San Francisco Chronicle refuses to cover MMA and UFC and UFC President bashes em

It should have been covered, they sold all of their seats, they can't help it if spectators only needed the edge of them.

 

The Chronicle actually had a big front page article in their sports section on Fedor Emelineko when Strikeforce had a show June 26th in San Jose. So to say they don't cover MMA is correct but to say they never did an article on MMA is incorrect.

No, the UFC did not advertise the fights in the Chron.

Sure, the Chron is not read by a lot of young people newspaper wise but they are read by a lot of young people on their website sfgate.com. Millions of readers go there daily to visit and know about what's going on in the SF Bay Area.

I agree with the folks that said the Chron did a disservice by not talking about the event since it was a huge event in their area.

 

Well done, both of you.

 

I don't have any idea what happened with this, but I can tell you one thing with certainty: We barely have enough people at the Chronicle to cover the regular pro beats. When I was taken off the A's and put on the Sharks' playoffs, one of our columnists went on a three-city A's road trip to do the beat work. When they couldn't find anyone to cover for me on an already scheduled day off last week, same thing, a columnist covered.

As someone notes, the other Bay Area papers are all part of a chain, and they have quite a few more reporters to draw from. We have no back ups. We have no GA reporters. We have no real take-out writers. It's the summer, some of the few people we do have are on vacation.

I'd be amazed if anyone in my office was rude unless someone else was rude first. And judging from this tweet, that doesn't seem entirely unlikely.

 

Dana White is an unmitigated asshole. Always has been, always will be.

But, that being said, UFC isn't going anywhere, anytime soon. Not with the way they're flawlessly marketing their product. (OK, because of White I guess it isn't entirely flawless).

They've built up a huge crop of up and coming superstars, single handidly changed their image in the last few years based on the strength of their reality show along (They even got an SI cover a little while back, something I never though I'd see) and, if you do watch and are into that kind of thing, you can see the beauty of it from a sports perspective.

I said all that to say this. There is, absolutely, positively, no excuse for not having some sort of something in the paper on this.

If you're short staffed, that's fine. I understand. But what took priority over this? Why couldn't you have done some sort of feature before hand? Why ignore it entirely?

If it's because of something White or the other PR people said, OK, well, that's what being a professional is all about. Even if they were dicks, you have a job to do and by not covering an event this big (And, like it or not, it's a big event), you're doing your coverage area a disservice.

Your readers might not be hardcore MMA fans, only you can judge that. But, I know if this happened in my neck of the woods and the so-called local sports leader ignored it, flat out, I'd question how serious they are in their coverage and whether or not picking up their paper is in my best interest.

The point is, if you try to proclaim yourself the No. 1 source for sports in your area, you better back it up. And unless you can show me what was going on that was more important in that area that day, then you've got to admit you dropped the ball. Plain and simple.

 

Couldn't you have said the same thing about poker a couple of years ago?

 

To an extent, yes. But poker as a sport took off because anyone could play it online and it was new and fresh. The novelty has since faded, to an extent, for two reasons. One, all anyone gives a shit about is the WSOP. Two, poker, even in its prime, was always about the sport and not about the individual poker players. How many poker athletes can you name?

Off the top of my head, I can think of four or five and I don't even know them by name, just face. And I'm a guy who watched Poker After Dark for a while.

Now, UFC is a different beast. First, it's been steadily gaining steam for about five years now, I'd say since the first TUF Finale unveiled Forrest Griffin vs Stephan Bonnar onto the world.

UFC did two things really well in their expansion. They built a brand with solid competition on their TUF series and they then used that show to build up both new and already existing stars.

That's why I don't see it fading away any time soon. In their last two PPVs, they've put together epic main events that couldn't have been any more similar yet any more different. The main attractions went from big guy Brock Lesnar to ferocious Anderson Silva.

Those stars cater to two different types of fans and will likely only fight once or twice a year so, when they do fight, those are guaranteed blockbusters. Add in Griffin, Ortiz, Couture, Penn, Hughes and Mir and you've got six other legit main event PPVers. That's a total of eight legit stars. As long as you keep adding new stars, it's going to keep growing or will, if nothing else, stay the same for the foreseeable future.

 

None, because poker is not an athletic activity. It's mentally challenging at their level, but not athletic.

The players are TV-made entertainment celebrities.

 

Re: San Francisco Chronicle refuses to cover MMA and UFC and UFC President bashe

Y'all straighten up, guests will be arriving soon thanks to Doyel.

http://bit.ly/8ZfQ2c

 

Can't disagree with the basic premise of the article. Sure, White is a bit of an ass but, man, he really gives off the vibe that he cares. It's kind of the Mark Cuban vibe. If you're a fan of the Mavericks, you love having a passionate owner there to back you up. If you like any other team, you likely hate him and wish he would shut up.

I was the same way. Before I got into watching the UFC, I thought he was a loudmouth idiot that ruined what little credibility the UFC had. Now that I've gotten into the sport, I love his outlandish behavior and look forward to reading his reaction to hot button topics (I.E. Lesnar's post-fight meltdown after his win against Mir, Anderson Silva's piss poor win a couple months ago).

White is an acquired taste but for many MMA fans, myself included, he's the perfect fit.

 

Yeah, so, UFC 118 is in Boston this weekend.

It was A1 in the Globe yesterday and has been on the sports front all week.
It is on the front page of the Herald and has been covered all week.
It is the cover story of this week's Boston Phoenix.

Now, do you think Joe Sullivan or any of the other editors involved are actually fans of the UFC? Probably not. But if an event like this is pulling through your town, damn right you cover the hell out of it regardless of your personal opinion of the sport.

 

Ding.