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By Anthony De Franco  March 13, 2010, at 12:45 pm  Is the Iceman coming back sooner than we thought?
According to Fighters only, his return may be roughly a month away. Chuck would forgo his UFC 115 fight with Tito Ortiz to take on former middleweight champion Rich Franklin on April 15th. This, of course, is the same day that Strikeforce will be on CBS, with the main event being Dan Henderson v. Jake Shields.
Chuck Liddell will be fighting Rich Franklin in his next bout and not rival TUF 11 coach Tito Ortiz, Fighters Only has heard from a reliable source. The switch was initially reported to us just under two weeks ago but was only a rumour at that time.
However, the rumour hit message boards late last night and an industry source confirmed that Liddell will indeed be facing former middleweight champion Rich Franklin. The fight is to headline an April 17th Fight Night event which will counter Strikeforce’s show on the same date.
Bloody Elbow (which is just an awesome site) is quick to point out that Fighters only is credentialed by the UFC, which means that this claim probably has some legitimacy to it.
Let’s look at what this does for the UFC. First off, they will lose the UFC 115 main event between Ortiz and Liddell. This fight had a chance to be a big PPV moneymaker, so there are some who will question Zuffa’s logic. Instead, they will put the Iceman on free cable, and some that he draws some eyes over from CBS.
Inside the cage, this should be an interesting fight, and it’s a win-win for Dana White. If Liddell loses, he will likely retire, which Dana publicly said that he would like Chuck to. That would mean that Franklin is back on the map in the light heavyweight division with a win over someone who, at the very least, is still a name.
If Liddell wins, then Chuck will likely be given another fight, and that one would not be free. Even if Liddell isn’t a championship caliber fighter anymore, he is still a name that can make money.
It’s also an interesting test of Liddell’s drawing power. Can Chuck still draw like The Iceman could a couple of years ago or are people going to think of him like they do LaDanian Tomlinson nowadays and react with general apathy?
If this fight goes off, there are a lot of interesting dynamics involved
[Update: (1:37 PM) Okay, maybe not. MMA Junkie is now reporting that Liddell and Franklin will take place as the main event of UFC 115, not on a new card scheduled for April. They also are reporting some other strange news...]
By Anthony De Franco March 10, 2010, at 4:20 pm I wrote before the event that was a very important card in the history of the WEC. They needed to put up a strong number to show that there was interest in the pay-per-view that they are putting on next month.
Yea…not so much. According to MMAJunkie, this was the second-worst rating that the promotion has done on Versus in nearly two full years.
WEC 47 (Bowles vs. Cruz): 373,000 viewers
WEC 46 (Varner vs. Henderson): 640,000
WEC 45 (Cerrone vs. Ratciff): 330,000
WEC 44 (Brown vs. Aldo): 414,000
WEC 43 (Cerrone vs. Henderson): 419,000 (first event after loss of DirecTV viewers)
Why did this happen? Well, the event did certainly lack some pop. The only real star on the card was Miguel Torres, and he was coming off a pretty embarrassing knockout loss. The main event was between two bantamweights that only the real MMA fan would know. Bowles was coming off a win, but hadn’t fought in more than six months. Cruz has only one loss, but doesn’t have a resume that screams superstar.
However, I bring you another possibility. This card was on a Saturday night. While me and you may block some prime weekend time for the WEC, Joe Average is out at the bar getting crunk at that time. He might stop for a UFC, but not for it’s awkward little brother.
Well, can the WEC draw on a PPV if they can’t draw on cable on a Saturday night? We’ll see. This next card coming up has a TON of star power on it. The featherweight triumvirate of Urijah Faber, Mike Brown and Jose Aldo are all in action. Donald Cerrone and Ben “Pootie Tang” Henderson go at it in a repeat of WEC’s 2009 fight of the year. Not to mention the possible inclusion of hot prospect Chan Sung Jung, who is best known as “The Korean Zombie. Mmmm…Brains.
Should we assume that the WEC is screwed next month? No, not quite. However, this can’t be good news for Reed Harris and the boys.
By Anthony De Franco November 16, 2009, at 9:55 am This has been a rumor for a while, but someone finally went ahead and put pen to paper with a few details. The source is Brazilian source TATAME.com, which is not exactly the New York Times, but they seem convinced. So, we put the word report in front of it let you figure it out.
Biggest MMA event of the planet, UFC has plans even bigger to 2010. Sources close to WEC informed TATAME.com that the UFC will add new weights categories on the next year, bringing athletes with contract with WEC, that was bought by Zuffa – same organization that commands the UFC – in 2006.
This year, UFC scheduled 20 events – WEC made only eight –, but the bigger amount of athletes would force the organization to make a bigger number of annual shows. According to sources close to the event, Zuffa called all the fighters with contract with WEC in Las Vegas earlier this month, telling about the merger and revealing that they plan three events for month in the future.
