The Heat and the Shine

FACT OR FICTION: ROH, TNA and Destination America By Ben Miller Oh, what a great time of year.  Baseball is in full swing, motion-enabled comics are packing the theaters and middling pro wrestling companies are eating up the news cycles.  What does that mean for you, loyal readers? Why, it means that it is time for another edition of Fact or Fiction (a.k.a Coors Light Cold Hard Facts [because Bud Light doesn't pay me]).   Past discussions of Facts (not actual facts) and Fictions (more predictions and speculation, really), concerned  UFC's business decline in mid-2014  (boy, was I wrong on that one),  cable & satellite providers' distaste for WWE Network  (three out of four correct; much better) and  UFC drug testing  (the verdict is still out on that one).   The gimmick of "Fact or Fiction" is that I present four  straw men  statements, and then determine/predict whether the statement is factual or not.  The previous Fact or Fiction covere

On March 28, 2013, UFC and Fox Sports were married.  That wasn't the day that UFC announced that it was leaving Spike TV.  It wasn't the day that Can Velasquez fought Junior Dos Santos in the first UFC fight on national, broadcast television in the United States.  It was the day that Fox Sports 1 was announced.  For better or for worse -- mostly for worse -- the two have been married ever since. Fox needed big sports properties to create Fox Sports 1.  UFC was not Fox's largest cable sports property -- that would be college football -- but UFC was essential.  UFC was young, cool -- not it's peak of cool, but close enough -- and singular.  UFC fans would follow UFC wherever it went, or so it was assumed.  (The amazing audience for Chael Sonnen's fight on Fox Sports 1's first night was evidence of that.)  UFC provided volume content -- Ultimate Fighter, live events, hype specials, fighter profiles -- which is extraordinarily valuable when launching a new televi