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You’re Not Saving Money…Calm The @#*% Down
We discussed this briefly at this weekend’s Dot Com Pho after we heard the news of a Walmart employee getting trampled to death and shootings breaking out over the Black Friday sales a couple days ago. Seriously, we all agreed that this was pure idiocy…not only for the tragic events that occurred but the [...]
Read MoreMuhammad Ali: The Greatest of All Time
It’s perhaps one of the most overused phrases in all of sports but on occasion, it is undeniable that it is the appropriate.
The Greatest, Muhammad Ali, turns 65 today and while guys like me may not have had the opportunity to see him fight live and only know the man today, who is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, there are still plenty of ways to experience Ali’s legacy. When We Were Kings is a great documentary of the fight between Ali and George Foreman, who is very different at that time than the grill salesman we know in 2007. After I saw this movie years ago, I was instantly a fan. The man is just so entertaining. He has a magnetism to him.
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Today, boxing is rather boring. Heavyweights barely move and just beat each other until they fall down. However, Ali, a man of roughly 220 pounds, moved with the quickness of a featherweight. It’s poetry to watch that man move. Ali was undoubtedly one of, if not the most charismatic athletes of all time, coining phrases like “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” and speaking with a kind of flair that was not found in sports at the time.
After listening to stories of folks who had met Ali on the radio today, it leaves little doubt that he was more than just a great athlete, but a great man as well, speaking for peace and civil rights. It’s a really sad thing to see him as sick as he is today. Happy Birthday, Champ.
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- 2 Comments
- In Sports and Health
Boxing is dead, but a new sport is taking it place. Mixed Martial Arts is bigger than ever last year, thanks to UFC having very charismatic and skilled fighters. While nobody in the world has the charisma of Ali, these guys still know how to build fights.
5 years ago, their Pay-Per-Views were getting like 150,000 buys or so. Last year they set record after record, the first being Chuck Liddell vs. Randy Couture doing like 400K buys. Then an old school fighter came back (Royce Gracie) to take on then the 170 lbs champion Matt Hughes. That one did 600K buys, totally unheard of in MMA, and up there with WrestleMania for PPV buys.
It didn’t go down after that either. 2 of the next 3 shows did over 700K buys! And it all topped off last December, with estimates around 900,000 buys, up to 1.2 million for Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz for the title.
During this time, Boxing isn’t completely dead. They can still do around 400K with big fights, and in fact DeLaHoya’s last fight did over 900K! Boxing is still huge in the hispanic community.
I highly recommend checking out MMA, if you are into hype, charismatic characters, and EXCITING fights. If you like I can get you started with some recommendations of stuff to check out.
ReplyI liked Mixed Martial Arts better when UFC first came around and they were much more lax about their rules and what clothes you could wear, etc. I have to agree about Ali though: it’s rare to find a great athlete who is also a great *person*. Have you watched the movie — Ali — with Will Smith?
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