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bone_and_sinew

breaking down barriers in gratuitous nudity
Ubisoft is the Tito Ortiz of gaming. Once great but remained stagnant, never really evolved, and became a can as a result.
 
dream

dream

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Bellator MMA confirmed that they will be moving to Friday nights for live shows in the fall.

The promotion will run its second season on Spike in the 9-11 p.m. time slot starting on 9/13, moving from Thursday, to avoid the National Football League games on the NFL Network, according to Spike President Kevin Kay in a story at SportsIllustrated.com, which first broke the story about the new time slot. A Bellator source confirmed the story to us. Spike sources stated that it has not been determined how many weeks the season would be.

The night is notable because Bellator had run on Friday nights on MTV 2 throughout 2012, and ratings were down 18 percent from its 2011 numbers, on Saturdays. The promotion moved off of Saturday because of frequent competition from UFC events, as well as major boxing shows, But Friday nights, due to the lower number of males in the demo that MMA draws from being out, has been thus far a graveyard for the sport.

The Ultimate Fighter moved to Friday in 2012, and even with a revamped live format, did record low numbers. Going back to the old format only caused another decline, This caused the move to Tuesdays, where numbers increased significantly. The lows weren't because of the shows competing with each other, as Bellator ran from 8-10 p.m. and Ultimate Fighter from 10-11 p.m., although there was some bleed-over since Bellator main events frequently ran past 10 p.m.

Kay said in the story that what happened on MTV 2 was not an indicator of what would happen on Spike, given Spike is a much higher rated channel, with a higher profile and reaches more homes.

In 2011, on Saturdays, Bellator averaged 204,000 viewers in the spring, 229,000 for monthly summer specials, and 186,000 in the fall, which frequently went against major UFC and boxing matches that year.

In 2012, on Fridays, Bellator averaged 155,000 viewers in the spring, 180,000 for the monthly summer specials, and 162,000 in the fall.

But it's going to be tough, because Bellator is also moving away from its TNA lead-in.

Spike's previous history, when it ran UFC and TNA together on Thursdays several years back, was that football hurt UFC numbers more than TNA numbers, which is why Ultimate Fighter moved to Wednesdays while TNA has remained on Thursday. A move from Thursday at this point for TNA would probably be disastrous.

There was no easy answer for where to move Bellator once the decision was made to avoid the NFL. For the fall, that would eliminate Sunday, Monday and Thursday. Saturday would buck college football, several UFC shows and boxing. Spike has its own Tuesday night block of original programming they didn't want to break up.

So this left either Wednesday or Friday, and with UFC running Ultimate Fighter every Wednesday in the fall on Fox Sports 1, as well as several live events, Friday became the best option.

“I don’t want to see Bellator going head-to-head with the UFC,” said Kay. “I don’t think that makes any sense for fans. No matter who would win in that scenario, you don’t want to not give the fans the choice to watch both.”

Kay claimed that TUF on Fridays did more than 1 million viewers, and he expected with live fights to beat that number. The odds aren’t good for that, because with a wrestling lead-in, on Thursdays, a night with far more TV viewers in the demo, Bellator averaged 809,000 viewers those nights.

Friday’s key competition would be Smackdown in the first hour, as well as ESPN 2 boxing (which usually pulls about a 0.4 rating) later that night.

Bellator starts its Fight Master reality show, on Wednesdays, on 6/19, but it will end before UFC starts its major Wednesday push with live shows on 8/28 and 9/4.

Bellator will also do monthly shows, the first being 6/19, over the summer, on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. The first show, from Thackerville, OK, will have the beginnings of the summer four-man light heavyweight and heavyweight tournament. The light heavies have King Mo Lawal vs. Seth Petruzelli and Renato Babalu Sobral vs. Jacob Noe. The heavyweights have Richard Hale vs. Vinicius Queiroz and Vitaly Minakov vs. Ron Sparks, plus War Machine’s return against Blas Avena.

The second summer show is on 7/31 in Albuquerque, with two five-round title fights with Ben Askren defending the welterweight title against Andre Koreshkov and Michael Chandler defending the lightweight title against David “Caveman” Rickels, as well as former UFC fighter Rob Emerson vs. Patricky Pitbull Freire. The finals of this past season’s welterweight tournament, the winner getting a title shot, between Ben Saunders and Douglas Lima, that was scheduled for this show, has been postponed a second time because Lima suffered a rib injury in training. The fight didn’t happen during the spring season because Lima broke his hand during his semifinal win over Bryan Baker.

