June 1, 2008

• This past night; Saturday May 31, 2008, was probably one of the most important nights for the growing sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). EliteXC and CBS Sports had the hard task of airing a free MMA event in national primetime TV, despite the fact that this sport is still seen as controversially too violent outside of Cable/Satellite/PayPerView. In fact MMA still hasn't been sanctioned in every state, which is a hurdle to get the sport more legitimized in the public's eye. "CBS and EliteXC present : Saturday Night Fights" was the name of the show, and it hopes to be the launch pad for having the mass audience embrace this sport like they already do for basketball, football, etc... The International Fight League has already tried it's luck on the primetime hours with the minor TV network "myNetworkTV" in 2007, but airing MMA on CBS is a totally different league altogether. So how did CBS and EliteXC do with their inaugural MMA show? Did they succeed in what they set out to do? In a way, yes and no.

  "EliteXC : Primetime" was definitely entertaining, exciting, and will probably bring new fans to the sport. The spectacle was there, with the female dancers, the fireworks, and the flashy fighter entrances. A portion of the program educating people about the rules and techniques of MMA was a welcome thing for them to do, for those who are just now getting exposed to the sport. The fight card was really good and arguably better than some MMA shows that are on Pay Per View. Everything was set out to attract casual and serious TV sports fans, so what could go wrong? Technically, this turned out to be a rocky start for CBS and EliteXC.

  "The best fight of the night was the Gina Carano vs Kaitlin Young match." That's right, the best fight of the night was of the female fighters. For the unitiated who thinks that MMA is primarily a man's sport, this is probably shocking to hear. As somebody who have seen several female MMA fights, this wasn't surprising to me, as the women are more than capable of putting up a good fight. However is it really in the sports best interest, when in this publicly high profile inaugural primetime network TV fight card that consists of mostly men, the ladies were the ones that won the night?

  Conspiracy theorists have speculated that because of the very public nature of this show, CBS and EliteXC did not want the fights to get "too violent." It's been speculated that the referees were told to stop any of the fights earlier than expected, before anybody got so injured that it might get "too ugly" for primetime TV. This speculation applied the most to the two main fights, and the MMA fans were not happy because of that. A middleweight title match for Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith ended as a no contest by doctor's decision, which to MMA fans is like watching a playoff season basketball game end the 4th quarter on a tie and not continue into overtime to determine a winner. Then the main fight featuring internet street fighting sensation Kimbo Slice vs James Thompson, also ended with a controversial (especially to MMA fans) referee stoppage. Kimbo Slice was built and hyped up for a long time now as this up and coming rags to riches fighter, but he honestly did not perform as well as he should have this past night, especially considering that he is "the face" of EliteXC : Primetime too.

  There were other problems that CBS and EliteXC has to address that ruined the allure of MMA this past night. After one of the fights ended in controversy, you can clearly hear the audience chanting "Bull$#!^" several times, which made me wonder what happened to CBS' censor button. Luckily the cussing occured past 10PM, which is technically safe from FCC fines, but still most likely something the CBS network would rather not have happened. It also did not help that the show went 45+ minutes over it's time slot cancelling the local news, so those who put it on timer with their DVR aren't happy. Some CBS affiliates even purposely delayed the show until midnight (reportedly replacing it's time slot with a block of kids shows) because they feared that MMA was still not ready for free primetime network TV. Maybe it really wasn't, and CBS should have followed NBC's decision to air their own MMA show "Strikeforce" at 4AM when everybody would be asleep already.

  At this time, it's still unknown to me how the show did in the ratings. I'm hoping that it did well enough for CBS to continue airing free MMA on primetime network TV. Hopefully this show did increase public awareness to what is currently suppose to be "the fastest growing sport in the world," despite the faults with this particular event. To be fair to the main complaints about it, there are technical reasons behind those controversial
  referee stoppages, so I wouldn't go so far to say that the whole thing
  was "fixed," which is definitely a stigma that MMA must thoroughly
  avoid. "EliteXC : Primetime" was definitely one of the most fun MMA shows I've seen, thoroughly enjoyable all the way. Just ease up on the dancing girls, stalling too much between fights, and less momentum killing commercial breaks.

  p.s. there's another thing very common with MMA, and that's "cauliflower ears." This show of all shows really really makes the audience know about it.

  

  • 8:17 am
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