Vince McMahon running the UFC.?? I can already imagine the fighters being introduced with their own theme songs and doing scripted promos before each fight. Wait actually it's not a bad idea. bringing drama in between the fights haha
(the fun kind the day male soap opera level drama)
WWE stock was the one stock I legitimately understood enough to make decent profits from. Not totally sure how this will impact that.
It does seem like it's potentially more about setting up a future sale of both companies though, doesn't it? There's now no risk of them potentially competing against each other with sellers (I know they're very different products but they'd occupy the same gap in the market for a lot of buyers, I'd imagine).
Seems a bit of a strange marriage but I suppose there is some sense in former UFC fighters being able to extend their careers by hopping over to the WWE.
From a business perspective, they're pretty much the same, both being mostly based on negotiating TV rights fees and, to a lesser extent, promoting individual stars.
And some WWE stars with legit fighting credentials have gone back and forth from UFC (and other MMA promotions) to WWE. Brock Lesnar being the best example
WWE performers are already underpaid. They are non-unionized independent contractors who cover their own travel costs and get no medical benefits. Less than 10% of revenue is dedicated to talent in WWE, whereas it's around 40-50% for unionized sports.
If I were a UFC fan then I would be concerned about the integrity of UFC, given the pure entertainment and narrative focus that an organisation like WWE has.
There will be moments where WWE execs or simply WWE practices and processes will realise that a certain UFC outcome will be much better entertainment. The question is whether or not everyone will forever have the integrity to ignore that as an option and if the dividing line between the two cultures is strong enough to stop the bleed.
Could it maybe work the other way, start to make the WWE more real?
The UFC already shapes events around marketability over merit as much as they can get away with. Look how long it took for Charles and Islam to get their title shots. The difficulty Islam had getting fights with people ranked above him on the way. Beneil and Belal still aren't getting title shots. Meanwhile, Colby gets away with just sitting out a year between title shot losses with fights against washed opponents sandwiched in between.
I don't think WWE as a product stands to gain much from becoming real. The UFC has brand value around being real, but you can see that management wants to sell drama, not sports.
poor people around the world have little fight clubs all the time, and the result is "knuckle heads" with broken teeth and unable to work. This show business has big production value, good lighting with excellent cameras, and yes, stories that people can latch on to.. hint- fight fans are often not very smart.
you have no idea what you're talking about and your comment is just patronising. MMA is a highly technical sport that demands elite levels of athleticism and sporting intelligence. fight fans are also already a highly diverse group from all around the world and that group is continually growing in size and diversity
I never was attracted to the sport and maybe even had some unconscious biases towards fighters, but about a year ago my meditation practice brought me to try and confront the fear and aversion I had towards aggression. Long story short, I've been training Muay Thai for about a year and it totally changed my view on things. Everyone I've met at these gyms has been kind, welcoming, and exceptionally thoughtful. Training anything this difficult has a way of cutting down your ego. I only wish I had started 10 years ago.
Maybe the fans are different, who knows, but the people that actually show up and train I'd absolutely take as a friend or direct report. It's deep internal mind/body training.
I was curious so I did some Googling just to get a sense if what you're claiming is true and it turns out you very likely wrong on this matter. According to TIDES/University of Central Florida, more than 80% of UFC fighters have a college degree, which is much higher than many other sports including the NFL (31%), NBA (20%), and MLB (less than 45%).
But you mentioned fans specifically, and here you're also way off. Much like the other sports I mentioned, the demographics of UFC viewers are also much more educated than the other sports I mentioned. Based on the Sports Business Journal's survey, 42% of NBA viewers have a college degree, 34% for MLB, 32% for the NFL, and 55% for UFC.
Now you can object to college being a good indicator of intelligence and that's fine, but it's probably a much better indicator than just randomly making stuff up and stereotyping people based on their hobby.
> Could it maybe work the other way, start to make the WWE more real?
That would be a tragic mistake for everyone involved. People like being in on the joke when John Cena, a grown man costumed in neon green, runs around the square stage whilst pretending to be invisible. It would ruin the fun if his opponent unceremoniously dropkicked him in the solar plexus.
Professional wrestling makes way more sense when you realize it's not sport, it's modern day Shakespeare: Plays for the layperson, with plenty of dirty humor and crassness.
> It would ruin the fun if his opponent unceremoniously dropkicked him in the solar plexus.
Not to take away from the point, but I could also see this being part of the joke. "No, obviously you're not invisible! Why did you think I would fall for that?"
