May 21, 2013

UFC Needs to Sell MMA as More Than Just Brutality

November 11, 2011 by 19 Comments

This weekend Dana White is hoping to bring the UFC back to the roots of boxing.  Before the great sport of boxing fell victim to the business culture that sprouted up around it, it was a spectacle that seemingly stopped the world.  People tuned in on television and radio and the biggest fans can tell you where they were when certain matches took place.  Obviously we’ll never get back to that place where one single event can dominate the culture anymore than there can ever be a band as universally popular as the Beatles ever again.  Still, as big a fan of boxing as Dana White is, you know that he was just itching to get his UFC brand of mixed martial arts on real networked national television.  With Fox this Saturday night at 9 PM he is doing just that with Cain Velazquez vs. Junior Dos Santos.

In addition to being a Cleveland sports fan, I’ve been taken by the MMA world over the last three or four years.  I couldn’t be more excited to see undefeated Heavyweight Champion Cain Velazquez defend his belt in a five round fight against Junior Dos Santos.  Even still, it will be somewhat strange to see the fight on Fox.  It is also strange to think that Dana White would end up being the kind of guy who could steward a company and a sport like this onto national television.

Dana White is a great businessman to be sure, but his brashness and crude mouth are legendary.  For every smooth talker and hype man there is in the promotions game, Dana White has all that same intensity and passion, but without the sheen or distance usually associated with marketing.  Then again, it has something to do with the product he is selling.

Certainly modern MMA is a far different animal than the “no rules” battles that were once outlawed in many states.  You wouldn’t know it from talking to politicians in New York that continue to hide behind the brutal past of the combat sport in their efforts to not license it.  Sometimes perception isn’t reality though.  The UFC has lots and lots of rules.  It is sanctioned by state commissions that regulate it including medical suspensions for fighters who get hurt and also drug testing.  Despite the ignorance of many detractors, you can’t just go up to a guy lying on the ground and kick him in the face.

There in-lies the conundrum for Dana White and the UFC that they will try to overcome this weekend.  They are selling this sport because it is exciting across all weight classes.  They are selling this sport because from one match to the next you can see knockouts, premier wrestling and grappling and submissions.  Some people watch auto racing for the crashes.  Some people watch UFC for the brutality.  The UFC needs to get in front of more people and sell their sport as more than just car crashes though.  It will be fascinating for me as a fan of the highly strategic fighting sport to see how they go about it.

And what happens to the message if someone gets knocked out in brutal fashion in the first round?  That’s always a possibility in the UFC.  Will you be watching?

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  • Clown Baby

    My wife thinks it sells a lot of homoeroticism, so there’s that.

  • Grif_E
  • Return of the (Alex) Mack

    I am happy to see it on fox, although it may cause the refs to end fights earlier than they normally would.

  • http://www.60bpm.com/ Robbie

    I’ve been a pretty big fan of MMA since I caught the replay of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter a few years ago. The history of the sport is intriguing to me as well. The idea of “could a championship boxer beat-up a karate expert” is very cool to me. Over the years, things have changed, but it’s still interesting to me to see guys with different skill sets go up against one another.

    I can see it being a difficult sport to just immediately get into, though. When I would catch matches by accident, I wasn’t even sure what I was looking at… so it might take some time for the general public to get it.

    And, yeah, there have to be more free bouts available to the public. I remember reading an interview with Dana White and he mentioned growing-up with the Saturday night fights and how he wanted to have significant free matches once a month, but I haven’t been noticing that.

    Anyway, thanks for the article, Craig! I’ve been following TUF this season but have been FFW through the commercials. I’d just assumed this was PPV, so I’ll be watching this one thanks to you.

  • mgbode

    I loved the UFC when it first came out. They were chess matches between guys like the Gracies, Shamrock (yes, he’s a real fighter too), etc.

    The problem is that Dana White took over and wanted to “open up the game” in a similar way to how the NFL and NBA have given rules to more offense, so has the UFC. It had disastrous results at first (way too brutal, Gracie juijitsu who helped start it walked away, a period of over-aggressive guys who had no discipline were born in). It was during this ‘dark’ period where UFC got it’s bad name that lives to this day.

    Despite all of the progress the UFC has made to the rules to protect it’s fighters while keeping an ‘open’ style of fighting, they have not been able to shake their brutality image. It should be (and is again) a much less brutal style of combat compared to boxing and yet the general public still sees it as worse.

    I will tune in interested to see how the fight goes but also to see how the general public reacts to the fight as well. I just wish they had more than 1 fight. It seems too risky to put all the chips on the national consciousness on 1 fight.

  • Chris

    Just wanted to point out it’s for the Heavyweight belt. Not Light Heavyweight.

    Just tryin’ to help.

  • humboldt

    Craig, I ask this not in a snarky way but with totally sincere intent: how would you feel if your son decided to become an MMA fighter? Would you be ok with it? Any reservations?

    I personally can’t watch this sport.

  • Steve

    Despite the regulations and your strawman argument against the detractors, MMA is brutality, pure and simple. And it’s laughable that you put all the blame on the decline of boxing on the “business culture”. No doubt, that was/still is a serious issue, but the fact of the matter is that boxing also declined because of how brutal it became. Great athletes could find other sports to excel in that didn’t require them to get their brains beaten in over and over again.

