Blood.
Some MMA fans love it (perhaps a bit too much), while others consider it a necessary evil in a violent sport.
But for those in the media who are uneducated and unwilling to give the sport a chance, blood is just another reason to call the sport little more than “human cockfighting."
The UFC is looking to shed the human cockfighting label for good this weekend when they make their debut on FOX, airing a one-hour special event featuring a heavyweight title fight between Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos.
But fans have been left wondering why only one fight is eligible to make the broadcast, especially since a fight between lightweight contenders Clay Guida and Ben Henderson could result in the winner getting a crack at Frankie Edgar’s title.
Guida’s manager, John Fosco, said in a recent interview with MMAjunkie.com that the UFC would have preferred to have shown the fight if possible, but FOX decided against it.
But why?
According to Fosco, the head honchos at FOX thought that Guida would be unable to draw viewers, but is that really an issue at this point?
The main event with Velasquez and Dos Santos has been hyped and promoted to the point that fans would have only been talking about the main event regardless or who else was on the card, so Guida and Henderson would basically be expected to put on an exciting fight and nothing more, something that both men do almost every time they step into a cage.
The only reason to not put the Guida fight on the televised broadcast is fear.
Guida is a fighter who has been busted open pretty frequently throughout his career, and in a fight with a guy like Henderson, it seems even more likely that there will be a bit of blood flow.
Perhaps FOX is afraid of a bloodbath on the first card of their new sports franchise, and it makes sense from a business standpoint if they are.
This is the first fight card in a long-term deal with the UFC, and the first step in making the UFC into a sports franchise that rivals the NFLs and NBAs of the world is to change the public’s perception of the sport.
A three-round fight that ends with two guys covered in blood probably isn’t going to do much to change that perception.
You can make the argument that FOX knew what they were getting into when they decided to throw a combat sport on their network, but maybe it’s better for the sport as a whole if they do everything they can to avoid a public backlash immediately.
So while having to watch Guida and Henderson fight one of the most anticipated non-title bouts of the year on Facebook isn’t ideal, it may end up helping the growth of the sport in the long run.
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