• by J Mitchell McMahon , July 22, 2008

Punch comes to shove in the cross-media onslaught of mixed martial arts

Thanks to CBS, even your mother knows Kimbo Slice. No? Then she somehow missed the network's promotional juggernaut launching the street fighter into iconic status as the face card of mixed martial arts, the blood sport that's caught fire in America. Guess she didn't download Slice's gruesome fistfights, still circulating on YouTube, or pick up an ESPN The Magazine with Slice's mug on the cover. Let's hope she doesn't know him from his former sponsor, RealityKings, the pornographers that run such warm and fuzzy sites as inthevip.com and MILF Hunter.

Hoping to tap into the 18-to-34 demographic (hereafter referred to as the Dude Demographic), the Tiffany network is prepared to bloody its geriatric hands. The former network of Mary Tyler Moore and Ed Murrow featured Kimbo on EliteXC Primetime, its first mixed martial arts (MMA) broadcast. For starters, XC stands for extreme cagefighting. Produced by CBS Entertainment, rather than CBS Sports, EliteXC ended a decade-long absence of combat sports on network prime. The spectacle - rife with a female knockout, sultry dancers, Busta Rhymes rap and the cartilaginous eruption of a lime-size cauliflower ear - landed in more than 6 million living rooms.

Dude, Where's My Demo?

Indeed, the battle over the Dude Demographic, never a contest devoid of risky maneuvers, has gotten downright gory. Even CBS chairman Sumner Redstone expressed concern about MMA, saying, "I don't like the sport," and he wondered aloud whether it's "socially responsible" for network TV to broadcast it free. Take that, media watchdogs.

After watching SPIKE TV's more established MMA broadcast, The Ultimate Fighter, consistently earn good ratings, CBS inked the deal to air four episodes of EliteXC this summer and fall. Now on primetime network TV, the billion-dollar combat industry has evolved into a formidable cash cow.

MMA is not the renegade Jean-Claude Van Damme blood sport its marketers would have you believe; but it's not boxing, and it's not professional wrestling, either. CBS announcer Gus Johnson called it "artistic, cerebral, vicious and violent." He might have added gruesome, sensational and tied to commerce unlike any other sport. By combining lifestyle with sport, MMA is striving to become the ultimate cross-branding entertainment and sports industry. When successfully promoted, MMA fuses sports, consumerism and the voyeuristic qualities of sensational video games into a total lifestyle brand. The commercial sponsors for EliteXC - Burger King, Bud Light, Grand Theft Auto and Rockstar Energy Drink - give away its target. It's fairly obvious the suburbs are in the crosshairs.

Landing CBS was a surprising coup. After all, EliteXC is just one of several competing MMA promotional units in an increasingly crowded space, and powerful names are joining the fray. Donald Trump has backed Affliction, an MMA-themed apparel company that has entered the promotional sphere in a bold manner. Mark Cuban's HDNet airs the weekly Inside MMA. Not everyone is thriving, of course. Promotional brand International Fight League has lost more than $31 million since debuting in 2006. Despite IFL's initial presence on MyNetworkTV and a 2008 deal with Fox Sports Net, it has canceled its August promotion, fueling rumors of an inevitable fold. NBC airs the anemic Strikeforce, a 52-week series, every Sunday in the wee hours of the morning. Critics say EliteXC is the least credentialed of all of these, that it lacks legitimate fighters and that it promotes a cartoonish fraud as the face of MMA in the person of Kimbo Slice.

Home Slice

The CBS debut of EliteXC did not, of course, live up to its own hype, and despite excellent ratings, many said the show made a mockery of MMA. "Mixed martial arts didn't put its best foot forward," said UFC president Dana White in an ESPN interview. "What happened on CBS was horrendous." With the exception of MMA apologists, like George Willis of the New York Post, both the sports media and the cultural police paused for a universal cringe. Nonetheless, the show earned better ratings than Game 5 of the NHL's Stanley Cup Finals. That the NHL's marquee event, a contest dating back to 1926 in North America, couldn't compete with CBS's cagefighting show certainly gives one pause.

