This has potential written all over it.
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MMA |OT2| - Thread of Athletes, Fighters, Personalities, and Sports Entertainment
- Thread starter yacobod
- Start date
This has potential written all over it.
sazabirules
Unconfirmed Member
Is the Gagnon - Beford fight going to be cleared off the pool since the fight is scratched?
TheNatural
My Member!
http://mmaweekly.com/win-a-date-with-ufc-fighter-or-ring-girl-give-to-a-good-cause
WTF, no Arianny or Brittney? Fuck it, I would just try to win a bro meeting with Randy. A couple of cold ones, listening to Tom Petty, and starting a bar fight with anyone I please.
dream
Member
wtf. I just got home, turned on the TV, and saw Chael on TSN giving an interview completely out of character, blasting Brock's Coor's Light promo for being fake and basically saying he doesn't care who his next opponent is: just tell him the date, location, and weight class (aka "I'll fight anyone Joe Silva puts in front of me.")
wtf.
Is this his heel turn?
wtf.
Is this his heel turn?
TheNatural
My Member!
wtf.
You think this is the START of his heel turn?
EDIT: He was on ESPN too, wearing the UFC belt LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF5BIBh-mSM
DKehoe
Member
fixed friend.
TheKaeptain
Banned
He's just trying to be like our lord and savior Brady by showing the kids how to be successful and good looking.
TheNatural
My Member!
GTFO of here with that shit.
Anyone else think Nick is in the midst of an unintentional face turn?
That first Primetime episode was masterful at painting him in a new light. I can see the school segment swaying the popular opinion on him. He's no longer just that idiot asshole from the 209. It's clear he has serious issues and deserves some sympathy.
Funny how blowing the biggest fight of his career started his turn and no doubt boosted his popularity and fan awareness. The fight will be bigger than ever if he gets by Conduit.
That first Primetime episode was masterful at painting him in a new light. I can see the school segment swaying the popular opinion on him. He's no longer just that idiot asshole from the 209. It's clear he has serious issues and deserves some sympathy.
Funny how blowing the biggest fight of his career started his turn and no doubt boosted his popularity and fan awareness. The fight will be bigger than ever if he gets by Conduit.
Oh god, this ESPN interview is hilarious! lol
Maklershed
Member
New Denzel movie coming out February 10th - gif fuel!
Even the trailer is a goldmine. I might make some now.
Hes scared for Andy
TheNatural
My Member!
Maybe when he stops Fitch'ing guys. I find Bisping less annoying than him, what does that tell you?
But watching Bisping get wrestled for 3 rounds would be the second best Bisping moment of all time.
TheNatural
My Member!
UFC 142 has done about 225,000 buys according to Dave Meltzer
Where's dream at? He failed with the wall of text, I win.
Where's dream at? He failed with the wall of text, I win.
dream
Member
did someone request a wall of text?
UFC continued its string of strong shows, but the pace of weekly offerings led to a mixed bag overall for the night in its move to FX.
The move from Spike to FX was supposed to be a move upward, going from a station that has more eyeballs and supposedly would be promoting the shows better. But week one saw the prelims of UFC 142 on 1/14 be lower rated (admittedly hurt by going against the NFL playoffs and Tim Tebow) than any prelims ever on Spike. Week two, the first full main event fight card on FX on 1/20 from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, drew a rating lower than 46 of the previous 47 live fight cards on Spike.
The show was likely hurt by being on a Friday, a bad night for TV and unfamiliar one for UFC fans. The show did a 0.90 rating and 1.27 million viewers, beating only the September 15, 2010, Spike special headlined by Nate Marquardt vs. Rousimar Palhares, that did a 0.89 rating and 1.15 million viewers. The rating and audience were down 32% from the Spike 2011 average for a live show, as well as down 33% in Males 18-34 (1.20 rating for this show) and down 34% in Males 35-49 (1.18 rating for this show).
Some have explained it by saying it was the first show on a new station. Actually it was the second, as they were on FX the week before with PPV prelims. There is the argument, which may be valid, that it will take time to build the audience on FX. On the flip side, Spike's first UFC television show did a 1.7 rating and its first live special did a 1.9, and that was with no existing years of a television audience for the sport to mobilize and move to a new station. The show did roughly what FX averages for a normal show in prime time.
Spike counter programmed with two hours of Unleashed going head-to-head, based around Melvin Guillard fights. The first hour did 648,000 viewers and the second hour did 751,000.
FX promoted the show significantly on its network. Whether they promoted it as hard as Spike normally did, that I can't tell. Whether the lower rated Spike's programming is more conducive to drawing the UFC demo than the FX programming is, that's a question to be asked. It could also be the unfamiliar night.
