July 9, 2010 - 10:36 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
UFC VP of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner is the man who made all of the details run smoothly at Vancouver UFC 115 card, in spite of the amateur nature of the VAC officials he had to deal with.
Sitting in the press conference a few days before UFC 115 took place, I couldn’t help but shake my head at the sight of the humbled and tentative Mirko Mladenovic, the former chairman of the Vancouver Athletic Commission (VAC). Mirko sat their alone, possibly shocked that it was all happening in spite of his interventions, which at times put the whole event in severe jeopardy.
I say former because this is what happened yesterday, coming as no surprise to those of us who closely followed the proceedings of how the UFC finally got to Vancouver.
Comments like this show how clueless this guy really is:
““I’ve been on the board for three terms. I am only into this one four months. What has changed? What has changed is they wanted to kill UFC and I approved it.”
Excuse me? YOU approved it? And THEY wanted to kill UFC?
Wow. Here’s the real story folks.
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June 14, 2010 - 2:03 pm |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
Dana White and Gregor Robertson meet for the first time before last Thursday's press conference.
UFC 115 has come and gone, and Vancouver has not lost its moral high ground, nor was the event overtaken by gang warfare. Most importantly for the issue of the day regarding the card, there were no major injuries to warrant concern about insurance or indemnity for the City.
No, UFC 115 was a spectacle of epic proportions that brought a broad cross-section of fans from across Metro Vancouver to GM Place. I saw kids that were under 10 and jumping off the walls, and I saw senior citizens who God bless their souls, had trouble walking up the stairs. I saw guys and girls, I saw ethnicity across the rainbow that Vancouver has to offer, and saw casual and diehard fans in the crowd.
It was well run, it was entertaining as hell, and it made a mint for local economy (one figure I heard from someone who tracks this kind of stuff told me it was at least in excess of $13 million).
UFC is definitely coming back to the city – that has been confirmed by Dana White, and further echoed by the Mayor’s office.
And in the end, it was the political muscle of Gregor Robertson that turned a bureaucratic nightmare into a huge win for the city. Read the rest of this entry »
April 6, 2010 - 9:59 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
CTV Sportsnet's "Showdown" Joe Ferraro might have stepped into an empty octagon before, but that certainly didn't help his credibility last week after falsely reporting that the UFC Vancouver pay-per-view had been cancelled.
He calls himself “Showdown Joe” and ironically, the name of the show he hosts on CTV Sportsnet is entitled “MMA Connected.” Yet, you would never have known that Joe Ferraro has any knowledge or connection to the sport with the way he inserted himself into the UFC-Vancouver courtship last week, which revolved around his shoddy reporting that put the now-secured deal in serious jeopardy.
Before I get into the story of how everything went down last week, here are a couple of excerpts from a from an interview Joe did where he described how he broke into MMA broadcasting:
“From there, we started sponsoring fighters at various events and then I met up with some promoters. They fell in love with the knowledge that I had and how I could break down fights into what this guy needs to do to win and what that guy needs to do to win, and then during the fight I would explain what guys needed to do to get out of a position and they said, “Did you ever think about doing commentary?”
“About three or four month in, the guys from Sportsnet started getting into MMA, they started covering the UFC and they decided, “We need an analyst; someone who is involved in the sport and can pick up the phone and call Chuck Liddell or Randy Couture.” So they started looking around and realized that The Fan 590 is owned by the same company as Sportsnet – Rogers Communications – and said, “Who’s this Showdown Joe guy? Let’s bring him in.”
Humble and not at all self-absorbed, as you can clearly see.
Now let’s examine Joe’s breaking news from last week, and his supposed chat with UFC president Dana White, which he still will not confirm with any certainty in spite of repeated emails from me.
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October 22, 2009 - 9:31 am |
Posted by Jonathan Ross
Yesterday I dealt with the rocky road that MMA has had to encounter in Vancouver over the past few years. Today I want to delve into what I outlined as the three most pressing issues that City Council will have to consider in the vote that is now expected sometime in November:
- Safety
- Liability
- Economic Impact
While at one point these might have been considerations that Council could use as justification for delaying the return of professionally sanctioned fights to Vancouver, the concerns have largely been alleviated by the facts.
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