Dana White Loves Analogies

Here’s a Dana White gem for you, from a recent interview with Carlos Arias of the Orange County Register. This is White’s response to a question about competitors in the MMA business:

“You come over to my house this weekend and we kick back and watch TV. We put on (expletive) NASCAR. We’re like, ‘Holy (expletive). Look at all the (expletive) people at this race. All those fans and this and that. These guys got television deals and merchandise deals and all this crazy (expletive). You know what? Let’s steal two of their drivers, and let’s start our own (expletive) company. We’ll call it (expletive), you know, GASCAR instead of (expletive) NASCAR.’ That’s how (expletive) stupid it is.”

Now, I love comparing two things that are different and making them sound the same just as much as the next guy, but I find this viewpoint troubling. White’s contention here is that competing MMA organizations are “(expletive) stupid” because they hold MMA events similar to those held by the UFC, though they are not the UFC. This, in the business world, is called competition. It’s kind of like how Pepsi sells a similar product to that of Coca-Cola, though they are in fact two completely different companies.

By Dana White’s logic, that makes Pepsi “(expletive) stupid”. See? Fun with analogies.

It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with White’s comic book-type persona to hear him argue in favor of a UFC monopoly. If you read the interview, it’s pretty clear that the OC Register’s Carlos Arias has zero problem going along for the ride with his leading questions, such as this one, doing the driving:

“Everybody says there is this big surge and rising popularity for mixed martial arts, but it seems like it’s the UFC getting this big surge and poularity [sic] rather than the sport itself? How do you see it?“

Gee Carlos, I wonder how Dana White sees it, now that you asked in so cooperative a fashion. Let’s find out:

“You’re the first (expletive) smart guy that I’ve talked to who has actually really caught that. They come out with all these demos and all these numbers and all theses [sic] things that mixed martial arts is doing. Mixed martial arts isn’t doing that, the UFC is.”

That’s called softball, ladies and gentleman. But my point is that, yes, of course Dana White thinks it’s stupid to have to deal with competitors. That’s why he bad-mouths them every chance he gets, why he does everything in his power to try and hinder them, and why he’s so receptive to a question suggesting that any success MMA is enjoying is solely because of the UFC and, by extension, Dana White.

But whatever he says, remember this, fight fans: competition is good, especially for fans and fighters. White likes to make comparisons between the UFC and other pro sports leagues. In the past, he’s pointed out that there’s only one NBA, one NFL, and so on.

But here’s where that analogy falls apart. Those are leagues. They serve to unify the different teams and help them co-promote. The NFL doesn’t decide how much Randy Moss gets paid. Because the league is made up of many separately owned and operated entities, he is free to get as much as he can (within pre-set limits) by pitting them against one another in a bidding war. The UFC doesn’t work that way. The UFC gets to tell fighters who they’re fighting, when, and for how much. The fighters can take it or leave it, but because of the competing organizations they have options.

If you take away those competing organizations, fighter salaries will come down. The UFC will have less motivation to put on a compelling product. They’ll be secure in the knowledge that if you’re an MMA fan, you’ll pay to see their fights no matter what. Why? Because they’re the only game in town.

Dana White might not want to admit it, but the increased competition in the last few years has made the UFC and MMA stronger. It’s drawn more attention to the sport and created more fans. It’s also kept the UFC, at least to some extent, honest. The UFC is without a doubt the biggest show around, with the greatest stable of fighters. But if you think they would somehow get better without competitors nipping at their heels, you’re just plain wrong. Competition is good. It’s good for fans, fighters, and — whether he’ll admit it or not — for Dana White and the UFC.

Now, who wants to come over to my place this weekend and watch some (expletive) Gascar?

Fedor to M-1: I Just Need My Space Right Now

It was a whirlwind romance, but it seems the flame has burned out.  Fedor and M-1 are breaking up.  At least, that’s what one of Fedor’s agents, Apy Echteld, told ESPN’s Ryan Hockensmith.   Echteld claimed that an announcement was forthcoming in the next few days, and that Fedor would officially be a free agent.

It’s not hard to see what prompted this split.  Fedor wants to see other people.  And considering that M-1 has had him for about five months without even coming close to putting on an event of their own, who can blame him?  There he sits, surrounded by big promises and not much else from M-1 Global — which has shown itself to be little more than a Rent-a-Fedor operation thus far — while outside the MMA world turns without him, and the big fights pass him by.

One man who was very happy to hear this news was UFC president Dana White.  His inability to sign Fedor the first time he was a free agent precipitated the Randy Couture debacle.  Though that matter soon got ugly in other areas, Fedor joining the UFC could be the impetus that Couture and the UFC both need to put their differences aside and make this highly anticipated bout happen.

But, would White be willing to take another go at signing Fedor, whose abilities he has publicly disparaged many times, even once calling his management team “crazy Russians”?

“Absolutely, 100 percent, in a heartbeat,” White told ESPN. “People think he’s the best—I don’t, not even close. But if it’s somehow possible, I would make it happen.”

