Did anybody not see this coming? Sonnen and Silva get into fist-fight on set of TUF Brazil, Sonnen gets sucker punched by Team Wanderlei coach

Dana White wrote:

Wanderlei and Chael fought. Just today. They literally fought. While they were fighting one of Wanderlei’s guys sucker punched Chael. They went crazy, crazy shit happened there. We’re dealing with that right now too. … They literally fought today, it went on for awhile. It’s one of those things, it’s on a reality show, it’s good and it’s bad,” White said. “A fight didn’t need to break out between these two for people to be excited about this fight, because these two have been at each other’s throats.”

http://www.bjpenn.com/sonnen-silva-fist-fight-on-tuf-brazil-set-coach-jumps-in-and-sucker-punches-chael/

I was just getting ready to post it. you beat me to the punch. hahaha

But yeah that is some bullshit on wandy's team part if all of this is true of course. from what I read it sounds like Chael and wandy were arguing and maybe some light shoving then wandys coach threw a sucker punch at Chael and the fight got broken up. Either which way what wandys coach did was a bitch move plain and simple.

The only thing that really annoys me about this is that I can't shake this nagging feeling that Dana is just overhyping this and everything else about the show. Given the recent news that this TUF will only be available exclusively on Fight Pass and the fact that every time Dana describes this TUF he just spews out superlatives like "insane" and "crazy", I can't help but think this is just a case of Dana pushing Fight Pass.

Yeah... fuck fight pass.

Tuf on fight pass? thats a stupid idea. the role of tuf was that it put the word out on ufc and it still has that role. its not an entity of its own, its a tool of marketing. if they move it from mass's view it will die.

otherwise, i wonder who would win in a street fight between these two. something tells me that wandy would get the better of sonnen, just because he can go absolutely crazy for that one minute

I agree that TUF doesn't belong on Fight Pass, but I think Dana's moving it there as a sort of power play.
From what I've seen and heard about Fight Pass so far, it's not being received well. People are viewing it as unnecessary and nothing more than extra income for Dana and Co. Dana knows this, and he knows if people feel that way, they're not gonna buy it, especially with it's best offerings being weak overseas fight cards and a library of past fights that everybody's already seen. So Dana says "Fine. You don't want to buy Fight Pass? Fuck you, then. I'll take one of the most anticipated TUF's in recent memory and put that on Fight Pass and only on Fight Pass! And if you still won't buy it, I'll keep putting more and more high demand shit exclusively on Fight Pass until you do buy it!". Then he hypes the living Christ out of this TUF like it's the single greatest television event in history.
 
I for one unfortunately won't be viewing this TUF. I really want to see it, but I'm not going to get sucked into this bullshit. I personally hope they lose a boatload of money on this and never try anything like it again.

Agree with others. I would love to watch this season but I wont be paying extra $$$ to do so. maybe we might get lucky and some one on the site will be able to locate a different site we can watch the episodes on.


Side note: I hope sonnen stomps a hole in wandy. In my opinion the only real aggressor I have seen between these two is wandy. Wandy called him a chump and so on when they were in that car. wandy was the one who got in sonnens face at a body builders event and now we have one of wandys coaches taking a sucker punch at sonnen. Very bad form on wandys part.

Yeah, I'm actually rooting for Sonnen in this one. Somehow, Wandy has managed to make Sonnen look like the good guy.

Just an FYI - Again this isn't the main TUF it's TUF Brazil. Im pretty sure its going on fight pass 1) because they do want to hype fightpass but 2) i dont think there was a US network that was going to go down there and air it this time.

Gecko wrote:

I was just getting ready to post it. you beat me to the punch. hahaha

But yeah that is some bullshit on wandy's team part if all of this is true of course. from what I read it sounds like Chael and wandy were arguing and maybe some light shoving then wandys coach threw a  sucker punch at Chael and the fight got broken up. Either which way what wandys coach did was a bitch move plain and simple.

That's tamer than the rumor that was going around yesterday.  Yesterday morning the rumor was that Wandy took a swing at Chael and Chael ducked and double legged him.  When Chael was on top of Wandy Andre Amade punched Chael in the back of the head.  Who knows though.

FistK wrote:

Just an FYI - Again this isn't the main TUF it's TUF Brazil.  Im pretty sure its going on fight pass 1) because they do want to hype fightpass but 2) i dont think there was a US network that was going to go down there and air it this time.

I know it's not the "real" TUF, but I still don't see why they couldn't have put it on FS1. They did for the previous season of TUF Brazil, and the current TUF Nations is available on FS1. But yet this highly anticipated season of TUF Brazil isn't being showed on FS1, but exclusively on the UFC's new money-making venture?
Very convenient, I must say.

