by Dave Meltzer
The fact is, in the court of public, media and private opinion, UFC and its competitors had always fared poorly. While they could continue to point to the lack of serious injuries in the competition as compared to numerous other sports, they were constantly haunted by their own over-the-top promotions before running afoul of political and media problems promising the bloodiest most violent sport around, and their own promotional bragging about it being banned in so many states during the early days of the genre when it actually wasn’t banned anywhere. That kind of hype likely led to buy rates rapidly escalating in the sport’s early days.
UFC gained popularity initially under the guise that they were pitting champions from various combat sports and putting them in a tournament to see not only who the toughest fighter in the world is, but is the best fighting style. Even from the start, credentials of fighters were exaggerated and even created out of thin air in some cases, and the early successful shows turned into a commercial for the wonders of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as practiced by unbeaten champion Royce Gracie, who made himself the biggest martial arts star on the planet through winning three of the first four tournaments. But as the years went on, it became apparent that the key issues that drew curiosity in the early shows were no longer there.
Ironically, for the most part, the quality of the fighters has increased greatly from the early shows, but the public generally doesn’t recognize that and has still seen star after star from UFC walk away without being clearly beaten and sees the current crop as second rate in comparison to the early stars. Nobody was kidding anyone any longer that the winner of a UFC tournament gave a guy a legitimate claim to being the toughest man alive or proof of a superior fighting style. While most of the shows were well received by people who bought the shows, with no outside hype mechanism and little done to create and make stars, the novelty noticeably began wearing thin in 1996, which some blame on the Dan Severn vs. Ken Shamrock match in May, although that would be far too simplistic an explanation.
The fact is creating a new viable sport is never easy, and even when UFC was drawing the monster buy rates in 1995, the media rated it as a level below tough man contests on their respectability scale. For long-term success as something other than a novelty, it either needed to be able to control its own hype, like pro wrestling, or to be treated in the media as a serious and important sport, thus getting the benefit of that kind of hype.
Their own contradictions on the glove issue, which UFC officials and its spokesperson when in political jams, referee John McCarthy, would point out the lack of gloves inherently make the matches safer, yet the fact was they did allow competitors to wear gloves and it did turn the matches into bloodier and less technical bouts. While UFC talked about having Olympic caliber medal wrestlers and top caliber martial artists on its shows, the competitions were also stacked in many cases with fighters who obviously didn’t belong chosen above the numerous world-class wrestlers and judo players that had expressed interest in competing.
At times the company seemed to want to run tournaments and title matches to set up what its fan base wanted, to find out who the toughest man alive was, although none ever worked out exactly as hoped for. At times the company seemed to have an attitude of putting almost anyone in and that the public would pay to see the UFC name with the idea of doing tournaments with a few big names and rounding out the tournament with guys who didn’t have a prayer.
Once it became clear that the wrestlers were dominating the field, numerous world class wrestlers, Tom Erikson in particular, were avoided because of the thought, in his case, he didn’t look right, was too much like another Dan Severn, and because in reality few thought that there was anyone around who could beat him and they were afraid of him being a dominant force. While publicly trying to portray themselves as a mixed martial arts contest, the company continually attempted to build and push Tank Abbott because of his charisma, but who also was the flesh and blood representative of everything their critics claimed they were. While Abbott came out of UFC’s most successful event, a July 1995 show in Casper, WY, as its most talked about fighter, a September 1996 show built around Abbott’s return which was geared toward a match between he and Mark Coleman that never happened, drew UFC’s weakest buy rate to date.
Isaacs has continually maintained that SEG is in the UFC for the long haul, and that as satellite dishes grow in popularity, there will come a time that they’ll be able to be in enough homes without having to worry about cable companies and cable carriers. But those days aren’t soon even under the most optimistic of projections, and with lower quality shows due to budgetary cutbacks on the horizon, and less exposure in much of the country, realistically the genre won’t be able to maintain even its current level of interest even if that day arrives in a few years. Isaacs is confident, however, that with a lot of outside publicity in recent weeks for UFC, from being featured in two episodes of “Friends” (which finished No. 4 in the ratings in the episode where Abbott has a brief cameo), on MTV, the Learning Channel and expected strong hype over the next few weeks on WWF television, that the 5/30 show will produce a solid number.
