MMA Live stacks the deck with recaps of UFC 105 and WEC 44, as well as a preview of UFC 106: Ortiz vs. Griffin II. Also, MMA legend Dan Henderson is in Bristol with an update on his fighting future.Tags: Mixed Martial Arts, Ufc
When the UFC's hype engine fails to deliver any real, palpable anticipation for a fight -- as in the case of Saturday's Tito Ortiz-Forrest Griffin rematch, which is fine but far from the Epic Super Rematch of Mega-Titans some clever editing and music are presenting it as -- you can make up your own narrative.
In this instance, UFC 106's four light heavyweights might potentially be participating in a four-man tournament for a chance at the title without knowing it. In addition to Ortiz-Griffin, a debuting Antonio Rogerio Nogueira will face Luis Cane; the respective winners would have time to meet before May 1's Lyoto Machida-Mauricio Rua rematch. It may be all that you need to sit a little closer to the television.
Fewer excuses need to be made for the undercard, a talent-rich program with some genuinely compelling fights and fighters. Any program forced to restrict Caol Uno to preliminary status has things going for it.
What: UFC 106: Ortiz versus Griffin, an 11-bout card from the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas
When: Saturday, Nov. 21, 10 p.m. ET on pay-per-view, with a live undercard special on Spike at 9 p.m. ET
Why you should care: Because Ortiz, while not for all tastes, usually brings a contagious energy into his bouts; because we'll get to see what kind of answers Anthony Johnson has for someone like Josh Koscheck, who can take his legs out from under him; because the Amir Sadollah-Phil Baroni bout looks deceptively like a boy-versus-man matchup, which might amuse your friends; and because it's a pleasure to watch any Nogueira compete.
Fight of the night: Karo Parisyan versus the UFC (previously Parisyan versus Dustin Hazelett). Parisyan has grappled more with anxiety issues than opponents in recent months; he pulled out of the event Thursday for suspect reasons. Now Dana White swears he's done.
Sleeper fight of the night: Paulo Thiago versus Jacob Volkmann, two
finishing submission artists who will benefit from Parisyan's absence -- they've been moved up to the main card.
Hype quote of the show: "I've sparred with Anthony before. He was afraid to get punched and he got really aggressive and came back swinging whenever I got in his face and put any pressure on him. A win will put me one step closer to my goal of becoming the UFC welterweight champion. When I whip this kid's ass, I'm calling out Georges St. Pierre next." -- Koscheck, objectively calculating his chances, to UFC.com.
Five questions: UFC 106
Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
Another showing like this, and Forrest Griffin can kiss his career goodbye.
Q: Is Tito Ortiz ready for an encore?
A: Ortiz's recent performances displayed a fighter far removed from the kind of dominating, aggressive cage-wrestling he used to great success early on; he blamed back issues, corrected by a new and less invasive surgery. But even if Ortiz reverts to his old form, he'll be a 2002 fighter in 2009: up against athletes who can stuff his takedown, shut him down on the ground and pester him standing. Aggressive wrestlers will always have a chance -- even fresh off the college mat -- but it's not as good a guarantee as it used to be.
Q: Can Forrest Griffin handle another loss?
A: Batterings against Rashad Evans and Anderson Silva put Griffin on track to suffer a third consecutive defeat. While his popularity and "Ultimate Fighter 1" finale cred probably guarantee him permanent employment in the UFC, he does not strike as the type who will take a run of misfortune with grace. Whether that statistic influences his performance against Ortiz, forcing him to fight more conservatively, is one for the wrap-up.
Q: Can Phil Baroni pull it together?
A: Despite being difficult to take down, heavy-handed and sporting the ring temperament of a rabies victim, Baroni's record reads as 13-11. Depending on which fights of his you've seen, he appears either tougher than you expect or weaker than advertised. His fighting a capable Amir Sadollah will help determine whether being "at home" in the UFC's 170-pound division is going to make a difference -- or whether Baroni and Frank Trigg are on course to give each other an exit interview.
A: Parisyan, probably the most macho-strapping fighter in the sport today, blames anxiety issues for flat performances. His last, versus Dong Hyun Kim, was erased when he was pinned for painkiller use. Having a mind congested with these issues when Dustin Hazelett is looking to make your ankle touch your ear is not proper, which may be part of the reason he made an unexpected exit from the event Thursday. Parisyan, only 27 despite his decade of experience, needed a strong performance to mute the negative voices -- both in and out of his head. He won't get that chance.
A: Long a fixture of the Japanese circuit, Nogueira has all the tools necessary to become a legitimate light heavyweight contender -- which would place him directly in the sights of associate Lyoto Machida. MMA is not chess, and a punch to the face is not as subdued a move as taking a rook. Nogueira's success could come with a heavy tax.
Red Ink: Ortiz/Griffin
Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com
Tito Ortiz has returned, but has he brought his surgically repaired back with him?
There is likely to be a moment during the Tito Ortiz-Forrest Griffin bout Saturday when both men struggle for position: Griffin pressed against the cage, resisting Ortiz's chances on the ground, Ortiz testing his new back against someone paid to hurt him. There are consequences to how this plays out, but they amount to more than superficial damage: In jockeying for control, both are really fighting to remain relevant.
Ortiz has not competed in more than a year, maintained a nearly annual fight schedule prior to that, and may find that fans have pledged allegiances to more active fighters. In the span Ortiz took time off, fought Lyoto Machida and convalesced, Griffin has fought four top-10 opponents (and beat two of them). Ortiz has not had a hand raised in a meaningful fight since he defeated Griffin in 2006.
If Ortiz cannot beat Griffin, there will be doubts whether a good or bad back has much to do with his recent mediocrity. If Griffin cannot beat Ortiz, he might be doomed to a career as a sardonic special attraction, not a serious contender. This is a fight that the loser leaves feeling lost.
Might look like: Ortiz's fight with Vitor Belfort, a wild back-and-forth that confuses judges who are already struggling with common sense.
Wild card: Absolutely Ortiz's back: If he can continue taking effective shots for three rounds, Griffin will need a sewing kit for his forehead.
Who wins: Griffin is most successful when opponents want to take batting practice with him; it's not a game Ortiz has to play if he doesn't want to. Ortiz by decision.
