Issue 063
June 2010
MMA attracts all kinds of people, and sadly (or hilariously if you prefer) some of those are swivel-eyed dreamers – jokers with a fistful of bad ideas, grandiose plans and financial backing that could only have come from an even more eccentric billionaire. Unfortunately, MMA also seems to attract the spectacularly incompetent. Andrew Garvey presents five examples of when lunacy met uselessness and bred MMA’s maddest ideas.
1 Japanese MMA destroys Japanese pro wrestling c. 2000 – 2006
Known in MMA circles as the mega-chinned bloke who fought Muhammad Ali in a legitimate ‘mixed martial arts’ fight in 1976, Inoki is a legendary figure in Japanese pro wrestling with a ruinous obsession about ‘real fighting’. Inoki based a career on his supposed martial arts prowess, and as a powerful figure in Japanese pro wrestling pushed his ill-prepared, under-trained ‘fighters’ into ludicrous mismatches on major Japanese MMA shows. Predictably, the showmen were almost always annihilated. Take Yuji Nagata, one of pro wrestling’s finest. In 2001 he fought Mirko ‘Cro Cop’, and then, two years later, Fedor Emelianenko. Obviously, both fights were massacres. Repeated again and again with other stars, this process almost permanently killed off the pseudo-sport / performance in the one society where it was actually held in some esteem.
2 Advertising 101 BodogFight, 2006 to 2007
Losing some $50 million in 2007, BodogFight was always intended as a loss-leader to help push fight fans towards the Bodog website and its branded gambling / music / lifestyle ventures, but even with that in mind their advertising strategy still beggars belief. Event posters for their December 2006 show in Vancouver failed to list any matches or fighters, a starting time, ticket prices, a location, or even the date of the show. Their television advertising was little better – for their biggest-ever show in April 2007 (with Fedor Emelianenko headlining) they listed matches for a previous event, failed to give a date and told people to visit the website for details. The result? A pitiful 13,000 pay-per-view buys in the whole of North America. Hiring someone other than heavily medicated gibbons to handle promotional duties might have been a decent idea.
3 WAMMA, 2007 to present
An organization dedicated to promoting the integrity, legitimacy and longevity of the sport sounds like a fine thing. Unfortunately WAMMA (World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts) has at times seemed more like an exercise in lionizing Fedor Emelianenko than supporting the growth of MMA. Completely ignored by the mighty UFC, WAMMA was doomed from the outset, but their failure to crown titleholders in all but two divisions (Shinya Aoki is nominally their lightweight champion but has thoroughly ignored the title), retain their key staff, or even update their all-important rankings since November 2009 all suggest this pointless exercise has been a depressingly predictable failure.
4 Yamma Damma Do, April 2008
The now-legendary Yamma Pitfighting event may have been the most ridiculous thing that ever happened on this planet. Starting with an atrocious premise – showcasing everything MMA had left behind over a decade earlier, polluted by sports radio DJ Scott Ferrall’s hilariously awful attempts at fighter introductions (“Shake it, OOHHHH”) – the show was an unmitigated disaster of titanic proportions. Billed as a revolutionary new fighting surface, the Yamma (Russian for ‘pit’) was essentially a big frying pan that made it impossible for fighters to defend against takedowns or even maintain their own balance properly. Throw in terrible matchmaking, a bastardized tournament concept, hideous fights and bargain basement production, and you have the biggest failure in modern MMA.
5 The IFL, May 2008
Back in 1993 Rorion Gracie and Art Davie were planning the Ultimate Fighting Championship, an event to glorify the name and art of the Gracies’ Brazilian jiu-jitsu. They had a few wacky ideas about the fighting arena – they considered electrifying the fence or adding a crocodile-populated moat before deciding that was a tad silly and going with an octagonal cage. Fast-forward 15 years and the terminally ill IFL (International Fight League) decided all their troubles would be over if only they had a new, ‘innovative’ six-sided ring they dubbed ‘The Hex’. Having wasted millions on their boneheaded team concept and seen their share price plummet from some $17 to 7c, the IFL actually seemed to believe The Hex would be a difference maker. It wasn’t. They went out of business before it could be unveiled and, last we heard, it was still gathering dust in a warehouse somewhere in the US.
