It was revealed Tuesday that Josh Barnett has tested positive for a “performance enhancing substance” and will be unable to compete at Affliction: Trilogy on August 1st in Anaheim, California.
The story is still developing – the CSAC expects to release a more comprehensive statement later today and Affliction plans on announcing Fedor’s replacement shortly – but it appears as though middleweight Vitor Belfort is primed to step up and face Emelianenko.
Payout Opinion:
While I feel for Tom Atencio and Affliction, I’m not willing to buy the bad luck argument either. Rather, I’m left to question the foundation of any organization that could be brought down by the cancelation of one fight.
This situation really brings me back to the demise of EliteXC in a way: Affliction, too, is a promotion that has built itself around a single fighter, whilst spending excessively and failing to establish sustainable revenues.
It makes me wonder – and so, I suppose, I ask the question – did these guys have a plan? If so, what was it?
I understand the goal has always been to create a “fighter friendly” organization, but that’s more akin to an organizational mission or vision statement than it is any sort of strategy. It’s a guiding principle that they should have kept in the back of their head: one to frame policies, but not to interfere with the bottom line.
Even if Affliction was gambling that its personnel approach would generate the star power needed to generate massive PPVs – something more in line with an actual strategy – they could have gone about organizing their business more efficiently.
There’s no rule that says you have to lose millions of dollars before you can become profitable – quite to the contrary.
The $40 million that Zuffa lost between 2001 and 2005 represents the time, effort, execution, and the money involved to create a foundation that would allow an MMA organization to flourish. The serendipitous birth of The Ultimate Fighter helped, no doubt, but it was the foundation Zuffa created that allowed it to capitalize on that success.
Times are different now, the sport is well more established, and at some point Affliction is going to have to create a foundation of its own – one that is not dependent upon a clothing line for subsidization.
Unfortunately, things just got complicated.
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