"SUCK HIM OFF!!! GET HIM FLAT"

-benavidez coaching, 2016

uhhhhhhh

Rocha just kicks a guy off the stage in a jiu jitsu match

https://www.instagram.com/p/BLEetckDeg6/

Wow, what a garbage person

Has that guy never seen Million Dollar Baby?

What's the deal there? Did he walk off mid fight because he threw a punch?

For what it's worth, the guy he kicked off stage is a notorious jackass and blatantly eye-poked jake shields multiple times in their Polaris match



He then pushed Shields at the end of the fight because Jake wouldn't shake his hand. I'm not ok with Rocha's actions, but I still enjoyed AJ getting Sparta-kicked off the mat.

Yeah, not excusing what happened, but Azagarm is a POS!

good

Werdum the trendsetter, good on him. Sparta kicking scumbags is A-OK in my book.

bunch of stupid apes, at the end of the day what do you really expect from people who fight for a living

bj penn injured, out of fight night main event

that card is uuuuugly

lol the prelims might be better than the main card,

that said the whole card looks pretty bad

lol so ufc 204 main event starts at 3am local time, with bisping fighting at around 5am. i understand why they do this but that just seems like absolutely turrible decision making by the UFC.

I mean it sold out immediately anyways and its on at the most profitable time for PPV buys, so why is it a horrible decision?

They seem to do that with foreign cards all the time. Most places are so desperate for a UFC event it will sell out regardless as long as its at a decent time.

It's so stupid. What's the point of doing it in UK if you care mostly about international ppv.
It's not like late evening in UK would be that inconvenient in the US Saturday afternoon

stim,

like eddy said, why do you think they are taking the card to the UK in the first place? i assume the intention is to try and develop the sport in a non-US market and to attract new fans. yes, you will get more US PPVs having it at primetime than in the afternoon, but that will be somewhat offset by screwing over the european PPV market. plus, this card is pretty awful anyway, how many is it really going to sell? 300k? i am surprised they wouldn't take a hit on that to try and get more UK eyeballs on it (it's not on PPV in england, it's on a subscription channel that a decent % of sports fans have).

lastly, how good of an evening do you think the fans at the event are going to have? i've been to tons of things at that arena, and it's a lock to say that everyone there will have been drinking since 5pm at the latest, and more likely closer to lunchtime. i am just picturing a crowd of exhausted, passed out people.

Good points. I just don't really see this as a push for the UK market. They been trying to do that for 10 years with little success. To me it seems like they don't care for the UK market much anymore. I figure its more of a hey we need to do a UK show soon and we got a british champ so lets do it there. More so than them trying to make a push for the UK again with a 37 year old champ whos a big dog to any top 5 fighter.

They probably make peanuts from that subscription channel. Else why wouldn't they be having more UK cards?

According to Wiki

This will be the fourth UFC event contested in Manchester and first PPV event held in the European/Middle East market since UFC 112. UFC 112 was in 2010, so the last 6 years. 2 of those 4 were headlined by Bisping. So it seems like it's just something they do with him, more so than a new attempt to break into the market.

They're feeding him Hendo in England.

Ari wants that PPV income.

It seemed like they used to do 2-3 uk shows a year before

I think it's as simple as asking which venue gets you the highest gate for this card? That answer is obviously Manchester Arena. And here we are.

I think we should all agree on referring to new UFC owners as ari.

they did ufc 138 at birmingham, but i guess that wasn't ppv?

i just think it's completely loltastic to throw a bone to other markets once every few years but expect the fans to stay up until 5am. but hey, what do i know - they did this for a fight night in sweden and got 30k people to show up.

it also seems that due to conor the UFC is presumably bigger than ever in the UK right now and with a UK champ maybe this would have been a really good opportunity to act like you care about the market and show it at a normal time.

to be clear, this is a sports channel that shows a bunch of sports, and all UFC events are bundled in. most people that pay for it will be paying to watch soccer. i was just making the point that it's very possible that with some hype and build up in the week you could easily attract lots of new fans to watch live, primetime UFC without paying $60 for a PPV. if it's on at 3-5am, that's much less likely to happen.

anyhow, my conclusion: U S A #1

It will probably hurt the ppv sales to move the fight forward a few hours but another motivating factor is the sales in bars and restaurants. Some of these places wouldn't even be open by the time the main card started.

We understand why they picked that time slot but that doesn't mean it's not a Greedy short-sighted decision.
It's a terrible viewing experience for European. If you want a global market just throw a bone sometime to lesser markets. People who will watch it at the venue at 5am will have a crappy experience. Making it watchable at a decent time slot once in awhile for the European ppv watchers would be nice and should have been treated like an investment.
It feel like a big Fu to Europe. I was thinking about watching it live for once. It never even crossed my mind that they would pull this one. I'm not even salty but that feel stupid.
I guess I'll do as usual and will download the torrent at 10 am my time and most likely watch it knowing most results already.

I wonder if they were upfront with ticket buyers about the time of the event. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people got a huge shock this week when their tickets arrived and said 3am!

yeah, it's a good question. some of the mainstream press articles i saw talking about the upcoming event didn't mention the time, and i think it's inevitable that there will be a ton of people that didn't realise what they were buying. on ticketmaster it says 11pm, it's only when you click 'more' that it tells you the event is 11pm - 6am, haha.


fwiw, bisping v silva in london, main card started 9pm. totally reasonable. obviously that was 'just' a fight night and they were happy for the main to start at 4pm east coast.

the gustaffson card i mentioned earlier was a 'ufc on fox' event where the main card started at 2am.

ufc 112, silva v maia in the UAE was a 1pm USA PPV.


so it seems like they've been more flexible in the past, but now that it's a much bigger sport i'm guessing that we won't see any more of that when it comes to PPVs.

whenever croke park was talked about in this forum and someone would mention the curfew, i assumed he just meant that UFC events tend to run a little late and end near midnight. it never crossed my mind that you would want 80,000 people in a football stadium at 5am.

edit - found this thread where everyone pretty much concurs: https://www.reddit.com/r/MMA/comment...la&sh=4bc2461f

New thread