duran
03-30-2009, 11:27 PM
From W.I.N. (Wrestling Insider Magazine)
[Only registered and activated users can see links]
This is a great print publication that I subscribe to. Very well written articles and monthly contributors from the likes of Olympic Gold Medalists Steve Fraser, Rulon Gardner and Dan Gable.
You can always count on a great inspirational article or one regarding mindset.
W.I.N is headquartered in Newton, Iowa
PACKING A PUNCH
What will be the impact on wrestling by MMA?
By Roger Moore
It was billed as one of the biggest mixed martial arts fights in history. Two former wrestlers — Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar — squared off inside a small cage at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand on Nov. 15.
UFC 91 had an overall purse of $1.118 million distributed between 18 fighters. Just over 14,000 attended the event that saw Lesnar, the 2000 NCAA heavyweight champion from Minnesota, knock out Couture, a 45-year old who lost in the 190-pound NCAA finals in 1991 when he wrestled for Oklahoma State.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship turned 15 in November. Its first mixed martial arts fight card took place in 1993 at Denver’s McNichols Arena in which 7,800 fans attended.
In 2006, UFC set a pay-per-view industry record of $222 million in revenue.
For his victory over Couture — not counting endorsements or unknown bonuses — Lesnar earned $450,000. Couture was paid $250,000.
There were ESPN interviews in the days leading up to the fight and the nation’s top sports channel had highlights on a Saturday night.
Mixed Martial Arts competitions have certainly come a long way since Arizona senator John McCain’s “human ****-fighting” comment.
As MMA has picked up major steam over the last five years, many have said that amateur wrestling would benefit greatly.
So the big question is: Has it?
“I don’t see it,” said the National Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Executive Director Lee Roy Smith. “It seems like wrestling is doing an awful lot to promote the MMA stuff and we aren’t really getting anything in return. You can’t flip through a wrestling magazine without seeing some sort of advertisement for a mixed martial arts fighter and his gear.
“There really are no numbers out there that show it’s had a positive effect on our sport.”
Contrary to public opinion, wrestling’s numbers — at least on the mat — remain strong. In 2007-08, USA Wrestling, the governing body for amateur wresting in the United States, set annual records for athletes, coaches and clubs.
There were 147,014 registered athletes, topping the previous year by over 1,500. The number of registered coaches climbed for the 10th straight year and there were 1,762 sanctioned events inside U.S. borders.
The state of Arkansas added wrestling as a high school-sanctioned sport this year. Only one state — Mississippi — does not offer wrestling at the high school level.
The same weekend as Lesnar-Couture, over 2,000 youth wrestlers from California to New Jersey traveled to Tulsa, Okla., for the Cliff Keen Kickoff Classic. Of the 10 kids this reporter talked to, only two — a 10-year old from Missouri and a 12-year old from Iowa — said they thought they might want to be an MMA champion some day.
Six said they wanted to be an NCAA champion first and four wanted to wrestle in the Olympics. Two said they would do MMA if “it made me a better wrestler.”
Mixed Martial Arts’ influence may still have a ways to go before it gets to 12-and-under circles.
There are those who feel, however, that the United States’ freestyle and Greco-Roman teams could eventually suffer as a handful of possible stars jump into the cage as opposed to continuing their wrestling careers.
After making his first U.S. freestyle team in 2008 and competing at the Olympics in Beijing, Ben Askren returned home and thought hard about crossing over into Mixed Martial Arts. The two-time NCAA champion from Missouri signed with American Top Team in the first week of November and expects to start his MMA career in January.
For some, it’s about the chance to earn a large amount of money. For Askren, a wrestler since age 5, it’s about a new challenge.
“It’s not about money at all for me,” Askren said. “I wasn’t getting rich as a wrestler, but with camps and DVDs and all the other things I was doing fine. My situation is different than a lot of guys.
“It comes down to ‘what are you doing besides getting paid by USA Wrestling?’ Not many are living at (Colorado Springs), getting $3,500 as the No. 3 guy doesn’t make it easy. The No. 1 guy gets $7,500.
“This is just something I’ve thought about for awhile. I’ve wrestled forever, this is a new challenge.”
Not counting endorsements, Henry Cejudo, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist at 121 pounds in freestyle will make around $85,000 this year.
As a resident athlete of the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., Cejudo had his room and board paid.
According to MMAweekly.com, at WEC 36 on Nov. 6 in Hollywood, Fla., Chael Sonnen, a former Oregon University wrestler, earned $48,250 for his win against Paulho Filho. Jake Rosholt, a three-time NCAA champion for Oklahoma State, earned $22,000 in beating Nissen Osterneck on the same card.
The smallest paycheck ($3,000) went to a pair of fighters suffering losses.
