UFC/MMA: Face Gane and March Backwards Into Hell

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What will cause the heavyweight title to stay vacant this time? This poll is closed.
Jon Jones goes on a pre-fight bender in Vegas	3	8.11%
Jon Jones goes on a post-fight bender in Vegas	1	2.70%
Jon Jones goes on a mid-fight bender in Vegas	4	10.81%
Jon Jones tests positive for supercocaine, which USADA spends the next three months pretending is normal	18	48.65%
A well-fought majority draw	1	2.70%
No Contest on account of simultaneous dick kicks	10	27.03%
Total:	37 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

CarlCX posted:

I think champions going up in weight to fight other champions is hard to justify in general if you care about divisional matchmaking, and the thing that makes it better is their having sufficiently dominated their field of contenders such that there isn't anything to accomplish at their primary weight class for a period of time. People felt iffy about Izzy challenging Jan because at that point he'd only defended the belt twice, one of those defenses was the extremely weird Romero fight, and he hadn't fought Cannonier or given Whittaker his extremely well-earned rematch. By contrast, Volkanovski had four defenses, the last three were absurdly definitive, and until Yair beat Emmett (and if Allen beats Holloway) no one in the entire top ten had a real claim to a shot. The acceptability hinges on how many questions the fans feel the champion has left unanswered.

In the case of Jon Jones, his justification for a heavyweight title shot is his light-heavyweight greatness, but he's only actually fought two people currently in the entire light-heavyweight top fifteen, one of those fights was four years ago, and the other was against the #11 guy in the division who's on a four-fight losing streak and he arguably won. There's nothing BUT questions about how Jones would do against the light-heavyweight division right now, and that makes the proposition feel worse.

Also he's a dickhead.

The argument I have for Izzy is that he more or less cleaned out the division, aside from Cannonier, in his build up to the title win and they were all fairly strong wins in his favor. Kelvin was the only "oh maybe he could lose here" fight he had in his road to the title. He starched Bobby and while Bobby had worked his way back up a bit, losing the title via KO is hard to come back and justify a rematch over as compared to a decision loss. Add in that LHW was pretty much dead at that point thanks to Jones and just it being a bad division it was more or less a "yeah sure why not you're a hot talent right now" kind of thing that isn't too absurd.

Mekchu fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Mar 3, 2023

# ¿ Mar 3, 2023 07:12

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 18:25

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

blue footed boobie posted:

What is even the appeal of the apex for the UFC? You would think they want to make money from the gates at arenas.

I guess they just want to pump out shittier and shittier events that no one will go to so they can bleed the ESPN contract for everything it�s worth.

The point of the APEX is so they can run events and cut out the middle man in the form of the arena who takes a cut. It also lets them double it as a TUF stage which they were already doing but instead of a lovely warehouse in Las Vegas its now a prettier looking warehouse in Las Vegas.

There was indications they were also going to use APEX to rent it out for smaller events (eg. LFA etc.) who wanted to do an event in Vegas but not pay the high prices for the different arenas. There was an article in early 2022 that said the idea is they're gonna add food facilities/etc. so basically at this point UFC Apex is its own regional fairgrounds building for events.

In short, its just a way for them to cut corners and pocket more money than they're spending and if they're doing DWCS, TUF, and UFC events there with people on shittier and shittier pay rates they don't have to worry about gate revenue.

Especially since their deal with ESPN requires X number events per year and to keep that they can't just do events all over the world anymore and still be profitable in that money making scheme.

Brut posted:

They want to make a lot of money per event with huge sold out crowds, but a lot of places still have (or at least had last year) various covid regulations preventing that or even market research showing that they won't sell out (cuz people don't wanna risk covid just to watch Fight Night: Who vs Huh), so they don't want to deal with those places.

They built the APEX before COVID. HTH

Mekchu fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Mar 3, 2023

# ¿ Mar 3, 2023 11:25

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

InfiniteZero posted:

I don't understand why Roadhouse needs a remake

Half of pop culture these days is just banking on nostalgia

# ¿ Mar 4, 2023 15:25

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Lone Goat posted:

it used to be, every time you won you got a new belt, did they replace the new belt with a single gem now?

