1. Ironically Stacked Card
The biggest criticism levelled at the UFC in 2012 – rightly so – has been the weak cards they have put out on Pay-Per-View. The addition of the multi-million dollar Fox Television deal and a refusal to decrease the number of Pay Per View events to compensate has seen the UFC roster spread wafer thin. It is rare for any card to have more than one marquee fight right now, in some instances there is simply no pay per view draw at all. The UFC have told us for years that their product is better than boxing because its shows aren’t just built around one big fight, that the UFC itself is a bigger draw than any individual fighter. At this point in time that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
It is somewhat ironic then that the first, and probably last, stacked Pay Per View card of 2012 comes as a direct result of all that is wrong with the current UFC PPV product. You should know the story by now, Dan Henderson was set to challenge Jon Jones at UFC 151 in a card so weak it could not survive without the main event. Henderson pulled out injured and the Light-Heavyweight champion refused to take a replacement opponent on eight days notice. The UFC cancelled the show and moved many of the fights onto UFC 152.
What was once a pay per view set to do a horrendously low buy rate, headlined by a Flyweight title bout getting no media attention, is now likely to become one of the highest drawing shows of the year. Two World Title fights and a Middleweight bout that should determine the next challenger to Anderson Silva. Where most current Pay Per Views are lucky to have one fight people care about, suddenly UFC 152 has three that are super relevant to the immediate future of their respective divisions not to mention providing two of this month’s must see fights. It doesn’t get much better than that in 2012.
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2 Comments
Four reasons why you MUST NOT watch UFC 152
1: Vitor Belfort doesnt have a chance, after getting knocked out by the middleweight champion Anderson Silva, Belfort steps up a division and takes on the Light Heavyweight ruler, why is he getting this shot? Because the UFC has a extremely thin talent pool and have to keep recycling the same fighter over and over again.
2: The fly-weights who cares, the little guys deserve there moment in the limelight but this is a decent undercard fight, nothing special.
3: Micheal Bisping vs Brian Stann, Bisping will win & then get a shot at Anderson Silva & get knocked out, Bisping is a decent operator but each time he tries at championship level he falls short, this is probably the most competitive fight on the card.
4: Wether UFC fans admit it or not sooner or later theyre going to realize that the UFC is now on a download slope, failing to sign fresh new talent (King Mo, Fedor) and recycling the same guys again and again (Wanderlei Silva, Dan Henderson, Rich Franklin, Vitor Belfort) is getting boring and more importantly starting to hurt the organisation. Expect the UFC to fall further behind boxing (in terms of ppv buys) if the 2 biggest fights that cen be made arent in the next 18 months, we all want to see Anderson Silva vs Jon Jones & Anderson Silva vs GSP, its time Dana White pulled his finger out.
1. is Vitor going to win? Almost certainly not, he’s fighting the best fighter on the planet in any weight division bar none. But, what if….. I hate to always use the Matt Serra example as it’s lazy but, nobody saw that coming either. If Vitor somehow did win, much like how I’d love it if Stephan Bonnar somehow beat Silva, it’d be an even bigger “screw you” to the UFC, plus one of the most lovable fighters in the sport gets to realise a goal in a pretty emotional moment. If Lyoto Machida “deserved” – use that term ridiculously – a title shot just one fight removed from getting owned by Jones, simply because he beat Ryan “I’ve never beaten an elite level fighter” Bader, then at least Vitor has a two fight win streak to bring into the fight. The UFC isn’t a sport, it’s a company who make their own match making rules. There are no rankings, title shots don’t have to be earned. Does their product stink right now? Absolutely, so much so that this will probably be the last UFC Pay Per View I watch for a while. However it came together though, this is about as stacked as UFC cards are likely to get any time soon so make the most of it.
2. as a Pay Per View main event this would have been a joke. A world title added to a bout between two fighters with zero drawing power would have equalled one of the worst buy rates since the Bonnar/Griffin boom. as a secondary fight adding something relevant to the card in what should be a great fight, it’s a wonderful addition. Doesn’t this fight encapsulate everything that you think belfort/jones doesn’t? two guys worthy of the shot, best in their weak division, fighting for a world title.
3. if this is a really competitive fight I don’t see why that’s a reason to not watch. Whether Bisping would lose to Anderson Silva or not, it’s hard to see how that makes watching his other fights pointless. Everyone would lose to Andeson, everyone would lose to Jon Jones, that doesn’t just render all Middleweight or Light Heavyweight bouts pointless in the mean time
4. The UFC will never admit it, but they are. The company is a mess. The Fox deal has overstretched them and the PPV cards have become everything Dana always publically said they would never be. MAssive roster, loads of guys nobody cares about, the drawing fighters not fighting enough, everyone else fighting too much. There’s a whole lot wrong with the UFC at the moment, but somehow as a direct result of that mess, this card feels like the sort of PPV’s that we used to get. I’ll take that while I can.