Granted, none of this is going to happen easily.  At the moment, no announcement about Fedor leaving M-1 has been made, and some in the MMA world have cast doubt upon the possibility.  One notable shift in the dialogue is the fact that it’s now Echteld doing the talking for Fedor, and not Vadim Finklestein, Fedor’s longtime manager.  But then, we also have to remember that Finklestein also has a stake in M-1.  If Fedor’s on the outs with the organization, he may also be looking to split from Finklestein, who guided him in that direction to begin with.

It’s still too early to know exactly what’s going to happen, but the wheels seem to be in motion.  Now we just have to wait and see how M-1 is going to take the breakup.  Something tells me she’s the kind that doesn’t let go easily, especially since Fedor is all she’s got.  Attention-grabbing fake suicide attempt, anyone?  Maybe an “accidental” pregnancy?

Okay, this metaphor has officially gone too far.  I’ll stop now.

Dana White Implores Couture to “Be a Man”

Apparently unsatisfied with calling Couture a liar in the press and suing him in court, UFC president Dana White seems now to be embarking upon a campaign intended to shame Randy Couture into returning to the Octagon. Just recently White called Couture out publicly in the Canadian Press:

“Come on Captain America, step up and be a man and give these guys the opportunity to win the title,” White said.

“He’s the heavyweight champion. He signed a contract with us less than a year ago and I expect him to honour it. And I expect him to be a standup guy and give these guys the opportunities they gave him.”

When I hear of a quote like this coming from Dana White, I edge further toward the conclusion that he is purposely making himself the most hateable figure in the sport. Note the sarcastic use of the “Captain America” nickname for Couture, the implication that somehow his manhood is in jeopardy. This is pure Vince McMahon meets Lex Luthor. White obviously doesn’t believe that an incendiary remark like this will actually make Couture come back, so he’s settling for potshots from a comfortable distance.

It’s also interesting that White is now trying to frame the issue as if Couture is denying anyone else an opportunity at the UFC heavyweight title. He’s doing this, mind you, on the same weekend that two men are fighting for the UFC (interim) heavyweight title. Does that seem just intolerably disingenuous to anyone else?

It’s not as if the UFC has never taken a title from one person who can’t or won’t compete in their organization (B.J. Penn, Sean Sherk, etc,) and given it to someone else. White has said that he is purposely not stripping Couture of the title, vowing “we’ll hold on forever”, with the implication that it serves as a useful legal bargaining chip.

So now White wants to have it both ways. He wants to keep the title around Couture’s waist while simultaneously offering a different heavyweight title to Sylvia or Nogueira, and he also wants to criticize Couture for not defending the title that the UFC is insisting he maintain against his will. Have we all got that, now? Good. Just wanted to be clear.

A Black Day for MMA: UFC Sues Randy Couture For ‘Irreparable Damage’

It’s finally happened. The UFC has filed a lawsuit against their former heavyweight champion, alleging “irreparable damage”, “numerous intentional torts”, and conspiracy. Now things are going to get nasty. According to a report in the Las Vegas Review Journal, the UFC is seeking in excess of $10,000 in damages from Couture, as well as an injunction prohibiting him from participating in any competing promotion.

So much for working things out like gentlemen.

“What’s really tough for me, to be honest, is we have been friends for a very long time,” said Dana White. “The hard part is that he is not living up to his obligations. Captain America is not keeping his word.”

And so what do you do, naturally, to this friend who has been an ambassador for your sport and company? You sue him. For damages. In excess of $10,000. That should set things right.

There’s a lot we could say here about who we think is right or wrong. There are questions about what fulfills a contract, what constitutes acceptable compensation, and all that will likely be worked out in court. But the only thing I can think about right now if just how sad this is. Randy Couture, of all people, is getting sued. And by the UFC.

If MMA had any innocence left to lose, consider it lost. Now we’re just another big time pro sport, with big time pro sports problems. Are we happy now?

What’s interesting about this suit is that it alleges Couture has done irreparable harm to the UFC, presumably by speaking out against their bonus system and the way they handle closed-door fighter compensation and negotiations. I say presumably because that’s the only negative thing he’s said about the organization, at least that I can recall. If the UFC’s position is that this has done harm to the organization, I’d be interested in hearing them explain exactly how. Very interested.

If they claim that the way Couture characterized their bonus system is untrue, then that’s something. They’ll have to prove it. I’m not sure how they’ll be able to do that, and to my knowledge no one — fighter or manager or UFC representative — has taken issue with Couture’s description of the bonus system thus far. If they don’t claim that his statements were untrue, then it’s hard for me to see how his statements have caused them irreparable harm.

Maybe that’s what bothers me most about this suit. Trying to get the guy to stick to his contract, to come back and fight or at least not fight for someone else, that makes a degree of sense. Suing him for damages and alleging intentional tort, that’s just sticking it to him. Is this how the UFC wants to be perceived? As the organization that repays Couture for all the memorable moments and pay-per-view buys by going after him in court?

Consider the best possible outcome for the UFC in this situation: they win their lawsuit, along with $10,000 in damages (which means, what, Dana White can finally afford to really pimp out his Hummer?), Couture can’t fight (Fedor) in any other organization, his gym (Xtreme Couture) can’t field an IFL team, and the UFC will have made a point to all the fighters in their stable.

