For the record, I support competition against the UFC... but that doesn't mean I'm an M1 fan.

Miles... you say fighters get paid more when they sell shows... that is MY point exactly. Look up the payouts (vegas law they post the purses)
GSP and Lesnar have both been paid $400,000. The UFC has been topping the PPV sales records for years yet... 20 years ago Mike Tyson made 25 million a fight. If the UFC is breaking records they have the money to pay.
As for "not using the bidding system" it actually addresses your concern of keeping the fighters under one roof. If every promotion company had a shot at getting the best fighters they in essence would be under one roof. Boxers are permitted to fight under more than one promotion company. But the UFC handcuffs people with their contracts and uses bully tactics and threats if those fighters look elsewhere.
As for fighters taking years to make.... very true... but you have to start somewhere and right now we're on the wrong road.

Reddog.... great point about the sponsorships. The UFC is screwing the up and comers who gather local sponsors... they now lose that income. So now what? 10-15 g's if they get their winning bonus?! How do you pay trainers and take time from work and buy equipment etc with that. Especially if they only get 1 or 2 tv shots a year.

M1 is a fucking joke and I hate them. I have to say I'm with the people wanting strikeforce and m1 to fold so that their top guys end up in ufc. I don't care about competition, that means nothing when the fights you want to see are still an impossibility. You can have all the competition in the world but that still won't put Fedor/Lesnar, Mousasi/Silva, Aoki/Penn, Shields/GSP ect. in the ring together will it? If ufc had all of the top 10 in each weight class in their organization do you really think we'd ever see a watered down card just because there's no competition? With all of those fighters they wouldn't be able to put on a shitty fight card if they tried. Fuck competition, give me the super fights I want to see.

Good or bad I'm for promotions that better the sport of MMA and M1 failed to do that last evening, plain and simple

@miles9000

First off, nobody gives a fuck about your fourteen thousand paragraphs.

"If you support it then you are causing shitty MMA to appear on my TV schedule, and that makes me angry" No, they are like me, people who enjoy a variety of MMA, not the same meal every day.

"I'm not interested in one off exciting fights, I want to see a fighter have the potential to grow in ANY direction" So, despite your claims, you admit you are only a fan of entire cards/careers. True fans like any exciting fight, regardless of venue or fighters experience.

"The UFC is never a monopoly" The UFC is the Google of MMA. There are other players, but they still are considered controlling teh market.

"The UFC and any MMA organization works to continue as a going concern." and fatten the Fertitta/White pockets as much as possible. They try and keep as much away from fighters as possible. Like making the 200k/yr sponsor rule, fucking a huge amount of fighters.

What's the best way to get fighters paid better? No, not a bidding system. Then you get Affliction. And SF sure isn't putting much salary pressure on the UFC either - maybe you didn't check the payouts?

Fighters get paid more when the cards sell more. And not just a few more, but 2x-10x as many buys, and large live events. That's going to happen with the UFC anyway, but it would happen FASTER if all the elite athletes were under the same roof, instead of 10-20% of them doodling around somewhere else.

The UFC is never a monopoly, because KOTC and CR events are still fun to watch. Amateur athletes can make great fights. But there are not enough top shelf fighters to split across more than 1 organization, and regardless of how you approach it, that is what you are advocating (I know you say you don't want that, but that's what you are by definition promoting).

Fighters take years to make, you can't just bump the UFC salaries and suddenly talented guys will pop out of the woodwork in 10x the number we have now.

Competition is not the only driver to succeed, making fuck loads of money is a great incentive. SF is just slowing the UFC down a bit, and SF will get eaten eventually, either whole for a big buy out, or slowly picked apart.


The "pay more" argument is really silly. There needs to be more money spent on MMA before you can dish it out. The UFC and any MMA organization works to continue as a going concern. If they felt they got a return on paying their fighters double what they do now, they would (that's why it's called a return).

Audience growth takes time. Splitting elite athletes across nonsense fight organizations makes it harder to grow audience share, which makes less money, which makes it harder to pay athletes more, which makes it harder to grow the pool of amateur fighters. It's like when a tech company fights someone on a patent that they will never use themselves - they just slow down how the technology gets propagated in the industry, and the only real benefit is they get a pay day in the meantime.

