Let's start with the UFC/WEC merger now that I'm back from my hiatus.



I'm all for it. I've been all for it since they first bought the WEC. It makes the most sense for a bunch of reasons.


1. The amount of events the UFC plans to put on each year.

Think about all the events with pointless non-title main events. Lets look back at the horrendous Mir vs. Crocop main event. Even when it was suppose to be Nogueira/Mir 2 it was still pretty pointless. Neither were in line for a title shot, all it would prove is who was still hanging in there. Now with the inclusion of the Featherweight and Bantamweight divisions, it adds two more champions that are around to defend their belts. So while the UFC is wasting our time with locking up champions with whatever TUF series they are on, we have two more options for a worthy main event.

2) Payscale

The WEC has such a great heap of talent and they put on some of the best fights of the year but because they are not the UFC, they only make a fraction of the purse money. Someone like Urijah Faber, who pretty much carried the company on his back, should be earning alot more than $20,000 to fight/$20,000 to win. Same with Jose Aldo and Miguel Torres. If someone as irrelevant (in terms of rankings) like Tito Ortiz can make $250,000 to fight then Faber should at minimum be making $100,000 because of the draw he brings. Being under the UFC banner will get the fighters the money they should be making.

3) Better roster

Having alot of the top WEC guys coming in brings in a much better roster for the UFC. Instead of watching the same guys fight eachother, we'll get to see some of the top WEC guys mix it up with the UFC guys. It also opens up the option for alot of the lighter Lightweights, like Frankie Edgar, make the drop down to 145lbs without having to give up fighting under the UFC banner. It also makes the appeal for some of the bigger Featherweight guys to make the leap up to 155lbs.

4) Attraction from other markets

I think a big reason alot of the foreign fighters haven't made the jump to the WEC is simply because it's not the UFC. Although alot of the top ranked Featherweight and Bantamweight fighters are apart of the WEC, it's the UFC that everyone wants to be apart of. Without PRIDE existing, it's hard to dispute what organization has the top fighters out there. DREAM has a pretty decent roster but it seems that everytime one of them leaves that organization to fight somewhere else, they perform like shit. There are very, very few top 10 fighters that aren't fighting in the UFC. Now with the inclusion of two new weightclasses, it's going to open up alot of appeal for more top foreign fighters to make the jump.

Gonzaga cut from the UFC. Pretty much says he's retiring from MMA. He said that, although there are other companies out there, he will not take a fight for cheap. The UFC was paying him too good and he was used to that. He said that if someone wants to offer him good money for a fight then he won't rule another fight out but for now he's going to go back to the grappling circuit. Doing superfights and prize money tournaments. He'll also be doing seminar tours as well for jiu-jitsu.


Gilber Yvel has also been cut from the UFC. But no one is surprised.

I would have liked to see gonzaga stick around a little longer. For some reason I like the idea of him fighting lesnar.

Gonzaga had all the potential to be a powerhouse in the HW division but the man seems to buckle mentally once a fight starts to not go his way. I was super impressed with him when he was tearing through the division to get his crack at Randy. He single handidly crippled Crocops fighting motivation. He was beating Carwin and nearly won that fight until he got sloppy in an exchange. In a few fights it seemed that once he got hit, he crumbled. Especially in the Werdum fight.

oh i agree completely......i don't think he would be winning any more big fights, but i still think he would be a decent challenge for up and comers and a good fight for those coming off a loss.....basically just a gatekeeper

I think that the ufc simply protects its investments in strategic flow with buisness. After all 20 grand for 15 minutes of work is still pretty fuckin good money for simply persueing a life of good health and fitness.

I wish I got paid like that.

I chain myself to a log and sprint up and down a 25 or thirty yard leangth of the friggin yard 4 times like up and down the yard four times. not thier and back and thier and back, like, go thier and back...4 times
its a form of releasing excess energy I"m not doing things for the purpose of whoopin some ass...

after a wk of work I'm still out runnin a mile or so in seven eight min.

so sprint a total of 240 yards while chained to a log FOR YOU.

I mean serious I work out and like to be healthy, honest! I'll woop some ass for free if you catch me in the right mood. well I'd try...maybe...I can't garuntee I whoop some ass, but still I aint about that. I think I actually work out to avoid snappin out on people...

