musings on mixed martial arts, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai and all things mano-a-mano

Pat Barry cracks me up (check out his Techno-Viking). And apparently Christian Morecraft and his jutting alien jaw crack Pat Barry up. Can’t say as I blame him. Morecraft looked ridiculous during Thursday’s weigh-ins for today’s UFC on FX card. Doesn’t help that he has his name tattooed in gangsta script across his belly. I’m automatically inclined to think less of someone who has their own name inked on themselves. It’s like a bad vanity plate, and across the stomach is the worst. Of course, it might come in handy for Morecroft should he find himself knocked out and unable to remember his own name.

It was bad enough that referee Mario Yamasaki cost Erick Silva an obvious victory, but he actually threatened to disqualify Rousimar Palhares, as well (if the translation on the video below is accurate). After Palhares subbed Mike Massenzio he tapped him on the back to shake his hand, at which point Yamasaki stepped in. Now, I get Yamasaki’s earlier warnings about Palhares grabbing his opponent’s glove. Totally legitimate. But threatening to DQ a guy for wanting to shake his hand? That was the most-genteel and polite thing Palhares has ever done. Yamasaki might as well have slapped Palhares.

If you need a clear sign that Strikeforce is in palliative care then the live attendance figures for the promotion’s most-recent event should convince you that Zuffa is about to pull the plug. According to figures released by the Nevada State Athletic Commission, a mere 1,992 people showed up to watch Luke Rockhold knock out Keith Jardine at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas on January 7. Of those, 1,065 had their tickets comped to them, leaving 927 actual paying customers and a gate of $68,805. Another 727 tickets went unsold.

Bruce Lee was bad-ass, no doubt. But I don’t need Dana White or Jon Jones or Kobe Bryant or Mickey Rourke to tell me that. I don’t need talking heads and hagiography.

I want to hear more about his cultural impact, not just his pop cultural impact, about how he influenced culture in the 20th century, how he gave Asian men balls. But this will certainly lack depth and insight. And if the trailer is any indication, the archival footage of Lee won’t be anything we haven’t seen before.

It’s been a rough week for Zuffa and the UFC, despite delivering off one of the most-exciting cards of the past year. The high of seeing featherweight champ Jose Aldo’s crowd surfing following his UFC 142 triumph was soon dampened (and I’m not just talking about Anthony Johnson’s weight problems).

UFC 145, originally set for March in Montreal, has been scrapped because of “scheduling complications” and an inability to lock down a championship main event, according to UFC boss Dana White. Already announced for the card were Che Mills vs. Rory MacDonald, Ben Rothwell vs. Brendan Schaub, Mark Bocek vs. Matt Wiman, Mark Hominick vs. Eddie Yagin, Travis Browne vs. Chad Griggs, Mac Danzig vs. Efrain Escudero and Chris Clements vs. Keith Wisniewski. So yeah, the card was in desperate need of some big names, which are becoming more and more scarce due to injuries (Georges St. Pierre, who’s on the shelf until at least November) and there just being too many damn cards.

Meanwhile, Chael Sonnen will step in to replace the injured Mark Munoz against Michael Bisping at UFC on Fox 2 on January 28, with the winner set to face middleweight champ Anderson Silva.  While the war of words between Sonnen and Bisping is bound to entertain, I’m a bit disappointed that we won’t see Bisping against Demian Maia.

Even more disappointing is that leg lock monster Rousimar Palhares turned down a crack at Maia because his passport has expired and he’s tired from fighting in two UFC events (including a 63-second submission win over Mike Massenzio at UFC 142 that saw him barely break a sweat) and the ADCC in the past year, which is really a way of saying he’s afraid of locking horns with the Brazilian jiu-jitsu ace Maia. Because claiming he can’t get his passport renewed in time or that he’s too tired to take the biggest fight of his career is just plain ridiculous. Maia will now face Chris Wiedman, who stepped up without a second thought. Wiedman last fought at UFC 139, scoring a technical-submission win over Tom Lawlor.

Then there’s Zuffa instituting a  new policy requiring all potential UFC and Strikeforce fighters, including those who compete on The Ultimate Fighter, pass a pre-contract screening for performance-enhancing drugs. You can thank Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos and Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal for prompting the promotion to take a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, TUF fighters will still be allowed to consume alcohol.