But come March, Friday is going to be FX UFC night every week. A notable thing about this show is the second hour went head-to-head with Smackdown and didn't even make a minor dent in the Smackdown ratings. That would indicate that any casual UFC audience, many of which are WWE fans, either didn't know about the show, or didn't care much about the lineup to change their viewing habits or switch the channel. And Friday is going to be a Murderer's row of programming come March.
The bright side is the prelims on Fuel did a 0.28 rating and 148,000 viewers. That doesn't sound good, but for Fuel, those have to be some of the best numbers in the history of the network.
Very early numbers for UFC 142 look to be around 225,000 buys (although there have been wide variations in the estimates, some significantly higher believe it or not, but generally they are above what probably would have been expected). It's appearing to be just slightly below where UFC 136 (Edgar vs. Maynard III) ended up and would be one of the lowest numbers in years, but all of that was expected, given it was not a strong marquee card and shows that emanate from outside North America generally do a lot worse. This would appear to be the UFC's current baseline number, since this show was from Brazil and was going against the Broncos playoff game. It did better in Canada and Australia. It's possible the late controversy regarding Anthony Johnson's weight called some late attention to the show and may have helped it slightly. Best cities were London (ONT), Halifax, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago and Charlotte. With the start time being moved back an hour, the West Coast skew seems even stronger. 2/4 will be interesting because there's three weeks of build on FX, and Super Bowl Saturday is a traditional big drawing show, but Nick Diaz didn't draw good on PPV against B.J. Penn, and Carlos Condit is hardly Penn, and there isn't a lot of support. They'll probably be pushing the fight hard on the 1/28 FOX show, so that in theory should help.
When you say the 1/7 Strikeforce show in Las Vegas didn't sell many tickets, well, the figures were 927 tickets sold, with 1,992 as the total attendance at the Hard Rock, was set up to hold 2,719. The gate was $68,805. Las Vegas has had so many shows that it's dead unless you come in with big guns and augment the fan buys with casino buys. When I said that they probably paid more than 50% of revenue from that show to fighters, that may have been an understatement. I don't know what Showtime pays for the new deal, but if it's the same as the old deal, it would be in the 68% range. The thing with UFC shows is that often the PPV show revenue funds the revenue of some of the TV events that are not money makers. Dana White said in October that they were going to lose significantly on the first FOX special but the idea of the show is that exposure would expand the PPV fan base going forward. For the record, the new Showtime deal runs through the end of 2013. Showtime has control of the production of the show and right now the agreement is that Strikeforce fighters, with the exception of the heavyweights, will not be moved to UFC and right now there are no plans for Strikeforce vs. UFC fights. Everything is up for change, but Showtime has that level of control that UFC can't do anything in that direction without their approval.
Here is the situation with the fights this weekend. Barring injury, the Chael Sonnen vs. Michael Bisping winner meets Anderson Silva, probably on 6/16 at the soccer stadium in Sao Paulo. Dana White said even if Bisping wins, it wouldn't be in England because the attendance and ratings potential of the fight is so much bigger in Brazil, which UFC currently feels is its No. 1 market, as White is calling it "The new Canada." Sonnen said he could 100% guarantee that if he wins that he would not face Silva, but White said that if Sonnen wins, he could 100% guarantee that fight would be made. Doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for either guy. In the light heavyweight division, if Rashad Evans wins and isn't injured, he'll face Jon Jones. If Phil Davis wins, most likely Jones would instead face Dan Henderson, who is sitting and waiting right now. Henderson was offered a fight with Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, who beat him back in the Pride days, but turned it down, figuring at this stage of his career the risk/reward ratio isn't good. Henderson won't get a title fight any quicker, and since he's a PPV bonus guy, there is no point in taking a fight that isn't likely to draw anything special. White also noted to Ariel Helwani and others that he tried to make Rousimar Palhares vs. Demian Maia. Palhares said he was too banged up to come back so fast (given how he looked in Brazil, I'd hate to see him when he's not banged up) plus Maia didn't like the idea of fighting another Brazilian, so that's where Chris Weidman got his shot. This is a real big one for him because he can make himself a star with a win and this on paper is a winnable fight for him. I can get the idea of teammates not wanting to fight each other, even though most fans don't fully get it. But once you start with the idea that a Brazilian thinks Brazilians shouldn't have to fight each other, that's ridiculous.
Vitor Belfort claimed that he spent $100,000 on his training camp to get ready for the Anthony Johnson fight. Given what he earns, it's a price he can afford.
Former UFC star Mirko Cro Cop, whose contract with the company expired with his last fight, will do a kickboxing match against Ray Sefo on 3/10 in Croatia. Cro Cop is coming off tearing his right biceps tendon and this is definitely pushing it for a return.
