MONTREAL - He's said it before, and he'll say it again: The UFC is going everywhere.

At today's pre-UFC 113 press conference at the Bell Centre in Montreal, UFC president Dana White
revealed that while the company is still actively seeking sanctioning in
both Ontario and New York, the expansion of the company isn't targeted
solely to those two locales.

In fact, White said an international version of "The Ultimate Fighter"
may focus on Canadian athletes as soon as 2011, and UFC co-owner Lorenzo
Fertitta will soon set out across the globe with the intention of
netting TV deals in China, India and South Korea.

Since leaving his post as the head of the Nevada State Athletic
Commission and joining the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2006, Marc
Ratner has been a key figure in getting mixed-martial-arts regulation
adopted in many U.S. states.

In fact, with two more states joining the fold this year along, only two
holdouts remain.

And though those states and Canada (specially, Ontario) are a top
priority, the UFC's vice president of regulatory and governmental
affairs has a goal beyond MMA regulation: the growth and improvement of
MMA officiating.

Press Release

Ontario, California April 27, 2010 – Submission Ink announced today that the lineup for the Submission Ink MMA Autograph Session is complete. The lineup will consist of Former WEC Lightweight Champion and current assistant coach on the The Ultimate Fighter Season 11 “Razor” Rob McCullough, WEC Featherweight contender Cub Swanson, StrikeForce Middleweight fighter Benji “Razor” Radach and Jamie “The Chosyn 1″ Yager from the UFC Reality TV hit The Ultimate Fighter Season 11.

The Submission Ink MMA Autograph Session will take place May 1st in Ontario California at the Ontario Convention Center and coincides with the three day long Rock The Ink Tattoo and Entertainment Festival (April 30th, May 1st-2nd). The autograph session takes place inside an actual MMA cage so fans get the full MMA experience complete with Ring Card girls. More information is available at http://www.SubmitInk.com

McCullough, the former WEC Lightweight Champion, is known as one of the most feared strikers in all of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) with his blend of power, speed and technique. McCullough can be seen as the assistant coach for Team Punishment on Spike TV’s hit series “The Ultimate Fighter” Season 11 produced by the UFC.

Alongside McCullough will be current star of The Ultimate Fighter Season 11 Jamie Yager. Yager is one of this season’s most electrifying young talents having won his preliminary fight over Ben Stark by devastating knockout with a high kick and followed up that win with another knockout for his second KO on the show.

Radach is best known in MMA for his last fight, one of the best of 2009, with Scott Smith in StrikeForce when the two went to war in a grueling three round fight which saw excellent striking from both fighters. Outside of the sport Radach is widely known for foiling an armed robbery attempt at a Vancouver Washington restaurant where he was eating. Radach was able to physically disarm the would-be robber and subdue him until police arrived.

Swanson is coming off of a submission win over the highly ranked John Franchi in November of 2009 which earned him Fight of the Night honors. It was later revealed that Swanson had broken both of his hands in the fight yet found a way to secure the guillotine choke for the victory. Swanson has faced some of the top fighters in the featherweight division including current WEC featherweight champion Jose Aldo, former UFC lightweight champion Jens Pulver and WEC veteran Charlie Valencia and was the owner of an eleven fight win streak from 2004-2007.

Submission Ink is a one of a kind national submission grappling tournament and MMA Fighter Autograph Session which takes place within the three day Rock the Ink Tattoo & Entertainment Festival which provides entertainment of all types including on-site Tattoo artists, Music, Skateboarding, Motocross, Roller Derby, Guitar Wars, Miss Tattoo Contest and more!

Playing live during the concert portion is Compella & the Twister featuring legendary Jiu-Jitsu player and instructor Eddie Bravo of 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu. In addition to the MMA autograph session there is a No-Gi Submission Grappling Tournament with a $1,000 prize for the Absolute Division, a grappling SuperFight, cash prizes for Intermediate and Advanced Division champions and EVERY competitor receives a gift bag! The action takes place at:

May 1st 2010
Ontario Convention Center
2000 E. Convention Center Way
Ontario, California 91764
Submission Ink takes place within
the Rock The Ink Tattoo & Entertainment Festival

To register for the tournament visit http://www.SubmitInk.com

Make sure when you register you select your weight division using your weight with the GI ON. You must wear your GI (Top, Bottom, and Belt) at Weigh-ins. The tournament brackets will already be completed prior to the day of the tournament therefore it its imperative you make the weight division you registered for. Competitors who do not make their weight division at time of weigh-ins will automatically be disqualified.

