Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mixed martial arts/MMA notability

Hi, I thought I'd discuss the matter here, rather than WP:MMA. Good work on this draft. My thoughts are as such:

Organisations

Yeah, I totally agree with the criteria, though I'd add a few examples in:

• Maximum Fighting Championship - Canada's top promotion
• Affliction Entertainment - a fairly large (now defunct) organisation, given they had some top names like Fedor Emelianenko and Andrei Arlovski, as well as their continued clothing venture.

I didn't think MFC was quite there yet--geographically limited, seems more like a training ground for bigger promotions. I didn't think about Affliction. Papaursa (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Events

I'm not sure how this is defined. Would you have the UFC/WEC/Strikeforce/DREAM events or not? I'd say there is definitely the need for them.

I was thinking about almost all fight cards, unless something significant happened besides the fight outcomes. Papaursa (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

• Agree on the coverage
• The highest title. Now by this, I can only think of one example in Cage Rage. They had Cage Rage world champions and Cage Rage British champions. For me, both have notability and symbolised the top of the organisation.

I was actually thinking about Shooto which has at least Pacific Rim, Rookie, and European Amateur titles as well as their world titles. Given the number of organizations and the usual athletic standards (Olympics or World Championships), I felt only the highest title should be considered.Papaursa (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

• The biggest gripe I have with this well-done draft is the SIX fight quota needed. Such notables as Amir Sadollah or Matt Mitrione don't meet this standard. For me, this should be two. That then allows such fighters as the aforementioned Mitrione and others not earlier mentioned such as Rory MacDonald (fighter).

Thought you might dislike that number. The reason I set it that high is because I only want to include truly notable fighters. Many are signed to 1 or 2 fight contracts that are essential tryouts. Also, I don't believe all the organizations are equally notable, but I wanted to keep the criteria simple. Another issue to me was if someone tried to count the fights on TUF--I don't consider those equal to regular UFC fights. If I were king I'd say TUF fights don't count. How about a compromise of 3 fights, not including TUF? Papaursa (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

The deletion criteria:

• Fought pre-dominantly for non-notables. Well this could outweigh point 3 from notability. A fighter could have 15 fights in local shows, before having the required fights in major organisations. By definition, that fighter, despite passing notability, therefore also meets deletion criteria, having fought mostly for locals.

Agreed. It should be obvious that meeting notability is the real criteria. I'll rewrite that. Papaursa (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

One other point I'd make is that there's no mention given here about The Ultimate Fighter. How many of these are classed as notable? How do they pass it by the majority's standards? Paralympiakos (talk) 18:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm not sure how to deal with TUF. See my comments on the number of fights. Papaursa (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

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Papaursa, I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to reply at the bottom, just so that it doesn't become all confused later on.

Your first point: MFC, I'd say is no more a feeder league than Bellator is. The last MFC event, I believe, featured a main event of Thales Leites vs. Jesse Taylor, two former UFC competitors; one of which who competed in a main event, for the UFC MW title. While not HUGE names, they are certainly notable in my opinion. I'm not going to push MFC adamantly, but I'd say it's worth investigation as to whether it could be included.

Second point: I think personally that all events from the BIG organisations, as I previously mentioned deserve note. Every WWE pay-per-view, if we use this as a basis for comparison, has its each article and I believe the two fall under similar categorisation.

Third point: Shooto, I had no idea about. You mention an "amateur" title. Yeah, absolutely not notable in my opinion. Worth a mention in articles, but not something that should be wholly relied on for notability. However, I would be interested in your opinion on my previous Cage Rage example.

Fourth point: I get your point about 1/2 fight contracts and I'd say that for most organisations, that's largely true. I'd say all though, but UFC. With UFC being the highest level of competition, I wouldn't quite classify it as a tryout under the classic definition as I understand. I would say that by definition, taking on any fighter is a gamble, as they could be a massive flop (e.g. Rolles Gracie), but that doesn't mean that they are taken on as a tryout, because some of the fighters sign 2 fight contracts, lose both and stay on, e.g. Jacob Volkmann. I think it would be stubborn of me to dig my heels in and request 2, so yeah, neither of us would be particularly happy with it, but I guess 3 has to be the way forward.

