Quote:
Lorenzo Fertitta Comments on EA Ban
July 12, 2009
Steve Silver with the Las Vegas Sun was at the UFC Expo and transcribed Fertitta’s response to questions from fans, including a response to a question about UFC seeking to banish fighters no currently with Zuffa from future UFC employment if they sign with the EA MMA game: the
Q. If a fighter signs with EA Sports, will they be banned from the UFC?
Fertitta: “There is no such thing as banned, but this is something that does get under my skin and Dana’s skin because when we had the opportunity to go out and build a video game who do you think the first people we called was? EA Sports… We sat in the room with them and I would have cut a worse deal just to be with EA Sports. I wanted them so bad. They looked at them and they told us they didn’t think MMA was a sport. This was three years ago. They said the UFC was irrelevant and that we were wasting their time. So we went down the street and did a deal with THQ and they thought MMA was a sport. So we stick with the guys who stick with us. Now the UFC video game has been a massive success with three million copies sold. And guess what EA wants to do? They want to do an MMA game now… If you are young fighter coming up, it just makes sense to stay under the umbrella of UFC companies, sponsors and marketing to ensure yourself a cut of the action for the rest of your life.“
Lorenzo Fertitta seems to hedge his bets publicly about what is going on with this EA ban. The UFC is having a Michael to Fredo moment with fighters that want to sign with MMA, but the public face they are putting on it is something they are blunting. Joe Silva has been dispatched to do bidding of the UFC and spread the word to agents and managers that signing with the EA game will make you persona non grata within the Zuffa universe. Fertitta’s words seek to glaze over this concept but that is what is taking place. The UFC’s beef with EA is leaving the fighters and their welfare as so much collateral damage, something that Zuffa brass seems infinitely comfortable with.
Blogger Ivan Trembow also takes aim at an example of Zuffa truthiness (Zuffiness?) with Lorenzo saying the UFC’s success with THQ was the impetus for the EA game by noting that the EA game was in the works before the UFC THQ game ever came to market:
That is some nice revisionist history ……. The launch (and sales success) of UFC 2009: Undisputed came in May 2009. EA Sports has been working on an MMA video game since 2008, and multiple media outlets wrote about it in 2008, including MMA Payout and the Wrestling Observer.
The UFC’s management was fully aware of the existence of EA’s MMA game in 2008, as that was one of the major reasons that the UFC threatened its roster of fighters into signing away their lifetime exclusive video game rights for free (ie, to ensure that they couldn’t appear in EA’s game).
