The Future of MMA

As a long-time boxing fan I wish you weren’t right. With the influx of legitimate athletes, UFC is perched to take off. Frankly, they have been too many mid-western college wrestlers away from the big-time for awhile, but that seems to be changing.

The wild card, however, is the probability that someone is killed in a televised fight in a relatively gruesome manner. And it could happen. Admittedly, boxing has survived literally hundreds of ring deaths, but the UFC vultures would jump all over a single incident and the venture is still new enough that it could be crippled by the perfect publicity storm.

There is also the possibility that the sport is heading for the NASCAR position of having a dedicated, loyal, commercially viable fan-base that has very little in common with mainstream sports fans.

I’m a boxing fan as well. And the two sports aren’t opposed necessarily. One doesn’t have to take from the other. MMA just presents a stark contrast.
 
The NBA and NFL cleaned out heavyweight boxing - the key for broad fan support - long before MMA’s arrival. Mike Tyson was the anomaly that kept the heavyweight division off of life support. Without a viable heavyweight division, boxing becomes a narrow ethnic sport with fan interest dominated mostly by Latinos and a few Brits hoping to adopt their latest tomato can. RICK-Y HAT-TON!
 
The MMA death has already happened, but because the sport is now commisioned and somewhat culturally entrenched, it will have no real impact long term. The submission aspect of MMA and aggressive referee stoppages also decreases the likelihood substantially.
 
The NASCAR analogy is an interesting one, but MMA’s appeal is broad both geographically and culturally and its stars represent all races. That’s a key tool for its growth. NASCAR has no growth strategy beyond its base nationally or internationally. MMA is nothing but upside from a market perspective.

One thing that I like about MMA vis-a-vis boxing is that you usually don’t have several rounds of inaction. These guys go full speed from the start. Furthermore, the 5 minute periods mean less people are saved by the bell, which often leads to playing keep-away in the following round if it were boxing.

I finally figured out MMA was getting huge when my boss flew to Vegas a couple of years ago to attend an MMA fight with his wife. That may not seem like a big deal until you consider that he is a 43 year old lawyer, father of 4, highly religious (has never drank or smoked, home schools his kids), and his wife is a professional classical musician.

Now I am guessing that those 2 are not exactly in the sweet spot of the marketing plan for most fringe sports.

Boxing also lacks MMA’s overt homoeroticism.

Tennis has more legs than you’re giving it credit for, Scipio, and is growing rapidly in Asia.

They recently tweaked the doubles format to make it more television friendly, with promising results. There may be similar movement on the equipment front if such will make the game more attractive to viewers.

alma -
 
Agreed. The lighter weights keep up a good pace in boxing for the most part, but the heavyweights can be tough to watch.
 
That’s where the rule structure of MMA is helpful - if you know you’ve got 15 minutes to endure and every single round has the equivalent value of four rounds in boxing, you pace yourself accordingly.

I know its not the main sticking point, but I don’t see anything that would suggest that soccer is an up-and-coming spectator sport. Athletes are definitely not flocking towards MLS, the biggest stars go and play in European leagues, no big televised NCAA soccer event, etc.

parlin -
 
The equipment changes seem key to making it viewer friendly.
 
I don’t think even most hardcore tennis fans will watch a double’s match.
 
 
Brickhorn -
 
Or in the case of the movie Bruno, super-overt.

Honna -
 
No doubt. The problem with the MLS is that it’s just a bad and inferior product. Still, I think the sport is healthy and growing worlwide, irrespective of domestic penetration.

What kind of money do those MMA dudes make?

HJ -
 
Hugely variable, but the UFC has done a very effective job of controlling labor costs.
 
Here’s some UFC 100 payouts http://www.mmaconvert.com/2009/07/13/ufc-100-fighter-payouts/
  
Elite fighters make between 250K all the way up to 1 million for a big fight.
 
The dropoff from elite fighter to mid-range fighter payouts is steep.
 
Obviously, all fighters augment that with sponsorships, personal appearances, promotions, seminars. A reputable guy can teach a 3 hour seminar to 30 dudes at $90 a head if he needs to pick up some walking around money.
 
The UFC also offers incentive bonuses of between 30K to 100K for Knockout of the Night, Fight of The Night, Submission of the Night.
 
At UFC 100, GSP and Brock Lesnar had base payouts of 400K, but their PPV match was at least equal to that payout.

What kind of money do those MMA dudes make?

They’re paid in Affliction t-shirts and Rockstar Energy Drink.

