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During today’s Affliction M-1 "Day of
Reckoning" conference call featuring Josh Barnett and Matt
Lindblad the fighters went through the usual pre-fight
clichés. The more quotable character was one of the senior
executives of the Affliction team, who predicted that his
organization would become “the Q-Tip of MMA.” Michael Cohen,
Executive Vice President and Special Counsel to Donald J.
Trump made the claim after Tom Atencio, the Vice President
of the Affliction Entertainment Group spoke on the call
about his organization’s challenge to differentiate their
brand from the all-powerful Ultimate Fighting Championship.
“It’s like talking about cotton swabs and Q-Tips. One of the
challenges we have is that the casual fans of the sport
refers to fighters as ‘UFC fighters.’ This will be our
second show and we’re looking to make our brand the leading
one in the sport.” At that point Mr. Cohen added, “we’ve now
added Donald Trump, Jr. to the executive team. I want to
stress that we have a team here; Donald Trump, Don, Jr.,
myself and Tom Atencio will build the Affliction brand to
become the Q-Tip of mixed martial arts.”
Hmm. There had to be a better metaphor
to use in context to the blood sport that is mixed martial
arts than a Q-Tip, don’t you think?
So while momentum gathers for the
January 24 card at the Honda Center in Anaheim, one gets the
impression it will not be the spectacular witnessed this
past summer that featured Fedor Emelianenko dominating Tim
Sylvia in 36 seconds. It’s been well documented that this
card is a re-scheduled one; it was originally scheduled to
take place in Las Vegas this summer. Paltry ticket sales
scuttled that event and while this card is solid top to
bottom, the presentation will be toned down. The show will
be devoid of any musical performances, a good move in our
opinion. Atencio admitted that as a fledgling organization
they need to control costs while Cohen conveyed that a poll
of fans in attendance at the July show showed that while the
Megadeth performance wasn’t an annoyance, it wasn’t a pull
for fans to attend. The first card drew a legitimate full
house to the Honda Center and this card will be a true test
of Fedor’s ability to sell tickets as the first one was a
novelty at that point; rest assured UFC President Dana White
will be keeping a watchful eye on the live gate.
Both Atencio and Cohen were sensitive
about talking about ticket sales about this event given the
earlier cancellation. “Ticket sales are going well but I’m
not going to give any specifics,” Atencio commented while
Cohen was aggravated when a question came up about the
previously scuttled card. “We’ve answered this question a
couple of dozen times. The Las Vegas event would have been
fine but it would not have been great. It was our belief
that it would not been up to the standards of our first
show,” he explained. Cohen also mentioned the addition of
Golden Boy Promotions to the promotional mix (although if
Oscar’s not fighting, they don’t know how to sell seats),
while Atencio confirmed that with its other co-promotional
partner M-1, Affliction will stage fourteen (4 in the US,
the balance overseas) events in 2009. The organization has
also picked up Showtime as a television distribution
partner, which can only help to extend its PPV footprint and
it will be interesting to see if UFC counter programs a card
that is slotted in the weekend before its George St. Pierre-B.J.
Penn PPV on the last day of the month.
The sport of MMA has stagnated over the
last 18 months primarily due to the fact that with no
competitor to UFC, the unquestioned industry leader is more
risk adverse, sticks to its winning formula and hasn’t gone
outside the box for a long time. At least one of their
championship belts change hands at each event, its
heavyweight champion has had all of three professional
fights and its best fighter still can’t speak English. So
while UFC is far from ripe for the taking, their product
frankly has become stale. How many more version of the
Ultimate Fighter can you produce anyway? If Affliction can
navigate the perilous route to profitability in this sport,
there’s more than enough room for a strong second fiddle to
the undisputed champion.
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