Newsweek piece on UFC's popularity

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15079908/site/newsweek/?GT1=8618

 

Semi-related: Should we reserve an "RIP Kurt Angle" thread for sometime in the next year?

 

Is Angle fighting in UFC?

 

Not yet, but there's been talk he'll try to do both TNA and MMA. His body and mind aren't in good shape for wrestling, much less shoot fighting.

 

Free advice for any reporter doing a future piece on UFC: When Dana White says he took over UFC as a blood-soaked carnival and cleaned it up, like he does in this piece, he's lying. The rules changes that led to comission sanctioning happened years before his company took over.

 

I think a lot of the mainstream media pieces on UFC have confused it with Toughman fights, which were and are chock full eye-gouging, biting, hitting below-the-belt, etc...etc...

 

Or independently-run shootfighting that flies under the radar and has more in common with backyard wrestling than UFC. Another common mistake: mixed martial arts is the same as UFC. UFC is an MMA organization in the way the NFL is a football organization, but MMA is a catch-all term that can be applied to things like Pride and K-1.

 

I believe Pride or K-1--I think it's K-1--is about to go out of business.

 

Not that great a story. It looks like it was written in the last 20 minutes of the reporter's shift after a three-minute phone interview with White and a cursory look at the facts as provided by a fax from White's media relations department.

On another note, you just know that the UFC's pertinent stats -- "routinely eclipsing the NBA, NHL and MLB in cable ratings among the coveted 18-34 set" and "UFC's most successful pay-per-view event this year generated more than $30 million in revenue, a sum that beats WrestleMania's $23 million haul and HBO's typical $16 million from a night of boxing" will quickly be pooh-poohed by the same kind of people who claim that the NHL is no longer a Big Four sport because its American TV ratings are "too low."

 

Read like a press release story.
Which means a vast majority of the people that don't follow UFC (or MMA in general) will cite this as a definitive story on the subject because it was in a major magazine.
And those that do actually follow the sport, will shake our heads and sigh loudly.
Okay, maybe it's just me that will sigh.
<sigh>

It reads like all those "gee, NASCAR sure is becoming popular" stories/columns from people that have never been to a race in their life but some editor said, hey, people say NASCAR is popular, can you do a story, that always include the Daytona 500 fight on live TV when half the country was snowed in and the multiple appearances of stars like Jeff Gordon on Regis.
The writers always think they're writing some big breakthrough piece, revealing to the world that all NASCAR fans aren't rednecks or that the UFC isn't equal to beer-fueled brawls.
Great.
Thanks for the insight.

 

does your paper give UFC results? Over the past 6 months both the Globe and Herald have started writing about UFC on a regular basis, in fact I've seen more UFC articles than boxing lately in both papers. I was jsut wondering if the same thing is happening at your papers....or if Dana White (originally from Boston) managed to befriend Borges.

 

Borges was at one of the events, sitting with DWhite -- don't know if he was working on a feature or what,
And he has included more UFC chatter in his weekly boxing notes.