This is not going to be so much of a commandment, but I just want to explain this from every angle because I have promoted fights, I am a fan, and of course I deal with fighters. So this will be from every aspect. I think ultimately, it's not a matter of the UFC doing too many pay-per-views, but a matter of too many shows, period. Fighters get injured in training and during fights, and that leaves a lot of their guys out to go with what they have and last minute replacements. And basically, the card is no longer what it was designed to be in the first place. It's kind of inevitable, in a way, because of the amount of shows that the UFC is doing because of their FOX deal. It's kind of out of their control in some way. I think where they are catching the heat is, if you put on a card that is subpar and it's on free TV, the ratings are affected by it and the network doesn't like it, but the fans, if you don't like it turn the channel. But when you take somebody's money, you have a responsibility to deliver a product that's up to par to what the audience is paying for. So in that retrospect, I think it's gonna start hurting the UFC a lot more than they anticipated.

These people aren't stupid; they knew going into the FOX deal that they had to water down some of their shows and their pay-per-view buys were gonna suffer as a result because of the sheer volume that they are doing. When they were doing really good numbers on pay-per-view, it's because they were doing 8 to 10 Spike shows and the rest were on pay-per-view. So there was basically a hunger for the UFC product. People were like, "Ah, a UFC card is on." Now, it's like back to back to back to back to back. There are so many UFC's now, it's almost impossible to keep up with it. And they anticipated that it was going to water down the product a little bit and it's gonna affect their pay-per-views, but when you start to produce pay-per-views that are subpar and people are complaining that they just had to pay $55 for a card that sucked, now you gonna start seeing some numbers drop based on the performance.

Somebody is over there scratching their head to see what they can do to rectify this, I'm sure. Dana was pretty open about saying the card was subpar and he was happy that the undercard delivered, but you taking $50 of my money to tell me that the pay-per-view sucked, but the free version was good is not exactly what I'm looking for. People are saying like, "You see how honest Dana is?" Of course he's honest, but at the same time, I don't see any refunds being offered. It's like, I'm glad that the free version delivered, but it sucks for me that I paid $55 to watch the paid version.

As far as the UFC being able to regulate the price on some of these cards that are bitten with the injury bug or not up to standard, I'll be honest, I'm sure there is a way. I think the UFC sets their own pay-per-view price. To my knowledge, the only thing that the cable provider does is set the limit on what's the maximum that you can charge. They don't want you charging $200 a buy and nobody buys it. You have to have a minimum amount of buys, otherwise it's not worth InDemand's air time to give you the spot. It's like you can charge $19.95, but you have to have at least 100,000 buys and if you don't, then they will take a bigger cut.

So yes, they can control it, but that's not something the company can do because then, every time somebody is unhappy about a card, they will be demanding that it's cheaper. They set a price and that's just how much the card costs and you roll with it. It's just like if your tickets aren't selling, well, you can't just drop the price because the next time you are in that market, everybody who wants to buy a ticket will just be like, "Just wait until the last minute and they will drop the price." So it's the same here, it's just not something you can do. But what they probably could have done was say, "You know what? We gonna scarp this whole pay-per-view thing and we are gonna feed this whole thing to FX." At some point, when your card starts to fall apart, you have to make that call to FOX and be like, "Hey, we have a card. Can we do it on FX?" No offense to FX, but a lot of their programs are blah. I'm sure it was something that could have been done.

So that's pretty much from a promoter standpoint, and as far as the fans are concerned, it's easy to be a "Monday Morning Quarterback" and just look at the card after it is completed and say, "Oh, this card sucked and these fights sucked." That is beyond the UFC's control. They can't control how Hector Lombard fights. Expectation is sometimes set too high for these guys just because they are making their Octagon debut. I'm pretty sure they didn't have a meeting with Hector before the event and say, "We really want you to be a safe fighter and drag this thing out." There are things that are out of the UFC's control. To be fair though, everybody puts expectations on these fighters. Boxing does it as well. I paid $70 to watch Ricky Hatton get his ass beat by Floyd Mayweather because fucking HBO produced these 24/7 shows and they had me thinking Ricky Hatton actually stood a chance and he ended up being a punching bag for the whole damn fight. I wouldn't have paid $70 to watch that crap. When I was watching the 24/7, I thought that shit was going down. So that's part of every sport.

You can't argue with the quality of the fights because they don't control it. I think the promoter has a responsibility to a certain degree. If the card is going to shit and you are starting to replace people last minute over and over and over again, then at some point, you have to make a judgment call. But at the same time, if you looked at a card beforehand, you think, stylistically, this is not a bad card. But the fans have to take responsibility too because it's not like you are buying fights X, Y and Z and you got fights B,C and D. Whatever you bought is what they were advertising. I didn't buy this last card [UFC 149] because I thought it was a shit card. I looked at it and thought it was a shit card and decided I wasn't gonna buy it. Everybody shares a burden of the responsibility. The promoter shares a burden of the responsibility to produce good fights and a good show, especially when they taking your money. But in this sport, sometimes you just have to know that sometimes, things aren't going to play out and fights are going to be boring.

I remember when I lived in the Carolina's and Panthers went to the Superbowl against the Patriots. And my God, the hype and the build up with it being their first time, everybody was a fucking hero and they paraded them up and down. The game was boring as fuck until the 4th quarter. Finally in the 4th quarter, they woke up and started scoring. Until then, it was a snooze fest. So what do I do? Call the NFL and tell them I just wasted 3 quarters of my life? It's a sporting event and that shit happens. You almost have to anticipate it because of the amount of shows that they put on. They can't keep these guys healthy and it just happens.

Everything that I just said raises more questions than answers and that was my intent. My intent was to shine the light on all of the aspects of this scenario and let people make up their own minds. This is not a typical Kogan's Kommandment as much as it's like, use your fucking mind and think. I don't want people to read this and say, "This dude is just talking about a whole bunch of shit and I still don't know what he's trying to say." I'm not trying to say anything. I'm just giving angles from different perspectives because, like I said, I've worked for promoters, I'm a fan, and I work with fighters. So all of these different angles here are various reasons and things you can look at and find your own answer. There is no answer to this.