Flying high: Jose Aldo jump-started his career with a title-winning effort against Mike Brown.
WEC 44, which aired Wednesday on the Versus network and probably pre-empted an important rodeo meet, climaxed with an indirect example of Anderson Silva's greatness.
Silva is entering his fourth year as middleweight champion, which is not unlike being Miss Teen USA for two decades running: It is incredibly difficult to avoid making mistakes or running into someone who can deconstruct you.
Despite this negativity, Mike Thomas Brown, who defeated Urijah Faber for the featherweight title and then successfully defended it twice, was believed to have a fairly solid grip on his division. (Good wrestlers who can punch often do.) But he was not able to bully Jose Aldo, a harrowing striker that seemed bent on breaking Brown's ribs with kicks or knees. Unable to score a takedown, it was Brown who was mounted and tenderized.
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Brown held the belt for one year, 13 days. This is not a sport that lets its fighters stay happy for very long. And yet Silva is always smiling.
Next for Brown: Rethinking his stated desire to compete at 155 lbs; perhaps the loser of Faber/Raphael Assuncao in January.
Next for Aldo: The winner of Faber/Assuncao.
Nickname of the night award: Kamal "Prince of Persia" Shalorus, who put down Will Kerr and looked royally dangerous in his first televised fight.
The this-is-not-pure-wrestling award: Danny Castillo, an NAIA community college wrestler who managed to take down All-American Oklahoma State alum Shane Roller. The threat of punches, kicks, and knees to your dental work changes everything, including your takedown defense.
The baiting-bullies award: Karen Darabedyan, who probably put up with no end of harassment over his first name (pronounced Car-en) but appears capable of ending lives if you push your luck.
The corrective-lenses award: Judge Tony Weeks, for believing Rob McCullough had done enough to win every round against Darabedyan. Weeks apparently had more sympathy for Darabedyan's hands than McCullough's head.
Round 1 to Randy: UFC's Couture outdueled Strikeforce's Fedor in the ratings game.
After some slight misdirection in declaring Saturday's broadcast of UFC 105 "live" -- it was actually on a several-hour tape delay from Manchester, England -- Spike and the UFC have decided that the opportune time to acknowledge the stuttered feed is when discussing how it beat Nov. 7's Strikeforce in the 18-49 demo.
"Emanating from a European UFC attendance-record-setting MEN Arena in Manchester, England, the tape delayed presentation of 'UFC 105' outrated the LIVE broadcast 'CBS Saturday Night Fights' and the Strikeforce debut of Fedor Emelianenko on Saturday, Nov. 7 (9 -11:24 p.m. ET) in every key male demographic," bleated the press release.
An average of 2.9 million viewers tuned in, with 3.7 million staring agog at Randy Couture's hold-and-mold offense against Brandon Vera.
How badly did the event trounce Emelianenko's network debut? Not very. It scored a 2.84 rating in 18-49-year-old males to CBS' 2.45, which is not exactly a Globetrotters/Generals drubbing. And while you could make the argument that the victory resonates more because Spike is on cable and CBS is over-air, this isn't 1995: Nearly 90 percent of homes in the US have a coaxial snaking into their set.
Public relations could take turns spinning these numbers for eternity: UFC 105 was competing with Manny Pacquiao/Miguel Cotto, reportedly a huge seller; Strikeforce was up against a college football game on ABC; a thunderstorm may have disrupted signals to Nielsen households; CBS didn't count the prison population tuning in; and on and on.
It's a strange metaphor for Emelianenko's literal win against Brett Rogers: There are always a set of reasons why we shouldn't find him impressive. No wonder the guy doesn't bother listening to English.
With a proper training camp, time to prepare and a healthy athletic base, the heavyweight division is still the sloppiest in mixed martial arts. Absent any of those things, it can produce a prizefight so bad you will begin to believe in the theory of relative time and space.
In pursuit of a formal career in the UFC, Jon Madsen and Brendan Schaub put on this season's latest display of plodding, monotone fighting, which Schaub mercifully ended by landing a straight right early in the second round. (To be fair, Madsen was out-numbered: Schaub teamed with the fence to stifle some takedowns, a bold new interpretation of the rules that prompted Rashad Evans to ask why he didn't get a point deduction.) Schaub joins Roy Nelson in the semifinals. My pulse remains steady.
Though he didn't participate in a fight, much of Wednesday's episode focused on Matt Mitrione staring vacantly into space and trying to explain to coaches that he might have "brain swelling." This condition does not normally allow for the kind of casual conversation Mitrione enjoyed. More often, it demands the attention of a neurosurgeon, a tranquilizer and a quiet room in which to drill into your skull.
Mitrione's peers were equally unconvinced. "He's not brain-damaged," James McSweeney announced. Considering how this cast has performed so far, he's probably right. That kind of trauma is out of their reach.
Dan Hardy doesn't deserve a title shot, huh? We aren't sticking around to hear his rebuttal.
If there is a 12-step program for coping with Dan Hardy's getting a title shot against Georges St. Pierre in 2010, Josh Koscheck is still somewhere around No. 1: denial.
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Speaking to Heavy.com, Koscheck -- who lost to St. Pierre in 2007 and trains with Mike Swick, whom Hardy defeated last Saturday -- discredited the opportunity, alleging that promoters are "just trying to get someone for St. Pierre to beat up."
"He doesn't deserve a title shot," Koscheck said. "It's simple, but I don't make those decisions."
Those who do might see the value in British nationalism: The UFC boasted a huge gate in Manchester, despite never having had the chance to promote a title bid for a challenger from the U.K. This was easily and immediately remedied with a Hardy win over Swick, a respected and durable opponent. St. Pierre has erased virtually everyone else in the division, so Hardy's opportunity doesn't come at the expense of a worthy contender. But it still smacks of a decision to further cement the brand in the land of fish and chips.
Will we see Brock Lesnar in the Octagon again? Almost certainly, but why try speculating?
As of the middle of this week, Brock Lesnar's health remains vaguely defined. We only know that he would prefer we not be discussing it. That's according to UFC president Dana White, who then proceeded to do exactly that in Manchester last Saturday at UFC 105, citing that Lesnar was very ill and may not fight again -- a condition downgraded in severity when Lesnar's trainer, Greg Nelson, said Lesnar would be returning home soon.
