Falls Count Anywhere

04-14-08

High jumpin'

The MMA Hot Spot
UFC made Vegas the hottest place in the world when it comes to seeing live MMA. Most of the UFC’s biggest shows are held in Vegas, not to mention that it has about 50 years of history as the center for Boxing to build on. The Hard Rock Hotel and Casino was the best single place to watch MMA for a couple of years, and when they still have shows there, it’s still pretty cool.

But that’s a traveler’s hotspot. People come from around the world to see the big UFC PPVs and the locals, while they love their MMA and go to shows, it’s not like it’s a local thing.

In San Jose, California, MMA is a local thing, and they have been doing it better than almost anyone.

Dave Meltzer wrote a piece saying that San Jose as an MMA city started when Frank Shamrock moved to San Jose in 1997 or so. That’s not a bad time to point to, though Paul Varlens, an early UFC guy who was known as the Alaskan Polar Bear, came to San Jose to work on his MMA training sometime in 1995 and was very well-known in the business. Cung Le, a San Shou fighter who just kept winning and winning, was from San Jose and was the second best-known Martial Artist out of San Jose before the MMA thing took off (the other was Ernie Reyes Jr.). He was an impressive fighter and put everything out there.

San Jose has had an active martial arts community for years, has had a lot of boxing over the last decade (Fight Night at The Tank was a popular boxing series held at the San Jose Arena) and has been strong for pro wrestling since the WWF explosion in the mid-1990s.

That’s the recipe for MMA. You need rabid fans who love Wrestling and can appreciate boxing and martial arts. Without that, you’ll never connect with the fans in the right way. You have to have the spectacle of wrestling and the competition of real fighting. That’s what San Jose was lucky enough to have.

The Strikeforce shows have been very good. They’ve been built around two guys: Frank Shamrock and Cung Le. Shamrock was a traditional MMA fighter. He was the UFC Middleweight champion and had one of the great fights of the late 1990s when he took down Tito Ortiz in 1999 in a fight that made me think that Ortiz was nothing special. Shamrock fought in UFC until he had a dispute and left. He fought in Pancrase in Japan and I believe in Heroes and Pride on a limited basis. He really wasn’t a regular anywhere after his UFC run until Strikeforce hit.

Cung didn’t want to do MMA, though he had many offers. His San Shou matches were big deals, drawing a bunch of people to shows at the San Jose Civic Auditorium and to San Jose State Events Center. He was flashy enough to be a star, but he also had a wrestling background which you’d think would make him perfect for MMA, but he didn’t want to go. He spent the better part of a decade becoming a star and building an audience. That allowed him to capitalize when he finally did make the jump.

One of the reasons that Le didn’t want to do MMA may have been the hope for legitimate martial arts as a drawing sport on its own. Le did fight K-1 Kickboxing, going 3-0. There were a lot of shows that drew good numbers, but it never broke through and the groups that got TV time never made anything of a national impact. MMA grew quickly, found a serious audience and groups started looking at promoting around the country. Terry Funk famously said that he thought that the future of promoting was local groups popping up and promoting big shows a few times a year and they’d be legit instead of traditional pro wrestling.

Strikeforce started in 2006 when they first allowed MMA in California under strict regulation. The show at the HP Pavilion (San Jose Arena or the Shark Tank, depending on what you’re seeing) sold out and these were the hottest tickets in town. Mike Tyson showed up, as did Chuck Norris. This was the same time as Cinequest and I was staying at the Arena hotel right next to the Pavilion and there was a huge buzz. A lot of the fans (and a few fighters) stayed at the hotel and there was a pre-WrestleMania feel to the place. I’ve been to WrestleManias and stayed at the primary hotels and this was very similar.

The show was centered around the matches of Clay Guida, Daniel Puder, Cung and Shamrock. That was all they needed to draw the number. The show was huge and the biggest draw and most over performer was Cung Le. There were tons of Cung signs and Vietnamese flags flying in the arena.

The second show drew a little under 10 thousand when Alistair Overeem beat Vitor Belfort on top and Cung won second from the top. Clay Guida lost in his match, and Daniel Puder was put lower on the card. Puder, a local boy who was featured on Tough Enough and almost made Kurt Angle tap, was supposed to be one of the focal points of the promotion, but it hasn’t quite worked that way since there’s always been Shamrock and Le in his path.

Cung Le headlined the third Pavilion event, though they’d done a couple of shows in Fresno and elsewhere. This also had the Gina Carano (Crush from American Gladiators) match that put her on the map.

The fourth Arena event was Shamrock vs. Phil Boroni, a match that was completely built like a traditional pro wrestling match. These were two guys who hated each other and everyone was interested in seeing which of them would shut the other guy up. Le was second from the top against Travis Frykland. They had a really good match. Shamrock and Boroni had one of those matches that just blew the roof off. The two of them had a war, Shamrock busted his ACL and Boroni broke some ribs. Shamrock was gonna be out for a while, but it also meant that they could build up the match against Cung, because it was obvious that those two were the future of Strikeforce in the same way that Flair vs. Sting was obviously the future when they started to face off in late 1987 and early 1988.

Cung headlined the November 16th, 2007 show with a strong win. It was there that they had Shamrock show up and they set the stage for the big show. They drew less than 7500 people, which is disappointing, but shows what a draw that Shamrock is. The Tacoma Dome show, built around Bob Sapp, was pretty much a failure because it wasn’t in San Jose where they had tradition, and they had neither Shamrock nor Le. It would be interesting to note that some consider these two local stars, though Shamrock was certainly the biggest name nationally that isn’t with UFC at the moment.

The March 29th fight at the HP Pavilion between Shamrock and Le was every bit as exciting as the Shamrock-Boroni match, but even more physical. Le kept Shamrock from coming inside with his kicks and Shamrock was trying to block them with one arm. He ended up getting the arm broken and the corner doctor called the fight. This set up an obvious rematch between the two, probably early next year. The crowd was easily in for Le, but Shamrock got a lot of positive reaction too. That sort of reaction is hard to maintain, but they did for the entire match. The match was so good that when Shamrock, who had been rocked for most of the first round and a half, made his big comeback the audience really got into him.

San Jose has built a brand and while it may not be the biggest game in town (that is the Sharks), MMA has certainly taken control.

That’s all for now...more soon!

Chris Garcia