All the crying and gnashing of teeth around here on the so called ban has got to end. Pull your head out of ass and think about it rationally for a minute.
First off anyone who considers some dude who sits down and writes an article about the UFC and posts it on a web site a member of the media is insane.
Real reporters have editors, legal departments, fact checkers.
Do you think anyone from mmaweekly or sherdog does any of that? No they don't. They sit down maybe talk to a person or two or see a rumour on the internet and write a story that may or may not be true.
Secondly do you think Sherdog.com, Insidefighting.com or MMAWEEKLY.com have ever garnered any ppv buys for the UFC?
Has anybody ever gone to Sherdog that has never seen the UFC and read an article and said to themselves "Oh man I gotta see the UFC"? No they haven't.
All the sites listed are making profits by reporting on the UFC. In other words the UFC is the shark and these are all just sucker fish taking money out of their pockets by having people go to their sites instead of the UFC's under the guise of reporting news but really there just hawking DVD's and shirts, etc, etc.
Last but not least. The UFC is in no way banning anyone. Jeff Sherwood, Ryan Bennet, Josh Gross among countless others can all still go to the UFC and write any kind of article they want to about it and post it on their little websites just like they can now. The only difference is there going to have to do it the same way you and I do. There going to have to buy a ticket.
The fact that you have people that have been writing about this sport for ten years is not something to just dismiss. Are there better writers out there? Of course. Do they cover MMA? No they don't. Do the people in the mainstream that have now covered MMA have the knowledge to reference Hughes fighting in a tournament in the middle east? Do they understand the dynamic between Pride and the UFC? Do they know it's not toughman? The answer is no.
"Real reporters have editors, legal departments, fact checkers. "
lol, fact checkers? Anyone who knows anything about a particular sport has found numerous factual errors in sports journalism from every major outlet, their paper, SI, ESPN, everything. Even simple things like what round a player was drafted in, or how long he's been with the team, histories of all-star appearences, and on and on and on.
I think you're a hypocrite lastcall. I'm not going to debate the UFC media ban. I believe the truth in that will come out in time and therefore debating that right now would only be pure speculation.
What I do take offense to is your condescending attitude toward MMAWeekly, Sherdog etc... How many times have you visited their website and enjoyed their product? If you're anything like me, I'm guessing you've been there thousands of times over the course of the past several years. For you to turn around and now say things like "they weren't real journalists" and "who needs them anyways" is hypocritical.
MMA is truly blessed to have individuals like Jeff Sherwood and Ryan Bennett associated with the sport. Anyone who doesn't acknowledge the contributions these two have made should get their heads examined.
godofmma my whole point is what can't Sherdog, MMAWEEKLY.com, insidefighting.com, FCF do now that they couldn't yesterday?
They can still write their editorials, get their interviews and sell their stuff. Zuffa simply isn't going to help enable them to do it anymore.
What business isn't about the money? What are you Michael Moore or something? Zuffa invested a lot of capitol in the UFC and you don't think they should try to make a profit off it?
I guess they owe you something since you've been posting on a forum for so long?
Let me check something else. Exactly which one of these sites has created buzz about any of the unknown fighters on tonights card?
The only two fighters that have any buzz associated to them are Josh and Chris and why is that? Well I think its because they were cast member on the TUF1 which oh yeah Zuffa produced.
Arrogant forum members kill me. For some reason they feel Zuffa owes them or somebody else something. They don't owe anybody anything.
If there were no Sherdog, I would not have started buying Pay per Views and training jiu jitsu.....that site was there for me at the perfect moment in my life when i was looking for something new to get into in fall in love with, whether or not i realized that that was what was happening to me at the time...
so you capitalist extremists can go shove it...you don't know everything...i'm sure i'm not the only person that feels this way
I will laugh my ass off if the UFC somehow gets some mainstream writers from ESPN, SI, Sporting News, etc, to cover an event only to have said writers butcher MMA just like the good old days.
The problem with your logic is that these web sites are the closest thing to real media that could even give a crap about the UFC. ESPN has never reported the results of events and the same goes for Sports Illustrated or any of the other mainstream media outlets. These web pages are the only means for many of us to get our mma results and info and to pull the rug out from under them is just cheap. I mean, these guys are working hard to promote the sport and Zuffa should be working with them, not against them.
"The problem with your logic is that these web sites are the closest thing to real media that could even give a crap about the UFC"
not true. the UFC is on the best damn sports show all the time, and I've seen them talk about it on Friday Night fights on ESPN as well, just for starters
grimer your speculating. None of us know the real reason Zuffa decided to do this.
Maybe they're going to do their own magazine. Maybe they will begin to be covered by the national media.
I don't know and neither does anybody on this board.
The only thing I do know is they're a private company and they should always do what they think is in the companies best interest.
By the way supersonic ESPN news showed the Tito Ortiz/Randy Couture weigh in live. UFC fighters have been guests on talk shows both morning and late night on every major network in the United States.
I think the mainstream media is past "the human cockfighting " stage although you obviously wish they weren't.
"Has anybody ever gone to Sherdog that has never seen the UFC and read an article and said to themselves 'Oh man I gotta see the UFC'?"
Aside from watching a few tapes of the early events in '98-'99, I had never seen the UFC. When I entered "UFC" into Kazaa in 2001, I was expecting to find some videos of Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock beating everyone, since I figured they were still the two best fighters on the planet. Instead, I found highlight videos of guys named Vitor Belfort, Vanderlei Silva, and Kazushi Sakuraba. These all had a spinning logo in the bottom corner that read "Sherdog.com". I went to the site and checked it out, and I haven't missed a UFC PPV since.