MMA promotions

For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge mixed martial arts fan. For around two years now, I've watched every major card from every major promotion religiously. Today, I want to talk about the recent mma events from various promotions, and how good they all are from a production standpoint.

Lets start with the UFC. As we all know, the UFC is top-notch when it comes to production. Rogan and Goldberg are iconic figures in the sport, and they do a fantastic job commentating. Rogan is knowledgeable and very articulate when it come to describing technical aspects of the game. He may be biased at times, but what commentator (who isn't a robot) isn't? I think that only adds to his personality and gives even more of a comedic factor to his words. Goldberg is, of course, a robot. His lines get repeated over and over again, but what fight would be complete without, "It's allllllll overrrrrrr!!"? Those two are the perfect team in my opinion.

Now, to get into the fighters themselves. The UFC unarguably has the best fighters on the planet (minus Fedor Emilianenko), and they know how to hype a fight. They consistently put on the matchups that people want to see, and they make sure that everyone wants to see it.

They are not, however, without their flaws. Sometimes they put on bad matchups (Silva-Maia, I'm looking at you). These things just shouldn't happen when Joe Silva is getting paid top dollar to put up good matchups. They also play with rankings, which is inevitable to some degree. But, it is often too much, as it was with Hardy's title shot or Dos Santos and Okami being held back. Yes, it is a business put on to entertain, but give the fighters the respect they deserve. One last thing: Dana White needs to clean up his language and stop bending the truth. His attitude is a perfect fit for the sport and he most certainly cares about the fans, but his language is just bad public image and his outright lies hurt his credibility. In general, though, I think he is great for mma as a whole.

Let's move on to Strikeforce, or should I say Strikefarce? For a company with very few elite fighters and even fewer viewers, they have bitten off far more than they can chew. With Strikeforce: Nashville this past weekend, they put most of their A-level fighters on one card with three titles on the line. That was a terrible idea. One, that makes timing issues extremely difficult. As it was, they ran over more than a half-hour, and they could've just as easily been an hour short. Two, the three long, drug out decisions that occurred are boring to the casual fan, which is who you are trying to attract by putting it on network tv. Also, they claim to have the sport's best interest in mind, but should an inferior product be on network tv? Some people re watching mma there for the first time, so shouldn't the UFC be what they see? introducing people on Strikeforce is only going to turn them away. I like free mma as much as the next guy, but Strikeforce has to go.

Last and certainly not least is Bellator FC. First off, the circular cage is genius and I have no idea why no one thought of it sooner (maybe someone did and I don't know?). The commentating is awesome; I've been a fan of Jimmy (not sure his last name, he's from Fight Quest) for some time and he really knows his stuff. He's a very like able guy and shows a real connection to the fighters. The promotion knows exactly how big it is and never overestimate themselves. They don't acquire and overplay UFC rejects (Huerta is different and he certainly isn't overhyped), but rather they build up and create their own stars. They put on fantastic fights with hungry up and comers and best of all, it's free! I love Bellator and I hope they last a long time.

That's it for now, I've already spent way too much time writing this. I'll write again soon.

-Joe