Quote :

If you haven’t signed up for UFC Fight-Pass yet, you might want to do so before the UFC’s March 8 event in London.
Set to be headlined by a light-heavyweight bout between Alexander Gustafsson and Jimi Manuwa, UFC Fight Night 37 goes down from the 02 Arena in London, England. The event, will be free to UFC Fight-Pass subscribers and will only air on-line, in the U.S., using the UFC’s new subscription based service.
The full UFC Fight Night 37 lineup is as follows:
 
MAIN CARD: (3 p.m. ET)
Alexander Gustafsson vs. Jimi Manuwa
Melvin Guillard vs. Michael Johnson
Ian McCall vs. Brad Pickett
Omari Akhmedov vs. Gunnar Nelson
 
PRELIMINARY CARD: (12:30 p.m. ET)
Cyrille Diabate vs. Ilir Latifi
Luke Barnatt vs. Mats Nilsson
Brad Scott vs. Claudio Henrique da Silva
Roland Delorme vs. Davey Grant
Igor Araujo vs. Danny Mitchell
Louis Gaudinot vs. Phil Harris

http://www.bjpenn.com/10-bout-lineup-official-for-ufc-fight-pass-only-fight-night-37-event/

I really don't like where this is going. I've always been a Dana supporter, but he's really pissing me off with Fight Pass.

well that really sucks I wanted to watch that card too.   

I am with Trigger. I've always been a Dana supporter.
Although he's done enough crap in the last year or two to be done with him.

There is not one possible fight or lineup of fights that would make me buy fight pass..... just on pure principle.

^^^
Agree 100%. That's exactly how I feel. It's about principle at this point.

Is this the beginning of the end of free UFC on TV?

It may be the beginning of the end of me giving a shit about MMA.
Too many divisions, and cards spread across too many networks subscription feeds, whatever, shitty judging, shitty rules, boring "fighters"....

My life is getting too busy for my heart to stay in something that gets shittier every year. There was a time where it got better every year.

It's to the point where I can find any fight online at some point. If I can save some cash and wait a few days to watch a fight, I have no problem any more.
Many years ago when my circle of friends was MMA fans, it was maybe different. However, almost everyone I know has moved on now save for a few friends I don't talk much with any more as we live in different states.

I am sure the numbers will show that the MMA fan base is growing. However, from personal experience, I know several times more people who've given the middle finger to MMA than are newcommer fans.

I just don't like how flooded it's become. I remember someone on here a few years ago saying they liked it better when there was only like 6 events a year. I don't agrre with that, but I certainly don't need something like 2 PPVs, 3 Fight Nights, and two TUF finales all in the span of one month. All of the cards suffer in this situation becuase they're so thin on talent. On top of that, who has time for this many cards? I make it a point to watch the PPVs on Saturdays, and I'll catch a Fight Night on the weekend if I remember it's on, but I just don't have to time to watch one on a Wednesday or some shit like that.
With that said, I do want to watch the good cards. There are definitely fight cards that aren't even PPVs that I look forward to. The problem I have with Fight Pass is that some of the good cards are being put on there, and it's being done as a power play to force our hands in purchasing it. Why can't Dana and Co. just take all their shit cards and put them on Fight Pass? Because they know those cards are shit, and putting just them on Fight Pass won't change the minds of people like you and me at all.

Chrom,
Any way to merge these two threads? They've pretty much become the same discussion at this point, and I don't want to have to keep re-writing the same thing, cuz my posts are usually long as shit. lol

http://www.mmastandard.net/t2605-did-anybody-not-see-this-coming-sonnen-and-silva-get-into-fist-fight-on-set-of-tuf-brazil-sonnen-gets-sucker-punched-by-team-wanderlei-coach#22541

White's greed is going to screw this whole thing up so bad that people simply won't be able to identify with more than half the fighters that that UFC has fighting. I'm not going to pay extra cash to see this crap I'd much rather watch the walking dead.

the cards have been getting more and more watered down but that is to be expected when ufc has cornered the market and mma has gain such popularity that everyone and their mother wants to be a fighter. even myself, i have trouble following who is who and sometimes hardly care about an event. and i am deeply "in love" with martial arts.
so, the problem is in the way they are marketing this thing. as i said, TUF, in the beginning was a tool to make mma a widely recognized sport. it is still that, its role is to make regular fans become more familiar with the sport and the fighters; making people search deeper for the program and then pay extra will not work.
same with the low-end cards. there is a card almost every week and the only way for people to watch them is to "throw" them into their face; free and prime-time.
bad business led by unrealistic view of the state of the sport. Dana and co think that the sport has grown so much that its fans will follow it whereever it goes.

Yeah I think you're spot on about Dana thinking if he says jump, the fans will say "how high?" without question. If he thinks this shit was going to go unquestioned he really is mistaken.

I wish Fight Pass was just used as a carrier of "feeder" content-based programming. By that I mean Fight Pass could be a program for the UFC to showcase its upcoming talent (sort of like Strikeforce Challenger Series), and leave the established and developed fighters to fight on the PPVs and such. Of course, that probably wouldn't make much money, so it won't happen. I'm just saying it would be nice.

I don't think a ton has changed with the frequency of cards the only difference now is they are all UFC cards instead of 1 UFC card a month, 1 Strikeforce card a month, 1 WEC card a month, etc.

But now since the UFC has twice as many fighters as they used to because they absorbed those orgs the cards are definitely more watered down because they have so many more fighters.
The only difference now is the watered down cards used to be called "Strikeforce 15" and "WEC 11" instead of UFC Fight Night 10 lol