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.