John Moody is the man behind Tristatefighter.com (focusing on the Northeast MMA scene) as well as a regular panelist on Fox Fight Game. You can check out some of his great work in MMA on MoodyReports.com. In this guest column for MMAPayout.com, Moody illustrates that Brock Lesnar’s behavior in the wake of his win at UFC 100 was a bit of honesty that could also reap PPV gold for Dana White and the UFC.
Brock Lesnar set the MMA world on fire with his post fight antics at UFC 100. Love or hate his behavior, Lesnar’s personality is a huge win for the UFC. Nothing is better for ratings than a good villain. This is not revolutionary analysis, but the knee-jerk response that he ticked off Bud Light and was not a gentleman to Frank Mir is short sighted and thin-skinned.
Bud Light can handle hurt feelings and witnessing the birth of a UFC cash cow is good for all involved. And, always expecting fighters who talk trash for weeks leading up to fight night, to instantly ‘hug it out’ the moment they end a brutal war appears disingenuous. Brock’s actions after the fight showed his pre-fight words to be that much more honest and true.
The UFC certainly allows just about any kind of language to hype a fight in the lead up – heck, BJ Penn said he wanted to kill GSP before their match. Now, we all know that is just BJ being BJ and the UFC encourages the selling of a fight, but if the pre-fight talk is honest and not just hype, as I believe it was from Lesnar, I find it completely human to still hold a little, if not a lot of animosity for one’s opponent after the final bell. Not every fighter is as holy as Roger Huerta and Leonard Garcia doing the kneel and pray thing after pounding each other. It often makes for nice announcer talk about how honorable this sport is, and it is, but turning off the kill switch against your opponent cannot be expected in every case and this is what we saw in Brock … a guy who does not turn off the kill switch on a dime.
Going forward, look to football’s Terrell Owens as the Brock Lesnar blueprint. Why do the sports networks schedule TO’s team for Sunday Night and Monday Night national broadcasts so often? Like America at large cares about his current team, the Buffalo Bills? It’s all about TO. Fans love to hate TO which means eyeballs = nielsen ratings = ad revenue. The UFC’s Brock Lesnar will lap TO in this category and take the world of “player hating” to new levels.
UFC President Dana White may have scolded Lesnar for being unprofessional (uhhh … Paging Loretta Hunt), but he knows this monster is a pot of gold and will likely re-write Pay Per View records in the years to come, thus the post-fight lecture about good behavior rings a bit hollow.
I found it refreshing to realize that Lesnar’s pre and post fight feelings were consistent and genuine. He was just being honest. I will take that any day over trumped up pre-fight hostility for theater sake yielding suspect hugs and back slaps after the blood.
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