Post#18 » by Bernman » Thu Dec 1, 2016 4:13 am
Bjorn was your typical shady MMA promoter. In a way that makes it ironic he'd hold this position, but at the same time he knows the business from the dark side, is a lawyer, and I think the bad rep was way over-inflated because he ran a promotion genuinely trying to build up to compete with the #1 eventually. Many just wanted him to release guys like Eddie and Brookins whenever they wanted out, but don't see how that was fair to the investment they made, and it would have been bad for the sport as a whole if he acted as a de facto feeder. There would have been no competition.
A lot of people felt sympathy for Eddie, but UFC made the material terms of the contract matchable, while at the same time Eddie was compensated well, and their actions of just not letting him go made that possible. The contract he got from Bellator didn't have the upside of him fighting in the UFC, as we saw he ended up enjoying (hindsight is 20/20), but at the same time Bellator offered him more assurances. He knew which network he was fighting on and he'd have maintained sponsorships. Whereas the UFC took his sponsorships soon after and he could have fought on FS1, FS2, Fight Pass, Fox, or atop a ppv. Eddie made a bad analogy about how Bellator didn't compare because of the network, but it was just looking at the upside, by the same logic no contract really could be matched, and Bellator could have used their Viacom connections to get him on CBS if they really needed to. I think that's imminent right now. Plus, the UFC had a bunch of deceptive language like "they intend to give him an immediate title shot" and to put him on "this card or that one", which in practice they couldn't have necessarily delivered on nor would have tried. That's where a lot of the vitriol toward Bjorn came from, and IMO it was much ado about nothing.
Another gripe I see that holds little water is the payment of prelim fighters. It was apples and oranges between Bellator and UFC. Bellator had little quality control on their prelims. It was like 2 decent major org fights and then just local guys with bad records to draw some fans early. Then they get $500 or whatever, and people think that's exploitative, when that's probably better than they'd do on the local show, and they weren't some guy on the cusp like the UFC prelim fighters, or on tv.
One example of a shady thing I remember Bjorn doing was lying that Prindle couldn't make weight so Big Monster Santos wouldn't lose his opportunity and Prindle couldn't win the tourney on the scale. Then, he arguably could have released a few fighters who wanted out sooner. But there should be some punishment for contract breach, it just depends on how long. Of course there's the dog incident before, which some ridiculously think Bjorn executed. He's a lawyer. He knows about plausible deniability. Hire a guy to do a dirty job and then don't talk to him about what that will be. That's shady, but people I think sensationalize and speculate his involvement.
Perception is reality though. Maybe then he will be dropped, or they can convince other fighters he's a necessary evil.
"TRADE GIANNIS" - Magic Giannison
