UFN 143 on ESPN+ 1 Cejudo vs Dillashaw

[null]

Thanks. I think it's ridiculous to have Fight Pass and then another streaming service on top of it. I'm wondering if this will last. I'll probably play the free trial game for a while.

ESPN+ will be absolutely essential for all but the most casual UFC fans since it will show most of their cards, with a lesser amount on ESPN channels on tv. It's only $50 or $60 for a year. Some people may be tempted to cancel Fight Pass, thinking that they won't need it any more, but in the meantime, the UFC promoted that UFC PPV prelims will still be shown on Fight Pass in 2019, so that's something you may miss. Plus, they beefed up Fight Pass offerings with a lot of other combat sports live content recently like CES MMA, Roy Jones Jr. boxing cards, and Muay Thai Grand Prix to the long established Invicta FC, Glory SuperFight Series, Cage Warriors and many other promotions, several of which are bettable. I hope they follow through on the combo deal they announced a while back where we may get Fight Pass for only $5/month. But either way as a gambler, there's no way I am going to quibble about an extra $50 for the year. I put more on that on a prop flyer wager.

 

[Soccer Steve]

Thanks. I think it's ridiculous to have Fight Pass and then another streaming service on top of it. I'm wondering if this will last. I'll probably play the free trial game for a while.

We're observing the death throes of cable TV. The nickle-and-dime subscription services - Fight Pass, ESPN, Netflix, HBOgo, Disney is coming with one - are the way of the (near) present, imo. Who knows what the future holds for TV but having cable with 200+ channels, 90% of which are dogshit, at $100+/month, or whatever it is, is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Thankfully.

 

[Soccer Steve]

And I go look at ESPN+ just now. Great: $4.99/month. Then: "Not Available in your country." For fuck's sake, I live in Canada. VPN but seriously...enough of this geoblock horseshit.

edit: rant continues...so rather than take my money I'm just going to access an illegal stream. So dumb...

 

[Kyle Stephens]

I would not trust my money on The Menace, unless he is fighting some absolute scrub and he is reasonably priced too. The guy is the definition of unreliable. He has the IQ of a potato. I have to admit that I didn't watch any fights of Te Edwards, but reading you guys saying he has solid wrestling background is the reddest ot the red flags, if you wanna bet Bermudez. I would sit and think very hard to bet or not Bermudez if he was the much better wrestler in a match-up, let alone if the wrestling is a wash. And he is going up in weight for this. How is a guy losing split decisions from 3 of the worst athletes in Alpha Male having your trust that he'll do better going up in weight and fighting better wrestler than all 3 of them? I don't know...

I made some progress on the Glover fight. Hope somebody can use it.

What I saw on tape is that Glover slowed down most in his movement - he is slow footed, but Ion is not some quick mofo with his feet too. Glover still has good speed with his hands, at least enough to not get blown out the water by random guys. And Cutelaba is not some fancy distance striker, he is winging wild hooks and looks to clinch to do some dirty boxing and use knees. Hooks are maybe the one striking weapon that Teixeira avoids very well, he is a magnet for straight punches, tho. But Cutelaba, as I said is mainly wild hooks (uppercuts here and there). And Cutelaba is a head hunter, especially from distance. In the clinch maybe some knees to the body and punches, but at distance he is very predictable with his swings. At the very least Glover will be able to defend himself long enough to make his wrestling and after that - his grapping work.

Once on the ground I frankly see an insta sub win for Glover. Maybe I am overestimating Glover's grappling, but Misha is not a lot better than Glover on the ground (more physical for sure) and he tapped Ion the moment the fight was on the ground, if I remember correctly. Ion's striking in nature is best in close distance, if he is gonna be in Glover's face, it will be very easy for Glover to duck under a punch and take him down, and Ion's TDD is not good to begin with. Especially not good defending lower body attacks - doubles and singles (Glover shoots singles mainly).

I think Glover can avoid the early storm of Cutelaba and get him later in the 1st or in the second. Cutelaba's style is energy consuming and on top of that he is not the biggest LHW. He is mucle bound, but his frame is not that big. If my eyes don't lie me he didn't seem bigger than Cutalaba and Cutelaba is fighting @ MW now.

 

[null]

And I go look at ESPN+ just now. Great: $4.99/month. Then: "Not Available in your country." For fuck's sake, I live in Canada. VPN but seriously...enough of this geoblock horseshit.

edit: rant continues...so rather than take my money I'm just going to access an illegal stream. So dumb...

TSN is the UFC's partner in Canada.

 

[Card]

 

[Soccer Steve]

TSN is the UFC's partner in Canada.

But at $24.99/month is getting a bit pricey. And, to overshare, ESPN+ has Italian soccer rights which would be awesome to get as well.