The point is that WWE broadcasts are specifically about fun and entertainment. It's not supposed to be "real". (Although, obviously it is "real" even if it's staged; imagine doing what they do and not killing or injuring yourself or anyone else.)
I honestly thought this was an April fools joke. Kind of speaks to what the UFC prefers in their fighters though. They love heels and are always encouraging fighters to talk shit.
I'm an MMA fan and I'm not concerned about this affecting UFC's integrity. Their matchmaking is already often based off of what will be marketable. It's an accepted part of the business, and they know they need to balance it with high level competition.
I think this move really makes sense for the career paths of UFC fighters. Right now, you can have a very marketable fighter fall in the rankings, and suddenly lose a ton of value. MMA fighters also tend to decline really quickly with age. So a transition to something else like Pro Wrestling can be a good path to maintaining a really lucrative career, as we've seen with a bunch of fighters like Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar, and Ken Shamrock.
Marketability-centered matchmaking isn’t even exclusive to UFC. College football bowls are virtually never selected based on skill outside of the New Year’s Six.
Ken Shamrock and Brock Lesnar both started as pro wrestlers who transitioned between Pro wrestling and MMA. Only Rousey has really managed to make a successful pure MMA->WWE transition. It will be interesting to see how many MMA stars can actually find success in the WWE before WWE fans become tired of the UFC treating the WWE has the UFC retirement home.
Jessamyn Duke, Shayna Baszler, and Tom Lawlor have found success as well, but not all inside WWE. I think they'd be embraced if they approach it as becoming a wrestler instead of being an MMA fighter who pulls their strikes and loosely locks in submissions
>Their matchmaking is already often based off of what will be marketable.
Sure, but the concern is that they will start following the WWE practice of basing the winners on what is more marketable. Given that the practice of fight-fixing has a long history in boxing, this merger seems like a really tone deaf money-grab to me.
We just missed out on the possibility of Josh Barnett vs Brock Lesnar in a feud with two wrestling matches and an MMA fight to serve as the rubber match.
Despite the similarities, the WWE and UFC are very distinct brands in the eyes of their fans.
In talking to fans that I know, WWE fans don't want the wresting to become more real. Nobody watching WWE is under the impression that being thrown onto a table is something that would happen in the normal course of a sporting competition. Making it more like "real" wrestling would largely defeat the parts that make the WWE fu
UFC fans, on the other hand, are coming to the sport because it's real. Fans that only watch the UFC are often very sensitive about a comparison to the WWE, because they value the fact that it is "real" competition and not scripted.
> Could it maybe work the other way, start to make the WWE more real?
They actually tried that in the 90s. Turns out, having performers compete who are used to making a fight with a scripted outcome look real - rather than win an open-ended fight - is a terrible idea.
While there certainly are pro-wrestlers who could legitimately win a real fight (the name Haku coming to mind; according to reports that a guy was a certified bad-ass you wouldn't have wanted to mess with), most of them likely don't really know how to block non-scripted jabs or strikes, which led to serious injuries during that event.
First thing I did was check the published date. It makes sense. Lots of companies own multiple brands. And there is a reasonably good cross over of fans. I don't think we're going to see mixed events or anything. Just one company owning the two companies.
Uff, no-one will be watching wrestling if they start testing.
The one sport where there is no advantage over the other "competitor" if one is taking drugs. In fact I would claim that drug use is needed in order to recover and deal with the injuries from the brutal physical abuse they put their bodies through.
So Joe Rogan may become a WWE commentator? I find that hilarious as he isn't a wrestling fan.
"Back in 2014, Joe Rogan caught heat from pro wrestling fans after making fun of wrestling when comparing it to MMA. Rogan noted that MMA was real, while wrestling "was some weird, f**ing jerk-off thing that strange guys do when they sit in front of the TV and pretend that they don't know it's fake."
Rogan later said he was just making a joke and didn't really hate pro wrestling. In May of last year, Rogan spoke with comedian Patton Oswalt on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast about pro wrestling being called "fake."
"It's definitely scripted. It's not like they're risking it all because they don't know what the outcome is gonna be," Rogan said. "It's different than an actual athletic event, but it's still pretty badass as far as what they're able to do. They don't nearly get enough credit for it either. While they were doing it, before the lockdown, they were doing it 250+ days a year traveling all over the country, throwing each other on tables."
Earlier today, Rogan said he was watching the A&E Legends documentaries and may now finally understand what pro wrestling was about." [1]
Pretty sure Rogan is free to do whatever he wants. I would worry about the quality of upcoming ufc fights, though. The fighters will have to spend more time promoting fights with WWE-style kayfabe, sacrificing actual training.