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"Major" surgery, in White's vernacular, became "minor" surgery early this week. Aside from a definitive diagnosis of mononucleosis, Lesnar clearly has one (or more) other things ailing him, including a vague bacterial infection in his intestinal tract. He has since returned home to Minnesota to convalesce.
Whatever is attributable for Lesnar's collapse, the time and energy spent speculating whether or not it will end his career is a waste. A car helped crumple Frank Mir's leg; serious staph infections have eaten holes in the flesh of many fighters; Ken Shamrock, as his legend is quick to remind you, once broke his neck. They all came back to fight. Athletes, in particular, have a tendency to resist doctor proclamations that they will never compete again. Chalk it up to either incredible physical constitutions or incredible egos. Lesnar has no shortage of either.
There's something truly bizarre about the roundtable Internet discussion about his symptoms and piecemeal suppositions: Lesnar has diverticulitis; no, it's a bacterial infection; no, a tapeworm; no, he's just gassy. It's like a satellite gathering of a doctoral think tank in which no one has doctorates, medical records or the patient's cooperation. I doubt that anyone -- including Lesnar himself -- has any idea how his career will be affected. So what's the point in dialoguing it to death?
There are reasons fighters have a library of good stories. The profession can take you to odd corners of the world, and early experiences can twist and torque the brain into gravitating toward that sort of career choice. Fighters are not boring people. They all have a book in them.
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This is especially true of Jose Aldo, who told Yahoo! Sports' Steve Cofield this week that he was once tossed into a barbecue pit by his two sisters while horsing around as a toddler in Brazil. Let me run that by you once more: He was tossed into a barbecue pit as a baby.
(Tiger Woods, meanwhile, had a formative experience of his own earlier this month: In Shanghai for the WGC-HSBC event, Woods complained that crowds kept taking pictures of him with their cell phones. Haunting. Perhaps he and Aldo can swap horror stories sometime.)
This is part and parcel to relative thinking -- the idea that nothing you experience in the ring can be as traumatic as what you've already gone through. Mike Thomas Brown will not be packing pyrotechnics Wednesday night, and he can't do anything to Aldo that might require skin grafts.
A lot of people get hung up on how tough fighters are physically. I tend to think it's their mental calluses that make a greater difference.
Is Randy Couture thinking about a title shot? A Mark Coleman fight will be a blast either way.
In relation to other sports, frequency of competition is MMA's biggest deficit. If you're a baseball fan, you can see the Yankees player at least 162 times in a year. If you happen to enjoy the WWE, you'll typically see major stars wrestle at least a couple times a month. But in prizefighting, unless you're working the ladder as a near amateur, you're going to be trotted out for only two or three fights a year.
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It's not necessarily any healthier that way: Athletes spend vacation months gorging, partying, then trying to snap their bodies back into shape -- an up-and-down cycle of bad and worse abuse that can invite assorted problems. Funny thing is, it's not necessarily the athlete's preference to idle so long: Josh Koscheck recently requested to fight 12 times in 2010.
Couture prefers Greco-Roman tie-ups in the clinch, set up by his boxing; Coleman dives for legs. Both have rated among the most successful modified wrestlers in the sport. It's a match that doesn't need to make any allowances for age, size or ring wear. Whether it has title implications probably depends on how good the winner looks, but that's besides the point. Not every fight needs to be about a trophy. Watching two Hall of Fame competitors test themselves on equal footing is a celebration of two impressive careers. That's enough.
Mike Thomas Brown routinely overpowers even the best opponents in his own division.
While being the furthest thing possible from a not-for-profit organization, Zuffa remains fairly generous when it comes to offering high-level, competitive fights for free. If the strategy is to do the exact opposite of the greedy financiers who stifled boxing in the 1990s, then the strategy is working.
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Wednesday's WEC event on Versus -- Zuffa's third event in eight days -- will determine the world's top featherweight fighter, a role previously held by both Urijah Faber and Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto. Challenger Jose Aldo has TKO'd every one of his five WEC opponents, dispelling the commonly held thought that sub-155-pound athletes don't have knockout power. Champion Mike Thomas Brown is also undefeated in the promotion, having taken Faber's title in violent fashion.
Like most athletes who excel in the sport, they are not one-dimensional, and it will be interesting to see if Aldo's largely unseen ground game can answer Brown and his ferocious wrestling base. It's going to be difficult not to be entertained.
What: "WEC 44: Brown vs. Aldo," a 10-fight card hosted by the Pearl in Las Vegas.
When: Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 9 p.m. ET on Versus.
Why you should care: Because Aldo's striking is impressive enough for pixels, let alone live-action viewing; because Brown is like a mini Brock Lesnar, noticeably stronger than most everyone he fights; because seven-time junior national judo champion Manny Gamburyan and debuting Karen Darabedyan both bring doses of under-represented judo, a beautiful art with ugly consequences; and because Danny Castillo, a slept-on 8-1 performer, is going to be the underdog in a wrestling match against former Division I All-American Shane Roller.
Fight of the night: This space is not proud to point out the obvious, but it's expected that Brown-Aldo will be a rabid 25 minutes.
Hype quote of the show: "The government of Iran says I'm 37, but I'm not. … Maybe I was born in 1978, maybe 1979, maybe 1975. I don't know. I said, 'Mom, what happened?' She said, 'Oh yeah, we had another son before you and he passed away. We could not go to city [to the hospital] because we had no money and it was snowing, so we just gave his birth certificate to you. … It's very common where I come from." -- Kamal Shalorus, who claims to have no idea how old he is, to WEC.tv.
Although a long and lean 145 pounds, Jose Aldo has shown more than his share of power.
At 5-foot-6 and a child-actor-like 145 pounds, Mike Thomas Brown is evidence that tough men come in all shapes and sizes. Most would give him a fair chance against several 155-pound fighters; he probably would pick off a few 170-pound athletes if you got him mad enough. His technique is aggression. Some fighters are gentle finishers, rolling you into a submissive ball and hugging you afterward. Brown hopes you'll need a nurse to assist you in chewing.