Westfield Middle School Gym
345 West Hoover St.
Westfield, IN 46074
MAP

More information on the official site.

The buy rate for “UFC 111: St. Pierre vs. Hardy” did approx. 770,000 PPV buys and did very well in Canada.

A much anticipated fight for the UFC welterweight title had champion Georges St. Pierre defend his title against British striker Dan Hardy. The interest in seeing one of the best mma fighters would have definitely pushed the PPV numbers and it should be no surprise that the numbers in Canada were high. GSP has been named athlete of the year, he’s signed a couple of big sponsorship deals with Underarmour and Gatorade. The French Canadian has so many fans throughout the world, that any card he’ll fight on will always draw big numbers.

Updated UFC 111 numbers look to be coming in at around 770,000 buys. With Georges St. Pierre as the headliner, the numbers were strongest in Canada, as the top per capita markets were Halifax, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa. Montreal, Hamilton, Saskatoon, St. John’s, Windsor, Kingston, Burlington (Ont), Regina and Victoria, all Canadian markets. The top U.S. markets were Honolulu, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Seattle, Newark and Denver.

As a contrast, the biggest markets for WrestleMania the next day per capita were Guadalajara, Monterrey (Mexico, not California), Mexico City, Phoenix, Delhi, India, Lima, Peru, Marseille, France, Toronto, New York and Santiago, Chile. We still don’t have Mania numbers, but it looks like UFC beat them in the U.S., which is one that I figured would be close, and that’s still not a definite, just trending patterns show UFC 111 well ahead of Mania in the U.S.

In Canada, UFC killed.

But WrestleMania was far stronger internationally. Montreal is usually not a strong UFC PPV market. It’s a strong live event market, but that’s because a strong percentage of those at a Montreal show actually come from Ontario. It shows St. Pierre’s local fame has grown by a big margin in the past year.

A couple of notes on the numbers courtesy of MixedMartialArts.com.

Note: The PPV estimates are incomplete and still subject to change. We’ve posted the reports to give you an idea of the events progress with the cable companies.

Note II: Interesting that Seattle was one of the top markets, again, for the UFC. White has openly said he’d like to take a show there in the next 12 months and I’d expect that to come sooner, rather than later, if these market reports continue to produce such good results in that market.

HT: f4wonline.com via mixedmartialarts.com.

Takes place within Rock the Ink Tattoo & Entertainment Festival. $1,000.00 Absolute Division Prize, SuperFight between Roberto Tussa Alencar (Gracie Barra) and Alexandre Vaca Moreno (Team Link), plus Eddie Bravo’s band Compella & the Twister playing live during the concert portion.

2000 E. Convention Center Way,
Ontario, California 91764
MAP

More information on the official site.

Low pay for MMA competition makes perfect sense given its current state, but that is a hard thing for a lot of fans (and fighters) to accept. There seems to be a resurgent outrage over published salaries like UFC lightweight Ronys Torres’ $4000 payout for UFC 110. But fact is, despite being the greatest sport in existence, MMA is not established enough for fighters to be paid big bucks.

Part of the problem behind this empathy-in-overdrive is the skewed perception of professional athlete’s salaries. American major league sports have some ludicrously overpaid players–from the NBA’s $5 million average to A-Rods $100 million contract with the Yankees. Surrounded by such excess, it is easy to forget that those activities have a healthy hundred-years-plus head start on being accepted as legitimate sports; whereas kicking people in the face or forcing a sign of submission by squeezing the trachea are traditionally considered criminal offenses.

MMA–in its current form– has only existed since the advent of proper rules and regulations. That shortens the origins to around UFC 28 in 2000–the first to adopt the “unified rules” set out by the New Jersey Athletic Board. (Ok, there were smaller promotions that came first, and Pride FC started in 1997, but UFC 28 established the first mainstream event with the specific rules that are becoming universal in MMA’s biggest promotions.) Extreme youth for a sport is enough of a burden, but there are still legal hurdles to overcome. Only two provinces in Canada allow professional MMA, despite a huge fanbase in places like Ontario. It’s encouraging that MMA events are now legal and regulated in all but four U.S. states, but most still have not hosted a major event.