I'm just sayin for 20 g's I'm sure anybody would comit themselves to a competition that takes a total of 15 min. personal time on a certain schedual.

the training is like a benefit people should work out and be healthy cause they want to. You aren't obligated but its NOT a negative obligation if you are so obligated.

think about it...I just wouldn't wanna have to be a little blood puppet on the end of a string or whatever. Ya know, I just wonder how many of these guys are just getting thrown out thier for the sake of getting the ring dirty enough for some little bitch's to go prance around and act hard. fuck um tho...I grew up with a dude who's basicly a savage and I don't know how serious he is about his MMA stuff but he's the type to do it from scratch, and have the energy to make a name for himself.

he's a savage for real he's like one of the reasons I don't feel that the log I chain myself to is quite BIG ENOUGH. you look at him and just wonder if his arms got thier own digestive tract or somethin.

I'm not 100% sure what to make of that post but its all prize fighting. Look at someone like Floyd Mayweather. That man makes like $40 million a fight. In a broad generalization, he does the same thing as any fighter in the UFC. When you are a fighter you are your own personal business. If a company is going to make millions off your name and you putting your body on the line, you should get a decent cut of it. Obviously champions and bigger draws should be making more money than the guy that is a relative nobody fighting for the first time. But think of it this way, the more important you become in your own personal line of work, don't you want to be compensated for it or are you happy never getting a raise? Everyone wants to make more money and someone like Urijah Faber, who is a face of MMA, should be paid accordingly.

Now to break up another point you tried to make in your argument. You aren't necessarily making $20,000 just for 15-25 minutes in the cage. If you look at it simply that way, I could partially see your argument. What you are making $20,000 for is 8-12 weeks (sometimes longer) of putting your body through physical hell in order to prepare for an athletic contest that requires you to knockout or submit your opponent while he is trying to do the same exact thing. You aren't getting paid while you train and you aren't getting paid by your company while you are not fighting.

Let me put it in perspective for you. A guy fights on the very first card of the year. Lets take the UFC for example as there is a card litterally on January 1st next year. He fights and loses. So he only gets the $20,000 to fight and loses out on that win bonus that would double his pay. Now he has to heal from that fight and probably won't be schedule for another bout for atleast 2 or 3 months. In that time, unless he is doing something else for income, he's not making any money. Sure he's probably still training, but he's not bringing in any income. Then he gets the call for his next fight in April. He's training his fucking dick off for it and gets hurt 2-3 weeks out from the fight and has to pull out. Well there goes that potential $40,000 he could have made (thats if we're still sticking with the even $20,000). So now he has to heal from that injury which could be any number of weeks of. He then has to get himself back into some shape prior to even thinking about dedicating himself to an 8-12 week training camp. So now we're probably around September, still riding off that $20,000 from the fight on January 1st. So now that he's been out of action for awhile he's low on marketing, which means lower purse for this next fight. Now he's fighting for $15,000 to fight, $15,000 to win. His fight is in November. He loses. He won't fight again in 2011. He's made $35,000 for the year.

I could go on about how technically he doesn't even make $35,000 because of taxes, paying trainers, paying for physical and license to fight, and manager's percentage. So after that we're probably looking something in the realm of $15,000 and that's being generous. Sure he makes money on sponsorships but if he's an undercard fighter, he's not making that much from them. And that also gets broken up by all the previously mentioned stuff.

Originally posted by: WREN

I'm not 100% sure what to make of that post but its all prize fighting. Look at someone like Floyd Mayweather. That man makes like $40 million a fight. In a broad generalization, he does the same thing as any fighter in the UFC. When you are a fighter you are your own personal business. If a company is going to make millions off your name and you putting your body on the line, you should get a decent cut of it. Obviously champions and bigger draws should be making more money than the guy that is a relative nobody fighting for the first time. But think of it this way, the more important you become in your own personal line of work, don't you want to be compensated for it or are you happy never getting a raise? Everyone wants to make more money and someone like Urijah Faber, who is a face of MMA, should be paid accordingly.

Now to break up another point you tried to make in your argument. You aren't necessarily making $20,000 just for 15-25 minutes in the cage. If you look at it simply that way, I could partially see your argument. What you are making $20,000 for is 8-12 weeks (sometimes longer) of putting your body through physical hell in order to prepare for an athletic contest that requires you to knockout or submit your opponent while he is trying to do the same exact thing. You aren't getting paid while you train and you aren't getting paid by your company while you are not fighting.

