Dai

Raven had a tonne of interference in it, and DDP was a main eventer, so I'd say the perfect example of this in Goldbergs run was his match again Saturn at Spring Stampede. Saturn was a low ranking Flock member, but had a really good and competitive match with Bill, and got in plenty of offense. Goldberg come out of it looking better too

3 hours ago, Egg Shen said:

The London card did an £8 million gate. Double the previous highest UK gate. Edwards might not be the single factor driving that, but clearly having a UK Champion defend in his own country boosted business significantly. I fairly certain any London fight with Edwards headlining going forward does massive business.

Edwards/Masvidal would do an 8 million gate, but then so would Colby/Masvidal, or any half decent PPV main event. Personally I think the Leon factor is very small, it was the fact it was a UFC PPV. The fact that Curtis Blaydes/Aspinal did 4 million shows you how good the market is still here. 

Being undefeated in the last seven and a half years means absolutely nothing with regards to negotiating power with Dana. Despite the fantastic performance, its still only Leon Edwards. Dana couldn't give two flying fucks if he's champion or not. He's not a big star. Even the Masvidal fight wouldn't do huge business.

As shown with big Francis, who is a miles bigger star than Edwards, Dana doesn't give a shit if you're champion or not. Leon has no say in whether Colby gets a shot, unfortunately. If he refuses the fight, Dana will just create an interim championship and have Colby fight for that, and just allow Leon to sit out. He can say what he likes, but unless your McGregor, every fighter is playing in Danas world.

25 minutes ago, Browser Brady said:

Has Gunnar Nelson ever had a really genuinely impressive performance in the UFC, i am still scarred by that Damien Meia fight.

Loads. Off the top of my head, hes got a tonne of really impressive subs when hes gained top control and looked impossible to get off. Look at the Cowboy Oliveira fight, the DaMarques Johnson fight. There was a time, Id say, when there werent many better in the whole of the UFC when they had their opponent grounded. 

Plenty to look forward to on this show. Edwards is a 2/1 underdog in this one, but I dont see that being good value at all. Are you doing a rewatch report of their last fight, Wand? I would be interested to know if it was as one sided as Im remembering it. My memory of it is being a complete shut out for Usman. Will have to be picking Usman for this one, too.The Gaethje fight should be crazy, too.

'The rules permit the UFC to make an exception' seems very strange. It sounds like USADA are saying that Dana can effectively over rule them? If he's going to do that with anyone, it will be with McGregor for a mobster summer PPV

I sort of agree, but with the slaps theres a very high probability of someone getting sparked cold, which adds quite a decent level of suspense and payoff for any such grudge matches.

Ill be honest, there was a great grudge match in one of the latter episodes. One of the contestants was always drunk in the house, and acting like an arsehole. He nearly got into a fight many times with the same guy. Then they had a match together, which was really good TV. They were talking shit to each other between slaps, trying to psyche each other out. Then the arsehole won, and taunted the other guy when he was laying on the floor, not even knowing what planet he was on. It was edge of your seat stuff, and each slap was proper tense beforehand. This is, of course, the rare exception, but if you can somehow channel this sort of story/villan/rivalry, then it would have some legs as a pre produced TV event.

Thanks for the Wrestle Me recommendation, as Im another who has started loving it too. Pete is great on the 'Abroad in Japan' podcast too.

On the flip side, Ive given up on Nash's podcast. I tried to jump back into the episode discussing the new NWO doc, but switched off after about 10 minutes. I think it was another episode where he was stoned doing it. 2 to 2 1/2 hours per podcast is crazy long. I get that theres commercial reasons for having it unbelievably long, but I think all of these wrestling podcasts would be way better if they tightened them up to less than an hour.

20 hours ago, simonworden said:

Thanks for the harsh 2005 forum like reply. Perhaps I didn't explain that bit well or you misunderstood. What I meant was they could have been a part of saving it. Not a big one but a part. It's undeniable part of WCWs success was the cruisers and there wasn't exactly a great division left in 2000. The names I mentione tore it up on the indies in 2002 onwards for some time. I was never saying they should be the focus or main event but perhaps...and just perhaps would have boosted some interest. As for the word questionable and how I used it, there honestly isn't a direct opposite in that context unless you have a time machine. 

 

Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles in 2001 would have less than zero part in saving WCW. 'Tearing it up' in front of a few hundred fans in high school gyms in ROH around this time surely suggests how niche they were. Again, its the opposite of 'undeniable' about how the cruisers were a part of WCW success. Not a single person was buying a PPV to watch the cruisers in WCW. They were just fun to watch during this time, but the viewers were there because they wanted to see the big stars. Im not going to spend any more time on this, as every time I see the theory its blowing my mind with how ridiculous it is.