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None of this is news to Jose Aldo, a blitzing striker and jiu-jitsu black belt who has lost only once, four years ago, and washed that out by taking victories in his next eight fights. He is everything Brown is not: a little reckless, long, sometimes airborne. Brown can counter by digging a trench in the canvas and stuffing Aldo in there for five rounds.
What it means: Brown has the potential to become the Anderson Silva or Georges St. Pierre of the 145-pound weight class: A man who makes good fighters appear lost.
Third-party investor: Urijah Faber, the WEC's most familiar face, who probably can't beat Brown but might find a more inviting style match in Aldo.
Wild card: Aldo's striking doesn't follow convention: It will either confuse Brown (as it has others), or Brown will exploit it with a more disciplined offense and heavier hands than Aldo is used to seeing.
Who wins: Brown might eat a few coming in, but he's a guy that would get angry, not concussed, if you took a bat over his head. Brown by TKO.
Randy Couture might have lost a step over the years, but his efforts were still too much for Brandon Vera.
In trying to come up with a metaphor for Randy Couture's current physical abilities, you can't do much better than a boat anchor. If he gets a lock on your body, he will either drag you down or exhaust you with your own resistance, swimming against the current he creates. It's an ugly way to go.
Against Brandon Vera on Saturday in Manchester, England, Couture clung to Vera while landing few effective strikes. The biggest moments in the bout came only when Vera had the distance to land body shots, which Couture's creaky reflexes allowed through. Despite Vera's delivering the damage of the fight, including a knockdown, judges figured Couture's lone takedown and pressing Vera into the fence trumped it.
If the fight were scored as a whole, Vera would probably win. As it is, they appeared to split two rounds and stalemate a third. A draw would have made the most sense. Increasingly, we should not expect judges to do the sensible thing.
Couture looked a few frames behind Vera, which is a problem that will continue to plague him in the weight class that probably strikes the best balance between speed and power. But at 46, you take your victories however you can get them.
Next for Couture: A title shot against Lyoto Machida would insult viewers' intelligence: This was the least impressive win of Couture's career. A rematch with Tito Ortiz or a fight with the winner of next week's Antonio Rogerio Nogueira-Luis Cane bout would be a plausible progression toward that goal.
Next for Vera: Motivational speaking (attending, not lecturing).
Next for Dan Hardy: Facilitating the easiest payday of Georges St. Pierre's career: In beating Mike Swick, Hardy has been granted a shot at the welterweight title. The UFC will try like hell to sell this fight, but don't you believe it. Hardy isn't ready.
Next for Michael Bisping: A fight with Wanderlei Silva could spring one of them into immediate title contention -- especially if Dan Henderson has pulled up stakes for Strikeforce.
New questions
Martin McNeil for ESPN.com
Dan Hardy's heavy hands probably wouldn't help him seize the day against the likes of GSP.
Q: Will fans buy Dan Hardy as a worthy title challenger?
A: Hardy hits like a piston and gets better every time he appears in the ring, but he's still miles away from the kind of suffocating, upper-tier attack of a Jon Fitch or Thiago Alves. That's the kind of competition he should have to face and beat in order to earn a shot at Georges St. Pierre's chin. It's hardly sandbagging -- St. Pierre has defeated virtually every big name in the class -- but if this is the beginning of St. Pierre's 2010, he should consider a future at middleweight.
A: He went about it in the most perfunctory way imaginable, but Randy Couture still defeated Brandon Vera. And while he ate some crippling body shots, he proved he wouldn't turn to dust against a highly credible kickboxer. Other elite strikers in the division -- Thiago Silva, Lyoto Machida, Mauricio Rua -- don't have Vera's Greco-Roman skills to work as a Couture anti-venom. He's not done.
A: For most of his career, Bisping has had a habit of squinting into the camera and daring fans to like him. The knockout delivered by Dan Henderson brought some humility with it: Bisping was cordial in victory against Denis Kang, surviving a first-round daze to show off some impressive guard work. Everyone loses. If Bisping continues to acknowledge that, he can continue improving.
Awards
The young-old man of the night award:Aaron Riley, who became a fixture in the 1990s MMA scene and is still somehow only 28 years old.
Admiral apathy of the night award:Andre Winner, for strolling over to the splayed carcass of Roli Delgado to grab a nearby sponsor T-shirt, then scratching his nose as his name was announced. He might've gotten some water, too, if those stupid EMTs weren't in the way.
Glaucoma awareness of the night award: Tito Ortiz, for sporting sunglasses indoors -- that would make him look out of place if he were orbiting the sun.
Street fighter of the night award:Brandon Vera, for pulling off the sport's first and only simultaneous groin shot and eye poke against Couture. If you see this man in a bar, leave him alone.
The Goldberg award: Mike Goldberg, for never letting a fight get in the way of a plug.
Joe Rogan: "Riley needs to do something here …"
Goldberg: "The 'Ultimate Fighter' finale … tickets are still available …"
Rogan: "… even his kicks are tentative …"
Goldberg: "Log on to UFC.tv for more info."
Etc.
Martin McNeil for ESPN.com
Guess who's back: Maybe fans and media alike were too quick to write off Michael Bisping …
• Manchester's M.E.N. Arena hosted 16,693 attendees Saturday, setting a European attendance record for the UFC: For financial reasons, it seems likely Dan Hardy's title shot against Georges St. Pierre would take place in the UK …
• UK's Telegraph believes St. Pierre and Hardy might coach the 11th season of "The Ultimate Fighter." Thirteen weeks of attempted brainwashing …
• White told MMAJunkie.com that the promotion is only "months away" from organizing international versions of "The Ultimate Fighter," with cast members pulled from hosting countries …
• With the win over Vera, Randy Couture, 46, became the oldest winner in the Octagon in the promotion's history …
The truth is, we don't know what to make of Brandon Vera. He looked good against opponents who largely have faded into obscurity. Then he took a year off while management tried to siphon more money from the UFC. When he came back, he was dialed down, hesitant and easy to underestimate (3-3 since 2007, with no knockout in years). Not a guy a gambler would try to even up his MLB season losses on.
