Quote:
Originally Posted by fredr123
That's where The Ultimate Fighter TV show comes in. TUF gives you a chance to get to know the fighters a little bit. Rome was riffing on this today (I think). By the time one of these guys shows up at a PPV or in some other promotion, you can go "Oh, yah. I remember him. He's the one that peed on the other guy while he slept." Or "Oh, yah. He's the guy that eats that seaweed diet."
That kind of character is completely acceptable in my books. If you're hinting at guys coming out with capes and luchador masks then, for the sake of all who care about the sport, I hope you are wrong.
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Thats what I'm saying will happen, probably not with the UFC which to me has done a fabulous job of promoting itself, except the the Ortiz/White feud which to me was pretty transparent.
But somewhere along the line some of these smaller organizations that are desparate for their own piece of the market are going to find a way to meld Pro Wrestling and Mixed Martial arts into a character based/story based theme with Legit fights.
Years ago the WWE tried to do it with a series of toughman contests, which featured wrestlers legitimately boxing each other, with fake angry interviews and story lines. Unfortunately for Vince, he had already decided on a winner in Doctor Death Steve Williams who was a legitimate tough guy. Vince was banking on Williams winning the thing and pushing him to the moon in a way to legitimize sports entertainment, only to see his hand picked champion knocked out in his first fight to a scrub wrestler named Billy Gunn.