got character issues as a witness.

All these guys, everyone that they included, Pat Miletich again has a lot to offer, even Ken Shamrock and Ricco Rodriguez, but they're all guys who've got axes to grind. They didn't have anybody who didn't have an axe to grind included in the piece and I thought that was a major failing. As for Zuffa's response, we'll get to that in just a second.

I guess the last thing we'll say is there's a lot of ways to unpack fighter pay. I think at the low end, it's probably pretty good that they don't make that much as a friend pointed out to me, Jon Jones filling in for Tomasz Drawl against Andre Gusmao, if there was a base pay that all entry fighters got, say $50,000, they would have never taken a chance on Jones and the fighter pay is low and that creates a low financial barrier to entry which is ultimately good for fighters particularly ones of considerable ability who just need that someone to notice them. I think that is a good thing and obviously if you're winning like Jon Jones is, you're gonna make money pretty fast. Again, I wonder if guys like Tyson Griffin make what they're supposed to but we don't really know.

That is my general takeaway, we can unpack the details a little bit more but it's kind of instructive that, and this is kind of naval gazing a bit, but it's kind of important, you and I were both taken aback by the vociferous from the UFC to these charges that I felt were, as we said on twitter, basically pretty tepid. Talk about your response, first of all, how did you feel? Did you feel the UFC response merited the gravity of the story?

Nate Wilcox: Well, my initial reaction to UFC's response was amusement. It was entertaining. It was the Dana White show. There was conflict. It was the UFC versus ESPN but my initial reaction was, "These guys are overreacting." Who watched ESPN Outside the Lines? A couple hundred thousand people? Are those people likely UFC customers? What's the audience for that show and it's like, I think UFC fans would tune in because it's UFC content on ESPN but I don't think they would have tuned in in big numbers if the UFC had just been like, "Hey check out, Lorenzo was interviewed for ESPN, should be an interesting story," or whatever instead of the big angry reaction.

Some people would have watched it, not watched it, but the thing is, the real life audience that the UFC should care about for that story is the regulators and the people in New York that are considering voting for or against it, the unions that have been going after the Fertitta brothers at Station Casinos, that an audience for this. They'll definitely be using this against the UFC and possibly the FTC, which has been rumored to be sniffing around into MMA after the purchase of Strikeforce so that's the audience of decision-makers that they really should care about and so I don't think that they're response to this was aimed at those decision-makers.

I think it was aimed at the MMA community, the fighters and management included but it went over great with our readers, Bloody Elbow, MMA Mania, MMA.tv, everywhere that I saw like Sherdog, people were like, "Hey Dana really stuck it to ESPN," and so that's good and I guess the subtext is it reinforced to the MMA business community, "Hey, we're still the boss here. We're not taking this. We're not taking anything laying down. Don't think that your client or you should talk to ESPN about this stuff," and so that's of use to them but I have to wonder if someone from the New York state senate is watching this and watches Dana White's reaction to this, how they gauge that and is it helpful to them?

My guess is it's not especially helpful to them. It might not be harmful but it kinda reeks of somebody having something to hide and I would advise a lot of clients that were in legal difficulties, that were having massive PR disasters and I would never encourage them to take on a belligerent or confrontational attitude with a major media outlet like ESPN as your opening salvo. It should take quite a bit to turn things into open warfare between a subject and a reporter in my opinion.

Luke Thomas: My sense about it is, I think first of all they did the right thing in filming John Barr and I've done that with clients as well in my background and what we did that for was to let the people interviewing us know that we're watching them and if you make any error, we're gonna make note of it and if you edit us in a way that makes us look bad unfairly, now of course if you have a meltdown in the interview, you're gonna look bad no matter what but if you answer the interview questions straightforward and you edit it in such a way that we are discriminated against, we're gonna let you know.

I don't think the Outside the Lines piece did that. I thought Lorenzo Fertitta came across pretty damn reasonable actually. He's a very smart guy and the other thing Dana White was complaining it's a 40 minute interview, it's only nine minutes long on the Outside the Lines piece, but that's all they had time for. That's not a long show and I've dealt with people for a variety of different clients for a variety of different publications and one of them was I had to prepare a client for an interview on Frontline.

Now Frontline is, that is about as big as it gets in terms of Washington D.C. because the audience is not huge but the audience is congressmen, senators, their staffers, people in serious positions of power that can affect legislations that can affect entire industries so if you don't do well on there, you're in trouble and this isn't even remotely the same kind of thing. ESPN has a large audience as you mentioned but Outside the Lines covers a wide variety of topics so they're not devoted to one thing. Frontline can devote an entire hour to one thing and they can really sink their teeth into it and that's a key distinction and I felt like the UFC's response, if you were just viewing it in the prism of, "Here's a fighter story and here's the UFC's response," most PR professionals would say they were bringing a bazooka to a fistfight, however, I don't think that's the full story.

