10 UFC SPONSORS WHO MAKE ME EMBARRASSED TO LIKE UFC

I don’t want to expend too much energy trying to prove to you my big brain cred, but let’s just say that between my numerous degrees from high-priced universities and a drawing room that smells of leather-bound books and the panties of only the classiest Craigslist casual encounters hookups, I’m quite the cultured intellectual.  My staggering intellect notwithstanding, there’s nothing I enjoy more than the sight of two sweaty dudes in their underwear beating the piss, crap, blood, and snot bubbles out of each other.  That’s right, I’m talking about mixed martial arts.  To the less initiated, UFC.  I’m smart, and I love it.  And so do many of my smartest friends; doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists, and quadriplegic physicists among them.  It’s arguably more strategic than any sports involving balls, and it involves the inherent possibility that the cerebral, better-prepared, more intelligent fighter will prevail over the belligerent, beef-headed meatbrain, in an outcome that’s as unambiguous as it is unconscious.  And what intelligent person wouldn’t love that?  …Steve?  F-ck Steve, everyone knows Steve’s a p-ssy.

With so many intelligent folks drawn to UFC, you’d think they’d start catering to our demographic.  Instead, it seems like every business that advertises during UFC events is convinced that I’m watching the broadcast from my meth lab while skinning a squirrel and waiting for my slutty cousin with Down Syndrome to show up so I can date rape her and eat Burger King.  Entirely false.  For one thing, you can’t rape the willing. Here, I break down the most egregious offenders.  The companies that leave me constantly explaining to friends at my wine and cheese parties that, no, my favorite sport is not “like pro wrestling.”

Except for the sweaty dudes in their underwear part.  That part is still awesome.  Oh, and it’s not gay, because the fighters’ cups keep them from accidentally touching d*ck tips.

10. Hoelzer Reich, the Nazi t-shirt company

Admittedly, this one’s more of a strange asterisk than the norm for the UFC, but it is still worth noting that a neo-nazi t-shirt company called Hoelzer Reich was allowed to sponsor fighters such as Joe Brammer at The Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale and Donald Cerrone at WEC 45.  To be fair, UFC/WEC parent company Zuffa banned the company once they discovered Hoelzer’s neo-Nazi affiliations (and the fighters have renounced their sponsorships).  But it shouldn’t have taken them that long, considering, you know, “Reich” is in the GD title. Oh, and the shirts have SS bolts and iron crosses all over them.  That might’ve been a giveaway.

(Center: The shirt Hoelzer Reich snuck past Zuffa.  Left and right: a couple of their earlier designs, via FightLinker)

Luckily, this one was offensive enough to get banned. But you don’t have to be racist to be offensive to anyone with a brain. For instance…

9.  Mickey’s

I know, I know, I’ve drunk plenty of Mickey’s in my day too.  It’s great for getting a 15-year-old girl drunk, or for playing “Edward 40-Hands” in college.  But come on, watch this commercial and tell me you don’t feel at least 50% dumber.

HURRRRR, I LOVE UFC AND DON’T UNDERSTAND CARBONATION.  You nailed me, Mickey’s.  Soon as you release a drool-activated bottle that I can open with my ‘tard flipper, I’m there.

8. TNA! Wrestling

Anyone who’s ever watched The Ultimate Fighter on SpikeTV has been subjected to countless TNA! Wrestling ads.  Allow me to summarize my argument against TNA! Wrestling.

• It’s not a sport, it’s a scripted reality show starring ‘roided out weirdos created for the enjoyment of Juggalos.  There is… nothing good about that.  And it’s not even the major leagues of fake wrestling, it’s a cheap knock off.  If a WWE ad is your daughter starring in bukkake stump porn, a TNA! Wrestling ad is like her being the uncredited fluffer.
• It’s called “TNA Wrestling,” but the TNA actually stands for “Total Non-Stop Action.”  Think about that.  Their actual business plan was to entice guys over by calling their product “TITS ‘N ASS!”, and then when the customers actually showed up, they’d give them big juiceheads fake fighting in boots and underpants instead.  And they expected people to be okay with this.
• It has an exclamation point in the title.  Hey a-holes, I’ll decide whether your product excites me.

7. Xyience.

First of all, the name is shorthand for “Xtreme Science!”  OOH WHA-AH AH-AH!  Not only do they expect that to appeal to me, they seem to think no one’s going to ask where the f-ck that Y came from.  Sorry, pal, no one slips a Y by me, not even when I’m covered in KY.  Does anyone actually know what’s in Xyience?  You know they assume we’re idiots, because all the commercials tell us about the product is that it’s fortified with “Noc CG-3.” We also know Chuck Liddell uses it when he’s hitting a punching bag in the desert, and it helps Matt Hughes when he doesn’t have time for “a country breakfast” (which I always assumed was a shot of Bourbon and a hearty slap across the wife’s face).  Even the commercial for their energy drink, which is just tits and fire and thus should be awesome, somehow manages to be insulting.  It practically screams, “HEY, P*SSY!  I BET YOU’RE NOT BANGING A SLUTTY PORNO SKANK LIKE MONICA HERE, ARE YOU! WATCHOO NEED TO DO IS DRINK YOUR FAT ASS SOME OF THIS SH-TTY ENERGY DRINK, SON!  KNOCK KNOCK. WHO’S THERE? VITAMINS, F*GGOT!”

