You know what the best part of this video is? It isn’t hearing IFL welterweight champ Jay Hieron do his best not to bash the IFL even though they canceled his next fight and yet aren’t allowing him to take another, though that is uncomfortable watch.
No, the best part is at the 1:54 mark when MMA Rated’s Ariel Helwani informs him of Jay Larkin’s comments comparing ground fighting to “gay foreplay”. The look on Hieron’s face at that moment, it’s priceless. He also goes on to say that he’s never met Larkin, which seems odd.
Hieron seems to be taking the whole IFL cancellation in stride, though I have to say I might be slightly more pissed off if my employer was keeping me from making a living. They aren’t giving him a fight in August, and also aren’t allowing him to look for other fights until after August. So basically they’re telling him to take the summer off, and if he doesn’t want to, then they’re forcing him to take the summer off. Nice.
Nothing like hanging out in fighter purgatory to make you wonder what happened to that organization that was supposed to be taking great care of their fighters.
IFL CEO Jay Larkin is no stranger to making crybaby speeches when things aren’t going so well. But with the IFL canceling events until further notice, and with its publicly traded stock currently hovering at two fucking pennies (down from $17 per share in January 2007), it’s not going to get much worse than this, business-wise. Larkin knows it, which gives him the freedom to say whatever pops into his head, no matter how gross it makes him look.
Business magazine Portfolio just published a profile on IFL’s current tailspin, in which it revealed that the company is now on the auction block for a cool million. Here’s the third paragraph, which follows a description of a recent IFL fight, written in wildly purple prose:
Jay Larkin surveys the inaction with a weary, seen-it-all expression. “This isn’t my idea of fighting,” he says of the world’s fastest-growing spectator sport. “To me, two guys rolling around on the floor is tedious, like watching gay foreplay.”
Wow. And this guy runs an MMA league? He sounds like your average message-board troll. Later, presumably after a few more whisky-sodas, Larkin drops another gem:
“Our so-called friends in the M.M.A. [mixed martial arts] world are telling people that the I.F.L. is going out of business,” says Larkin. “I like to tell people you can’t spell fuck without U.F.C.”
Glug, glug. Luckily, it’s over for this man. Maybe he could go back to boxing, where things are simpler, and less similar to gay foreplay. I guess the demise of the IFL should be lamentable, but it’s hard to work up even a shred of sympathy for such a deluded dickhead. Anyway, read the article, which also contains the following highlights:
— Even IFL co-founder Gareb Shamus calls MMA “Ultimate Fighting.”
— By the end of October 2007, the IFL’s MyNetwork TV broadcasts were pulling in about 362,000 viewers (barely registering on the Nielsen scale), and their average age (49) was almost twice that of the typical UFC fan.
— Despite spending far more money than they’re taking in, Larkin still says the IFL is “debt-free.”
IFL CEO Jay Larkin released a statement earlier today about EliteXC: “Primetime” on CBS:
Saturday’s ratings success of ProElite’s show on CBS again shows that the market for the sport in the mainstream is growing, and we at the the International Fight League are very excited to be one of the industry leaders that can help [...]
This morning we got a spam e-mail from the IFL imploring us to buy presale tickets to “IFL Summer Throwdown,” which goes down August 15th at the IZOD Center in the Meadowlands, New Jersey. And just as we were about to hit the delete button, we saw this at the bottom:
The night will also feature the world debut of “The HEX,†the IFL’s brand new six-sided ring. This is the future fighting surface for all of MMA. To introduce this new era in fighting, the IFL Summer Throwdown fight card will present the most explosive Mixed Martial Arts action the East Coast has ever seen!
Ho. Lee. Shit.
Merriam-Webster defines “hex” as a “jinx” (in its noun form), or “to affect as if by an evil spell” (in its verb form), which is astoundingly appropriate considering how cursed the IFL is. This is their response to public disinterest? A six-sided ring!? As we saw last week, IFL CEO Jay Larkin believes that since MMA fans haven’t taken to their events, we all must be Affliction-wearing, Xyience-swilling jokers who care more about light shows and dancing girls than high-level mixed martial arts competition. (The rebuttal to that misguided viewpoint is long and complex, and is expressed in the analysis and comments in the original post.)
So, my first thought was wow, what an idiot. Doesn’t Larkin know that gimmicky ring surfaces are the tool of the desperate and creatively bereft? American MMA fans don’t respond well to the ring, so the answer is to give them a different, more fucked-up ring? Really?
But now I’m starting to think that the “HEX” is Larkin’s final “Kiss My Ass” to all of us.
“The question it all comes down to for me is, is there a market for MMA? Now coming from the boxing world, when I first saw MMA I didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy watching it. I found it boring and when it wasn’t boring I found it grotesque. Now what I had to do was learn about it. I had to learn more. I had to learn the moves, the players, the disciplines and the different camps and what they meant. The more I learned about it the more I found I enjoyed it and the more I could appreciate the strategies and I have found that for the most part, the fan base out there doesn’t have a clue. Not a clue what they’re seeing, not a clue what they’re watching and therefore they’re almost uniformly attracted to the UFC light show. The dancing girls, the music, the UFC brand and the spectacular job the UFC’s done in creating that brand…
I sincerely question whether or not there is a market place for legitimate MMA outside of the UFC. Now if you look at the card we had at the IZOD center that was spectacular. That was as good as MMA fighting ever gets and it didn’t make a blip on the radar screen. It was difficult selling tickets, the Monday morning reviews of the event were the fights were spectacular but the place wasn’t very full. What does one do to grow the audience? What does one do to sell tickets besides putting on the best show you could possibly put on? And when you put that show on and you still can’t sell tickets well then you have to ask yourself does the public want this? Do they really want fights? Do they want mixed martial arts? Do they want competition at the highest level of the sport? Or do they want to run around wearing their Affliction t-shirts and swigging Xyience. What is this really about? Is there really a fan base for this or is it a cult? And I’ll tell you, as truthfully as I can, I don’t know the answer.”