There will be a special live event on a Saturday, 9/7, a night that UFC has no event, which will be the Fight Master final which will be a live show that kicks off the fall season, before the move to Friday.

As far as The Fight Master show, the first episode was screened for reporters this past week in Los Angeles. The reports were that it was very different from Ultimate Fighter. In this show, the fighters picked who coached Bellator them during the season. But each of the four coaches, Frank Shamrock, Randy Couture, Greg Jackson and Joe Warren, could only get four fighters of the 16 who make the house.



The UFC ran the finals of season two of Ultimate Fighter Brazil, a show designed largely to be a live special on Globo, the largest network in the country, on 6/8 in the company’s debut at the Paulo Sarasate Arena in Fortaleza, Brazil.

On paper, the show figured to have limited interest in North America. There were only a few Americans on the show. The big stars to the hot sellout crowd of 6,286 fans, were, aside from the main eventers, Godofredo Pepey, Erick Silva and Rony Jason, all Brazilian up-and-comers. The top three matches were Brazilian vs. Brazilian.

But the show was easy to watch, and ended up successful. Ten of the 12 fights ended before the time expired, with six in the first round and four in the second round. There were eight submissions in all, tying the record for submission holds set at UFC 2 back in 1994. Because of so many quick matches, and the fact they couldn’t start the TUF Brazil final match until after 10:20 p.m. Eastern time because that’s when the show started on Globo, Fuel was able to air 10 of the 12 fights during its three hour and 20 minute broadcast, which may be a record.

In the main event, Fabricio Werdum defeated Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira via submission with a second round armbar in a match that showed that it’s the mileage and not the age that matters. Werdum is only 14 months younger than Nogueira, but Nogueira has been in so many wars, that he had slowed down to the point he couldn’t keep up, even on the ground. The scenario was completely different from 2006, when Nogueira was the experienced No. 2 heavyweight in the world, and Werdum had his Jiu Jitsu, but little else.

The win pretty well establishes Werdum as the most likely fighter to face the winner of Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos for the heavyweight title. With the timing, Werdum may also be booked one more fight, against either the winner of Frank Mir vs. Josh Barnett (8/31 in Milwaukee) or Alistair Overeem vs. Travis Browne (8/17 in Boston) to determine a heavyweight title contender.

Werdum after the show talked about an idea of having he and Velasquez as coaches of the first Ultimate Fighter Mexico season. There is no date announced for such a show, but given the new network, some sort of a Latin American version of the show is inevitable. Werdum lived in Spain, speaks fluent Spanish, and does Spanish language announcing for UFC.

The show did a 0.64 rating and 313,000 viewers, making it the second most-watched show in the history of Fuel TV, behind only the 3/2 show from Saitama, Japan, headlined by Wanderlei Silva vs. Brian Stann, which did 485,000. The previous second place total, for prelims of a Jan. 19 show from Brazil where the main card was on FX, was 255,000 viewers. The number has to be considered surprising considering it was a foreign-based show. The peak rating, for the main event, was 399,000 viewers. The show was also the second highest rated in the Mens 18-49 target demo, doing a 0.88 rating, phenomenal for Fuel. It was also the second most watched overall day in the station’s history. Leonardo Santos, a multi-time BJJ world champion, won TUF Brazil season two via second round submission over William Patolino, a 21-year-old who is among the youngest fighters on the roster. It was pretty clear all weekend how the second season of the show didn’t have nearly the impact of the first in Brazil. The crowd was not that hot for this match as compared to the matches with the fighters who came off the first season like Jason, Daniel Sarafian and Pepey.

A funny story came out of the Thiago Silva win over Rafael Feijao. There is apparently some sort of a real life issue with Silva and the unrelated Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva. Thiago Silva said he’d fight Bigfoot, but only if Bigfoot makes 205 pounds. Considering Bigfoot is probably a 290 pounder who cuts heavily to make 265, I don’t see him getting to 205 any time soon.

