Scheduling Conflicts
Jake Rossen Mar 31, 2008
Virtually eight weeks to the day after a ragtag win over David Heath (Pictures) -- a fight that resembled a
lunch-money melee gone awry -- Tim Boetsch (Pictures) will re-enter the Octagon this
Wednesday against "Ultimate Fighter" cast member Matt Hamill (Pictures).
Boestch's appointment, a possible quarter-hour on Spike's marathon UFC Fight Night card, is part of a congested schedule that's becoming increasingly rare in mixed martial arts. Despite the fact that most athletes need only eight to 10 weeks to train and peak for a bout and four to eight weeks to convalesce following a loss, some gloves are being hung up long enough to collect dust.
Tito Ortiz (Pictures), who last fought Rashad Evans (Pictures) to a draw last July, won't see
action again until May 24 (the last bout on his Zuffa contract)
against Lyoto Machida
(Pictures). Despite exiting his Dec.
29 war with Wanderlei
Silva (Pictures) unmarked, Chuck Liddell (Pictures) will have idled for six months
until a June 7 London meeting with Evans. Brock Lesnar (Pictures), who barely broke a sweat in a
90-second contest with Frank
Mir (Pictures), will spend seven months tending
his Minnesota farmland before a sophomore UFC fight with Mark Coleman (Pictures).
Not exactly a breakneck pace.
The UFC ran 19 shows in '07, which would seem to preclude any discussion of athletes being inactive due to a stuttered event schedule. And it's certainly not reluctance to compete on the part of the athletes themselves -- Liddell told me in 2006 that he found his biannual dates "frustrating," but "I understand the business side of that."
Liddell, nothing if not pragmatic, nailed it. The business side of the sport, much to the dismay of fans, has been responsible for more holdups than Clyde Barrow.
Quinton Jackson (Pictures), a man whose charisma seems predestined to grant him a blinding mainstream spotlight, has been invisible since a September '07 win over Dan Henderson (Pictures). His expected winter title defense was suspended in favor of slotting him in as coach of the "Ultimate Fighter," a spring side gig that will serve to hype a summer bout with Forrest Griffin (Pictures). Lesnar's sabbatical is due to the August availability of a Minnesota arena, where his presence will likely act as rocket fuel for ticket sales.
It's a far less hospitable climate for fans than boxing's style of grooming, where prospective attractions ran a gauntlet that would exhaust the lax latter-day mixed-style athletes.
In 1985, the year he turned pro, Mike Tyson fought 15 times; Ali notched 10 performances over 1971-72.
Obviously, the majority of these bouts were against men that went on to lucrative careers in mall openings and air conditioning repair. And once their names were established, both Tyson and Ali settled into periods of inactivity broken up by high-profile, big-money bouts.
Well and good in boxing but an ominous sign of things to come in MMA, a sport that purports to learn from its distant cousin's mistakes. Rather than fill an undercard with substantial fights, the UFC and its competitors are opting for top-heavy attractions.
The April 19 Canada event has an obvious capper in the Matt Serra (Pictures)-Georges St. Pierre (Pictures) rematch, but can you name a single supporting fight? (No shame in missing the Rich Franklin (Pictures)-Travis Lutter (Pictures) bout -- it's one I'd just as soon forget, too.)
UFC 84, meanwhile, has three headliner-worthy bouts in Ortiz-Machida, Wanderlei Silva (Pictures)-Keith Jardine (Pictures) and Sean Sherk (Pictures)-B.J. Penn (Pictures), making the Montreal card look threadbare in comparison.
In the cases of athletes like Liddell and Ortiz, the UFC is making heavy investments in profit sharing and discretionary bonuses, a tact that may not be profitable when a fighter is wearing out the canvas four times a year.
But it's equally disheartening to see how seriously diluted some careers have become. Slots that are ignored in favor of more preferable box office can't be redeemed later: The fight that Liddell could've theoretically taken in March is gone for good.
Frequency of performance is obviously something that competing cultural attractions rely on to build awareness and maintain attention. The WWE's jesters have faux-grappling sessions weekly, while television is itself a serial form of entertainment. It's almost antagonistic to have fans invest themselves in a fighter's career and then force them to sit through the equivalent of a pregnancy term before they step back in the ring.
