is it more important to you have a single successful promotion or is it worth it to you to see a promotion try and succeed?

Was affliction doomed to financial failure? Most likely, yes. Were they still trying to do shows for the fans? Yeah. In my eyes they deserved my money because they were doing things to earn it.

Now a promotion like EXC was not doing anything to earn my money. I never would have paid for a ticket to one of their shows or paid for a PPV (had they ever tried to go that route).

I haven’t given the UFC a nickel since they banned Internet media outlets in 2005.

That is the ultimate commodity in the modern economy (advertisers, sponsors, etc.). So far, none of these other promoters has been able to capture the attention and imagination of mainstream America the was UFC has.

I do concede at this point it is highly unlikely there is a group of investors ready to piss into the wind.

Anyone who thinks the UFC is bad for the sport should also believe that poorly run promotions like Affliction are bad for the sport. While they give you that short term thrill of believing that the UFC has a rival or is in some danger, they ultimately end up making the UFC stronger and discouraging future competition. If a serious well run challenger to the UFC is coming some where down the road, their job is now going to be more difficult because of Affliction and EliteXC. It is going to be harder for them to get investors, harder to get media coverage, harder to sign fighters and harder to capture the interest of fans.

The strange premise of the Rios article is that the UFC with no major competition would actually be the wished-for “MMA utopia.” I understand the rush to that conclusion—one top organization with the best fighters is most fans’ dream, and the UFC is closer to that than anyone has ever been. But I’m not convinced that the UFC would be ideal in this regard. I mean, maybe they would really give us all the best fights between the best guys. But maybe they’d simply put on the most cost-effective fights possible, with an emphasis on crowd-pleasing stand-and-bang, while ridding themselves of fighters that are good but deemed insufficiently popular and overly demanding, with the knowledge that such guys have no place else to go. Do the Yushin Okami’s of the world have a place in a UFC monopoly?

Anyway, I’m sure it wouldn’t be that dire. I guess there’s nothing stopping them from dropping Okami right now. But the point is, I don’t think the UFC—or any other organization—could fulfill the fan’s ideal. Which makes asking fans to stop paying for good fights if they’re under the “wrong” banner a pretty weird suggestion.

I hereby propose that this be the last article that stupid ass picture of Dana White and Tom Atencio be used in. I don’t know why but that photo just gets on my nerves. All in favor?

I don’t see the UFC cutting payroll to maximize profits. If you look at if from the vantage point of another sport, it would be the Colts cutting Manning or the Patriots cutting Brady, sure those teams might do ok without, but it makes the teams less interesting which, in turn, detracts eyes and dollars.

Plus if you dilute the fighter pool you end up with a situation very similar to that in which boxing finds itself. No household names, no faces of the sport, and most importantly you have no identifiable figures that you care to find out more about.

I just think that if you cut top-end talent and fill it with a bunch of mediocre talent that ýou’ll end up killing your promotion. Because you’ll still have your top 2 fighters in a division and then a huge drop off, or you end up with all mediocre talent in which everyone can beat anyone and you lose a fan’s rooting interest, whether you are rooting for someone to win or lose.