UFC continued its string of strong shows, but the pace of weekly offerings led to a mixed bag overall for the night in its move to FX.
The move from Spike to FX was supposed to be a move upward, going from a station that has more eyeballs and supposedly would be promoting the shows better. But week one saw the prelims of UFC 142 on 1/14 be lower rated (admittedly hurt by going against the NFL playoffs and Tim Tebow) than any prelims ever on Spike. Week two, the first full main event fight card on FX on 1/20 from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, drew a rating lower than 46 of the previous 47 live fight cards on Spike.
The show was likely hurt by being on a Friday, a bad night for TV and unfamiliar one for UFC fans. The show did a 0.90 rating and 1.27 million viewers, beating only the September 15, 2010, Spike special headlined by Nate Marquardt vs. Rousimar Palhares, that did a 0.89 rating and 1.15 million viewers. The rating and audience were down 32% from the Spike 2011 average for a live show, as well as down 33% in Males 18-34 (1.20 rating for this show) and down 34% in Males 35-49 (1.18 rating for this show).
Some have explained it by saying it was the first show on a new station. Actually it was the second, as they were on FX the week before with PPV prelims. There is the argument, which may be valid, that it will take time to build the audience on FX. On the flip side, Spike's first UFC television show did a 1.7 rating and its first live special did a 1.9, and that was with no existing years of a television audience for the sport to mobilize and move to a new station. The show did roughly what FX averages for a normal show in prime time.
Spike counter programmed with two hours of Unleashed going head-to-head, based around Melvin Guillard fights. The first hour did 648,000 viewers and the second hour did 751,000.
FX promoted the show significantly on its network. Whether they promoted it as hard as Spike normally did, that I can't tell. Whether the lower rated Spike's programming is more conducive to drawing the UFC demo than the FX programming is, that's a question to be asked. It could also be the unfamiliar night.
But come March, Friday is going to be FX UFC night every week. A notable thing about this show is the second hour went head-to-head with Smackdown and didn't even make a minor dent in the Smackdown ratings. That would indicate that any casual UFC audience, many of which are WWE fans, either didn't know about the show, or didn't care much about the lineup to change their viewing habits or switch the channel. And Friday is going to be a Murderer's row of programming come March.
The bright side is the prelims on Fuel did a 0.28 rating and 148,000 viewers. That doesn't sound good, but for Fuel, those have to be some of the best numbers in the history of the network.
Very early numbers for UFC 142 look to be around 225,000 buys (although there have been wide variations in the estimates, some significantly higher believe it or not, but generally they are above what probably would have been expected). It's appearing to be just slightly below where UFC 136 (Edgar vs. Maynard III) ended up and would be one of the lowest numbers in years, but all of that was expected, given it was not a strong marquee card and shows that emanate from outside North America generally do a lot worse. This would appear to be the UFC's current baseline number, since this show was from Brazil and was going against the Broncos playoff game. It did better in Canada and Australia. It's possible the late controversy regarding Anthony Johnson's weight called some late attention to the show and may have helped it slightly. Best cities were London (ONT), Halifax, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago and Charlotte. With the start time being moved back an hour, the West Coast skew seems even stronger. 2/4 will be interesting because there's three weeks of build on FX, and Super Bowl Saturday is a traditional big drawing show, but Nick Diaz didn't draw good on PPV against B.J. Penn, and Carlos Condit is hardly Penn, and there isn't a lot of support. They'll probably be pushing the fight hard on the 1/28 FOX show, so that in theory should help.
When you say the 1/7 Strikeforce show in Las Vegas didn't sell many tickets, well, the figures were 927 tickets sold, with 1,992 as the total attendance at the Hard Rock, was set up to hold 2,719. The gate was $68,805. Las Vegas has had so many shows that it's dead unless you come in with big guns and augment the fan buys with casino buys. When I said that they probably paid more than 50% of revenue from that show to fighters, that may have been an understatement. I don't know what Showtime pays for the new deal, but if it's the same as the old deal, it would be in the 68% range. The thing with UFC shows is that often the PPV show revenue funds the revenue of some of the TV events that are not money makers. Dana White said in October that they were going to lose significantly on the first FOX special but the idea of the show is that exposure would expand the PPV fan base going forward. For the record, the new Showtime deal runs through the end of 2013. Showtime has control of the production of the show and right now the agreement is that Strikeforce fighters, with the exception of the heavyweights, will not be moved to UFC and right now there are no plans for Strikeforce vs. UFC fights. Everything is up for change, but Showtime has that level of control that UFC can't do anything in that direction without their approval.
