Posts tagged RandyCouture at FanHouse

On September 26, 2003, Randy Couture defeated Tito Ortiz for the UFC light heavyweight championship in one of the biggest fights in mixed martial arts history. But instead of promoting it as a great sporting event, Couture and Ortiz felt the need to bark at each other on this TV appearance the week before the fight:

I agree with Michael Rome of Bloody Elbow, who calls it "kind of embarrassing to watch because it's so forced and unnatural." Have you ever seen Peyton Manning and Tom Brady promote a Colts-Patriots game by making a joint TV appearance to talk trash to each other?

I like the way UFC promoted last weekend's Georges St. Pierre - Jon Fitch fight, as two great athletes engaged in a spirited competition, not as a couple of dudes trading insults. The UFC has come a long way.

After the jump, watch the post-fight press conference, in which UFC President Dana White refers to Ortiz as "a good friend of mine" after the Couture-Ortiz fight. That White would say such positive things about Ortiz, (and that White has hair) shows how long ago this was.

Here's the latest edition of ESPN's great MMA Live program:

This week's installment focuses, of course, on last Saturday's UFC and Affliction shows, followed by a preview of this Saturday's EliteXC show. UFC heavyweight Frank Mir continued to lavish praise on Affliction and WAMMA heavyweight champ Fedor Emelianenko, although he did suggest that UFC middleweight champ Anderson Silva is the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world. (I agree.)

I liked the way Franklin McNeill phrased it: "Fedor's presence makes the heavyweight division relevant."

And, of course, the man everyone wants to see Fedor fight is Randy Couture, who appeared as a guest on the show and had some interesting comments.

Fedor Emelianenko put on one of the most impressive showings in mixed martial arts history Saturday night, dominating Tim Sylvia with a submission in the first minute of the fight. So what's he going to do next? He's going to Magic Mountain:

"With us came a lot of Russian fans, my friends and supporters, we're just going to kick back, have a good time and celebrate our victory," Fedor said through his translator. "And tomorrow, we want to go to the big roller coasters at Magic Mountain."

I guess MMA hasn't reached the point where fighters get to say "I'm going to Disney World" after a big win.

Fedor also discussed his strategy against Sylvia, looked baffled when asked how he would fight against himself, and said of possible future opponent Randy Couture, "Randy's a fighter with a lot of strengths, but I see a couple weaknesses as well."

On Saturday, fans of MMA will have a rare opportunity: They can watch the best fighter in the world on television without having to buy his bout on pay-per-view.

That fighter, the Ultimate Fighting Championship star Anderson Silva, will have a match on basic cable because the established UFC wants to deliver a knockout blow to the upstart Affliction MMA organization, which will show its first pay-per-view program that night.

At first glance, this looks like welcome news for consumers: Fans are accustomed to paying $50 to watch high-caliber fighters like Silva, and competition has led UFC to cut its prices. But none other than Donald Trump, who is promoting Affliction, says the head-to-head match-up between UFC and Affliction may portend something few fans want to see: a time when the sport's best athletes fight for separate organizations.

I previously mentioned that Kim Couture was badly bloodied in her professional mixed martial arts debut against Kim Rose last weekend. But I didn't realize exactly how Couture's jaw was broken until I read this interview with Sherdog and re-watched the video of the first round:

The fight begins 2:30 into that video, after the introductions, and you can see that Rose lands a vicious right hand at the outset.

EliteXC brought mixed martial arts to the masses by televising five fights on CBS Saturday night. But while the show was a ratings success, many MMA fans have criticized it.

Some fans say the fights were stopped too early. Some fans say the main event between Kimbo Slice and James Thompson was more freak show than fight. Some fans say the quality of the action was inferior to the quality of fights that UFC puts out.

So was the EliteXC show good for the sport? I interviewed EliteXC Live Events President Gary Shaw on Monday, and that was my first question.

We're starting to see more mainstream media coverage of the sport of mixed martial arts, which is good. But a lot of that coverage comes from people who don't know much about the sport, which is bad. So I'd like to offer a few suggestions:

Don't call it "ultimate fighting." The name of the sport is mixed martial arts, or MMA. The most popular organization within MMA is Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. The phrase "ultimate fighting," with those two words lower case, should never appear in your articles. Ultimate Fighting, a phrase that is a registered trademark of the UFC, can appear in your articles, but it should be followed by Championship -- and in general, you can just say UFC.

On yesterday's post about which fight various MMA writers most want to see, FanHouse commenter Drew asked, "MDS, you watched ESPN.com Original series MMA Live???? discuss it after viewing it."

Thanks for asking, Drew. I will discuss it, but first, here's the video:

So there you have it, the premier episode of MMA Live, a 30-minute show that appears to be taped in an ESPN studio in Bristol, just like SportsCenter and ESPN's other studio shows, but that is shown only on ESPN.com, not on television.

I liked it a lot. Host Jon Anik and analysts Kenny Florian and Franklin McNeil offered good analysis of all the major issues -- Fedor Emelianenko's upcoming Affliction fight, Tito Ortiz's upcoming final UFC fight, whether Randy Couture will ever have another fight, and so on.

I also like the fact that this is ESPN covering mixed martial arts as a sport and not as a spectacle. That is a very good sign that there are people at ESPN who "get it" when it comes to MMA.

Will the show succeed? Will it ever move off ESPN.com and onto TV? I don't know. There are three commercial for Toyota Trucks during the show, so I assume it's bringing in some revenue, but I also assume we're a long ways away from actually seeing regular MMA coverage on ESPN. Still, this is a big step in the right direction.

When heavyweight champion Randy Couture left UFC, he did it because he said his pay wasn't commensurate with his contributions to UFC. And since then, he has frequently talked to the media about the way UFC pays far less than boxing.

But Kevin Iole has a great piece at MMA Junkie that delves into the actual pay earned by boxers and UFC fighters. And the bottom line is that when you consider that UFC awards bonuses and allows fighters to sell ad space on their trunks, the pay is actually better than most people realize.

When Frank Mir beat Brock Lesnar, for instance, his base pay was only $40,000. But he got a win bonus of $40,000, a submission of the night bonus of $60,000 and $85,000 from the companies whose logos appeared on his shorts. All in all, $225,000 for that fight was an impressive haul, and more than any other promoter would have paid him to fight Lesnar.

Couture is a smart guy, and if he thinks he can make more money outside UFC than he can in it, he's probably right. But Couture is one of very, very few MMA fighters who can make more outside UFC -- and he wouldn't have gotten to that position without the promotion he got in UFC.