That point? Take what we give you, whatever it happens to be, or we’ll drum you out of the sport. That’s what they want to do to Couture. They want to force him to fulfill his contract by fighting in the UFC (which he really can’t do now, unless he wants to be seen as the man who cowed to their tactics), or make it impossible for him to compete anywhere else, effectively ending one of the most prolific and inspiring MMA careers of all time. And, I’m sorry, that will be considered a victory for the UFC? Really?

What the UFC isn’t seeing right now is that they have much more to lose than gain from this lawsuit. Dana White can go on and on about Couture being his friend and how sorry he is to have to sue him for $10,000 worth of tort and damages, but do you know what that’s going to do? It’s going to make it so that he can never again refer to any fighter as his “friend” without that fighter putting his hand on his wallet and backing toward the door. It’s going to make the UFC seem like an exploitative organization, the one that ended Randy Couture’s career before his time.

It’s a shame when money comes between “friends”. It truly is.

Penn-Stevenson Fight For Interim Title, And I’m As Confused As Ever

My brain hurts. It’s tired of trying to sort this mess out, and it’s getting nowhere. But it’s not my brain’s fault, it’s the UFC’s. Their tortured logic is driving me crazy, and they don’t even care.

If you’re on the UFC’s mailing list, as I am, you received an email alerting you that B.J. Penn and Joe Stevenson will be fighting for the “interim” lightweight title at UFC 80 in January. And if you also compulsively follow MMA news, as I do, you know that Dana White has said he will not strip lightweight champion Sean Sherk of his title because of the way the California State Athletic Commission has bungled his appeal of a positive steroid case.

But if Sherk isn’t being stripped, why is there an interim title at all?

This feels like one of those situations that only gets more confusing as you try to sort it out. I almost understand the reasoning. White seems to feel that Sherk is innocent when it comes to steroid use. From what I’ve heard, the levels of nandrolene detected in Sherk’s system were so low that it’s not so unbelievable to think this might be a false positive.

So, okay, I get it. White feels that the CSAC, which has a reputation as the most difficult commission for MMA organizations to deal with, by far, is screwing this thing up. They postponed Sherk’s appeal hearing because they didn’t read all the material submitted by his lawyer, which makes them seem more like the Mayberry Athletic Commission than the California one. White was angered by this, as was Sherk, and understandably so.

That’s why White announced that Sherk (who White says he considers a friend) will not be stripped of his title. Okay. That makes a certain kind of sense. It seems like he might be blowing off the CSAC, but maybe somebody should.

But now I have to ask again. Why is there an interim title?

I understand that Sherk is stilll under suspension pending his appeal, but if the UFC’s position is that Sherk is going to hold onto that belt unless the CSAC can produce photos of a needle going into “The Muscle Shark’s” arm, there shouldn’t be any interim title. It’s meaningless. The winner of the interim title has essentially just earned number one contender status, only he’s got a belt to show for it.

I’m not going to pretend I don’t know why the UFC is doing this. They don’t want the belt to be out of circulation while they wait for this appeal, because a title fight always makes for an instant main event on a pay-per-view card. They already have a heavyweight title with no one to defend it after Randy Couture’s “resignation”, and they’ve kept their welterweight title in reality TV land lo these many months.

But they can’t have it both ways. They can’t refuse to strip the title-holder and also have two other guys fight for his title. That essentially creates two champions in one weight class, which defeats the purpose of having a champion at all.

Do you see now what I’ve been going through? Maybe it’s my fault for even trying to understand this, or for assuming that it’s supposed to make sense. As it is I feel like I’m standing in the mall and looking at one of those magic pictures that has an image of a sailboat somewhere in it, only I can’t see it and I just keep staring.

Much like those magic pictures, this situation will leave me with nothing but a headache and a nagging sense of failure. I just know it.

Pithy Thoughts For a Monday Morning

The new edition of my weekly column is live at Crave Online . It focuses, naturally, on the issue of the moment regarding Dana White and Randy Couture. While I thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth between these two last week, I’m still baffled by some of White’s comments. Did he really say that Fedor sucks? Did he also really say that Fedor isn’t a top five heavyweight? Really?

Instead of arguing here that Fedor does not suck, which I take to be a given for any thinking MMA fan (at 26-1, if Fedor sucks, who’s good?), instead I’m going to argue that we should all extend some sympathy towards White. Obviously the man is hurting.

Why else would he lash out like this only after his repeated attempts to sign Fedor to a UFC contract? It’s like a boy in junior high who gets rejected by a girl he likes. The first thing he does is go tell everyone he knows that she’s ugly or stupid or a slut. Even other junior high boys know he’s just saying things that he doesn’t believe in order to make himself feel better. The appropriate response there isn’t indignation; it’s pity.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing a future match for the now-vacant UFC heavyweight title to determine who doesn’t suck. My guess is one of the participants will be Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, who Fedor beat twice, and my other guess is that he’ll probably win if he’s going up against Tim Sylvia, which seems likely at this point.