The main event was a coming out party for Kimbo Slice, a 34-year-old street brawler who became a YouTube sensation - videos showed the fully bearded, barrel-chested, gold-toothed bare-knuckler wrecking one pathetic Floridian after another in back yards and alleys. CBS served him a tomato can named James Thompson, who had lost seven of his past nine matches. It was only Slice's third professional fight, and though he prevailed, he looked amateurish, out of shape and, incriminating for a sport seeking legitimacy, unskilled. Perhaps most damning: The telecast was mind-numbingly dull. Throughout the first 80 minutes, there was less than four minutes of live competition.

To make matters worse for CBS, when its girl fight aired at at 10 p.m., SPIKE TV was showing a free brawl between two of its most legitimate and famous fighters, Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell and Wanderlei "The Axe Murderer" Silva. After a jaw-dropping orgy of unfathomable blood, guts and violence, Liddell prevailed. This fight removed any doubt as to what lies in the hearts and minds of top MMA guys. Liddell and Silva endured punishment that could be rivaled by a car crash. How bad was it? If it had been a video game, I would have turned it off. As sport, it was impossible to turn away.

Now, about Thompson's ear. He entered the ring resembling a CGI-created ogre plucked from the movie 300. Fortunately for Slice, Thompson's punches are so slow and telegraphed he seems trapped in one of those nightmares where you can't move your arms. Which is perfect for Slice, the most over-hyped brawler in America since Philo Beddoe in Every Which Way But Loose. There's an unwritten rule to bullying: Never fight a smaller man, a prettier man, or a better man. If you win, you beat an accountant. If you lose, you lost to an accountant. So pick a big, lousy, menacing guy. Stomp him, and 6 million uninformed viewers will say, "Damn, Kimbo is bad!"

But Kimbo, the poor bastard, who's just trying to make a living (he's no convict, and he's actually a surprisingly nice guy, married and supporting kids), did not show himself to be the real thing and seems unlikely to survive against the top MMA brass. The tomato can rag-dolled him early, but in the third round, Slice landed several flush blows, finally giving the fans what they had come for: an ear in two pieces. Mercifully, that was that, because Thompson was virtually out on his feet. Only Willis - the New York Post writer, who, two days after the debacle, was not only still writing about the fight, but suggested Slice's backers point him to boxing and market him as the next Mike Tyson - saw anything redeemable in the spectacle. But how Willis sees shades of Mike Tyson, once the 20-year-old heavyweight champion of the world and arguably the most ferocious puncher in pugilist history, in a 34-year-old YouTube fraud is a mystery.

Battle Royale

Ultimate Fighting Championship, owned by Zuffa Inc., is thus far the most popular, legitimate and successful MMA brand. It has the most top-rated fighters - though in the absence of a single sanctioning body, consolidated rankings are fleeting. In just over a decade, UFC has promoted 87 pay-per-view telecasts; its topper broke the million-buy mark.
UFC's Ultimate Fighter is a weekly reality show for SPIKE TV, and it follows the elimination formula used by other reality shows. The Saturday night 10 p.m. presence also bolsters UFC's pay-per-view events and provides a steady advertising revenue stream from companies hungry for the Dude Demographic. In 2008, UFC landed several blue-chip sponsors, including Anheuser Busch, whose Bud Light is now the official beer of UFC. If you drink too much Bud Light watching UFC on SPIKE, you can pound a few Rockstars, the official energy drink of the UFC, before hopping on your Harley Davidson, the official motorbike of UFC. If that doesn't work, hang out and play some Grand Theft Auto, or play with the new UFC action figures. Zuffa has also signed partnership deals with THQ to develop a suite of video games. No consumer stone has been left unturned.

White, the UFC president, hosts Ultimate Fighter, lording over the fights like a benevolent dictator with a cult of 12 supercharged tough kids. The show, now in its 10th season, follows a proven formula that's irresistible to the fickle Dude Demo. The UFC throws a troupe of emerging professional fighting prospects into a shared Real World-esque living space, divides them into teams, and over the next eight drama-building weeks, lets them fight. Winners stay, losers go home. The show even employs the standard Apprentice exile shot, but instead of a limo on Madison Avenue, it's a Hummer in a suburb. Fighters are coached by two marquee UFC fighters, typically bitter rivals, who fight one another after the series.

