Issue 069
December 2010
ESPN’s MMA Live is a benchmark in the sport’s media coverage. Join FO’s Gareth A Davies, MMA Live international correspondent, backstage.
It was heralded as a “great leap forward” when ESPN’s MMA Live, the weekly delve inside the sport, moved onto mainstream US television earlier this year on ESPN2, bringing with it a wealth of experience and the heavyweight feel from a world brand-leader.
MMA Live has grown organically in the last 30 months to become the most well-rounded, and arguably most dynamic, sports show ever created on mixed martial arts. It is certainly the first generation, and will get better. But it delivers truth on the sport.
What began as a vision, had its infancy as a dotcom show in April 2008, grew up through its exponential ratings to become a full-fledged, televised show (on ESPN in the UK as well as ESPN2 in America) and now has the potential to reach eyes in 99 million homes across several countries. That means so much to a sport suffering from misconceptions, views which many of us are keen to eradicate with alacrity. The program makers are only too well aware of it.
Like any burgeoning fighter, the 40-minute weekly program – hosted by Jon Anik; with journalist Franklin McNeil; ex-fighter, now coach, Pat Miletich; and current UFC roster fighters Kenny Florian, Rashad Evans and Stephan Bonnar as regular analysts – continues to develop. I joined as the show’s international commentator, ten months ago, having worked with UK sports channel Setanta for a year with Ultimate Talk, a 20-minute show on their rolling news channel, and with respect to Setanta, with whom we had some fun times, we hadn’t reached the heights that ESPN has with its broad base in Bristol, Connecticut. With segments such as ‘MMA For Dummies’, demonstrating moves, sports-science insights and detailed coverage and fight breakdowns across the main MMA organizations, MMA Live thrives on credibility as the sport sits in front of a new audience. That matters so much as it grows.
“The early episodes were pretty raw, and have probably since been purged from the archives,” says Anik. “I’m sure there is some pretty embarrassing footage for all involved, even if the content wasn’t too bad. We’ve all grown on the job. But the show has evolved like the sport. It was a calculated move by ESPN, just at the right time. Kimbo was on the cover of ESPN Magazine when we launched, the timing was right, and I wonder if we had been a year later starting it, it may have not caught the wave as well as it has. The creators of the show need a lot of credit for that.”
An executive at ESPN, and one of the developers of the show, explains: “From creating the concept for MMA Live to where we are now, the process has been as much about building relationships and bridges to educate colleagues that MMA is not a form of barbarism, that it is not fake, that it is real and that it is an absolute, pure sport featuring great athletes who are extremely dedicated to their profession. The athletes are just so intelligent, making development of analysis a rewarding experience, while others at ESPN are always so impressed with our talent and the caliber of personnel. That process has led, through the dedication of the entire team, to people within the company saying, ‘OK, let’s go with it. We’ll out it on ESPN2.’ It is more or less mainstream. What remains exciting is pioneering a sport which is so young, yet clearly growing fast.”
I can personally vouch for the hard work, long hours and early-morning planning meetings that go into a program packed with content. The weekly show from Bristol sees the team, graphic designers, producers, directors, executives, media and fighters gathering at 7.30am each Thursday, running over the segments before the studio goes ‘On Air’ at 9am. By midday the show is completed, yet the detail that goes into it behind the scenes brings an end-product on a par with any other world-class show on a major sport. It’s a tight-knit crew of around a dozen people with a passion for MMA. When the show goes on the road, live at events, the days is longer. Come late Saturday night, the entire crew are exhausted.
It is not without its fun, either, or hilarity. Rashad Evans often does Stephan Bonnar’s tie for him in the makeup room. Anik is early to bed, early to rise, normally for a five-mile run. He never has a hair out of place. Rashad likes to sing on air – badly – but does wicked impersonations of Mike Tyson. Kenny tries to be serious, but often collapses with laughter. The teasing is constant. The only time I have witnessed tension in the studio was when Bonnar, Evans and Tito Ortiz were all in the Bristol studio together. There are legion tales. One Thursday, after filming MMA Live in Bristol, six of us set out in a Land Cruiser for Montreal, a six-hour drive. We were stopped by a traffic cop four hours into the journey, for a broken tail-light. He wasn’t in a good mood. It was growing dark. He wanted documents, flashed his torchlight across our faces and wanted to know what our game was. “Heading north for UFC,” came the response. Kenny Florian was in the passenger seat. When he was recognized by the officer, the guy melted. It was T-shirt and autograph time. Earlier that day Kenny had needed 27 takes to complete a 30-second news bulletin on the impending fight between ‘Shogun’ Rua and Lyoto Machida. We’ve never let him forget it.
Another time, Franklin McNeil was outside scoffing a Danish pastry during one episode when he was supposed to be on set (Anik’s story) with the whole crew searching for him. And after filming MMA Live in Bristol in August, this year, I drove down to Boston with Bonnar in the passenger seat for UFC 118. The two-hour ride turned into a road trip. We stopped off at a VIP adult store for him to buy three schoolgirl outfits for ring card girls for his ‘Are you smarter than a ring card girl?’ competition for the Boston Fan Expo. Picture Bonnar walking around a huge store with three school outfits on coat hangers on his arm. Not pretty. But pretty weird. On the way down there, Bonnar related his tale of the night he realized he needed to download on the throne just as his music for his Octagon walk-in began. There was no turning back.
He fought that night farting all over his opponent as he hit him in the face. He said “the crap afterwards was almost better than the win.” There are stories all the time off air. On air, Anik believes the bonhomie shows. “There’s a real team spirit, and off air there is a lot of fun. Like having apples thrown at my head in the lobby of a five-star hotel in Boston at 8.30am in the morning by a certain international commentator for ESPN, from The Daily Telegraph. Seriously… hopefully we are giving the sport the platform it rightly deserves. In a way, we are just starting out.”
Florian believes the show can change minds about the sport. “It’s true that ‘perception is reality’ and for many years the UFC was a victim of its own marketing. It was billed as “no-holds-barred” and “human cockfighting”, and people thought of it as that. We’ve suffered from that kind of perception, and unfortunately it has taken time for it to be considered mainstream.”
Florian, it’s worth recalling, majored in Media Communications at Boston College. “When you have a major world-media outlet creating a show with fighters, analysts and the media, it provides a platform. I’ve been very impressed with ESPN. Impressed with their vision, setting the bar very high with the intention of making it the best show on TV and giving it the legitimacy the sport deserves. There really is a passion from everyone involved in it, and I’m cut from the same mold.”
MMA Live airs Fridays 1am ET/Thursdays 10pm PT on ESPN2 or on espn.com. As Fighters Only went to press, John Zehr, a senior ESPN executive who had given his full backing to MMA Live, was critically injured in a car accident. Our thoughts are with John and his family.