In entering MMA, Johny Hendricks, another former NCAA champion, wanted to take care of his family first and possibly give back to the sport of wrestling down the road.
“Wrestling has given me this opportunity,” said Hendricks when he joined the professional ranks of Mixed Martial Arts the summer after his senior season. “I think wrestling is the foundation of where to start with (MMA). I think the relationship between (wrestling and MMA) will get stronger, but right now it’s still kind of new. (MMA) has been around for a long time, but only just now starting to get popular. Wrestling has to benefit.”
“As popular as MMA is becoming, I think USA Wrestling could maybe market amateur wrestling as a way to prepare fighters,” Askren said. “I think amateur wrestlers will benefit from MMA, not amateur wrestling.”
Can you do both?
Mo Lawal, a former NCAA Division II national champion at Central Oklahoma and an All-American at Oklahoma State, finished seventh in freestyle at the 2005 World Championships. He’s had recent success in the cage, but hasn’t ruled out the possibility of wrestling again.
“You just don’t know,” Lawal says. “For some guys it’s not about the money but for others it is. Unless you are the No. 1 guy at your weight, it’s hard to make a living, pay your bills with what you get from USA Wrestling. It’s tough to stay focused when you are worried about other things.
“Most guys, if they have the chance, aren’t going to turn down the type of money that is out there.”
“It’s naïve to think money doesn’t play a factor for some,” said USA Wrestling Executive Director Rich Bender.
“There is always going to be somebody to step up and take the spot. For every three or four guys who leave there are three or four to take their place. Mixed Martial Arts has nothing to do with success at Olympic and world-level wrestling.”
History of success
This list of former wrestlers having success in MMA is a long one.
Chuck Liddell wrestled at Cal Poly before becoming one of Mixed Martial Arts’ top light heavyweights.
Matt Lindland, an Olympian in 2000, is one of the top middleweights. Dan Henderson, also a middleweight, wrestled at Arizona State and will fight Rich Franklin in Ireland in January of 2009.
Josh Koscheck, a national champion for Edinboro in 2001 was a four-time All-American. The 170-pounder has lost just three times in 16 fights.
Urijah Faber was the WEC featherweight champion until his loss at UFC 91. He wrestled at UC-Davis.
One of the pioneers, Dan Severn, has 90 fights, winning 70 of them. His career lasted 17 years, beginning in 1984. He was fourth at the 1981 NCAAs after taking second in 1980 at 190 pounds for Arizona State.
Mark Coleman was the first heavyweight champion in UFC. The term “ground-and-pound” comes from the NCAA champion and 1992 Olympian’s style and strategy. The 44-year old is part of the UFC 93 card in Ireland.
Mark Kerr beat Couture in the 1991 NCAA finals while wrestling for Syracuse University. He started fighting in 1997 and was featured in an HBO series in 2003 about the violent nature of organized MMA competitions in its infancy.
The Future
With sponsors such as Bud Light and Harley Davidson, plus talent agencies helping promote outside the cage, Mixed Martial Arts appears to be a growing monster.
Couture (Xtreme Couture), Henderson (Clinch Gear) and Koscheck (MAR apparel line) have crossed over into the fashion industry as well.
“There is a compelling argument that MMA has already eclipsed boxing and will likely do the same to hockey by mid-2009,” said Joseph Noel, a principal analyst for Emerging Growth Research, in an MMAweekly.com article.
“We strongly believe the mixed martial arts industry will continue to see strong growth over the coming years.”
So, at the end of the day, with mixed martial arts’ rising popularity, has amateur wrestling benefited?
“The reality is that there has been some elite MMA fighters who have had successful wrestling careers and have used that as a basis to start a successful career in MMA,” Bender said. “But that’s like saying wrestling needs the NFL because Stephen Neal learned some skills in the sport that he transitioned into a successful career in football.
“Obviously there are more similarities with MMA, but that being said, it doesn’t mean that a successful wrestler will be a successful MMA fighter.”
Bender and the powers-that-be at USA Wrestling will meet Dec. 6 and the topic of Mixed Martial Arts will be on the agenda.
“We are not sticking our heads in the sand and saying that MMA has not had an impact on wrestling, positive or negative,” Bender added.
“You don’t have to look any further than a guy like Ben Askren, who we think is a guy that could be a World champion but has decided to go to MMA.
“What (USA Wrestling) is tasked with right now is to figure out if there should be an association with MMA and is there a strategy that would keep a guy like Ben Askren in the sport of wrestling. When you lose guys like that, along with a Stephen Neal, it reduces our athlete pool by a lot.
“We are going to continue to investigate how our sport can benefit from the popularity of MMA.”
Stay tuned.
(Roger Moore is a freelance journalist who lives in Stillwater, Okla. He has been part of the Oklahoma State wrestling radio broadcast since 1997 and was named WIN and the National Wrestling Media Association’s Journalist of the Year in 2005.)
