Sims-Thomas fight off of TUF Five Finale

I say the fight was canceled while a quote given by Dana White to the Houston Chronicle's Steve Sievert says it was never going to happen. You can read the entire piece including Dana's comments here

I don't buy this one for a second. This announcement appeared on UFC.com for crying out loud, if he didn't have knowledge of it before then than this is a pretty WCW like spectacular mistake.
For all of the outrage displayed during the show about this fight, it didn't stop commercials hyping it from being produced and aired for a week straight. It didn't stop them from putting Dana's rant after a commercial for maximum impact and to not only retain viewers through the break but to quite frankly give them time to inform their friends that Dana was about to rant.
I can buy that Dana White travels quite a bit especially these days and I'll even say that there are likely things that happen that escape his notice. However, this kind of thing seems a bit...large.

If Sievert's guess is correct, then the UfC should be commended for listening to fan reaction and abandoning plans. I'm not sure that's really what went down either, seems to me there's probably a middle ground explanation.
If Dana is telling the truth and I'm not entirely ruling it out...0.000001 percent is still a percent (and I'm not saying that's the percentage I put on this one) but if he is telling the truth then there's a communications gap that needs to be mended, like yesterday.

One last prediction. This fight will happen and it will happen on a pay per view. It may not be a UFC Pay Per View, in fact I don't think you'll see either man in the UFC any time soon if ever. However, someone will try and make money on this and that is the only thing in this whole story of which one can be 100% certain.

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MMA Late Night Newsbits for 5/29

We'll take a quick glance at things before we head home.

All the links behind the cut.



IFL joins troops for Fleet Week

A preview of this Friday's Seattle event can be found here

Former UFC Heavyweight fighter
Marcio Pe De Pano Cruz to fight in IFL

Here's what to expect on IFL Battleground this monday:

You Will Submit! "IFL Battleground" Highlights League's Best Tap-Outs Monday On MyNetworkTV

Episode Looks Inside The Art Of Chokes And Holds

NEW YORK, May 29, 2007- The International Fight League (OTC.BB: IFLI), the world’s number one professional mixed martial arts league, takes a look at the
league’s top submissions and tap-out artists, in the next episode of “IFL Battleground” on Monday, June 4, at 8 p.m. ET/PT (7 p.m. CT/MT). “IFL Battleground”
airs every Monday night on MyNetworkTV.

The show features full fights and highlights of IFL bouts which have ended via submission, and also includes demonstrations by “IFL Battleground” Co-Host
Bas Rutten and IFL athletes such as the Tokyo Sabres’ Antonio McKee (Long Beach, Calif.).

Additionally, the search for the next IFL Ring Girls continues, with audition footage of some contenders – and a few pretenders – from searches conducted
in New York and Los Angeles.

Some of the competitors seen in the episode include:

Lightweight John Gunderson (Houston/Medford, Ore.) of the Lions vs. Josh Odom (Tallahassee, Fla.) of the Razorclaws
Middleweight Benji Radach (Coconut Creek, Fla.) of the Anacondas vs. Brian Foster (Moreno Valley, Calif.) of the Razorclaws
Middleweight Jeremy Williams (Laguna Niguel, Calif.) of the Condors vs. Bristol Marunde (Sequim, Wash.) and Kazuhiro Hamanaka (Tokyo) of the Sabres
Middleweight Matt Horwich (Portland, Ore.) of the Wolfpack vs. Brent Beauparlant (Ottawa, Ontario) of the Dragons
Welterweight Jay Hieron (Las Vegas) of the Anacondas vs. Donnie Liles (Colorado Springs, Colo.) of the Razorclaws
Light Heavyweight Jamal Patterson (Hoboken, N.J.) of the Pitbulls vs. Alex Schoenauer (Las Vegas) of the Anacondas

Viewers can find their local MyNetworkTV affiliate at www.mynetworktv.com/local_stations.html.