Did anyone catch the Power Slap show in the end? Was unsurprisingly a shit fest. I think every 'championship' fight ended with the first round of slaps. in a two hour show, you were left with about 5 minutes of action. Regardless of what you think about it general, I think this shows why it cant be done as a live event. Just way too much filler. Some of the rules just dont make much sense either. When a guy was floored by an illegal slap, he got up and carried on the match, despite the fact that if he just stayed down he would have won the fight. Very counter productive. I doubt we will see this sort of show again from the UFC.

Embellishing or not, theres no denying that whatever money he made from that Chalmers fight, which still must have been millions, was the easiest cash grab of 2023. No training, and show up and do a bit of sparring for a few minutes. 

1 hour ago, simonworden said:

WCW could have been "saved" until close to the end in my opinion. If it had got bought out and secured a TV deal. There were plenty of bright young cruisers on the horizon to come in such as Daniels, AJ etc. ECW would have gone out of business and potentially they could have swooped up RVD and other recognisable talent. 

It's questionable how well it would have performed though.

With your solution, its the complete opposite of questionable with regards to how it would perform. It would have been a monumental failure. Its been over 20 years since WCW folded, and I genuinely think in all these years since, saying Christopher Daniels and AJ Styles would be the solution to keep WCW afloat may be be the worst idea thats ever been pitched.

Quote

I'll hold to the notion that WCW could have been saved so long as it had TV. It was deep enough in the red that it couldn't continue or go on hiatus without a deal lined up, but if one was you still had 2.0 - 2.5 nielsens watching Nitro every week. More than enough to produce a cost effective TV show and take it off the road for a bit. 

People just saying "it needed TV" have just fallen into the web of bullshit that Bischoff and Russo have spouted in the last few decades. I havent got the figures, but Im fairly surely in 99 they lost millions of dollars, and in 2000 they lost tens of millions of dollars. Thats with a TV deal. No amount of TV money at the end is turning that around. The WCW we all think about could not possibly be saved, just check out these salaries from the year 2000, and tell me its a business that could have been saved:

Jeff Jarrett - 500k, Hugh Morris - 250k, Kidman - 300k, Bam Bam - 400k, Disco - 280k, Shane Douglas - 300k, Lance Storm - 380k

These are not even the big names from the year, yet theyre blowing insane amount of money on them, and as that spreadsheet shows, there were tonnes of jobbers on 100k+ a year too. It was clearly an unsustainable amount of cash being spent on talent.

On 3/2/2023 at 3:46 PM, wandshogun09 said:

Spoiler

I get what you’re saying about hindsight. It plays its part and I’ve said similar myself about people judging fighters careers based on how their opponents looked later, often after a decline, rather than how they looked at the time of the fight. A lot of people do that and knock points off unfairly. But…I was as balls deep in MMA as anyone back in 2019-2020 when those Santos and Reyes fights happened and I honestly don’t recall this “insane” hype and aura around Santos. Or even a great deal of buzz around Reyes.

Santos was already 35 going in, was on a decent little win streak but only really had the one proper standout win, his knockout against Jan Blachowicz which earned him the shot at Jones. Granted, that was a legit win. Jan wasn’t seen as a title mix player himself back then but I thought he’d probably beat Santos, it turned out to be one of Santos’ all around best performances. Aside from that, as exciting as the Jimi Manuwa slobberknocker was, Manuwa wasn’t that great a win. And Santos had a bunch of losses at 185 before that. And we didn’t even know about the fact that his knees were knackered either! I honestly don’t remember many, if anyone, giving Santos much of a shot at beating Jones, which is why it was such a shock how close the fight was on the night. He was dangerous but really no more than guys Jones had already pissed through. A ‘punchers chance’ thing is how I think most saw it and nothing more. I even looked back at the thread on here because I thought I might be misremembering it but nobody voted Santos in the poll and I didn’t see anyone giving him much hope. The talk, as usual, mostly centred around Jones and how he might manage to fuck up this time.

As for Reyes, the intrigue there was that he was the first of the ‘new breed’ of 205ers coming through to get a crack at Jones. And he was also comparable in size. Given the problems the last similarly sized challenger Gustafsson was able to give Jones in their first fight, I do remember some talk that maybe Reyes could have a bit of success there too. But again, I don’t recall people actually predicting he’d win. And again, I looked back at the thread for that event and nobody voted for Reyes in the poll, although there did seem to be a few giving him a better chance than Santos. But maybe that was because Santos made him look more human. Reyes was a welcome fresh challenger and was a big 205er but seen as nothing more than a relatively unproven prospect at the time. He was unbeaten but his most notable wins were Jared Cannonier (but 205 Cannonier who wasn’t anywhere near the fighter he later became at 185), Ovince Saint Preux (who wasn’t shot like he is now but was never anything special, a so-so win), Volkan Oezdemir on points (in a fight many felt Oezdemir won) and Chris Weidman (a Middleweight coming up to 205 who was in rough form even back then). Don’t get me wrong, he deserved a shot at Jones because there was nobody else really left at that time. But I don’t think many fancied his chances at all or saw him as a huge threat.

