Couture vs. Toney Taught Us More About MMA Fans Than It Did About MMA
by Brian Mayes on Aug 31, 2010 5:21 AM EDT
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Let us turn the clock back to May 27, 2006. At the time, your humble correspondent had been watching MMA as a casual fan for roughly eight months, drawn in by the second season of "The Ultimate Fighter" reality show. I was now drawn in by something far more fascinating than anything I had ever seen on Spike TV – Royce Gracie, the man I had watched dominate so many big, powerful guys on the old grainy VHS tapes I bought for a dollar each on clearance from my local video store, was about to fight the most dominate UFC welterweight champion of all time, Matt Hughes.
I cannot explain the palpable excitement I felt in the lead up to that fight, and then the tension I felt while watching it. Deep down, in my heart of hearts, I think I knew Matt Hughes would win. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind – that guy I saw on those VHS tapes, he just ran over everyone! He was SO good! How was Matt Hughes going to beat this guy? And then I saw some training footage of Royce at the Fairtex Gym on the Countdown show, and he was training head kicks. And I was sold. "Royce Gracie is taller than Matt Hughes. He’s just going to kick him in the head, then jump on him and submit him." That was my line of thinking going into the fight.
Photo by Tracy Lee via Cage Writer
Of course, we all know what transpired that night. Matt Hughes took Royce Gracie down, nearly ripped his arm off, and then took his back and pounded him out. He totally dominated him. It wasn’t even remotely competitive. At the end of the night, I just sat there and thought "Wow, I have a lot to learn about MMA."
The fight we saw between Randy Couture and James Toney this past weekend wasn’t that much different than the Matt Hughes vs. Royce Gracie fight. To be fair, Royce Gracie is a real MMA fighter with legit grappling skills, and he’d most likely beat James Toney in an MMA match. But he had absolutely zero business being in the cage with Matt Hughes. Anyone who had actually studied tape of the two men knew that Royce was going to get beat up real, real bad in that fight. By the same token, anyone who had watched much MMA at all should have known that James Toney never should have been sanctioned to fight Randy Couture in the first place. That fight may go down as one of the worst mismatches to ever take place in sanctioned MMA – the only one that I can think of that is worse is Tim Sylvia fighting Mariusz Pudzianowski, which ironically was also sanctioned by the same Massachusetts athletic commission.
Yet while talking with fellow fans in the lead up to this fight, the discussion was very odd. Most of them acknowledged that Randy Couture was most likely going to win, but then they’d go on to cite all of James Toney’s boxing credentials and then list all the various ways in which he could win the fight. When delving deeper into the conversation, they would bring up how he was a "real athlete", how he was a great 200 pound football player in high school, and various other anecdotal evidence to support an argument for a James Toney win. They all argued that a guy that talented should be able to pick up a lot of skills in nine months, and had a good shot of landing one clean shot on Randy Couture’s noggin before getting taken down. And because he’s a pro boxer, and world champion, Couture wouldn’t be able to absorb that one shot and it would be "lights out".
Now, we know what happened. Randy Couture came out, shot in on James Toney, took him down with an ankle pick, and was fully mounted by the time 20 seconds had elapsed on the clock. From there it was text book –stack into the fence, ground and pound, arm triangle for the tap out. Basic stuff. All James Toney learned in 9 months of MMA training was how to bear hug a guy who’s in full mount. That’s about it. He didn’t even know how to properly submit – Couture had him in an arm triangle up against the fence, and Toney said "I give", which the ref did not hear. Couture told the ref, and the ref told Toney he needed to tap. Couture put Toney flat on the mat, reapplied the choke, and this time Toney weakly tapped the mat.
The fight went down exactly like it should have. I would expect just about any well trained MMA fighter from basically any weight class to be able to do that to James Toney. And that’s no disrespect to James Toney – the man is a fantastic boxer, he’s just doesn’t have the skills to be an MMA fighter.
Looking back, we had the same thing happen in the lead up to Couture vs. Toney as we did with Hughes vs. Gracie – fans wanted to look for a reason to think that the underdog could win. No one wants to tune in to see a squash match. If the outcome is known beforehand, no one wants to watch it – it ceases to be sport. So in our minds, we create a narrative that gives a fighter a better chance than he actually has. People really, truly thought that James Toney had a chance to land that one shot on Randy Couture, even though there was zero evidence from his boxing career that he could land a one shot knock out punch on a guy in the opening seconds of a fight. It ended up that Toney had roughly 10 seconds to land that one big punch, and he never even got the chance to throw it- Couture stayed out of range, then shot in so low that Toney could do nothing but improperly defend the shot by stepping back, which landed him right on his butt.