Jason has discussed this plenty of times before. With all the injury woes that the UFC is suffering, how nice would it be to put Urijah Faber and his wonderful golden locks on Pay-per-view and not have to worry about it? Well, it looks like that may be a possibility.
One of my biggest concerns about this is the employment status of WEC general manager Reed Harris. Harris has done a really wonderful creating something out of nothing with his brand, and even since Zuffa took over, he was resided over some of the best fight cards in the world. What would his prize for that be? Severence pay? That doesn’t seem right.
However, it is the right move. While the cable deal they have in place with Versus is great, it isn’t the same type of money that pay-per-view can pull in.
It’s not a question of if a featherweight fight will headline a UFC PPV, it’s a question of when. My guess is that it’s by the time we see Brown-Faber III.
By Anthony De Franco October 12, 2009, at 4:36 pm Once is a gift, or a chance to counterpromote the biggest boxing card of the year. Twice, on the other hand, is a pattern and something that UFC fans should thank the MMA gods for. UFC 104’s very potent undercard will be televised for free on SPIKE TV on October 24th. Here’s the news from MMA Weekly:
Spike TV on Monday announced that it will telecast live undercard bouts from UFC 104 on Oct. 24 at 9:00pm ET/PT from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Calif. The fights on Spike TV will include “The Ultimate Fighter 8” winner Ryan Bader, a rising star in the light heavyweight division, taking on Eric “Red” Schafer. The one-hour telecast will run commercial-free. The UFC 104 main card will run on pay-per-view at 10:00pm ET.
Spike TV telecast the prelims for UFC 103 on Sept. 19 drawing a robust 1.4 million viewers and placed No. 2 on cable with Men 18-34 in the timeslot.
A two-time NCAA Division I All-American wrestler at Arizona State University, Ryan Bader, fighting out of Tempe, Ariz., is 2-0 in the UFC and a perfect 10-0 in his mixed martial arts career. The 26-year-old light heavyweight, winner of the eighth season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” earned a unanimous decision win against veteran Carmelo Marrero in April. He now faces another experienced grappler in Eric “Red” Schafer. Fighting out of Milwaukee, Wis., Schafer is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and on a four-fight win streak, with two of his three UFC wins coming via submission. His most recent victory came via TKO against Antonio Mendes at UFC 93.
Last month, we saw the lightweight winner from The Ultimate Fighter 8 Efrain Escudero. This month, we get to see the light heavyweight winner, Ryan Bader. Bader reminds me so much of Josh Koscheck that it’s scary. He’s an all-american wrestler that understands how to use his skills in the octagon. However, he needs to develop a striking game to complement the ground game that he has spent his entire life honing. Much like Koscheck, who trains at The American Kickboxing Academy in San Diego, Bader has a damn good camp in Arizona Combat Sports. ACS is home to such high level fighter as WEC lightweight champ Jamie Varner, and UFC fighters C.B. Dollaway and Aaron Simpson.
As for the free fights, it’s an interesting new way to market the TUF winners. We’ve done a lot of talking on this site about what exactly it means to win the reality show at this point. No longer do these winners get to “warm up” to the Octagon by taking fights they can win. Instead, they get fights against other up and coming stars and we find out how far they are going to go very quickly. With these new fights that million of people are watching, Dana White and Joe Silva have a way to build names while testing the winners with strong opponents. After all, how many people knew Escudero’s name before 103?
UFC 104 is headline by Lyoto Machida defending the light heavyweight champion against former PRIDE GP winner Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.
By Anthony De Franco September 22, 2009, at 3:28 pm Take that Floyd Mayweather. The UFC’s newest counterprogramming strategy of showing the undercard fights from UFC 103 on Spike TV paid off big time as they put up an absolutely huge number on Spike TV. Here’s the whole article from MMA Weekly:
The Ultimate Fighting Championship broadcasted live prelims for the first time on Spike TV for UFC 103 and the numbers are in.
Spike TV’s live telecast of the UFC 103 prelims on Saturday, September 19 (9:00-10:00pm ET/PT) delivered a robust 1.4 million viewers and was the #2 rated program in Men 18-34 in all of cable in the timeslot including out-delivering ESPN2’s coverage of NCAA college football (West Virginia vs. Auburn).
Overall, the fights drew a 1.5 (441,000) in Men 18-34, a 1.3 (738,000) in Men 18-49, and a household rating of 1.0.
That’s terrible news for all those people out there who hoped that this Boxing card would take overtake the UFC. I would assume that this means that the numbers for UFC 103 are going to be pretty impressive as well.
Hey, maybe the UFC can overtake college football too….
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