[Only registered and activated users can see links]
This is a great print publication that I subscribe to. Very well written articles and monthly contributors from the likes of Olympic Gold Medalists Steve Fraser, Rulon Gardner and Dan Gable.
You can always count on a great inspirational article or one regarding mindset.
W.I.N is headquartered in Newton, Iowa
PACKING A PUNCH
What will be the impact on wrestling by MMA?
By Roger Moore
It was billed as one of the biggest mixed martial arts fights in history. Two former wrestlers — Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar — squared off inside a small cage at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand on Nov. 15.
UFC 91 had an overall purse of $1.118 million distributed between 18 fighters. Just over 14,000 attended the event that saw Lesnar, the 2000 NCAA heavyweight champion from Minnesota, knock out Couture, a 45-year old who lost in the 190-pound NCAA finals in 1991 when he wrestled for Oklahoma State.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship turned 15 in November. Its first mixed martial arts fight card took place in 1993 at Denver’s McNichols Arena in which 7,800 fans attended.
In 2006, UFC set a pay-per-view industry record of $222 million in revenue.
For his victory over Couture — not counting endorsements or unknown bonuses — Lesnar earned $450,000. Couture was paid $250,000.
There were ESPN interviews in the days leading up to the fight and the nation’s top sports channel had highlights on a Saturday night.
Mixed Martial Arts competitions have certainly come a long way since Arizona senator John McCain’s “human ****-fighting” comment.
As MMA has picked up major steam over the last five years, many have said that amateur wrestling would benefit greatly.
So the big question is: Has it?
“I don’t see it,” said the National Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Executive Director Lee Roy Smith. “It seems like wrestling is doing an awful lot to promote the MMA stuff and we aren’t really getting anything in return. You can’t flip through a wrestling magazine without seeing some sort of advertisement for a mixed martial arts fighter and his gear.
“There really are no numbers out there that show it’s had a positive effect on our sport.”
Contrary to public opinion, wrestling’s numbers — at least on the mat — remain strong. In 2007-08, USA Wrestling, the governing body for amateur wresting in the United States, set annual records for athletes, coaches and clubs.
There were 147,014 registered athletes, topping the previous year by over 1,500. The number of registered coaches climbed for the 10th straight year and there were 1,762 sanctioned events inside U.S. borders.
The state of Arkansas added wrestling as a high school-sanctioned sport this year. Only one state — Mississippi — does not offer wrestling at the high school level.
The same weekend as Lesnar-Couture, over 2,000 youth wrestlers from California to New Jersey traveled to Tulsa, Okla., for the Cliff Keen Kickoff Classic. Of the 10 kids this reporter talked to, only two — a 10-year old from Missouri and a 12-year old from Iowa — said they thought they might want to be an MMA champion some day.
Six said they wanted to be an NCAA champion first and four wanted to wrestle in the Olympics. Two said they would do MMA if “it made me a better wrestler.”
Mixed Martial Arts’ influence may still have a ways to go before it gets to 12-and-under circles.
There are those who feel, however, that the United States’ freestyle and Greco-Roman teams could eventually suffer as a handful of possible stars jump into the cage as opposed to continuing their wrestling careers.
After making his first U.S. freestyle team in 2008 and competing at the Olympics in Beijing, Ben Askren returned home and thought hard about crossing over into Mixed Martial Arts. The two-time NCAA champion from Missouri signed with American Top Team in the first week of November and expects to start his MMA career in January.
For some, it’s about the chance to earn a large amount of money. For Askren, a wrestler since age 5, it’s about a new challenge.
“It’s not about money at all for me,” Askren said. “I wasn’t getting rich as a wrestler, but with camps and DVDs and all the other things I was doing fine. My situation is different than a lot of guys.
“It comes down to ‘what are you doing besides getting paid by USA Wrestling?’ Not many are living at (Colorado Springs), getting $3,500 as the No. 3 guy doesn’t make it easy. The No. 1 guy gets $7,500.
“This is just something I’ve thought about for awhile. I’ve wrestled forever, this is a new challenge.”
Not counting endorsements, Henry Cejudo, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist at 121 pounds in freestyle will make around $85,000 this year.
As a resident athlete of the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., Cejudo had his room and board paid.
According to MMAweekly.com, at WEC 36 on Nov. 6 in Hollywood, Fla., Chael Sonnen, a former Oregon University wrestler, earned $48,250 for his win against Paulho Filho. Jake Rosholt, a three-time NCAA champion for Oklahoma State, earned $22,000 in beating Nissen Osterneck on the same card.
The smallest paycheck ($3,000) went to a pair of fighters suffering losses.
In entering MMA, Johny Hendricks, another former NCAA champion, wanted to take care of his family first and possibly give back to the sport of wrestling down the road.