In the end, we didn’t really learn anything about MMA or boxing on Saturday night that we didn’t already know. We already knew that a well trained grappler can take down a one dimensional striker, rough him up and submit him. It was literally no different than what we saw at UFC 1. What we did learn is that MMA fans will literally buy anything that is put in front of them. We were sold a fight that in no way, shape or form was competitive. We all knew, in our heart of hearts, it wasn’t going to be competitive. James Toney is a boxer who is far, far past his physical prime and is most likely suffering from dementia pugilistica. He had no business being in the cage with Randy Couture, who despite being 47 years old is still a pretty darn good fighter. Yet we ate this fight right up. The interest in it was positively off the charts. People were more interested in this fight than the Frankie Edgar vs. BJ Penn title fight or the Gray Maynard vs. Kenny Florian fight – two fights between elite level lightweights. People didn’t give two craps about those fights. Nope, all they wanted to talk about was Randy Couture and James Toney. They knew James Toney was going to get dominated out there……yet they couldn’t resist. Some part of them thought James Toney had a chance, that one in a million shot to land the perfect punch, and for that reason they just had to tune in and see the inevitable unfold.
What does this all mean? It means big business for the UFC. They were able to sell a fight that was a totally one sided squash match, and people ate it up based on nothing more than James Toney running his mouth and the perception that he might, just *might* land that one punch that changes everything. The UFC now knows the blueprint to selling a fight that’s difficult to market – you put the underdog out there, you get him talking trash, and you get people convinced he has a chance, no matter how narrow. And if people think the guy has a chance, they will tune in. Hell, if they got me to think Royce Gracie was going to knock out Matt Hughes with a head kick back in the day, I’m sure that they could get plenty of people to really, honestly believe that Jon Fitch is going to beat Georges St. Pierre in a rematch, should that fight ever take place.
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I think your conclusion is off-base, but only slightly.
I think MMA fans are more open to buying a match that looks like it will be one-sided, but I think it has more to do with the fact that glorious (or damnable, depending on which side you’re on) upsets do happen quite frequently in MMA.
The number of variables is such that even at the highest levels of the sport, you can get guys like Matt Serra to KO GSP. Deserved or not, the perception of MMA is that there is a much higher possibility of an upset than in other combat sports.
If you went back to before UFC 112 and told the online community (or any group of semi-knowledgeable fans of MMA, for that matter) that Frankie Edgar was going to dominate BJ Penn for at least 7/10 rounds over the course of the next few months, you would have gotten rotten egg on your face and laughed out of the room.
The other thing your premise ignores is that MMA cards, top to bottom, provide high-quality entertainment even if they don’t necessarily provide high-quality technical displays. That is probably what separates boxing from MMA. If you order a premier boxing card, you’re really lucky to get two bouts that provide great excitement or entertainment. In MMA, you’re really unlucky if you get less than two thirds of the fights to be great. So the consumer knows they have a good chance at being entertained, even if the top billing isn’t a guaranteed barn burner.
Still, I like the article and you make several excellent points. And really, MMA fans will buy just about any MMA PPV they’ve become familiar with. But I don’t think it has so much to do with their acceptance of a mismatch, or seeking for a reason why the underdog might win. To me, those look like factors common to fan discussion of just about any sport contest with a clear advantage to one competitor or the other.
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by misterjonez on Aug 31, 2010 5:58 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
This, this, this.
This, this, this, this.
I think MMA fans are more open to buying a match that looks like it will be one-sided, but I think it has more to do with the fact that glorious (or damnable, depending on which side you’re on) upsets do happen quite frequently in MMA.
Not so much this:
What we did learn is that MMA fans will literally buy anything that is put in front of them.
I agree with you for the most part. Pretty much every card these days is wildly entertaining, but then again I’m the kind of MMA fan who enjoys pretty much any kind of fight. I can find just as much enjoyment in watching Leonard Garcia throwing hays with The Korean Zombie as I can watching Jon Fitch break down Thiago Alves with great takedowns from the clinch and smothering top and back control.