  • http://www.waitingfornextyear.com Craig Lyndall

    What’s the straw man argument against the detractors? Most detractors dislike the brutality based on what the sport was at the beginning. It has come a long long way since then and a whole lot of the matches in the different divisions are based largely in wrestling, grappling and submission attempts. There is still obviously a lot of boxing, kick boxing and other types of striking, but there are rules to reign in the brutality.

    If anything MMA has become a landing spot for all the great athletes that wrestled growing up, yet didn’t have any professional landing spot after their collegiate careers.

  • matt underwood

    bunch of hard asses pissed off cause they are closeted gays.

  • mgbode

    sigh. that’s okay. i know MMA is not for everyone. just like I don’t really get into soccer. or golf, tennis, and I have given up following hockey (time constraints no that one though). I do love baseball and many do not.

    it’s just sad that the same arguments are made despite changes.

  • humboldt

    @mgbode – The incremental safety changes are positive I suppose, but they are just fig leaves covering an excessively violent sport. If you’ve ever actually practiced a martial art, you know that they are complex philosophical and physical systems that have been developed over the centuries with the main intent of self-defense, discipline, etc. What the MMA does is fetishize the “fighting” aspect martial arts and turn it into a consumer commodity that appeals to our bloodlust.

    Interesting that you find it “sad” that people would continually assail the brutality of this sport — I actually find it encouraging.

    And Craig, why didn’t you respond to my question about your son becoming an MMA fighter above? Is MMA only fun to watch insofar as its not your kin getting its brains bashed in?

  • Shawn

    I think the UFC has a good number of stars that will be great at promoting the sport as everything but “human cock-fighting” as John McCain has previously called it. And, I don’t think there are two better fighters in Velasquez and JDS to do the job.

    The adapted rules help make the sport so much better. Unlike Pride, who allowed head stomping and the sort, the UFC has done the best they can to make it as safe as possible. The only real downside is the judging, but that is something the UFC can’t control as it is always in the hands of the state commissions (as is the refereeing). But then again, it’s not like Boxing hasn’t had it’s fair share of terrible refereeing and judging.

    Kudos to Dana White for attempting to make this sport as main stream as possible. Outisde of the MLB, this is the sport I follow the most.

  • TobaccoRoad

    The fact that UFC started out on Spike TV and will now have their Heavyweight Championship tonight on network television is remarkable. Kudos to White and what he has done. I look forward to tonight..

  • http://www.waitingfornextyear.com Craig Lyndall

    Sorry Humboldt. I forgot. If my son goes down that path of being a wrestler or studies mixed martial arts and has the capability to do it, then I will support him in doing it. It might not be top on my list of things that I want him to do, but I love any of the individual style sports like running and wrestling. I will enjoy helping him train and plan strategy. At least that’s what I think I will feel about it. He is only 1.5 years old right now though so who knows?

  • http://www.waitingfornextyear.com Craig Lyndall

    This answers a lot of questions. The UFC wrote a list of 10 things you should know if you haven’t followed MMA in the UFC before…

    http://www.ufc.com/discover/fan#top

  • http://www.60bpm.com/ Robbie

    So, does a KO at 1:04 on national TV do more damage than good for UFC? After watching 30+ minutes of back story and build-up… ugh.

  • http://www.TheConstantComplainer.com The Constant Complainer

    Yes, Dana White likes boxing. But he’s also made it a point to make the UFC better with respect to everything he hates about boxing. So he gives the fans the fights they want to see. And he gives us the big matchups without having to wait several years. Boxing is a joke. The big fights never happen. They’re overpaid and trying to overcome the myth of being fixed. Who cares if there was a KO tonight in the first round. That’s what people want to see. The UFC doesn’t promote brutality. But they do promote the ability for fights to be finished – something that has become a rarity in boxing.

  • mgbode

    @humboldt – not sure if you will see this, I don’t check the site much after I leave work on Friday. Anyway,

    not that it matters much, but since you asked: yes, I wrestled for 8+ years and practiced jiu-jitsu for 5+ years. some shotokon and other various forms of karate growing up as well, but mostly a few months here and there. never really got into them.

    you are correct in that most forms of fighting are built on defense and counters. heck, jiu-jitsu’s basic style of fighting is off your own back (it was based on how large cats fight). it is one of the reasons that the strategy and chess matches are so interesting between the different styles of fighting.

    as for the brutality, yes, it is a physical sport. it can be brutal (especially if 2 fighters are not evenly matched). however, UFC has thankfully changed gears to go to great lengths to make things safer. both in rules and how they setup their matches.

    is it more brutal than boxing? I would argue that it is not even close.

    is it more brutal than fake-wrestling? no, for many reasons the least of which includes the heavy-doping and pain-killers that are in rampant use there.

    is it more brutal than football or hockey? yes, in some ways, no in others. much less head contact (head trauma proving to be cumulative effects of many repeated hits), but there is a greater possibility for a huge head injury.

    i think that in boxing and UFC that the headgear used in Olympic boxing should be mandatory (or another style if it is found to be safer). i think that there are many more rules that can be enacted to make the sport safer (having an ‘inner circle’ is one idea that was around for awhile. basically, an ‘inner circle or octagon’ within the ring; fighters cannot leave that area unless they are engaged with each other. eliminates the possibility of a flee and fury attack that alot of kick-boxers use and is quite dangerous).

    however, I think that those that cheer unabashedly for football and hockey and then decry violence for UFC are not seeing the full story here.