6. Blue Mountain State/Blade: The Series/Any of the terrible shows Spike is trying to promote.

Hey, UFC, we get it, you’re on Spike.  That’s fine.  But let me let you in on a little something: you wear the pants in this relationship.  People watch Spike so they can see UFC.  95% of everything else on that channel is idiotic and terrible.  So by all means, let them have their commercial time during the show, but stop bending over backwards to have Mike Goldberg plug their latest stupid show IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIGHT.  Stop interviewing Blade the Series star Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones during the fight telecast.  Oh really?  This is the toughest character you’ve ever played?  No one cares.  And remember, they owe you, not the other way around. Seriously, just look at this show’s title sequence. It’s like they paid a space alien to try to write a Tucker Max story.  The ingredients are the same, but… no.

5. Affliction

The above pictures were entries into Fightlinker‘s make-an-mma-shirt-in-MS-paint contest.  They got the contest rolling with “Krunch.”

ARE YOU REDDY FOR KRUNCH? No way you aren’t! This sh*t is in your motherf*ckin’ FACE with pictures of skulls and a crossed sword/c*ck! Do you want f*cking top hats and wings and American flags and F*CK on your shirts? F*CK YOU YOU DO! GET KRUNCH – WARRIOR WEAR FOR WARRIORS and DEATHPAIN.

And that’s basically Affliction’s mission statement.  The sad thing is, someone is a millionaire because of this crap.  Who would’ve thought that because I like to watch two guys kick the crap out of each other, that I’ll also want to wear a $40 shirt with a rhinestone dragon queefing a rose onto a skull?  Guess what, I don’t.  Probably because I’m not an a-hole.  Or maybe I am, but if people find that out, it’s going to be because of the inappropriate things I say, not because of an overpriced t-shirt that says A$$HOLE in bedazzled glitter paint.  Also, you might not want the company name that’s stamped on the front of all your shirts to remind people of a sexually transmitted disease.

Or maybe you do.  I suppose a disclaimer is only fair.

4. Dethrone Royalty

(“Hi, I’m Josh Koscheck, and I’m here to talk to you about the dangers of sentient pirate skeletons.”)

Okay, to be honest, I just threw this one in here because I needed another entry to make ten.  But it’s still basically an Affliction knockoff with a stupid name.  “Dethrone Royalty?”  That’s righteous, brah.  How much money did you want me to pay you for this t-shirt made by Indonesian kids again?

3. Jesus Didn’t Tap

This one doesn’t need much explanation beyond “yes, this is a real company.”  Oh dear God, their website has a Jesus rap playing over it, I didn’t even know that when I started writing this.  It’s true, though, Jesus didn’t tap.  But then, Pontius Pilate nailing his f-cking hands to a board was clearly illegal.  Anyway, this is the kind of company that makes satire unnecessary.  Here’s an actual excerpt from their website, with grammatical errors intact:

When Jesus stepped inside the cage of life to take on the cross, human legs did not kicked his out from under him. It was not human hands that broke his arm during the arm bar of adversity. It was not a human fist that knocked him to the mat for our sins. It was not a human that kept him inside the triangle choke of suffering. It was not the fighter’s sent by Satan to tap him out that beat him.

God gave him strength while on his back being pounded in the face by the elbows of sin. Those same hands that formed the universe.

Wow.  Just… wow.

2. MANswers

The holy grail of moronic Spike TV shows constantly advertised during UFC.  It’s impossible to ignore because in every promo, the announcer shouts at you at the top of his lungs over butt-rock guitar so cheesy it would embarrass a strip club DJ.  “REAL boobs, FAKE boobs, which chicks are HORNIER!  FIND OUT how to SCORE with a LESBIAN!  How much BEEF JERKY can you get from ONE COW!  Can MY DAD beat up YOUR DAD? Find out, on MANSWERS, the only TV SHOW for INSECURE TOWNIES!”

Meanwhile, if they actually wanted me to watch this chunky pile of yak period, the only rhetorical question they’d have to ask is, “WHY IS THIS C*CK KNOCKER ALWAYS YELLING AT ME???!!”

Not embeddable, but also relevant.

1. Tapout

Yeah, you knew this was coming since I used them in the banner pic.  Most people won’t criticize the Tapout crew because they’ve been around since the very beginning, their sponsorships have helped a lot of fighters to make a living when no one else was, and one of the founders, Charles “Mask” Lewis died in a car accident last year.  That’s cool (well, not the dying… you know what I meant), and of course I’m not here to criticize them for that.  But come on.  I like to think of MMA as the ultimate sport — two guys, with as few rules and as few props as possible.  No bullsh-t.  You know what a sport like that doesn’t need?  Three jackasses who look like they just stepped out of a Mudvayne video.  It doesn’t need afro wigs, top hats, face paint, cholo bandannas, and grown men who ask other grown men to refer to them as “Mask,” “Skyscrape,” and “Punkass.”  Come on, fellas, I thought we were here to watch a fight, not a Raiders game.

I also like how they do that same “ta da!” thing with their hands in every picture, as if dressing like a dickhead was some kind of magic trick.

In conclusion, the only guy whose fashion it’s okay to emulate is Don Frye, because Don Frye is manlier than chopping down trees with a Slayer record.  Don Frye eats foreigners and sh-ts bald eagles.

And, as a final thought, to anyone who beats people up for a living that I may have offended in this post… please, please don’t kick my ass. Or else I might write a harshly-worded blog post about it.