Written by Lyman Hoyt
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Monday, March 09 2009
Frank Mir injured his knee in late February and had surgery several days before the UFC officially announced his fight with Brock Lesnar as the main event of UFC 98. They then put tickets on sale without informing the public about the surgery. Lyman Hoyt says this demonstrates the height of contempt for their most loyal fans. (Photo: Susumu Nagao)
Lost amid the WWE’s revisionist history of pro wrestling’s ‘territory’ era is the fact that they were killed off as much by their own sleazy and duplicitous promotional tactics as they were my Vince McMahon’s onslaught. In addition to pointless and inconclusive ‘screwjob’ finishes, unimaginative or ‘hotshot’ booking and a dwindling talent roster, a common practice during this era was advertising matches featuring wrestlers that weren’t going to appear. Whether it was a wrestler that was leaving the territory, was suffering from an injury or was just ‘double booked’ on another card the same night the frequency of ‘no show’ wrestlers in some territories alienated fans and drove them away for good.
Old school wrestling promoters essentially operated in a monopolistic environment within their ‘territory’. The typically respected each other’s territorial ‘sovereignty’, and cooperated with each other by exchanging talent and co-promoting events. In the event that an ‘outlaw’ promotion tried to compete with them, other promoters would often send top talent to help run the newcomers out of business. In those days the bulk of revenues were derived from the live gates at ‘house shows’, and weekly wrestling events were commonplace in many cities until the 1980’s. Being the ‘only game in town’, some promoters didn’t exactly put the concept of ‘customer experience’ at the top of their priorities.
Even the colorful verbiage of pro wrestling is rooted in ‘carnie culture’ and implies an effort to ‘put one over’ on their most loyal customers. Fans are referred to as ‘marks’. Those with an inner working of the pro wrestling industry were considered ‘smart’ to the business. This sort of de facto hostility toward the people that buy the tickets perhaps shouldn’t be surprising in a business that is entirely ‘worked’ with results predetermined in advance, but this mindset toward the customer base made the pro wrestling industry an all too easy target for Vince McMahon’s takeover efforts.
Surprisingly, the WWE has become fairly responsible about their advertising practices. Some of this is likely due to the more stringent need for forthright business practices inherent in a publically traded company. Some of this is due to their transgressions of the past, as the WWE has encountered some trouble from various governmental oversight bodies due to these practices.
Ultimately, it has more to do with the paradigm shift in the pro wrestling marketplace. In other words, everyone knows it’s a ‘work’. The WWE has rebranded itself as ‘sports entertainment’ and is on record with the fact that the match outcomes and storylines are predetermined. Insider newsletters like Dave Meltzer’s ‘Wrestling Observer’ detail the inner workings of the business, and there’s no shortage of Internet sites that offer the same style of reporting. In 1970, the WWE could have booked Triple H in two places at once and then tell the live crowd in one city that he was defending the title in Bora Bora last night and his flight out was delayed to a native uprising. In 2009, it’s too easy for even the most casual fan to visit ‘The Wrestling Observer’s’ website or one similar to it and find out that Triple H was wrestling on a house show in Topeka, Kansas the night before.
Over the weekend a MMA fan knowledgeable of the colorful history of pro wrestling felt like he was in a time warp as the UFC tried to ‘work’ its fanbase in a similar manner. Their handling of the Frank Mir injury was a contemptuous effort to screw their most loyal fans, and Dana White’s claims of ‘ignorance’ to the situation is comical coming from a man who’s work ethic and emphasis on detail is legendary. To best illustrate what the UFC has perpetrated here, consider this timeline of the events surrounding and leading up to the postponement of Mir’s rematch with Brock Lesnar announced on the UFC 96 PPV:
Late February: Frank Mir injures his knee during training. According to his account on the PPV, it was a nagging injury and it ‘blew out’ a couple of weeks ago.
February 29th: Mir has arthroscopic surgery on his knee. On the UFC 96 broadcast he indicated that after injuring his knee that he had surgery ‘last Thursday’.
March 1st: WEC: Brown vs. Garcia—Frank Mir is conspicuously absent from his usual color commentator’s role, with Jens Pulver taking his place. Obviously in light of more recent revelations it’s apparent that Mir’s absence was due to his knee surgery several days prior.
March 2nd: The UFC officially announces the main event for UFC 98 as Frank Mir vs. Brock Lesnar for the UFC heavyweight title.