I realize there is a wide base of fan support but I’m still going to paint with broad strokes here. MMA guy is an absolute douche bag. They get all beer’d up (not opposed to that) and then after watching the fights they want to fight everyone like an 8 year old that just watched a Sho Kosugi movie (am opposed to that, not necessarily the movie part though.)

Those horrid Affliction shirts are the number one indication you’re in the presence of d-bags, especially when it’s a 40 year old wearing it.

All that said, I like the actual sport ok. I prefer boxing but those bitches will do anything to not fight eachother where as UFC guys will do anything TOO fight eachother. I also like the performance bonus’.

My chick actually got me into it. So now, we hit a bar up, get buzzed, and go home and “wrestle.”

Fair point about Football stealing heavyweights. I get that. And I perfer light-weight fights these days anyway. But, to a certain extent, I do think MMA takes even more directly from boxing. It may not matter though — boxing in the US is pretty much dead.

The people I know who are serious MMA fans seem to fall into three camps: (1) law enforcement officers and dudes who are into martial arts (lots of cross-over here); (2) unathletic dudes who like MMA because it has white guys, Wal-Mart merch, and a little of that elusive Harley-Davidson faux-tough guy thing; and (3) meatheads and fitness guys. This does not capture casual fans, obviously. But that group is niche enough to evoke NASCAR possibilities to me.

I expect Steve Levitt to do an article on why MMA Fighters still live with their moms.

What kind of money do those MMA dudes make?

You thinking of jumping in the ring? I hope so.

Jon Jones is fun to watch. That reverse elbow to the brain stem has to feel great the next day.

I’ve often wondered what Ray Lewis would have been like as a boxer. Or how about Pat Willis? But now it’s gotten so bad that last offseason Willis trained with Randy Couture and Jay Glazer at MMA. They don’t even cross train with boxing anymore.

scip - you should also have mentioned that jon jones, featured in the video, broke his opponents orbital with a vicious elbow sunday night.

as a huge mma fan, i cant wait to see elite athletes come into the sport in a big way. this generation of top-level fighters are really the first who have been training mma for most of their career. just look at the difference in versatility and athleticism between matt hughes and gsp, both in the same weight class and both dominant in their prime.

guys like jon jones, jose aldo, phil davis, cain velasquez wil drive this sport to new heights. my only worry is a death in the ring, which would get the politicians in a tizzy. for hardcore fans, the next decade will be great.

As a 40 year old who still enjoys playing soccer in an Affliction t-shirt, I endorse this thread.

magnus -
 
You may be a little surprised at the MMA fan breakdown.
 
http://www.watchkalibrun.com/2009/11/24/1172674/study-of-mma-fans-results-in
 
eljinca -
 
Yeah, I watched the Vera fight live. Brutal elbow.

MMA is trying to pass that threshold where the average person wouldn’t be embarrassed to be known as an MMA “fan.” NASCAR has given up on passing that threshold.

“The average MMA fan is 217% more likely to have a tribal band tattoo.”

“The average MMA fan is 96% more likely to own one of those fat leather band watch thingy’s”

Dammit Scip, lemme stereotype.

Ghost, that’s a good breakdown, but all three of your “types” are often the same guy. A lot of it has to do with being “law enforcement” guy.

I didn’t watch the Vera fight, damn. Was watching the topic which we don’t speak of and forgot that shit was on after watching the first two fights.

Live Bait, I love soccer.

Best part of that link:

“-MMA fans are 62 percent more likely than the average adult to be a corporate decision maker for overnight delivery services.”

I actually know a couple of 40+ year-old Affliction shirt wearers. Despite their questionable fashion sense, they are not douchebags.

Are these the same guys that watch it for the eroticism? Because as you mentioned, there’s those too.

MLS is hardly the bell-cow for soccer as an international product. It’s a startout league for elite level US-born players and last-stop-before-retirement league for international talent.

The quality of the product it offers is inferior to that put out by the A-list leagues of Europe, who must compete intensely with each other for the best players and coaches.

The pool of quality athletes who choose to pursue a career in soccer in this country is growing, relative to years past, but its a niche sport. Unless it becomes an attractive option for undersized wide receivers, dbs, option qbs, and point guards that currently choose to pursue NBA and NFL dreams that tend to end in the NCAA, that’s all it will be here in the US.

Live Bait—Welcome.

http://fantake.com/forums/topic.php?id=885#post-5290

So who wins the fights this weekend?