The bonuses of $50,000 each went to Thiago Silva’s win over Feijao for best fight (there were several in the running), Thiago Silva for best knockout, and Erick Silva for best submission (and there were several that would have won best submission on nearly every show.


The UFC actually under-reported the attendance at the 5/25 show in Las Vegas, although not the gate. They had announced 11,089, which would have been the lowest attended MGM Grand Garden Arena crowd since 2002. However, the actual attendance was 12,380, with 10,075 paid for $2,942,365. They were 1,403 tickets shy of a sellout the way they had set up the building. It was still UFC’s lowest attended show at the MGM Grand since November 19, 2005, a show headlined by Rich Franklin vs. Nate Quarry.


Dana White this past week in an interview with SportsNet in Canada said that Georges St-Pierre vs. Johny Hendricks would take place in October, in the U.S. As noted before, Jerry Jones wants an October date at Cowboys Stadium with the idea of holding it at the same time as the Texas State Fair, with the idea so many tourists are in the Dallas area during that period. Las Vegas has been wanting a GSP fight for a few years, because they get so many travelers coming in from Canada. I just don’t think GSP vs Hendricks is strong enough in a place where you need to have 30,000 people minimum in the place or it could be construed negatively. Hendricks lives in Dallas.


Another interesting piece to the fall season puzzle is that Jon Jones, who at first was wanting to fight in August, was told by his doctor that he’s pushing his training on his bad toe too hard and needs to back off. Jones is now targeting October and Alexander Gustafsson. If you had two title matches on the same show and call it the 20th anniversary show, is Cowboys Stadium at that point viable? I think so. Also, the result of Anderson Silva vs. Chris Weidman on 7/6, both as far as the winner and how healthy the winner is, will play a part in fall booking and the potential of a 20th anniversary show, as well as Jones vs. Silva, which is a stadium caliber main event that could go with a second title match and have a shot at coming near UFC 100 levels of interest. At the same time, do they want to put the title bouts on the same show, rather than hold one of them off for November? They’ve got more PPV dates then they have genuine top tier drawing champions to fill, so there’s a strong argument against doubling up.


Through the process of elimination, with all the other champions not available, if there is going to be a title match on the 9/21 show in Toronto, it’s either going to be Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos, or perhaps Renan Barao defending against Eddie Wineland if Barao is recovered from his foot injury.
 
dream

dream

Member
Chael Sonnen, on UFC Tonight, when talking about Antonio Rogerio Nogueira being out of the Shogun Rua fight and his replacing Nogueira, said he knew about Nogueira’s back injury before it got out. He said he’s actually been training for a fight with Rua for a while and knew it was going to come out like this. If he’d really been training and was close enough to ready to fight, they probably have kept it on the Winnipeg show, because losing four of your six headliners is a problem. Then again, they did need a quality main event for 8/17, and with Jon Jones falling out of being able to make that night, they look to have been left with no real alternative. Sonnen also said he actually was aware of Dan Henderson’s injury last August, saying he and Henderson set up Jon Jones. Well, Greg Jackson was happy and felt vindicated and even congratulated Sonnen on trying to pull it off. I’m not sure what he was trying to pull off given Sonnen with a full training camp could do nothing with Jones, so even if he had three weeks of training instead of no training, against Jones with two plus months of training, while there is an edge of knowing who he was going against, he still had realistically no chance to win the fight. Either way it was Sonnen in a high profile main event and Jones getting a bigger buy rate than usual in a match that posed little danger for him, past the fluke ending (which, granted, had Sonnen managed to last the first round, that incredible fluke almost happened). Whether it’s true or not is anyone’s guess, given Henderson, Henderson’s management and Sonnen previously all denied it. Three days later, on UFC Tonight again, Sonnen was asked about that statement and if he really knew about Henderson being hurt and if he and Henderson really tried to set up Jones. He said, “All we know for sure is that I lied. I said one thing, and then I said the exact opposite. So you want a liar to tell you the truth? That makes as much sense as going to a Kardashian for marriage advice.” Regarding Sonnen, no matter what he says, you have to take it for entertainment purposes, and nothing else.


