How the UFC and Colts Make Me Angry

We’re a couple of days away from UFC 60: Hughes vs. Gracie, and I’ve got a few thoughts about the event and mixed martial arts in general.  

I’ve been reading around the Web, like I always do, about the event, and I’ve heard recently that the tickets are not selling well for UFC 60 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.  This comes as somewhat of a surprise to some, seeing as how UFC 59 sold out (there were about 17,000 in attendance) in a matter of hours.  Here’s a bit of history for the uninitiated, and an explanation:

The main event for UFC 60 has the current middleweight champion, Matt Hughes (the most dominating champion in UFC history in terms of title defenses) taking Royce (pronounced Hoyce) Gracie, who won the tournament-style UFC 1, 2, and 4 (he withdrew from UFC 3 after taking a beating in his first fight, which he won).  It’s being billed as “Champion vs. Legend”.  Gracie is indeed a legend in the sport, having brought the art of Brazilian jiu-jitsu to the masses nearly 13 years ago.  He made it known that size didn’t matter in this particular martial art when it was used correctly.  He showed that by beating men twice his size on numerous occasions.  He would beat them by basically neutralizing their strengths and waiting until a window opened where he could grab an arm or a chokehold and make his opponent submit, or “tap out”, which signifies submission.

Matt Hughes has been unstoppable over the last few years, going 17-1 since 2001.  He’s the current welterweight (170 pounds) champion in the UFC.  He’s a ground-and-pound machine, which means he’s adept at taking his opponents down via a shoot or a similar move, and then getting in an advantageous position and beating his opponents until they submit or the referee stops the fight.  Hughes is an excellent wrestler who is also very good with submission holds.  

Sounds like a compelling matchup, right?  Well, here’s the thing.  Hughes has fought 25 times since June of 2000, and Gracie has fought thrice.  When Gracie made his initial appearances in the UFC, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was an unknown entity in the United States.  Now it’s an essential part of mixed martial arts.  In the UFC where Gracie fought, there were few rules and no rounds.  Gracie could literally just sit and wait indefinitely until the opportunity presented itself to sink in a submission hold.  Now there are five-minute rounds and the rules are very specific.  There are all sorts of differences I could list here.  As long as Hughes can avoid Gracie’s submissions (and you can bet that’s what he’s been training for, if nothing else—Hughes has a history of only training as much as he absolutely needs to), Gracie is in for a long night.  Or a short night, depending on how fast Hughes can get into an advantageous position.  

This is a big reason that the fight isn’t drawing like a strong UFC event is capable of doing.  Today’s more recent mixed martial arts fans aren’t familiar with Royce Gracie.  They watch “The Ultimate Fighter”.  They know Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell.  Rich Franklin, Andrei Arlovski, Tim Silvia, and all the rest.  This is not an interesting fight for the newer fans.  And frankly, it’s not an interesting fight for a lot of hardcore old fans either.  I could really care less about this one.  It won’t be a close fight, and Hughes’ welterweight title will not be on the line.  That’s another problem:  you need to have a title fight to headline every card, in my opinion.  Without something on the line, there is significantly less motivation to pay the huge price of an event ticket.  

That having been said, there are actually a few compelling matches on this card.  Swick-Riggs should be a barnburner, and I’m excited to see Brandon Vera take on Assuerio Silva.  It’s exciting to have two promising heavyweights like these two in the division.  I also like the lightweight fights on the card.  Spencer Fisher is a very exciting fighter, and I think he’s a future lightweight champion in the UFC.  But that brings me to something that really bothers me about the UFC pay-per-view events.  

Customers, including myself, pay good money to see these events.  They’re scheduled to go for about 3 ½ hours according to my DirecTV feed.  And yet, on a card with nine fights, they only broadcast five?  Really?  If every fight goes to a decision, that’s 15 minutes per fight, which comes to 60 minutes of action.  The rest of the night is spent talking and hyping the upcoming fights.  Look, I’ve already bought the event.  I know what’s coming up.  I don’t need advertisements about something I already paid for.  I don’t need ads for “The Ultimate Fighter”.  I don’t need analysis and commentary from all the celebrities on hand.  Do you really think I need to hear from Paris Hilton?  I hate that part of the UFC broadcasts.  Absolutely hate it.  It’s a huge downside to buying the event.  And yet I continue to do so because the fights have been of a good quality as of late.  But seriously here, I know no one probably even reads this blog, but if by some fluke someone in the UFC reads this, I’m telling you on behalf of everyone that buys pay-per-view events:  Show more fights.  Please.

Here are my predictions for the night (fighters I’m not familiar with in italics):

Hughes over Gracie, TKO 2
Vera over Silva, TKO 3
Swick over Riggs, KO 2
Sanchez over Alessio, sub 1
Guillard over Davis, decision
Fisher over Wiman, sub 1
Lister over Sakara, decision
Gonzaga over Scherner, KO 2
Horn over Sonnen, decision

Turns out my UFC 60 thoughts were longer than I thought, so I’ll stop there for now.  I’ll throw in my general MMA thoughts with the next column about fighting.