I think the full story is, they obviously have difficulty with Josh Gross, that's news to no one, but I think it's about, listen, one thing I think UFC has in common with all serious MMA journalists is, if you're an MMA journalist and every place I've worked at, I've been taken care of very well, very well, but if you cover MMA and you work in a larger media organ, you've gotta lobby for your content. That's just the way it goes. People aren't against you, but MMA is just in a space where if you want it noticed man, you've got to fight for it and that's the way it goes. Certainly no one knows that better than the UFC who has had to fight and to struggle and to struggle and to struggle and have doors slammed in their face and be told whatever they've been told and I think they have a lot of antipathy towards Dana White and Dana made one point that I thought was pretty salient, actually.

On ESPN.com, obviously Brett Okamoto covers them and a lot of other people cover them so they get on the .com on balance, pretty great coverage actually on ESPN and the print magazine too, that naked issue and everything, Jon Jones, MMA athletes always get in there, whatever it's not a big deal and of course they get to make the rounds on Sportscenter with the various programming ahead of a fight but you never really see feature pieces about MMA fighters.

You saw that one on E:60 about Rad Martinez, but that was about a guy with an exceptionally special difficult case that it wouldn't have mattered what athlete he was, that was a big deal and I feel like he did have a point when they say they don't cover these fighters in a way in which other athletes are covered for even their prosaic lives and I do agree that White probably said to himself, "Hey, we've been beating down the door of these guys to get them to cover us and the first major story, I can't think of a previous written video component together, a dual action piece that was a positive story about MMA at ESPN. It's hard for me to think of one and it certainly doesn't ring a bell to me off the top of my head and I am sympathetic to the UFC on those grounds even if I think their response was totally out of proportion.

Nate Wilcox: I'd have to agree with that, but ESPN has no business incentive necessarily to cover UFC on their TV. For one thing, they're competing with FOX to be a leader in sports and UFC went with FOX. ESPN never offered them as far as I know, ESPN was never part of the discussions and so I can totally understand the UFC's perspective but I don't think they did themselves any favors. I do think they possibly engendered themselves some more coverage along these lines because for ESPN, that story got a lot more attention than a similar story might have gotten because of the promotion the UFC did for it online.

Luke Thomas: Do you think the story was blown up by the UFC, in other words, the story was bigger than it would have been?

Nate Wilcox: Yeah, I don't think that this was a story that was just gonna set the MMA blogosphere on fire if it had just come out that Josh Gross and ESPN do a story on UFC fighter pay. I mean, a few sites would have done posts summarizing the argument, the discussion or whatever and that would have been it, so long, goodbye, it's over and thanks to UFC, it got a lot more attention. Dana White's having a Twitter beef with somebody and they filmed their own video and Dana White's talking about it like he talks about Bob Arum or somebody. It created a lot more drama than was really inherent to the story I thought in the situation.

Luke Thomas: What about the issue, though? What about the issue of, you talked about it for just a second, ESPN doesn't have a business incentive but you know, to Dana's point, I thought the Friday Night Fights thing was a pretty bad argument, but, if you consider what's happening here, they're covering boxing at basically the regional level MMA. Now that costs less, only $100,000 per show, but they don't give any coverage in terms airing live fights to MMA, certainly not UFC. What about that argument that ESPN, even in their own interest, could be doing more to cover MMA both in terms of broadcasting it and covering it as a sport, not just online which they already do, but on their video and television platforms?

Nate Wilcox: They certainly could. You and I have both been long term critics of ESPN and most of the main leading sports media for being slow to cover MMA and being reluctant to cover MMA and some of the them oppositional to MMA. They've slowly begun to feature fighters on Sportscenter before a big fight although they may be pulling back on that it seems like.

Luke Thomas: And I don't know how much that really adds to pay-per-views anyway.

Nate Wilcox: I don't think it particularly does. We are remiss if we don't mention the Lee Murray E:60, so if a fighter is successful at the highest levels of bank robbery, then they'll do an E:60 at ‘em. There's lots of good stories they could be telling about MMA. It brings in a good audience, they're only hurting themselves I think by not covering MMA and they're also boxing in MMA. The lift that the kind of coverage that Mayweather or Pacquiao get from the mainstream media and ESPN before they fight would do huge things for UFC pay-per-views. If they were talking about Nick Diaz and Carlos Condit like they talk about Mayweather or Pacquiao, that would be worth a lot of money to the UFC and it would get advertisers for ESPN.

Luke Thomas: What about this idea that long term this is good for the UFC? Here's my question to you. UFC is certainly now in a better position to go mainstream, whatever that means, they need these other organs to truly be mainstream and FOX has gotta be one of the best ways to do it, no doubt about it, but they have gone to war UFC with big mainstream companies, EA Sports or EA video games being one of them and now, I don't know if you want to call this of war, but this is a pretty strong declaration of discontent against ESPN. Can they still achieve their goals and do all the things they want to do? I know they have an international focus, can they do all these things with the scorched earth policy, whatever you want to call this? It's not a middle finger to the mainstream, but it's not a hug either. What would that mean long term?