All that said, I won’t be shocked if Jones wins on Saturday night. He’s not a stupid fighter and I don’t think he’d have came back if he didn’t think he could succeed at Heavyweight, or against Ciryl Gane in particular. But I’m far from convinced that we’re gonna be getting anything close to prime Jon Jones here. It’s easy to point to his age, and 35 isn’t old by Heavyweight standards. But prime isn’t always about age. Some fighters peak early like Mike Tyson, some are late bloomers like Bernard Hopkins, and there’s probably a hundred more examples in between those extremes. Jon Jones was very fucking good from very young. He was wrecking UFC world champions and legends in his early 20s. It’s very rare, pretty much unheard of actually, for a fighter’s prime to last a full decade and certainly not more than that. Then you factor in what he’s done in that time outside the cage. Yeah he hasn’t been in a bunch of wars, that we’ve seen anyway. A lot of fans forget but we only see the end result of a training camp. We only see the rounds fought on Fight Night under the bright lights. You have to factor in all the sparring and all the wear and tear these guys accrue in training camps as well. Then his lifestyle. I’d maybe understand people having confidence if this was a GSP or Mighty Mouse type who by all accounts live clean and stay in the gym regardless of whether they have a fight booked or not. Constantly staying in shape, sharpening their skills and eating healthily. Who the fuck knows what Jones has been doing the past 3 years but I doubt it was all gym, salads and 8 hours kip a night. He’s a wild cunt. It’s part of what’s made him an attraction but there’s no way that doesn’t knock some time off your physical prime.

And on top of all that, he’s going up in weight, after a massive layoff and is up against probably the only current active Heavyweight who isn’t just gonna stand flat footed and swing like a caveman. The grappling is gonna be where Jones should still have a significant advantage. Gane’s still learning and Jones is way ahead. But even then, a lot of Jones’ grappling starts from clinch positions and that’s where Gane’s size might be an issue and make up for his relative lack of grappling experience.

We’ll see. Hopefully. If Jones behaves himself the next couple of days anyway. 

 

All great points! Just looked back at your thread for the Santos match, and youre right, you dont give him much chance at all, so it seems like I was off on the Santos and Reyes hype. That said, the fight will be fascinating in that it will answer all of these questions we have about Jones. Really looking foward to seeing what happens!

1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:

I'm not quite sure that all was all 

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Money gained legitimately. Remember when matey got caught selling coke and he said something like "it wasn't even my idea" ? Think it might have something to do with that but I could be wrong.

 

Loved The Bear. Not a dud character out of all of them. Can someone  explain:

As much as I hate to defend him, I think I have to here (purely on the sporting side of things). Firstly, anyone with half a brain wouldnt put a Gane win in the same bracket as Serra/GSP. Secondly, I think people are being way too harsh on Bones' last few fights. Its easy to look back at those last three fights with 2023 eyes, and almost discount them because of how the fighters have fared since. Particularly in the case of Santos. The hype, and even the aura, behind Santos for this fight was insane. To a lesser extent, even Reyes had a fair bit of buzz behind him at the time. Despite whats happened since, they were, at the time, seen as legit threats. Another big thing that I dont think is factored in is that for their fights, the three 'new school' challangers were Rocky in film 1. It was their moment of a lifetime, and the one fight that their whole career was building to. You can bet that they put absolutley everything into this one fight. The way they have declined since, its almost as is they sacrificed everything just for winning their shot. For Jones, its not BS at all to believe that he wasnt that hyped to fight any of them.

Despite what hes like outside the cage, when it comes to inside the cage, hes easily either the best or second best (behind GSP) to ever do it in the UFC. To be that great is not just a physical thing, its a mental thing too. Despite all the talk of size and being past his prime, he still has the mindframe that made him this good, which I think is a huge factor that shouldnt be overlooked.

Physically, hes only 35 years old, and has had four fights in the last five years. Ive just browsed his fight record, and you can count on one hand the amount of 'wars' hes had in his entire career. Talk about being over the hill just doesnt ring true to me. In this day and age, theres no reason to believe that hes not somewhere near his physical prime. I do believe it was motivation and burnout that made him perform the way he did in his last few fights (fights he still won). I dont think I could bet against one of the GOAT, where theyre not going to be at a phyiscal disadvantage, and where theres a cast iron plan for a victory. That said, Jones as a 4/7 favourate doesnt appeal to me either. I think 7/5 seems about right too for Gane to win too.

