Kimbo Slice was a sideshow put on centre stage. Now he'll be a sideshow on the side stage. Look, I know what EliteXC was doing. Kimbo Slice seemed like an easy guy to market--scary looking, heavy hands, criminal past chronicled on YouTube. Stack some cans up in front of him and everyone will tune in to watch him knock them over. Keep feeding him easy prey and try to get the viewers who just tune in to see him to catch on to the other quality fighters on the show--guys like Jake Shields. Avoid putting anyone in front of him that would be threatening. Ride this amateur for all you can and eventually let him work his way up to top level heavyweights. At that point fans should be hooked win or lose. The problem with that strategy is that legitimate fighters get the shaft, especially EliteXC's own heavyweights. While Kimbo Slice eats up the attention and gets his name on the marquee, guys putting in work in the division get looked over. Guys like Dave Herman, Antonio Silva, and Brett Rogers. Not household names, but fighters who could form the foundation of a weight class for the brand for the next half-decade. Guys who now only hardcore MMA fans are aware of. According to Jared Shaw of ProElite, they will try to market Seth Pretruzelli now as well as Kimbo. So the paper dragon and the paper dragon slayer will both be getting attention ahead of the other heavyweights. Plus the animated remains of Ken Shamrock will still be haunting the federation. I like a lot of the fights EliteXC puts on. Radach/Rua, Sheilds/Daley, Arlovski/Nelson--those were all fights that could be on a UFC PPV card. We got to see them free. But how much attention did those guys get? The UFC used to refer to the Ultimate Fighter reality show--of which Seth Petruzelli is a product--as their Trojan Horse for television. EliteXC is using CBS's Saturday Night Fights in the other direction, building a fanbase before they try their luck in pay-per-view. The problem they were having up until now is that the promotion was centred around MMA newcomers in Slice and Gina Carano. But MMA isn't boxing. You can't control the outcomes so easily. They found that out last night when they offered Kimbo Slice a fight with a part-time fighter and light heavyweight who had taken a year off from fighting, and he threw a monkey wrench in their promotional plans. Are people really going to pay to see Kimbo fight now, especially since all of his fights so far, including the backyard shenanigans, have been free to air? I think the answer is no. Now they are forced to go a different route. Hopefully it means they are going to start rebuilding their promotion around people who have worked for it for more than a couple of cash-incentive laden years. Seth Petruzelli showed them that a seasoned mixed-martial-arts fighter can beat anyone, anywhere, anytime. But with a reported $50-million debt, is the lesson learned too late?
Re: Why Kimbo's loss is so good for EliteXC Good analysis there Speeds. I love Elite XC because they have shows for free.
Re: Why Kimbo's loss is so good for EliteXC MMA is a star driven business. No matter what you thought of Slice, he was the most known MMA fighter to the casual fan. In no way is this even close to being a good loss for EXC. Let's look at ratings for a second. Both shows with Slice as the headliner did ratings that CBS was happy with. When they went with a more "hardcore" show for their second one with Lawler and Smith on top, it failed big time. What needs to be understood is that TV and PPV run the show. If you put on good fights, but no one watches, guess what - you are a dead company. Look at UFC. The top two buyrates in UFC history featured two mismatches. Ken Shamrock vs. Tito Ortiz wasn't even a viable match. But people paid to see it. Same with Chuck and Tito, though that was more competitive. I wish MMA fans would understand the business side of this a bit more. You can't run a company if you can't get on TV. And if you're on TV and your top ratings draw loses badly, no one should ever think that's a good thing for the company. Dave Herman/Antonio Silva/Brett Rogers can't draw fleas to a flea market. Can they in the future? Maybe if EXC gets weekly television. But until then, it's a superstar's game, and they have exactly two superstars. One won (Carano) and one lost.
Re: Why Kimbo's loss is so good for EliteXC Welcome to the site! I think really the message I was trying to convey was that they've been forced to learn an ideological lesson. Certainly it won't be good for their business in the short-term and maybe it will prevent them from doing business in the long-term. ProElite may not last the remainder of the year and EliteXC could be under new ownership or dead by mid-2009, who knows? They've taken their chances by rushing to network television without a built-in audience expecting the new fans to eventually follow them to PPV. My basic premise is that EliteXC is not going to have longevity building their brand around rookies and has-beens. They must develop their own viable stars. Carano is a face for a poster but until the women's division in MMA goes from paper thin to at least cardboard thin they are very limited with what they can do with her. This is especially evident when they bill her as the top female fighter but avoid putting together fights with her and Tara LaRosa or Chris Cyborg (in the same fashion they've been reluctant to match Kimbo Slice up against anything but a posterboard standee). They've lost the opportunity to make a big name out of Kimbo's killer, too. Seth Petruzelli is a mediocre MMA fighter with no appeal. They could've offered Kimbo Slice enough money to fight Brett Rogers, and then, after the predictable beatdown Slice received, been able to market Rogers as a young buck. He is a realistic prospect for them to build around. This would've been a dangerous experiment to try and teach their casual fans about MMA--it isn't about being scary or punching hard, its about being a well-rounded athlete. But in that situation they keep Kimbo's appeal either way while getting the chance to make a star out of Rogers (or Silva, or Herman, or whoever). Hedging their bets on Shamrock and Ortiz is going to be problematic.