 

[null]

We're observing the death throes of cable TV. The nickle-and-dime subscription services - Fight Pass, ESPN, Netflix, HBOgo, Disney is coming with one - are the way of the (near) present, imo. Who knows what the future holds for TV but having cable with 200+ channels, 90% of which are dogshit, at $100+/month, or whatever it is, is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Thankfully.

I may be the last holdout, but the idea that streaming is better than traditional cable or satellite tv is laughable to me. Maybe it saves you some money if you are a broke young person, or don't really make much use of it. But tv is 100x more efficient for delivering video content in my opinion. I actually like having content on tv better than having to stream everything through my internet. $150/month for every channel on DirecTV in recent years with multiple DVRs was a fair deal in my opinion since I watched not only fight cards, but a wide variety of other tv shows and movies on the movie channels. Now consumers have to bog down their internet connection and pay for a clusterfuck of streaming services individually, $5 or $10 or more per service and the services are multiplying like mushrooms in a damp basement. It's a whole bunch of clunky unique interfaces with separate passwords on top of it. And even if you subscribe to the biggest ones like Netflix, it's not much new content save a few exclusives, but mostly old tv series and movies. I realize that streaming is the future and I now subscribe to Fight Pass, DAZN and soon ESPN+ for fights in addition to DirecTV. But as far as I am concerned they have everyone fooled and we are going backwards technologically, at least in the short term.

 

[Soccer Steve]

I may be the last holdout, but the idea that streaming is better than traditional cable or satellite tv is laughable to me. Maybe it saves you some money if you are a broke young person, or don't really make much use of it. But tv is 100x more efficient for delivering video content in my opinion. I actually like having content on tv better than having to stream everything through my internet. $150/month for every channel on DirecTV in recent years with multiple DVRs was a fair deal in my opinion since I watched not only fight cards, but a wide variety of other tv shows and movies on the movie channels. Now consumers have to bog down their internet connection and pay for a clusterfuck of streaming services individually, $5 or $10 or more per service and the services are multiplying like mushrooms in a damp basement. It's a whole bunch of clunky unique interfaces with separate passwords on top of it. And even if you subscribe to the biggest ones like Netflix, it's not much new content save a few exclusives, but mostly old tv series and movies. I realize that streaming is the future and I now subscribe to Fight Pass, DAZN and soon ESPN+ for fights in addition to DirecTV. But as far as I am concerned they have everyone fooled and we are going backwards technologically, at least in the short term.

I'm not broke or necessarily all that young but I ditched traditional cable years ago. I would find myself watching maybe 6 of 100+ channels and paying upwards of $150 for that, with internet included. Now I pay $47 for internet, $5 or whatever for Fight Pass, and stream everything else. With Chromecast I just use my phone to send whatever I want right to my TV screen. That's incredibly convenient. And I don't remember the last commercial I've seen, honest. That alone is worth it for me. All that said, you do make some good points, no doubt about it.

With the rise of Netflix, I agree with you that all these new services are silly but I disagree that everyone is fooled. The market will weed out the good and bad. At least that's what it's supposed to do.

(Full disclosure Jim; I use my parent's Netflix login so I'm not out of pocket on that one hahaha)

 

[Oblivian]

I may be the last holdout, but the idea that streaming is better than traditional cable or satellite tv is laughable to me. Maybe it saves you some money if you are a broke young person, or don't really make much use of it. But tv is 100x more efficient for delivering video content in my opinion. I actually like having content on tv better than having to stream everything through my internet. $150/month for every channel on DirecTV in recent years with multiple DVRs was a fair deal in my opinion since I watched not only fight cards, but a wide variety of other tv shows and movies on the movie channels. Now consumers have to bog down their internet connection and pay for a clusterfuck of streaming services individually, $5 or $10 or more per service and the services are multiplying like mushrooms in a damp basement. It's a whole bunch of clunky unique interfaces with separate passwords on top of it. And even if you subscribe to the biggest ones like Netflix, it's not much new content save a few exclusives, but mostly old tv series and movies. I realize that streaming is the future and I now subscribe to Fight Pass, DAZN and soon ESPN+ for fights in addition to DirecTV. But as far as I am concerned they have everyone fooled and we are going backwards technologically, at least in the short term.

I'm 100% with you here. I also think not having the UFC on cable TV for multiple events will be the death of pulling in new viewers.

 

[null]

I'm 100% with you here. I also think not having the UFC on cable TV for multiple events will be the death of pulling in new viewers.