That’s going to be a tough moment. I mean, the only thing worse than having a heavyweight champion who sucks is having one who was beaten twice by someone who sucks.  That would really, for lack of a better word, suck.

Dueling Press Conferences: Dana White vs. Randy Couture

When Dana White announced that he would hold a press conference on the same day as the one already announced by departed UFC heavyweight champion Randy Couture, it wasn’t hard to see what he had in mind. When he scheduled his media conference call to begin just thirty minutes before Couture’s Las Vegas media reception, it was obvious. White wanted to take some attention off Couture and his complaints about the UFC, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

After a reporter pressed the UFC president on the issue of whether he intentionally held his press conference to coincide with Couture’s, White responded:

“We’ve got a lot of s— going on and we’re here to talk about it. Is it a coincidence I signed Brock Lesnar, made Chuck Liddell-Wanderlei Silva, and signed a new Spike deal in the same week? …Am I doing a press conference to f-ck Randy Couture? No. I’m here to announce things.”

As for those things he was there to announce, most of them had already been made public. The signing of Brock Lesnar was announced at UFC 77, where Rogan did an interview with the former WWE star. The Liddell-Silva match had been advertised on the DirectTV website for days before its official announcement at the Spike TV Scream Awards on Tuesday night. And the new Spike TV deal is essentially an extension of the current Spike TV deal.

This was the big news that simply could not be announced on any other day or any other time? I don’t think so.

Obviously, the point was to pull media attention from Couture, whose press conference was streamed live on ProElite.com. That White used this tactic and then played innocent about it seems petty, but it’s not hard to understand why he felt it was necessary.

To hear Couture tell it, the UFC hadn’t been giving him the respect (read: money) that he deserved. He directly addressed a Yahoo! Sports article claiming he was in the middle of a four-fight contract that would pay him $3.25-3.75 million per fight, by showing his unsigned bout agreements that had him making around $750,000 per fight after pay-per-view bonuses were factored in.

Some people will point out that this contract doesn’t include the bonus money that the UFC hands out after their fights, which even Couture said is sometimes more than the athlete earns from the contract itself. But even if Couture was receiving a $1 million dollar bonus for each fight, he would still make only about half what the Yahoo! report claimed. Not to mention, the bonuses are not guaranteed in his contract, so it can hardly be said that he was in the middle of a contract that was due to pay him anywhere in the neighborhood of $3 million per fight (unless the pay-per-view buys eclipsed every known record several times over).

This bonus system, it seems, has played no small part in the dispute between Couture in the UFC.

Couture said that the rift with the UFC grew after they failed to give him a bonus for his win over Gabriel Gonzaga in August. White, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t dispute this. Couture said he received large bonuses for his fight with Chuck Liddell (which he lost) and his comeback fight against Tim Sylvia (which he won via decision after five rounds).

So the question here is, why wasn’t his performance against Gonzaga worthy of a bonus?

Anyone who saw that fight knows it was a gritty, dominating performance by Couture. He stopped Gonzaga early in the third round after having his arm broken by a kick earlier in the bout. This wasn’t worth a bonus, but getting knocked out by Liddell was?

Of course, you could make the argument that since it’s a bonus, he has no right to expect it. Couture painted a picture of the UFC bonus system that seem arbitrary and capricious, saying the checks were handed out in the locker room after the fights and were “at the discretion of the UFC.”

But if the bonuses regularly match or eclipse the contract money, and if he had received one for two previous fights of varying levels of success, it’s understandable that Couture would be confused at not receiving one here. From his perspective, it’s as if his pay had been cut in half even after he performed as well as anyone could have hoped.

Couture said he tendered his resignation two and a half weeks after a meeting in which he asked White and the UFC management why he hadn’t received a bonus. They gave him no answer, he said. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to do.

White seems to like to blame Couture’s “Hollywood agent” for the way this situation has unfolded, but he’d do better to look within his own house. A secretive and whimsical bonus system that isn’t based on any predetermined criteria and which can make a drastic difference in the money an athlete takes home is a recipe for discontent.

Certainly, Couture’s complaint is as much about money as it is about respect. But in the world of professional sports, the two are often synonymous. White should know that. And if he really wanted to get Couture back in the UFC, he’d swallow his pride and make amends. Maybe he will. Maybe we will see Couture back in the Octagon someday, maybe even against Fedor Emelianenko (who White says “sucks”). But don’t bet on it.

Aftershocks From Couture’s Resignation Reach Far and Wide

Randy Couture’s announcement yesterday that he was resigning from the UFC and abdicating his throne as heavyweight champion has thrown the MMA world into a small-scale panic. Nobody wants to lose Couture, and nobody, at first, knew what to make of his decision to leave. I imagine the reaction by MMA fans was something like what our parents experienced when the Beatles broke up, with the two major differences being 1) we have the benefit of the internet to discuss it to death, and 2) only about half of us are stoned on grass.

