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Keller's Take
KELLER: UFC fans and announcers pushing sport in dangerous direction
Apr 22, 2009 - 11:53:45 PM
KELLER: UFC fans and announcers pushing sport in dangerous direction
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By Wade Keller, Torch editor
I was frustrated watching Anderson Silva's fight on Saturday night, too. The more the fight went on, though, the more frustrated I grew with the announcing and the fans. But in the heat of the moment, I could understand disappointment on everyone's part that two fighters weren't going at it to win, but rather they were fighting to survive. One was fighting to keep his title no matter what and the other was fighting to go the distance with a heralded champion since he determined early in the fight that he had almost no chance to win.

MMA is a sport. Some people don't like that we give star ratings to fights because they think MMA is so pure a sport, nobody should ever label a fight good or bad, exciting or boring (and that's all star-ratings are - shorthand for adjectives such as those), because all that matters is winning and losing. The outrage this week aimed at Silva and Leites is somewhat founded, but even more so dangerous. It's a case of fans demanding a four-star fight in a main event, even if that meant asking one or two fighters to act against their best interests and the integrity of their sport.

UFC, of course, would thrive more if all main event fights were exciting, if all fighters went all-out and played aggressively on offense and loosely on defense, taking chances that often would lead to a big KO but sometimes would lead to a preventable loss had they been more conservative.

UFC fans would get what they want more than anything, which is a big knockout or dramatic tapout or even a grueling, hard-fought, back-and-forth time-limit decision. But MMA can't guarantee that any more than the NBA can guarantee best of seven finals will go seven games, including several overtimes or last-second buzzer beaters. Sometimes there are blowouts. Sometimes stars don't play in the fourth quarter because the score is so lopsided and risking injury would be stupid. Late in the NFL season, I've been at games as a Minnesota VIkings season ticket holder when starters were benched because playoff positioning had already been decided and there was no sense risking injury. It's accepted as part of the game, even though a lot of fans payed money for expense tickets in the stadium to watch week 17 action.

Anderson Silva by round three had the fight won. He might have felt he had it won by half way into round one. He had the equivalent of a 42-3 lead at halftime. He did the equivalent of benching the starters in the fourth quarter. He did the equivalent of handing the ball off to a reliable running back who doesn't fumble and running out the clock. He did what a smart athlete does to win the game. He got the winning purse, he kept his title, he kept his reputation headed into a possible dream fight against George St. Pierre.

Had Anderson gone balls-out and "put on a show for the fans" - as the fans in the arena, as Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg addressed (Goldberg was more measured here and had his best outing as an announcer in a while after increasingly shaky performances in recent years), and as commentators and bloggers have called for since - he might have lost. He probably wouldn't have lost, but he might have. His odds of winning by fighting the way he fought was about 99 percent. His odds of winning if he fought the way the critics of the fight wanted, he had a 90 percent chance of winning. He had a lot to lose, so why increase his chance of losing ten-fold?

Some would say: To please the fans, the ones who pay his salary, the ones who travelled great distances to see him fight, the ones who might not buy his next fight because he held back.

That's a fair argument. After all, UFC charges a lot of money for PPVs and fans want to be entertained with great shows each time.

UFC, though, is a real sport. It's not pro wrestling where fans are 100 percent justified in expecting great match performances every time. It's not the movies where the audience is justified in expecting a well-acted, well-directed, well-paced, well-produced, dramatic show every time.

The price UFC fans pay for seeing something unpredictable and totally real is that sometimes, in the course of fighters trying to win - or better put, not risk losing (Silva) or not risk getting hurt and humiliated (Leites) - the fight isn't very exciting.

If UFC changes the rules and begins scoring fights in part on excitement level, in part on quantity and quality of punches and kicks thrown, and is willing to strip a champion of a title for being boring, then maybe fans will get better fights. But fans will no longer know who the better fighters are. They'll just learn from UFC fights who the more exciting performers are. Is that what UFC fans want? Is that what's best for the sport in the long run?

UFC is successful in part because of the perceived integrity of the sport. It's successful because a lot of times fights are extremely exciting or end with dramatic conclusions. Over time, those conclusions will be less dramatic if they seem manufactured or forced. And the sport will be less appealing to many if it seems to lack integrity.

Royce Gracie hated time-limits and stand-ups when they were instituted in UFC. He felt the integrity of an MMA fight was dependent on two fighters with almost no rules battling to a finish no matter how long it took and what direction it went. Heck, Joe Rogan has spoken out against stand-ups during fights on UFC PPVs because he believes refs have been prematurely standing up ground fighters for the sake of making fights "more exciting."

The sport has already made compromises for the sake of marketability and survival by instituting rounds, limiting certain moves, and forcing stand-ups during perceived stalemates on the ground. It's going too far, though, when the sport begins to demand that a champion fighting within the rules risks his well-being and his title in order to give the fans what they want at that moment. His goal should not be to entertain the fans, it should be to win fights. No NFL coach would keep his job if he lost a big fourth quarter lead because he decided to start passing every down to excite the fans and it resulted in multiple interceptions for touchdowns that flipped the score and lost the game.

