FACEBOOK TWITTER RSS APP PODCAST Opinion & Analysis : Staff Columnists BENT: Affliction Could Not Have Picked A Better Name For Their Company

Jul 22, 2009 - 4:59:28 PM
By: Jason Bent, MMATorch Columnist


Affliction:
def.-A state of great suffering and distress due to adversity.

One must look no further than the latest failed urinalysis submitted by Josh Barnett which has forced him to be pulled from facing Fedor Emelianenko in the main event of the 'Affliction: Trilogy' PPV on August 1st in order to find a fantastic example of a state of great suffering which is surely reflected upon the face of Affliction's head honcho Tom Atencio.

The only thing I can think of is that Atencio might find a way to take this pain to his graphic arts department and see if they can't cobble together a t-shirt design afterwards. On this Affliction t-shirt, it would be a skull as usual, except this time the skull will be crying huge tears. Green tears, too as this will help to signify the vast sums of money lost by the organization and especially so due to this event.

Here we are just a little over one week away from a PPV headlined by one dandy of a main event featured atop a card no one is likely to buy, and Barnett's testing positive for a banned substance is turning out to be the equivalent of someone getting hit by a car and then having a child walk up to them and kick them squarely in the nuts.

Lucy from the 'Peanuts' strips showed more business sense in charging a nickel for dispensing psychiatric advice from a wooden booth than did Tom Atencio in organizing a third PPV event and placing it squarely in between two HUGE UFC events. Our collective entertainment dollar is already more stretched out than the combined vaginas of Nadya Suleman and Kate Gosselin due to the fact most of us purchased UFC 100 two weeks ago and will again tap the reserves in order to order up UFC 101 on August 8th.

Yet, here is Tom Atencio and company choosing to hold their third PPV offering right in the middle and expecting these same hardcore MMA fans to somehow crap out an extra fifty dollars or turn a trick at the gas station so that they have enough cash to purchase a one fight PPV. Part of me wonders if Atencio is somehow the real life Montgomery Brewster and must piss away so much money in a little over one year so that he may then be entitled to his real inheritance. That would actually make sense and his cash hemorrhaging would then be easy to swallow.

This is not reality and the truth is that we should probably expect no better from a man who expects people to dole out well over two hundred dollars for a pair of "Ozzy Osbourne" jeans. That's right. Ozzy. I mean, don't get me wrong, who doesn't like a big rosary and cross embroidered down one leg of their pants but seriously, Ozzy Osbourne jeans? These make as much sense to me as a sneaker company trying to compete with Nike and bring back the Bo Jackson cross trainers in lime green.

Hell, Bo knows more than 'Affliction' and no one has even asked him. I can guarantee that if you asked Bo Jackson if he would place a mixed martial arts PPV in between two of the biggest UFC events of the year that he would first tell you to get off his porch while wondering how you found him and second that his answer would be a succinct, "hell, no".

So, we already had the idea of running a PPV, which makes as much sense as doing the girls of a Haiti brothel bareback, but at least the main event of Fedor vs. Barnett was a legitimate asskicker of a fight between two of the very, very best heavyweights in the world. This would be the fight that would decide just who the number one heavyweight in the world would be and hopefully lead us down a path towards a bout with Brock Lesnar under the UFC banner.

Josh Barnett failed a drug test once before when he tested positive for anabolic steroids after defeating Randy Couture for the UFC Heavyweight Championship at UFC 36 in 2002. As of this time, it is not known just what Barnett has indeed tested positive for and it would only be speculation to suggest it is once again a drug of the performance enhancing variety. Odds are that it is not a recreational drug but this is not to say it could not be and until the results become known it is impossible to tell.

What is not impossible to tell is that the 'Affliction' ship has just gone down like the Titanic if the Titanic would have been carrying a cargo of nothing but gold, pearls and elephant tusk ivory while also having leather crosses affixed to the starboard side. So far, it has been announced that Vitor Belfort has agreed to face Fedor in the main event and this changes absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Belfort will have no chance in such a fight and I would not sanction it at all. Vitor Belfort is simply the most marketable name the promotion can place in Barnett's place as the rumors of putting Bobby Lashley in this main event are hopefully nothing more than a cruel hoax on the level of Kimo being dead. In fact, if Kimo's management is looking to file a lawsuit against the person who erroneously reported Kimo's death, I too would file a lawsuit except against my own management if I were Bobby Lashley and it was even considered to have him face Fedor. Vitor Belfort needs to come back to the UFC and getting pummelled by Fedor will not be of any benefit to him. Just because the promotion is dying, does not mean Belfort needs to be killed in this slapdash main event.

Who knows if Josh Barnett can beat Fedor Emelianenko but the one thing we do know is that he can kill a promotion. Because 'Affliction' was already on its last leg and Barnett's hot piss test was merely the bullet to put the poor thing out of its misery.

I just want to know one thing.

Will Tom Atencio wave a white t-shirt at the PPV to let everyone know he is giving up this ridiculous notion of competing against the UFC?

Affliction may not have been able to choose a better name for their company but the best word for them right now is a four letter word.

Quit.

Not as expensive as 'Affliction' denim, but a whole hell of a lot better than lighting cash on fire by trying to be something you are not.

Tom Atencio might always sell t-shirts but if he keeps trying to sell PPV's he is going to be selling them on the street. He will probably still wish to fight Dana White although by then he would probably be willing to do so for food.

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