In addition to his marketing prowess, White is a pretty intimidating fellow himself. Over 6 feet tall, shaved bald, gruff and often engaged in some tough-talking dispute, White has become the most recognizable figure in all of MMA. Unlike the ridiculous and frightening Vince McMahon (he did nearly kick Bob Costas' ass in an interview once), White comes across as a pretty cool cat, charming, level-headed and fallible. The UFC owes much of its success to him, the promotional face and the intellectual motor that's been running UFC for a decade.

A mastermind of hype, White has proved he can sell vapor. Case in point: Several years ago, his ongoing feud with Tito Ortiz, likely the most recognizable MMA fighter in the game, boiled over. They agreed to a sanctioned boxing match. White, a former boxer, aired a two-hour dramatic build-up on SPIKE TV primetime in which he trained, sparred, received sanctioning from Nevada State Athletic Commission and gave detailed exposition. (White had formerly been Ortiz's manager. Ortiz, no dummy, got wind of the pay-per-view revenue and demanded to be paid like a top boxer.) The show was a compelling build-up, fighter versus suit. In the end, Tito didn't show, so there was no competition. It's difficult to imagine a more perverse betrayal of a fan base, yet UFC lost little momentum.

Among UFC's rivals, the Donald Trump-backed Affliction Clothing is a serious foe now that the apparel company has crossed over into the promotional realm. Its July card was stacked with marquee fighters and big checks and backed by the ubiquitous Trump logo. Its debut event, "Banned," was headlined by the world's top heavyweight, the Russian Fedor Emelianenko, the unofficial baddest man in MMA, and by No. 3 ranked Tim Sylvia, a former two-time UFC champion.

UFC and EliteXC anticipated Affliction's entry, banning any fighter from wearing Affliction apparel at their events. UFC scheduled a major fight on SPIKE TV for the same date, hoping to steal some thunder, just as they did with the CBS telecast.

Cover to Cover

For a sport that teetered on the brink of extinction 10 years ago - it was banned in every state in the union at one point, and John McCain called it "human cockfighting" - the meteoric ascent of MMA into mainstream media is astonishing. MMA figures have graced the covers of ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated in the past year. Richard Sandomir, the New York Times boxing correspondent, has written features about MMA. The Post's Willis frequently covers it. Yahoo has launched an MMA section, and ESPN has begun to show highlights on SportsCenter. Barnes & Noble carries several magazines dedicated to MMA. And there are even books: memoirs penned by Chuck Liddell (Iceman: My Fighting Life), Tito Ortiz (This Is Gonna Hurt: The Life of a Mixed Martial Arts Champion), Matt Hughes (Made in America: The Most Dominant Champion in UFC History) and Randy Couture (Wrestling for Fighting: The Natural Way).

MMA events can be viewed on CBS, SPIKE TV (weekly), HDNet (24 live events in 2008) and pay-per-view (87 Ultimate Fighting Championships at last count). UFC pay-per-view events sold 5.2 million buys in 2006 and
4.8 million in 2007. That's about double the PPV figures of professional wrestling, and on par with boxing.

To explain the popularity of MMA, many journalists use inaccurate comparisons with boxing, giving false homage to "that dying sport." Boxing and MMA share similarities - each is mano-a-mano, the object is to dismantle your opponent in a closed-in space in timed rounds - but that's about it. MMA didn't evolve from boxing. The sport itself is more closely related to the style of ultimate fighting that Bruce Lee wrote about in his Tao of Jeet Kune Do: namely, whatever works. It combines wrestling, boxing, muay-thai and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Most of the top athletes have wrestling and mixed martial arts pedigrees and are not terribly good strikers. If you are a good striker, your opponent will most likely tackle you, deploying choke holds and leg-breaking tactics in hopes of forcing a "tapout."

