ESPN's John Barr Responds To UFC's Criticism Of Outside The Lines Piece

You Know???

Heck, we don’t cover Mixed Martial Arts enough, you know, and the few times we do it we get blasted

Yes because all your stories are nasty and MMA/UFC bashing.

It’s clear to me that if the UFC really wants to mature as a sports entity, it’s going to have to be able to shoulder and weather the criticism.

truth

the few times we do it we get blasted for not doing it in a way that essentially would have us be nothing more than shills of the UFC. That’s not the kind of reporter I want to be.

yeah that is what Jon Anik was for!

until that bit about the TRUTH… Dana and co, need to grow thicker skin. ESPN needs more fact checking, and data gathering.

He’s right. ESPN is not a PR firm.

to work for ESPN and get on a high horse about journalistic purity. No single entity has done more to redraw, blur and outright erase the line between entertainment and journalism than ESPN.

Also, as someone who has spent a lot of time in both journalism and PR, I can say categorically that “they distort the truth, we report the truth” line is a load of horse shit reporters use to feel better about the fact that they’re paid like bathroom attendants.

I personally have known a few fighters who have been in the UFC (none in the past couple years) and they did not get paid very much. What you guys have to consider is even in a simple comparison of boxing to MMA a lot of promoters also pay for training camps for a boxer. When it comes to MMA the fighter pays his training camp. So when the ufc pays out let’s just say 5k to a fighter that does not pay for a training camp. And if it does it usually means the fighter training for that camp ends up helping other fighters train for their camps in return. Sponsors is where the fighter will try to make back his lost money from the UFC.

ESPN may have had some facts wrong but I am not sure why people seem to believe every word that comes out of Dana white or the UFC’s mouth. They are after their own best intrest and as we have seen in the past they just puff up their chest to try to make a point.

In other sports when reporters do pieces or reports you never see the coaches or GM’s pull a UFC. If the UFC ever fails as a company I think its going to be ego that kills them. Sometimes especially when you are dealing with the big leagues in media, take the high road.

Barr should be forced to sit still while the next UFC PPV is projected onto his ample forehead.

Luke Thomas talked about the weird loyalist mentality UFC fans have for the UFC. He gave an example of a cult like chant from the crowd during the James Toney/Randy Couture fight where the crowd started to chant “UFC, UFC”. And he’s right, Dana has the UFC fan base trained like drones who blindly follow the doctrine of Dana. So whatever he says they believe because he’s the creator of this product they’ve become addicted to.

It reminds me of Barack Obama supporters in 2008, especially the young college students who would shout down someone by chanting “Obama, Obama, Obama” . They even chanted “Obama, Obama” during the inaugural ball when he and Mrs. Obama had their first dance as President and First Lady. It was like something out of a weird sci fi flick man.

The UFC has become a cult to a lot of people who just can’t stomach any type of criticism leveled at Zuffa. As if Dana and those guys can’t handle criticism…oh wait

The UFC likes to throw childish tantrums at the grownup table, but to say that ESPN is out there to get the truth is ridiculous. This altruistic notion that this type of journalism is going for the truth is a big a joke as Dana’s petty grudges. If ESPN was so concerned about he truth, they would have done a better job presenting more sides to the story. Both sides looked terrible in this. There is no objectivity, everyone has an angle they’re trying to push, and agenda they’re trying to get across. I’m not saying that ESPN hates the UFC and wants to “get ’em,” but at the same time the white hat they’re trying to wear doesn’t quite fit, you know?

Seems to me like this story needed a wee bit more work before being released. All it is really doing is making both sides look unprofessional.

The UFC should be able to just let some things slide. They haven’t exactly helped themselves by going on about it so much. Maybe ESPN should just get over it too.

Why does the UFC throw boxing under the bus whenever they get criticized? It’s become an instinctive reaction at this point. “UFC fights are boring” “Boxing sucks” I mean come on.

Nor was it as eloquently produced as John Barr at his best seems capable of, since he’s one of the more (read: only) intelligible journalists on ESPN. I don’t think he can be pleased with the end result, but hindsight is 20:20. It was a lazily done feature that would have been more carefully pieced together had they known the attention it would garner. That being said, Zuffa went overboard as they always do in their distaste for the final product. They certainly have a right to do so, but they need to expect increasing criticism and gather their thoughts as a professional entity before reacting. This should come as a wake up call to them in future matters such as these.

I agree with a lot of what John Barr has said…..

If the UFC wants to become a major sports organization in the viens of a MLB, NFL etc, they are going to have to take these criticism leveled against them.

Holding grudges and leveling gut shot reactions to detractors like ESPN, Josh Gross or Loretta Hunt only makes them look bad in the long run and IMHO will limit their growth

The UFC needs the media, it’s not the other way around. Even negative critism labelled against in certain cases can still put eyeballs on the sport

I think the best thing that the UFC could have done is ask for a retraction. I also think retractions usually go unnoticed so I doubt it would’ve gotten any attention.
Question:
If ESPN doesn’t own to their mistakes is there any way that the UFC could sue for slander?

But not mentioning Kens relationship with the UFC or Riccos is irresponsible.

One issue is whether the ESPN piece on fighter pay is fair and accurate. I’m not qualified to speak to that, but from the responses to previous articles, it seems like there are plenty of people on both sides of that one. The second issue — and the one that’s really at play at this point in the game — is whether the UFC’s response to perceived criticism is damaging to MMA’s prospects at achieving mainstream success.

Even if the ESPN piece WAS a hatchet job, the response has got to be the sort of response one would expect from a professional organization. One of the reasons that the NFL, NBA, and MLB can get away with responding to concussion-palooza, steroids, and handgun incidents with meaningless bromides and no real change is that the responses are delivered in a way that deflects future attention. Respectfully disagreeing, downplaying the severity of the issue, offering vague promises to “investigate” are all ways to defanging the piece without looking deranged.

In other words, Dana’s response was the executive equivalent of “Just Bleed!!!!!”

I heard rumblings but decided to catch up on it. Is anyone surprised about ESPN doing this? I watch the Dan Patrick show sometimes and he rags on ESPN so much its funny he calls them the mother ship he had a guest on that wrote a book about them and some of the shady shit they do. It sounds like DP and the mother ship parted on pretty sour terms. He even does an occupy game day thing where they have the fans of his show go to ESPN’s college game day events and sabbotage them with signs if you try to bring in a sign with anything that has Dan Patrick or anything releated to his show on it they take it away from you. So ESPN has always been shady for christ sake they are owned by Disney.

and then basically says UFC should be happy to be getting this coverage… Why would the UFC be happy to get this bad coverage?

out of both sides of his rear.
You know?

So when 1/10th of the stories are somewhat critical of NFL or NBA (usually in retrospect) it doesn’t carry much weight with me especially when they walk on eggshells with those sports as they usually do.

And yes Dana is defensive in general but it’s also not honest to pretend that ESPN has been completely fair & honest in how it represents the UFC & MMA presently and in the past.