At first, the wording of Couture’s official announcement sounded like he was moving on because the UFC had failed to sign Fedor Emelianenko and because he had other opportunities outside of fighting. But some subtle phrasing also suggested that he was unhappy with how he’d been treated by UFC management, and in an interview with Sherdog.com yesterday, that issue was magnified:

“I’m tired of being taken advantage of, played as the nice guy and basically swimming against the current with the management of the UFC. I have a lot of other things going on in my life that I’m doing just fine with. I don’t need the problems. I don’t feel like I get the respect I deserve from the organization, and that’s motivation No. 2 for the letter of resignation that was sent today.”

Couture went on to say that the money being offered to other fighters, especially Fedor, was “insulting” considering what he was making for being a marquee draw:

“I think the final straw for me was meeting with Dana and Lorenzo (Fertitta, UFC co-owner) where they claimed I was the No. 2 paid athlete in the organization, which I know is a bold-faced lie,” Couture said.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Upon hearing this complaint, UFC president Dana White responded by blaming MMA web sites, ironically enough, during an interview with Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports. Obviously, White is referring to sites like Sherdog, whose forum tends to break more news (and spread more rumors) than their actual news site. White apparently felt that these websites were more responsible for Couture’s resignation than the UFC management:

“He felt he was not getting paid as much as Mirko Cro Cop, as much as this guy and as much as that guy,” White said. “We told him he was our second-highest paid fighter, but he didn’t believe us. Chuck’s the only guy who makes more, but he kept hearing all these rumors and he wouldn’t believe us.

White then launched into a tirade against what he called “the rumor mongerers on the Internet,” whom he said are, “the lowest of the low.”

He said fighters read those sites and believe them to be true, causing friction at the negotiating table.

“This business is like a beauty salon,” he said. “These guys are all the toughest guys in the world, but they’re like (expletives) in a beauty salon. They pass along rumors and gossip, which has no basis in reality and they believe all the (rumors) they hear. The Internet is very powerful and one of the best promotional tools we have, but it’s a crazy place.”

I have to admit he’s right. The internet is a crazy place. It combines the lawlessness of the Wild West with the flashing lights of Vegas and the pornography of Times Square.

But let’s examine White’s beauty salon analogy for a moment. Notice how he says the fighters are like “expletives” in this metaphorical salon. Setting aside the observation that your swearing has become a problem when your analogies can’t be printed in full, what do you think he really said there? Customers? No, that’s not an expletive. Bitches? No, that’s only one expletive, not “expletives.” Fucking bitches? Possibly.

I guess only White and Iole know for sure, but we can safely draw this conclusion: whatever expletive he used to describe the fighters, it was derogatory and negative. And that seems like a big part of Couture’s complaint. He didn’t feel like he was getting the respect he deserved. After reading White’s explanation, I’m starting to see what he means.

Respect matters. The money matters too, for obvious reasons, but the money is also a way of showing respect. Couture was a huge draw for the UFC and a great ambassador for the sport. But if he didn’t feel he was being treated accordingly — if, for instance, he felt like his boss saw him as just another expletive in a beauty salon — he’s only going to put up with it for so long.

And White’s claim that MMA web sites exacerbated the problem also seems disingenuous. As someone who makes my living writing about MMA for internet sources, I’m on these sites everyday. Very rarely do I see actual figures named when talking about fighter salaries, and when those figures are named they almost always come from official athletic commission reports.

Of course, the UFC always claims their fighter payouts are much higher than what they report to the commissions, once bonuses and sponsorship money and everything else is added on. But they never say exactly what the final numbers are. Now White is complaining that fighters have a warped perception of those numbers thanks to internet speculation? If that’s the problem, why not disclose the numbers and end the rumors?

But the UFC obviously isn’t going to do that. It’s easier to blame the internet. Couture says he got his information about fighter salaries from the fighters themselves, and not the internet, which makes sense. It’s in the fighters’ best interests to tell one another what they’re being offered, and they do. The internet is not the problem. The money is the problem.

Still, this is about more than money. This is about respect, about treating MMA fighters like real athletes and not commodities or “products”, as White has referred to them in the past. Every organization should learn from this, and every fighter should be thanking Couture for making this stand and going public with his complaints. This is an issue that isn’t going away, nor should it.

Liddell Talks Retirement (But I’m Not Buying It)

Following his decision loss to Keith Jardine (who has reclaimed full “Dean of Mean” status with the victory), former UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell is said to be considering retirement. According to trend-follower Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports!, UFC president Dana White spoke about the possibility of Liddell hanging up his gloves.

“There’s a hunger thing that you have to have to be an elite fighter and I just didn’t see a Chuck Liddell who was as hungry as he used to be,” White reportedly told Iole. “Chuck has made a lot of money in this business and he’s done a lot of things, but he wasn’t the Chuck of old.”

It’s not such a crazy notion when you consider that Liddell has been competing in the UFC since before they had timed rounds. He’ll be thirty-eight in December, which is typically when hand speed and punching power starts to fade. For someone like Randy Couture, that might not mean much, but Liddell is a striker who has always relied on those skills. If he can’t hit harder and faster than everyone else, Liddell becomes just another guy with good footwork and takedown defense.

