When Seth Petruzelli delivered the punch that knocked out Kimbo Slice and shattered the toughman's image, he also put a TKO on Elite XC and its parent company ProElite.
ProElite closed its doors this week, declaring bankruptcy, facing $55 million in debt and with its main drawing card disgraced, no real way to make that money back.
I'm disappointed for two reasons. First, I was at the first EliteXC card on CBS, what at the time I thought would be a watershed moment for MMA. My thinking was, even if EliteXC fails, it could force the UFC to step up and put more of its product on TV.
Second reason being, that's never going to happen.
Selfishly as a casual MMA fan who is never going to spend $480 a year on UFC PPVs I had really hoped we would see more MMA on broadcast and cable TV.
So now the best I can hope for is that Affliction (the fledgling competitor to the UFC, with real talent) seizes the opportunity and takes the last spot CBS had planned to give to EliteXC.
As bad as some people say it was, EliteXC's 3 cards on CBS all drew pretty good ratings for a Saturday night, not great, but better than the mainstream sports it competed against.
I would even love to see Affliction put its top draw, Fedor, up against Kimbo on CBS. Though I'm not sure the network would want to televise an execution.
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