I’m not so sure that boxing didn’t give all the heavyweight fighters to the NFL and NBA. After all the (good) fights went to pay-per-view boxing basically became a fringe sport for die-hard fans willing to shell out the$100 fee. Sadly the few remaining athletes who might gravitate to becoming boxers probably can’t afford the cost of buying the fights, especially considering the NFL and NBA are on free TV.

It might be a chicken and egg kind of thing, but I think its something the NFL network better think long and hard about.

Of course there are also the Don Kings of the world who basically just keep kicking the corpse of what used to be a great sport with there off-putting monday night raw promotional style.

Buy MMA, football, golf (tiger is cured of his “addiction”)

Oh, one more thing. Live boxing is really a Vegas sport now. There really aren’t major fights (very few of the lower level fights either) in other cities, you really have to work to see a fight whereas football teams and basketball teams are all over the country and you can get tickets with very little effort.

A billion dollar organization? Doubtful. Billion-dollar sports franchises are a pretty short list. They’re a private company, but Zuffa LLC has a smallish credit line (100 mm) and a mediocre credit rating - I don’t think you could unload them for anywhere near a billion dollars.

Forbes estimated the UFC at worth over a billion in 2008 and the Fertittas claim to have turned down multiple offers in excess of same. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0505/080.html
 
And 2009 was a record year in every category.
 
Given one single year with 300 million+ in PPV sales, another 40-50 million in gate/concessions, trivial labor costs, plus unknown profits in licensing fees for multiple television shows, apparel, DVD sales etc. a billion dollar pricetag isn’t hard to reason to.

Pangloss -

They are private for a reason. These guys are making cash hand over fist and want nobody looking at their P&L. They have tax and real estate attorneys stashing Benjamins in mattresses all over Clark County.

If they went public, they’d be worth well north of a billion. Of course, they don’t want Orin Hatch crawling up their, hatch.

Fedor is baaaaack

Well, this is certainly going to put a damper on opening day.

For certain, MMA has its fair share of d-bag fans. There is a blatant overabundance of Jersey Shore-lookalike wannabes out there rockin’ their $75 Affliction tees and acting like there is some kind of osmotic process where watching MMA garners them a functional knowledge of the art, allowing them to potentially kick the ass of 95% of the American male populous. Personally, I would never wear Affliction, TapOut, Silver Star, etc. unless I was actually training and considered myself a legit MMA practitioner, but then again I try to avoid established douchebag principles as a general rule.

That being said, MMA is just beginning to gain its foothold on the world scene, and has a high probability of blowing up even bigger over the next 5 years. So many people are training for MMA nowadays that the selection pool talent is getting higher and higher, and it has firmly rooted itself into the American psyche as a viable subculture. The Ferttitas have enough financial backing and Dana White has enough aggression and chutzpah to keep pushing the brand to a level that might plant them firmly in the #2 slot of American sports, firmly entrenched behind the NFL. The fighter payouts have increased to be competitive for the purpose of talent retention, but are still fairly low in comparison to what other professional athletes earn (thus providing a low payroll overhead for the MMA companies out there, allowing them to generally turn a hefty profit). In my humble opinion, MMA is here to stay…

The first UFC offering on Versus was a certifiable success. NONE of the matches that were televised went to decision, with several KOs or TKOs to excite both the live and television audiences. Jon Jones truly appears to be one of the future stars of the UFC, and at such a young age he still has plenty of learning and maturing to do. Can’t wait to watch his meteoric rise to the top of the LHW division.

NASCAR still has the good ole boy network, with nepotism alive and well. I could be the greatest NASCAR driver ever, but no one ever let me suit up and drive around the oval at 200 mph. But if I was Dale Earnhardt’s son, I could suck and still be a big time driver.

I’m not an MMA fan or a NASCAR fan, but I think this is where MMA has an opening. If I can kick someone’s ass, I can make it big in MMA. My impression, and it may be wrong, is that it’s still mostly white guys that weren’t good enough to be football players. But as the money and fame grow, MMA could start to attract the best athletes, which will further facilitate it’s growth.

On soccer, MLS isn’t the answer. But thanks to Fox Soccer Channel, and now Fox Soccer Plus and HD broadcasts, as well as internet streams like justin.tv, I can follow teams from England in ways that I couldn’t before. England’s Premier League makes boatloads of cash from its international broadcasts, including a ton from China and India.

i dont think the connection of wearing a t-shirt brand needs the assumption that you train in mma. that jump isnt made for other basketball shoes or baseball caps. When you see a t-shirt and you assume that the person is a fan rather than a participant is the point where you can start to consider the sport fully mainstream.

the sport is expanding, but i dont think its at that point yet.

internationally, the ufc has a lot of opportunity to grow it would be amazing to see them return to japan or brazil.