But I have a hard time believing Liddell will never set foot in the Octagon again. If history is any indicator (and if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t keep deferring to it and refusing to learn from it), Liddell will probably have to be all but forced into retirement.

Great athletes almost always have a difficult time knowing when to quit, and professional fighters are the most notorious for keeping at it long after they should. Consider boxing greats like Muhammad Ali and Joe Louis and George Foreman.

Think about MMA legends like Ken Shamrock and Kazushi Sakuraba and Royce Gracie, even my unofficial life coach Don Frye.

They all kept at it past their prime. They all had to be shepherded into retirement by the fists of younger fighters. It’s hard to watch a hero take beatings he should have never signed up for, and it’s even harder to understand why he can’t see that his skills have deteriorated when everyone else can.

But in a way, it makes sense. I remember interviewing Ken Shamrock and asking him why he kept going for so long when he didn’t particularly need the money, and what he told me was very enlightening and endearing.

He said that a champion fighter has to have a certain personality that makes him push through things a normal person can’t. He has to be the kind of guy who can break his hand on an opponent’s skull and keep swinging. He has to view quitting as an unforgivable sin. If he didn’t, he’d never have become a champion in the first place.

That’s why, when the ravages of age begin to show themselves, he can’t see it for what it is. He thinks it’s one more hardship that he has to push through. He’s always been able to do it before, so his mind isn’t programmed to believe that there is an injury or a setback so debilitating as to be final.

It’s something you either have or you don’t, and champions have it. It’s also a tragic gift when age catches up with you. Sure, some guys — Randy Couture, for one — defy the odds, but many more succumb to them.

Think about the great heavyweight boxing champions of the last hundred years. How many of them retired before some sad spectacle in the ring? Lennox Lewis, maybe. And Rocky Marciano, who is still the only heavyweight champ to retire undefeated.

Marciano once said that he knew it was time to quit when the smell of the gym began to make him sick. He said that smell of old sweat and leather and mildew had always been strangely pleasant to him before, but one day he went in to train and it disgusted him. And that was it. He never fought again.

I think that may be what Dana White is referring to in regards to Liddell’s hunger. That hunger to fight and compete and win is something you can’t force and you can’t fake. If that fire isn’t burning in Liddell anymore, then he should call it quits. But I have to think that a man who’s been a top-level fighter for so many years is going to have a hard time letting go of that identity.

Who knows, maybe Liddell has a few more good years left in him. Couture found a second life in his forties, so it’s not unheard of. Only Liddell knows for sure. Something tells me, though, that a decision loss to Keith Jardine isn’t going to be definitive enough for him. Not while Wanderlei Silva — Liddell’s white whale — is still out there.

Liddell is going to have to find out for himself if he can still compete. For most great fighters, it’s a question they can’t stop asking, even after the answer is clearly no.

Upsets Leave Uncertain Future for UFC Stars

At the top of last night’s UFC pay-per-view broadcast, announcer Mike Goldberg mentioned that Chuck Liddell would fight former Pride champ Wanderlei Silva if he beat Keith Jardine in the evening’s main event.

He didn’t. Now we don’t know what’s going to happen to Liddell or Silva (much less Jardine). If Goldberg’s statement is any indication, neither does the UFC.

What’s interesting about that comment is he didn’t say that the winner of Liddell-Jardine would face Silva, which is usually how these things work. Phrasing it that way told us two things about the UFC’s mindset going into last night’s main event: 1) they weren’t making Jardine any promises about his future, no matter how well he did, and 2) they only made this fight so Liddell could get another highlight reel KO and bolster his status before fighting Silva.

The irony is that Dana White went out of his way to criticize Pride when they made a similar mistake, putting Silva in last year’s Open Weight Grand Prix where he got head-kicked into dreamland by “Cro Cop”, the tournament’s eventual winner. White called them stupid (among other names) for not making the Liddell-Silva match happen when the two were at their peak and the money was on the table.

And yet, by refusing to wait until November or December to put Liddell in the Octagon again, when Silva said he’d be ready to fight, White made the exact same mistake. He thought Jardine would be an easy win for Liddell, but it turns out Jardine is a lot tougher and — probably thanks to trainer Greg Jackson — had a better game plan than anyone expected.

Liddell looked like he’d never defended against a kick in his entire life, as Jardine chopped away at his legs and body all night long. Almost every kick landed cleanly, sapping Liddell’s energy and leaving him unable to summon the knockout blow he’s depended on his entire career. Jardine weathered the early storm of punches from Liddell and came back with some bombs of his own, dropping Liddell in round two and completely controlling the final frame.

In what basically amounted to a kickboxing match, Jardine managed to stay on offense without getting too aggressive — a feat few Liddell opponents have been able to accomplish. The result was a well-deserved split decision victory that left the humble Jardine nearly speechless while Liddell crouched against the cage, staring numbly at the mat.

It will be hard for the UFC to justify the Liddell-Silva match now, with Liddell coming off two straight losses. They also don’t know how much fight Silva has left in him, considering the beatings he’s taken in the last year and a half.

