I was at that half-full 6000 seat stadium and it was dead. I think most of the people there (myself included) got their tickets for free.
MMA in Indonesia is a non-starter anyway, and Surabaya people would be even less interested than Jakarta people.
(There were a lot of foreigners at the Jakarta show)
Good to know. They'd probably be doing well in Indonesia if Fransino Tirta hadn't retired, since he was a guy that could've really galvanized interest. But, well...
I think Stefer Rahardian could be what saves them in Indonesia if he wins a few more fights. Maybe not if he wrestlefucks his way to decisions like he did the last couple times, but even then it'd just add to the number of wins needed to be a star.
Favoritism to where they let a champion miss weight, announce that she made weight, and keep their belt or get up to 7 tries to make weight? Fighter safety where they brag about letting that same fighter fight through pneumonia and taking all of those tries to make weight? They basically left a guy in a foreign country to fend for his own after being KO'd. ONE isn't trying to make changes, the whole weight cut ban was just a PR move, they don't enforce or enforce it very selectively.
The fact that you're
so convinced that they let Angela dehydrate from 130 despite the fact that there's no proof shows how
ridiculously biased you are against ONE. She was
rumored to have missed weight by two pounds against Mei Yamaguchi, which was one thing, but there's been
no proof (or even rumor with any kind of steam; the rumors have all been circulated by the same, like, 5 people on Twitter that are the equivalent of attack-shills and
constantly talk shit on ONE) that she dehydrates or that they selectively use the rule to give fighters an advantage (despite the fact that these rumors extend no further than Angela), but you're acting like it's a fact. She looked the same size as Istela Nunes in her last fight; does that mean they let Istela Nunes dehydrate from 130, too? They must've, since they let her get a size advantage on all her opponents through dehydrating and there's no way she could've been the same size in any other circumstance.
The closest thing to "proof" they have is that Angela looked bigger than Jenny Huang in some of the pictures, but considering even Mei Yamaguchi looked bigger than Jenny (despite the fact that she's almost two inches shorter than her) and that Jenny could probably make weight if there was a minimumweight women's division, that's
really not a good argument.
They don't even have a good reason to do it. If Angela winning is
so important to their success that they have to go around their dehydration rules just to ensure she wins, not only would they be so desperate that they wouldn't have
any other stars (since not having any other draws is the only reason for a company to have the kind of desperation that results in abusing the rules), but they'd be struggling
so much they wouldn't even be trying to expand to other territories. It would also be easier to just have her fight at strawweight and give her legitimately-overmatched opponents, not going through all this hooplah with finding atomweights and having them weigh-in at one thing and giving Angela a different weight to go in at.
Not to mention it would be
horrible PR if that got out and would completely destroy all of Angela's star-power that they're banking everything on, apparently. Finding out that Roger Huerta spends so much time in Thailand so he can fuck kids would be better PR.
They have
way more to lose than to gain by doing that. It's like how everyone was convinced last year that ONE's just a marketing machine for the EVOLVE gym, which was complete bullshit just by looking at their business practices for 5 seconds and realizing what a terrible strategy that is if that's what they're going for.
