According to Sports Business Journal, FOX was not happy at all with the UFC's streaming deal with ESPN. They wanted exclusivity, or if they had to share rights then they at least wanted it to be with someone other than ESPN. Last week they reduced their offer in response to the UFC signing their ESPN streaming deal and also wanted more events. ESPN responded by saying "hey, we'll pay what they are offering for just those other 15 fight cards and exclusivity, we dont really need you on every week", which is understandable because they also have the NBA, college football, etc to juggle on their weekend schedules. [Reply]
8pm - (Paramount) - Bellator 200, Carvalho vs. Mousasi
This is a pretty good card by Bellator standards, and the last 3 fights are interesting.
Saturday
nothing
Sunday
10am TV - (9am Fightpass/10am FS1) - UFC Fight Night, Thompson vs. Till
This is on at an odd time because its in the UK, and unlike Bellator, the UFC does not do tape delay. The prelims are not great with a lot of local fighters, but the main card has a few interesting matches and the main event is great. Wonderboy vs. Darren Till is an important fight for the WW division. You can probably wait until about 1pm to tune in and you won't miss much. [Reply]
Originally Posted by OKchiefs:
Really? I always assumed wrestling fans were mostly white dudes.
He's generally right other than the audience is about 50% white and 50% minorities the thing is though it's not a ton of black people, the minority is mainly Mexicans. The WWE is a huge Mexican fan base. And honestly hes the WWE to advertisers has never been viewed greatly, to put it nicely the WWE is viewed as worse than Nascar.
Because of the fact that it has a high minority audience and it skews younger you're looking at very limited things to advertise. They can't run the alcohol ads that Nascar does because the age range is younger. They don't get high end sponsors because they are viewed as poor etc etc. [Reply]
Wondered if this is even MMA news since he doesn't seem interested in fighting anymore, but the UFC put out a statement, so I guess it is. Nick Diaz was arrested for domestic violence, and apparently also choked out the woman who called the cops. [Reply]
Darren Till missed weight badly for tomorrow's fight, at 174.5 pounds. Wonderboy agreed to a catchweight under 2 conditions, first he insisted that Till give up 30% of his purse, and 2nd Till can't weigh more than 188 pounds tomorrow at 1pm local time.
edit: Till has already flat-out said that he's probably going to weigh more than 188 tomorrow, so I guess we'll see what happens, maybe Wonderboy will demand more money. [Reply]
This week we have a rare Friday night UFC card (which will probably become more common in 2019 since ESPN will often have a packed Saturday schedule)
Friday
7pm TV - (5:30pm Fightpass/7pm FS1) - UFC Fight Night, Rivera vs Moraes
This is a very good main card (the prelims are OK) which will probably not get great ratings because most casual fans will look at it and go "I don't know who most of these fighters are". I'm expecting a lot of TKO's and violence in this one, the matchmakers have done a pretty good job.
Saturday
1pm - (Fightpass) - Glory 54
Kickboxing
8pm - (Fightpass) - Island Fights 58
Judging by tapology rankings, this is pretty bad even for a local promotion. Its only a little better than typical Wednesday Alaskan cards.
I not only double-checked the name of the promotion on Fightpass, I even looked for an independent non-UFC source on the internet to verify, thinking maybe some dumbass at Fightpass mispelled "Bangkok Fights", but no thats what they unironically called their own promotion. [Reply]
Question for all you hardcore MMA fans. How do you keep up with all the fighters? Like up and comers and that kind of stuff? I'm amazed how much people know about this stuff because it seems like there's 3 fights a week now with a bunch of fighters and women. Hard to keep up on like the NFL. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Titty Meat:
Question for all you hardcore MMA fans. How do you keep up with all the fighters? Like up and comers and that kind of stuff? I'm amazed how much people know about this stuff because it seems like there's 3 fights a week now with a bunch of fighters and women. Hard to keep up on like the NFL.
I watch every fight I can, I read mma blogs and sights, shit like that but there's always some guy fighting on a regional circuit who will come up and be in the UFC making noise that I've never heard of. It's just too wide spread. [Reply]