Let me put it in perspective for you. A guy fights on the very first card of the year. Lets take the UFC for example as there is a card litterally on January 1st next year. He fights and loses. So he only gets the $20,000 to fight and loses out on that win bonus that would double his pay. Now he has to heal from that fight and probably won't be schedule for another bout for atleast 2 or 3 months. In that time, unless he is doing something else for income, he's not making any money. Sure he's probably still training, but he's not bringing in any income. Then he gets the call for his next fight in April. He's training his fucking dick off for it and gets hurt 2-3 weeks out from the fight and has to pull out. Well there goes that potential $40,000 he could have made (thats if we're still sticking with the even $20,000). So now he has to heal from that injury which could be any number of weeks of. He then has to get himself back into some shape prior to even thinking about dedicating himself to an 8-12 week training camp. So now we're probably around September, still riding off that $20,000 from the fight on January 1st. So now that he's been out of action for awhile he's low on marketing, which means lower purse for this next fight. Now he's fighting for $15,000 to fight, $15,000 to win. His fight is in November. He loses. He won't fight again in 2011. He's made $35,000 for the year.

I could go on about how technically he doesn't even make $35,000 because of taxes, paying trainers, paying for physical and license to fight, and manager's percentage. So after that we're probably looking something in the realm of $15,000 and that's being generous. Sure he makes money on sponsorships but if he's an undercard fighter, he's not making that much from them. And that also gets broken up by all the previously mentioned stuff.

and when you factor in sponsorship money some guys aren't as marketable or they aren't featured on main cards so a lot of companies are reluctant to invest in them.

a lot of fighters supplement their fight winnings with teaching at the academy where they train. and like wren said, guys get injured that those injuries affect their other means of income. if you blow your knee out and require surgery you certainly won't be rolling with your students for quite some time.

The sponsorship thing totally comes down to negotiations and how much of a payoff the company thinks the sponsorship of an MMA fighter is worth to their company. One of our guys, that was the first pro fight of a local Pro-Am card, was thrown $5,000 from a new area company to put their logo & website on the back of his shorts and on his fight banner. That's pretty big for a fighter on an event that had probably 1800 people at and no PPV.

But if the company is established and dipping into sponsoring fighters isn't a worthy gamble to them, you'll get thrown a shit offer, which most of the time you take because new fighters pretty much take what they can get.

i don't think most of that injury shit is very pertinent to UFC fighters because most of the fights are rigged anyway

Rigged, really? I'm sure this is a bit of trolling but I guess I'll retort since I'm bored at work.



That's why their most marketable fighter, Brock Lesnar, just was pummeled in the first round. There is more money to be made with Lesnar as the Champion than any other fighter in the UFC. The sole exception might be Georges St. Pierre. If you have presented your argument in the way of the UFC trying to set up fights that will draw the most revenue as opposed to what is logical in terms of rankings, then yeah the fights are "rigged".

It would be hard to rig a fight in the US with all the atheletic commissions watching over your shoulders. Combat sports are federally regulated now. The UFC is high profile. Maybe in small promotions that get less attention, maybe but even that's a stretch. Even though boxing has a long history of corruption, I'll go as far as to say it would be nearly impossible to fix a high profile fight. If it was that easy, I'm sure a Pac-Man/Money trilogy would have happened by now.

Then you have to factor in all the former fighters that felt like they were cut from the UFC for unwarranted reasons. You don't think that they'd say something about how they were paid off to throw a fight? I think so. It's different than boxing. In boxing you are essentially a one man show, especially with the hundreds of promoters and belts out there. In MMA it's about what Promotion you are fighting for. If you have no hope of getting back with a certain promotion, there is nothing stopping you from bad mouthing them.

If you hate the sport, just say that instead of something totally moronic.

Onto injuries:

Injuries in the sport happen way more often than you think. The majority of them happen during training. Hell I only fight amatuer and haven't fought in nearly two years. In that time frame, I've broken two of the small bones in my foot, broken bones in both hands, received multiple cuts to the face/head, was KO'd during a sparring session, pulled countless amounts of muscles, and that's ontop of all the regular bumps and bruises, as well as anything I'm forgetting.

Training is the hardest part of the game. It's why you see so many bar room toughguys come into the gym and only last a month. They find out that it's not as easy as it looks and that getting punched/kicked doesn't tickle and that an armbar actually fucking hurts.

yeah, it was basically a bit of trolling, i don't think dana white handed too many people an envelope of money and told them to fall over from the right hook in the second round, but their are definitely people with belts that don't belong at the top of their game, or even weight class.- noone will ever convince me that chuck liddell was ever anything more than a third rate fighter, for instance.