It’s too bad the MLS is such a shitty league. I think there really is an audience if it was a decent product. It seems like more and more people tune into EPL or Champions League coverage all the time.

World Cup is the best. I’m basically drunk for an entire month, it’s beautiful, no hangovers.

While the talent in the MLS is subpar, it’s still fun to attend the games.

Scipio,
This kind of goes to the heart of both this article and the one you wrote previously about MMA’s ascendancy into popular sport, but what’s your take on the long-term popularity of sports with increased levels of violence? On one hand, there’s seems to be a decreased appetite for increased levels of violence as one gets older. On the other hand, it’s not like violence is that far removed from society to begin with. Moreover, human history is littered with countless sports that were worlds more violent that anything we are accustomed to today (I’m not suggesting MMA is equivalent to anything that happened in the Roman Colosseum or anything, but I’m sure you would agree that it’s probably the most “violent” sport currently in general popular culture).

UTiceberg -
 
Those are interesting questions.
 
First, with respect to age, I think older people respect skill and I don’t think MMA is just mindless carnage. If the audience bothers to learn some of the finer points of the game, these are about as skilled a group of athletes you can find.
 
Or maybe it’s a Peter Pan sport, always perpetually the most popular between the ages of 18-45.
 
We’ll find out soon enough as the current group of MMA fans age.
 
MMA is certainly violent, but its rule structure spares you from mayhem. The refs aggressively stop fights when a guy can’t defend himself, you can win by submission, and you also have the ability to tap out when your situation is hopeless.
 
I’d argue that boxing is more violent in terms of real, long-term damage and inarguably in the potential for death.
 
I’ve been to bull fights and that’s ridiculously violent, basically just sanctioned animal torture. Dog fighting is more humane. Its most fervent defenders are older men. Maybe a cultural connection to a another time.
 
You also don’t have to look back to Ancient Rome to find violent spectactle in our own history - bull baiting, bear baiting, cock fighting, bareknuckle brawling.
 
Most cultures throughout history have some provision for getting young men together and having them duke it out under some rules. I say you regulate it, give them plenty of outs in the ring, and make sure it’s not a bloodsport.

Scipio,

Yeah, I didn’t mean to insinuate that MMA is mindless carnage or anything. I’ve caught a few fights and would totally agree that these dudes are quite skilled. In fact, I pretty much agree with exactly what you mentioned above about how when Joe-blow-fighter/athlete steps into the ring with little or no training, he’s asking for a quick beat down (see: Kimbo Slice).

I do agree that the popularity for MMA is growing. On the violence in society point, I think the general trend (at least in American culture) is in fact to embrace sports that have a more carnal aspect, a little more “blood”, so to speak. Just my opinion, but that’s the general trend I see us headed in. Not good or bad, just is. I’m certainly not suggesting that MMA is more dangerous than some other sports or doesn’t have rules, but I certainly think it’s fair to say that the reputation for MMA is that it’s one of the “toughest” sporting events out there and, by extension, is perceived to be more “violent” than most. Anyway, interested to hear if you agree or disagree.

I definitely agree that it’s tough. I think people like that it represents a stripped down very pure form of individual competition. Two men enter, one man leaves.
 
It’s also a sport with a wide participation range: skater kid likes it as much as football jock.

The future of MMA..

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhHv4DfzeY6B0cxJ5c

actually It’s my understanding that the dude in the yellow is echeese

“Chinaman and a Sikh away from completing the markets that matter sweep.”

UFC 112: Invincible will be in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates….still got the Chinaman to worry about though. I know what you’re going to say, yes I know the UAE has zero Sikh population, but most of the readers here didn’t know that.

I would say MMA is a far cry from NASCAR, kind of like what Logan said. Anyone can fight. Not anyone can have the opportunity to drive a car around a track at 200mph. I think that fighting appeals to lot of people for various reasons. There are the people who just want to see someone removed from consciousness (the people that boo when the fighters grapple), but my hope is that the more they see, the more they will appreciate what is really happening.

Scip- who do you like for the Mir - Carwin fight?

I like Mir, assuming his head is right.
 
And I expect GSP to destroy Hardy.
 
Both Mir and GSP make it interesting because they have average chins.
 
Glad to see the UFC is headed to Abu Dhabi - that’s been a big place for grappling tournaments for quite a while.

Well, Mir’s head was not right. He’s on his way out.
 
GSP took care of Hardy easily.
 
Pretty weak UFC, by all accounts.