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Just My Thoughts: Scoring the Perfect 10
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SAW IT COMING.
USA (Jordan Zone) Who are the 10 most marketable
fighters in mixed martial arts and how important
are they?
One of the most important aspects—check
that, the most important aspect—of leading
MMA down the path towards mainstream acceptance
is the fighters. Promoters of the various MMA
organizations can build mammoth marketing schemes,
pump truckloads of money into theatrics and show
productions, hire "celebrity" spokes
models and delicately place ads within scattered
other mediums. While that certainly aids in the
widespread popularity of MMA, the only thing that
counts is the product.
If “Regular Rory” and “What's
Vogue Victor” are to latch onto a product
and shell out their hard-earned cash on something,
they better know what they're getting themselves
into—they must like it.
The product in this case is the fighter.
The fighters are what sell tickets, what sell
pay-per-view and what bring fans (and in many
cases, people who hate the fighters) back into
arenas. While there are dozens upon of dozens
of superbly talented and fierce competitors within
the glorious sport of MMA, for some reason the
mass general public either knows nothing of MMA,
doesn't understand it or simply cannot relate
to any of the combatants.
How hard is it to shove thrilling UFC, PRIDE or
other events down the general public's throat
if they don't know anything about the fighters?
Aside from Tito Ortiz, hardly any casual Rory
or Victor can name a solitary fighter. And even
mentioning Ortiz is a stretch.
There are ways to market fighters to a segmented
audience. For one reason or a hundred, nobody
within the fight game can burrow through the dreadful
top soil of American popularity and reveal a product
so in demand that even the most staunch critic
of MMA can’t help but create an alliance
with one fighter or another.
Throughout history, every marquee sport was built
around a few athletes that created the sporting
Monolith in the U.S. In the early 1920s, it was
Babe Ruth that single-handedly morphed Major League
Baseball into America's pastime.
Once the entire nation caught Ruth fever, the
casual citizen quickly began paying closer attention
to other stars like Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Lou
Gherig and Honus Wagner. Ruth is what made baseball
turn into baseball, the sport by which virtually
every kid in every city pretended to be his hero
while playing stick ball in the streets.
As more and more fans were born and converted
into sports junkies, more and more money poured
into the sport, resulting in more and more teams
birthing in various cities. Of course, since African-Americans
weren't allowed to participate in the Major Leagues
until 1948, the Negro League was created. Baseball
was so popular back then that even when a huge
section of American citizens were prevented from
playing, an entirely new league was founded.
The same goes for football with the emergence
of Jim Brown, Joe Namath, Dick Butkis and Johnny
Unitas. The NFL today is America's favorite pastime
(forget boring NASCAR), a sport with over 30 teams
and athletes as popular (or more popular) than
movie stars. Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, Emmitt
Smith, Barry Sanders, John Elway and countless
others became such heroes that stadiums sold out,
making pro football season the most eagerly-awaited
timeframe of each year.
In hockey, we had Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux,
Mark Messier, Eric Lindros and Patrick Roy.
In the NBA, a sport league that struggled for
notoriety until the 1970s, once the mighty Michael
Jordan began his legacy it exploded. Jordan was
the man who helped reinvent pro basketball and
became so popular that Nike made Air Jordan shoes.
Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson made the
NBA as accepted as it is today. Since Jordan,
the NBA has had stars like Shaq, Kobe Bryant and
Allen Iverson, and remains the nation's number
two sport.
So, what do the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA have to
do with MMA? Like boxing, a sport which relies
solely on a vastly marketable fighter or two (see
Jack Dempsey, Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard,
Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson, Julio Cesar Chavez
and Oscar De La Hoya), MMA needs a few of its
stars to stand out, and whichever organization
he fights for to dedicate much more time in marketing
him.
So while Ortiz, Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell and
a few others have made their rounds on “The
Best Damn Sports Show, Period!” much more
can and should be done to not only help line the
fighters' pockets with some Benjamins, but to
also create MMA into a major mainstream player.
Why not try a bit harder to put Couture on Oprah?
He is a wonderful person with a feel-good story
and if someone can get a biography made about
him, I'm sure ol' Oprah would invite him onto
the show and talk about the nation's number one
best-selling book.
(Yeah, that's a stretch, of course, but why not
give it a shot? Couture is one of the most intelligent
fighters in MMA and when Oprah and her fellow
hens would start to attack him and our beloved
sport, Couture's intellect would shine through
and who knows? Maybe some new fans would be converted.)
Jens Pulver has had his fair share of ups and
downs and is such an emotional guy, why not try
to put him onto some sort of documentary show
like Dateline or 20/20? With the problems he's
had with being on top, and then having major relationship
issues, losing his crown as the world's best lightweight
and now his slow rise back to top, it'd make a
great story for Katie Couric.
Pete Spratt is a seasoned rapper, so why not try
to hook him up with some serious playas in the
hip-hop world like Dr. Dre or Jay-Z and work with
him. He is an exciting fighter and his rap game
ain't too bad. Hook him up and toss him onto MTV
or something.
Obviously, it's so much easier said than done,
especially from my perspective or a fan's perspective.
Right now, in this time of MMA and its seemingly
unwinnable battle to become widely accepted in
the mainstream, the chances of our fighters going
on Oprah, Dateline, etc. are slim to none.
However, there are several bright spots for the
future of MMA and below I have listed the 10 most
marketable fighters in the sport today. While
nothing is foolproof and each fighter might not
be the next Barry Bonds, one would be foolhardy
to dismiss the potential each has to be a major
force in the non-MMA world.
By Mike Sloan
Sherdog.com
January 26, 2005
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