Memos from Media Purgatory
Jake Rossen Oct 4, 2005
The seismic shift felt in the MMA community in the past several
weeks could be attributable to one of two things: either Akebono
has taken another inevitable spill onto the canvas in a fleshy heap
of kamikaze glory, or Zuffa has issued their umpteenth edict
designed to leave onlookers doing their best Curious George.
If you guessed the latter, give yourself a prize. (But don’t despair, losing team: ’Bono is probably being airlifted to the ER as we speak.)
Zuffa has recently decided to put a moratorium on most members of
the print and Web MMA media attending UFC-branded events. Effective
with the October 3 SpikeTV special, no media credentials
will be issued to such mainstays as Sherdog.com, Full Contact
Fighter, MMAWeekly.com, and a host of others.
It’s been hypothesized the media blackout is an attempt to internalize all UFC-related news, with Zuffa's ultimate intention being to create a proprietary Web site and control the content and distribution of information.
Mixed martial arts, as one would be quick to point out, is a sport, not sports entertainment. The very purpose of sport is to use a public forum to disseminate results of athletic contests. Journalists should feel free to interpret sporting events as they see fit, and they should be accommodated within reason by the promotional body in order to do so.
As Sherdog.com and others have learned, Zuffa does not share this sentiment.
The Tex Avery-inspired double takes from editors that met credential denials were followed by phone calls to Zuffa PR, who retorted only with confirmation that criterion had been established — no elaboration was offered. Media relations firm Brener Zwikel & Associates states only that these sites fail to meet Zuffa’s qualifications for admittance.
These oft-referenced standards seem to be a well-kept secret. Jacket? Tie? BA in English? A strong resemblance to Dean Cain? It’s a mystery to site administrators. We can dismiss traffic, since Sherdog.com resembles the I-95. Print media? Didn’t help Full Contact Fighter.
Zuffa’s motivations are unclear. And largely unimportant. To allow the UFC to self-police its promotion and distribute information in a way that casts no critical light is more than an insult to fans: it's an outright dangerous practice. The uproar that would accompany the NFL refusing press at the gate would be deafening. No legitimate sport can operate in a bubble. There’s no substitution for live eyewitness accounts.
Granted, a good chunk of purported “journalism” circulating online is little more than a fan’s self-indulgent ramblings. As the UFC begins cutting the Internet’s umbilical cord, it would be understandable to see the incoherent sites fall by the wayside. Evolution is unforgiving like that.
But is that really the motive? InsideFighting’s Jason Probst speculates that the UFC finds sites that promote fighters or events as contraindicative of balanced journalism. If true, that might explain the absence of Full Contact Fighter (publisher Joel Gold sponsors fighters) and Sherdog (with its peripheral online store). Throw in Ryan Bennett’s gig announcing for different promoters and you have a case for a collective conflict of interests.
It almost sounds like a noble pursuit. But not quite.
Gold’s sponsorship is a separate entity from the editorial pages of FCF; Sherdog’s store differs not one iota from ESPN’s marketing pursuits; Bennett has done nothing different than boxing media who’ve broadcast for specific promoters in that sport, not to mention the fact that his show has substantial UFC content.
To think that coverage is being re-directed or diluted in some vain attempt to boost profitability for a sister business is the stuff tinfoil hats are made of.
Here’s where the real subversive kowtowing is going on: the Zuffa-supported ufcfightnews.com and sites and publications buoyed by the UFC’s advertising dollars will allegedly be permitted entrance. If Zuffa is so concerned about objectivity, it seems laughably absurd to expect sites that depend on the Octagon’s sponsorship to turn any kind of critical eye. Of course, when that perceived bias benefits them, there’s clearly no problem.
What’s more, while the MMA media and its ragtag bunch of glorified fanzines certainly needs some degree of self-monitoring, it doesn’t seem appropriate for Zuffa to act as mediator. Not when the media has been overwhelmingly pro-UFC from the start, acting more as champion and less as critic of an opposed fringe sport.
Try not to sneeze. This is one precariously balanced house of cards.