What is Strikeforce doing for MMA exactly? Fedor was already "fighting" in Japan, and Mousasi was almost out of opponents, so nothing has changed there. They are pioneering mainstream WMMA, and I salute them for that. The rest is just running interference on the UFC, with no reasonable future prospect of matching the UFC's stature. It's dumb, and it just slows things down, and frankly keeps all the other small organizations out of the picture.

People might actually start giving a shit about KOTC/CR/etc if they knew the top shelf prospects from that circuit could make it to the UFC, rather than wander off into some other random org and fight nobodies for a few years.


Pride's gone, man.

^^You are a moron.

Wow... 16 year... of watching. Then you must clearly have an expert opinion.
The UFC being privately held is a HUGE difference, without a ranking system it's not a "league" it's a business that handpicks competitions regardless regardless of achievements. Do I want fighters spread out over organizations so that I cannot watch the top fighters fight each other?... No. But to say one privately owned company which is a monopoly is the answer is stupid.
You want more fighters? Pay more... with exception to a handfull of top stars... they all have jobs, because they cannot afford to just fight. Take Carwin who is an engineer... he makes more every year working as an engineer than he does fighting and he is fighting for the title. How many other talented fighters out there don't try to balance fighting and working?
Now to pay these fighters more it requires competition for the UFC... so bidding begins. I'm not saying that boxing has a perfect system... corruption has tarnished any credibility in the boxing system... but there are good traits that can be taken... for example allowing fighters to fight in other organizations and most importantly.. a ranking system. The UFC is NOT MMA... just a company with the best media who is cornering the market.

I like the idea of these inferior organizations sticking around simply because Dana likes to counter program them, resulting in more fights from the UFC to watch. I do agree M-1 is complete horse shit.

If you think I'm a UFC nuthugger then I say you like watching shitty MMA. Was M-1 Breakthrough your idea of competition? If you support it then you are causing shitty MMA to appear on my TV schedule, and that makes me angry.

Strikeforce is the only thing that currently resembles competition for the UFC, but even it is a sham. There are a few criteria for running a succesful MMA organization and SF almost has the 2 most important: running the business, and having a pool of fighters.

Unfortunately THERE AREN'T ENOUGH FIGHTERS TO SHARE ACROSS EVEN 2 ORGANIZATIONS IN MMA. Even the UFC barely has depth in more than 2 divisions, and as much as I loved Pride, it suffered from freak shows and a very shallow talent pool. It takes hundreds or thousands of amateur to produce a single quality pro, and the sport is just not big enough yet.

People like you hang on to this idea that somehow having multiple organizations just manufacturers fighters, which is just not true. The amateur and small time (CR, KOTC, hell even Bodog) circuits are farm organizations for the big leagues *nothing more*.

Strikeforce holding on to a few keystone fighters is not helping MMA at all - did you enjoy Mousasi's last fight? Why? Because it was fun to watch or because it was actually leading somewhere? It was a waste of my time, as will Fedor vs Rogers be.

I have been watching kickboxing and MMA for 16 years, I'm not interested in one off exciting fights, I want to see a fighter have the potential to grow in ANY direction. There isn't room for another organization operating at the same level as the UFC.


Scott Coker brought a soapbox cart to a NASCAR race, but unfortunately the podium has 3 places. Just because the UFC is privately held, doesn't mean all the analogies to NBA/NFL/MLB don't hold true - they do, you're just deluded.

One more time for the obstinate. MORE FIGHTERS = MORE PROMOTIONS.

If you can think of a way to concoct about 200 decent MMA fighters by next month, then I will agree Strikeforce should still exist. But that's impossible. Strikeforce should stick to women's MMA, or join the ranks of the smaller (and critically important) circuits, rather than muddy the waters at the top level.


I want to watch good fights AND have the *expectation* of future good fights to follow. The boxing model "who will he fight next??" is bullshit and outdated. The UFC is the closest thing you've got to a premiere league. Holding a few fighters outside of that league only slows the sport down.

not bad for free fights would've been better if don frye didn't puss out.

not that i'm defending kerr or anything because he probably would have lost anyway..but everyone seems to fail to realize that after mo picked him up to slam him, kerr's left arm was behind mo's head..when kerr landed on the ground,..his left arm was lifeless..kerr must have hurt his shoulder where he couldn't move it to defend properly when he landed..mo then went on to give him blows that knocked him out...take a look at it again

I'm with G Funk.... competition for the UFC is good.
People have to stop thinking of the UFC as a sport... it's compared to NFL, NBA etc. But those leagues are not privately owned. UFC is just a privately owned company who is corning the market right now. If LEGITIMATE competition comes in we should see improvements... like a ranking system, fighters who get paid more resulting in MUCH better fighters, fighters who actually train everyday/all day instead of training after work cuz they need to keep a job to pay bills.
I'd like to see a players association develope, giving ALL promotion companies a fair chance at having fighters in the top 5 come and fight for them. Then the best promotion company will grow based on it's ability to hold a card, not their ability to prevent fighters from fighting elsewhere.