UFC 161 on 6/15 in Winnipeg starts at 4 p.m. with Facebook fights with Yves Jabouin vs. Dustin Pague and Mitch Clarke vs. John Maguire. The FX fights at 8 p.m. are Roland Delorme vs. Edwin Figueroa, Sean Pierson vs. Kenny Robertson, Sam Stout vs. James Krause and Tyron Woodley vs. Jake Shields. The PPV show at 10 p.m. has Ryan Jimmo vs. Igor Pokrajac, Pat Barry vs. Shawn Jordan, Alexis Davis vs. Rosi Sexton, Roy Nelson vs. Stipe Miocic and Dan Henderson vs. Rashad Evans. I don’t see any way this won’t do the lowest numbers since last August and the Benson Henderson vs. Frankie Edgar II show. Psychologically, since all the promotion was about Henderson vs. Evans instead of built around Renan Barao vs. Eddie Wineland, even though the card is weaker, I think that’s to its advantage marketing-wise. To me, if they can pull 250,000 out of this they should be very happy.


Jonathan Tweedale, the legal representative of Nick Diaz, was on The MMA Hour to promote Diaz’s first show of his WAR MMA promotion, a 6/22 event at the 12,000-seat Stockton Arena. The show is headlined by Daniel Roberts, an area fighter who was previously in UFC, against Justin Baesman. The promotion is planning on streaming the show live for free. There are some differences Diaz is insisting on, including fighting in a ring instead of a cage, and no elbows allowed on the ground. Diaz can’t fight for his own promotion because of his contract with UFC. While people are skeptical, since he’s retired many times and come back, Diaz is not taking any UFC fights right now and claims he has retired after his loss to GSP on 3/16 in Montreal. UFC booking Carlos Condit, who would make the most sense to face Diaz, against Martin Kampmann on 8/28, seemed to indicate UFC right now hasn’t been able to get Diaz to agree to fight. Right now, Diaz has said that he would only come out of retirement for a rematch with GSP, which makes no sense given he lost all five rounds, or a match with Anderson Silva, which at this point makes even less sense, Tweedale said that could change, noting that GSP or Silva could retire, or lose the title, and perhaps at that point he’d be open to coming back.


The World Series of Fighting announced that after 6/14, its next two shows will be 8/10 in Ontario, CA and 9/14 in Atlantic City. The 8/10 show will have Tyrone *****, the kickboxing star, against Andel DeAnda. They were to fight on 6/14, but ***** instead took a fight on a Glory kickboxing show on 6/22.