As for TUF, I still maintain that competitors are notable, by virtue of WP:ATHLETE, though I guess the parameters we're looking to set in place completely go against that. As such, I'm not entirely sure the right way to go with this. I'd definitely say that those invited back to the live finale should be notable, as though they potentially don't have 2/3/however many fights, they have the combination of at least that one live fight at the TUF Finale, as well as participation in a highly notable show (owing to its Zuffa banner).

One final point/question: are we including anything about having fighters that haven't competed in notable events, BUT have competed against many notable opponents? Paralympiakos (talk) 22:48, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

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Truth be told, I wasn't that keen on including Bellator but went with it based on comments on the MMA project talk page. I'm inclined to leave MFC off right now, but if they continue to draw notable fighters they can be added. My inclination is to add and remove organizations slowly. If I had the information, I'd look at how international the fighters are to help determine an organization's notability. Fighters' paychecks would be another criteria I'd use, if I could (both for organizations and the fighters themselves). However, lacking that information I'm trying to find easy to use reference points.

I'd argue the WWE events shouldn't have their own pages either. I stick with what WP:N says.

As for the Cage Rage example, I go back to the WP:ATH standard of world championships and Olympics. However, since we've reduced the number of fights to 3, this shouldn't be an issue. If you're fighting for a championship and you don't have two previous fights yet, I'd say it's not much of a championship.

I'd be willing to count the TUF finale as a fight.

As for fighters that haven't competed in notable events, but have fought notable fighters--that probably means they didn't fight them in their prime. Think of the baseball analogy--minor leaguers compete against players who go on to be major leaguers or who were major leaguers all the time, but they're not notable. If they're good enough they become major leaguers themselves.

Finally, there are meant to be guidelines--they're not Wikipedia policy. Each fighter should be looked at on their own merits, it's possible there could be circumstances that might make a fighter notable who doesn't match the criteria we've discussed. I just want to get something down that people can refer to that's more objective and agreed upon than one person's opinion. Papaursa (talk) 00:03, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Let me pop in about TUF, I think they should all have pages, as not only as fighters, but as TV "stars" There are comics from last comic standing and other "reality" shows that spent less time on TV that are on wikipedia (ducking rocks from TreyGeek) David.snipes (talk) 13:03, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to go with this, for the most part. There are some, (if we take TUF 9 for example) like AJ Wenn etc who aren't worthy of inclusion as they don't make it into the house, but some prelim fighters are involved in incidents that are fairly notable.

I'm also thinking about the reinstatement of Zak Jensen, especially since he's currently being investigated for homicide. Gives an extra layer to this article. Paralympiakos (talk) 13:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I would not go with the ones that lost the pre-lims, but the main show- I.E the ones with IMDB entries. David.snipes (talk) 13:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

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No problem about MFC. We'll just see how it goes then.

I think having event pages for the most notable organisations is justified, but even if I didn't, you'd find it impossible to battle this as you'll face a backlash from disgruntled IPs.

To be honest, there could be examples of fighters competing for a title despite not having lots of prior experience, e.g. Brock Lesnar. I can see where you're coming from, but that would have to be a case-by-case basis.

Finally, I'd say I'm fairly happy wit h this draft. If you want to put it up, that would be great. Good work! Paralympiakos (talk) 08:55, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

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Let me all a bit to the roster.

USA-MMA: Currently runs about 4 cards a year- all sellout, and recently had Ricco take thier Heavyweight title, Ken Shamrock is expected to sign after the Impact tour. They have had several larger card fighters come through thier ranks, and considering a good many of them have fought on Shine and Bellator came from that organization, big things are coming.

I do need to add an event listing for this one, but as of yet, had not had an oppertunity yet.

Ring Rulers: I still need to finish this page- but its the largest amatuer organization in the country, running about 20 events a year in 6 states. Will Campuzano (WEC) might be the biggest name from there so far- but 6 of the Bellator 18 fighters came from there. Fighters that turned pro from there have fought in Dream, Shine, Bellator and TUF.

Naturally I have not added the event listings for this organization, as by themselves they are not notable.

Speaking of- We also need to add Impact to the Oceanic portion.