What I was trying to get at is that MMA fans like the create a narrative for the underdog. They never want to completley write off the chances of the chances of someone in a fight. Now, it’s true that this is MMA and anything can happen. But realitisticly, a 42 year old, obese brain damaged James Toney wasn’t going to do anything whatsoever to Randy Couture. We all knew this. To try to act like anything was going to happen in that fight beyond Randy Couture getting a swift takedown and then working twards some sort of finish was just being intellectually dishonest. Instead of going “Man, James Toney has a chance here, he could knock out Randy Couture!”, why weren’t people asking “Why in the hell is James Toney being allowed to fight Randy Couture? This man is clearly a compromised fighter, and he doesn’t belong in a situation where is clearly completley outmatched and totally at the mercy of his opponent.” We should be thankful that Randy Couture is a gentleman and a sportsman. He could have hurt James Toney really, really badly if he wanted to. Imagine what would have happened if that was Brock Lesnar or Shane Carwin out there against James Toney. I shudder at the notion.
You bring up an interesting point about Penn and Edgar. In that first fight at UFC 112, Penn was between a -700 and -1100 favorite. He was actually a BIGGER favorite than Randy Couture was over James Toney. Think about that for a second. Literally no one gave Frank Edgar, an elite level lightweight, a shot in hell. To be fair, I didn’t pick Frank Edgar in either of his fights with BJ Penn, but I always thought he was going to be very competitive, especially going into the first fight. Edgar, if anything, is an extremely fleet footed boxer, with good movement. Why wouldn’t he give a guy like BJ Penn, who’s primarily a counter boxer these days, a good fight? Yet the consensus opinion was that Edgar was going to get blown out of the water. No one could even find it within themselves to make an argument for an Edgar win going into that fight. It’s surreal to think that more people thought James Toney had a real chance to upset Randy Couture than Frankie Edgar had of upsetting BJ Penn at UFC 112.
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Ok, I can go with the "fans tend to create narratives that support their buying decision"
angle. Absolutely spot on. My primary counter is: what sports fan doesn’t do this? And that’s an attempt not to invalidate your point, just to illustrate how much more MMA fans buy into their product in general, simply because there isn’t only one way to get fans interested in this sport.
And you might remember Dana White frequently putting the phrase “I knew I had to build a great card around Couture/Toney,” which I think is a nod to his own thought that MMA fans wouldn’t consider it a credible challenge.
As for the Edgar/Penn series, you’re right that their fights are the perfect example why MMA fans are so accepting of the sport. I mean, I can think of one stinker of a card that I’ve watched in the last year, and that was the one that kept getting all the fighters injured before fight night which resulted in basically nobody with any name value/title contention fighting on it (I know it wasn’t that bad, but that’s the narrative the online media spun up for it, and it stuck).
You know what I think it is? I think it’s somewhere between our two positions, which I don’t often conclude. I think the reason why MMA fans are so willing to engage in wild underdog performance speculation is because of the following:
1. MMA cards are, essentially without exception, wildly entertaining events.
2. Upsets are frequent, if not quite commonplace events at the highest levels of the sport.
3. Due to the number of variables in MMA, fights rarely go exactly according to the paperwork.
I think those three factors essentially allow MMA fans to become even more invested and vocal about their dissections of the fight, since there’s essentially: 1. No chance the fight backfires and their friends get pissed at them for getting them to buy it, 2. Zero chance to go 5-5 in fight predictions, so you can just go with your gut and not worry about a 1-5 night of predictions, and 3. Even the experts don’t get it right much more often than a HOF baseball player’s batting average.
Good discussion.
If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand and some promises to keep...
The card that was plagued by injuries was UFC 108, which actually ended up being wildly entertaining. But leading into that card, people were saying that Zuffa should cancel it. People thought it wasn’t going to be worth watching. And then it turned out to be one of the more entertaining cards they put on that quarter. What we thought it was going to be, and what it turned out to be, were two different things.
And I think you are right – MMA fans are very passionette about the sport. It’s our hobby and to a certain extent, our lifestyle. So when a big fight comes up, and it’s pretty one sided, we’re still going to find a narrative to place on the underdog, for no other reason than we enjoy talking about MMA. Just talking about how fighter X is going to crush fighter Y isn’t horribly interesting. Creating a counter argument furthers discussion and makes for more intelligent discourse.
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Ah yes.
See, I do remember it now, and it WAS greatly entertaining. See how much damage negative press can do to perception? I don’t remember the fights, I only remember the part where a handful of writers were trying to convince the UFC to cancel an event.
Still, there has been a somewhat-stinker-of-a-card in the last year…I’m sure of it. But even the fact that I get confused trying to figure out what it is further emboldens our notion that MMA is really, really, really awesome compared to pretty much every other competitive athletic event.