JUNE 16
In an effort to save its sport from a political extinction, Semaphore Entertainment Group is expected to formally announce a series of rule changes within the UFC effective on the 7/27 PPV show. The official announcement should come within the next two weeks in an attempt to regain PPV coverage by Request, TCI and Time Warner.
The rule changes are designed to not change the basics of what the sport has grown to be. The rule changes include no attacking the fingers or toes (which nobody has done to date in the history of UFC), mandatory grappling gloves, no throat strikes (another thing that nobody has actually ever been able to do in a UFC match to date), no groin shots (which has been done a few times although not in a notable sense any time recently), no hair pulling (which really only came into effect in the Royce Gracie vs. Kimo match in 1994), no elbows to the back of the head, no stomping and no pressure point striking, whatever that is supposed to mean. Most of these were rules designed to alleviate questions that state athletic commissions have had with UFC, because TCI said that if the states where the commissions won’t approve UFC will change their viewpoints, that they would be happy to carry the shows.
The political problem here is that the commissions aren’t banning UFC for its potential danger but in most cases making a political statement to protect the powerful boxing interests that control the commissions in key states like New York, California and Nevada. For example, the idea of pressure point striking comes from martial arts mythology of things like paralyzing and death blows that are what’s known as voodoo martial arts and not one blow of the type has ever been done in a UFC and they don’t occur in sports like karate, boxing or kick boxing. There was pressure additionally to ban knees, elbows and head-butts, but SEG refused to acquiesce to those requests feeling it would change the basic nature of what the sport is.
John Peretti, who was the booker for the defunct Extreme Fighting promotion, has resurfaced once again, this time claiming to be in the process of inventing a new sport without the political headaches. The sport would basically be submission wrestling with no striking at all allowed, fought with three three minute rounds, overtimes, a point system for takedowns and throws, five weight divisions and no draws. He’s talking about debuting this sport on PPV in October using players from Judo, Freestyle wrestling, shootfighting and Jiu-Jitsu. Realistically, this has no chance on PPV. Eliminating the striking should logically get rid of all governmental opposition although logic has never played a part in these decisions. However, Americans aren’t going to buy in any great numbers a combat sport that doesn’t involve striking in some form to the face. Pancrase, which had open hand striking and kicking along with submissions, failed to make a dent.
JULY 14
The problems financially stemming from the bans from various cable companies continues to threaten the future of UFC. As mentioned last week, SEG has pull
ed Carlos Barretto and Murillo Bustamante off the 7/27 PPV show because of the costs of flying them and their entourages in from Brazil and replacing them with fighters with lesser name value. Apparently SEG has done the budget and figures that this upcoming show is going to lose money no matter what, and they are trying to keep the losses as low as possible.
The current plan is that the heavyweight tournament will have Mark Kerr vs. Daniel Bobish and Brian Johnston vs. Moti Horenstein and the light heavyweight tournament will have Kevin Jackson vs. Youri Valouns and Joe Moreira vs. Todd Butler. SEG will no longer use the term No Holds Barred in advertising its events and the term has been banned for usage on its television shows, instead the events are to be called either reality fighting or mixed martial arts.
In addition, the scheduled 9/26 PPV show from Russia is being moved to 10/17 and the change in date means the show won’t be in Russia. They are moving it back three weeks because they are crossing their fingers and hoping that with the new rules that some cable systems will agree to carry the follow-up show, and three weeks gives them more time to attempt to get systems to reverse their position, something at this point there is no groundswell to do.