March 5th: Tickets for the Mir/Lesnar headlined UFC 98 event go on sale to UFC Fight Club members.
March 6th: Mir is interviewed at the Arnold Classic in Columbus, which is the first public confirmation of his surgery and his desire to postpone the Lesnar fight. The interview may have taken place earlier in the week, but as it was posted to YouTube on Saturday March 7th it was taped no later than Friday. Mir indicates that his surgery was ‘last week’.
March 7th: UFC 98 tickets go on sale at 10 AM Pacific to the general public.
March 7th: Mir announces on the UFC 96 PPV that his fight with Lesnar has been postponed until UFC 100 in July.So it’s not like we’re looking for a second shooter on the grassy knoll here: the UFC went ahead and announced the UFC 98 main event and put tickets on sale *after* Mir’s surgery.
Currently, the Zuffa ‘party line’ is that they hadn’t talked to Mir until Saturday morning and once they learned about the knee injury they quickly postponed the Lesnar fight until July and added a Rashad Evans title defense to UFC 98. The idea that one of the main event fighters in the highest profile MMA bout of the next few months could injure his knee and get surgery without anyone in the UFC’s management knowing about it is comical. Mir wouldn’t have done the surgery without the acquiescence of Zuffa brass or, at the very least, without informing them about it. Furthermore, Mir’s absence from the WEC show indicates that Zuffa was very much aware of his knee injury and the surgery.
It’s pretty obvious why the UFC wanted to keep the public in the dark about the Mir injury for as long as possible: it’s a lot easier to sell tickets to an event with a Brock Lesnar/Frank Mir main event than it is for a main event of Matt Serra/Matt Hughes or Rashad Evans/TBA. Lesnar’s arguably the most popular fighter in the UFC right now in terms of putting butts in the seats and selling PPVs. Chuck Liddell is the only other UFC fighter that comes close. The 2008 UFC events featuring Lesnar were the #2 and #5 highest grossing PPV events in North America. The Lesnar/Couture PPV was the only event other than the Oscar De La Hoya/Manny Pacquaio event to exceed 1,000,000 buys
.
So despite the fact that Mir had his knee surgery before the UFC 98 main event was officially announced, the promotion went ahead and sold tickets to their best fans—the UFC Fight Club Members and non-members who bought tickets right after they went on sale—when they had to know that the main event was in jeopardy. Either they were planning to force Mir to take the fight with a short training camp, or else they wanted to make sure they had a good first day ticket sale before they went public with the postponement. Now that the tickets have been bought, the UFC is protected by the ‘Card Subject to Change’ disclaimer printed on every fight ducat. In other words, to make sure that they had a big first day of ticket sales they decided to ‘work’ their fanbase.
And they may be about to do it again. On Saturday night at UFC 96 they started to hype a fight between Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson and light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans for the UFC 98 main event. The only problem is that this fight hasn’t been signed yet, and ‘Rampage’ himself said in the postfight interview that he had ‘overtrained’ for Keith Jardine. To have eight week training camp, ‘Rampage’ would need to get back to work in less than two weeks. A potential May fight with Evans would also be his third in less than six months. It’s very likely that ‘Rampage’ will decide not to take the May fight and Evans will fight Lyoto Machida at UFC 98. That’ll be a very intriguing matchup for hardcore MMA fans, but obviously not one that would sell tickets like Lesnar/Mir. For now, however, the casual UFC fanbase and mainstream sports media is operating on the assumption that it’ll be Jackson/Evans at UFC 98.
Also complicit in the UFC’s duplicitous handling of the Mir injury is the mainstream sports media, and much of the MMA specific media. If Affliction put tickets on sale to ‘Day of Reckoning’ knowing that Fedor Emelianenko had just had surgery, the MMA media would suggest that they were crooks. When the UFC does it, their sycophants among the fight media turn a blind eye. The mainstream sports media is even easier for the UFC to hoodwink because they know nothing about MMA and care even less.
The UFC wants to have things both ways. They want mixed martial arts to be treated as a legitimate sport, covered by the legitimate sports media and regulated by the athletic commissions of the individual states. At the same time, they too often run their promotion like they’re in the sports entertainment business. The contempt they demonstrated for their most loyal fans with their “swerve” surrounding the Mir injury and the UFC 98 fight with Brock Lesnar is an updated version of a sleazy promotional relic from the dark ages of professional wrestling’s past.
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