To further complicate the issue, Pride import Mauricio “Shogun” Rua lost his UFC debut when he gassed out against Forrest Griffin. Rua looked good for most of the first round, scoring with punches and transitioning well into takedowns.

But it quickly began to seem as if he hadn’t trained to fight more than five minutes, as his hands dropped to his waist and his takedowns deteriorated into lazy dives at Griffin’s feet. Griffin fought through an ugly cut to submit Rua with a third-round rear naked choke, and he may have turned a corner in his career with the victory.

Griffin is one of the UFC’s most likable fighters, and his style is dynamic and exciting to watch, even when he loses. Hopefully he doesn’t develop Pedro Rizzo syndrome from being cut open in fights too often, because in an organization that allows elbow strikes to the face a vulnerability to cuts is a weakness he can’t afford.

For Rua, the future is uncertain. Losing in his debut makes him significantly drop in value, but the UFC isn’t going to give up on this investment just yet. If he had been in shape to go three rounds, I still think he would have beaten Griffin, so maybe this will serve as a wake-up call. A Rua-Liddell fight wouldn’t be out of the question, since both fighters need to pick themselves up right now and prove they’ve still got some skills worth paying for.

The two other televised bouts on the card — Diego Sanchez vs. Jon Fitch and Thiago Tavares vs. Tyson Griffin — both ended in decisions. While the decision victories for Fitch and Griffin were the right ones, they did prompt Joe Rogan to adopt the need for revised MMA scoring as his new pet cause.

Several times on the broadcast he mentioned the inadequacy of the “ten-point must” system for MMA bouts. While I agreed with the decisions that this system rendered last night, I do see Rogan’s point. That system was designed for boxing. It wasn’t designed for a sport where submissions attempts and controlling ground positioning also have to be factored in.

Rogan even took his newfound cause into his post-fight interviews, but the fighters didn’t have any answers for him. Should a submission attempt count in a fighter’s favor? Should escaping a submission count? What about controlling your opponent on the ground without doing significant damage?

There’s no quick fix here, but I do agree that some revision in the system is needed, as well as some more formalized directives for judges that don’t include the phrase “Octagon control”. But maybe that’s just me.

Bashing Bisping, and Other Judging Woes

I’ll be the first to say that I don’t think Michael Bisping deserved a split decision victory over Matt Hamill at UFC 75. Hamill looked strong from start to finish, winning every round in my book, and he surprised a lot of people in doing so. But the bigger surprise came when the judges’ scores were announced and Bisping was somehow awarded two of the three rounds by two of the three judges (one of whom was Cecil Peoples, but what’s the other guy’s excuse?).

But a recent Yahoo! Sports article by Kevin Iole made a big deal over Bisping’s perceived lack of class after the match. In the post-fight press conference he was asked by a man who Dana White later claimed to be a Hamill cornerman whether he felt he truly won the fight. When Bisping responded that he did, the faux-journalist asked, “Seriously?”

Anyone who’s ever been in a post-fight press conference can tell you there’s only one reason a reporter (or cornerman) would ask that question. He was trying to get a rise out of Bisping, trying to prod him into action under the guise of asking a real question. Unfortunately, he got what he wanted.

According to Iole, Bisping responded by saying, “”What do you mean, seriously? Do you want to go three rounds? … Of course I won the decision. Get the (expletive) out of here. Get that smile off your face.”

Then, reports Iole, Bisping made an obscene gesture.

So this is where everyone piles on Bisping, criticizing him for his lack of grace when just a few hours earlier he was the media darling. I understand the sentiment, but Bisping deserves a break.

What people are upset about to begin with is the bad decision. I agree it was the wrong call, but it’s not Bisping’s fault. He fought his heart out. Unless he got absolutely pummeled a fighter will almost always feel that he won. It’s like when a bad call works in favor of your favorite sports team. You immediately want to believe it was the right call, even if some part of you knows it wasn’t.

Now just imagine how that feeling would be amplified if you were on the team, the only one on the team, and if your paycheck was riding on the call.

It’s reasonable for Bisping to have blinders on here, and it’s also reasonable for him to react angrily to someone hiding among the press corps and trying to tear him down in front of international media.

But the bigger problem that people are struggling with is the judging, especially since the UFC had to select their own judges due to the lack of MMA regulation in the U.K. From my experiences with the IFL, I know how quick people are to blame the organization for a bad call, even though it’s completely absurd.

Whatever I may think of Dana White, I do not believe he would instruct the judges to give a fight to a particular fighter. He may be crude and brash, but he respects fair competition and, as an astute businessman, would realize he has far more to lose than gain by putting the UFC’s credibility on the line like that.

The IFL stills gets emails from people who are upset about the decision in the Ben Rothwell-Roy Nelson fight. They claim we’re trying to prop Rothwell up, that the fight was a farce, that Jimmy Hoffa’s body was hidden under the ring. You name it. Nelson even appealed the decision, and for some reason he genuinely thought it might get overturned, despite the fact that this almost never happens.

The Rothwell-Nelson fight was closer than Bisping-Hamill. And I’ve talked to both Rothwell and Nelson several times since that fight and both are absolutely convinced that they won, so much so that they can’t even comprehend how anyone could disagree with them. They’re fighters, and that mindset comes with the territory.

