The Official Mma/ufc Thread

Just watched Woodley give Cowherd the business that was great.

 

I think MMA is in for some major business side changes in the very near future. Randy Couture and a group of fighters/lawyers are attempting to get legislation past that will protect MMA fighters with the Ali act, that same group and more are trying for a fighters union or association, the UFC is owned by a conglomerate now that is interested in even bigger money, and now Connor has demonstrated how much value an MMA fighter can have. I don't know what will be the first step and I do not know how its all going to work out, but in 5 yrs I would imagine MMA being a completely different ball game for the fighters.

 

Spoiler

Hilarious, but spoilered for Language. - TIME
**my bad, brother**

 

Don't get me wrong he won the first three rounds and was definitely a lot better than I was expecting, but CM got walked down by a 40yr old FMJ which is basically the exact opposite of how he fights, imagine he tried to do that against Pacman when they fought, suicide.

They are basically two different sports, if the roles were reversed and FMJ had to get in the cage, CM would absolutely annihilate him.

 

he lost a match, not a fight

 

FMJ didn't respect CM's punching power, if he did, there is no way he would walk him down the entire match, CM had a (rumored) 20lb weight advantage on fight night and was meant to be blitzing him out of there and was gassed by the end of round three which is when he arguably lost every single round after. When FMJ decided to increase his output he was hitting him over 40%, CM deserves his credit for even making it to round 10 and showing some nice counterpunching during the fight.

Also, the ref should definitely have dealt with the backturning (lame) and also the rabbit punching, but for CM he had problems fighting on the inside, probably because he doesn't have to deal with it in MMA.

 

the crossover sport reaction on twitter is pretty funny, but Phelps actually responded

 

Who cares .... best fight of the year happening tonight in the Boxing thread and no one seems to give a crap.

 

Meh, through curroption, boring product, and the rise of other sports, the george foreman of tomorrow is play DE not in a boxing gym, boxing has burried itself. While the big names will keep makig big money for a while longer boxing is on life support. They are the circuit city of the sports world and the NBA is trying its best to be Blockbuster... As MMA continues to grow, evolve, and expand it will fill the niche spot left in the sporting world that boxing has abandonded.

And yes tonight is a great fight, but its far from mainstream in America.

 

Seems that way sadly but I was referring to peeps here on LB.

 

Interesting that you say the NBA is trying to be Blockbuster

Can you expand on that thought @Kingsama ?

 

Doubt this is what the referral was but how about unlikely comparison to those of us with A/V Jones that root for the highest quality of physical media (Blockbuster) like Bluray over compressed bit rate of streaming (Netflix).



Not to say it isn't easy to get hooked on other aspects of streaming.

 

The NBA is losing viewership, its selling less tickets, and is becoming less and less popular in the sports world. This has gotten so bad Adidas just walked away from the apparel contract with no negotiations. In spite of this, both the NBA and its business partners like ESPN continue to push the same old business models that got them to where they are now just like blockbuster. After the rise of Jordan the league made some huge decisions on how they would market the league. They became superstar oriented instead of marketing teams, they became scoring oriented, and they attempted to make the league a "white collar" sport instead of the "blue collar" sport bascketball has always been. These key changes have really sunk their ship. Instead of enjoying the brand loyality that every other major team sport still enjoys, the NBA is forced to now only market players.

When we were kids it was The Los Angeles Lakers as a team marketed over the players, now its about the players. While the marketing of players through endorsements the plays earn is a great thing, the NBA marketing games as Lebreon vs Steph, has under cut the ability to hang on to fans. While we love the Lakers and even begrudgingly keep following them, new fans lose interest when their fave player retire, move on, or start to stink. This is painfully obvious in the change of basketball from team oriented strategies to the iso ball that we all hate.

The next change is that in order to preserve exciting 80's early 90's high octane scoring they have taken steps to basically eliminate the ability to play defense, which has resulted in high scores but at the cost of a good product. This too has alienated many consumers and though they still have the desired end, they have destroyed the product worse than ever as it is litered with touch fouls, travels, and just bad basketball where hitting a 15 footer is thought of as a special skill instead of a basic one.

Finally, basketball has always been a blue collar sport. Whether it was superstars born and bread on the urban asphault or the country dirt courts the fans and the athletes have been working class. This was encampsolated in the way basketball was played. Basketball was a rough, hard hitting, hard working mans game. However, the NBA has turned it into a hands off, white collar game and that has alienated mountains of fans. Adding to this is the reality that like boxing the league office is overly involved in things it shouldn't be, like boxing the officials/judges/refs are trash. I think this is in an effort to get that product they want, but that product is what is killing them.

So much like blockbuster who clung to old business models that were dedicated to a vision the core consumer never really wanted the NBA keeps on keeping on turning a blind eye to what their core consumers really want and how the market is rapidly changing. Instead of trying to fix this, they like blockbuster who tried desperately to block netflix and redbox, have too shifted into desperation mode and are now running their business like the WWE. Turn on sports tv or go to a sports website and you will find it littered with reality tv like player drama and rumors instead of actual basketball news.

The NBA, and other pro sports are on the clock and if they dont fix it they will be just like blockbuster and soon to be boxing.

 

Great post.

Copies should be sent to Silver and (President / CEO) of ESPN.

 

Ouch