I have been a wrestling fan for as long as I can remember. It is irritating to be in the middle of a show when someone walks in and feels the need to inform me that it is fake. They don't do that when I am watching a movie or television show. They don't even do it in other venues where it is a show such as monster truck jams. They only do it with wrestling (ok sometimes a moon landing documentary too).
I think it would be better if people would say that it is scripted as it is certainly a very physical activity requiring quite a bit of athleticism even if the hits may not be as hard as if they were "real".
In fact I would compare wrestling to what stuntmen do. Scripted but very real in most ways.
Different era, but back in the 90s, guys like Ric Flair or Mick Foley were almost superhuman in terms of stamina or the bumps they were able to take and still continue.
Without a doubt. This is the cause of the stream of people who feel the need to point out it's fake. They aren't "in on the joke" yet, or "don't get the joke", so of course they won't hesitate to point out the obvious, and it usually goes over for fans about as well as someone who feels compelled to explain a joke told by someone else does...
Not a fan myself but I long ago wrapped my head around the Kayfabe and why it's silly to point out it's fake. Its just another sub type of "soap opera", like comic books, daytime soaps and telenovelas ...
Soap opera's exactly the right comparison, especially the really long-running soaps. Same kind of weird surprises, reversals, storylines and callbacks and characters spanning literal decades, all that stuff. Shit, this last Wrestlemania featured a wrestler (who's the son of another wrestler) involved with a plot line elements of which date back to when he was six years old, and that kind of thing's somewhat common wrestling.
Lots of the drama and conflicts and stories could easily be lifted and put in an actual soap opera with minimal modification.
It's a soap opera with tons of crazy, live stunts.
My wife and I are performing magicians and there is a surprising amount of overlap in the history of the two performance arts.
Wrestling came from circus and sideshow. Stage magic has also had a large presence there, historically. Both art forms have a history of keeping their "methods" secret.
It reminds me of the first Borat movie, where Sascha Baron Cohen - at the time relatively unknown outside of the UK - stayed in character during the promotion of the movie. People didn't know if this character was for real or if it was an actor playing a part. It was part of the "art" (I know it sounds weird to call Borat "art", I don't want to get into a pedantic argument about definitions ... let's just say that magic, film, pro wrestling ... all theatre).
Ethically, it's an interesting grey area and I think that each has different reasons for being protective of what going on behind the scenes. Every magician has learned the hard way that audiences usually react to finding out how a trick is done with disappointment and that's the real reason that methods are kept guarded. The line for me is that I will never pretend that what I am doing when in character is anything other than parlour tricks and illusions.
I think that pro wrestling and Kayfabe are similar. For a long time pro wrestling did want to protect the illusion. These days they are much more open about it being scripted and predetermined and, like magic, anyone that wants to learn how some of it is done can find out very easily online. But I think that they still don't want to advertise the techniques because, in their belief, it would ruin the suspension of disbelief.
Magic is actually the UNWILLING suspension of disbelief. Even if a trick is not framed as an intellectual puzzle, it takes an intelligent audience to experience the illusion. The person watching must have a clear understanding of what is possible vs what is not, and the magician needs to understand every possible explanation that might run through a typical rational human mind and work to preemptively disprove those explanations. It's a fun implied intellectual challenge.
I can find pro wrestling to be entertaining but I'm not a super-fan and so I don't know if the "unwilling suspension of disbelief" enters into the picture with Kayfabe at all .. but I can see how it can. If we were under the assumption that every move and stunt were without any risk then would it still be AS entertaining? The "moves" in pro wrestling do not eliminate risk but they definitely work to reduce it. And understanding the mechanics, like in magic, has the potential to break the illusion.
I’ve loved wrestling ever since I was a kid as well. I thought it was real until my dad pointed out that the a first person introduced always lost. That’s shattered my innocence but I started enjoying it more as I grew older because I could enjoy it as a joke/performance.
I watched it when it was called the WWF and stopped watching it just before it got renamed to the WWE so I’m less familiar with all the newer wrestlers from the last 20 years but I’ve seen the greats live, like Rick Flair. Being able to “woooooo!” with the entire arena was fun as hell even though we all know it wasn’t a real competitive event.
I haven't watched pro wrestling since I was a kid. I happened to be at a hotel across the street from a show. The talent and crew were at the same hotel. I was at the bar after the show ended. Everybody was so nice. I was a little mystified about what was happening, but I finally put it together.
