The New Pro-Wrestling

Yesterday, Randy Couture and Dana White had dueling pressers. Randy had his press conference covered by HDNet and ProElite.com while Dana had his phone conference held on Yahoo. While I heard about how it wasn't about the money for Randy, it was about respect and then spout off figures or read about how Dana was drooling over Brock Lesnar's "tremendous wrestling ability" from second hand sources, I had this question wiggling around the back of my head.

Where's the coverage from ESPN? ESPN 2? The Ocho?

Was there any coverage from anywhere but niche media on these two events?

There's nothing. Not even anything on ESPN's MMA section. Then again, it's run by Sherdog and we all know how Dana like to play Jerry Millen with that connection.

The only big source that did actual coverage was Yahoo and right now they're not looking too good. If you take Dave Meltzer out of the section, it pretty much resembles an Apter Mag circa 1993. Kevin Iole is UFC's own Vince Russo...or Mean Gene Okerland. Depending on how you take your "insider information". Wait...I take that back. yeah, Kevin Iole is Bill Apter. No way is he on the UFC payroll....yet.

So what does this mean?

Welcome to the new pro-wrestling.

Now before anyone jumps on me, I'm not saying that MMA is fake and/or predetermined. What I am saying is that the Sports jurnos are giving MMA the same "Who gives a fuck" attitude that they give pro wrestlers.

"But we got coverage on ESPN"

News. ESPN News. And on the day before a fight. And then maybe fifteen seconds on the Sporstcenter loop at night.

You can state till your face turns blue that MMA has coverage on TV, it's still being held back by the Kornhiesers and Mariatis of the network. Why? Because to them, stick and ball sports have more integrity. To them, Randy Couture vs. Dana White is just another Vince vs. Steve Austin.

So they laugh that horrid laugh and act like they're cool, but the end of the day they rather smoke crack then watch MMA. "Who wants to watch a bunch of lunkheads in a cage" they think.

You want it changed, send letters and more letters. Get major coverage and demand it from real jurnos and not office temps they send when they don't want to do it.

Stick and ball media are spoiled brats. Order them to do better.