The Spike Network is advertising that some ultimate fighting contest called “UFC 67” soon approaches.
Sixty-seven? I’m pretty sure they haven’t had Ultimate Fighting for sixty-seven years. Do they hold this once a month?
For that matter, after watching a few minutes of this show, it doesn’t appear to be a real sports association or anything like that; it’s sort of like a reality show. Can some explain how they got up to “UFC 67” so quickly and what the hell the deal is here?
They have multiple main events per year, so the UFC67 indicates this is the 67th ‘really big shew’ they have put out, not the 67th year of existence- kind of like if you had four Super Bowls a year.
If you think boxing or actual wrestling are sports, then this sure is- boxers are pussies compared to these guys.
Well, it isn’t a fixed annual event like the Super Bowl, for example. Think of it more like boxing, with many “main events” that aren’t necessarily crowning the heavyweight title. I think they have been numbered primarily due to pay-per-view and DVD sales being a huge part of their revenue, it makes it easier for fans to distinguish the different events.
UFC is as “real” a sports organization as any other. All sports organization pretty much make up their own rules of competition as long as their events are internal to themselves. The NFL answers only to the NFL, not to any international football standards organization.
So, like any other sport, we are free to take it or leave it based on how it satisfies our desire for entertainment and competition 
What do you mean “a real sports association?” It’s professional. It’s a business. Just like the alphabet soup of boxing promotions (WBC, WBA, IBF, NABF, etc.–I lost track a long time ago). Those aren’t “sports associations.” Those are companies who promote fights and have their own version of “the champ.” Occasionally, the champ owns more than one title. It makes for a better chance for a better box office (and PPV buys) to say it’s a “championship” fight, so it makes good business sense to have lots of champions. And in today’s product, where just about everybody is mediocre, just about anybody can be a champ somewhere.
The same pretty much applies to the NFL and MLB. Those are companies that promote games among their members. In that respect, they and UFC, are indeed "real sports associations.
You are confusing two different things. The UFC is a fighting league of mixed martial arts. They have various championship fights throughout the year. Mostly on PPV and then rebrodcast on SPIKE.
The Ultimate Fighter is a reality show for lack of a better term. It is a contest where a number of unknown fighters compete for a chance to get a contract in the UFC. A middleweight and a heavyweight are picked every season. I think they are on season 4 or going to start season 5.
There is the “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show and PPV events called “UFC XX”. The current UFC event must be 67, I think this is the third season of “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show.
Damn, submitted by Loach in the first round.
The UFC is a real sports association. Their events are sanctioned by the Nevada State Athletic Commision (most events are held in Las Vegas these days).
The UFC pushes out a Pay Per View event every two or three months, and that is why they are up to 67.
It has also become much more structured and regulated than it was in the wild and wooly days of it’s beginnings. (It has been around since the early or mid 90’s.) In my humble opinion, it seems to be for the better, too. More respectable seeming, somehow. In the early days, the guys looked like bikers with beer guts bashing each other into unconciousness. Now, they look like (and, indeed, are) true athletes.
TUF season 5 is all lightweights this year (155lbs) - the UFC has some very good lightweights, unlike their heavyweight division (which just got better with the signing of CroCop and Rampage…Heath Herring got some 'splaining to do).
Rickjay - A little certain-to-be-inaccurate history.
The concept was born in November 1993. The idea was a competition between varied martial arts styles to solve the age-old question, “What would happen if this style took on that style?” It was an 8-man single elimination tournament with one winner. That’s exactly what “Ultimate Fighting Championship” meant…one championship contested by everyone in the event.
In the early days, the fighters came from everywhere and employed a wealth of disciplines. Natrually, there was a pretty massive disparity between the overall ability of the fighters, especially for the first few events (UFC 1 and 2, in particular, had the most lopsided championship matches ever). Plenty of weirdness, too, and even the occasional scandal. It took all kinds…the “beer bellied bikers”, the string beans, the muscular lunks, the gritty pitbulls, and even the occasional clueless old guy.
In 4, the promoters decided to experiment with the idea of a “Superfight”, a single match separate from the tournament (that’d have its own belt), mainly because a lot of guys just didn’t have the toughness or stamina to fight three times in one day. 4’s was billed as an exhibition fight; the first actual Superfight happened in 5. This was the first break from the original meaning of UFC.
Then around…10? 14?..someone decided that three fights was just too much for anyone, and weight classes were introduced for the first time, Heavyweight and Lightweight, each of which had a 4-man mini-tournament. Another step away.