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But when Vera chooses to commit, imposing a formidable kickboxing game, he looks like a guy who might one day make good on the boasts early in his career. Whether he keeps it holstered or not against Randy Couture will probably be decided by how Couture fares in the opening moments. If he's in Vera's face, making Vera nervous about a clinch, it won't be a good night. If Couture lets on that he's not seeing what's coming and his nervous system shuts down as easily as it did in the first round against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in August, then Vera can join Manny Pacquiao in giving the Philippines something to cheer about.
Might look like: The closest Vera has come to thwarting world-class wrestling in his career was against Mike Whitehead, and that's not too close. Couture hasn't had to deal with fast, skilled hands since Chuck Liddell in 2006 -- but Liddell's takedown defense forced him. Vera doesn't have the same core.
X factor: Trainer Shawn Tompkins, in Couture's corner for the Nogueira fight, has since set up shop down the street and away from Xtreme Couture. Will his brain be missed?
Who wins: Vera is talented, but he has shown an overwhelming propensity to sit back and wait for the fight to come to him. If he does that against Couture, it'll be a long, grinding night and another 15 minutes of unfulfilled promises by Vera. Couture via decision.
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During a recent four-fight heavyweight run, Couture was outweighed by as much as 50 pounds on fight night. Although it might seem wise to eliminate that excess and return to the light-heavyweight arena, there's always a price to be paid: In this case, he'll be facing a considerably faster opponent who might be able to put punches together in the same time Tim Sylvia got off one.
2. Will Brandon Vera be intimidated by the Couture name?
Vera has made repeated mention of athletes such as Chuck Liddell and Couture being role models for what can be accomplished in the sport; that kind of hero worship cost Georges St. Pierre in his first fight against Matt Hughes. Although Couture isn't running as rampant as Hughes was at the time, he may still exist in Vera's head as something other than a man. An idol is a hard thing to damage.
Georges St. Pierre looks good in a maid's uniform: He has cleaned out the entire welterweight division, leaving talents such as Swick and Hardy -- capable, but not awesome -- as legitimate title contenders. For fans to back that idea, one of them will have to do more than grind out a finish: He'll have to do it with arterial spray.
Boxing trainer Freddie Roach has a telling explanation of the nature of knockouts "changing" fighters in Sam Sheridan's new book, "The Fighter's Mind." In it, Roach describes the idea that a fighter who hasn't been knocked out will take fight-finishing risks and plow ahead, not fretting over the consequences. If you haven't been KO'd, you don't know you can be KO'd. But a power outage like the one Henderson delivered can bring you back to reality. Bisping now knows he's human. That will affect his behavior.
5. Will peak audiences help the UFC's anti-Fedor sentiment?
The fight business exists to claim bragging rights: If Couture's fight with Vera draws more viewers on basic cable than Fedor Emelianenko's bout with Brett Rogers did on CBS, we'll hear about it -- repeatedly -- all week long.
It's never so much fun to be proven wrong as when Randy Couture makes us eat crow.
We know the story, and we know how it often ends: Randy Couture -- who has somehow avoided the debilitating effects of 12 years spent inside the Octagon -- takes on a younger, faster, hungrier opponent. People with microphones and laptops gather around and shake their heads at the waiting disaster. And then Couture makes us all -- observers, fighters, bookies -- eat a big, fat one.
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This pattern has been repeated against Chuck Liddell, Vitor Belfort (twice), Tim Sylvia, Pedro Rizzo (twice), Gabriel Gonzaga, Kevin Randleman and Tito Ortiz -- and to a lesser extent, in respectable efforts against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Brock Lesnar. It is not Couture's viability at his age that impresses, but his ability to resist the cumulative wear of spending more than a decade in a sport that treats participants like a wood chipper treats trees. It's an inexplicable career we should probably be grateful for witnessing firsthand.
Facing and defeating Brandon Vera, a dangerous 32-year-old, might afford Couture one last stint as a title contender in the 205-pound division, where he certainly could make life difficult for Lyoto Machida. But if he can't, and if his last act in the sport is to headline a show in which the outcome of a fight featuring a 46-year-old is in doubt, then he'll have done it to us again anyway. Couture has a lot of unique abilities, but the most impressive may be making us happy to be wrong about him.
What: UFC 105: Couture versus Vera, an 11-bout card from the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester, England.
When: A tape-delayed broadcast airing on Spike, Saturday, Nov. 14, at 9 p.m. ET.
Why you should care: Because a Couture fight on free television is generous by anyone's standards, let alone a fight promoter's; because Dan Hardy and Mike Swick are both 100 percent certain they're going to win; because Michael Bisping can prove that the Dan Henderson loss didn't rattle him permanently; and because the Manny Pacquiao-Miguel Cotto fight will be on HBO for free a week later. You miss nothing.
Fight of the night:Ross Pearson versus Aaron Riley; considering his inability to put it in reverse, Riley should be in traction by now. He's not. We're glad.
Hype quote of the show: "Yeah, I throw up every fight. Who knows (what causes it) -- nerves, excitement … the anticipation? It could be a whole bunch of different things; I don't know. I just know that if I stop throwing up, it's bad." -- Vera, on his prefight preparation as told to Canoe's SLAM! Sports.
Pity the fool? Actually, Mr. T is happy for Quinton Jackson, the new 'B.A. Baracus.'
I tried. I really did. When news of Quinton Jackson's casting in the "A-Team" remake spread earlier in the fall, I attempted to reach out to the original "B.A. Baracus," Mr. T, for comment. (Yes, these are the things that get written down on my Post-its: "Call Mr. T.")
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Unfortunately, T's listed management no longer represented him and didn't know who did. Life went on. Now FanHouse's Ariel Helwani has blogged that he ran into T in Chicago over the weekend. Sickening.
Strangely, T came off as reflective and reserved. "I have much love for him," he said of Jackson. "I do. It's going to become a pressure thing because people are going to come up to him and say, 'Hey, you're not Mr. T.' They are going to try to get in his head just to meddle with him. … I like his style, his toughness. He'll bring his own unique personality to that role."
Good for Jackson, but he'd probably be better off with Dana White's blessing than T's. At any rate, on to Carl Weathers. …
Tickets to the gun show? Uh-uh. Matt Hughes just wants to give out another Gracie beatdown.
