Diaz vs Shamrock: The Sizzle Sells
February 17, 2009
Strikeforce recently announced they would make their debut on Showtime with an April 11th card headlined by Frank Shamrock vs Nick Diaz. While neither fighter are within spitting distance of anyone’s Top 10, the fight looks to be one of the more enticing bouts in the next couple of months. The fight falls on the far end of the entertainment vs sport spectrum, but that may not necessarily be a bad thing.
A straight sell on the sporting aspects of MMA can vary greatly. Match two of the top 5 pound 4 pound guys on the planet like BJ Penn and Georges St Pierre, and you can do huge numbers like UFC 94 has purported to do. On the other hand throw together two guys also in most folks Top 10 p4p at the time they fought, Dan Henderson and Anderson Silva, and the numbers fall somewhat flat. Conversely, some of the bigger box offices on PPV have had little in the way of sporting impact (Shamrock vs Otiz 2, Hughes vs Gracie).
The month of April will give a contrast of sorts for the two booking options available, sport vs entertainment. Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites will take place and will do serviceable numbers based on the UFC brand. It will feature the unquestioned best 185 lber in the world, but from a perspective of a fight that gets the juices flowing, the fight that I will be looking most forward to that month will be Frank vs Nick. One would have a hard job making a case that Frank Shamorck is a top ten fighter at 185 anymore, but his fights with Phil Baroni and Cung Le over the past two years have been a couple of the more entertaining fights that have taken place. The build to these fights were almost as much fun as the fights themselves, the Baroni fight especially. A fight like Diaz vs Shamrock is almost as much about the sizzle as it is about the steak. The “MMA purist” may scoff at the fight but this is a guilty pleasure that will be well worth indulging.
Shamrock was eloquent in making his point recently in talking to MMAWeekly about a showdown with Tito Ortiz, but the gist of it holds true:
“We’re in the business of sports entertainment and we’re all entertainers. We just happen to fight,” Shamrock stated. “If you’re not entertaining both in the fight and leading up to the fight, you’re not a good entertainer, and there’s a lot of fighters we have that are not good entertainers.
With all that said, Frank seems shaking off the ring and promotional rust, using his video blogs to gin up the heat for the Diaz fight, approx. 48 seconds or so:
Find more videos like this on FrankShamrock.com