When the swapped from the old design to the new one, they put this sideplate on that has spots to put rubies into for each successful title defense rather than just giving you a new title belt.

Possibly because DJ was bugging Dana a bunch about getting his new belt for each victory, which was the norm at the time because like...i think only a handful of people had beyond 6, and this is likely cheaper to do than making a whole new belt each time.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2023 13:04

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Alaois posted:

okay that's where my confusion was, I thought that the Tuivasa fight was for the interim belt again after Ngannou was stripped

Ngannou was still in the UFC when the Tuivasa fight happened.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2023 23:42

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Alaois posted:

i mean it connected but i would still call it an unsuccessful attempt

How is it considered unsuccessful if the kick connected with Jones' cup and caused the fight to need a break in the action for Jones to recover from the nut shot?

# ¿ Mar 5, 2023 23:47

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Fozzy The Bear posted:

Its 100% fake

This.

Random p just make nice looking graphics with like zero actual credible research into the pay to support it and random people on the internet assume it's legit etc.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2023 04:10

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Other than Yan/Dvalishvili, and a few of the other lighter weight fights, the Bellator card looks a bit more appealing given its the start of their LW tournament and that bracket is pretty strong.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2023 03:04

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2023/3/...ay-on-broadcast

quote:

There are a lot of things that get said in the Octagon that don�t make it to the actual UFC broadcast.

Fights get uploaded to the UFC Fight Pass library without commercial breaks though, and sometimes it captures interesting moments that most audiences don�t get to see. While browsing those archives, Twitter user @DovySimuMMA was able to notice one such moment between Bruce Buffer and Danish UFC lightweight Damir Hadzovic.

Following his last TKO win back at UFC Fight Night 145, Hadzovic�s opponent Polo Reyes was hurt remained on the ground for an extended period. Seemingly feeling bad about the damage he dealt to his opponent, Hadzovic was seen approaching Buffer while they were on commercial break.

Some of the audio wasn�t very clear, but the exchange seems to have been as follows.

�They don�t pay us enough to do this poo poo,� Hadzovic was heard whispering to Buffer.

�I know, I know, I know,� the longtime UFC announcer responded. �When you see somebody like this...�

Buffer was then heard calling Hadzovic back. �Just, don�t say that in your interview, okay?�

Hadzovic acknowledged him, and said he won�t do that as he wants to receive a post-fight bonus.

�There you go,� Buffer responded. �I hope you get it.�

Prior to returning from commercial break, Buffer was also heard on the UFC Fight Pass broadcast directing Hadzovic and the referee to �get away from that, I don�t want them to see.�

Buffer was pointing at Reyes, who was still on the ground getting attended to.

https://twitter.com/DovySimuMMA/status/1633522414633250817

This was all back in 2019 at UFC Fight Night: Błachowicz vs. Santos (aka UFC Fight Night 145 aka UFC on ESPN+ 3) and was Damir's 5th fight in the promotion.

Per Sportskeeda (though this isn't substantiated with any proper forms/evidence in the article]

quote:

Bruce Buffer is worth over $10 million. The 64-year-old UFC announcer reportedly earns $50,000 per fight in the world's biggest MMA promotion and $100,000 per bout for special events.

Meanwhile Damir Hadzovic was on, likely if we use the 4 fight contract norm UFC follows, on his 2nd contract, making most likely 10k/10k. He made $4,000 in Promotional Compliance Pay but no bonus.

Right now, Damir is on his 3rd UFC contract (per his facebook in February 2022), likely again at 10k/10k or possibly 12/12 (which is hard to determine as UFC events aren't always posting the figher pay) and per MMAJunkie's article made $6,000 in Promotional Compliance pay for his fight versus Marc Diakese back in July 2022.

