I don’t know Iain and I haven’t visited his site before this last week so there’s nothing personal here. Zach over at FightOpinion chose to cross-post one of his articles discussing the recent termination of Jack O’brien’s UFC contract and its implications on the UFC in general.
The article’s not short so I’m going to summarize his points here before I tell you why I think they’re totally wrong…
- Jake O’Brien was widely considered a top heavyweight prospect in MMA and has all the potential you can ask for in a fighter.
- The aim of a sport is to determine who has the most legitimate claim of being the best in the world in their specific field / division.
- The UFC isn’t a sporting league or a sport in general.
His points are way off-base. First off, O’Brien is not one of the top heavyweights in the world. As a reference, I point you to last month’s Heavyweight Meta-Rankings over at Bloody Elbow. Jake’s a nice guy and a good fighter but he’s not on that list yet and for good reason.
The third point above follows from the premise in the second bullet: that the aim of a sport is to determine the best in something. While this is mostly true, the means to that end vary and like everything else in this world sports are a business. Specifically, sports are just another form of entertainment for everyone except those who are competing.
How is the UFC any different from the “sport” of boxing or, even better, college football? College football is one of the biggest “sports” in the U.S. but many people would argue that at the end of the bowl season, we don’t have a clear understanding of which was the best team in the country.
The bottom line is that the UFC is a business like any sports league and its goal is to be profitable. In the past when games have gotten boring or ratings have significantly dropped in other major sports, those same sports leagues have taken counter-measures, going as far as changing the rules of the game itself. Clearly those rule changes might favor some athletes more than others so, do we disqualify these leagues from the category of “sports” as well?
Of course not. And fighters like Jake O’Brien, or even Randy Couture for that matter, getting fired doesn’t disqualify the UFC or MMA as a sport, even though we may disagree with the decisions taken from time to time.
So it isn’t a personaly attack but you call out both me and my site by name in the title of your piece? Classy.
For the record your summary of my article is inaccurate and so I can only assume you’ve misunderstood the points that were being made. Therefore your response is equally invalid.
The headline is a play on your original post’s headline and it is no less sensational. Maybe I did misunderstand but that’s the stuff that stuck out when I read your article.
It was a silly article. High on melodrama and not much else. He would have had a point if Jake O’brien was the only reason the UFC had credibility. Of course, that isn’t the case.
The internet MMA media is very anti-UFC. They can take a story about the UFC releasing a hesitant fighter with injury problems and spin it that the company is going down the tubes. That is the way they operate.
Zach Arnold does not take unfair shots at the UFC, but he gives others the opportunity to do so at his website. He should probably look for writers that want to help grow his site with informative articles about the UFC. He is going to have to keep on begging for donations if he keeps on using UFC haters like Liddle.
Why writers want to cozy up to the hardcores with articles attacking the UFC, I have no idea. The hardcore fanbase is very bothersome in my opinion. They are going to watch regardless, so catering to them is just a lot of hassle.
I don’t think that Zach or really the internet as a whole is headhunting for the UFC. I don’t understand the backlash towards criticism — well, scratch that, I do understand it, I just don’t understand how people can put themselves in the mindset where criticism means that you are being a ‘hater.’
It is a valid argument to say that it was a bad choice to fire JOB for being a wrestler. I’m not in any which way a fan of his, I actually kind of dislike him and his style, but they have kept lesser fighters around in menial undercard fights for far longer than JOB.
What I think the writer of this rebuttal sort of missed was that Iain was referring to not just the isolated incident of JOB getting canned for being ‘boring,’ but instead that this is generally how UFC operates. They make crass, silly decisions that are seemingly based on how they are feeling that afternon.
That aside, I don’t think anybody who is discussing UFC on the net hates them, I think its more that we/they watch it all the time and have watched it for a very long time. It is a matter of loving the sport and having watched it grow. The fact is, writing nothing but praise for a company is boring. How often do you get so excited about something that you feel the need to sit down and pound out some eloquent, long prose about how amazing something was? Not everybody can be like Eddie Goldman towards YAMMA.
Liddle didn’t write anything in that article that isn’t true.
I read the original article and it was a horrid piece of journalism. It would be funny if Zach hadn’t actually posted it at his pretty respectable site.
Nowhere in my post did I say the UFC is perfect or that I agree with all their decisions.
The key point I was trying to make is that all “sports” will bend the rules of “sport” to meet their business goals; some more than others. Clearly, sports like boxing or MMA probably do so more than say, the Olympics. Nevertheless, it happens everywhere. So to call out the UFC for doing what everyone else is doing is disingenuous in my opinion.
I’m not sure if its fair to say its disingenuous to call out UFC on some crummy practices and say it helps to de-legitimatize them. Your point does hold water, as K-1 had adjusted its rules a few times to favor Japanese fighters and handicap foreign fights, such as the one knee from the clinch rule that hurts muay thai fighters like Buakaw and so on, as well as many other sports do shady things. I don’t see how that makes it OK for UFC to do that. Are we not supposed to hold UFC to any standards because more mainstream sports have done it as well?
Like him or not, getting rid of JOB for losing to a true top level fighter like Arlovski and not being ‘exciting’ seems to contradict how fighters like Brandon Vera are somehow still considered UFC contracted fighters. Josh Koscheck was a ‘boring’ young fighter when he had his first few TUF and post-TUF fights, but they didn’t fire him. Lyoto Machida has a boring, almost point-fighting defensive style and rarely pushes the pace but is still contracted (granted his win record is good).
Also, while I believe your intentions were simply to post a counter-point to Iain’s article, you have to admit the headline is a bit.. Inflammatory.
Like I said, the headline is a play on the original and no more inflammatory than the original. It was on purpose to show how silly the original claim and headline was.
Also Dave, I guess I don’t have a problem calling out the UFC on inconsistent sporting decisions as long as you do the same for every other sporting league.
The problem with Iain’s argument was that he claimed that the UFC no longer belonged in the group of actual “sports” because of what they did. When in fact I believe if held to that same standard, many other “sports” would fail to meet that bar as well. My point is that consistency is needed rather than singling out the UFC.
The NBA will not Drop the San Antonio Spurs or Tim Duncan from the finals because they are boring or not marketable, although, they follow the rules. ACTUALLY, the NBA has changed rules to prevent excitement like legalizing the zone, calling traveling and palming. The NBA doesn’t say, well Phoenix is more exciting, so, they should play in the finals. Also, College Football is not really a sport because it deals with college athletes. If they were not students, they would definitely set playoffs, which they will do anyways, so that the favorite or the most marketable team plays in the championship game. NCAA Football is getting criticized left and right for doing so, and that is what you compared the UFC to?
The point of the article is that they could have very well changed their own set of rules or done something to increase excitement, instead of letting good promising fighters go because they are not marketable or exciting.
Your article loses all its credibility with your first attempt at providing a counter point. Iain never said that JOB was a top heavyweight, but he did say that he was a top HW prospect, a fact that can’t be denied. Of course you took him to task for calling JOB a top heavyweight, something he didn’t do. Credibility shot indeed.