Penick's Take
PENICK: UFC's production staff shows signs of fatigue with below average TUF 10 finale
Dec 7, 2009 - 6:45:27 AM PENICK: UFC's production staff shows signs of fatigue with below average TUF 10 finale

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

The UFC did not put it's best foot forward on Saturday night with The Ultimate Fighter's tenth season finale on Spike TV. With only a week off after two events that were only a week apart, and with UFC 107 coming up right away this week, it seemed the production department was suffering from a bit of over-exertion. The result of that was a poorly paced and not very well executed three hours of action from Las Vegas.

The first hour consisted of commercial break after commercial break, and while they got two fights broadcast in that space the time simply dragged along. Then, they subject the viewers at home to a Hulk Hogan segment to plug a different venture, which in all honesty made sense because it's a Spike TV property and they want to get the word out on what will be one of their higher rated programs, but it simply didn't belong for a UFC event.

Then, in a decision that made absolutely no sense, they show the full entrances for the Mark Bocek vs. Joe Brammer fight when they hadn't for any of the others and would not for the fights that followed outside of the main event. To add more fuel to that fire, one of Brammer's sponsors was the controversial Hoelzer Reich clothing company, which denies ties to neo-Nazism but shares clear iconography with the movement along with having sponsored very controversial figures in that movement. So they don't even show Kimbo's entrance and give him more face time, when he's likely going to bring in a few extra viewers for however long he's on screen, and instead show Brammer's full entrance along with a sponsor that many have expressed outrage against.

Once past that it became more timing issues, with the three hour event really dragging along. The other thing that was not done well enough was the final hard sell for this weekend's UFC 107 event. They brought in B.J. Penn and Diego Sanchez via satellite to talk about their main event fight and had a couple of promo spots for the event, but with this free event a week before the pay-per-view they simply didn't do a great job of selling the free audience on why the pay-per-view would feature better action than what they were seeing for free on Spike that night.

Finally, in the most blatant example of below average work from the production staff on Saturday night, the screen froze on the image of James McSweeney and Darrill Schoonover for over a minute and a half of that fight's first round, with the audio of the fight in the background. It's certainly not the most grievous offense, but it shows that it was an off night from that production standpoint.

It's worth looking into the argument that the frequency of events here, and what is supposedly planned for 2010, is having and will have a negative affect on the product on many levels. One of those levels we have seen over the last couple of months with the injuries and illnesses that have made great looking cards into sub-par events, but another is that the production staff is getting and will get overworked and a bit burned out with the running of so many events in close proximity. This Saturday was the third event in four weeks, and now there's another already in quick succession this weekend. For fans it can be a great thing, because it means more fights to watch on a regular basis; but for the people behind the scenes that have to put it together, it might be getting a bit too much when it's this many cards in this little time.