A little later, the tournament was done away with for good, and the Superfight belt became the Heavyweight belt, and UFC, for all intents and purposes, had evolved from a single event to a league, where the champions all had belts and kept them until someone beat them. Then in 2001, Zuffa bought the rights from Semaphore Entertainment Group, and the final obstacle to the event becoming fully legitimate, i.e. a self-important alphabet soup organization plastering its name on the product and sucking up a percentage of the earnings, fell.
So anyway, UFC was never an annual event. The numbering is a holdover from the old tournament days. The way it’s set up now is just like boxing, kickboxing, or a similar sport, with a card of competitors each fighting once, with one or two main events at the top, and a champion in each division. The main reason for keeping the numbering is, well, it makes each event easier to keep track of.
Oh, before I forget, there’s also something called Ultimate Fight Night, a regular event with no numerals, sort of a lower-tier event. It’s used to showcase up and comers, build up to a PPV, fill time, etc.
A little complicated, yes, but nothing unusual for a league that wasn’t supposed to make it to 1995.
One other thing to note in the wiki article is the evolution of time periods to the current five-minute rounds. That was a big improvement in the sport, since it gave guys that had expended a lot of energy a chance to catch their breath, instead of just riding each other interminably.
Lots of misinformation in this thread.
-The UFC has a PPV virtually every month, not every 2 or 3 months.
-The Ultimate Fighter exhibits different weight classes each season. We’re entering the 5th season.
-Rampage is a 205’er - light heavyweight, not heavyweight.
As long as we’re discussing it…how do you not make weight for a championship fight, Lutter? How do you not make weight for a championship fight?!?! :smack:
Oh, and Cro Cop was terrifying. He will eat Tim Sylvia’s soul.
I was secretly pulling for Lutter before that, just because of the underdog factor and he seemed like a nice, hard-working guy. When he failed to make weight I lost all respect for him. What was even worse was when he said “I’ve been having a hard time getting motivated to drop weight.”
If you can’t get motivated to drop weight for a titled shot then you are in the wrong line of work, bub.
No doubt. I was pulling for Lutter, too, he’s a Fort Worth, Texas BJJ black belt and a friend of a friend, even though I didn’t think he had much of a chance after seeing Silva demolish Franklin in the first round. I think Rogan’s comment was probably right: his problem is that he has no coach and trains himself. If he’d had a trainer, coach and team behind him he would have made weight and maybe even had a better outcome.
In this there is an interview with Lutter. He comes off as a little more sympathetic
Lutter on not making wieght:
I really didn’t think I was too heavy until about four hours beforehand. I knew at that time I was in a lot of trouble. I told the guys, this is not good. And the weird thing was, I was ahead of schedule on paper. We keep track of weight cuts from fight to fight. And as compared to my fight against Patrick Cote (in November 2006), we were 1.5 hours ahead as far as time.
But that’s when I got into trouble, as I began to quit sweating. The weight just quit coming off. We knew we were in trouble at that point. Once you stop sweating and your body says it won’t give up anymore, it’s very hard to lose weight. It’s painful and sucks but you keep trying.
Lutter on motivation:
I think that was taken out of context. I meant that six weeks before the fight, I was having trouble with motivation, and that’s only because I’d been cutting weight all year. With six fights in a year, I’d fought on average once every two months, so it was like spending the whole last year in training camp.
Thanks for posting that, Balduran. That makes me feel a little bit better about him, but not much. If I know Dana White as well as I think I do, I don’t think Lutter has much of a future with the UFC. Someone IRL compared it to when Joe Riggs failed to make weight in his title fight last year but I don’t think it’s comparable because IIRC Riggs was a late replacement for Karo Parisyan and it’s a miracle he got as close to the weight as he did.
I wish there was some way to get rid of weight cutting. I know it’s a time-honored tradition in wrestling but I’ve never liked it. I think people should fight at their natural weight and only move up and down in weight classes through diet and excersize, not by cutting water and putting it back on before the contest. Maybe if they weighed-in on fight day a lot of this would be alleviated. Does anyone know why they don’t?
Agreed. IMO, this guy is even scarier.
Technically wrong since Fedor is not human.
Another comment:
Currently, today’s boxing product is of sketchy quality, mostly mediocre forgettable people, with an occasional quality nugget competition. I’ve heard that HBO will start airing some UFC fights. Possibly this is the result that they realize that boxing is, for the most part, dead.
ESPN, however, turns a blind eye to UFC, considering it little more than WWE type entertainment. But maybe they’re just protecting their own promotions.