NO HOLDS BARRED

Much has been written of late about the differences between what are actually two brother combat sports, boxing and mixed martial arts. But they also share something else in common, which is hardly as noble as their legacy as being fighting arts which have existed for thousands of years: Both the HBO boxing pay-per-view on August 12 headlined by Maskaev vs. Rahman and the UFC mixed martial arts pay-per-view on August 26 headlined by Liddell vs. Sobral had rematches as their main events, featured fights which had dubious entertainment value at best as well as poor quality technique, and were also available for free, at least in highlights, on YouTube.com.

Mindful of the dislike by many people of pay-per-views as a medium and their walling off most of the public from sampling the product live, the International Fight League (IFL), the fledgling mixed martial arts company which uses a team concept, has just announced that the non-pay cable network FSN (Fox Sports Net) will air ten hours of new IFL programming in the fall in the U.S.

You can read more about this in my piece on the ADCC News entitled "IFL TV Deal on FSN Could Be a Winner".