By the way, in my last post, I said I’d explain why the Colts pissed me off.  So here it is:

The Eagles play the Colts this year in Indianapolis in November.  So of course, I figured I’d get some tickets to the game.  When I looked at the Colts website to see when single game tickets were going on sale, I found out that there were no single game tickets.  None.  They won’t be sold this year.  Now, I understand you want to sell season tickets.  I understand you want your own fans at the games.  That’s cool with me.  What I don’t dig is that in order to attend a single game, you have to be able to afford expensive season tickets.  And what happens now?  Are they going to keep selling all the seats as season tickets?  Will they not have single game tickets anymore?  They can’t very well take peoples’ season tickets away in order to make it possible for them to sell single game tickets.  There’s a waiting list for them as it is.  So if you ask me, this is just bad business.  Yeah, you fill up the stadium, but you do it at the expense of the fans who can’t afford to buy a ticket for every game.  And in my opinion, that sucks.  On behalf of your fans, thanks a lot Colts.

Barry Who?

So Barry Bonds is coming to Philly this weekend.  All weekend long on Sportscenter and the like, you’ll hear how mean ol’ Philadelphia booed Bonds out of the city.  And you’ll hear it as if it hasn’t happened everywhere else, outside of San Francisco, that the Giants have played this year.  I know that back in 1968 they booed Santa Claus (briefly, the real story).  I know we cheered Michael Irvin getting injured at the vet.  There are plenty of other things for which Philly fans are run down.  And I’ve touched on the subject before, so I won’t go in depth, but we boo because we care.  Now I’m not saying Bonds won’t get booed when he plays (I don’t think he’s playing tonight), but he won’t get trashed the way everyone is expecting.  At least no more than everywhere else.  Remember at the beginning of the season when a fan threw an empty syringe onto the field?  Had it happened at Citizens Bank Park, it would’ve been another black mark on the Philadelphia fans.  But as it is, does anyone even remember where that happened?  I don’t.  

But is Bonds really getting booed because he juiced up?  I don’t think that’s the only reason.  No one has ever liked Bonds because he acts like a complete jackass.  Now that there’s a reason to boo, everyone’s letting him have it.  I mean seriously: is he really the first guy we’re pretty sure took steroids?  What about Mark McGuire?  Anyone?  What about Sammy Sosa?  Would these guys get booed anywhere near as heavily as Bonds if they had equally damning evidence of steroid use presented during their careers?  I’m going to lean towards “no”.  If Barry Bonds weren’t a jerk (and closing in on one of the most hallowed records in all of sports), nobody would care about this.  And really I don’t think anyone cares all that much anyway.  Whether or not there’s an asterisk in the history books, everyone will know that Bonds’ passing of Babe Ruth’s homerun record is tainted.  Every dad will tell his sons that Bonds cheated.  Aside from that, we all know it’s just a matter of time before Bud Selig suspends Bonds anyway.  So go to the game, boo Barry Bonds, hope he doesn’t break Ruth’s record in your park, and forget about it.  

Next time:  Why I’m pissed off at the Indianapolis Colts.  

The Draft and Other Football Stuff

So the draft is over. I always watch passively to see what positions the Eagles draft, but honestly I have no idea who anyone even is outside of the top ten or so picks. I saw that the Eagles drafted a bunch of linemen and a couple receivers. I think it’s pretty cool that they drafted Jeremy Bloom, though. I couldn’t figure out why I knew his name, and finally I heard that he was an Olympic skier. Apparently the guy has blinding speed and will be a force on special teams right away, with a chance to push for playing time at receiver later in the year. He’s apparently not the only one that could contribute on special teams right away, which is a very good thing. Give special teams coach John Harbaugh some tools, and he’ll put a great team out there. He’s shown it in the past. On the other hand, I would have liked to see them make a move for Lendale White in the draft, and it would have also been nice had they been able to get Javon Walker from the Packers.

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So Arnold Schwarzennegger wants to bring two football teams to L.A.? No one in L.A. even cared when both of their old teams left! Did you notice the huge outcry in Cleveland when the Browns became the Baltimore Ravens? How fast did the NFL bring the Browns back? They made it happen because it had to happen. Los Angeles can have its Lakers and its Dodgers (and the poor man’s teams of the Clippers and Angels), and stay out of football. If Angelinos want to see a game, drive to friggin’ San Diego. You don’t deserve a football team just because you have a big city.

Speaking of cities that don’t deserve a pro team, how about Atlanta? Get the Hawks out of there and move them to Oklahoma City. The Okies showed they’d be a great basketball town when New Orleans moved there temporarily. Atlanta can’t even fill up Turner Field for every Braves playoff game, and that’s sad. They don’t care about pro sports. They like their college sports, and that’s fine. I say give them college sports, but don’t let the pro teams languish there. Get them to a place that can appreciate them and put butts in the seats. Sure, it’s tough to sell tickets for a team as bad as the Hawks, but no one would care if they were any good anyway, if the Braves are any indicator. I should say however, that the Falcons actually do pretty well in attendance, so they can stay. Which kind of negates the segue to this paragraph, but get over it.

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Granted, I don't know much about hockey. But I do know that in any sport, when you're down 3-2 in a best-of-seven playoff series and you're on your home ice (court, field, whatever), you don't lose 7-1. You just don't do that. Unless you're a team from Philadelphia. The Flyers need a new goalie, because Esche was just awful. Let's just say that if you're not sure whether to start your first-string goalie in the playoffs, you're not getting very far.