Black Entertainment Television debuts “Iron Ring” tonight
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- March
- 18
BET is hopping aboard the mixed martial arts bandwagon.
“Iron Ring” will premier tonight at 11pm EST. “Iron Ring” is a reality based mixed martial arts show that will allow up and coming fighters to try out for teams “owned” by famous rappers (and one boxer).
Nelly, T.I., Lil Jon, Ludacris, Jim Jones and Juelz Santana have all been selected as coaches, as well as undefeated boxing sensation Floyd Mayweather Jr. The first two episodes of “Iron Ring” will focus on the selections of fighters from their respective team tryouts. The fighters are looking to make it onto “Team Luda”, “Money Mayweather Boys”, “Team Nelly”, “Team Dipset (Santana/Jones)”, “Team Grand Hustle (T.I.)” and Lil Jon’s “Headbusters.
I’m not going to make any judgments about the show until I see it tonight. Who knows? Maybe I will find some entertainment value in “Iron Ring”. I do know that the show has been the source of much criticism and back handed compliments across MMA news sites, message boards, and the like. Defenders of the show claim it will bring a whole new audience to the world of mixed martial arts.
Is that necessarily a good thing?
Here is a quote from one of the shows “expert trainers” , Novell G. Bell :
“I’m looking for cats to knock cats out.”
You let me know.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 5:26 pm by Larry Vollmer.
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I know I’m a little late in responding to this but I’ve just seen it. I’m not sure what the big deal is that BET is doing a fight show. It’s not like their the first network to try it. Face it, MMA is big business now and other people are going to try to capitalize on it. What difference does it make how a fighter gets his name out there as long as he does. Besides, a fighter may come from this show and end up being the next Rampage or Ortiz. I’m an African American woman and MMA is the only sport I watch. What can I say, I love it. It’ll be great to have more people become aware of it and that’s a good thing. I think the rappers are involved because BET mistakenly believes that people will watch because of them. Which may be true initially because they’re unaware of how awesome MMA is. So, whatever works. Personally, I want to know why UFC isn’t trying to get some women fighters!
Keena – no one ever said there was anything wrong with BET doing an MMA show, it’s the way they produce the show that people,including myself, take issue with. The fighters are rarely portrayed. You hear more about Floyd Mayweather and his money then the fighters that are busting their humps to win this competition.
To be honest, I haven’t seen the show myself so I can’t really respond to that. As a matter of fact I didn’t even know the show existed until this article. For the sake of the fighters I hope not. But I’ll have to watch for myself, I tivo’d it so I’ll reserve judgement until I actually see it. To be honest, I don’t see how having rappers on the show serves any purpose other than maybe attracting a bigger audience. But, I don’t know their backgrounds so I don’t want to be unfair to them either.
Quite simply put, the show is bad.Mayweather and T.I. look like jackasses, and most of the fighters are undisiplined thugs.No real skill on display, most of the coaches are completely clueless on the intracacies of the mma groundgame and strategies, and are too ignorant to do their homework.Look at the iron ring blog.No one has intellegent comments about the sport;the show wasnt made with fans of the sport in mind,just quick exposure for celebs and a fast buck.