UFC v Afflicton MMA - July 19th

Affliction.



The word used to mean something fierce, a disgusting disease or condition. Now it means $80 t-shirt with disgusting skulls and images of death and the like...for your fashion enjoyment.

On July 19th, the t-shirt company will forage into Mixed Martial Arts. They have the world's best fighter, Fedor Emelianenko, taking on former UFC Champion Tim Sylvia, among other fights involving good UFC fighters from the past and top fighters from around the world who've never been in a UFC cage.

In some ways, you could even say Afflicition isn't trying to compete with the UFC (at least not yet) and if you listen to those in charge of the promotion you'd be right.

There are tons of fighters out there, and the UFC is only interested in having about 200 of them on their roster at a time. That leaves a lot of good fights and a lot of potential entertainment.

The big question though, is will Affliction be a success, and what determines "success"?

The UFC bled money for years before finally establishing itself as a money-making promotion, now Afflicition plans to make money right away? How is that possible when they have made it a point to say they will pay fighters more along the lines of what boxers make? (9/2/08 Edit : Tim Sylvia made $800,000 for his 1 minute loss to Fedor Emelianenko. Afflcition leader Tom Atencio a.k.a. "T-shirt guy" according to Dana White, then came out and said fighter salaries will be going down in their successive fights. It appears that hindsight is 20/20)

I am pretty sure the Affliction pay-per-view will be a good event, fightwise. I hope financially they find some success as well because the UFC - which I enjoy - doesn't need to be the only game in town. Boxing has management companies that put on fights and co-promote fights. Golden Boy, Top Rank, Seminole Warriors, Don King Promotions, et al. The UFC's exclusive-contract structure is such that they have their managed fighters going against each other and have a UFC champion. That'd be like having a Golden Boy champ, and a Don King champ and a Top Rank champ if the analogy were to go the other way. That'd be chaos.

Pause... that'd actually be similar to the way it is now, with all the random WBO WBC WBA IBF IBO NABO Ring Magazine titles going around, plus they have WAY too many weight classes in boxing...its pretty chaotic. MMA is better only because the UFC is the dominant promotion for weight classes from 170 to 205, and there's not a lot of good competition. WAMMA is trying to have a unified champion but the UFC wants to do it their way. Oh well!

OK this entry is done. Let's just say that I'm excited about Affliction joining the fray and I hope it works out, because more MMA is good for MMA...and for the UFC!