" you have presented your argument in the way of the UFC trying to set up fights that will draw the most revenue as opposed to what is logical in terms of rankings, then yeah the fights are "rigged"."

yeah, thats mostly what i would say is happening- dana white picks someone that looks like they will make him money, and makes sure he doesn't get defeated- there are plenty of fighters in other organizations, making less money, that would crush the UFC media darlings- but you don't see them fighting. then these noones from nowhere with sixty five fights under their belt, 2 draws and 2 losses come out and get their asses handed to them by the second round in their first big fight. lots of tomato cans handy



but as to your defense of the UFC's infallibility due to it being a single organization, how long was wwf wrestling considered srs bzns? not saying ufc fighters are actors, just saying.


and i'm well aware of how hard training is on the body

There are definitely cans out there and there are definitely some questionable fights made in any of the organizations. Sometimes the miss matches of a marketable fighter coming off a loss and fighting some relative nobody are staggering. But then there are instances where everyone, well not the educated, just "knew" that Chris Leben was going to obliterate Anderson Silva in his first fight...we saw what happened there.

Then you have the instance of Brock Lesnar. That man is still green in the sport. With the exception of Heath Herring, he really hasn't been given an easy fight. Mir, although Lesnar matches up well against him, isn't an easy fight. Randy Couture is not an easy fight. Nor where Shane Carwin or Cain Velesquez. They really made him sink or swim.


As for Chuck Liddell...I wouldn't say he was a 3rd rate fighter at all. Definitely not at his prime. I guess if you broke down his abilities to their simplist form then maybe. He's definitely not that well rounded. His main striking is a hybrid of Kenpo and western Kickboxing. He pulls it off well but isn't necessarily great at either of the arts on their own. His wrestling seems to be rather solid as he was hard to take down and wrestled well in high school/college. His grappling game on a submission level, although a purple belt, has to be weak. I'm sure his knowledge on Judo is minimal and his clinch game has never been seen really.

But with all that said, you can't say he was third rate when he was blowing through a who's who list of guys...Between his losses to Rampage, he KO'd a still prime Tito Ortiz, Randy Couture twice, Babalu, and Jeremy Horn. Prior to his first encouter with Couture he was beating guys like Belfort, Bustemante, Randleman, and Guy Mezger while they were in their primes.

He has definitely seen his days, but Chuck Liddell in his prime was a nightmare for pretty much anyone not named Quinton Jackson.

oh and the single organization thing...

There are definitely some justified comparisons between the UFC and the WWF. From a production aspect down to the prefight drama that is created between fighters. Due to some crafty cutting in the editing room, they almost seem like scripted storylines. Shit even the fighters will tell you that they only talk their shit to hype the fight. More hype = more money.

Hell they also stole ideas from the WWF with The Ultimate Fighter and by buying out their main competition.


The WWF is definitely not the prime source of entertainment anymore for us savages that enjoy watching to people beat the shit out of eachother. I think in alot of cases with the UFC, you are now getting the real thing and it's hard to go back to the scripted, fake, or whatever you want to call the WWF. I used to be the biggest Hulkamaniac ever and I can't watch it anymore. It's hard for me to even appreciate the old guys now.

But even with the UFC dipping into the WWF's audience, Vince MacMahon is still the King of that mountain. TNA doesn't touch it's numbers in any department (audience, revenue, merch) and although there are big promotions in Japan, almost every wreslter aspires to be wrestling in the WWF.

I'll fully admit that MMA/UFC is definitely a trend right now. It's going to continue to grow and will peak with absolutely retarded numbers but in a few years it will fizzle down a little. However, I think it's going to be around for a long, long time. Just like the WWF has been and will continue to be.

The points you made about liddell are my points- his fighting ability doesn't stack up at all to his list of people he won against. he should have been fighting in high school basketball courts on sundays in omaha, nebraska, not being marketed to the american public as the toughest thing with two legs.

so then we have quinton jackson- he raises a hand against chuck liddell, chuck's corner throws in the towel. thats how fucking tough quinton is. he fights some idiot noone's ever heard of over in japan, same age as chuck liddell (past his prime too?), and giving up twenty pounds to get in the same ring, and makes quinton his bitch. dana white doesn't want sakuraba in the ufc any more than absolutely necessary. how about wanderlei silva? sure, quinton can beat him. as long as the fight is on american soil with a ref that will stop the fight before anyone gets too hurt, and wanderlei can't let it all hang out. dana white wants to make sure that wanderlei doesn't spend too much time in his organization, either.


so basically, the greatest fighters UFC could ever promote get their asses handed to them unless theres an eight sided chain link fence? i'm having trouble buying all the details of the shenanigans

your last post- thats just my point though- too much concentration on hype, sales and merchandise, not enough concentration on solid fights and blood. i can't even go out to watch a fight and grab some beers and get a table because the place is full of a bunch of doughy idiots that train at some gym that cropped up last year, run by some idiot that knows two ways to put an arm bar and had three professional fights, and everyone is decked out in four hundred dollars worth of fight gear.

so yeah, its fine, its a business, they want to make money, they need the hype, but for some people, all the hype kills the excitement