Whats wrong with UFC nuthuggers like miles 9000000. Competition makes at all better for MMA a fans, ESPECIALLY UFC FANS!
Look at all the extra chit we are getting from the UFC now that they've had competition (since elite XC blew up, Affliction and now Strikeforce's recent super expansion.)

1: Airing most recent PPV cards on Spike w/ undercards that were previously un aired.

2: Occasional Free PPV events

3: More free Spike live fight nights

4: Network Deal (supposedly)

5: Putting on more events more often with more stacked cards

6: Expanding their rosters

7: More I cant think of at the moment

Come on people, real competition makes any service better on every scale!

haha m1 gets fedor to fight for them because they got fedor before ufc was even a global threat like they are now
and thatsparring session with mousasi was fake just like the last one fedor had with the asian whos 2 or 3 classes below fedor (his name escapes me right now)

C Sample has successfully trolled this thread

Perhaps people were confused by the term "sparring exhibition", as in, not a real fight. We will see the real Fedor fight later this fall. There will be no smiles, no easy get out of armbar situations, and there will be striking. Mousasi would have the tiniest of chances in real life.

Kerr didnt look that out of shape for 263. He did, however, look outclassed.

Not that he wouldn't have gotten his ass kicked anyway, but.....Didn't it look like Kerr took a dive? He gets taken down off a kick he was baited into (expected), he semi-turtles up (expected), but then he stops and turns right into a flury of punches. He is starting to get up @4:41 and then one second later, for seemingly no reason, he kind of rolls back to his side and starts eating punches.

I wouldn't put it past M-1 to ask a fighter to take a dive. But are they so collectivly fucking stupid that they would ask "The Smashed Machine" to take a dive....? I guess they don't want to have another Kimbo incident and see King Mo fighting his way onto TUF.

That whole card was garbage! Fedor seemed to be the only one taking the sparring match serious. Watch when gegard gets fedor in an arm bar and just lets him go while he smiles...Bullshit!!! The refs sucked and C. Sample is a tool!!!

I would root for Strikeforce, but the reality is MMA would be much better off if they just folded and the UFC bought them. Which is probably their long term plan anyway, just make their fighter roster look tasty enough, and they can cash out when the time is right.

UFC needs to go global asap, and get these M-1 jokers out of the picture. Watching Breakthrough was like going back in time 10 years (or maybe 15?).

M1 is the most unorganized, irresponsible, joke of a MMA Org out there right now. Mark Kerr looked like he was dead after 20 seconds. Obvioiusly he wasnt prepared, and M1 shouldn't have let him in there with King Mo. He is a killer. Don Fry was right not to fight for them.

Ben, please ban the C. Sample. I'll stop making fun of you.

You guys think M1 got the ring left to them in Affliction's will?

@C.Sample... Ummm, M1 is partially owned by Fedor. Where have you been? It's the reason he's not in the UFC, because White & Co. won't co-promote. That and Fedor's shenanigans.

LOL YALL ARE JUST JEALOUS M1 CAN GET FEDOR TO FIGHT FOR THEM AND UFC CANT

THEY EVEN GIVE FEDOR GOOD OPPONENTS LIKE MOUSASI

FEDOR STILL MADE HIM TAP THAT SHOWED ALOT OF HEART

FUCK YALL HATERS IMA DO ME, AND YOU CAN DO YOU

PEACE OUT BITCHES

I want my 5 minutes back.

I'm glad HDNet interrupted this for the shuttle launch, it was about 1000x cooler than this crap. M-1 needs to just go explode.

Nakamura literally picked apart Kheder in a way that would make Nate Diaz jealous.

P.S If Fedor and Mousasi actually fought id put my money on Mousasi.

I had no idea Daisuke Nakamura was on this card.

M1 showcases the entertainment values of one sided beatings.