Well, first off, contempt for the audience will get you nowhere — and I’m not sure that the IFL’s fanbase has a smaller percentage of Affliction-wearing, Xyience-swilling meatheads than the UFC’s. Larkin may eventually be proven correct that there’s no mainstream market for MMA outside of the UFC, but I don’t think the failure of the IFL should be held up as proof of his thesis. I can’t speak for the general public, but as an MMA fan, I’ve been excited about recent fights held in the WEC, Strikeforce, EliteXC, and DREAM in a way that I’ve never really felt for matches held in the IFL. I get the sense that a lot of other MMA fans feel the same way, and for me, the reason is because the IFL never succeeded in promoting and building individual stars. EliteXC is Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano. WEC is Urijah Faber. Strikeforce is Frank Shamrock and Cung Le. The IFL, on the other hand, is a questionable camp system where no single fighter is given more attention then his legendary coach. Larkin seems to think that solid matchups between up-and-comers should have been enough to make his league marketable. Am I a fake MMA fan for thinking that personalities create interest, not just talent?
Saturday’s live broadcast of the first round of the IFL World Grand Prix could be the most crucial event in the league’s brief history.
While new IFL president and COO Jay Larkin has understandably tried to downplay talk that this could be a make or break show for the company regarding whether the ratings performance will determine the IFL’s viability as a live product, I firmly believe that whether the Dec. 29 show gets picked up will have a lot to do with how many people watch on Saturday.
The bottom line is that IFL co-founded and commissioner Kurt Otto has said that the league needs to secure live television in ‘08 if it wants to remain competitive and tonight’s numbers will go a long way in determining whether we’ll see more live IFL telecasts.
MyNetworkTV is not a highly rated network so I don’t even want to begin to guess what numbers would be considered good and what wouldn’t. On average, I would say the league draws between a 0.4 and a 0.7. I’m not a television expert, but I think anything below 0.9 would be considered a disappointment.
IFL President and COO Jay Larkin made himself available to the media during a conference call to promote Saturday’s World Grand Prix event in Chicago at the Sears Center. The event will mark the promotion’s first-ever live telecast with matches between Chris Horodecki vs. Bart Palaszewski and Vladimir Matyushenko vs. Alex Schoenauer scheduled to air on MyNetworkTV at 9 p.m. ET.
Larkin made some notable revelations during the conference call, with the most newsworthy being that there will be changes to the league’s format in 2008.
The former Showtime executive stated that the product fans will see in March of 2008 will be different then what they will see in November of 2007. When asked if that meant that the league will be abandoning its team format, Larkin said they are committed to the team-based concept but hinted that teams will no longer be affiliated with geographical locations.
In spite of recent reports making claims to the contrary, new IFL President and Chief Operating Officer Jay Larkin claims in a new interview I conducted with him for CBSSports.com that the promotion has a TV deal in place for next year:
Q: As a point of clarification, is the IFL without a contract to do live TV on MyNetworkTV next year or without a TV deal with MyNetworkTV entirely at the moment?
JL: We have a TV deal in place with MyNetwork and Fox Sports Network. We’re examining that deal now. We have every indication from our partners at Fox that they’re very enthusiastic about the IFL on their channel and want us to come back next year, and we’re in those talks as we speak.
Q: But as of now is there a deal for 2008 in place?
JL: Yes, there’s a deal for 2008 in place. It’s in various stages of going through the lawyers and it’s being reviewed here. Being a TV guy, I want to take a hard look at the existing television deals. But there’s definitely a television deal for 2008 that’s in place.
For over 20 years Larkin was a top executive for the Showtime Network. Larkin was responsible for brining boxing to the premium cable network and one of his top promoters was none other than EliteXC live events president Gary Shaw. I asked Larkin if there was any chance of the IFL and EliteXC working together in the future:
Q: I know you still have strong relationships with the people at Showtime and Gareb Shamus and Kurt Otto are open to working with other promotions for the betterment of MMA. EliteXC president of live events Gary Shaw also claims to have an open door policy. Is working with EliteXC and Showtime something you’d be open to in the future?
JL: It’s something we would be very much open to. You’ve got the one big obstacle of the cage vs. the ring. The IFL, as you know, is a ring sport, and Elite’s fighters are fighting in a cage, so that would be an obstacle. Gary Shaw is a very old and close friend of mine, so that is certainly not an obstacle.
There are some issues that need to be explored about organizations working together but I don’t think there’s any obstacle there. If you look at boxing as an example, most major boxing fights are co-promotions. You’ll have Don King working with Bob Arum or you’ll have Golden Boy working with Lou DiBella, or whoever it may be. I see no reason in the world why the IFL and Elite couldn’t do a promotion other than the logistics of the cage.
I also asked Larkin about future financing for the IFL, his vision for the promotion, whether he’d be open to a merger or acquisition and much more. You can read the entire interview by clicking here.
