Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on Biogenesis, MMA scoring, Bellator MMA's pay-per-view

This week’s Twitter Mailbag has a little of everything, from MMA’s connection to the Biogenesis scandal, to the trouble with scoring takedowns, to still more discussion of this whole Bellator pay-per-view thing.

If you’ve got a question of your own, or, hey, even just a pithy observation about life, why not tweet it to @BenFowlkesMMA? I love pithy observations. Except for when I don’t.

@benfowlkesMMA Everyone has a bug up their butt about Phil Davis‘ win. Just how much of a striking edge does a takedown negate? #CME

— Eric Sharpe (@sharperic) August 7, 2013

Talking to fighters, you get a sense that they have a pretty good idea how the mind of a judge works when it comes to takedowns. Close round? A takedown in the final minute will almost invariably sway it, usually even if the takedowner does very little to the takedownee after the fight hits the mat. And if you’re the one who gets taken down? You’d better get up and get that takedown back, or at least end the round with a flurry of strikes that looks impressive, even if it does very little actual damage. The thing is, I can’t tell if the fighters have discovered the secret formula to a decision victory, or if they’ve just convinced the judges that that’s the way it should work.

Seems like MMA has been having the discussion about how to score a takedown for as long as we’ve had judges. Personally, I feel like takedowns exhibit some degree of control, but they’re really a means to an end. If you’re not doing damage with them, and you’re not using them to get to a dominant position from which you can do damage or attempt a submission, I don’t think they should count for that much. If anything, I think they should count for even less in the final minute of a round, since that leaves you less time to do anything with them. Unfortunately, seems like MMA judges have already decided how the takedown game works. And as long as fighters are rewarding for playing that game, it’s going to continue.

@benfowlkesMMA why is Bellator is getting more crap for breaking format than UFC did when Chael got a unearned LHW title shot against Jones?

— Terence Parton (@ELcujorino) August 7, 2013

Probably because Bellator has been the one making a big deal about the superiority of its own format for the last few years. When you think about it, the format is what Bellator built itself on. That was its unique selling proposition. It used the tournament system to set itself apart from the UFC and other would-be UFC imitators. When the UFC started giving title shots to fighters coming off losses, that seemed like a temporary abandonment of its own unstated principles for the sake of convenience, and the UFC got a fair amount of crap for it. But for Bellator to build its first pay-per-view event around two ex-UFC fighters (a class of fighter it initially said it didn’t want) who have nothing to do with any of the Bellator tournaments (which is supposed to be Bellator’s whole thing in the first place), that feels like an obvious betrayal of its own explicitly stated values. And for what? To produce a fight that nobody was asking for between “Rampage” Jackson and Tito Ortiz? It just doesn’t seem worth it.

@benfowlkesMMA Worse outcome for Bellator PPV: boring decision or an injury to one of the aging fighters scrapping the main event? #TMB

— Matt Murray (@mbmurray) August 7, 2013

My first thought was, definitely an injury. Possibly because it just seems so damn likely that one of these two aging light heavyweights will pull up lame at some point in training camp. But then, it also seems pretty likely that, even if they don’t, their fight won’t be all that great. Honestly, when is the last time either one of them really looked good in the cage? If one of them gets injured before the fight, at least Bellator can throw up its hands and blame the cruelty of the MMA gods. But if they both show up, produce a stinker on pay-per-view, then (and I’m just playing the odds here) blame any number of questionable injuries in their post-fight interviews, well, no one at Bellator will be able to say that they couldn’t have seen it coming.

@benfowlkesmma Would a worked TNA “fight” between MMA stars like Tito & Rampage damage the entire sport or just Bellator? #TwitterMailBag

— MrJM (@misterjayem) August 7, 2013

I believe what you’re referring to is not so much a worked fight as a pro wrestling match. And yes, there’s a difference. A worked fight is a scam. It’s a fight that the audience is led to believe is real and unscripted, but isn’t. A pro wrestling match, on the other hand, is a performance. We all know this. We know that what happens in the TNA ring, while physically difficult and dangerous, is not sport so much as theatre. There’s no expectation that such a “fight” would be real, so I doubt it would damage Bellator or MMA at all. Instead, it’d probably just feel kind of dumb. As anybody can tell you who remembers Karl Malone’s stint in the WCW, being a good athlete does not necessarily make you a good pro wrestler. If Jackson and Ortiz tried to pull off a pro wrestling match, my gut says they’d only succeed in proving that it’s harder than it looks.

@benfowlkesMMA Chan Sung Jung/Aldo rematch? Don’t you want to know what happens without freak injuries/zombie necrosis?

— Manhoodship (@Manhoodship) August 7, 2013

Not especially. I feel like we know where that fight was headed. Yes, Chan Sung Jung was in the process of turning up the heat on Jose Aldo when he suffered that shoulder injury, but I still don’t think we can say that he was winning. I can understand why Jung would want a rematch after the way things ended, and I can even see why the UFC might give him one if he rattled off a few more wins to keep himself in the conversation at featherweight. Right now though, he’s headed to the back of the line.

@benfowlkesMMA who would you want to see fight aldo next? #LamasNext

— Telly Lucio (@Tellyigoham) August 7, 2013

Ricardo Lamas has a strong case, but I don’t feel like he quite has that feeling of inevitability just yet. That’s why I think the thing to do is match him up against the other surging featherweight, Cub Swanson. Yes, I know Lamas beat Swanson back in 2011, but a) Swanson hasn’t lost since then, and b) what else are we supposed to do while we wait for Aldo’s foot to heal? This division isn’t so established that it can afford to remain essentially dormant for the rest of the year.

@benfowlkesMMA What’s some of the golden rules when trying to get an interview? That youll be positive? Quick? Your fanbase?