Other than that- awesome job! David.snipes (talk) 14:05, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

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Hey guys,

Good job getting this all organized. I don't have the time to edit on Wikipedia as much as I used to, but I've been in this project for a while now and wanted to give my quick thoughts:

-It seems to me that the Criteria supporting notability is a little too restrictive. When a fighter makes it to the big time (UFC), even if they only fight once, that seems to be the consensus for notability among the Wikipedia Sports community: Most atheltes in the major North American sports leagues that have played for at least one season seem to have a Wikipedia page (and often more extensive than the majority of MMA fighters' pages). In my experience the community needs to make more pages regarding MMA fighters. Also, MMA is lucky when it receives any coverage at all from the national media (either than the MMA media).

-The Current list of notable MMA organizations is missing World Victory Road, the parent company of Sengoku Raiden Championship (formerly just Sengoku) (I think someone got it mixed it with Shooto on the WP:MMA page). WVR is definitely one of the Top 10 MMA Promotions in the world- and I could make the argument that it is Top 5.

I will try to keep checking up on this project, keep up the good work. (Justinsane15 (talk) 02:03, 4 June 2010 (UTC))

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I think we should keep discussions about changes, additions, subtractions, on the MMA project's talk page. That said, any comments that improve these guidelines are good.

Let me put in my 2 cents on some of the recent comments. Given that most professional MMA circuits don't make the cut, it's hard to see how an amateur circuit operating in 6 states can be considered notable. Also, when I looked at the World Victory Road page I saw champions given in only 2 divisions. I can't see how an organization can be notable and have champions in only 2 divisions.

I also don't agree with the comparison of 1 MMA fight to a season in other sports leagues. Leagues have 1 season a year--an MMA fighter can fight a number of times in a year. Papaursa (talk) 19:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

New additions

As per above, I added Sengoku. Not sure how that one was missed out.

Anyway, I've added a list of potentials, that while aren't as notable as UFC, PRIDE etc, could, in my eyes, play a small part in establishing notability.

• BAMMA-- with Cage Rage now dead, Cage Warriors and BAMMA are the top two in Britain and are fairly decent. For example, BAMMA 3 was supposed to be headlined by Tom Watson and Alex Reid. It also featured fighters such as Seth Petruzelli and War Machine.

• Elite XC-- I'm sure people don't really need a background for this company. I'd say main carding for Elite XC would be a slight help in establishing notability. I'm not saying that a fighter could have 3 fights here and pass notability; they'd have to have some appearances in the already established list too.

• Maximum Fighting Championship-- see above somewhere.

• Ring of Combat-- bear with me on this one. ROC is pretty much a feeder league for the UFC and they've had a LOT of new guys come from this promotion. As such, I'd say that gives it a decent reputation, albeit as a secondary promotion. As per Elite XC, not 3 apps = notability, but it can be a contributory factor in establishing notability. It's also important to note they've appeared on HDNet fights multiple times. Paralympiakos (talk) 18:44, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

• I added the following promotions that would appear to meet notability guidelines. Each promotion has existed for years and has put on a large number of shows, often with top fighters: King of the Cage, M-1 Global (notable for the M-1 Challenge), and Pancrase. I also alphabetized the list and renamed some items to follow a more consistent naming structure. I also added Impact Fighting Championships and Adrenaline MMA to the list of organizations for future debate regarding notability following the above examples. Eshaeffer (talk) 17:07, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

New changes

I disagree with the new changes, in the way that I perceive them. There is now a second tier (which I actually like, as UFC is obviously far more notable than Adrenaline MMA), but there's no provision for how many 2nd tier fights = notability.

For example, at the moment, Jim Wallhead fails criteria on the basis that he's never fought in the TOP promotions, despite being highly notable. Previously, his Cage Rage career (I'm working off memory here, so I think he passed via that) saw him comfortably pass these guidelines, but now I'm not so sure. Are we going to discuss new rules? Paralympiakos (talk) 18:36, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, as many promotions and fighters as possible should be covered. Apart from notability one should pay attention to neutrality - not only in individual articles but also in regard to the selection of articles.

At the moment MMA pages in Wikipedia look as if they had been written by the PR department of the UFC. UFC fighters and fights are described in great detail and they are also hyped way too much. I think Wikipedia is one of the main reasons why many people think that MMA is the same as UFC. 130.235.3.161 (talk) 09:50, 26 June 2010 (UTC)