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I agree with all your other points in the post but this specific oneâŚdo you think that gets better bringing in a professional? I think it gets exponentially worse. No way are we ever going to have someone whoâs honest about how fucking badly wmma sucks. Weâre never going to hear âJesus, another poorly timed poorly set up head and arm throw?!?â
To me, DC is way, way worse. And moving to the three man broadcast team makes absolutely no sense, it makes Rogan much worse, since heâs no longer play by play or color. He just agrees with shit DC says and sits quietly while anik or whoever reads the degenerate gambling sponsor of the night.
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This is all womenâs sports though.
I watch cycling. Thereâs been a push in the last 5 years so pushing womenâs cycling. So by proxy Iâve seen more and am aware of it. But Iâve only turned on womenâs races where theyâre right before or right after the menâs.
Theyâre terrible, slow, rarely interesting, and women cyclists arenât pretty enough to keep me watching. Yet theyâre pushed by media like anyone would care if they went away.
Wmma, wnba, w sports ⌠no one cares to watch, they just spout off about it like theyâre just as good or interesting as menâs sports.
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I hate that they keep trying to push that the women are better than the men in cycling specifically. They always cite some race where the women âcaught upâ to the men but really there was like a train or some shit.
I donât know. Going back to Larry Merchant, he would lose his shit if he was announcing wmma. He would 100% call it out as the fiasco it is and hold nothing back. For instance if he was interviewing Ronda after last nightâs âfightâ, I could absolutely see him asking something along the lines of, âso you beat a 44 year old woman weakened from massive weight loss that hasnât fought in 17 years and the sport had already passed her by when she originally retired. What, if anything, did this prove and what does it say about the state of wmma in general?â That was Larry.
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Joe does more of this than youâre giving him credit for I think though. Iâve seen him call two heavyweights being shitty bad blue belt grappling lol.
Joe honestly has the longest leash with honesty any commentator does because Dana feels indebted to him for doing it for free early. No promoter is going to hire people who just say whqt they are selling is shit.
This whole Netflix card would have just been any honest person saying shit like âthey tried to exhume the corpse of the 60 year old and medically inelligeble Mirko Cro Cop to fight Francis, but he was smart enough to say no so they found this shitty Brazilian to feed to Francis so he could kill someone for the Instagram clipâ or âthis entire event is an affront to God and man, and the fact that the main event is two women who havenât fought in 10 and 15 years is disgusting.â
It sounds like what youâre really complaining about is the fact that the structure is no longer a network that hires the commentator to give his thoughts on whatâs unfolding in a promotion.
We work for the promotion, not the network or broadcaster. Disparaging our employer would be suicide, youâd just have commentators who are employed for half of an event.
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This is something I think deeply about a lot. Commentators jobs arenât really brutal honesty at all cost.
Iâm a fucking brutally critical coach and teammate.
The job of a commentator, especially a color guy, is really more to guide the viewer along to follow the story of whatâs unfolding in front of them. There are a lot of fights where I want to say âJesus Christ I canât believe he tapped to that shitty guillotine; the guy who won sucks but this guy is just much worseâ but instead I say something like âthe positioning was suboptimal, he didnât have complete closure of the left artery, but he was able to get the tap. Fighter xâs grappling was just too much for fighter y to deal with tonight.â
If youâre too honest about how shitty someone is, their extended family and gym get mad and donât send people to fight for the promotion. Their gym might not send guys to fight for you anymore either, or managers wonât have their guys fight for you because you make their guys look bad to other promoters. Promotions that hire me have had dozens of people demand ppv refunds because commentators called fights brutally honestly or in a biased fashion.
Itâs not an easy thing to juggle; being a good steward of your employer and also being honest to Ares and Athena about whatâs going on.
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Donât get me wrong, Iâd love a gig where I could just talk about how fucking shitty some people are, or how they only won because the other guy did something retarded, or they deserved to lose because they did something awful.
But thatâs just not an option the way commentary is done now, and it will never be that way again I donât think.
To be fair, this is how the world works in general. Silly for anyone to think it wouldnât be how this aspect of it works also. If you want to listen to people shit on fighters or be able to shit on fighters yourself thereâs always streaming/talking head/fight companion type options.
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I know it will never happen the way things are now but I can still dream.
MMA today is run like the studio system in old Hollywood.
I guess the closest thing to a Larry Merchant that we have today would be Ariel Hellwanni, which is a pretty sad state of things.
In the sense that he shits on people maybe, but he doesnât do anything honestly. He just says whatever he thinks will get clicks.
And justifies it by saying âitâs good for everyone to get more people talking about the sport.â
He doesnât give one single fuck about MMA, thatâs why he was there at MVP sucking off Jake Paul and talking about how great Ronda x Gina was, after crying about how Gina was a Nazi two years ago. Little faggot doesnât believe in anything.
Also why he sucked off Craig Jones in his retardation
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Where do I get in line to be sucked off?
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The price is you have to be a white knight on Reddit
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