Re: Why Kimbo's loss is so good for EliteXC I think Speeds hit it right on the spot. I think EliteXc tried to build their organization to be a UFC killer or UFC challenger too fast, they tried to show that they had star power but all they had was washed up talent or people that weren't talented. Honestly right now they best way to go if you really want to challenge the UFC is you have to build talent and attract young prospects. EliteXc had a great chance to hype up any young talent they had with the TV deal. Kimbo was a resource they could of used to launch an actual legitimate prospect like speeds said. Kimbo coulda knocked out a few losers, fight and probably lose to a blue chip prospect and BAM behind the might of CBS and great marketing that said prospect coulda been the greatest thing since sliced bread. Elite thought they had a cash cow in Kimbo but the only real cash cows in MMA are guys with talent that is backed by a great marketing team.
Re: Why Kimbo's loss is so good for EliteXC Thanks for the welcome. You are definitely right. But I guess my thought is, "What else could they have done?" They got the TV deal UFC was trying to get, and by the book, it's how you need to build your MMA company in these days. PPV without TV isn't the way to go. But here's the thing. UFC has most of the great fighters. Affliction has a few with maybe the top guy around. What else can they do? Kimbo and Gina are homegrown EXC stars. They built two stars on their own. And Carano and Cyborg are facing each other as soon as they decide when. They built up to that match. If fate didn't intervene, Kimbo would've probably rolled over Ken as well, and they'd have their two biggest stars in prime condition. You are definitely right about that. That was a lose/lose fight. I disagree with that angle. While Rogers is definitely someone with potential, if you put Slice in with him, you've just told your fan base that Kimbo wasn't even the better than the curtain jerker on your Showtime card. At least with Petruzelli, you can say that he fought in the UFC and thus, at least has some sort of marketability. They'd be wrong, but they could say that. See, I think if you build to Rogers or Herman vs. Kimbo, then that's different. If you make it a grudge match, then Kimbo doesn't lose his appeal. Right now, his loss to Seth can be viewed as a fluke, or him not being ready for someone like Seth, or whatever. But if he lost to the other two guys, guys who have some marketability possibly, you'd ruin their full potential in a sense. Even though I'm not sure they last that long, their only three real viable fights to the public that they can sell are Frank vs. Ken, Frank vs. Tito, and Ken vs. Kimbo. I can guarantee you that Brett Rogers vs. either of those guys won't happen because no one knows him. And, they don't use their television properly to build these guys up. Thanks for the reply. Even if we disagree, I still enjoy thoughtful discourse.
Re: Why Kimbo's loss is so good for EliteXC In fantasy MMA booking, you're right. You'd want to build slowly. In the reality of TV where ratings are everything, the only thing, and there's nothing else that matters, you can't do that and they would've never got the CBS TV deal in the first place if that was the case. If they told CBS that they were going to book Brett Rogers vs. Dave Herman as a main event, CBS would stop it immediately and it would do a 1.3 TV rating. They'd be done. It's not necessarily fair, but the TV game isn't fair either. By the way, Kimbo is a cash cow. Look at the rating he pulled in. Will he do that again? Who knows. But they're going to give him the chance.
Re: Why Kimbo's loss is so good for EliteXC Yeah, someone explain why he shaves half his chest but leaves the fur on the shoulders and neck. Actually, don't, I never want to talk about that again.
I do think Elite messed up, instead of having an up and coming star be the one to beat Slice and garner recognition, they have a guy who hasn't fought much lately and is as likely to lose his next fight at 205 as he is to win it. The funny thing is, I was watching Ken get interviewed in HD and I couldn't even see the cut.
The day of the fight his cut right on his eye lid almost was just nasty looking. The stitch's made it look really gross.
Kimbo's loss may have been bad for Elite, but it was good for MMA as a whole. What genius decided that the way to market MMA was on the shoulders of some fake "street fighter" from youtube? They might as well have built around some action movie hero.
I agree it was bad for the sport, especially for true fans, but there's no denying that it got casual fans interested and they watched. I get the idea a bit "Come see the freak show! but stay and watch the skilled and true MMA practioners!" not sure how well it will work, but they've screwed that up somewhat.. unless Seth has become a much better fighter than he was in the UFC. Then he becomes the guy who beat the myth and got casual fans to appreciate how difficult and great a sport MMA is.
If you think Kimbo losing was good for the "sport", then this "sport" isn't going to last. Imagine if baseball took away the home runs. The "sport" becomes much more strategic, but you'd lose a lot of casual interest. There's no way Kimbo losing was better for the sport, especially if EXC goes down because of it. He was definitely exposed, but him being exposed helps in no way, if you want to see EXC succeed.
