The Savage Truth: The Silent Treatment
Greg Savage Oct 5, 2005
So it’s finally official.
Absolutely no MMA media will be on hand to cover this week’s UFC 55 card. No weigh-in video. No post-fight interviews.
I have heard all of the conspiracy theories floating around the
Internet from the ill-informed pseudo insiders:
The UFC’s decision to rescind MMA media access was due to the TUF 2 spoilers leaked on the Internet.
It has something to do with UFC’s purported entrance into the publishing realm. Word has it there will be a revamped Web site as well as a brand-spanking new UFC magazine.
(Quite possible, but I am not 100 percent sold on that one yet.)
Perhaps UFC President Dana White has had enough of what he perceives as the less than supportive coverage of his company from the people whose livelihood he thinks is dependant upon the UFC.
(Ding, ding, ding. I think we have a winner.)
The word on the street is the Prez attributes the success of Sherdog.com, MMAWeekly.com, Full Contact Fighter, et al, to a massive coattail effect. Now there is no denying the recent popularity enjoyed by the UFC has contributed to an increase of traffic for our site; I would imagine the same is true of others in the industry.
But don’t forget, Sherdog.com was growing long before The Ultimate Fighter fell into Zuffa’s lap and turned its ledger from an ocean of red to the sea of black I would imagine it is today.
With that said, White has every right to do what he has done — with a few caveats attached that is.
Those exceptions being that Zuffa outline a clear set of criterion for those who wish to cover their shows and uniformly enforce those requirements across the board, without exception.
The book on this calamity could be slammed shut in minutes and all questions answered if only a line of communication would open up between Zuffa and those media entities Dana White himself was so anxious to praise less than six months before. Is it too much to ask for these “new” requirements? If we do not meet the requirements, we would at least know what we should be aspiring to.
Now I don’t know if Mr. White was on an emotional high after seeing his friend and former client Chuck Liddell (Pictures) take home UFC gold after knocking out Randy Couture (Pictures), but he can be seen and heard on the UFC 52 post-fight presser video singing the praises of a couple of the now unwelcome media outlets.
How the tide has turned. In just a few short months we have gone from an integral part of the evolution of the UFC to a band of illegitimate hacks. I, on the other hand, would have thought we were moving in the other direction. But what do I know?
Well one thing I do know is that there will be a big uproar over this and rightly so, but I really don’t think it’s that big a deal for Sherdog.com as a company. Don’t get me wrong, less UFC access will have its drawbacks but the fact of the matter is Sherdog.com covers the sport of mixed martial arts, and although some entities in and around this sport may disagree: the UFC is just a cog in the machine that is MMA.
Sure, it is a huge part of the sport, but a part nonetheless.
I know this was not a popular decision in the Zuffa office, for good reason. And I wonder what the true motivation was behind its inception. I can tell you this: It would have been a whole lot easier to swallow had there not been a long history of personal rather than sound business decisions being handed down from atop the Zuffa throne.
And the silence we, as an industry, have been met with regarding our concerns about this new policy speaks volumes.
All we are asking for are the new set of qualifications Zuffa is using to grant credentials. Seems simple enough, don’t you think? The only reason I can come up with for the refusal on Zuffa’s part is my belief that there is no new set of guidelines and this decision was made in the most arbitrary of manners.
Does it make sense to clean out press row? You bet your ass it does. I can’t tell you how many times I have been sitting in the pressroom watching fans, err “journalists” posing for photos, soliciting autographs, and just plain gushing over fighters like teenaged girls fawning over Brad Pitt. But it makes absolutely no sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater and that’s what they are doing when they ban the top MMA media sites.
When I wrote about this issue last January I hoped to shine a light inside the world of MMA media. Little did I know Dana White was getting ready to take a flamethrower to press row.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Shortly after purchasing the UFC, the Zuffa brass thought it was ready to take the world by storm and at UFC 32 it tried to relegate the MMA media to second-class citizen status.
(This was the impetus for the classic Eddie Goldman meltdown — I would love to explain but I don’t have an extra 10,000 words so let’s just say it involved Eddie unleashing an F-bomb laced tirade on the girl in charge of media credentials after finding out he was not going to be sitting ringside. And for good measure he put an exclamation point on his remarks with a word that rhymes with “hunt.”)
That Zuffa policy lasted less than one show, as we were allowed to fill in all the spots that had been reserved for all the “mainstream” media that failed to show.
I fear this time we might have a tougher fight on our hands. We all know what we are up against and personally I feel the best course of action is to continue to conduct ourselves in a professional manner. This will leave the UFC little wiggle room on the true reason for the sudden and unwarranted revocation of media credentials for outlets such as Sherdog.com, MMAWeekly.com and Full Contact Fighter. The reason is still a mystery and will continue to be until Mr. White finds time to address the issue. I would imagine if there were legitimate reasons he would be shouting from every mountaintop, reassuring MMA fans that he still has the best interests of the sport at heart.
Sometimes silence can be deafening.
As always, comments are welcome — even from you Dana. Drop me a line at greg@sherdog.com and let us know what you think.