UFC is doing just fine financially, and it always will as long as the sport has integrity. It would do better if all fights were exciting, and in as much as that's possible to encourage without crippling the sense that better skilled, more disciplined and prepared fighters are winning the vast majority of the time, then the sport will be fine. UFC cannot guarantee exciting fights all the time without taking away the main draw of the sport - that it presents real fights with deserving winners.

UFC would draw better if all of its top stars were charismatic and exciting fighters who were either passionately liked or disliked by the audience. Ideally they'd all speak English well, connect with fans on some level, and do great pre-fight interviews. It'd be great if the good looking fighters were likable and the ugly ones were naturally easy to hate. But that's not reality, that's pro wrestling. Sometimes an awkward uncharismatic Tim Silvia beats a more marketable Andre Arlovski. Sometimes a potential great rivalry like Anderson Silva vs. Rich Franklin turns out disappointingly one-sided. Sometimes a hugely well known established star like Chuck Liddell loses his chin and gets knocked out repeatedly before all of his big money dream fights can take place.

There's nothing UFC can do about it other than keep producing cards filled with the best fighters against the best fighters and hope for the best. It doesn't always work out, but MMA will survive some bad main events and some boring fight cards. It will not survive as a respected, legitimate sport if severe compromises are made in order to try to ensure "exciting" main events every month. It will end up being something entirely different than it should be and what its fans actually want it to be. MMA isn't defined by nor should it be defined by any one event. It's an ongoing story, and each UFC card is more akin to a three or four game series in baseball that may or may not be exciting. Each fight card is part of a bigger mosaic with various careers of fighters crossing paths and changing each other's course as part of something larger than just one fight card or one fight.

Outraged fans this week are upset because Anderson Silva didn't compromise the ultimate goal of any ultimate fighter - winning a fight. That's a dangerous threshold to cross. It's the wrong pressure to put on a fighter. He didn't disgrace himself or his sport. What he did is different than what Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn did in UFC's early days when they went to a much more frustrating, much more boring, genuinely disgraceful time limit.

There was no clear winner in that fight. Both fighters were playing not to lose, and thus they both were losers. Silva, on Saturday night, had a clear advantage, and it was up to Leites to try to change that. He needed to be the aggressor and force Silva's hand. Leities chose to preserve his well being and score some sort of small moral victory by surviving five rounds with Silva. He, not Silva, should be criticized. He, not Silva, should pay a price when it comes to future big fights and title shots. He has something to prove now. Someone as great as Silva playing conservatively with a lead in a sport where winning should always be everything has nothing to be ashamed of this week. (And even Silva in the most boring fight is still pretty dazzling, throwing in quick sidekicks to the knee, reverse kicks, and some dancing.)

For fans who want a virtual guarantee of a great show with a great finish, there's always pro wrestling, the movies, or some great books that are out there. Or there's waiting for the reviews of a UFC card to come in before deciding whether to order a replay or wait for the DVD to come out. For fans who want to see a real fight game with real winners and losers, it's time to accept that clunkers occur in UFC from time to time due to injuries, quick knockouts, freak eyelid tears, and yes, great champions winning fights on points against challengers who decide not to show the heart of a champion. It should be part of the reality that makes MMA such a great sport, not a mark against it.

If UFC loses ten percent of its potential audience - heck, even 40 or 50 percent - so be it. UFC's power brokers should put the integrity of the sport first. If that means fewer finicky fans with unrealistic expectations, smaller profits, and smaller payoffs for fighters, so be it. It's the reality. Manipulating that to increase fan satisfaction and increase profits compromises the sport in a way that would be more crippling in the long-run than occasional clunker main events.

***

Wade Keller is the Supervising Editor and Founder of MMATorch.com. He has covered MMA for the Torch since before UFC existed, including Japanese shoot-fight cards such as Pancrase in the early 1990s, plus all of the early UFC PPV events (some of those reports can be found in the MMATorch Flashbacks category). He covered the first UFC event in Las Vegas in person in 2001 and Brock Lesnar's recent return to his hometown Minneapolis when he defeated "Crazyhorse" Heath Herring. He has interviewed Dana White, Mike Goldberg, the original UFC match-maker Art Davie, and others in MMA over the years. He has also been interviewed as an MMA reporter by major newspapers dating back to the mid-1990s. He has trained in karate, judo, and jiu jitsu, with over 12 years of formal martial arts training and tournament fighting. He is a double black stripe belt in tae kwon do.


DON'T GO YET... WE SUGGEST THESE MMATORCH ARTICLES, TOO!
FLASHBACK: Keller's 1993 editorial on UFC 1 answering the question - what if pro wrestling were real?
KELLER: Trying to figure out what was going on in Silva's head during the fight and how he'll react tomorrow when he wakes up without the belt
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