Here is the situation with the fights this weekend. Barring injury, the Chael Sonnen vs. Michael Bisping winner meets Anderson Silva, probably on 6/16 at the soccer stadium in Sao Paulo. Dana White said even if Bisping wins, it wouldn't be in England because the attendance and ratings potential of the fight is so much bigger in Brazil, which UFC currently feels is its No. 1 market, as White is calling it "The new Canada." Sonnen said he could 100% guarantee that if he wins that he would not face Silva, but White said that if Sonnen wins, he could 100% guarantee that fight would be made. Doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room for either guy. In the light heavyweight division, if Rashad Evans wins and isn't injured, he'll face Jon Jones. If Phil Davis wins, most likely Jones would instead face Dan Henderson, who is sitting and waiting right now. Henderson was offered a fight with Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, who beat him back in the Pride days, but turned it down, figuring at this stage of his career the risk/reward ratio isn't good. Henderson won't get a title fight any quicker, and since he's a PPV bonus guy, there is no point in taking a fight that isn't likely to draw anything special. White also noted to Ariel Helwani and others that he tried to make Rousimar Palhares vs. Demian Maia. Palhares said he was too banged up to come back so fast (given how he looked in Brazil, I'd hate to see him when he's not banged up) plus Maia didn't like the idea of fighting another Brazilian, so that's where Chris Weidman got his shot. This is a real big one for him because he can make himself a star with a win and this on paper is a winnable fight for him. I can get the idea of teammates not wanting to fight each other, even though most fans don't fully get it. But once you start with the idea that a Brazilian thinks Brazilians shouldn't have to fight each other, that's ridiculous.
Vitor Belfort claimed that he spent $100,000 on his training camp to get ready for the Anthony Johnson fight. Given what he earns, it's a price he can afford.
Former UFC star Mirko Cro Cop, whose contract with the company expired with his last fight, will do a kickboxing match against Ray Sefo on 3/10 in Croatia. Cro Cop is coming off tearing his right biceps tendon and this is definitely pushing it for a return.
parrotbeak
Member
Go Mr. Wonderful!
bone_and_sinew
breaking down barriers in gratuitous nudity
When is the second UFC Primetime ep airing? My and some other regional FSNs are making it look like a new episode is airing in a few minutes.
edit: it's not a new one
edit: it's not a new one
TheKaeptain
Banned
I don't know. Maybe Silva was supposed to be the Heel and Sonnen the face?
bone_and_sinew
breaking down barriers in gratuitous nudity
"The man with the biggest arms
The man with the greatest charm
The man who came to Chicago,
To do Bisping a lot of harm!"
OMFG
AwesomeSauce
MagsMoonshine
I wonder if the bus story is the one about the Nogueira brothers. Had something to do with them feeding the bus a carrot lol.
parrotbeak
Member
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgjH0tZ2Lq8
Here's the whole interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru6v16iB0C4
ItAintEasyBeinCheesy
it's 4th of July in my asshole
Vivalaraza
Member
Oh my God how have I not seen this before. I'm dying.
Roland Deschain
Member
We need a bigger wall!
Those UFC Brazil PPV numbers are way above what I thougth it would get.
parrotbeak
Member
Ya, I expected to log in tonight and see at least 4 more massive blocks of text. Just one post and with spaces in between paragraphs? Dream, don't sell out man.
TheKaeptain
Banned
All that proves is Dream purposely made the text unreadable just to fuck with us and he forgot to do it this time.
Don't think it's unintentional at least from the UFC, they could have gone with a more aggressive asshole kind of edit surely. Just trying to make us feel all good inside about Nick Diaz's story or something. That being said, the school segment was just embarrassing and trying to make him look cute.
Terrific! This shall be my lunch time entertainment.
Those PPV numbers aren't "way above" anything.
225k is pretty much their PPV "floor" since TUF started. It's shit.
parrotbeak
Member
Live chat with Sonnen was supposed to have started a few minutes ago but apparently he's late:
http://blog.chron.com/fighting/2012/01/ufc-on-fox-2-chael-sonnen-live-chat-1130-a-m-et/
You have to submit questions now and they will close it once he's online. I'm gonna miss it.
http://blog.chron.com/fighting/2012/01/ufc-on-fox-2-chael-sonnen-live-chat-1130-a-m-et/
You have to submit questions now and they will close it once he's online. I'm gonna miss it.
I recorded the open workouts yesterday in Chicago.
Here are some highlights including Chael,Bisping, Hashad, and Davis. http://vimeo.com/35702056
Here are some highlights including Chael,Bisping, Hashad, and Davis. http://vimeo.com/35702056
bone_and_sinew
breaking down barriers in gratuitous nudity
Damn, even the females have turned on GSP!Ronda Rousey said:
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
Chael Sonnen with the belt. 
parrotbeak
Member
Breaking News: Ronda Roussey advocates GSP throw the fight against Diaz; knows Diaz has no chance to win unless GSP "lets" him!
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