Nate Wilcox: Well it would be bad if they succeeded in convincing ESPN to never cover the UFC or MMA but I think that would take some doing. Like I said, if I were ESPN, I'd be exciting at the prospect of doing more of this but definitely if there's just a blanket state of hostility between the UFC and CNNSI and ESPN, including ABC, that's bad. That puts a ceiling on how big they can get so that's not a good thing. One thing I sort of advise clients is to fight up, pick fights with people are more popular than you and bigger than you are and get the attention of their audience.

UFC is definitely doing that. I think a certain amount of ESPN viewers that may have never paid attention to the UFC before are now tuning in to some degree although it's hard to fathom what their perception of Dana White and the UFC is after watching this back and forth which was a little silly like we said. I don't know. I think it could be the beginning of a good bickering back and forth and maybe they can pressure ESPN into doing some positive stories as a tradeoff but that would only give further attacks from ESPN more credibility so that's kind of a double-edged sword. Be careful what you wish for.

Luke Thomas: So in other words, if they did start covering MMA properly but then went back to a negative story, people would only take that more seriously?

Nate Wilcox: Yep

Luke Thomas: Interesting. My sense about it long term is I don't think it's in anyone's best intereste that they depart from ESPN. I think ESPN provides a lot of credibility. One thing that Dave Meltzer always notes is, if you look at the way boxing is covered, boxing gets less coverage outside of Pacquiao/Mayweather than MMA does in terms of general front page pick-up. If you look at the front pages of ESPN.com or Sports.Yahoo.com or SBNation obviously, you'll get more MMA on there if for no other reason than there's a lot more of it but there's still a bit of a novelty act kind of thing to MMA - unfairly in my judgment.

It's one thing you and I rally against constantly, but that's the nature of the game and boxing still has a little bit of that sporting treatment that we just can't get. When I covered the Khan-Peterson fight here in D.C., you wouldn't believe all the old media mainstream journalists here, all the major papers of the UK and not just the dumb ones. They're all kind of different than the New York Times but they were all here and I thought that was really kind of interesting that this is a fight not even remotely on the same level as Overeem-Lesnar, it's not and moreover, that's a heavyweight fight that still captures imagination and yet, I bet you the Wall Street Journal didn't cover that or Reuters, Reuters was there. Of all things, Reuters? How could it be? But it was!

I feel like those are still some last vestiges and I would say, ESPN or no ESPN, you and I both know for a fact that it's not a mystery. We talked about this in the previous chat. The UFC wants to get sports audiences. They've got some of those pro wrestling guys, they've got fight fans which are a cousin of sports fans but they don't quite have the Redskins fans. They've got some, but not as many as they'd like. They've got some of those Red Sox fans, but they'd like more and the best way to get that of course is getting plugged on NFL games, that's great. Being on FX, that's great too but as I just mentioned, they're not in Reuters, they're not in the Wall Street Journal and we'll see going forward what kind of things are like at ESPN. I wonder what's happening now. We'll see what happens but I kind of hope not, I don't know but I hope they're not painting themselves into a corner and only relying on just a few of these sporting media organs to help push them into those audiences that I know very much that they want to and frankly I hope they do reach them. It benefits you and me if they reach them, trust me. That is my one concern going forward.

Stay tuned for part 2.

Interview: Dave Camarillo Talks 'Submit Everyone', Leaving AKA, Jiu-Jitsu Tactics, Jon Fitch and Coaching Future

2012-01-19T13:58:16Z

Dave Camarillo, former coach at MMA gym American Kickboxing Academy (AKA), talks to Luke Thomas and Nate Wilcox of MMA Nation about his new book 'Submit Everyone'. Camarillo, a judo and jiu-jitsu black belt, talks the importance of tactics, UFC welterweight Jon Fitch's style of fighting and his future as a coach or cornerman.

Luke Thomas and I had the opportunity last week to speak to Dave Camarillo, the long-time head Jiu-Jitsu coach at the American Kickboxing Academy. Dave is promoting his new book Submit Everyone: The Guerrilla Jiu-Jitsu Files: Classified Field Manual for Becoming a Submission-focused Fighter, co-authored with Kevin Howell.

Dave told us at the beginning of the interview that he's left AKA to focus on his own gyms in Northern California although he expects to continue to corner Jon Fitch and Josh Koscheck for the rest of their careers. Luke and I got to ask Dave a lot of questions about his unique blend of Judo and Jiu-Jitsu -- he's one of the few people to have competed at a high level in both grappling sports -- and we drilled pretty deep into some of the ideas from Submit Everyone.

We also discussed Jon Fitch's fighting style, applying Camarillo's 'guerrilla jiu-jitsu' style to MMA, how Camarillo approaches teaching submission grappling to fighters with excellent wrestling backgrounds.