Article:EliteXC Musings

From The Bryant Blog at www.bryantwrestling.com

I must preface this by saying I’m not an expert or pundit on Mixed Martial Arts. I’ve covered a variety events from Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — including the first two IFL Legends events. My background is in wrestling … but that being said, here’s some things I found to be amusing from Saturday’s waste of time on CBS.

Thankfully, the EliteXC didn’t hold the CBS audience hostage like its last event Kimbo was involved in. I don’t have Showtime, so I’m not sure how the rest of their productions go, but at least this one was more compact and didn’t run over too much from the scheduled times.

1. The Hulkster and his daughter Brooke sitting cage-side … who needs talent when you have a father with the world’s most famous skullet — and a set.

2. Too bad Seth Petruzelli didn’t have time to get rid of the hot pink dyed into his hair. He’d be pretty marketable otherwise as the fill-in, part-time former reality show competitor. That’s the feel-good type of thing CBS is looking for, right?

3. Sherdog’s MMA forum thread dedicated to the main event discussion jumped from seven pages to 32 pages within two minutes of the fight ending.

4. It was officially scored 14 seconds, but that’s giving Kimbo the benefit of the doubt of pulling a Fritz, which is double digits but not high enough to be in the teens. The time-keeper gave Kimbo some credit.

5. Where is the after party again?

6. One more wax treatment on Kimbo’s pectoral might have been the difference in his balance.

7. Let’s kiss this guy’s ass, even when losing. Seeing guys like Tito Ortiz, Ken Shamrock and Andrei Arlovski in the EliteXC — that is marketable to the fan base. Those are seasoned, legit fighters. The Kimbo Experiment has gone horribly, horribly wrong — but that’s nothing new. I’m sure those of you who follow MMA, even just casually, could see this train wreck when it left Miami traveling 100 miles an hour.

Overall, the production value was better than the previous Kimbo farce, but there are still signs the MMA is getting this kind of staying power on television. It’s obviously on CBS, but this doesn’t do much for the marketability of Mr. Kevin Ferguson. Arlovski knocked out a guy (who is a good fighter) but looked like someone you could pull out of a saloon in West Texas. Arlovski looked, in comparison, in tremendous shape. Think how this looked to first time viewers? Yeah, not so much. But the MMA community’s flooding of sherdog.com following the 14-second outcome dwarfs any such response I’ve seen in any other sport’s message boards. That was impressive — the response of the fans immediately.

I just wish wrestling would get this type of attention.