Despite a generally crooked business regimen, Japan's Pride organization was justified in penalizing fighters for passivity. Too bad the same edict can't be applied to promoters.
For comments, e-mail [email protected]
Boestch's appointment, a possible quarter-hour on Spike's marathon UFC Fight Night card, is part of a congested schedule that's becoming increasingly rare in mixed martial arts. Despite the fact that most athletes need only eight to 10 weeks to train and peak for a bout and four to eight weeks to convalesce following a loss, some gloves are being hung up long enough to collect dust.
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Not exactly a breakneck pace.
Compare their couch indentations with those of Clay Guida (Pictures), who fought four times in 2007,
or Roger Huerta
(Pictures) and his 5-0 mark that same
year. Tim Sylvia
(Pictures), who just announced a
mutual parting of ways with the UFC, expressed enthusiasm over
being able to fight "five or six" times in the next 12 months.
The UFC ran 19 shows in '07, which would seem to preclude any discussion of athletes being inactive due to a stuttered event schedule. And it's certainly not reluctance to compete on the part of the athletes themselves -- Liddell told me in 2006 that he found his biannual dates "frustrating," but "I understand the business side of that."
Liddell, nothing if not pragmatic, nailed it. The business side of the sport, much to the dismay of fans, has been responsible for more holdups than Clyde Barrow.
Quinton Jackson (Pictures), a man whose charisma seems predestined to grant him a blinding mainstream spotlight, has been invisible since a September '07 win over Dan Henderson (Pictures). His expected winter title defense was suspended in favor of slotting him in as coach of the "Ultimate Fighter," a spring side gig that will serve to hype a summer bout with Forrest Griffin (Pictures). Lesnar's sabbatical is due to the August availability of a Minnesota arena, where his presence will likely act as rocket fuel for ticket sales.
It's a far less hospitable climate for fans than boxing's style of grooming, where prospective attractions ran a gauntlet that would exhaust the lax latter-day mixed-style athletes.
In 1985, the year he turned pro, Mike Tyson fought 15 times; Ali notched 10 performances over 1971-72.
Obviously, the majority of these bouts were against men that went on to lucrative careers in mall openings and air conditioning repair. And once their names were established, both Tyson and Ali settled into periods of inactivity broken up by high-profile, big-money bouts.
Well and good in boxing but an ominous sign of things to come in MMA, a sport that purports to learn from its distant cousin's mistakes. Rather than fill an undercard with substantial fights, the UFC and its competitors are opting for top-heavy attractions.
The April 19 Canada event has an obvious capper in the Matt Serra (Pictures)-Georges St. Pierre (Pictures) rematch, but can you name a single supporting fight? (No shame in missing the Rich Franklin (Pictures)-Travis Lutter (Pictures) bout -- it's one I'd just as soon forget, too.)
UFC 84, meanwhile, has three headliner-worthy bouts in Ortiz-Machida, Wanderlei Silva (Pictures)-Keith Jardine (Pictures) and Sean Sherk (Pictures)-B.J. Penn (Pictures), making the Montreal card look threadbare in comparison.
In the cases of athletes like Liddell and Ortiz, the UFC is making heavy investments in profit sharing and discretionary bonuses, a tact that may not be profitable when a fighter is wearing out the canvas four times a year.
But it's equally disheartening to see how seriously diluted some careers have become. Slots that are ignored in favor of more preferable box office can't be redeemed later: The fight that Liddell could've theoretically taken in March is gone for good.
Frequency of performance is obviously something that competing cultural attractions rely on to build awareness and maintain attention. The WWE's jesters have faux-grappling sessions weekly, while television is itself a serial form of entertainment. It's almost antagonistic to have fans invest themselves in a fighter's career and then force them to sit through the equivalent of a pregnancy term before they step back in the ring.
Despite a generally crooked business regimen, Japan's Pride organization was justified in penalizing fighters for passivity. Too bad the same edict can't be applied to promoters.
For comments, e-mail [email protected]
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