Each of the 12 IFL teams for 2007 will compete in three regular season events; the teams with the top four overall win-loss team records will advance to
the semi-finals, which will be held on Thursday, August 2, at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J. The 2007 IFL Finals will then be held
at The Forum in Los Angeles on Saturday, September 15.

About the IFL

International Fight League™ (IFL) is the world’s first professional mixed martial arts sports league. IFL has its headquarters in New York, NY and offices
in Las Vegas, NV. For more information about IFL, please see: www.ifl.tv.

Seattle Tiger Sharks Light Heavyweight Allan Goes is ready for Friday's battle.

Dana White, when talking about the Pride sale and its fighters said We're going to have them all

UFC Explodes in Popularity

UFC 71 gives use yet another surprise

Rampage Jackson's trainer put together a masterful plan

MMA Knocks Out Boxing
NBC Sports

Kevin Iole looks at the rise of Rampage

Steve Sievert of the Houston Chronicle believe that the UFC Swings and Misses by scheduling the Sims-Thomas fight.

Could we see another Shamrock-Gracie fight?

I'm winding down, so I think that will be it for this evening.

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Some brief Newsbits

Last week's block of programming on SpikeTV saw TNA iMPACT do a 1.0 and The Ultimate Fighter 5 do a 1.3 rating. TNA is steady, TUF slightly up from prior weeks. I guess that the hype surrounding the street fight that Dana White was so "upset" by added a little to the ratings.

Speaking of the street fight. Marlon Sims Vs. Noah Thomas is confirmed for the 06/23 TUF 5 Finale special.

The Card for One Night Stand looks as follows with a few matches not yet announced:

1. WWE Championship Match: The Great Khali Vs. John Cena, Falls Count Anywhere
2. World Championship Match: Batista Vs. Edge, Steel Cage
   
3. ECW Championship Match: Bobby Lashley Vs. Vince McMahom, Street Fight
   
4. World Tag Team Championship Match: World's Greatest Tag Team Vs. The Hardy Boys, Ladder Match
   
5. Non-title match: Melina Vs. Candice Michelle, Pudding Match
   
6. Chris Benoit Vs. MVP
   
7. CM Punk, Sandman and Tommy Dreamer Vs. Elijah Burke, Marcus Cor Von and Matt Striker

I'll be back with more later.

Credit: Dave Meltzer

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TUF 5: Episode 8, Dana White's promo and the reality that it's TV

The following is the opinion of its author but not necessarily anyone else associated with this site. However, it should be the opinion of all of them.

I wanted to write about the Ultimate Fighter episode I saw tonight. No, this is not a recap of the entire show, Euan you still must do some work for once.

I just want to talk about one thing.



I want to talk about the streetfight but more specifically, Dana White's reaction to it. The short version is that Marlon Sims and Noah Thomas got in to a streetfight after an encounter with some alcohol. Others in the house were there watching and egging them on. When it ends the discussion turns to what will happen and if they'll get kicked out of the house. We don't have to wait long as Dana sees the tape the next day.

Dana pulls all of them together and starts yelling as he is prone to do. Now, let me say one thing before I get to the real heart of the matter. Dana's rant made for an entertaining TV moment. I'm not going to claim that what happened wasn't entertaining TV my problem is with the claims that were made.

Dana basically said (only he used the word fuck a lot more than I will) that he was disgusted by what he saw on the tape. He said that this was the kind of thing that most of the public perceived UFC fighters to be, nothing more than goons. I've got no objection with this so far.

He went on to say that he was working hard to change that perception and couldn't allow for something like this to happen and then he kicked Thomas, Sims and Alan Berube who was the chief antagonist out of the house and off of the show.

My questions are as follows:

1. If this bothered Dana White as much as he would like us to believe based on his rant, then why did all of the commercials for this episode hype up that incident?
   