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Well, most people point to UFC 109 as being not so great, but I really enjoyed that card personally. I thought the only fight on that card that wasn’t really entertaining was the Demian Maia vs Dan Miller fight. The rest were fantastic – Matt Serra thumping Frank Trigg, Paulo Thiago choking out Mike Swick, the great fight between Chael Sonnen and Nate Marquardt (one of my personal favorite fights from this year, in fact), and Randy Couture beating up Mark Coleman.
The only card I thought was kind of a stinker was UFC 114, and even then the Rogerio Nogueira vs Jason Brilz fight and Mike Russow KO’ing Todd Duffee still made that a pretty solid card.
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by Brian Mayes on Aug 31, 2010 10:06 PM EDT up reply actions
MMA fans tuned in cause they were expecting Toney to be beaten down so that they can talk trash about how old and obsolete boxing was.
They just talked about Toney having a chance because too many of them remembered how Mercer vs Sylvia turned out and didn’t want to look like an idiot if it happened again.
Boring he may be (to some), but you’ve got to admit Fitch stands a far better chance against GSP than Toney did against Couture. I can’t stand by and let a fellow Ft. Wayne native be cheap shotted like this! :) Don’t confuse “boring” with “not talented.”
Good article though. Thanks!
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Obviously I wasn’t implying that Toney had a better chance against Couture than Fitch does against GSP. I’m actually a big Jon Fitch fan, and I’m probably one of the few people who actually enjoy watching him fight. I like to watch great fighters fight. I’d rather watch Fitch vs Sanchez or either of his fights with Thiago Alves again before I’d want to rewatch Couture vs Toney.
What I was implying was that fights that are hard to sell from a competitive stand point can be done so if the fan thinks there is a “chance”. Listen, I obvious like Jon Fitch. Most likely, I’m probably one of his biggest fans. But other than landing the greatest punch of his entire professional career, what in the world is he going to do to GSP in a rematch? Jon Fitch might be in the most awkward position of any fighter in MMA – he’s literally better than everyone else in his division, other than the champion. And the champion is so much better than him at every possible facet of MMA, that he doesn’t really have a chance to do much other than get his ass kicked. It’s a very strange parable to have when the #1 and #2 guys in a division are THAT far apart. It’s not like Anderson Silva and Chael Sonnen, where they are ultra competitive with each other and you are really left wanting more. Unless GSP gets old overnight, there’s little doubt he’s going to do pretty much the same thing to Jon Fitch that he did at UFC 87. That fight fight was wildly entertaining, and I’m sure the rematch will be as well, and that’s reason enough to buy it right there. But the fans will be SOLD on the fact that Fitch has a shot to beat GSP. They’ve got to have that belief.
Just look at the GSP vs Josh Koscheck rematch that’s coming up. Now, anyone who’s seen that fight knows what happened – GSP took Koscheck down at will, and made him look foolish on the feet. About the only thing Koscheck was about to do was get a reversal in a scramble in the last minute of the first round, and then do absolutley nothing with it. One judge out of three gave him the first round based on being on top for little under a minute and landing virtually no offense. Based on this, and the fact that Koscheck claims he trained no wrestling in the lead up to the fight, people are sold on Koscheck having a legit chance to beat up GSP in the rematch. Nevermind that he hasn’t really shown any improvements since the first fight, or that he got absolutley pistolwhipped by Thiago Alves and knocked on his butt by Paulo Thiago in that time. Nevermind that he rose to a title shot off of KO’ing Frank Trigg (who then got KO’ed by Matt Serra), submitting Anthony Johnson (who was also submitted in much the same fashion by lightweight Rich Clementi) and outwrestling Paul Daley (who was not only outwrestled but outstruck by Nick Thompson hardly a year earlier). People are really, truely sold on Koscheck having a great chance against GSP. And as the new season of The Ultimate Fighter progresses, and Koscheck talks more and more trash, people are going to become more convinced. They’ll see Koscheck knocking out Yoshida and Trigg and Hazelett, and they’ll go “Well, GSP got knocked out by Matt Serra, so Koscheck could do it.”
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GSP might be a bit of a special case.
I think people might just be tuning in to see GSP dominate another opponent at that bursting second tier of talent in the WW division. He’s just running roughshod over the entire division in such impressive fashion, that at some point you feel like you’re watching something special a la Manny Pacquiao or Sugar Ray Leonard. I don’t know much about how that influences buying decisions, but for me I enjoy watching someone as versatile as GSP ply his trade against born killers like Koscheck.
Like you, however, I’m probably one of the few in Jon Fitch’s fan club.
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