During an interview with ESPN Radio 1150 in Las Vegas with Steve Cofield and Dave Cokin, EliteXC vice president Jared Shaw made a case that members of the media should focus more attention to other competitors on this past weekend's airing of Saturday Night Fights besides just Kimbo Slice.
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| Shields and other fighters get less attention thanks to Kimbo. (EliteXC) |
The fact that Gina Carano continues to show improvement in her first fights on CBS has been obscured by the Kimbo Slice show and the controversy that almost always ensues. As a story editor, I have to decide what needs more urgent attention: the fact that there are accusations that Pro Elite and EliteXC executives possibly offered Seth Petruzelli financial compensation, or that EliteXC welterweight champion Jake Shields won his 11th consecutive fight Saturday night and did so with his sixth consecutive finish inside the distance.
I'm not sure what exactly went on between Pro Elite, EliteXC officials and Petruzelli, and I do believe many people are jumping to conclusions and running with things without having done any investigation on their own, but after Petruzelli made his statements on 104.1 FM on Monday morning, it became a story that had to be covered.
One big criticism of EliteXC has been its failure to develop any major stars outside of Kimbo and Carano. In the case of Kimbo, he could be the reason why the promotion has been unable to build up other fighters as significant drawing cards.
Whether or not the masses will continue to want to watch Slice from this point forward remains to be seen. Saying that he is done as a fighter or that he's still a star is premature in both cases. The people will decide and not the promoters, or the media. But prior to this past Saturday's disappointing showing, I don't think there could be any question that Slice was the promotion's franchise player.
But did it market its franchise player the right way? One only needs to look at the first CBS show on May 31, which was almost entirely built around Kimbo. Then look at the second show, on July 26, which had virtually no Kimbo presence. The ratings definitely tell a story, which is no Kimbo equals no ratings and lots of Kimbo equals big ratings.
I just don't believe it's that simple. For whatever reason, when it comes to the CBS shows, EliteXC hasn't done a good job of allowing fighters, other than Slice and Carano, to shine in the spotlight. Sure, the second show featured a main event of Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith, but they didn't get much of a promotional push. Is that because they are good fighters who don't have the charisma needed to captivate the mainstream, or is it a situation where EliteXC dropped the ball?
To not feature Kimbo would be a major mistake. But perhaps EliteXC was onto something when they promoted him as a special attraction during last November's "Renegade" event in Corpus Christi. If you recall, Nick Diaz and K.J. Noons competing for the vacant EliteXC lightweight title headlined the show that night. But after Slice's much talked about verbal submission victory over Bo Cantrell, a decision was made to put him in the center ring of the circus instead of building him slowly over time as a sideshow attraction.
Kimbo Slice is a vacuum. If he's on a card, everything gets sucked up underneath and is virtually forgotten. Do I enjoy the fact that my website has been turned into the all-Kimbo, all-the-time website the past week? Not especially, but the website stopped being a personal project of mine a long time ago. If the vast majority of the public wants to know about Kimbo and the fallout from Saturday's controversial event, I feel an obligation to give them that coverage.
I'm not the first to say that EliteXC has suffered from a lack of depth in the star department and I won't be the last. Stars don't exactly grow on trees and they take time to cultivate. It's hard to build a fighter up though if there's no room or time to talk about them. Unfortunately, it looks like Carano, Shields, Benji Radach, and Andrei Arlovski are all going to get swept under the rug because UFC 89 is just over a week away and it's time to start shifting the focus to that event.
What we're seeing is the difference between building your company through reality television on basic cable as opposed to building your company through primetime network television. Ratings are important in all forms of television, but it takes on a greater importance when you're on a network. You can't take risks or think long-term because you've got to keep the all-mighty ratings gods happy. A good example of the drawbacks to sacrificing long-term planning is the Monday night wars in pro wrestling. While they were contested on basic cable and not network television, long-term planning went out the window in favor of short-term ratings gratification.
Both the WWE and WCW built their programs around their existing stars in order to try and draw the biggest audience possible. Looking back, they had no other choice. But when you analyze things, it's easy to see why WWE and WCW are both where they are now. WCW had success for slightly over a year because it had the more well-known stars. But pushing those stars came at a price, as much of the promotion's young talent was left on the back burner. When WCW's aging stars had either broken down or simply began to bore the public, there wasn't a fresh batch of stars ready to step in and take their place.
I'm not suggesting EliteXC shouldn't have featured Kimbo, but what I am saying is what just about everyone else feels at this point -- they never should have put most of their eggs in one basket. As great as Chuck Liddell is and as beloved as he is, you don't see the UFC focusing solely on him. When an opportunity to sign Brock Lesnar became available, the UFC jumped on it.
When the UFC decided last-minute it wanted to go head-to-head with Affliction's July 19 PPV debut, they built the show around Anderson Silva as opposed to someone such as Liddell, Rich Franklin, Matt Hughes, or Georges St. Pierre. By giving the MMA public an opportunity to watch the best "pound-for-pound" fighter in the world for free, it helped increase Silva's profile and added to his aura as being a star. There's still work that needs to be done in regards to making Silva a big-time draw, but UFC Fight Night 14 certainly was a major step forward.
But that's the difference between EliteXC and the UFC. While EliteXC entrusted Lawler with one half of their main event slot in July, what did they do to build him up to the public? In regards to Silva, I think I can recite the commercial promo they used for him verbatim because I watched it so many times.
If EliteXC continues on into 2009, then a Slice comeback should definitely be a part of the equation. But it's time for the promotion to start allowing more fighters an opportunity to break through the proverbial glass ceiling. The promotion needs to become an organization that features multiple subplots instead of focusing on just one primary storyline, no matter how enthralling it might be.
In addition to being a contributing writer for CBSSports.com, Sam Caplan is also the publisher of his own MMA website, FiveOuncesOfPain.com. You can contact him via e-mail at: SCaplan8@comcast.net.
