Today, I had to watch as my son laid in a hospital bed after getting dumped directly onto his head during the final play of his indoor touch football game. If you have kids yourself who play contact sports, than you can imagine that there is nothing scarier that you will have to go through as a parent.
Luckily, he only sustained a minor concussion.
After having such a bad day, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the evening than to watch the Strikeforce fights on CBS (which I would normally do with my son) with a large group of close personal friends.
Some were regular MMA and UFC fans. Others had only ever heard of it. This mix proved to be quite useful in my own experiment to see just how the fans, both new and old, would react.
As I sat there offering up my expertise to the newer, non-typical fans, I found the comments to be the most amusing part of the evening. Listening to the various observations offered by my many friends proved to be quite telling indeed.
Allow me to offer up some of the best quotes of the evening as they pertain to each of the individual fights and fighters:
Fabricio "Vaicavalo" Werdum vs. Antonio "Bigfoot" Silva
The Old Fan: “Silva is a monster! Look at the size of the man. What’s with his shorts falling apart?”
The New Fan: “That ugly dude has a massive jaw. How the heck could anyone knock out a guy with a head that big?”
Gegard "The Dreamcatcher" Mousasi vs. Rameau Thierry "The African Assassin" Sokodjou
The Old Fan: “Gegard is awesome! He is an amazing striker. This is going to be the best fight of the night!”
The New Fan: “I like that guys hair.”
Jason "Mayhem" Miller vs. Jake Shields for the vacant Middleweight Championship
The Old Fan: “Shields has amazing jiu-jitsu and Mayhem is nuts. This fight is going to be awesome!”
The New Fan: “This is soooooo boring. They should just get a room. Wake me up for the main event.”
Fedor "The Last Emperor" Emelianenko vs. Brett "The Grim" Rogers
The Old Fan: “Fedor is totally unstoppable. Still though, Rogers might knock him out.”
The New Fan: “It’s like Rocky vs. the Russian, only instead of Rocky, it’s Mr. T”
The “Really” New Fan: “Which one is Fedor?”
At the end of the evening, I asked the group of newer fans if they liked the fights and if they would ever consider watching it again. Not surprisingly, they unanimously answered: “No. Absolutely not.”
In your opinion, was this show a success or a failure? If the idea was to attract a new demographic of fan, I personally have to think it was a huge failure—despite the fact that I enjoyed it very much.
The biggest failure in my opinion had to have been the Shields vs. Miller fight. Miller did an excellent job of defending Shields' superior jiu-jitsu and Shields was relentless in his pursuit of Miller. The down side was that it didn't matter if someone followed the sport regularly or not—this fight was boring. Miller at least offered some excitement, but overall, this fight was just too long and provided too little.
Definitely not a great lead in to the main event.
Thank you to all of my friends for helping to put a smile on my face on an otherwise dreadful day.
James Ryan
http://www.coachjamesryan.com
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