So, MMA/UFC wasn't a fad

Anybody shocked that White was on the podium at the '16 RNC?
No chance in hell Khabib will be stripped of the belt or be docked any $. White wants to do business in Russia, Pooty is a big MMA fan (even Conor loves him), and if Khabib has any beefs, Pooty will call he and Dana's mutual BFF at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and get it straightened out.
The upshot: Russian organized crime beat Irish organized crime.

 

Forty years ago that would've been a fair fight. Not anymore.

 

As someone who attended Bowe-Golota...this wasn't even close. Bowe-Golota was one of the most frightening experiences as brawls just started from everywhere at every level and there was nothing but in-house "security" to stop it.

Last night there was WAY too much law enforcement presence for them to not expect something to happen. And Dana is such a carny-in-training I have little doubt he promotes such behavior from his guys. I have no doubt he told Conor to start some shit when he threw the hand truck at the bus in Brooklyn and I have no doubt he wanted to keep things on edge in the post fight regardless of who won.

 

Craziest thing about Bowe - Golota might be that they fought again 5 months later.

And Golota was DQed again!

 

And he suckered in people like me who don’t care about any of this to see what the fuss is about

 

I will never forget the conversation with my cousin on that Thursday, July 11, 1996...We both had Friday off and were thinking of taking in the Mets-Braves game but the Mets were shit and it was just something to do. I go to scanning through the Daily News and see that Bowe is fighting...and hell it seemed like something fun to do. The concourse tickets were relatively cheap. Figure go to MSG for a couple of slugging heavyweights and hit a nice restaurant or bar afterwards.

Yeah, none of that went as planned. It was so hard to escape because every direction we looked there was a brawl happening. And we really didn't want to get caught in some crossfire between the Golota fans, the Bowe fans and the NYPD that was sure to arrive any second. It was just crazy.

And yeah we didn't go to Atlantic City for the rematch. No thank you

 

Short term, there are certainly benefits to this sort of carnival barker/Vince McMahon approach. Especially if PPV numbers have plateaued, and Dana White is struggling to create new attractions.

Long term, stunts like this erode confidence in the legitimacy of the sport. It becomes theater.

And once it all seems like a work, then it's just more professional wrestling.

As deeply fucked up as boxing may be, it is atomized across a sufficient number of promotions and promoters and managers and venues and fighters and broadcasters and sanctioning bodies that it remains mostly believable most of the time.

 

Good news for White: most of the fans also like WWE as well and probably won't care.

 

Agreed.

 

Which also speaks, in part, to the genesis of this thread.

I.e., why old-time boxing guys like me still don't take MMA very seriously.

That's OK. Dana White doesn't need us.

For now.

 

Noticed on Facebook Saturday night that a lot of my same friends who are babbling about WWE were all over this as well. These people just wanna' see people get fucked up, scripted or unscripted.

I never took MMA to be anything more than legalized goonery. The idea that you can get someone down and keep beating them. And you do it in an octogon cage, like you’re fucking Sonny in Bronx Tale, “now you’ze can’t leave...” Its all designed to take money from people with barbed wire tattoos on their biceps.

 

Did everyone affiliated with either camp make it out of Vegas alive?