...OH, ONE MORE THING - PLEASE BOOKMARK US & VISIT DAILY!
By Frank Hyden, MMATorch contributor The UFC has gotten better at allowing their fighters to compete more often but there's still too long of a gap in between bouts the vast majority of the time. Rashad Evans is a great example of this. Rashad beat Brad Imes on November 5th, 2005 to win The Ultimate Fighter 2 but he didn't fight again until April 6, 2006, 5 months later. Then he had a 2 and a half month layoff before fighting again on June 28th, 2006. Then a 3 month layoff before fighting September 23, 2006 followed by a 4 month off period before fighting on January 25, 2007. 5 and a half months went by before he fought Tito Ortiz on July 7, 2007. Another 4 month layoff was after that and then an unbelievable 10 months in between fights. Granted, the 10 month lapse happened because of the injury-off where Evans replaced Mauricio Rua then James Irvin replaced Chuck Liddell before coming up injured himself and that threw a monkey wrench into the plans. But instead of cancelling Rashad's fight and just having him sit on the sidelines they should have scheduled another opponent for him.
Chuck Liddell only fought twice in 2004, twice in 2005, 3 times in 2006, 3 times in 2007, and he had an injury in 2008 so he's only fought once. I could keep listing names and numbers but no UFC fighter has fought more than 3 times in a year except for the very rare occasion where a guy has fought 4 times in a calender year. That's far too few fights. I understand if there's injuries or a guy's a little banged up and wants to take some time off but a guy should be able to fight as often as he wants.
If you have a 10 year career in the UFC you might fight 30 times. And that's only if you fight as often as they'll allow you and you avoid any major injuries. 30 fights is a lot, but 10 years is a long time to fight and fighting 3 times a year is more than UFC will usually give you. A fighter only has so many peak years and he wants to take advantage of them while he can. Athletes also like to get the bitter taste of defeat out of their mouths as quickly as possible and waiting 3,4, or 5 months in between fights is asking too much. If a fighter loses 2 or 3 times in a row he'll have gone over a year without getting a victory. It'd be tough for anyone to stay motivated under those circumstances. NFL players want to play the next day following a loss, waiting a week for them can be tough.
UFC is leaving money on the table. Yeah, it means more when a guy doesn't fight that often but that's offset by the lack of familiarity fans have with him. You're not going to care as much if you only see him 2 or 3 times a year. He's like your Uncle Leo that you only see at Thanksgiving and Christmas. But that other relative, the one you see every month, you care a lot more about him because you know more about him. And by the time you get to know this Uncle Leo guy it's been 3-5 years and half his career's gone.
One of the better aspects of being a sports fan is watching guys ascend towards greatness and make the leap to superstar. I remember watching Peyton Manning throwing plenty of interceptions in his rookie year. And a few years after that, in the game that inspired the infamous "Playoffs?" rant by Head Coach Jim Mora, Manning threw a handful of interceptions and showed that he wasn't there yet. It wasn't until 2007 that he finally broke through and won the Super Bowl. And then there's Tom Brady, who enjoyed great success early in his career. We got to watch these guys on their divergent career paths and how they grew. If we had only been able to see them play a few times per year we might not care as much about them. If a guy likes only fighting 2 or 3 times a year, that's fine, more power to him. But to those guys who want to fight more they should be able to.
DON'T GO YET... WE SUGGEST THESE MMATORCH ARTICLES, TOO!
Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
Interested in joining MMATorch's writing team? Send idea for a theme to your column (for Specialist section) or area of interest (i.e. TV Reporter) along with a sample of writing to mmatorch@gmail.com.