Edit: Three episodes into the countdown show. What percentage of people who watch a Jones/Gane Countdown show want to see anything that Geoff Neal is doing? 2%?

Shows that there must be some decent coin to be made with the BK stuff. Two ex world champs making their debuts on one show makes it a must watch for me. Both should be alot of fun.

I think they were intentionally smart in just showing him in the pool and with a hoodie on. Keeps the mystery surrounding his weight there for a little longer. Id probably say he will be right around the 240 mark, but its more a question of how good he looks at 240, and how much excess weight hes carrying around at that amount.

I did. I wasnt looking foward to the main event, so the fact that it got cancelled didnt bother me at all. What you were left with was a perfectly watchable main card, that had a solid main event scrap, and that was done in two hours. Perfect for a show like this.

Malott looked pretty good, and finished it with a lovely head and arm. It was fantastic to see Tatiana Suarez back in there, and also look very impressive. The fact she was a weight class higher than she usually is, and still dominated the fight will send a big message to her regular weight class. If she stays injury free, shes easily looking at a title shot come the end of the year.

The Sakai fight was pretty dull, and it was clear that Mayes was easily a few levels beneath him.

The big story was, of course, Brendan Allen subbing the BJJ wizard. Huge victory for him. The striking was pretty much 50/50 for the whole fight, but bizarrely, it was Allen who dominated on the ground in R2 and then before the sub in R3. The R2 ground exchange was very strange, as Muniz didnt do anything off his back, and sort of just accepted defeat. When hes such a high level sub guy, it was very strange how bad he looked in R2 on the ground. Even the back defence that led to the finish just seemed a bit off too. Not sure what happened to Muniz. Fun fight, with a finish which will surely lead to Allen getting a nice opportunity in his next fight.

You have to respect Mayweather for fleecing all of these people that put these shows on. You have to assume he got paid millions for this, and when you break it down, its essentially a sightly more intense sparring session, and i mean slightly. Mayweather makes the easiest money any sportsman in the world does. Dont think anyone comes close to what he does.

In terms of the broadcast, it wasnt the best of looks when the commentators and the match graphics thought it was a six rounder, and then it went eight instead. Very amatuer.

11 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Just to say that if there are any Taskmaster fans on here then the first four episodes of the Australian version are up on YouTube. If you like the UK version you will enjoy it, and if you haven't seen the New Zealand version the second series of that is one of the best series of Taskmaster from anywhere. It can also be found on YouTube. 

I tried to watch season 1 of the NZ one and it was abysmal, and all of them were really unfunny. Could only last 1 and a half episodes. It lacked everything that makes the UK one great. Is season 2 really such a massive jump in quality? 

There was a lovely super slo mo replay of the Hardy KO used a little later in the show. Dub some classical music over it, and it would be considered a work of art.

Diego was so far out of his depth, it was scary. A complete mis match, as evidenced by the state of his face at the end of the fight. Trout, to be fair, looked superb, and picked him apart without taking any damage. And on that subject, the fight stats said Diego landed 45 punches in the fight, compared to Trouts 65! If you saw the fight, theres no way anyone saw Diego land 45 punches, with a roughly 50% land rate. Nearly everythig he threw hit thin air.

Dodson looked pretty good too. The end was a little strange. It certainly wasnt a massive Dodson bomb that landed, so for that fairly lacklusture punch to end the fight was a bit strange.

Just polished off the main event too, which was really fun. Hunt gets hit with a bomb and then barely makes the 10 count. Richman immediately goes in for the kill and gets laid out cold by a Hunts first punch in the exchange. Crazy stuff!

Great write up again! Any time Gaethje is in there is a special event. Its impossible for this man not to have a fight of the year candidate every time he fights.

Leon is a 2/1 dog in the betting, which I think isnt long enough. Admittedly, I havent watch the fight since it happened, but my memory of it is that Usman absolutley dominated the entire thing. He was in complete control for the duration, and making it look so easy that even when Leon was a few seconds from landing the KO kick, the commentators were all saying hes given up, and was happy to take the decision loss. I do remember thinking why he wasnt really going for it at the end of R4 and into R5, when it was clear hes was losing. The perfect head kick sort of disguises the fact that even for all of R5, he wasnt desperately trying to slug it out with Usman. Had the kick not landed, we would all be wondering why he didnt go for it more. Usman as a 2/1 favourate seems very generous.

Ill be checking out the main fights out of curiosity of how the UFC lads do. A 9/1 dog seems crazy too! Im sure everyone will want to watch Hardy's face get ripped to shreds, too.