Talent was very patient with fans, let pretty much everyone take pictures. Staff cared about fans, asking about their favorite part or listening to the odd complaint. Compared to say a kitchen crew getting off work and unwinding, the WWE folks were surprisingly wholesome. Everyone seemed nice and down to earth.
Non of those comments strike me as hostile. Looks like common casual talk. I was in the same boat, don't actually find WWE super entertaining, but respect the athletes. I do enjoy amateur wrestling and been to a lot of events.
It is an actual athletic event. People come at pro wrestling from the wrong angle. It's a stuntman exhibition show.
And no one is going to say that it doesn't take athleticism to be a good stuntman. That it's not dangerous. The difference between the WWE and professional stuntmen is that the professional stuntmen have guidelines and rules about safety. The WWE, less so.
On a movie set, if you were going to dangle a person 100 ft in the air, then every possible landing surface would be covered in padding and foam. Then about 10 yards further out just in case. In the WWE, Owen Hart hits the concrete and dies live on Pay Per View. And then they continue the show.
These are real people, doing real stunts, with real danger. The only thing fake is the outcome of the match.
> UFC champion and superstar Conor McGregor lauded news of the pending deal Sunday evening. “Incredible. What a powerhouse!” he said in one tweet, following up with another tweet displaying an image of him brandishing UFC and WWE championship belts.
I would not be happy about this if I was a UFC fighter/WWE wrestler, since less competition will mean less compensation. Where's the anti-trust busters when you need them?
There's a monopsony (buy-side monopoly) case against the UFC already, as the monopsony buyer of professional MMA services. WWE isn't MMA but rather combat-themed theatre though, so the merger shouldn't affect that.
Both UFC and WWE athletes are already independent contractors and have to privately buy stuff like health insurance while participating in a literal combat sport (UFC) and wrestling over 200 days a year (WWE). It's already a race to the bottom.
The UFC and WWE have already vertically integrated their respective niches. They're pretty much the only game in town. If no one cared when WWE bought ECW and WCW--and no one cared when the UCF bought Strikeforce--nothing is gonna be done now.
>I would not be happy about this if I was a UFC fighter/WWE wrestler, since less competition will mean less compensation. Where's the anti-trust busters when you need them?
You know, there's a good Ari Daivari, Slim J & Jeeves K joke in here somewhere..
Assuming the tournaments stay separate, this does make some sense, but if they start leaking into each other (other than people moving from UFC -> WWE later in their career), I don't think it'll be good for either.
I find it amusing when pro-wrestling gets compared with MMA - or any other combat / fighting sport, for that matter. I appreciate both, but they're entirely different beasts and should be judged based on their own merits.
I by the way consider it no less funny when people pretend or assume MMA to be tantamount to - or at least a close approximation of - self-defence situations. MMA is still a sport with rules, which has very little in common with a non-consensual fight.
WWE fans should brace for the exorbitant PPV price hike. UFC PPVs cost $80 in the USA whereas the recent Wrestlemania was $54.99. On the bright side, Endeavor might merge UFC Fight Pass and WWE Network since its wise to consolidate infrastrcuture.
I’m still not sure this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. The cross pollination between these two organizations that will be jammed down fans’ throats will be insufferable.
84 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadIt does seem like it's potentially more about setting up a future sale of both companies though, doesn't it? There's now no risk of them potentially competing against each other with sellers (I know they're very different products but they'd occupy the same gap in the market for a lot of buyers, I'd imagine).
From a business perspective, they're pretty much the same, both being mostly based on negotiating TV rights fees and, to a lesser extent, promoting individual stars.
https://wrestletalk.com/news/comparison-wwe-stars-greatly-un...
It's been reported there are performers who make more money streaming on Twitch than wrestling.
https://www.thesportster.com/news/zelina-vega-more-money-twi...
For UFC it's around 15% of revenue.
https://www.fightful.com/mma/report-ufc-fighters-received-ju...
There will be moments where WWE execs or simply WWE practices and processes will realise that a certain UFC outcome will be much better entertainment. The question is whether or not everyone will forever have the integrity to ignore that as an option and if the dividing line between the two cultures is strong enough to stop the bleed.
Could it maybe work the other way, start to make the WWE more real?
I don't think WWE as a product stands to gain much from becoming real. The UFC has brand value around being real, but you can see that management wants to sell drama, not sports.
poor people around the world have little fight clubs all the time, and the result is "knuckle heads" with broken teeth and unable to work. This show business has big production value, good lighting with excellent cameras, and yes, stories that people can latch on to.. hint- fight fans are often not very smart.
