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I know it might be a little much to post two MMA entries in as many days, but breaking news; Randy Couture will be back in the UFC and take on the genetically modified behemoth Brock Lesnar later this year. There’s so much going through my mind right now. In no particular order:
Randy Couture left two fights on his contract, the heavy weight belt, an employment contract for his on-screen commentary, and one of the most lucerative contracts in the UFC because he was dissatisfied with the pay and the terms and conditions of his contract. The UFC is extremely fierce when it comes to their contracts; from all information, one of the clauses in the contract states that the UFC also gets rights over your likeness, which basically means that while you’re under contract you have to get permission to go to another event, lest you be caught on camera at an event for another promotion. It also means you can’t sell posters, DVDs, or anything else with your image on it because, well, that’s not yours to sell. Essentially, this is how the Affliction promotion got started, because the UFC – probably engaged in a contract with another clothing line, like Tapout – banned Affliction t-shirts from their on-air shows. That basically took a large chunk of cash out of the fighter’s pockets. These fighters don’t make a lot of money to begin with. The highest payout so far was to Tim Sylvia when he fought Fedor at Affliction’s inaugural Banned show (named so because they got banned by the UFC), and he made $850k, which is nothing compared to pro-boxing. Most guys get 10 to 50 thousand dollars, and rely heavily on sponsorships (even going to the point of having “Condom Depot” stenciled on their ass, which is super-queer), or dropping the name of a club that they’ll have their post-fight party at. If you take away that ability to generate revenue, then they’ll get a little ticked off. Tito Ortiz left, Tim Sylvia left, Andrei Arlovski left, Randy Couture left. These are top names, each and every one of them.
So, the UFC basically tied Couture down and was very comfortable in keeping him in a legal stranglehold. Jitsing him in court took its toll on the guy and finally he threw in the towel. He’s fourty-five years old, and he can’t afford to throw away a year and not fight. He started his pro-MMA debut at the age of 33 (think about it, Tito Ortiz is 33 now!) and he’s defied all the nay-sayers by showing them that even at his age he can pull of victories that nobody saw coming. He’s a six-time UFC champion (three time light-heavyweight, two time heavy weight, and one time interim light-heavyweight), and he did all of that after the age of 33. The older you get, the harder it becomes for your body to access oxygen when under pressure. You can offset this by rigorous training, but only so much, your ability to draw oxygen is still declining as you get older. The dude is in time trouble.
Another reason why he left was because he wanted to fight Fedor, and the UFC couldn’t or wouldn’t make it happen. UFC president Dana White has, on several occassions, claimed that Fedor was a farce. He said he wanted to see him fight a top name before he wanted to pay Fedor what he wanted to get paid. (The UFC and Fedor’s management have been in negotiations before, resulting in Fedor’s management publicly stating that White is off his rocker.) After the Banned show, where Fedor dismantled Tim Sylvia, a two-time UFC heavyweight champion, in 36 seconds, Dana White had to admit to the legitimacy of Fedor’s number one status. White has agreed that when Fedor’s contract with Affliction is up, he’ll be ready to negotiate again, and that he really wants Couture to get the fight that caused him to leave the UFC to go in search of.
In the meantime, all this publicity, and Fedor’s fight, as well as the many times Couture and Fedor have been seen together in the last year, have generated a massive amount of interest among the slightly more casual fans. Dana White would rather see a big fight like that at a UFC show than at one of his rival promotions. There’s money to be made, and White is in the business of making money.
I am not sure why Couture would fight Lesnar, who is 3-1, 1-1 in the UFC. It seems like Lesnar is the next UFC superstar in the making, but I doubt he’s proven himself to be in the title contention range yet. I have to admit that his win over Heath Herring was a bit of a shocker and he looked pretty good, and that even in his first round loss to Frank Mir by submission he didn’t look bad, but to give him a shot at the title already? I guess the heavyweight division isn’t what it used to be. Sylvia is gone, Vera went down to light-heavyweight, Crocop left, Congo is getting more and more dissatisfied with the fodder he has to plow through, Arlovski is gone. But we still have Nogueira, Coleman is supposed to come back, Mir is still solid, and maybe they can even entice Barnett to come back if they can loosen up the contracts just a tad. It’s not like it’s a dead division.
The International Fight League debuted in 2006 and have since closed their doors with a 36 million dollar debt. Pro Elite, the umbrella corporation for EliteXC, King of the Cage, Cage Rage and ICON sports is still going, but have, according to the SEC, a 55 million dollar deficit. Affliction had a massive inaugural show, which scored well, but they paid out a massive amount of money to the fighters, something they won’t be able to keep up if numbers don’t go up for them. Of course, the UFC scheduled a Fight Night free on Spike TV programmed directly opposite Affliction’s PPV show, so numbers are skewed. In the end, if these fighters are to be paid a little more, someone needs to challenge the UFC for their crown as the biggest promotion in the industry. Until that happens the UFC can do whatever they want, however they want, feeding the fighters just enough for them to not stop fighting. Randy Couture’s legal battles, though they only lasted for a year or so and didn’t amount to anything substantial, have lead to a recognition on everyone’s part that the fighters need a little bit better treatment. Even the UFC is changing a few things, with Lorenzo Fertitta, founder and major shareholder of Zuffa, the company that owns the UFC, and known to be more generous than Dana White, the company’s president, going to work for the UFC full-time in order to straighten things out. Hopefully it’ll lead somewhere.
In the meantime, I can’t wait for Randy Couture to step into the octagon again. Even though it’s a bit strange that he would take on Lesnar and not Nogueira who has the interim belt, I hope it’ll all get sorted out and Couture get a shot at Fedor somewhere in 2009.