I've been meaning to do a post-mortem on Affliction - Day of Reckoning for some time now, and it's just getting more and more stale, and with St-Pierre and Penn 2 right around the corner who really cares, right? Well, I do, and I'm sure somebody else out there does too, right?
Well, anyway, I thought it was a great card and that Affliction did an excellent job improving from the mistakes made in their first show, Banned.
To start off, they did away with the musical interludes. I like Megadeth, but their songs between the fights at Banned just seemed to slow things down, although I didn't mind them playing at the show's beginning where all the fighters were introduced to the fans. Ozzy Osbourne was scheduled to play at Day of Reckoning, and no offense to Ozzy, but I'm glad he didn't perform there. Music is fine for fighter entrances, but that's about it.
Although I'm sure they didn't mean for it to be funny, Tito's foray into broadcast journalism was one for the record books, people. I can't tell you how many times the guy flubbed his lines. I'd have more sympathy for him, but I remember him being quoted somewhere before the event saying he thought it was going to be easy, so there you go. I vote Affliction keeps him right where he is for comic relief.
The fighters Afflcition had on this card were pretty much a who's who of dudes who are kick-ass fighters not employed by the UFC. Affliction should keep it that way - strive to get the best competitors out there, then match them up against each other.
The fights themselves were fan-frickin'-tastic: In the first one on the main card, Bobby Green, who listed his style as "hood," kicked Dan Lauzon in the stones three times. Lauzon finally had enough of it, took it to the ground and forced a tap-out by RNC. See, that's one reason why I love MMA - sometimes, justice is swift.
The stunning events continued, with Matt Lindland getting knocked out by Vitor Belfort in seconds - so do we have the "old" Vitor back? Renato "Babalu" Sobral worked his anaconda or was it a d'Arce choke to perfection, sending Sokoudjou packing. Paul Buentello scored a 3rd round TKO against Fedor Emelianenko's protege, Kiril Sidelnikov. Maybe we should see Fedor avenge the loss - it would probably take about 20 seconds. Josh Barnett unleashed an awesome groun-n-pound attack on Gilbert Yvel, setting up a fight between him and WAMMA heavyweight champ Emelianenko.
And finally, the Fedor-Andrei Arlovski fight. It seemed that Arlovski was getting the better of Fedor in the punching exchanges, until he left his feet for a flying knee. Fedor hit him in the jaw, and down Arlovski went, out cold. I had a group of guys over at the house to watch the PPV, and we were all like, what the hell just happened? The punch was so fast, so sudden, all you could see was Arlovski going up, then down. That's one of the most amazing things about Fedor - one little mistake is all it takes, and he capitalizes on it, and the fight's over.
My only regret about the event is that Affliction didn't show more of the undercard fights. I think with Banned, they showed every fight. I would have liked to have caught the Matyushenko-Nogueira fight, and still can't believe it didn't make the main card. I can understand Affliction having a deal with HDNet to show the undercard live, but maybe after the Fedor fight they could've shown them again for the PPV audience.
I really hope this isn't the end for Affliction. A lot of people on the Internet are saying there's no way they can continue, they're spending too much money, blah, blah, blah. We all know it takes money to make money. With partners like WAMMA, Trump, M-1, and Golden Boy, Affliction's got a good shot at survival. The keys to me, is building the brand, i.e., getting coverage by mainstream press like ESPN, and building personalities, like Fedor, Barnett, Arlovski, etc. One more thing - they should consider doing more co-promoting, with other organziations, like Strikeforce or maybe DREAM or Sengoku, to pull in more fans.
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