MMA Review: KIMBO SLICE & MMA Marketing and Merchandise

EliteXC- the newest big fighting promotion, will have their FIRST ever Nationally broadcasted FREE FOR VIEW this SATURDAY on CBS.

I gotta say, this weekend is an MMA junkie’s DREAM!!! Saturday we get to see the BEAST Kimbo Slice fight, and Sunday we get Pulver VS Faber. The best part about this, is that both events are FREE!!!!!

Free is good. Free is my friend. I am sure though that with all the fans watching, MMA merchandise will go flying off the shelves. This is why I have considered opening my own MMA merchandise store. I see the demand being very high right now, and supply is not very high. Yes, Champs and other sporting goods stores carry TapouT merchandise. But where can I go and try on a TRIUMPH UNITED shirt? Yes, i can buy them online, but there are VERY few stores that sell the merchandise at a brick and mortar type establishment. I like to touch and feel and try something on before I buy it. Clothes and brands fit very differently and look different on people. If I am going to spend $20 to $50 on a t shirt, it better fit PERFECTLY.

I’d like to think I have a good eye and sense for what will sell. I know information that can affect the outcome of retail MMA sales. And I know this just by keeping up with things. For example, I GUARANTEE that Affliction t shirt sales will go down. GUARANTEE IT! Why? Because I read that Affliction decided to start their own fight promotion. Very stupid decision on their part. Of course Dana White with the UFC knows this, and I am sure he doesn’t want to go and PROMOTE his new competition, so I am SURE he has mandated that no fighter will walk to the ring in Affliction gear any longer. Watch any UFC PPV from last year and you will see 75% of the fighters in Affliction gear. Watch UFC Ill Will, and how many Affliction shirts did you see? AHHHHH ZERO!! What I think WILL happen, is that other brands that are being worn more by UFC fighters and shown on PPVs and TV, will have increases in sales. Brands like Triumph United (Kimbo has a deal with them), Sinister (Anderson Silva and Chuck Liddell have a deal with them), TapouT (UFC has an exclusive deal with them), and maybe even Death Clutch (Brock Lesnar has a deal with them) will show much increased sales.

Also keep an eye out for No Fear products. Urijah has a sponsorship deal with them, and with his popularity now, I can see people being very interested in their product. The only thing working against them, is that they used to do surf wear, and you could find them at discount stores like Target and Sears. They will have an uphill battle trying to convince people that they have “toughened their act”.

You see, THIS is why I need to open my own retail store up. I KNOW the marketing side of the MMA industry. I understand it. If anyone wants to front me some startup capital, I am ALL EARS!!

MMA Review: Urijah Faber VS Jens Pulver

So as usual I ordered the UFC PPV (Ill Will) last weekend. Loved it. I witnessed the return of dominance from Wanderlei Silva, I witnessed what COULD be the final match in the UFC by Tito Ortiz, and I witnessed the true awesomeness of BJ Penn.

For as much as i dislike Tito Ortiz, I gotta give it to him, he went out in style. I think his post fight speech, and the fans’ reactions to him made me like him a little more.

Wanderlei Silva MUGGED the Dean of Mean. Absolutely DOMINATED him. It made me want to go out and buy a HITMAN FIGHT GEAR shirt right then and there.

BJ Penn backed up the talk with a pretty convincing win over the Steroid Shark…I mean Muscle Shark. I do NOT like him going back up to 170 and fight GSP. BJ looks very strong at the 155 weight class.

Onto the WEC. I think this weekend’s BLOCKBUSTER matchup of Faber VS Pulver will FINALLY attract some fans over to the WEC. I love watching the WEC, and I wish they had more PPVs. I am a big fan of Carlos Condit, Brian Stann, Doug Marshall, Brock Larson, Paulo Filho, and of course “The California Kid” Urijah Faber and Jens “Little Evil” Pulver.

I’ll be the first to admit that when I was first turned onto the WEC, I DID refer to it as “The minor leagues of the UFC”. I hope that this weekends FREE FOR VIEW on VS will distinguish the WEC as a “Big Boy’s” league and not the UFC’s little brother.

Sports: NBA and NHL Playoffs

Stars lost….BOOOOOOOOOOO

Orlando Magic lost…. BOOOOOOOOO

Cleveland Cavaliers lost…. BOOOOOOOOO

LA Lakers in it again…. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Spurs in it again…. BOOOOOOORRRRRRING! (you thought i was gonna BOO, didn’t you?)

Detroit Pistons in it again…… YAWN FEST!

Detroit Red Wings in it again….. Can we PLEASE see some new teams in it??

With all of my tragic losses, I have turned 90% of my attention to MMA (UFC and WEC and Elite XC), with the remaining 10% going to Baseball. The Texas Rangers have quite the impressive team this year! Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler, Michael Young. It’s actually GOOD to be a Rangers fan right now!

Movies: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT

SPOILER ALERT

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

LAST CHANCE TO LOOK AWAY!

