Yamma Pit Fighting first show

I got to see the first Yamma Pit Fighting (yammapitfighting.com) show that was on Friday night. If you don't know, Yamma Pit Fighting is the latest MMA franchise to hit the streets. It was founded by Bob Meyrowitz who is the man that originally founded UFC (and later sold to Zuffa and Dana White who made it what it is today). Meyrowitz has been hyping the promotion as having a "new fighting surface" which is supposed to revolutionize the MMA world. I was not a UFC (or MMA) fan until recent years, but I do remember when it was in the early days. It always looked super intense, but I was too young to be able to watch it. In those early UFC shows, they always had them set up as tournaments, where the fighters would fight more than one fight in a night. This sounds crazy by today's standards but I'm interested to see what it's like since I never got the chance as a kid. Yamma is bringing back this tournament style to crown their first champions. The MMA market is pretty saturated these days but I have to admit that I have succumbed to the hype about this "fighting surface" and the old-school tournament style shows of the older, more intense days and I've actually been pretty excited about this show.


This new fighting surfcace, The Yamma, is basically the same thing as the UFC cage. It is 24 ft wide and is a circle. The major difference is that there is a 3ft wide 'warning zone' on the perimeter of the circle which is on an incline. It is supposed to help prevent the fighters from clinching up against the fence. At first glance, it doesn't look like it will make any difference. I also noticed that there are no advertisements on the mat. That probably means they don't have any sponsors.

Pro boxing's ring announcer is Michael Buffer. UFC's ring announcer is Bruce Buffer. Yamma's ring announcer is a guy who's been smoking since the age of 4 and has probably had throat surgery. It's ridiculous. Who thought this guy was a good choice?

After the first fight it seems like the 'warning zone' in the Yamma only serves to help fighters get takedowns. Nothing too special. We also got another dose of the ring announcer. If you noticed, he didn't pronounce the second match's referee's name properly. He also took some liberties introducing the second fighter. They give you cards for a reason buddy. I think that is a little unprofessional and I hope he got reamed out for it. In fact, I hope they get rid of him altogether. I don't know how much more of his voice I can take.

I'm only going to comment on the Butterbean fight because it was the only one that got any significant hype. Man, what a travesty to the sport of MMA was that. Butterbean showed up at 416lbs, thats right: Four-Hundred and Sixteen pounds. What a knob. He looked like a rolly polly jolly ball with tiny little legs and arms. He tried to throw some kicks but it didn't look like he could get his legs around his belly. What a joke. He threw a bunch of punches but since he's so fat he couldn't get in close enough for any of them to land. His opponent, Pat Smith, simply outclassed him. Smith just kept moving and Butterbean couldn't do a thing. Eventually butterean tried to throw a fat-guy kick and fell down. He rolled around on the ground a bit and it looked like he couldn't get up. Smith was able to take his sweet time (it was about 5 seconds) and then jumped on top of Butterbean and pounded on his head until he submitted. Butterbean, you are a moron.

All-in-all, the show wasn't awful but it wasn't good. The two major selling points of this show were the 'revolutionary' fighting surface the old-school tournament show. Both were dissapointing. It seems that the new fighting surface did little to change the dynamic of the fights, and I didn't really like the tournament style - there were too many fights and they were all really short. Not to mention, the main event featuring Butterbean was a farse. It also seems like the show is lacking a little in production value. The ring announcer, Steve Ferrall, was pretty dumb. His voice is hideous and he is full of nothing but stupid things to say. It seems like he is trying to make jokes and ended up just being annoying. In any sport that has a ring announcer, the tried and true way to get people excited is to have a great ring announcer with a booming voice and a catchphrase. Keep it simple guys. Yamma may have been trying to do something different, and I can give them credit for that, but unfortunately for them it didn't pay off this time. My last point is if you look at UFC - which is the top MMA promotion - every event is promoted as a spectacle. There were no signs of this on the Yamma show. If you promote your show as second-rate, that's all it will ever be. I don't think I will be watching any more Yamma shows in the next little while.