Want a better perspective on the UFC fighter salary debate stirred up by ESPN? Look no further than Dave Meltzer’s lengthy breakdown over on Yahoo.com. Here’s the most-salient part, especially when it comes to pay-per-view earnings and how earnings compare to boxing and the Big Four (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL), and it’s important reading if you’re at all interested in the business-side of MMA:

Figuring out what is and isn’t fair is a difficult task. For one, UFC, as a business, is structured completely differently than the big four team sports, which pay closer to half of total revenue to the athletes. It’s also structured differently than boxing, where the major name fighters earn significantly more than UFC’s biggest draws. Georges St. Pierre recently said that he earns $4 million to $5 million per fight, but that figure likely includes sponsorship revenue. UFC has costs associated with producing and marketing shows, front-office expenses, and international expansion costs boxing organizations don’t have.

Additionally, the UFC’s draw is different than boxing. In boxing, most pay-per-view shows do fewer than 50,000 buys, but big draws like Manny Pacquiao can do significantly more than one-million buys, and at a higher price point than an UFC event. Floyd Mayweather vs. Victor Ortiz, for example, grossed $78 million just on pay-per-view revenue. Conversely, if UFC 141 was Zuffa’s biggest show of the year and did 800,000 buys that would be a gross of closer to $36 million, and Zuffa only gets a percentage in the range of half of that.

Virtually every UFC show will do at least 200,000 buys, but the top ceiling for the biggest events isn’t as high as in boxing, in part because there isn’t nearly the level of mainstream media coverage as there is for a Pacquiao or Mayweather fight. Plus, as a general rule, UFC pays undercard fighters better, and markets the shows around the top several matches on a card as opposed to just one killer main event.

The closest business model to UFC is that of World Wrestling Entertainment, which is believed to pay in the range of 13-15 percent of its total revenue to its performers. While some will argue WWE is a form of performance art and not a real athletic competition – and thus the performers don’t deserve as much money – the dollars WWE derives from its performers, who take a legitimate physical pounding, is every bit as green as those which UFC makes.

Both WWE and UFC employ hundreds of full-time front-office workers, so contrasting the percentage they pay to, say, an NFL team, isn’t necessarily a fair comparison. But on the other hand, like UFC, WWE has been a very profitable business built off the bodies of its performers for the past several years.

From 2001-04, UFC lost tens of millions of dollars. If you are talking about what the fighters were earning then, which is a lot less than now, it was significantly more than the company could afford and remain in business for the long-term. UFC pays more than other MMA organizations, but almost every other major MMA company existing collapsed due to financial issues, from Affliction to Elite XC, which often paid fighters more than the companies made.

In fact, UFC nearly collapsed under the weight of the debt. But the company turned the corner in 2005 thanks to a deal with Spike TV, and has been running with significantly high EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) based on regular Standard & Poor’s Credit reports since that time. However, other operational costs remain, such as getting legalized nationwide and internationally, which no other professional sport has had to deal with.

Still, anyone who has been around fighting at any level knows the stories of the fighters who aren’t big stars. Whether it’s the UFC or other organizations, those trying to get established make little money, sleep on friends’ couches and even go into debt trying to pursue a fighting career.

“We fleshed out stories on guys on the low end, who make six and six [$6,000 guaranteed and a $6,000 winning bonus], eight and eight or ten and ten, the scale for incoming fighters,” [ESPN reporter John] Barr said. “Even though they wouldn’t attach their names to it, we heard from enough of them.

“By the time you pay your trainer, one experienced fighter told me a training camp costs him close to 10 grand, some 7-10 grand, and he might fight three times a year. So, low end, that’s $21,000, and that’s before he’s paid his management company.”

Barr noted that no UFC fighters would go on the record, but several were willing to talk. It’s become accepted when you talk to fighters these days that, unlike athletes in other sports, what they get paid, at least for attribution, is not something many will discuss in detail.

“The reality is that nobody wanted to talk for attribution,” Barr said. “We talked to everyone. We talked to guys who made millions of dollars, guys in between, and guys at the bottom end of the pay scale.”