I loved it. Granted, it seemed to me that this installment of Indiana Jones got a BIT too far fetched in some places, and it seemed to me that Spielberg and Lucas may have over-used the fact that it was a summer blockbuster movie, and the audience is typically supposed to abandon all sense of reality for these types of movies. A couple parts I did not like because they were way too over the top far fetched:

Once again…SPOILER ALERT:

1. The car driving over the cliff and landing in the tree and going safely and smoothly down to the water. WAYYYY too cartoonish to me.

2. The car going down three NIAGARA FALLS type waterfalls. All I could think about was the raft falling from the plane in Temple of Doom, and then landing safely on a mountain, going off a cliff, and landing on the water.

3. The alien part at the end. Seemed SOOOOO out of place in this storyline.

And now the PROS….

1. Shia LaBeouf. I thought he was great in it. Good actor.

2. The early nods to the end of “Raiders” with the warehouse. We even got a quick shot of the “Ark”.

3. The non stop action and fight scenes.

4. Harrison Ford. Last but not least, probably one of my favorite actors of all time. Come onnnnn, if you grew up in the 80s like me, you love this guy!!! He was Indiana Jones AND HAN SOLO!!!!!

So, all in all, i loved it. Some of my friends that saw it didn’t like it at all, but granted they are younger and they were born in the mid to late 80s. They didn’t grow up with Star Wars and Indy movies like me.

Although there were some parts that were a bit far fetched, I still give it a solid A. Not quite a perfect A+, but still… great nonetheless.

TV: Cook VS Archie

Man am I glad David Cook won American Idol. I was getting a little sick and tired of all the disgustingly over the top praise Archie was getting.

Archie was a good singer, I’ll give him that, but all of his songs sounded the same.

Cook changed it up and was a lot more entertaining. I hope Cook’s album is successful. He seems like a really genuinely good guy.

Don’t call it a comeback! I’ve been here for years!

Ahhh yes, I’ve decided to quote the great James Todd Smith III (aka LL Cool J) with my triumphant return to the blogosphere.

I know there are only a couple people out there reading this, but I figured, what the heck, I’ll at least entertain myself.

I’ve been gone for over 2 months, and a lot has happened in that time….

Random Thoughts: THUNDERSLEET

THUNDERSLEET!! That is an actual term I heard on TV this morning when a meteorologist described what we had here in Dallas, Texas yesterday.

Sounds like a made up term, and it made me laugh hysterically when I heard it.

It sounds like an AC/DC song about bad weather on the road.

It sounds like an 80’s cartoon about People-Cats with magical powers to affect weather.

Sounds like a Mad Max movie with Tina Turner where instead of fighting to the death in a cage with post apocolyptic bad guys, they are having a snowball fight.

Dear Popzilla

Need advice? Need words of encouragement? Confused about something on the show “Lost”? Got a good “Star Wars” trivia question?

ASK ME!

I am your guy! I am here to help.

So do it…what are you waiting for? Ask away! Ask me anything!

I will answer your question, or pretend to know what I am talking about.

DVD Review: What to watch

I have SO many movies to watch at home, thanks to Blockbuster Online. Here is a list of those I need to watch still:

- The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, Wilson brothers flick)
- Into the Wild (Emile Hirsch goes on a long spiritual road trip to Alaska)

- Chaos (Jason Statham in a bank heist action flick)

- Surf’s Up (Animated Penguin surfing movie. I got the Blu Ray version!)

- The Nines (Ryan Reynolds in a strange looking movie)

- Stardust (DeNiro in a fantasy sci fi movie)

- 30 Days of Night (Josh Hartnett vampire movie)

WOW….7 movies I have at home that I need to watch!!!

The wife and I are going to try and get through two movies tonight for a home “Double Matinee”.

It’s too bad I can’t find a microwave popcorn that is identical to the mouth watering popcorn I get at the theater.

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Sports: The NFL Draft

This morning I was listening to ESPN Radio, specifically Mike and Mike. They stated that back in 1991, two quarterbacks were taken AHEAD of Brett Favre in the draft. Favre was taken by the Falcons in the second round, with the Jets taking QB Browning Nagle immediately afterwards. Funny side note, back then, the Falcons GM didn’t even know how to pronounce Favre’s name, calling him Brett “Favor”. The two QB’s taken ahead of Favre? Both in the first round- Dan McGwire (Mark McGwire’s younger brother) by the Seahawks, and Todd Marinovich by the Raiders.

Neither McGwire, Marinovich, or Nagle EVER amounted to anything in the NFL, and as far as Favre, the rest is history.

The point I am trying to make is that you never know what you are going to get in the draft. Heck, hometown hero Tony Romo wasn’t even drafted!!

It’s tough NOT to get excited at the NFL draft if you are a football fan, but I can tell you from the years I have been watching the NFL and the draft, there are far more misses than there are hits.

I just hope that Jerry Jones and Wade Phillips pick the right guys this year. Bobby Carpenter, Isiah Stanback, Marcus Spears, and the other duds that have been drafted by the Cowboys recently have not made the grade in any way, shape, or form.