But one thing all fighters know is that as soon as you allow a fight to go to a decision, you’ve already placed yourself at risk. The only way to be certain of the outcome is to finish the fight. Judges have done some crazy things, and they will continue to do more crazy things in the future. It doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy at work. It just means that judges are people, and sometimes people make mistakes (especially those who have the word ‘people’ embedded in their last name, for instance).

It’s understandable to be upset about a bad decision, but there’s no reason to jump all over Bisping or the UFC for it, just like there’s no reason to keep sending crazy emails to the IFL about fights that happened six months ago.

The best way to deal with it is to do what the IFL’s John Gunderson did, when he was absolutely robbed of a win over Bart Palaszewski on the same card as Rothwell-Nelson. In the post-fight press conference, as well as in the post-press conference bar conference that has become my favorite ritual while on the road with the IFL, he allowed that, yes, he believed he should have won, but it was his own fault for not making that more evident. That’s class.

As for Palaszewski, he admitted that it wasn’t his best performance and that he was surprised to have gotten the decision. He did not make any obscene gestures or swear at anyone, but then again nobody in the press conference was enough of a jerk to try and get him to.

Class is something we have a right to expect from everyone, after all, not just the fighters.

Dana White Talking Crazy Again

It’s hard to know what to make of UFC president Dana White. Is he an egomaniac, or a deft businessman? Is he purposely portraying himself as the thoroughly unlikable boss, ala the WWE’s Vince McMahon? Or is that his real personality? Does he knowingly draw comparisons to supervillain Lex Luther, or is that just a coincidence?

His most recent rantings are especially vexing. In an interview with Sam Caplan, who writes the excellent MMA news blog “Five Ounces of Pain“, White had more harsh words for the International Fight League:

“The IFL’s model is stupid; the whole thing is going away. It doesn’t concern me at all if the IFL goes away. They’re not building any superstars — that thing is just eating up air space on MyNetworkTV right now. I would have told you that it (IFL) was going to go away the first day it came out. I did, I told people if you want to lose your money, buy the IFL stock. I’ve always felt that way about the IFL.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I am employed by the IFL, and am therefore somewhat obligated to say nice things about it, but this is absurd. If White always felt that the IFL was “going away”, why did he spend a tremendous amount of time and money trying to keep it from ever getting off the ground?

He threatened to blackball fighters and trainers who became involved with it, and even went to court to try and destroy the league before it ever started. Does that sound like something you’d do to a competitor you thought was going away? And if White tries to claim that the IFL hasn’t built any stars, maybe he’d better go visit Miletich Fighting Systems in Iowa and watch the IFL’s top heavyweight, Ben Rothwell, beat up former UFC heavyweight champ Tim Sylvia in sparring sessions.

He also addressed the Renato “Babalu” Sobral situation, discussing why he made the decision to cut Sobral from his UFC contract after he held onto a choke against David Heath to “teach him a lesson” even after he had already submitted:

“I’m not your typical head of a sports organization where I got to get up there and say all the right s—. I’m in the fight game. These guys are fighters; they’re tough guys. And things happen sometimes. Do I think that the media was totally overreacting about the Babalu thing? Some of them were. Yeah. But they’re not fighters, they don’t get it. It’s a whole different world, this fight world. Whether it’s boxing, kickboxing, MMA, whatever it is, these guys are different types of people, and I understand them. I really do.”

Seriously? Now Dana White is telling us that nobody understands the fighters like he does? It makes me think that he actually believes these guys would be nice and friendly to him even if he weren’t in control of their professional and financial futures.

It’s one thing to have a public persona that’s different from your private one. If he were consciously cultivating this image of the asshole boss who nobody likes but everybody has to put up with, I’d be all for it. Vince McMahon’s feud with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was built on this premise, and that’s probably the last time I really enjoyed pro wrestling.

But comments like these make me think White is just divorced from reality. To hear the fighters talk about him (and man, do they love to talk about him), it seems like they all realize he’s a guy who couldn’t become a real fighter himself, but can’t let go of it.

To quote a very prominent former UFC champion who shall remain nameless: “Here’s a guy who used to walk around in boxing gyms carrying spit buckets, and now he pretends to be a tough guy just because he’s the president of an organization and no one is willing to tell him different.”

Which explains why he’s always swearing and talking tough, telling guys that they’ll fight whoever he tells them to, threatening to “bitch slap” fighters who test positive for steroids.

Pat Miletich put it best when he said, in regards to the steroid remark, “obviously Dana isn’t physically capable of doing that…his words are a cover for his insecurities.”

The hell of it is, White seems like a pretty smart businessman at times. He resurrected the UFC to make it a highly profitable, mainstream sports organization. He acquired Pride, including all their footage and most of their stars. He helped save MMA in America, and now the UFC puts on one of the greatest shows in the world of sports.

So why does he need to keep doing this? Isn’t it enough to be good at what you do? I genuinely think people want to like Dana White. If only he wouldn’t make it so hard.