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Plenty of good and bad in broadcast

CBS' third – and perhaps last – broadcast of an Elite XC mixed martial arts card on Saturday was far superior to its first.

Unlike Kimbo Slice, who was the main event star of both cards, CBS corrected many of its flaws from its May 31 MMA debut.

But CBS simply hasn't demonstrated that it gets it when it comes to broadcasting an MMA fight card. The show on Saturday didn't have many obvious flaws – save for the annoying presence of analyst Mauro Ranallo, who brought nothing to the show and frequently sounded as if he were reading from index cards – but it lacked spice, excitement and many basic journalistic principals.

CBS opened with the news that Slice's scheduled opponent, Ken Shamrock, was off the card because of a cut suffered the previous night and that he would be replaced by Seth Petruzelli.

There was no reporting of the kind done that one would expect if a similar incident had occurred on an NFL game broadcast by CBS.

Cageside reporter Karyn Bryant, who consistently is inept and whose interviews frequently elicit one- or two-word answers from her subjects, did no reporting. She should have been able to tell her viewers that Elite XC had to talk Slice into taking the fight and ultimately had to pay him a significant bonus to get him to say yes.

That fact flew in the face of the "he'll fight anyone, anywhere at any time," rhetoric that blow-by-blow announcer Gus Johnson kept spewing.

The Florida Athletic Commission would not have been out of line had it determined that Shamrock was no longer competitive and denied him a license to fight. He hadn't won since 2004 and had been stopped in the first round of each of his five fights since. New York had handed a similar suspension to boxer Evander Holyfield.

But that showed the kind of opponent Slice was willing to fight and the fact that he hedged greatly before agreeing to accept Petruzelli should have been a central theme on the broadcast. Instead, it was ignored.

CBS had Bryant do yet another of her lightweight interviews with Carano. She asked Carano about failing to make weight again, but Bryant did no other interviews about the safety issues Carano might have been facing.

Carano needed three tries to make 141 pounds and she appeared severely dehydrated at the weigh-in.

Reporting at these kinds of events is critical. Suzy Kolber of ESPN is brilliant at it during NFL games, and CBS has Bryant there presumably to serve a similar role. She fails miserably.

Johnson did a workmanlike job overall, but his handling of the main event and his over-the-top comments made him look amateurish. After Petruzelli's win, Johnson gushed that this was the "most incredible victory in the history of mixed martial arts."

Beating a guy with no real background in any of the sport's disciplines and who only had three fights, against poor opponents, qualifies as a victory of historic proportions? Sorry, Gus. I don't think so.

Slice isn't a good fighter. He is a piece of marketing hype, which I've said repeatedly. But the CBS announce team apparently began to believe its own hype.

Slice deserves respect for getting into the cage and fighting, but he's a long way from being an average fighter, let alone from being a good one. Johnson should know better than to make such wild statements.

What Ranallo brings to the broadcasts is anyone's guess. This is a guy who, not long after fighter Sam Vasquez had died of injuries sustained in a fight, reported that Vasquez had made a miraculous recovery.

In sizing up the Carano-Kelly Kobold fight on Saturday, Ranallo noted that it figured to be a "dynamite distaff diffication."

Whatever that means.

If Elite XC survives, and I wouldn't bet on that, CBS ought to cut to a two-man booth with just Johnson and analyst Frank Shamrock, who struggles at times but clearly knows the business and has the potential to grow into the job.

Then it should find a roving reporter who can actually unearth news and conduct interviews that give the viewers some information.

The real problem here is that a major league network is hitching its star to a collection of mostly minor-league talent. The broadcast team is struggling to make it seem network worthy and the result is an uneven performance.

It was much better than the putrid effort the first time out of the gate, but there is still much improvements for CBS to make.