This is all so loving hilariously lovely for fighters especially given the recent reports by Endeavor/UFC that despite having their best financial year ever, they've lowered fighter pay.

https://bloodyelbow.substack.com/p/finances-ufc-admits-to-lower-fighter-pay-as

quote:

Expenses

In addition to higher revenues last year, direct operating costs for Owned Sports Properties were also up $54.1 million, or 14.2%, from 2021, totaling $433.8 million. The higher direct operating costs were credited mostly to expenses connected to the increased number of live UFC and PBR events as well as costs for the seven months Endeavor ran the Diamond Baseball Holdings. It was also noted by Endeavor that these increases in direct operating costs were �partially offset by lower athlete costs for UFC.�

Based on comments by Endeavor executives, we estimated that total fighter pay in 2021 was $178.8 million or 17.5% of the UFC�s revenue. This falls right in line with what we know about the share of revenue the UFC paid in the past and what they projected they would continue to pay after their sale in 2016.

Operating costs were �partially offset by lower athlete costs for UFC.�

If UFC�s total athlete pay was just 1% lower in 2022 than it was in 2021, and their revenues ended up being $1.14 billion, then the fighters� share of revenue would have been only 15.5% last year.

Of course, if fighter pay was lowered more than 1%, their revenue share would�ve been even more lopsided in the company�s favor.

Mekchu fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Mar 10, 2023

# ¿ Mar 9, 2023 23:27

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Nierbo posted:

Bruce gets at least 50grand per fight?! That's disgusting

DO YALL WANT A BOXC posted:

surely that's gotta be per card. i can't imagine they're shelling $600,000 per 12-fight card?

As I said, there's no supporting evidence in the Sportskeeda article that supports the figures they're putting out so its anybody's guess what his actual pay is because its not specifically reported anywhere.

Given that back when she was around, Rousey was saying the ring card girls were making more than the fighters were, I wouldn't be surprised if its a similar situation for Buffer.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2023 00:34

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

CommonShore posted:

I can think of 3 instances where a world title/#1 in the world spot was directly decided on a champ's failed spinning attack, and a 4th where the champ got countered on bad spinning attacks many times en route to a finish.

Can anyone think of a time where a world title/#1 spot was won or defended by a successful spinning attack?

Da Terra Serra

# ¿ Mar 10, 2023 10:11

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XORKwmGmsKA

:laffo:

A PHD in Australia who focuses on hydration and how it relates to combat sports, shows how he's helped MMA fighters cheat their way past a hydration test.

https://www.ecu.edu.au/schools/medical-and-health-sciences/our-staff/profiles/lecturers/dr-oliver-barley

# ¿ Mar 10, 2023 23:52

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Benson Cunningham posted:

It's really not though. He's an identifiable part of the prestige associated with the UFC. The ring announcers for ONE, Bellator, and other promotions pale in comparison. Just because fighters are underpaid doesn't mean he is overpaid.

Yes he is part of the branding.

As are the fighters who the whole business is built around creating the content of the whole brand and without the whole thing would fall apart.

Just because Buffer is a big part of UFC's brand doesn't mean the fighters shouldn't make more than him.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 13:24

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

LobsterMobster posted:

this is just sad, man

https://twitter.com/MrMWells/status/1634760453208395777

https://twitter.com/MrMWells/status/1634760455393517569

these people did not tweet that. those tweets are lies

Please don't forget this tweet which should be a shock to nobody about the platform chosen to broadcast that on, and the political ideology that Dana openly supported.

https://twitter.com/FightOpinion/status/1634749956266528769

# ¿ Mar 12, 2023 11:53

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

BlindSite posted:

To be honest if you were relying on instagram or twitter you wouldn't have known there was a card on yesterday for all the powerslap bullshit.

see the UFC.com page for the Jones/Gane fight that covered 1/3rd of the screen with PowerSlap promotion (or that the UFC twitter/insta keeps reposting the PowerSlap promo poo poo).

Brut posted:

Eh if you care about UFC cards you should be relying on insta/twitter to tell you when there isn't a card on a Saturday, otherwise you should assume that there is. That being said, obviously, gently caress power slap and lmao at the fake tweets.

This is stupid. UFC doesn't operate on an "every weekend" schedule like every other sports leagues, so using their social media spaces to keep track of when an event is on is not absurd. Who just assumes there's a UFC event on EVERY weekend?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2023 08:23

Mekchu: Apr 10, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS