sponsors

("Can we take that one over again? Andrei blinked and Rothwell wandered into the shot." Photo courtesy of CageToday.)

MMA Weekly reports that UFC and Affliction executives met late last month to build a formal partnership that would allow Affliction to return to the UFC as a major clothing sponsor and work with the UFC to create co-branded apparel. In exchange, Affliction would agree to cease operations as a fight promotion and allow the UFC to buy out several of their fighter contracts. Unfortunately, the détente began to fall apart after EliteXC's "Heat" show on October 4th, when Affliction's ads plugging Fedor's next fight made UFC executives feel that the deal wasn't being taken seriously.

On Monday, a conference call was held between UFC and Affliction execs in an attempt to resurrect the partnership. Details are sketchy, though MMA Weekly reports that the call quickly turned hostile, with Affliction co-founder Todd Beard at one point telling Lorenzo Fertitta "you've fucked with the wrong guy." So for now, it looks like Affliction is still shut out of the Octagon, and will continue to burn money as a fight promoter. Their next event, headlined by Fedor Emelianenko vs. Andrei Arlovski and co-promoted by Golden Boy, goes down January 24th at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

(It was either this or a picture of a beer bottle.)

Just two weeks after the UFC debuted its first big-name sponsor, with Harley Davidson taking the center of the Octagon at "Nemesis," MMAPayout reports that a sponsorship deal with Budweiser may be close to being finalized. From Adam Swift's report:

Negotiations reportedly began as part of the UFC's negotiations with CBS. Once the CBS deal stalled, conversations continued between the UFC, Budweiser, and Spike TV...UFC President Dana White has been adamant in recent media appearances that the company is on the verge of landing several blue chip sponsors. Budweiser, on the heels of Harley-Davidson, would certainly fit that bill and silence much of the criticism directed at the UFC for its failure to lure mainstream sponsors.

The collapse of the CBS deal is a gut-shot, to be sure, but a sponsorship from the King of Beers would be a fantastic consolation prize, considering that the UFC will remain ghettoized to some extent as long as its biggest sponsors are Xyience and Mickey's Malt Liquor. It's understandable that large corporations would want to take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to associating themselves with blood-sports, but there's no denying the UFC's reach among young men. On the other side of the coin, a Bud sponsor in the UFC's corner would probably give them more juice the next time they try to negotiate with a television network. As the biggest name in MMA, the UFC deserves Budweiser. Let EliteXC have Mickey's Big Mouth. As for the IFL? We're thinking Natty Light.

By the way, those Bud girls at the top of this post may look hot now, but in 20 years they'll look like this: