I agree he "was" the innovator, now he is going the opposite direction. Insulting the guys who work for you, insulting the fans that buy your ppv events is no way to act when you are running a massive public business. You should follow him on twitter and see the stupid shit he saws about his fans.... His last rant with Jason Miller was classy as they come too.
I disagree about negative attention being better then no attention. Doesn't matter if it's mma or anything else in the world, negative attention will eventually have negative impact. Take firearms for instance, with all these shootings, guns are becoming the least popular thing in the world. Same goes for politics, as soon as 1 negative thing comes out against a candidate he is pretty much fucked. If you want a sport related comparison look at boxing, the pacquio vs. Bradley fight being judged wrong brought tons of negative attention to boxing, now everybody is down on that sport. If it hadn't had a massive amount of attention it wouldnt have been such a big deal. Same will go for mma, the more negative attention guys like Dana, and sonnen bring to mma the smaller the fanbase will
get. Negative is never a good thing.