The UFC exhausting the usefulness of fandom isn’t the issue here: neither fans nor journos are “owed” anything regardless of the amount of time they spent bailing water out of SEG’s sinking ship. The issue is Zuffa being so emboldened as to forgo the gift of free advertising that the MMA media provides. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship: By facilitating access to your product, the publication writes about something of interest to the reader. The product then gets exposed to a number of people. It’s a simple equation, yet one that Zuffa has apparently realized no need for.
‘Cause here’s the thing, gang: While Spike’s Ultimate Fighter grabs impressive numbers and Pay-Per-View buy rates continue to escalate, the quote-unquote mainstream press is still plenty satisfied to give the UFC the Robert E. Howard treatment. Are we really to expect a general-audience press — for whom the guard conjures up images of biblical wrongdoing — to provide the kind of perspective fight fans have grown accustomed to?
It’s all very odd, and indicative of the monopoly the UFC currently enjoys in the United States. Their brand has gone unchallenged since Extreme Fighting faded with barely a whimper in the mid-1990s. Undoubtedly, Zuffa wouldn’t dare consider such a totalitarian move in the face of direct competition. Why allow search engines and news sites to focus on rival businesses? But knowing that substantial coverage of events overseas is difficult, they forge ahead in what amounts to an unprecedented act of hubris.
The UFC brass must see a pattern to this insanity, a way to bilk dollars in the absence of comprehensive event coverage. You’d need to schedule a conference call between Will Hunting and John Forbes Nash to figure it out, though. Zuffa doesn’t believe it warrants an explanation.
So welcome to the New New UFC … where the heavyweight division is so spartan that an Internet celebrity is getting a crack on the under card; where you can be 9-3 in middleweight competition and get cut on a technicality just before your well-earned title shot; where abrasive business negotiations get the logo on your fight shorts blurred from repurposed highlight shows; where Chuck Zito gets a front-row seat while Quinton Jackson (Pictures) is told they’re fresh out of tickets.
I remind fans to let their voice be heard. Tell the UFC you cannot tolerate the concept of propaganda. Tell them you want objective eyewitnesses to their events. Tell them you refuse to patronize their editorially skewed product. As fans, you have the right to unbiased reporting.
To lose truth in this industry is to lose the very ideals that it was built on. We are all fans of real combat — unvarnished reality. To accept anything less in this sport's journalism would be hypocritical.
The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com
If you guessed the latter, give yourself a prize. (But don’t despair, losing team: ’Bono is probably being airlifted to the ER as we speak.)
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It’s been hypothesized the media blackout is an attempt to internalize all UFC-related news, with Zuffa's ultimate intention being to create a proprietary Web site and control the content and distribution of information.
(You'll find a similar business strategy in practice with the
press-shy World Wrestling Entertainment and its use of branded
periodicals.)
Mixed martial arts, as one would be quick to point out, is a sport, not sports entertainment. The very purpose of sport is to use a public forum to disseminate results of athletic contests. Journalists should feel free to interpret sporting events as they see fit, and they should be accommodated within reason by the promotional body in order to do so.
As Sherdog.com and others have learned, Zuffa does not share this sentiment.
The Tex Avery-inspired double takes from editors that met credential denials were followed by phone calls to Zuffa PR, who retorted only with confirmation that criterion had been established — no elaboration was offered. Media relations firm Brener Zwikel & Associates states only that these sites fail to meet Zuffa’s qualifications for admittance.
These oft-referenced standards seem to be a well-kept secret. Jacket? Tie? BA in English? A strong resemblance to Dean Cain? It’s a mystery to site administrators. We can dismiss traffic, since Sherdog.com resembles the I-95. Print media? Didn’t help Full Contact Fighter.
Zuffa’s motivations are unclear. And largely unimportant. To allow the UFC to self-police its promotion and distribute information in a way that casts no critical light is more than an insult to fans: it's an outright dangerous practice. The uproar that would accompany the NFL refusing press at the gate would be deafening. No legitimate sport can operate in a bubble. There’s no substitution for live eyewitness accounts.
