Promoting mixed martial arts is not an easy job, particularly if you don't have the built-in advantages of the Ultimate Fighting Championship brand. The basic task is to put together fights that people are excited to see, but that's difficult when the UFC has by and large the most talented fighters and the most marketable ones.
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| Petruzelli's win over Kimbo illustrates a problem for non-UFC shows. (EliteXC) |
Like Affliction, you can try to bring in the most talented available fighters, like Fedor Emelianenko and Josh Barnett. The problem is that they want to be paid commensurate to their talent, even if they don't mean much business-wise to casual fans. Thus, you end up with very expensive and skilled fighters who are a big deal to 100,000 fans but unknown to the larger numbers that are needed to drive business forward.
There is another route: You can build around personalities. This is what EliteXC has done, targeting fighters with unique stories or abundant charisma. They sometimes slip through the cracks because they are unproven or have a number of losses. Unlike Fedor or Barnett, they don't cost an exorbitant amount of money. They can frequently bring in excitement proportionate to or greater than what they are being paid.
Kimbo Slice is the perfect example of this philosophy. EliteXC rolled the dice with Kimbo, offering him a lucrative but not crippling contract and then building him up as their big star performer. The strategy paid dividends. Kimbo drew EliteXC its biggest crowds and biggest ratings. He brought mainstream attention to the promotion and became a much talked-about novelty. It's not hard to understand why.
Kimbo Slice is the embodiment of a fantasy many people want to believe in. He represents a guy many people know. He's the toughest guy on the block: a raw, rugged brawler who is always up for a fight. People want to believe that if you take that exotic guy and train him in some of the nuances and subtleties of fighting, he will be able to defeat any of these trained professional mixed martial artists.
There is a feeling that professionals might train very hard at their craft, but they lack something the scary-looking dude from the streets possesses. There is something instinctual, carnal and raw that the street fighter has, which separates him from the professional athlete.
This is an appealing notion, and it has existed since the early days of the sport. Tank Abbott was the embodiment of this image, and it brought him tremendous popularity for many years. Kimbo Slice is the new version. Kimbo isn't like these other fighters. There is something more real and more dangerous about him.
Of course, there's a downside to the promotional philosophy that emphasizes characters instead of the best fighters: These characters are eventually going to be exposed for what they are. The fantasy of the unbeatable street fighter is just that.
You can't take a brawler off the street, teach him a few tricks and expect him to defeat world class mixed martial artists who have trained full time for years in a multitude of disciplines. He might be able to get by a few handpicked opponents, but eventually, he will be exposed. Kimbo Slice, like the myth of the unbeatable street fighter, was a fraud.
This myth can be built up, and for a while it will pay dividends. But ultimately there is only so much a promotion can do to protect a fighter who simply isn't very good. When fans figure it out, there is little left in the fighter you spent so much time promoting.
Saturday night, Kimbo Slice lost in 14 seconds to a mediocre UFC washout from a lower weight class. EliteXC is unquestionably in a better position right now than it would be without Kimbo. But the flipside of that equation is after devoting so much time promoting Kimbo as the anchor of the brand, EliteXC is now back to Square 1.
The good news for EliteXC is that fans are often slow to react to the news that their fantasy wasn't real. Tank Abbott was able to coast along as an attraction for many years despite frequent losses. Kimbo Slice will still be able to generate interest for his future fights. But it's hard to believe he will ever be able to regain the mystique he had coming into this loss. Moreover, EliteXC will expose the inferiority of their brand if they continue to build around Kimbo.
It's hard to fault EliteXC for building so heavily around Kimbo. There are no easy answers for how to build an MMA promotion. There is a catch-22, and no matter which direction you go, you will find yourself on tenuous footing.
If you build around quality fighters with limited box office appeal like Jake Shields, you won't have the ratings or pay-per-view buy rates to survive. When your promotion goes under, people will talk about how stupid you were to build your promotion around someone who means nothing to the average fan.
If you build around attractions with questionable fighting ability like Kimbo Slice, eventually it's going to catch up with you. He'll get humiliated on national television, and people will talk about how stupid you were to build your promotion around someone that wasn't good enough to compete at a high level.
It's a tough world out there for MMA promoters, and Saturday's EliteXC show was another reminder that there are no easy paths to success. There's a tricky balance between steak and sizzle that needs to be achieved. If you stray too far in one direction, you end up like EliteXC on Sunday morning, wondering where to go from here.
Todd Martin has covered mixed martial arts for the Los Angeles Times, Wrestling Observer, SI.com and CBSSports.com. He can be reached at ToddMartin4L@aol.com.
