A Look Into Mixed Martial Arts Promotional Disasters

Jake Rossen compiles a list. Here's my favorite:

4. The Warning Track of Death (Yamma Pit Fighting, 2008)

There are many reasons to respect the efforts of Bob Meyrowitz. The Yamma is not one of them.

While not exactly an early innovator of the UFC, as some would have you believe -- Meyrowitz didn’t even attend the first show -- he did make valiant, expensive efforts to save the sport when it was nearly politically assassinated in the 1990s.

It was with great goodwill that I sat down for Meyrowitz’s latest venture, a fighting surface with raised edges that allowed fighters to -- well, God only knows what the hell that thing was supposed to do. But whatever it was, it didn’t do it. Yamma’s fighting pit played host to a bore of an eight-man tournament, and its idea of a “superfight” was Butterbean vs. Pat Smith.

(All of my thoughts were collected during that weekend’s Minute by Minute, available both here and in my therapist’s files.)

A second show has yet to materialize: Meyrowitz’s petitions for bungee cords, broadswords and Tina Turner appear to have hit some commission snags.

I still haven't seen any footage of this event short of Butterbean's "round house" kick to Pat Smith. Maybe one day I'll waste a few hours of my life and catch up on the goodness.