Don’t Sanction Me
By johnnyp on Nov 29, 2007
Question; what’s a WAMMA? World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts? Well, what is it that it does? Sanction fights? Sanction?
Sanctioning bodies don’t promote fights. Companies like the UFC and Elite XC promote them – and quite well. Sanctioning bodies don’t create fighter unions or take care of fighters. Theoretically managers and agents, or even fight teams/camps take care of the individual fighters. Sanctioning bodies don’t make rules and regulations for MMA fighters or promoters. State Athletic commissions do that. All it seems sanctioning bodies do is create and promote their own independent belts. While that might be attractive if everyone was going after those individual world titles, they aren’t. Fighters are going after UFC belts because they’re the championships of the leading fight organization. And since the UFC isn’t recognizing anyone else’s belts, and even Elite XC and Strikeforce aren’t, then why should I. The outside sanctioning doesn’t even seem to fit into lowly IFL’s team plans.
The only thing I do know that sanctioning bodies will bring to MMA is rankings. Alphabet soup sanctioning bodies rely on top ten rankings to supply their organization with opponents. I think rankings are random and subjective opinions that are often laughable and best left to opinion columnists like me for content fodder 4-6 times a year. They aren’t something for anyone to take to seriously. There’s a reason UFC doesn’t get locked into their own ranking system. You need to be flexible when booking fighting. Rankings invite disappointment and eventual indifference of fans and analyst alike.
So why should I want or encourage outside sanctioning as a fan when it doesn’t seem to add anything as a fan or supporter of the sport. Anyone?
After seeing the entire thing presented, I didn’t think it was even worth a sidenote. In my humble opinion they won’t accomplish anything by unifying smaller promotion’s champions.
The UFC won’t play ball with these guys unless they are somehow able to build a talent pool that is comparable to what Zuffa already has.
I think that’s one of a few fatal flaws with the plan.
I don’t know if the sport is even ready for something like this. From Zuffa’s perspective, recognizing outside belts would take away from their own title’s legitimacy. And forget about giving someone outside the company the ability to play match maker.
That glass ceiling creates a problem when it comes to corporate sponsored championships. I think I’m almost glad that it will prevent us from having a “Toyota Heavyweight Champion”.
I don’t think bigger companies are going to want to sponsor a championship that is recognized by the fans as inferior, either. I don’t think they will have any kind of impact.
They did say they are in it for the long haul, but I think they’re going to need to retool their approach if they want any success at all.
And without any throw weight to begin with, it should be interesting to see what they do with their “rankings”. As it is now, how do they intend to share these rankings? They don’t even have a website!
It seems like a half baked idea from some folks with money for such things.
Thanks for the insight, Matt. Looking forward to your next column. I just had a bit of this in my head and expanded upon it (the part about what exactly they do and don’t do that could be seen as helpful), but you’re right. This is barely a side note, and hence the timeliness of the writing in relation to the WAMMA press conference. I just don’t wanna hear about Quinton Jackson and race relations any more today.