“Wrestling has given me this opportunity,” said Hendricks when he joined the professional ranks of Mixed Martial Arts the summer after his senior season. “I think wrestling is the foundation of where to start with (MMA). I think the relationship between (wrestling and MMA) will get stronger, but right now it’s still kind of new. (MMA) has been around for a long time, but only just now starting to get popular. Wrestling has to benefit.”
“As popular as MMA is becoming, I think USA Wrestling could maybe market amateur wrestling as a way to prepare fighters,” Askren said. “I think amateur wrestlers will benefit from MMA, not amateur wrestling.”
Can you do both?
Mo Lawal, a former NCAA Division II national champion at Central Oklahoma and an All-American at Oklahoma State, finished seventh in freestyle at the 2005 World Championships. He’s had recent success in the cage, but hasn’t ruled out the possibility of wrestling again.
“You just don’t know,” Lawal says. “For some guys it’s not about the money but for others it is. Unless you are the No. 1 guy at your weight, it’s hard to make a living, pay your bills with what you get from USA Wrestling. It’s tough to stay focused when you are worried about other things.
“Most guys, if they have the chance, aren’t going to turn down the type of money that is out there.”
“It’s naïve to think money doesn’t play a factor for some,” said USA Wrestling Executive Director Rich Bender.
“There is always going to be somebody to step up and take the spot. For every three or four guys who leave there are three or four to take their place. Mixed Martial Arts has nothing to do with success at Olympic and world-level wrestling.”
History of success
This list of former wrestlers having success in MMA is a long one.
Chuck Liddell wrestled at Cal Poly before becoming one of Mixed Martial Arts’ top light heavyweights.
Matt Lindland, an Olympian in 2000, is one of the top middleweights. Dan Henderson, also a middleweight, wrestled at Arizona State and will fight Rich Franklin in Ireland in January of 2009.
Josh Koscheck, a national champion for Edinboro in 2001 was a four-time All-American. The 170-pounder has lost just three times in 16 fights.
Urijah Faber was the WEC featherweight champion until his loss at UFC 91. He wrestled at UC-Davis.
One of the pioneers, Dan Severn, has 90 fights, winning 70 of them. His career lasted 17 years, beginning in 1984. He was fourth at the 1981 NCAAs after taking second in 1980 at 190 pounds for Arizona State.
Mark Coleman was the first heavyweight champion in UFC. The term “ground-and-pound” comes from the NCAA champion and 1992 Olympian’s style and strategy. The 44-year old is part of the UFC 93 card in Ireland.
Mark Kerr beat Couture in the 1991 NCAA finals while wrestling for Syracuse University. He started fighting in 1997 and was featured in an HBO series in 2003 about the violent nature of organized MMA competitions in its infancy.
The Future
With sponsors such as Bud Light and Harley Davidson, plus talent agencies helping promote outside the cage, Mixed Martial Arts appears to be a growing monster.
Couture (Xtreme Couture), Henderson (Clinch Gear) and Koscheck (MAR apparel line) have crossed over into the fashion industry as well.
“There is a compelling argument that MMA has already eclipsed boxing and will likely do the same to hockey by mid-2009,” said Joseph Noel, a principal analyst for Emerging Growth Research, in an MMAweekly.com article.
“We strongly believe the mixed martial arts industry will continue to see strong growth over the coming years.”
So, at the end of the day, with mixed martial arts’ rising popularity, has amateur wrestling benefited?
“The reality is that there has been some elite MMA fighters who have had successful wrestling careers and have used that as a basis to start a successful career in MMA,” Bender said. “But that’s like saying wrestling needs the NFL because Stephen Neal learned some skills in the sport that he transitioned into a successful career in football.
“Obviously there are more similarities with MMA, but that being said, it doesn’t mean that a successful wrestler will be a successful MMA fighter.”
Bender and the powers-that-be at USA Wrestling will meet Dec. 6 and the topic of Mixed Martial Arts will be on the agenda.
“We are not sticking our heads in the sand and saying that MMA has not had an impact on wrestling, positive or negative,” Bender added.
“You don’t have to look any further than a guy like Ben Askren, who we think is a guy that could be a World champion but has decided to go to MMA.
“What (USA Wrestling) is tasked with right now is to figure out if there should be an association with MMA and is there a strategy that would keep a guy like Ben Askren in the sport of wrestling. When you lose guys like that, along with a Stephen Neal, it reduces our athlete pool by a lot.
“We are going to continue to investigate how our sport can benefit from the popularity of MMA.”
Stay tuned.
(Roger Moore is a freelance journalist who lives in Stillwater, Okla. He has been part of the Oklahoma State wrestling radio broadcast since 1997 and was named WIN and the National Wrestling Media Association’s Journalist of the Year in 2005.)