Jon Fitch on a press call also knocked UFC, saying he felt unwanted there, “From very early on, I was fighting for my job every single fight. They made it very clear that they didn’t like me or want me around. That’s one reason I’m so excited about being with WSOF right now. They want me around and they’re giving me a great push. It’s awesome to have people working with me instead of against me.” He also said, “There were times throughout my career with contract negotiations, there were threats of, after agreeing to terms of contracts, they were like, `It doesn’t matter anyway, as soon as you lose, we’re going to cut you and sign you back for half as much,’ type of statements. And just things said under their breath around me, things said behind my back to the media without ever sitting me down like a man and talking to me. To me that’s a clear sign of not wanting somebody around, not being appreciated and not having a place at the table.” Fitch is making a $30,000 guarantee for his main event on 6/14 in Las Vegas against Josh Burkman, with a $30,000 win bonus. For his last fight in UFC, a loss to Demian Maia on 2/2, he got $66,000 guaranteed and would have gotten another $66,000 for a win. He claimed being away from UFC opened more doors for sponsors, because a lot of sponsors don’t want to pay the six-figures annually to the promotion that gives you the right to sponsor fighters. In WSOF, the sponsor money goes directly to the fighters. It’s not a secret what the situation was with Fitch. The feeling is he wasn’t an exciting fighter and at times was a liability when it comes to producing a good show. At the same time, he had a great record and was used on main cards and high on cards and well paid because of it. He didn’t show much against Maia, also probably should have pulled out of that fight even though he won’t say that, and had a win in a great fight with Erick Silva prior to that. It’s a rare cut, the only top ten guy I can ever recall being cut but he’s also very unique in a lot of ways. The public stance is he was 1-2-1 over four fights and was 35 years old and had a high salary. Fitch lost to Johny Hendricks when injured and broke from a California housing recession, and needed to take the fight financially. With Maia, he was ill and probably should have pulled out of the fight but he isn’t the type to pull out with anything short of a very serious injury. His draw with B.J. Penn was a fight that he easily could have won (realistically, it could have been scored with either man winning, although Fitch destroyed him in the latter part of round two and all of round three). His win over Erick Silva was a fight of the year candidate. He wasn’t going to get a title shot so could only get in the way of someone who does, but there are plenty of great fighters in that situation who are never cut. It’s obviously all about his style and the perception he’s a boring fighter, and I’ve been to enough of his live matches to know he took the air out of the crowd on a number of occasions. You could argue that he’s only lost to top people, and was just one fight removed from the Silva fight, where he gained legit popularity, but they made the choice they did. It was probably the most controversial cut the company ever made. I saw a lot of people buying the high salary thing that Dana White said but that’s something I would think people would see through as $66,000 as a guarantee isn’t a gigantic amount for a name fighter. It’s all style and being out of title contention and the fear that anyone on the way up, he could still possibly beat, and if that happens, it does the company no good. If he had consistently been in exciting fights, no way he was getting cut one loss after the Silva fight, with the money he was getting. Proof, look at a guy like Donald Cerrone, whose record wasn’t nearly as good, slightly less in the salary, also had losses that should take him out of the title picture in an even deeper division, and nobody for a second would consider cutting him. That’s just how it works. Dana White responded to what Fitch said by saying that UFC paid Fitch $302,000 more than his contract called for in discretionary bonuses and another $130,000 in performance bonuses during his long career (nearly eight years) with the promotion. About $130,000 of that $302,000 extra came from main eventing the GSP fight (he made somewhere between $160,000 and $170,000 total for that fight, which included his guarantee), so he had about $170,000 in discretionary bonuses in his other 18 fights, another of which was a PPV main event against B.J. Penn in Sydney, Australia. That means most of the time he’s been paid around $10,000 more than his listed pay would have been for those shows. Fitch said that for his 18 UFC fights, he was paid $1,022,000 on his contract and the rest was the bonus money White talked about. He noted that 20 percent of his income went to management and gym fees. He estimated UFC grossed $36 million in live gates on the 18 shows he appeared on, and $208 million in PPV. “There’s a reason nobody has the numbers (the percentage of revenue that UFC pays fighters), because it would look really bad on them if people actually had the numbers to see what they were spending on those kind of things. It’s not what they make it out to be. He said most fighters are unhappy about pay. “There are an overwhelming majority who do share that view, but they’re scared. They’re absolutely terrified because the fighters, to them, are just meat to be replaced easily”


There was set to be more fear in creative after the Raw rating came in so low. Virtually everyone fears their position isn’t safe and the complaint is that Vince blamed the product more than the outside circumstances on the rating. He did understand that the Miami Heat was the biggest drawing team in the NBA because of LeBron James (said to be the only player on the team and one of the few in the league that he knows). But he said that Indiana isn’t a major market and the Pacers aren’t a popular team so why would that game be THAT huge a deal. One person described it as it’s not the big match you would have booked for the semifinals so why was it so big.
 
A

A More Normal Bird

Unconfirmed Member
Vio-Lence said:
The PS4 may be a better value to some, but if you already have good components in your RIG (like me), it may be more cost effective longterm to upgrade your GPU. I'm playing devils advocate.
Click to expand...
Yep. Most of my PC is nearing 5 years old and it still powers through pretty much everything without breaking a sweat. A new GPU at the end of the year should see it through most of next-gen. Plus a powerful PC has other uses.
 
L

Lambda Pie

Banned
Gr1mLock said:
That thread is fun.
Click to expand...

some folks would gladly die stabbed by a woman before hitting back.

conversely, that's closest most of them would ever be to one.

stunning.

edit: i'm in love with that blue bar.

3max.jpg
 
A

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
I got one of the Amazon launch models. I'll probably keep it and flip it. I'm not even close to getting my console backlog down, let alone the truckload of steam games I haven't played.

Can't unsee the penis handles on the DS4.
 
dream

dream

Member
How is it a good idea to say things like that when you're in that position? I mean, so soon after Nate and Meathead had their fiascos. I can only assume that Punk is either stupid, or he hates gays so much that he just can't help himself.
 
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