Ironically, MMA has proved safer than boxing. Thanks to shorter fights, incidents of cranial trauma are a fraction of those in boxing. Ears fare better in boxing, noses in MMA. Boxing bouts are more likely to end in knockouts. As Laila Ali said after knocking out an MMA fighter, "There ain't no tapping in boxing." As such, MMA has a far greater degree of parity. It's not that fighters lack skills, but with all the holds available, a man can go from muddling his opponent into ground beef one moment to submitting to an arm bar the next (or not, and having that arm broken).

Boxing enables the virtual infallibility of superstars like Floyd Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya. MMA has a revolving cast of beaten stars. The top -grossing MMA PPV event in 2007 pitted Tito Ortiz against Chuck Liddell and sold more than a million PPV buys. Their combined record was 36-11 with 13 knockouts. Oscar and Floyd's combined record was 73-4 with 55 knockouts (this fight sold about 2 million PPV buys).

Perhaps these two sports differ most in the boardroom. MMA has dynamic marketing potential; it's a modern-day technological billboard that carries a lifestyle concept. Boxing has been unable to outgrow itself: It remains merely a sport, two men fighting before 20,000 spectators a few times a year. Boxing is still strong as boxing, but it's a lousy vehicle for the type of hybrid brand-marketing pioneered by Madison Avenue to play to the unbridled consumerism of today.

Boxing emerged from an impoverished, hungry and proud America, giving youths and thugs a sanctuary in which to hone a craft. MMA, to the contrary, began in a time of prosperity. It's not necessarily the fighters who are affluent (though karate and jiu-jitsu lessons are indeed costly). It's the Dude Demographic, which, despite rough economic times, still wants its Grand Theft Auto, its Rockstar Energy Drink and its badass skull-and-bones Affliction T-shirts. The sports that can deliver the message that conspicuous consumption is cool will thrive.

Mixed Martial Marketing

This sort of cross-platform, brand-before-substance phenomenon isn't new, not even to sports. Michael Jordan paved the way with Space Jam (a commercial disguised as a film) and a billion-dollar apparel logo, and MJ was a pretty good athlete. Tiger Woods isn't just a golfer, he's a lifestyle: the Tao of Tag Heuer, Accenture asset, Chrysler man. This sporting-event-as-shopping-mall trend is well-served by mixed martial arts. MMA fighter David Wright has his own VitaminWater, just like 50 Cent. If nothing else, MMA is a marketing tool that has undeniable appeal for youths seeking identity through commerce.

MMA's roots can be found not in the boxing ring, but in the rise of extreme sports. Consider the NBC- and MTV-operated PepsiCo Mountain Dew Sports Tour. The Action Sports Tour targets a similar demographic as MMA, and it's a gold mine for affinity marketing and sponsorship partnerships. As Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music and Logo Group, put it, "MTV pioneered the marriage of music, sports and lifestyle back in the early 1990s. By joining forces with NBC Sports, we'll be giving our audience the chance to experience a next-generation sports tour that covers it all." Sponsors include Panasonic, Toyota, Right Guard, Wendy's, Sony PlayStation and Verizon, all lining up for a spot in the cross-platform-marketing bonanza.

American sports have long been a mirror in which we can admire our cherished features and endless possibilities. Like the arts, they're cultural barometers of the American experience. As the republic has evolved - and it has done so more abruptly over the past two decades than ever before - our sports have adapted. Genius marketers have helped convert America into a fortified shopping mall, a consumer state domestically and a militarized bully abroad. A massive 65-year suburban sprawl has transformed the open frontier into an asphalted network of track homes, Jamba Juices, Starbucks, Blockbusters and Wal-Marts. At its worst, corporate America gets accused of unfurling a soulless suburban landscape. Its overseers have long controlled the flow of our food, news, health care, national security, and now, our entertainment and sports. Therefore, the sports we see will increasingly be the un-sports. If a sport can't deliver a suite of corporate offerings, it must be dying.

The people are getting what they want, according to CBS: bloody, unskilled violence, Busta Rhymes, an aging bully with a gold tooth, a censored pornography sponsor, cagefighting, energy drinks and tough-looking shirts. Every marketer covets the crown jewel of our consumer state, the Dude Demographic, and MMA is a hella-badass way in.