Maybe the fans are different, who knows, but the people that actually show up and train I'd absolutely take as a friend or direct report. It's deep internal mind/body training.
Anthony Bourdain practiced Jiu Jutsu.
Lots of actors and comedians have started practicing Jiu Jitsu.
I’m a CTO and I’ve practiced jiu jitsu and Muay Thai. I lift weights regularly too :O
It says a lot you think ‘big muscles’ are a thing: the most popular divisions of UFC don’t have big muscular fighters.
But you mentioned fans specifically, and here you're also way off. Much like the other sports I mentioned, the demographics of UFC viewers are also much more educated than the other sports I mentioned. Based on the Sports Business Journal's survey, 42% of NBA viewers have a college degree, 34% for MLB, 32% for the NFL, and 55% for UFC.
Now you can object to college being a good indicator of intelligence and that's fine, but it's probably a much better indicator than just randomly making stuff up and stereotyping people based on their hobby.
This might be due to some MMA fighters having a collegiate wrestling background.
That would be a tragic mistake for everyone involved. People like being in on the joke when John Cena, a grown man costumed in neon green, runs around the square stage whilst pretending to be invisible. It would ruin the fun if his opponent unceremoniously dropkicked him in the solar plexus.
The Undertaker: Long Term Story Telling in Wrestling : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHVCTOmQNZM
Professional Wrestling is Stupid and Beautiful and I Love it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQCPj-bGYro
Not to take away from the point, but I could also see this being part of the joke. "No, obviously you're not invisible! Why did you think I would fall for that?"
The point is that WWE broadcasts are specifically about fun and entertainment. It's not supposed to be "real". (Although, obviously it is "real" even if it's staged; imagine doing what they do and not killing or injuring yourself or anyone else.)
I think this move really makes sense for the career paths of UFC fighters. Right now, you can have a very marketable fighter fall in the rankings, and suddenly lose a ton of value. MMA fighters also tend to decline really quickly with age. So a transition to something else like Pro Wrestling can be a good path to maintaining a really lucrative career, as we've seen with a bunch of fighters like Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar, and Ken Shamrock.
Sure, but the concern is that they will start following the WWE practice of basing the winners on what is more marketable. Given that the practice of fight-fixing has a long history in boxing, this merger seems like a really tone deaf money-grab to me.
In talking to fans that I know, WWE fans don't want the wresting to become more real. Nobody watching WWE is under the impression that being thrown onto a table is something that would happen in the normal course of a sporting competition. Making it more like "real" wrestling would largely defeat the parts that make the WWE fu
UFC fans, on the other hand, are coming to the sport because it's real. Fans that only watch the UFC are often very sensitive about a comparison to the WWE, because they value the fact that it is "real" competition and not scripted.
They actually tried that in the 90s. Turns out, having performers compete who are used to making a fight with a scripted outcome look real - rather than win an open-ended fight - is a terrible idea.
While there certainly are pro-wrestlers who could legitimately win a real fight (the name Haku coming to mind; according to reports that a guy was a certified bad-ass you wouldn't have wanted to mess with), most of them likely don't really know how to block non-scripted jabs or strikes, which led to serious injuries during that event.
The one sport where there is no advantage over the other "competitor" if one is taking drugs. In fact I would claim that drug use is needed in order to recover and deal with the injuries from the brutal physical abuse they put their bodies through.
"Back in 2014, Joe Rogan caught heat from pro wrestling fans after making fun of wrestling when comparing it to MMA. Rogan noted that MMA was real, while wrestling "was some weird, f**ing jerk-off thing that strange guys do when they sit in front of the TV and pretend that they don't know it's fake."
Rogan later said he was just making a joke and didn't really hate pro wrestling. In May of last year, Rogan spoke with comedian Patton Oswalt on his Joe Rogan Experience podcast about pro wrestling being called "fake."
"It's definitely scripted. It's not like they're risking it all because they don't know what the outcome is gonna be," Rogan said. "It's different than an actual athletic event, but it's still pretty badass as far as what they're able to do. They don't nearly get enough credit for it either. While they were doing it, before the lockdown, they were doing it 250+ days a year traveling all over the country, throwing each other on tables."
Earlier today, Rogan said he was watching the A&E Legends documentaries and may now finally understand what pro wrestling was about." [1]
[1] https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2021/06/the-rock-responds-...
This happens now. Colby doesn't have many recent wins but he's getting a title shot because he's provocative.
