Watch this.
Now tell me that the slippery sponsor's decal didn't jack up Cote and ruin the fight.
Fightlinker has more:
I don’t know the process for how the UFC puts it’s advertisements onto the mat. I do know that many fighters often complain that the ads often have different grips, and you often see dudes stalk across the octagon only to go banana heel one they hit a decal. At UFC 89 the Gears of War 2 advertisement seemed to cause several fighters some issues, including Brandon Vera and Keith Jardine. This isn’t the only time we’ve seen it … it’s just the most recent incident that I can specifically remember.
Can you imagine another sport where athletes could be hurt because of the way advertisements are presented? In MMA it’s worse than others … a simple slip in other games means a botched play and some embarrassment. In MMA it could result in the other fighter jumping you and punching your lights out. So even if there isn’t a rash of fighters blowing their knees out on these things, it still needs to be addressed.
The UFC really needs to find a way to make the sponsor decals less of a hazard to the fighters. As we saw Saturday night, if a headlining fighter gets hurt and spoils the main event, its not good for business.