MMA as a whole is stuck right in the middle of an emerging-process. There is a lot of red tape to clear for a governing body to permit people to hurt each other in a new and exciting way. For a municipal government to host a professional MMA event, it has to indemnify itself against being sued by an injured competitor. Ridiculous as it may sound, a sore loser can sue cities for permitting him to compete in a high-intensity sport.

If a city has never hosted an MMA event before, there’s no precedent for what cautionary measures need to be taken. Also, promotions need clear guidelines from the city to keep the event legal–all of which needs to be overseen by a higher regulatory authority. Over time, the process becomes smooth and systematic, but the first attempt can be dragged down by bureaucratic regulations and become incredibly time-consuming.

In order for fighters to be paid more, the whole sport needs to grow. MMA promotions need to keep expanding their scope to bigger and better places to increase profits– which is happening, but slowly. While inevitability doomed in the long-term, prohibition of MMA in places like Ontario and New York is seriously hampering cash-flow (hence the recent schmoozing blitz by the UFC in both cities.) The point is that MMA, while awesome, is still small beans in the world of sports.

Presently, rookie fighter’s have a disturbing similarity to struggling actors. It’s as if there is a credit line attached to their name and image that determines a pay-grade. Whether it’s waiting tables, or engineering (see: Shane Carwin, the UFC’s resident Dilbert) athletes trying to break into MMA will likely find a day-job necessary. However, while MMA training is grueling, it’s not outrageous to expect fighters to work in between fights. UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen for example, is even campaigning for public office while training and working in real-estate.

Furthermore, fighters are not necessarily wallowing in poverty between events as the published payouts may suggest. They stay afloat by way of sponsors –as many that fit on their shorts, walk-in T-shirt, hat and mouth guard. A decent sponsor provides free equipment and nutritional supplements; a great sponsor provides steady paycheques for endorsements.

MMA is a viciously top-heavy sport. Fighters like Randy Couture and GSP compete 2-3 times per year and pull in a quarter-million per fight, plus a percentage of the pay-per-view revenues, sponsorship money and commercial endorsements. Conversely, even with mountains of skill and dedication, a promising young career can be derailed by a single inconvenient injury.

MMA will always have a stigma that keeps it from becoming ingrained like American football is to high school and college and hockey is to…well, everyone in Canada. But rest assured, someday the sport will grow to the point where MMA competitors will no longer struggle, but enjoy all the luxuries reserved for a NBA or even PGA champion.

Then after a few years, the fighters union will become corrupt and shiftless. It will declare arbitrary strikes that anger the fans and delay exciting fights. Meanwhile, fighters will remain indifferent; snorting coke and sleeping on piles of money with porn stars. Then one day, after MMA gets its first sex scandal–the revelation that GSP has had consensual relations with every woman in the western hemisphere–fans will know that MMA has finally made the big leagues. All in good time.

Competition will begin at 9am on Saturday and end at 8pm. In addition to awards, the first 300 competitors to register will get a free tournament t-shirt. Whether you are competing or watching, we look forward to seeing you there.

Registration forms and entry fee must be received by Monday, May 10, 2010.
No late or same day registration will be accepted. No Exceptions.
Entry fee as follows: $60 for adult men, $50 for women, and $45 for children.
Send tournament registration forms and entry fee to:
Fabio Santos Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy 6156 Mission Gorge Rd, #L San Diego, CA 92120
Entry fee can be paid by check or credit card. Cash payments can be paid in person only. *** make checks payable to: Fabio Santos
Entry fees are non-refundable. No Exceptions (even if you are disqualified).
All adult competitors must weigh-in. Weigh in is WITH GI ON. Competitors may weigh in on Friday, May 14th at Fabio Santos Academy from
10am – 6pm OR on Saturday, May 15, 2010 at Crawford High School when checking in.
Spectators are $5 per day.

All competitors must wear a clean jiu-jitsu gi, in good condition. Pants and jacket must be the same color. Only all white or all blue gis will be allowed for competition, No Exceptions.

4191 Colts Way
San Diego, CA 92105
MAP

More information on the official site.

Mike Russell, UFC - Mark Bocek spent his summer vacations in high school a little differently than most teenagers. Rather than hanging out with his friends on a beach or pool deck in his hometown in Woodbridge, Ontario, the Canadian-born jiu-jitsu wunderkind traveled the world to train with some of the best mixed martial artists on the planet.

UFC president Dana White’s video blogs for UFC 111 from the 22nd and 23rd of March from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.