If it worked for Kazushi Sakuraba, it can work for Matt Hughes: After depressing the hell out of mid-1990s MMA fans by putting a stake in Royce Gracie's heart, the one-time steamroller of the welterweight division may fight Renzo Gracie next. This according to Heavy.com, FightersOnly.com and the vague, teasing Twitter comments of both Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta.
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In making no sense at all, it actually makes perfect sense: Neither Gracie, 42, nor Hughes -- who, at age 36, simply can't contend at the Alves/St. Pierre level -- is likely to make a title run at this stage in his career. This is a fight for a fight's sake, and that's something the UFC has been sorely lacking in recent years.
Being a reality television series producer can mean a handful of things: A certain percentage of dinner-party guests are going to look at you as if you have leprosy, for one. Two, you're going to be elated when a subject utters the phrase, "There's chickens in my car."
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Chickens, consumed en masse to feed the bodies of fighters, exacted some kind of circular revenge during Wednesday's episode of "The Ultimate Fighter," dropping feces onto the rental car upholstery of Rashad Evans. This is the kind of thing responsible for MMA's sensational growth during the middle part of this decade: the idea that we get emotionally invested in athletes' lives before watching them get brutalized in a ring. And nothing resonates more than athletes chasing pooping chickens.
Not partaking in the aviary fun was Matt Mitrione, who was shown -- either via the magic of editing or simply his own hammy acting -- suffering the ill effects of having his head used as a bongo. Mitrione may or may not fight, which may or may not lead to Kimbo Slice returning, which may or may not cause me to care.
The man who beat Slice -- Roy Nelson -- earned an early holiday gift by beating Justin Wren via decision. It was the least impressive victory of the season to date, as Nelson finally behaved as he looks -- sluggish, out of shape and ineffective. His coach was correct in wishing for a third round: Evans knows B.S. when he smells it.
Africa is rarely portrayed in the media as anything other than a politically tumultuous continent with lions prepared to eat tourists right off the runway. (This is amusing, but untrue: It's actually the cheetahs that'll get you.) African citizens enjoy their distractions the same as any other segment of the world, and MMA is increasingly becoming one of them.
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On Thursday, EFC Africa will host 12 bouts in Northgate, Johannesburg. One of two competing Americans is Gabe Casillas, who reportedly trains out of Wanderlei Silva's Las Vegas gym. The venue, the Coca-Cola Dome, has previously been host to Elton John, 50 Cent and the WWE. (You guess which one of these things doesn't belong.) There's even the requisite gaudy afterparty at Platinum. VIPs get in free.
This news follows word that Dubai could soon host MMA events, the UFC's journey into Germany, and increasing, sanctioned violence in China and the U.K. MMA probably never will be the biggest sport in the states, but the notion of it becoming the biggest sport in the world is looking less and less ridiculous.
Randy Couture has eyes for Lyoto Machida, but he'd be wise not to look past Brandon Vera.
It has been nearly nine years since Randy Couture fought outside of the U.S. Perhaps the plane-ride boredom forced him to make the very prizefighter error of thinking too far ahead.
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"I would love a crack at [Lyoto] Machida," he told Sherdog's Greg Savage. "His style is very interesting, and nobody has seemed to have gotten a handle on him yet. Skill set-wise, it would be a great matchup."
Couture approaches prizefighting like one of those giant, microscopically fractured puzzles. He delights in figuring out opponents, and in that realm there are few fighters more difficult than Machida, who represents the polar bear-in-snow image in that analogy. But meeting Machida is conditional on beating Brandon Vera in Manchester, England, on Saturday -- an order that might be hard to fill for a 46-year-old. Vera is the best Thai boxer Couture has faced in years, has better-than-average wrestling for the division and probably won't be as physically dysfunctional after a weight cut as Couture.
All of this may not matter if Vera's will can be broken against the fence, but it was Couture who walked away after stumbling at the hand speed of Chuck Liddell in 2006. Vera is not Liddell, but at this stage of Couture's career, he may not have to be. Fighting Machida will probably remain a hypothetical.
When Dana White opens his mouth, the resulting sound might as well be cash registers ringing.
UFC president Dana White has a better understanding of media relations than virtually any sports personality alive. Beat writers want inflammatory quotes; White dishes them out. It's the reason he's such a pervasive presence, and it has helped make his brand synonymous with combat sports. Geniality is boring. Meltdowns create hits and move copy.
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This past Saturday's Strikeforce telecast is an open invitation to solicit White, because everyone involved knows what he'll get. It's approaching performance art.
"CBS made its biggest mistake partnering with a tiny, small show with a roster no one cares about," White told Yahoo! Sports on Wednesday. Wind him up and watch him go.
"Just because you read on MMA.tv that someone is a superstar doesn't make it true. This should prove that no one out there gives a [expletive] about Fedor."
White is referring to the roughly 5.5 million viewers who tuned in for the Fedor Emelianenko-Brett Rogers bout, a number that bests the 4.7 million who tuned in to see Anderson Silva embarrass James Irvin in the summer of 2008. And if you believe White went on to proclaim that "no one gives a [expletive] about Anderson Silva," you are an interesting person.
Thankfully, Yahoo! Sports' contributor left the recorder on: "If I hear any of you guys [sports writers] calling Fedor the best pound-for-pound, I'm going to go postal," White raved. "Do you think Brett Rogers would have lasted two minutes with Brock [Lesnar]? What do you think Cain Velasquez would do to him?"
What Velasquez would do to Rogers is speculation, but we know what Emelianenko would do to the guy who is about to fight Velasquez for the UFC's No. 1 contender's slot: Emelianenko punched a hole in Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira's head on three separate occasions. So either he's really a pretty good fighter or White must concede that he's granting title opportunities to washouts.
This could go on for days. Some purists are going to seize up at these comments, but a sizable number of fans with a more recreational interest take White at his word. Strikeforce really didn't need an Emelianenko. It needs a Dana White.
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira may be just another pretty face, but the brand will carry UFC 108.
Since using "The Ultimate Fighter" to disguise a pretty swell sport as an idiot reality show in 2005, the UFC has largely avoided the economic crunch that has been sending businesses into survival mode (or, in many cases, bankruptcy proceedings). Blood is apparently recession-proof.