2. If he were truly upset by this, aren't there other things he could've done to suppress this kind of thing?

If I didn't want to get attention for this kind of thing, here is how I would've handled it. I would've made damn sure that the footage of the streetfight didn't air and I would've not sent those guys home. However, I would've held them off of the Ultimate Fighter Finale and not brought them back for as long as I could if ever. The reason I wouldn't have sent them home is because if you send them home the people need to see why. However, if I'm Dana White I do the same thing he did because ultimately showing this is theoretically going to bring ratings which is supposed to benefit the show and the company.

The Ultimate Fighter is first and foremost a TV program. TV programs need ratings and this is the kind of thing that will get people talking. So, that's why something you supposedly don't want your sport to stand for is the main thing being hyped in your commercials for that week's episode.

I'm not saying that Dana is an evil man for not being completely honest with his audience on this one. Showing that fight is theoretically good for the ratings and that's good for the show which is good for the company, image be damned. However, I don't want to read and am not going to say that Dana's rant wasn't a manufactured part of this show. If he really had a problem with that fight to the extent that he portrayed on the episode, you would've never seen that footage...ever. So he may claim he's trying to bring the sport out of the dark ages, but MMA is just like Pro Wrestling no matter how much the strictly MMA fans want to pretend it isn't.

The Ultimate Fighter is a manufactured TV show. Notice I never call it reality TV. This is because reality TV is an oxymoron. Because it is on TV, it can't be real. The reasons that is true follow:

1. These shows are edited (unless done live) and until you can edit real life to fit your needs...its not a reflection of reality.
   
2. The situations on most shows could never be duplicated in real life. I don't know about you, but I'm rarely ever pulled off the street to go to some secluded place and compete against other people for some prize.
   
3. Show's with competitions I.E. American Idle or the Ultimate Fighter don't really do what they claim. Take Idle for instance. You can't honestly tell me that when auditions take place that the best singers are always the ones that make the final cut. Anyone reading this knows full well that if you're a good singer but have no camera presence, you're fucked...even if you're more talented than people that do make the show. At that point, you're not picking the best singer. Plus, most of music isn't about singing anyway, its about image so really this show could exist without the singing at all and accomplish the same goal. Finally on Idle, I never watch the show but here's the deal. You can't tell me that the best singer is always guaranteed to win the contest. However, I can guarantee that the most popular person will win because...you win using a popular vote.
   In the case of the Ultimate Fighter, they probably had a bunch of guys come in that were more polished fighters than Corey Hill. However, Corey has a unique personality and that allowed him to vault past more experienced guys.

The above rant leaves out sporting events because strictly speaking you could hold the same game on TV or not televise it at all and have no real impact on the game itself other than the one not televised would run quicker due to not needing commercial time outs. The Ultimate Fighter show is not a sporting event though until you get to the finale. Until then it is a dramatic series with a sports contest as the vehicle to drive the drama. You could stick those guys in a house, give them something to do besides fight and get a show out of it...so the fights aren't really essential for this show to exist.

The Ultimate Fighter doesn't set out to find the best fighter as Dana claims every season. TUF actually sets out to find the most marketable stars. There's a difference between the 2. If the idea were strictly to see who the best fighter is then guys that were technically great fighters but had the personality of 100 year-old cardboard would be more prevalent on the show. But because it is TV and people connect to personalities when its audition time you'd better believe personality is taken in to as much account as fight skill if not more so.

So my point is lets not praise these guys for doing something that they didn't actually do. I praise them for putting an entertaining product on the air because I feel that's what they did. However, I don't praise them for taking a stand for trying to clean up the sport...because they embraced what happened more than they tried to shy away from it.

I think Dana White lied in his promo...I don't fault him for it because the lie made for a compelling segment on the show. He's not the first person to lie for the benefit of his company and he won't be the last. So this isn't a straight criticism of what Dana did so much as a wake up call for anyone naive enough to think he went on that rant for the good of the sport.

Want more proof to convince you that the whole thing was manufactured for the greatest impact. Look at the placement of the commercial. Dana says what he saw was disgusting and then we go to a commercial before hearing the rest of the rant. They knew exactly where to insert that commercial in order to keep people watching which is the ultimate goal of any TV show with the possible exception of TNA iMPACT.

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