Question About WAMMA
Roger T. asked:
Big John, first and foremost I would like to say that I enjoy reading your blogs very much. It’s the only reason why I come to this site. Also, I’m a big fan of yours and I miss you on the octagon! We gotta hear another “Are you ready? Are you ready? Lets get it on!” from you. But wow, this MMA business is serious stuff. I do agree with you though, as a fan I like the fact that there are several promotions in the sport. When I found out that Silvia was fighting Fedor, man I just HAD to watch that. Wouldn’t have gotten that fight with the UFC anytime soon. But I do have one question for you that I have not been able to figure out for a while… Where do you see WAMMA going in the future? Will it be embraced by every MMA promotion? THANKS, BJM.
Well Roger thank you very much first off for reading the blog, I am glad you enjoy it. The question you pose about the future of WAMMA is a good question that I am not sure I can truly answer with any certainty at this time. Just about every promotion besides the UFC will likely have no problem having WAMMA as a sanctioning body for the sport or their individual promotions at this point in time. Promotions like Affliction, Elite XC, Strikeforce and Adrenaline have all stated that they support WAMMA and want to use them to bring about one true champion in the sport. They say this because it will help them if they can have a fighter, fighting on their promotion that is recognized as the truly best fighter in the world at whatever given weight class.
Right now Affliction has Fedor Emelianenko fighting on their promotion and he is the WAMMA Heavyweight champion of the world after his 36 second destruction of Tim Sylvia. Everybody that knows this sport and is being honest would say that Fedor is the best heavyweight in the world at this time hands down. The UFC has Randy Couture as their Heavyweight champion who is attempting to hold out of fighting in the UFC until his contract expires, because he says the only fight that makes sense for him at this point of his career is Fedor. I personally agree with him based upon his age and the legacy he has created over his career, so you cant count him, and then they have Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira as their Interim Heavyweight Champion whom Fedor already holds two dominating wins against. So right now if you want to see the best Heavyweight fighter in the world fight you go to Affliction not to the UFC. That is the way all of the promoters besides the UFC want it because it adds legitimacy to their promotions, it shows people that are not the hardcore fans of the sport that there are other promotions putting on high caliber fights with great fighters, so all other promoters are behind WAMMA being recognized as the sanctioning body that recognizes the true world champion.
The UFC is not going to support WAMMA anytime soon. The WAMMA organization does nothing for the UFC and only hurts them. The UFC wants to be the start and the end for a fans interest in MMA. They are already the “Brand” when it comes to Mixed Martial Arts. You can go on the street and ask someone hey do you know what MMA is and that person might be able to answer you and they might not, but if you ask the person do you know what the UFC is you have a higher probability of that person saying yes I have heard of the UFC over the sports name of MMA. That is branding and the UFC has done a fantastic job of getting their brand out there the same as Xerox did with copy machines or Kleenex did with tissues. The UFC has a majority of the sports top fighters under contract. Of course there are great fighters not fighting for the UFC at this time, but if you look at any number of the Top Ten rankings out there, fighters under contract with the UFC will dominate most of the positions. There are guys like Gilbert Melendez and Josh Thompson in Strikeforce, Jake Shields and Robbie Lawler from Elite XC. All of these fighters are top level guys who could fight with and beat most any fighter on a given day, but they don’t fight for the UFC so it would be impossible to get them a championship fight under the WAMMA banner because the fighter that WAMMA has as their number #1 fighter is under contract to the UFC. BJ Penn is the top ranked fighter in the lightweight division. He should be, but for there to be a title match for the WAMMA belt between BJ Penn and a fighter like Gilbert Melendez the UFC would have to stop the system they have clung to for so long. They would have to allow a fighter who is not under an exclusive contract to fight in the UFC, or allow one of their champions to fight in someone else’s promotion. That is simply not going to happen, and it will not happen for several reasons. First if a titleholder from the UFC fights either in the UFC or in another promotion and loses to a fighter not under contract to the UFC then the UFC just devalued themselves and their championship belt. They will not have control of the person who is now considered the top fighter in the world, and their belt will be view by many people as just another promotional belt instead of the belt that most people consider the belt that signifies the best fighter in the world at that weight class. People will realize that maybe not all of the greatest fighters in the world fight for the UFC, but that there are other promotions out there that have very good fighters who can fight as good or better than the more popular fighters under contract to Zuffa. None of this helps the UFC so you can see why they will not be jumping on the WAMMA bandwagon. I cannot blame Zuffa at all for looking at this the way they do. They have worked very hard to get where they are at. They have their matchmaker in Joe Silva who sets up the matches that Dana White the President of the UFC wants to promote. They are a very successful self- contained promotion that has no outside influences telling them what to do. Why would they want to let someone in that can now influence their promotion in anyway?
This is the problem that confronts Dave Szade and Michael Lynch the CEO and COO of WAMMA. They have a pretty good idea, and I for one want to see the best fighters in the world fighting each other no matter what promotion they are signed to. Politics and money have a huge influence over all of the combative sports and since that is not going to change it is going to take “Hell Freezing Over” or a shift in the political power of the sport before you see the UFC and WAMMA sitting together hand in hand.
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