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This might change during the winter months, as the promotion is facing a drought: Four of its five champions have been shelved because of injury or illness. (B.J. Penn, who probably gets enough vitamin D in Hawaii's sun, is healthy and is set to fight Dec. 12.) Chuck Liddell still is appearing only on toy shelves; Randy Couture is being given away on free television Saturday.
That leaves Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Cain Velasquez to headline UFC 108 on Jan. 2, a contender's bout that may have some serious trouble selling every single $600 ringside seat being offered. Particularly when scalpers will charge a 300-percent markup as a handling fee.
Nogueira-Velasquez is plenty intriguing: Nogueira looked fresher against Randy Couture than he did in the beating he sustained against Frank Mir, while Velasquez has yet to be tied up in the knots Nogueira can create. But it's far from the kind of New Year's spectacle the promotion has provided in the past. The downside to conditioning fans to expect a fireworks display during certain times of the year is that they'll get grumpy when you can't light the fuse.
The first quarter of 2010 should see the disabled list dry up, leading to a run of programs with proven draws and title opportunities. The 108 card leads with only the UFC brand. It's exactly the kind of show it has spent nine years preparing for: one that's not only recession-proof but also fighter-proof.
In an effort to streamline its CBS telecast Saturday, Strikeforce elected to scratch an undercard bout between Mark Miller and Deray Davis. Although the decision might have helped avoid schedule complications with the network, it didn't do the promotion any favors with MMA media, who pushed Strikeforce into a bed of thorns for depriving both men a chance to snag a winner's purse. (And rightly so.)
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On Tuesday evening, Strikeforce's Mike Afromowitz confirmed with Sherdog, ESPN.com and other outlets that both Miller and Davis would receive both their show and win money.
"Originally, we attempted to place this matchup on another fight card being promoted by a local promoter in Chicago in a couple of weeks," Afromowitz said via e-mail. "If both fighters had accepted, we would have paid each his fight purse a second time. Since neither was available due to different circumstances, however, we paid each his win bonus on top of the purse."
While this doesn't completely negate the mistake -- both men still wasted training camps, among other hassles -- it's a nice concession. But unless the CBS production truck had a sundial, I'm not sure why this had to happen in the first place.
Mirko Filipovic's current problems seem to extend beyond the company he keeps.
Fighters have to believe in reinvention. If the traits that cost them bouts in the past aren't course-corrected, then there's no reason for them to compete again. The same ills will weigh them down -- if not athletically, then mentally.
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Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic knows this, which is why the Croatian has dropped boxing coach Marjan Zizanovic and sparring partner Igor Pokrajac from his circle of training associates, per the reports of Fighters Only and foreign news source Index.hr. Instead, Filipovic plans to work with Ivan Hippolyte, a retired Dutch Muay Thai legend with a 69-6 kickboxing record. The shake-ups come on the heels of rumors Filipovic will fight Ben Rothwell on Feb. 21 in Australia.
In all but a handful of his recent bouts, Filipovic has looked reluctant to engage or mount any kind of sustained offense, tarring an otherwise impressive career. A sports psychologist would bill him at least 50 hours to figure it out. It's good to cycle in new faces, but ultimately Cro Cop climbs into the ring on his own. And the ring is where his problems are.
The sand-encrusted United Arab Emirates (UAE), which probably exists in some minds as a kind of distant cousin to Tatooine, has some fairly significant aversions to American culture: Censorship is not uncommon, evolution is a verboten discussion, and political officers prefer prison terms over bankruptcy for debtors. Visit and keep a very, very tight grip on your passport.
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But, oh, how they love their sports. As detailed in this grand piece by ESPN's Jim Caple, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has infused Dubai with multimillion-dollar horse tracks and golf courses while plying stars like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods into PR opportunities. By 2012, perhaps some of the federation's citizens will be wearing giant cheese wedges on their heads.
Hungry for international roots, UFC president Dana White recently traveled to Dubai and announced intentions to bring his promotion there. It's possible he'll be beaten to the punch by the Xtreme Kombat League, an obnoxiously titled promotion that declared plans to hold a show on Feb. 20, 2010. The XKL had previously announced a reality series featuring Dan Severn and Pat Miletich as coaches.
Promoter Eric Rafiq, who is adopting that decidedly promoter-like trait of talking first and delivering later, also promised that women's boxing figurehead Laila Ali would be in Dubai soon to pick up a possible 25th career win. (No one is blinking over the fact that Ali has not fought in more than three years.)
If even a portion of all this comes to fruition, it would serve as another indication of MMA's ability to transcend cultural gaps. It would also serve notice that there is no dark corner to which a business isn't willing to turn a blind eye: By some accounts, the immaculate architecture and Middle Eastern skylines of Dubai mask a deeply malevolent, deeply medieval philosophy. Laborers who built the towering structures allegedly worked 14-hour days in the desert heat, had passports revoked and were paid only a quarter of promised wages. If your sexual preferences run toward the same sex, you face 10 years in prison. In Dubai, it is technically illegal to be Clay Aiken.
It might seem absurd that a blood-streaked Octagon has a moral obligation to investigate the grounds on which it's being hosted. But maybe that's another sign of this sport's maturity -- that Dubai might be too ugly for an ugly sport.
Saturday was a good day for Fedor Emelianenko: seven minutes of free advertising and a win.
The American public wants what it wants: Saturday's live bout between reputed No. 1 bruiser Fedor Emelianenko and former tire worker Brett Rogersscored 5.46 million viewers on CBS. In October, a tape-delayed, spoiled-result UFC telecast featuring Kimbo Slice and a distended Roy Nelson grabbed 6.1 million. It is this kind of mass-consumer thinking that will give us a "Transformers 3."
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Strikeforce's debut ratings for network television are roughly on par with what EliteXC drew in 2008. The promotion also won the evening in the prized "age 18-34 male" demo. But the idea that a basic cable channel could use a UFC logo and a boatyard athlete to outdraw a network special is a lesson in the UFC's crushing monopolization of the American fight business. Spike devotes hours and hours each week to putting that signature in neon lights. CBS has no similar investment in Strikeforce. This is the end result.