UFC is not a monopoly, as there are untold numbers of smaller promotions around the country. One competitor, Bellator, is owned by media giant Viacom, which will have a very significant television deal with Spike starting in 2013. But UFC is the controlling major league and with Zuffa’s purchase of Strikeforce in March, fighters’ ability to leverage two competitors against each other was gone.

On December 30, the three lowest-paid fighters were listed at earning $8,000, although virtually every fighter on a UFC pay-per-view show gets a bonus of some sorts, usually a minimum of $5,000 that the public doesn’t hear about. Of the 22 fighters on the show, 14 earned in excess of $25,000 disclosed.

Most UFC fighters fight three times a year and usually have to pay a significant percentage to a manager and to trainers that most people looking at those numbers don’t realize.

While I understand Joe Rogan’s explanation for why he confronted referee Mario Yamasaki after the Erick Silva DQ at Saturday’s UFC 142 — a combination of shock and wanting to do what people watching would also do, which is ask Yamasaki “WTF?!” — that doesn’t mean it was the time or place. Here’s what Rogan wrote on The Underground:

He’s a great guy, and I’m always happy to see him. When I step into the octagon however, I represent the people watching at home that might have obvious questions, and when something is controversial I’m forced to confront it honestly because that’s what I would want to hear from a person in my position if I was a fan watching it at home.

I think Mario Yamasaki is one of the best in the world at refereeing MMA. No doubt about it. He’s got great insight to the sport, he’s a life long martial artist, and he’s a really smart guy. What I was acting from, is that I saw an incredible young talent get denied a KO victory for a questionable call. When I entered into the Octagon and was told of the official ruling that Silva was going to be disqualified for illegal blows to the back of the head everyone that I was around who heard the news opened their mouths in shock. Everyone said, “what?”

The people in the truck couldn’t believe it. I had to read it back to them because I thought it was a mistake, and when I leaned over to explain it to Goldie he couldn’t believe it either. I had to ask Mario about it. I didn’t know how he was going to respond, but I had to ask him.

Erick Silva is a very promising fighter and I felt like I had a responsibility to address the issue. No disrespect intended.

I don’t blame UFC boss Dana White for being a little hot under the collar over ESPN’s story on underpaid UFC fighters. The UFC is an easy target. He goes a little overboard, but the piece he pulls together is a nice balancing out of the original.

Still, though, it doesn’t exactly help his case — that the UFC provides ample opportunities for fighters to make a very good living thanks to bonuses, cuts of the pay-per-view revenue, sponsorship dollars — by only having three fighters comment who also all happen to be former UFC champions who have made millions. That doesn’t mean a whole lot to the guy who’s spent three months preparing for his UFC debut for which he earns $6,000.

Obviously, anybody whose 9 to 5 job involves getting punched in the face deserves to make serious coin. But I’m not sure a bunch of anonymous sources, some shaky math and Ken Shamrock are the best way to make that point.

The best argument for the increase of fighter salaries: if the UFC sees itself as one of the big boys alongside the NFL and NBA, then it needs to pay its fighters accordingly. That doesn’t mean fighters should be banking Alex Rodriguez or Kobe Bryant or Cristiano Ronaldo type numbers, or that UFC newcomers should be cashing cheques for half-a-mil like the latest league rookies, but some adjustments have to be made considering the UFC is a billion-dollar company.

And while Lorenzo Fertitta comparing UFC purses to boxing purses appears apt on the surface because they’re both combat sports, at least boxing has the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act. And since when does the UFC willingly compare itself to boxing anyway?

A knee to the face is how most people will remember featherweight champ Jose Aldo’s win over challenger Chad Mendes at Saturday’s UFC 142. That, or Aldo’s post-fight sprint into the crowd. Certainly both were memorable, with Aldo ending Mendes’s night with one second remaining in the first round and then celebrating with the Rio crowd before returning to the cage for the post-fight interview (Jesus deserves His props, after all).

But also noteworthy were the times that Aldo illegally grabbed the fence to prevent himself from being taken down by the highly decorated wrestler, something which could’ve have been a game changer considering how successful Mark Hominick was against Aldo once he got him to the ground at UFC 129. Aldo probably still would’ve found a way to win, but maybe not. At the very least, a takedown or two against the toughest UFC fighter to take down would’ve changed how the rest of the fight played out, if not the final outcome.