The UFC is really good at hedging their bets across the full variety of delivery vehicles- they still make use of their 25 year old PPV model for about a dozen main cards a year; they will have a dozen or more cards wholly or mostly on traditional cable tv with ESPN in 2019, plus some more where the prelims only are on traditional tv at ESPN; plus a couple of dozen or more at least where they will be wholly or mostly streaming on ESPN+. Plus they have Fight Pass as well where some UFC PPV prelims will still apparently reside. So there will still be a significant tv component going forward, but it's for sure in the minority now, not the majority.

 

[Tony J]

Anybody know if UFC will have PPV prelims on ESPN, like they do (or did, rather) with FS1, or are all the PPV prelims now going to Fight Pass? Because they say "exclusive" fights, but currently, only 2 PPV fights go to Fight Pass, maybe more for a bigger card. To me, if that's the case, that's not worth it for me, because an injury already means one less fight for FP, so the TV fights go on as planned.

Cage Warriors used to be one of my favorite promotions, but the talent is constantly being raided, and the same can be said for Invicta FC. For entertainment purposes, FP looks like it is still a solid deal, but for gambling purposes, ESPN+ is the better value with the greater quantity of handicapped fights.

 

[rille31]

It streams a lot of live sports not including NBA NFL or MLB. Theres stupid espn+ originals on there too. Its like 5 bucks a month. Not sure if there is a library of things to watch, I would assume you wont just miss out if you dont catch it live idk I haven't bought it yet. Still murky waters on how it's going to work with fight pass if events will be put on there to stream later or not.

Will they air the prelims, the fightpass stream is usually atleast one min behind so would be nice if the delay got minimized especially for lb, I remember that bt sports where atleast 30 Seconds ahead of fightpass

 

[null]

That's another good point about the move to streaming- all you cordcutters are going to be regretting it if sportsbooks start to throw in the towel with live betting offerings if it's too inconsistent or delayed for them to manage in real time. Not to mention whatever delay you may suffer yourselves in placing live bets.

 

[Soccer Steve]

That's another good point about the move to streaming- all you cordcutters are going to be regretting it if sportsbooks start to throw in the towel with live betting offerings if it's too inconsistent or delayed for them to manage in real time. Not to mention whatever delay you may suffer yourselves in placing live bets.

Twitch, twitter, periscope, etc. make delays a moot point. The nerds will always win, Jim. Always. They'll ruin LB before stream services will imo.

And I have a feeling that bookies kill it on live bet. People on tilt and chasing losses probably accounts for a sizable gain for them. Anyone halfway successful at it they just limit anyways.

 

[null]

Twitch, twitter, periscope, etc. make delays a moot point. The nerds will always win, Jim. Always. They'll ruin LB before stream services will imo.

And I have a feeling that bookies kill it on live bet. People on tilt and chasing losses probably accounts for a sizable gain for them. Anyone halfway successful at it they just limit anyways.

Twitch, Twitter & Periscope are irrelevant- anyone who regularly uses live bet for MMA knows you have to watch in real time on the fastest tv channel or stream possible and your fingers have to fly to the keyboard in a matter of seconds oftentimes to get bets in on 5Dimes between rounds for example, otherwise you risk missing out on the short window you have to put a bet in, especially if the first price gets rejected. Even on the books that let the lines hang open during rounds and for longer it behooves you to move really fast before the prices change or it gets greyed out as things happen. From the point of view of the bookmakers or the service they use to handle the live bet lines, if they don't feel like they have a real time handle on it, they could easily stop offering it, especially if they take a bad beating when they mis-judge how far behind they are. It's certainly a concern now that we are in a streaming era. Anyone who was here in 2013-2015 and remembers Bookmaker's glorious full featured live betting for MMA will remember how good it was for us and how much money some of us made from it. They did away with it permanently for a reason and it wasn't because they were making a killing. On the contrary, I think they were losing their ass on it.

 

[ClipYourDirtyWings]

It's tempting to bet Bermudez.

Bermudez is the smallest favorite he's been in 15 fights and it's against Te Edwards

All the value is on Bermudez, I think Edwards has a punchers chance. Edwards is younger, bigger and he hits harder, thats it.

Bermudez has only ever been KO'd by Zombie and Stephens.

I have to agree. Aside from a Contender series KO against some blowjob from Indiana, Edwards has accomplished nothing. Bermudez was never great and he’s definitely starting to fall off, but I’ll take a veteran wrestler over Edwards at that price any day

 

[Soccer Steve]

I'm not going to shy away from the fact that all I'm doing with Menifield-Moreira is pretty much wiki-capping. Maybe I can save others the time...

With an 0:08 KO on a Tuesday fight and then a list of crushed cans what do we have in Menifield? Moreira crushed cans himself but I like the idea of him weathering 8-10 punches, dragging the dude down, and then choking him or ripping an arm off. The Brazilian fought 5 times in 2018 so he's obviously trying to make something of himself as a fighter. I got Moreira at 0.5u for 3u on his ITD line so the submission line might not be too terrible.

