It was a sad day for Ultimate Fighting Championship when Dana White was forced stoop to giving away a free car to drum up excitement about a UFC bout. Although no one was surprised when the much awaited “showdown” between Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock fizzled 1:18 into the first round, this slapdown had much more devastating implications for the entire UFC world as a whole. The Royce Gracie/Matt Hughes UFC 60 was also a disappointment with the one-sided stomping of Gracie, but hey, the fight made a lot of money, and that’s what’s important, right?
Stringing millions of devoted fans along with clearly mismatched opponents in manufactured fights is not only insulting, it endangers the future of the sport. Fans will only tolerate so much exploitation, and cheap gimmicks that attempt to divert attention away from the incredibly unbalanced ticket will only go so far. Hyping a fight is a good way to expose more people to the exciting world of UFC, but there has to be the promise of a good fight to back it up.
PRIDE FC has been UFC’s competition from day one, and now UFC is tapping out to PRIDE. Witness the recent spectacle at UFC 61 when Dana White pulled Wanderlei Silva out of the crowd and declared he would battle Chuck Liddell in November, provided Liddell retained his title at UFC 62. Pitting fighters from rival organizations may help hype a fight and make mountains of cash for promoters like Dana White, but it does nothing to shore up the reputation of the UFC as the premier fighting league in the world.
If the UFC wants to stay competitive with PRIDE FC as it claims more and more territory in the U.S., we must all make many tough choices. Are we willing to sit back and let promoters distract us from our sport with over-hyped fights that divert attention away from the thousands of fighters waiting to prove themselves against the best the UFC has to offer? Will White have to bring in more and more PRIDE fighters into UFC to drum up excitement? Are we willing to roll over and pay dead as PRIDE moves in against us? And if that is the case, does UFC deserve to lose out to PRIDE?
These questions and more will be answered in the coming days as UFC 62 draws near. Who will stand tall, and who will fall short? Hopefully UFC fans won’t come out on the losing end. Again.
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