What would be best for the MMA fan is Fedor and Barnett battling in the Octagon and chasing a single belt, up against all the best fighters in one ladder. Affliction will die, Fedor will eventually end up in the UFC after he’s lost years of endorsement earning potential. Couture, who already is almost past his ‘used by’ date, will eventually conclude the same. By the way i saw Redbelt…. and ‘Stuttering Randy’, sorry but you do NOT have a career in film. Couture could have fought Nog, and morphed already into the George Foreman of MMA. Instead he sits on the sideline and bitches and moans about being underpaid… he gets no sympathy from me…

MMA is still in its infancy stages…. Many UFC cards still perform underwhelming on the PPV. The fighters will get theirs in due time… as some have pointed out already, collective bargaining and yes, the occasional rebel, stirring up the kettle will raise the fighters share…but MMA is best without the boxing BS and the silly competing organizations and the lack of professional standards, etc, etc….

The UFC will start or acquire more minor leagues, and that is what will happen before the fighters get too high a percentage…. these minor leagues will subsidize lesser but promising talents…Yes, the future is super bright for MMA fans… we’ll get to see the best fight the best and leave the debates that rage when one fighter will NEVER be able to fight another right out of the equation.

Many people weigh the numbers of fights as being more important…to hell with that… I want ‘names’ fighting ‘names’ with no debates left and one unified organization is the best way to consistently accomplish that.

If you want artificially beefed up records everywhere, diluted talent shows, Kimbo Slice taking 20 unanswered hits to the head and not pretending that its a farce… an ass-munch like Babalu on your card AFTER you saw what he did in the ring and what he said after that… Now Affliction is not all of that, but those are facts about recent MMA promotions. The ‘best fight the best’, in one arena…Dana White said it best…”no posers, no pussies’. Sure they are in it for the money, but what about the 60 years where MLB players didn’t make much?… or the same for the NFL, etc, etc… Zuffa has turned around the UFC in 8 years!!!! and now fighters are making big money!!!! What’s the problem? Are they true warriors or are they in it for the $$$$. Get in the ring, face off against the ultimate tests you can meet, and be grateful that it’s not 1940 and you are not playing in the NFL or MLB strictly for the love of the game. If you are named Liddell or Penn, you’d fight for nothing, and thats why we love them so much and that, my friend, is why Fedor will not attract the PPV’s that people expect.

Just my two cents worth…
Cheers mates!

I hope Donny ZCombover is prepared to go deep into his so called deep pockets… He rarely uses much of his own money on any RE project and unless the Trumpster doesn’t mind , in essence, shelling out 4 to 5 million for his front row seat, in his Edsel MMA Promotion, the bleeding will end relatively soon when Trump finds his new baby going head-to-head consistently with the UFC on the same dates.

Dana’s ‘the balls’…. taking on the blowhard and beating him silly with hammer fists and an then an arm bar, at his own game. Affliction has no real cash themselves so when the The Donald pulls the plug, we keep a little longer, the idea of a single unified belt, that actually holds all the value.

The UFC is about Survival of the fittest…and so should MMA

I love a single Belt that matters
I love the idea of the majority of the world’s best fighters in ONE organization
There will always be small leagues …in fact more and more ads the popularity grows… but there is one NFL, one MLB, one ATP and the world is a better place because of this

Snuff out Affliction, get Fedor and Couture in the Octagon and wait for the next pretender to take on the champ.

Actually the annihilation of Affliction will be great for MMA… It will increase The UFC’s value, they will eventually go public and reap the rewards and then even more resources will be pumped into the UFC to secure the fact that the best will be fighting the best.

UFC also better get ready for EliteXC or even Affliction(if they can work a free TV deal) to try and do the same thing back to them later on.

I personally am tired of Dana White’s monumental ego.
His constant “i have a big announcement” nonsense. It is so tiresome. The fighters and all of MMA suffer because he strives to be #1. This is about him.

And that is why Affliction might struggle, not because of UFC. Viewers are only choosing between options if they are aware of them. If viewers watch UFC without knowing of Affliction’s card, Affliction didn’t lose those viewers to UFC because Affliction wouldn’t have them in the first place.

You know a few years ago, it was hard to find a place showing the UFC, even in Denver. Now, there are probably 20-30 bars showing it easily.

And outside of the mma sites on the net and the cage at Adrenaline the other night, I have seen ZERO advertising for Affliction and know of no bars showing it.

Most venues (Hooters etc.) pay a per seat fee, and this is a decent chunk of the UFC’s PPV money. A large sports bar might pay 2000 maybe even as high as 3000 for the right to (and legally) broadcast a UFC show. I have yet to see any advertising in any of the bars or sports bars I frequent.

I think if your prices and such were right and all tix sold, you numbers would be right on. However, many tickets are given away and many are much, much cheaper in that size of arena. I googled info on live gate for UFC and at one point in the past 2 years, they had only 3 or 4 gates over 2 mil in revenue. Now, this has gone up a lot since then, but I’m not sure if they have ever broken 5 mil, with 3-4 mil now deemed a very strong live gate. That is what I based my estimates off of, just guessing that it will do a live gate of an average UFC card at best, thus around 2 mil. I could see it getting to 3, but that would be pretty huge for a first show with little appeal to the casual fan. I also googled Affliction sales and all I found was the old estimate that they sold $250,000 in the first 30 minutes. Usually, ticket sales for mma events are usually strong at the beginning, then even out and that was their estimate, not an official number.

UFC has put on shows in many places that divulge the revenues and salaries, so just searching it on the net, should give you a lot of info on their past shows. For instance:

“Multiple sources are reporting that the UFC announced a sellout crowd of 14,773 at UFC 84. Todd Martin at CBSSports.com is reporting that the event drew a live gate revenue of $3.7 million.”–from one of my searches.

That was a pretty big card and it would be ultra-ambitious of Affliction to think they could achieve that.

Personally, I see this doing better than the K-1 Heroes Dynamite USA crapfest, but I don’t think it will get near an average UFC card.

I also doubt the rumored salary estimate of 4 mil, but I could easily be wrong, and that is the number we have to work with at this point. I know they have internally said they want to sell 250k in ppvs, but in my estimation, they would probably be satisfied with half of that, which would probably get them near the ballpark for breaking even.

Affliction seems to have the cash money to fund this thing without a whole lot of Marketing. EXC/CBS basically put on a “roadblock” campaign to let everyone know about their show and who was on it. Maybe Affliction is waiting until the first of July to make a major push or maybe they’ll continue like so, just treading water?

Someone on Sherdog made a post today with the question about Affliction and if they could sue the UFC for holding an event on 7/19/2008. This person was an orange belt. I know this is a question and I don’t mean to be rude or condesending but I would call this person a “casual fan”. That is the type of person Affliction wants to see their show.

If you can’t figure out at MMA is a sport and that the UFC doesn’t actually own MMA (although they may own the term “Ultimate Fighting”). Any org can hold their own event’s whenever they please. As long as they don’t book an event at the same venue on the same date. What is the BIG probelm here?

Instead of one event on 7/19 costing you Forty bucks (the undercard on FSN is a good, no, great move). We also get the UFC’s UFN 14 on Spike TV to boot. The UFN will also get re-aired at least 3 or 4 times as well. That is good enough for me. Again, sorry if that was rude but I had to point that out.

i just figured 20,000 arena capacity by an average ticket price of $350, based on looking at the ticketmaster event site for like one minute. so i may be a lil off.

thanks..