JULY 21
More bad news as it relates to the future on PPV. Despite the rule changes, there appears to be no movement in regard to cable companies that have pulled UFC changing their minds nor is there any indication any reconsideration will take place. SEG lost a lot of money two shows back because of the last second move, and lost money on the last show because TCI joined the other systems in not carrying the show. The 7/27 show is going to be the third money losing show in a row because there just isn’t enough distribution, particularly with Request TV not carrying the show, which makes the future questionable because how long will they continue to produce shows that simply because of outside forces be unable to turn a profit?
2 – Major Changes to WWF Programming
FEBRUARY 3
Don’t be surprised to see either major or minor changes in regard to Monday Night Raw. The rating on 1/20, where WWF came the day after a major PPV show where it changed the world title and had a controversial Rumble finish and opened a hot Raw show with Bret Hart quitting, and Nitro still won the hour handily and scored a tremendous second hour rating were major causes of concern for both WWF and USA Network.
At press time no changes were official, but what has being talked about by both sides didn’t include switching Raw to a new date, but was more along the lines of going live as frequently as the schedule permits and increasing the show to two hours so that the first hour of Raw on USA doesn’t end up providing the second hour of Nitro on TNT, its rival network, with a tremendous lead-in.
The cost of doing a show of that type would run into six figures weekly, so it’s an interesting question how the bill would be split between USA and Titan Sports. When WCW went live weekly with Nitro, both USA and WWF officials publicly talked about how much money Turner was wasting doing that, but it turned out to be the difference in TNT beating out USA last year as the top network in prime time which is big-time bragging rights that USA will do almost anything to reverse.
WWF announced a Raw taping on 2/24 at the Manhattan Center, which would be a live show coming just one week after the live show on 2/17 from Nashville. The WWF word is that the Manhattan Center show was just an experiment at this point.
FEBRUARY 10
As of press time on 2/4, there was still no deal between the WWF and USA Network regarding doing a weekly two-hour generally live Monday Night Raw show head-to-head with Nitro.
There has been much talk between the sides, and Raw was expanded to two hours on 2/3 and it is believed that will continue on 2/17 and 2/24 although even that hasn’t been confirmed. It appears the WWF and USA Network both want the two-hour live format, but the hold up appears to be what percentage each side is going to pay of the estimated $100,000 per week plus it would cost to do a weekly live shoot.
The WWF has been working toward the probability of a two-hour live show most weeks, and at one point last week USA Network even told advertisers of the format change as a long-term deal, but has since shied away in being committed past the end of February. The first two-hour show, taped three nights earlier at Sky Dome in Toronto, was basically a last week deal as WWF didn’t get the official word from USA as to whether the show would be one hour or two hours until the evening of 1/29, although there had been talks and it was well known by the previous weekend it was a strong possibility.
The impetus for the change is coming more from USA than WWF, because it’s highly touted new series “Le Femme Nikita” is struggling in the ratings against TNT’s “Robin Hood.” The reason the changes are being rushed is because February are sweeps month where the basic advertising rates are determined based on overall prime time ratings so it’s more important for all TV stations to hotshot this month, particularly USA and TNT because of their close battle to bragging rights of being the top rated prime time cable network.
The belief at the USA Network is that the one hour Raw is providing TNT was a tremendous lead-in for the second hour of Nitro, which did 4.4 ratings on both 1/20 and 1/27 while the USA 9 p.m. programming has gone down the tubes in competition. While Nitro beats Raw in the head-to-head hour every week, the margin of the victory is much closer than in the second hour with Nitro hour two against whatever USA puts in the 9 p.m. hour.
The original plan, due to February sweeps, is that USA wanted the WWF to air the entire Royal Rumble on the one-hour show on 2/3, which was pushed all week as “Royal Rumble Monday.” The reason is that the highest rated pro wrestling show in the history of the USA Network was the 1988 Royal Rumble, which did an 8.2 rating (broadcasted live one year before it became a PPV fixture), and that’s the type of thing you copy during sweeps.