From 2016. Opponent with a bunch of KO victories. Moreira looks super raw and pretty shitty tbh.
Rd 1: Sticks to him like glue as soon as they tie up. When they break, his opponents lands really clean and knocks him down bad. Jumps on top, heavy gnp. On his back, he eats a few more but you can see he's searching for the sub immediately. Finds his way on top and totally dominates. Arguable that ref could've stopped it.
Rd 2: Opponent is gassed. Moreira shoves him to the fence, drags him down, toys with him for actually a long time, gets subs eventually.


Most recent fight, August 2018. Arte another KO-heavy opponent. Moreira in way better shape, and tatted up. So cool.
Rd 1: Well, he learned how to put his hands up. That's encouraging. Closes in and ties up within 10 seconds. Gets him down, too rushed to try and improve position, Arte gets up and breaks away. Moreira so slow. So shitty standing up. Eats an big uppercut, big hook. Arte engages like an idiot, Moreira grabs him, drags him down, gets position this time. Man, once on the ground Moreira makes him look like an amateur. Just runs out of time or else he subs Arte.
Rd 2: Moreira front head kick lands, charges for him, leans him against cage, takes him down. Can see immediately it's just a matter of time for sub. Impressive that he can get full mount so easily and then not get bucked off. How Arte survived a fully extended armbar, I have no answer for. Moreira let it go as soon as a new position presented itself. Seemed happy to let Arte on top. Tangles his legs around his head. There it is; done.



Bit long there, sorry. This was as much for my own good as it was just making a post, I know you all can breakdown a fight on your own.

TL;DR I think Moreira is a live one. He absolutely needs to get it to the ground as soon as possible. Very slow on the feet and he'll have nothing to offer there. Showed a bit of defense but Menifield can probably bash through that easily. On the ground he's a spider. Only brief moments of it but off his back he seems just as dangerous as when on top. 99% Menifield is gonna come out looking to finish this within 1 minute. If Moreira can weather that, push him to the cage, and drag this to the ground he's got a great chance to sub what I assume will be a very vulnerable opponent.

Live dog imo.

 

[Oblivian]

The UFC is really good at hedging their bets across the full variety of delivery vehicles- they still make use of their 25 year old PPV model for about a dozen main cards a year; they will have a dozen or more cards wholly or mostly on traditional cable tv with ESPN in 2019, plus some more where the prelims only are on traditional tv at ESPN; plus a couple of dozen or more at least where they will be wholly or mostly streaming on ESPN+. Plus they have Fight Pass as well where some UFC PPV prelims will still apparently reside. So there will still be a significant tv component going forward, but it's for sure in the minority now, not the majority.

I think they underestimate how many people are all or nothing. I know at some point I am going to hit a wall when I say "this is too much to try to follow anymore". With the size of the roster, all of the different MMA events, different mediums to watch, etc., it's hard to keep up with.

Is it at least going to be convenient? Can I watch through the firestick?

 

[Soccer Steve]

Twitch, Twitter & Periscope are irrelevant- anyone who regularly uses live bet for MMA knows you have to watch in real time on the fastest tv channel or stream possible and your fingers have to fly to the keyboard in a matter of seconds oftentimes to get bets in on 5Dimes between rounds for example, otherwise you risk missing out on the short window you have to put a bet in, especially if the first price gets rejected. Even on the books that let the lines hang open during rounds and for longer it behooves you to move really fast before the prices change or it gets greyed out as things happen. From the point of view of the bookmakers or the service they use to handle the live bet lines, if they don't feel like they have a real time handle on it, they could easily stop offering it, especially if they take a bad beating when they mis-judge how far behind they are. It's certainly a concern now that we are in a streaming era. Anyone who was here in 2013-2015 and remembers Bookmaker's glorious full featured live betting for MMA will remember how good it was for us and how much money some of us made from it. They did away with it permanently for a reason and it wasn't because they were making a killing. On the contrary, I think they were losing their ass on it.

Totally concede that you know way more about LB than I do. But twitch, twitter, periscope put you in the arena. They are not irrelevant, they are the razor edge you need to be able to lay down your live bet when, as you say, a matter of seconds is all you have. Whenever I have to fight with a delay, twitter gives me the exact moment a round ends. Sometimes you can even watch the event in essentially real-time off someone's phone.

Anyways, I think we're going in circles now. I guess my point is that none of this is going away. Getting annoyed with us 'cordcutters' because we jeopardize your LB is one thing but, for instance, we'll be the ones who push streams to the point where VR allows you to sit inside the cage watching two people fight, from your living room.