— Chris C (@christopher_kit) August 7, 2013

I met a photographer once who said he prided himself on giving his subjects an accurate account of how much time he’d need from them. Whether he was shooting athletes or movie stars, he said, the important thing was that if he told them it would only take 10 minutes, he stuck to it. Then, the next time he asked for 10 minutes, they’d know he really meant it. There’s something to that, even with interviews. You want the fighters to know that you’ll respect their time, especially since you get paid for this and they don’t (not directly, anyway). There’s also something to be said for making them realize that the sooner they cave in and call you back, the sooner you’ll leave them alone. For now.

@benfowlkesMMA Daley, WarMachine, Rampage, Ortiz. Retreating on the no UFC cast offs statemet, why only get those who mean trouble? #tmb

— Til Breidenbach (@tilmobaxter) August 7, 2013

Maybe it’s because the fighters who get in trouble are the ones most likely to have been cut from the UFC for some reason other than the fact that they aren’t very good fighters. It’s like those problem players who bounce from one NFL team to another. Every coach thinks he can be the one to squeeze the good stuff out of them without getting bogged down by the bad. In MMA, where half the battle is convincing people to watch, there’s also the possibility that trouble is synonymous with name recognition. If fans know a fighter – regardless of how they know him – they’re more likely to want to watch him fight. If you’re the promoter, you just have to take care that the source of his fame doesn’t also become a source of problems for you.

@benfowlkesMMA In your opinion. Is Vitor Belfort bad for business in the long run?

— Jose Magana (@OMaganaO) August 7, 2013

Depends what the UFC does with him. Obviously, his issue with testosterone-replacement therapy isn’t going away. He already tried telling us that he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore, and look how that’s worked out. The UFC claims it isn’t hiding him in Brazil, then turns right around and tries to book him for yet another fight in Brazil. At this point, especially if he’s going to be taken seriously as a title contender, he needs to fight in some location with an established athletic commission, such as Nevada. If he wants to use TRT there (and it seems like he does), he needs to get a therapeutic-use exemption, which Nevada has said it likely would not grant due to his past steroid use. The best thing the UFC could do is schedule him for a fight in Las Vegas in order to prove that it isn’t aiding and abetting an effort to skirt oversight, then let the chips fall where they may. If he can’t fight, at least we have a ruling on it. If the Nevada State Athletic Commission caves, then it’s the NSAC that takes the heat and not the UFC. The one thing the UFC can’t do is keep him down in Brazil indefinitely. Whether it’s doing it for ticket sales, as White claims, or to enable his drug use – or a little of both – the perception alone is a problem right now.

@benfowlkesMMA the cheapest tickets for the uk Ufc is £75 and Munoz headlines AGAIN. Does Dana hate us?

— Sav (@JonnySaville) August 7, 2013

You mean Mark Munoz headlines again…this time opposite Michael Bisping. That’s what you U.K. fans want, right? A Bisping main event on British soil? At least, that’s what those of us in North America – and especially in the little slice of North America that’s home to the Zuffa offices – have long believed. Oh, the British fans are unhappy again, we say. Throw them some Bisping. That ought to quiet them down. And no, it’s not going to be on a pay-per-view quality card. Because who do you think you are, Brazil?

@benfowlkesMMA When will the names of the fighters on the Biogenesis list come out? Or will they just get swept under the rug?

— George Shunick (@georgeshunick) August 7, 2013

A lot of people wrote in this week asking about the Biogenesis scandal, and I’m glad they did. It means fans of this sport actually care about finding out which fighters might have benefitted from performance-enhancing drugs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like any of the organizations that promote MMA or the athletic commissions that oversee it are quite as interested. Compare MMA’s response to the Biogenesis scandal to baseball’s. After a former Biogenesis employee turned over documents to the Miami New Times showing that several Major League Baseball players had received PEDs from the “anti-aging clinic,” MLB first sued the owners of the clinic, then paid former Biogenesis employees in order to obtain records that would tell it which players had been on the anti-aging juice. Again, that’s a professional sports organization paying out of its own pocket to expose cheaters in its own ranks. Does that sound for one single, solitary second like anything the UFC would do?

While you ponder the answer to that question, check out UFC president Dana White’s reaction when asked about the scandal’s potential impact on MMA.

“Obviously, it’s an athletic commission issue, but it’s just one of those things,” White told reporters in Seattle last month. “It’s just another f–-king headache I don’t need.”

Did you catch that? Here we have a major doping scandal that may or may not involve current or former UFC fighters, but that does involve unnamed MMA fighters of some kind, according to former Biogenesis employee Porter Fischer. It’s a scandal that MLB commissioner Bud Selig thought was worth a lot of time and money to get to the bottom of, and the UFC president’s reaction? Hey, it’s just one of those things. Man, what a headache.

Of course, White also referred to it as “an athletic commission issue,” but as Yahoo! Sports writer Kevin Iole pointed out in an article this week, there’s not a whole lot that state athletic commissions can do if/when the Biogenesis fighters are finally named. So if the athletic commissions are powerless to do much, and if the biggest organization in the sport just sees the whole thing as a headache it doesn’t need, where does that leave us?

For one thing, it leaves MMA looking a lot softer on PED use than baseball, which is itself a sport choking on tainted records and empty Hall of Fame ballots in recent years. But then, at least baseball is spending the money and investing the time to try and do something about it now. MMA, meanwhile, would rather pretend that everything is fine the way it is, that regulation and oversight are someone else’s job, that doping scandals are an annoyance rather than a crisis with the potential to cripple the entire sport. So that’s where we are right now with performance-enhancing drug use in this sport. And it sucks.

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie.com and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.com.