In fact I would compare wrestling to what stuntmen do. Scripted but very real in most ways.
Different era, but back in the 90s, guys like Ric Flair or Mick Foley were almost superhuman in terms of stamina or the bumps they were able to take and still continue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
Not a fan myself but I long ago wrapped my head around the Kayfabe and why it's silly to point out it's fake. Its just another sub type of "soap opera", like comic books, daytime soaps and telenovelas ...
Lots of the drama and conflicts and stories could easily be lifted and put in an actual soap opera with minimal modification.
It's a soap opera with tons of crazy, live stunts.
McMahon admitted publicly that wrestling was fake in 1989 to avoid taxes.
https://www.thesportster.com/wwe-vince-mcmahon-admitted-wres...
Wrestling came from circus and sideshow. Stage magic has also had a large presence there, historically. Both art forms have a history of keeping their "methods" secret.
It reminds me of the first Borat movie, where Sascha Baron Cohen - at the time relatively unknown outside of the UK - stayed in character during the promotion of the movie. People didn't know if this character was for real or if it was an actor playing a part. It was part of the "art" (I know it sounds weird to call Borat "art", I don't want to get into a pedantic argument about definitions ... let's just say that magic, film, pro wrestling ... all theatre).
Ethically, it's an interesting grey area and I think that each has different reasons for being protective of what going on behind the scenes. Every magician has learned the hard way that audiences usually react to finding out how a trick is done with disappointment and that's the real reason that methods are kept guarded. The line for me is that I will never pretend that what I am doing when in character is anything other than parlour tricks and illusions.
I think that pro wrestling and Kayfabe are similar. For a long time pro wrestling did want to protect the illusion. These days they are much more open about it being scripted and predetermined and, like magic, anyone that wants to learn how some of it is done can find out very easily online. But I think that they still don't want to advertise the techniques because, in their belief, it would ruin the suspension of disbelief.
Magic is actually the UNWILLING suspension of disbelief. Even if a trick is not framed as an intellectual puzzle, it takes an intelligent audience to experience the illusion. The person watching must have a clear understanding of what is possible vs what is not, and the magician needs to understand every possible explanation that might run through a typical rational human mind and work to preemptively disprove those explanations. It's a fun implied intellectual challenge.
I can find pro wrestling to be entertaining but I'm not a super-fan and so I don't know if the "unwilling suspension of disbelief" enters into the picture with Kayfabe at all .. but I can see how it can. If we were under the assumption that every move and stunt were without any risk then would it still be AS entertaining? The "moves" in pro wrestling do not eliminate risk but they definitely work to reduce it. And understanding the mechanics, like in magic, has the potential to break the illusion.
I watched it when it was called the WWF and stopped watching it just before it got renamed to the WWE so I’m less familiar with all the newer wrestlers from the last 20 years but I’ve seen the greats live, like Rick Flair. Being able to “woooooo!” with the entire arena was fun as hell even though we all know it wasn’t a real competitive event.
Talent was very patient with fans, let pretty much everyone take pictures. Staff cared about fans, asking about their favorite part or listening to the odd complaint. Compared to say a kitchen crew getting off work and unwinding, the WWE folks were surprisingly wholesome. Everyone seemed nice and down to earth.
All that Rogan said is not untrue.
And no one is going to say that it doesn't take athleticism to be a good stuntman. That it's not dangerous. The difference between the WWE and professional stuntmen is that the professional stuntmen have guidelines and rules about safety. The WWE, less so.
On a movie set, if you were going to dangle a person 100 ft in the air, then every possible landing surface would be covered in padding and foam. Then about 10 yards further out just in case. In the WWE, Owen Hart hits the concrete and dies live on Pay Per View. And then they continue the show.
These are real people, doing real stunts, with real danger. The only thing fake is the outcome of the match.
I would not be happy about this if I was a UFC fighter/WWE wrestler, since less competition will mean less compensation. Where's the anti-trust busters when you need them?
The UFC and WWE have already vertically integrated their respective niches. They're pretty much the only game in town. If no one cared when WWE bought ECW and WCW--and no one cared when the UCF bought Strikeforce--nothing is gonna be done now.
Besides, what you are describing is not a “monopoly” it would be a “monopsony” even if the same people would be going from WWE to UFC.
You know, there's a good Ari Daivari, Slim J & Jeeves K joke in here somewhere..
I by the way consider it no less funny when people pretend or assume MMA to be tantamount to - or at least a close approximation of - self-defence situations. MMA is still a sport with rules, which has very little in common with a non-consensual fight.