Yahoo let Meltzer go, but hired this guy

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWxlZ52O0rI"]600lbs Sumo Vs 169lbs MMA Fighter - KTFOvideos - YouTube[/ame]

Kamala ?

[Warner2BruceTD]

What happened to Meltzer?

Here are the relevant bits and pieces from the thread on his board. He doesn't say specifics, but you can read between the lines.

MMA at Yahoo was the brainchild of Dave Morgan, who was running sports and saw it as a growth sport. When Morgan who grew sports from 9 million uniques per month in early 2007 to 55 millions by 2011, was forced out a long time back when there was a CEO change and the new CEO put her own people in, the new people saw MMA as a Dave Morgan project. It was just a question of timing when contracts expired. Kevin Iole was kept for a number of reasons, including they didn't want to drop it altogether, and he does boxing, which is a traditional sport that sports people cover. Iole is technically no longer an MMA or boxing reporter but a general assignment sports reporter, but mostly is still doing MMA and boxing.

So Dave was laid off with the rest of the MMA people, because yahoo is out of the MMA game, and Iole was kept on because he also does boxing.

And now Morgan is heading up the sports operation for USA Today. He was one of the major forces behind the purchase of MMA Junkie.

Was very surprised that Morgan was pushed out. That guy is great at his job.

I guess USA Today will be stepping up their MMA coverage now.

Would not be shocked to see Meltzer picked up if he is interested.

Here's the funny thing. Yahoo's MMA site was profitable.

However, it was the brainchild of Dave Morgan, and when he was out, ideas out of the box (like covering MMA as a major sport) were out, regardless of the traffic.

It's quite amazing in hindsight.

Clearly Meltzer gets along good with Morgan, because he keeps putting him over.

Amazing that despite the obvious growth and popularity of MMA, there are still old, stubborn editors who refuse to embrace it.

Yahoo is now in the Bleacher Report business of publishing "fan" articles (which is what this trash in the OP is).

Bleacher Report has actually hired a bunch of pro bloggers and promoted some "fan" writers to paying positions in recent months. I gave up writing for them because it's nearly impossible to get on the front page, and even harder to stay on the front page, because the list writers (UFC: TOP TEN SICKEST KO'S OF ALL TIME!!) and people who mark for themselves who write total trash with google keywords chasing hits, which keeps them on the front page (its based on total reads, if you dont get reads, you fall of the page).

I wouldn't play that game with the editors. They constantly wanted to change my titles to include google keywords, and always tried to edit me down from 2000 words to like 800. "People won't read long articles". Really? Better let Bill Simmons know, he's a gazillionaire and has his own site now and writes like 15,000 word articles on a bad day.

That's why I stopped submitting to them. It's frustrating. I find writing about UFC boring. There is enough UFC analysis out there, im not interested. But why should I waste my time writing a well thought out Bellator or Pro Elite or Strikeforce or Around The Cage piece, when they wont feature it, and it will be off the front page in a few hours (if it makes it on at all), while shitty TOP 10 garbage and copy & pasted NEWS!!1!! gets all the attention from the editors? I'm not a fucking reporter, I refuse to pretend to break scoopz so I can mark out for my reads and see my name on the front page. No thanks.

I was very proud, I never buckled and wrote trash or gave in to the editors, and most of my stuff got 1,000+ reads, some over 2,000, while sitting dead on the bottom of the page or completely off of it. I already have a career, I don't need that shit, I write for fun. If somebody wants to pay me, great, but it will be for shit that I want to write, not shit dictated to me by editors who want google hits. I only submitted to B/R in the first place because a local paper by some miracle picked up a freelance article I submitted, so I figured if I was good enough for that, maybe I should open myself up to the masses.

That's also why I never bothered with the pro wrestling section. I'm not going to put effort into a well thought out piece, only to get buried because some 19 year old mark with a gimmick name like "The Krusher' bumps me off the front page with "WWE RAW: TOP TEN OPPONENTS BROCK MUST FACE RIGHT NOW".

I've been looking for a place to submit some stuff, but the model is LISTS and SLIDESHOWS and copy/paste news. I don't need to see my name on Yahoo badly enough to write something as bread dead as the shit in the OP.