However, after agreeing to air the Rumble, Request and Viewers Choice protested and apparently there is some kind of exclusivity protection in their PPV deals so instead what aired of the Rumble on the two-hour show ended up being three different 30 second clips rather than the entire 50 minute match. At the same time, USA now wanted a two-hour show so the decision was made to turn the 1/31 house show in Toronto, which had a huge advance, into a Raw television taping.
However, with all the pressure on both sides for the first two-hour head-to-head confrontation, both shows were major disappointments despite each drawing a large live crowd. From a ratings standpoint, the margin of WCW’s victory, as expected, was cut noticeably from previous weeks as Nitro did a 3.04 rating and 4.6 share to Raw’s 2.64 rating and 3.9 share which is the first sign of what the effects of a two hour show will be.
The Nitro rating has to be a disappointment since the teased but never outright announced that there would be a Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper title match later in the show. The first hour was very close, with WCW with a 2.76 to 2.64 edge, but WCW was still the show that picked up steam and easily won the second hour 3.31 to 2.63.
WWF opened with a sizable lead with Austin vs. Vader at 2.67 against Dragon vs. Mendoza and Kidman vs. Glacier at 2.34. That was the only point WCW trailed. Ice Train-Parka against Vega-Funk was a 2.55 tie. Steiners-Heat vs. the beginning of the tag title bout saw a huge 3.17 to 2.46 gap and Enos-Malenko vs. tag title finish was 2.99 to 2.87 (although trailing at this point, the tag title match was the WWF show’s peak rating). Page-Renegade against Crush-Goldust was 2.99 to 2.74 edge for WCW. Wright-Calo vs. the Michaels-Hart interview segment was 3.24 to 2.74 WCW edge. Konnan-Benoit vs. Mero-Helmsley was 3.37 to 2.43 WCW edge, and the Jarrett deal and mainly Hogan-Piper confrontation against the Undertaker match was 3.64 to 2.61 WCW edge.
WCW drew the first real sellout to pro wrestling at the Mid South Coliseum in Memphis since a March 1986 match with Jerry Lawler & Dutch Mantel vs. Bill Dundee & Buddy Landel (hey, you should have seen the television show building up that match). The actual attendance was nowhere near record breaking since production killed several thousand seats with the total crowd at 8,173 (6,946
paying $77,128) while the aforementioned sellout was closer to 11,000. On television they announced thousands were turned away but it was more like a few hundred. The gate was the fourth largest for pro wrestling ever in Memphis.
The WWF drew 25,628 (an estimated 22,000 paying $324,326) to Sky Dome, which they billed several times as the largest crowd in the history of Monday night television. Vince McMahon called it a capacity crowd even though the place holds more than 65,000. McMahon and Jim Ross threw frequent barbs through the two-hour live voice-over of the taped matches, making numerous references to bait-and-switch tactics, presumably on Nitro, saying they deliver what they advertise and will deliver the complete matches they say they will and aren’t teasing with a match that may or may not take place (in reference to WCW opening the Nitro show teasing that there would be a Hogan-Piper match which ended up simply being a confrontation angle and no match). Of course, with USA plugging airing of the Rumble heavily for one week and it being only 30 second clips, one has to say this wasn’t the week for WWF to be name-calling about those tactics.
Both shows were disappointments. The Sky Dome was poorly lit, the crowd wasn’t well miced and most of the matches were disappointments. It came off as a dead show, reminiscent of one of those bad WWF house shows that used to be featured on the old “Prime Time Wrestling” two hour show in the 80s, leaving many to question whether the WWF has the talent depth to put on a weekly quality two-hour show. They do on paper, but this show wasn’t a good argument supporting that case.
WCW had a hotter crowd on television, but killed the crowd on a show where seven of the nine matches were very bad, and the finishes up and down were even worse, particularly a double-run-in finish during a Steiners vs. Harlem Heat match that killed the crowd dead in its tracks for the next several matches. The only high point of the show was a closing Hulk Hogan-Roddy Piper angle where Piper brought his son out, said he wasn’t accepting the match with Hogan, got insulted for a while, and came back brawling and accepting the 2/23 Cow Palace match.