With deals with CBS and Showtime, the latter a major shareholder, Elite XC had the exposure other failed challengers to the Ultimate Fighting Championship lacked, but lost more than $55 million in its two years of operation.
And now, thanks to incompetence, it's all gone. Elite XC, despite producing seven of the 10 most-watched MMA matches in U.S. history, will fold by the end of this week. (My MMAJunkie colleague Steve Sievert has the story first reported on GracieFighter.com.) What this means is Robbie Lawler, the promotion's best pound-for-pound male fighter in my view, won't defend his middleweight title against Joey Villasenor Nov. 8 in Reno, Nev. It also means Gina Carano vs. Cristiane Cyborg, easily the most anticipated MMA fight behind Randy Couture-Brock Lesnar, won't happen unless UFC president Dana White has a change of heart over female fighters.
The promotion signed its death warrant with the controversy surrounding Seth Petruzelli's 14-second knockout of the inflated Kimbo Slice. The way the whole thing was handled, from Slice getting paid not to back out in light of Ken Shamrock's injury (Shamrock should not have been fighting to begin with), to Petruzelli's allegations that he was bribed to trade punches with Elite XC's meal ticket, was a joke. The company's shady denials apparently sunk any hope of a bailout from Showtime.
Good riddance. Elite XC was an absolute farce. Their CBS broadcasts were plastic with all involved drunk on Kool Aid. Gus Johnson is a very good football and basketball commentator who took jiu-jitsu to help him study the MMA world, but came across like a shrieking idiot when he compared Petruzelli's win to Rocky over Apollo — this after he and his broadcast partners pumped up Kimbo as a stand-up guy when in fact he demanded money not to pull out. The UFC's lone two competitors, Affliction and Strikeforce, better digest this and take it as a lesson on how not to do things. In the latter's case, they have a graveyard shift TV deal with NBC and would be wise to continue building a program while avoiding the big bang too soon.
I wish White would open the UFC to women. Carano and Cyborg deserve better. As Yahoo! Sports' Dave Meltzer wrote, Carano's match with Kelly Kobold on that Slice undercard added more new viewers than any MMA match on television in the States White may want to study that and reconsider, but it appears as if impressive welterweight champion Jake Shields would be welcomed into the UFC fold. I'd love to see Shields against Georges St. Pierre, B.J. Penn or Anderson Silva if his game continues to develop at a rapid rate.
Meanwhile, you have to watch White's take on Kimbo vs. Petruzelli. Not only is he dead on, he's very colorful and most entertaining.
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