The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com
Absolutely no MMA media will be on hand to cover this week’s UFC 55 card. No weigh-in video. No post-fight interviews.
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The UFC’s decision to rescind MMA media access was due to the TUF 2 spoilers leaked on the Internet.
(Sorry kids, word of the ban was out before any spoilers were
posted. Feel free to try again.)
It has something to do with UFC’s purported entrance into the publishing realm. Word has it there will be a revamped Web site as well as a brand-spanking new UFC magazine.
(Quite possible, but I am not 100 percent sold on that one yet.)
Perhaps UFC President Dana White has had enough of what he perceives as the less than supportive coverage of his company from the people whose livelihood he thinks is dependant upon the UFC.
(Ding, ding, ding. I think we have a winner.)
The word on the street is the Prez attributes the success of Sherdog.com, MMAWeekly.com, Full Contact Fighter, et al, to a massive coattail effect. Now there is no denying the recent popularity enjoyed by the UFC has contributed to an increase of traffic for our site; I would imagine the same is true of others in the industry.
But don’t forget, Sherdog.com was growing long before The Ultimate Fighter fell into Zuffa’s lap and turned its ledger from an ocean of red to the sea of black I would imagine it is today.
With that said, White has every right to do what he has done — with a few caveats attached that is.
Those exceptions being that Zuffa outline a clear set of criterion for those who wish to cover their shows and uniformly enforce those requirements across the board, without exception.
The book on this calamity could be slammed shut in minutes and all questions answered if only a line of communication would open up between Zuffa and those media entities Dana White himself was so anxious to praise less than six months before. Is it too much to ask for these “new” requirements? If we do not meet the requirements, we would at least know what we should be aspiring to.
Now I don’t know if Mr. White was on an emotional high after seeing his friend and former client Chuck Liddell (Pictures) take home UFC gold after knocking out Randy Couture (Pictures), but he can be seen and heard on the UFC 52 post-fight presser video singing the praises of a couple of the now unwelcome media outlets.
How the tide has turned. In just a few short months we have gone from an integral part of the evolution of the UFC to a band of illegitimate hacks. I, on the other hand, would have thought we were moving in the other direction. But what do I know?
Well one thing I do know is that there will be a big uproar over this and rightly so, but I really don’t think it’s that big a deal for Sherdog.com as a company. Don’t get me wrong, less UFC access will have its drawbacks but the fact of the matter is Sherdog.com covers the sport of mixed martial arts, and although some entities in and around this sport may disagree: the UFC is just a cog in the machine that is MMA.
Sure, it is a huge part of the sport, but a part nonetheless.
I know this was not a popular decision in the Zuffa office, for good reason. And I wonder what the true motivation was behind its inception. I can tell you this: It would have been a whole lot easier to swallow had there not been a long history of personal rather than sound business decisions being handed down from atop the Zuffa throne.
And the silence we, as an industry, have been met with regarding our concerns about this new policy speaks volumes.
All we are asking for are the new set of qualifications Zuffa is using to grant credentials. Seems simple enough, don’t you think? The only reason I can come up with for the refusal on Zuffa’s part is my belief that there is no new set of guidelines and this decision was made in the most arbitrary of manners.
Does it make sense to clean out press row? You bet your ass it does. I can’t tell you how many times I have been sitting in the pressroom watching fans, err “journalists” posing for photos, soliciting autographs, and just plain gushing over fighters like teenaged girls fawning over Brad Pitt. But it makes absolutely no sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater and that’s what they are doing when they ban the top MMA media sites.
When I wrote about this issue last January I hoped to shine a light inside the world of MMA media. Little did I know Dana White was getting ready to take a flamethrower to press row.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Shortly after purchasing the UFC, the Zuffa brass thought it was ready to take the world by storm and at UFC 32 it tried to relegate the MMA media to second-class citizen status.
(This was the impetus for the classic Eddie Goldman meltdown — I would love to explain but I don’t have an extra 10,000 words so let’s just say it involved Eddie unleashing an F-bomb laced tirade on the girl in charge of media credentials after finding out he was not going to be sitting ringside. And for good measure he put an exclamation point on his remarks with a word that rhymes with “hunt.”)
That Zuffa policy lasted less than one show, as we were allowed to fill in all the spots that had been reserved for all the “mainstream” media that failed to show.
I fear this time we might have a tougher fight on our hands. We all know what we are up against and personally I feel the best course of action is to continue to conduct ourselves in a professional manner. This will leave the UFC little wiggle room on the true reason for the sudden and unwarranted revocation of media credentials for outlets such as Sherdog.com, MMAWeekly.com and Full Contact Fighter. The reason is still a mystery and will continue to be until Mr. White finds time to address the issue. I would imagine if there were legitimate reasons he would be shouting from every mountaintop, reassuring MMA fans that he still has the best interests of the sport at heart.
Sometimes silence can be deafening.
As always, comments are welcome — even from you Dana. Drop me a line at greg@sherdog.com and let us know what you think.
The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of Sherdog.com