Granted, a good chunk of purported “journalism” circulating online is little more than a fan’s self-indulgent ramblings. As the UFC begins cutting the Internet’s umbilical cord, it would be understandable to see the incoherent sites fall by the wayside. Evolution is unforgiving like that.
But is that really the motive? InsideFighting’s Jason Probst speculates that the UFC finds sites that promote fighters or events as contraindicative of balanced journalism. If true, that might explain the absence of Full Contact Fighter (publisher Joel Gold sponsors fighters) and Sherdog (with its peripheral online store). Throw in Ryan Bennett’s gig announcing for different promoters and you have a case for a collective conflict of interests.
It almost sounds like a noble pursuit. But not quite.
Gold’s sponsorship is a separate entity from the editorial pages of FCF; Sherdog’s store differs not one iota from ESPN’s marketing pursuits; Bennett has done nothing different than boxing media who’ve broadcast for specific promoters in that sport, not to mention the fact that his show has substantial UFC content.
To think that coverage is being re-directed or diluted in some vain attempt to boost profitability for a sister business is the stuff tinfoil hats are made of.
Here’s where the real subversive kowtowing is going on: the Zuffa-supported ufcfightnews.com and sites and publications buoyed by the UFC’s advertising dollars will allegedly be permitted entrance. If Zuffa is so concerned about objectivity, it seems laughably absurd to expect sites that depend on the Octagon’s sponsorship to turn any kind of critical eye. Of course, when that perceived bias benefits them, there’s clearly no problem.
What’s more, while the MMA media and its ragtag bunch of glorified fanzines certainly needs some degree of self-monitoring, it doesn’t seem appropriate for Zuffa to act as mediator. Not when the media has been overwhelmingly pro-UFC from the start, acting more as champion and less as critic of an opposed fringe sport.
Try not to sneeze. This is one precariously balanced house of cards.
The UFC exhausting the usefulness of fandom isn’t the issue here: neither fans nor journos are “owed” anything regardless of the amount of time they spent bailing water out of SEG’s sinking ship. The issue is Zuffa being so emboldened as to forgo the gift of free advertising that the MMA media provides. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship: By facilitating access to your product, the publication writes about something of interest to the reader. The product then gets exposed to a number of people. It’s a simple equation, yet one that Zuffa has apparently realized no need for.
‘Cause here’s the thing, gang: While Spike’s Ultimate Fighter grabs impressive numbers and Pay-Per-View buy rates continue to escalate, the quote-unquote mainstream press is still plenty satisfied to give the UFC the Robert E. Howard treatment. Are we really to expect a general-audience press — for whom the guard conjures up images of biblical wrongdoing — to provide the kind of perspective fight fans have grown accustomed to?
It’s all very odd, and indicative of the monopoly the UFC currently enjoys in the United States. Their brand has gone unchallenged since Extreme Fighting faded with barely a whimper in the mid-1990s. Undoubtedly, Zuffa wouldn’t dare consider such a totalitarian move in the face of direct competition. Why allow search engines and news sites to focus on rival businesses? But knowing that substantial coverage of events overseas is difficult, they forge ahead in what amounts to an unprecedented act of hubris.
The UFC brass must see a pattern to this insanity, a way to bilk dollars in the absence of comprehensive event coverage. You’d need to schedule a conference call between Will Hunting and John Forbes Nash to figure it out, though. Zuffa doesn’t believe it warrants an explanation.
So welcome to the New New UFC … where the heavyweight division is so spartan that an Internet celebrity is getting a crack on the under card; where you can be 9-3 in middleweight competition and get cut on a technicality just before your well-earned title shot; where abrasive business negotiations get the logo on your fight shorts blurred from repurposed highlight shows; where Chuck Zito gets a front-row seat while Quinton Jackson (Pictures) is told they’re fresh out of tickets.
I remind fans to let their voice be heard. Tell the UFC you cannot tolerate the concept of propaganda. Tell them you want objective eyewitnesses to their events. Tell them you refuse to patronize their editorially skewed product. As fans, you have the right to unbiased reporting.
To lose truth in this industry is to lose the very ideals that it was built on. We are all fans of real combat — unvarnished reality. To accept anything less in this sport's journalism would be hypocritical.
The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com
