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Post-UFC 100 Thoughts
by Ivan Trembow

-I realize that Brock Lesnar is just playing a heel pro wrestling character, but the casual fans who make up a big percentage of the audience for such a huge show wouldn't know that. They would just think that's how the UFC Heavyweight Champion behaves. You don't have to play a trashy heel pro wrestling character to be a superstar, and one doesn't need to look any further than Georges St. Pierre on the very same event for evidence of that.

-The clip of Brock Lesnar screaming in his semi-conscious opponent's face and then slobbering all over the camera like a bad 1980s pro wrestler made it onto the overnight SportsCenter. So did the clip of Dan Henderson punching his already-unconscious opponent's head.

Between these two things and the recent E:60 segment about Dana White's obscene rant, I don't think that the average ESPN viewer has a very good impression of MMA at this point. Neither does the average potential advertiser, for that matter.

-Here's a quote from UFC play-by-play announcer Mike Goldberg, leaving his credibility at the door in a post-event segment on ESPNews: "Lesnar is undoubtedly the best heavyweight in the world!" He obviously wasn't going to go on ESPNews and say, "Lesnar is still not the best heavyweight in the world!" But he could have also retained a lot more credibility if he had chosen different wording.

-I didn't catch it on the live broadcast, but all of the quotes from Dan Henderson’s post-fight interview include Henderson openly saying that he knew Michael Bisping was unconscious and he hit him one more time anyway. That is just classless garbage. At least he didn't throw two more punches at his unconscious opponent's head after the ref was literally pulling him off (like Quinton Jackson did against Wanderlei Silva), but it's still classless garbage.

-That was a masterful performance by Georges St. Pierre, but why was cornerman Greg Jackson talking to GSP like he was five years old in between rounds? I'm not even exaggerating; that is literally how Little League coaches talk to five-year-olds.

-Were the judges distracted by a piece of flying lint during the Yoshihiro Akiyama-Alan Belcher fight? I had it scored 30-27 for Belcher, although I could understand scoring it 29-28 for Belcher. But one judge had it 30-27 for Akiyama? As Jake Rossen said on his ESPN/Sherdog blog, "Do they test the judges for recreational drugs?"

-The fact that Mark Coleman is still fighting at his age and in his condition is sad. The fact that Stephan Bonnar lost to him is almost as sad.

-According to USA Today, during a recent Q&A session with fans, UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta recently "called out EA Sports for passing up a deal with the UFC on a video game and then coming around after the success of UFC 2009 Undisputed to do another MMA game."

That is some nice revisionist history (from someone whose company has been engaging in plenty of revisionist history recently). The launch (and sales success) of UFC 2009: Undisputed came in May 2009. EA Sports has been working on an MMA video game since 2008, and multiple media outlets wrote about it in 2008, including MMA Payout and the Wrestling Observer.

Were the writers at MMA Payout and the Wrestling Observer blessed with psychic powers that enabled them to write about EA’s MMA game and some of the specific fighters that signed to appear in it (Randy Couture, Frank Shamrock, etc.) one year before EA even started working on the game?

No, they weren't. In fact, IGN also wrote about EA's MMA game in May 2008, a full year before UFC 2009: Undisputed was released.

The UFC's management was fully aware of the existence of EA's MMA game in 2008, as that was one of the major reasons that the UFC threatened its roster of fighters into signing away their lifetime exclusive video game rights for free (ie, to ensure that they couldn't appear in EA's game).

As Steve Barry wrote on MMA Convert, "It's just another example of Zuffa bending the truth to spin an ugly situation in their favor. And quite frankly, it's starting to get old, especially when the majority of people listening don't know any better."

Labels: Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

posted by Ivan Trembow at 5:02 AM

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