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Opinion & Analysis : Guest Editorials

HANSEN: November was great for MMA fans, right? Or was it a little much, stealing away the joy of anticipation and aftermath?

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Dec 9, 2009 - 6:40:48 PM

By Bjorn Hansen, MMATorch columnist

November was a historical month for the sport of MMA as we were spoiled with three Strikeforce events, two UFC events, and one WEC Title fight, all in one action-packed month.

Zuffa put on half of those events and is obviously revving up the frequency of fights and testing the waters to see just how much MMA us fans our willing to devour.

You hear people talk about whether or not Zuffa is over-saturating the market with too many events, leaving people wondering whether or not they’re going to have the budget to be loyal, repeat, event-to-event, purchasers.

I think there is some credence to that argument considering the tough economic times, but Zuffa is doing it correctly by teasing fans with free events, in the form of UFC 105, WEC 44, and TUF 10 in the hopes that they do buy their one PPV at the end of the month. If they would have had three PPV events in one month, then that would have been one thing, but they knew how to strike the proper balance.

What I do have a problem with is the timing between events. In my mind, a fight has three stages for a fan: (a) the anticipation building up to the fight; (b) the fight itself, and (c) the aftermath and breakdown that follows.

If you have a fight happen too soon from the last fight, you run the risk of having the aftermath overshadowing the anticipation of the next fight, or vice versa. For example, UFC 105 had only been over for a couple days before we were talking about WEC 44, and WEC 44, had literally only happened two days before UFC 106.

We didn’t even have enough of a chance to absorb just how magnificent Jose Aldo really was, because we were already thinking Tito-Forrest, and Koscheck-AJ.

UFC 106’s anticipation stained WEC 44’s aftermath. In fact, Dana White’s overzealous counter-programming ways worked against him as he had the TUF 10 episode running simultaneously as WEC 44 ran. They would have been better suited to not engage in cannibalizing counter-programming and moved up last week’s TUF 10 episode to this week, since we’re TUF-free this week. Hell, I wouldn’t mind a Thanksgiving Card. The NFL pulls it off, and this year there aren’t any MUST see games.

My point is that it’s possible to throw as many events as Zuffa did, but you have to set the proper pace that allows for fans to develop a certain rhythm that maximizes their enjoyment of each event. Zuffa had no business running three major events in six days. It’s way too crammed. Spread out over thirty days and you’ll have very satisfied fight fans. We can handle one per week; just don’t jam three down our throats in six days.

Bjorn "Norwegian Nightmare" Hansen is a weekly columnist for MMATorch. If you've got questions or comments, send them to: bjorn.hansen@fiu.edu...

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Comments

ginrog
09 Dec 2009, 23:48

Well I gotta be the instigator here and say you're crazy for thinking that there is such a thing as too much MMA. Almost everything that we see nowadays is high-caliber fighting and such a joy to watch(barring most of the cardio-challenged TUF 10) that we should be happy to watch. Most sports are on tv at least once a week so why shouldn't MMA?