Get back to what made you great

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A few days late getting to this but I was on vacation last week.  By vacation I mean I was working on my NFL previews.  Division by division, team by team, in depth trying to cover as many aspects of each team as I could in approximately 500 words all to give YOU, the soups on sports Taliban (no good?) the information that you need to know heading into this NFL season so you will know SOME of the players names and that is IT because the information will be no good come week 4!  So, with that being said how about Dana White cancelling UFC 151 hey?!…

For those of you that didn’t know Dan Henderson (remember when his nickname was Hollywood…the guy couldn’t be any LESS Hollywood but I digress) partially tore his MCL with just over a week to go before the fight so obviously he was unable to go.  The UFC went to different fighters asking them if they wanted to take the fight on short notice, they declined.  Chael Sonnen, playing the role of Lex Luger there for making Jon Jones the Yokozuna on the U.S.S. Intrepid, stepped up and said that he would take on Jones….in which Jones declined.

Jon Jones is now naturally taking a boat load of heat over this, and I absolutely understand why.  But how about this…how about instead of letting Dana White pass the blame on to other people, we all chip in and buy Dana White a mirror so he can own up to what the big issue is here.  White has been taking after guys for not stepping in an attempt to take the attention off the fact that he had to cancel an entire PPV card because 1…that’s right 1 freaking fight couldn’t go!

I have said it before and I will say it again, they are watering down all of the cards for a total cash grab.  I understand it, but it’s short term thinking and long term I’m not certain this is a good path for the UFC to travel down.  I know among my group of friends we definitely aren’t buying the PPV’s the way we used to.  It used to be (5-6 years ago) that we wouldn’t miss one, they were a huge event, and there were at least 3 fights on every card that you were amped to see.  Now, as much as I enjoy seeing Clay Guida fight, there is no way in the world that he should be headlining a PPV card.  I’m not even sure he should be headlining a UFC on FOX card.  Actually scratch that, I know he shouldn’t be headlining a UFC on FOX card.

Yet this is what it’s come to.  Cards just about every week, a PPV card at least once a month and in some cases more, with just about every card completely watered down.  If there is a big fight it’s just like a big boxing PPV now.  For years White has talked about how he is doing the opposite of what boxing promoters have done and learned from their mistakes yet all of a sudden here we are.  UFC 148 in Calgary headlined by Urijah Faber was a total embarrassment for the organization, even White acknowledged it.

It’s all about supply and demand.  Again, I understand the logic behind them pumping out card after card and spreading the talent around as thin as they can.  The sport is hot and there for the large majority of the fans won’t be like me.  They will continue to watch every single card.  Prices for the events will continue to be through the roof and they will continue to sell out.  That’s all well and good.  But eventually if they keep it up, the sport will start to lose its fans.  More and more people will see it for what it has become and lose interest.  In my opinion they need to get back to doing a big PPV card once every 2 months or so, and obviously still maintain the cards on FOX and FX.

MMA doesn’t have a long history, it’s not one of the big 3 major sports in the United States.  The NHL has been relatively hot down there at times and NASCAR’s popularity spiked for a while to in the early to mid 2000’s.  But kids for the most part don’t grow up with NASCAR, they don’t grow up with hockey, and they haven’t grown up with MMA.  If you water down the cards to where they are either atrocious like UFC 148 was, or have 1 big fight carrying the mail like UFC 151 was slated to do, kids won’t have an urge to buy the PPV’s when they come of age and the sport could slowly die off.

I still consider myself a big MMA fan and as of right now the UFC is the only game in town.  But they better get their act together and address the issue at hand here.  Dana White is a smart enough guy that I would think he be on it, but sometimes even visionary’s can get distracted by the Brink’s truck backing up to their door.

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