The rating -- solid, unspectacular -- answers one question, but the issue of retention remains. It should be addressed in a future broadcast, when we find out whether viewers were satisfied enough with what they saw to return. Emelianenko effectively got himself a seven-minute commercial on free television. That has to count for something.
The expectations created by Fedor Emelianenko's media profile make it impossible for him to perform in a way that pleases everyone: If he had crumbled Brett Rogers on Saturday in a manner akin to Tim Sylvia -- women sobbing cageside, medevacs hovering overhead -- fans would sigh and complain that Rogers never belonged in the ring with him.
In taking nearly seven minutes to finish Rogers off, gushing blood all the while, Emelianenko is instead viewed by a portion of the audience as a less-than-prime fighter. The paint, some would argue, is coming off the pedestal.
There is some truth in the idea that we don't yet know how impressive it really was to beat Rogers: Maybe he's a devastating heavyweight who hasn't had much of a chance to show off. (His lone win over a top-10 opponent, Andrei Arlovski, earned him this slot.) Maybe he's a one-dimensional athlete who won't go much further.
So we go on what we do know: Emelianenko overcame nearly a 50-pound size differential against an undefeated opponent, weathering an early storm and the ring age of his 31 fights to spin Rogers 90 degrees with a socking right hand. Fans still scratched their heads. This is what we get for making the guy sit on a literal throne.
The heavyweight division, while not as talent-rich as the others, leaves one of the smallest margins for error. A man who hits as hard as Rogers, sporting those pathetically tiny gloves, does not need much of an opportunity to jar a brain. And Emelianenko has been in serious danger before: Against Kazuyuki Fujita, he looked like he was walking on ice; against Mark Hunt, a highly suspect ground fighter, he was pinned to the mat for minutes.
His ability to escape, to back off the edge of the cliff, is what should impress. Fedor makes concessions, but he does not make fatal errors. He looked like himself. Rogers looked like what he is: tough. And there's your fight.
If Rogers had a more imposing résumé -- if he were a frightening heavyweight who had destroyed huge names -- Emelianenko would be applauded with any footnotes. Rogers may be that guy. He may not be. It's to Emelianenko's credit that he never gives his opponents -- or us -- much of a chance to figure it out.
Next for Emelianenko: Fabricio Werdum narrowly defeated Antonio Silva on Saturday, but there's nothing in his striking or jiu-jitsu that Emelianenko hasn't seen and smothered before. In Strikeforce, only Alistair Overeem is intriguing enough to add something to his résumé.
Next for Rogers: A chance to show everyone how good he really might be: Antonio Silva would be a start.
Next for Jake Shields: Recent acquisition Matt Lindland brings a reputation earned outside of the promotion, but he fights Dec. 19; a bout with Frank Shamrock would elevate Shields' name, which may have gotten dinged in a semi-sleepy bout with Jason Miller. (I happened to like the fight.)
Next for Gegard Mousasi: Strikeforce has a solid but small roster: Bouts with Mike Whitehead or Kevin Randleman are filler material. "Mo" Lawal needs to fast-track it.
Awards
The don't-listen-to-idiot-pundits award: Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, for putting up a better fight than expected against Gegard Mousasi. (Sports Illustrated's Josh Gross had picked Sokoudjou to win; if he didn't get exhausted in the second round, that seems plausible.)
Einstein's theory of relativity award: Jason Miller, for choking Jake Shields nearly unconscious in the third and thinking the bell rang too soon; and Shields, for getting choked unconscious and not hearing the bell ring soon enough.
The unsuspecting Jimmy Lennon award: Jason Miller, for forcing Lennon to announce his fighting style as "slap boxing," a comedy routine that remains just as unfunny as when Dennis Hallman insisted on "cowboy karate" all those years ago. (Miller is wacky. We get it.)
The we-gotta-figure-out-this-TV-timing-thing award: Strikeforce, for bumping the undercard bout between Mark Miller and Deray Davis entirely. Not having an Excel sheet with an event rhythm laid out cost both men wasted training camps. That's beyond belief.
New questions
Q: Is the heavyweight division outgrowing itself?
A: A burly, barrel-chested Emelianenko still looked comparatively small next to Rogers, who has the physique of a lineman; Antonio Silva, Tim Sylvia, Brock Lesnar, Shane Carwin and at least a half-dozen other heavyweights flirt with the division's 265-pound ceiling. While heavyweights are traditionally expected to fight in an open-class environment, big men are acquiring skills comparable to the opponents they dwarf. If Brock Lesnar steps into a cage to defeat Emelianenko one day, did he do it because of a skill set -- or because he's the size of a Kenmore side-by-side?
Q: Is Gegard Mousasi in for a dour 2010?
A: Mousasi looked slow to start against Sokoudjou on Saturday, but recent performances -- including a heavyweight contest -- have shown him to be a viable next-generation fighter. Unfortunately for his development, Strikeforce's 205-pound division is their weakest: Getting rounds in isn't quite the same as getting pushed.
Q: Is CBS in this for the long haul?
A: Television's biggest asset -- consistency -- is also its biggest handicap. While programs like "Seinfeld" can take months or years for viewers to warm to them, executives rarely operate in a patient mood: If you're not delivering, you're not airing. Emelianenko's performance will get buzzed about, but it'll take both Strikeforce and their performers several shows to work up a head of steam.
Q: Is Brett Rogers going to get more dangerous?
A: A knockout loss tends to change how fighters conserve their attacks: Get hit and next time you might flinch. But Rogers has the benefit of knowing he lost to the best, an asset that could actually boost his confidence the next time the bell rings. His follow-up might be more interesting than Emelianenko's.
Etc.
• The CBS broadcast was the top-rated program in adults 18-49 during its 9-11 p.m. ET time slot Saturday, but total viewers (nearly 4 million) slotted it last among the big four networks in overall viewers. Ratings for the Emelianenko-Rogers bout, which began after 11 p.m. ET and was the fight the entire program was built around, have not yet circulated.
• Emelianenko broke his nose and injured his left hand in attempts to separate Rogers from his win purse: The Russian has had issues with his fists throughout his career.
• Jake Shields, who defeated Jason Miller for the middleweight belt, would like to pursue the welterweight title; where this leaves teammate Nick Diaz is a conversation for their gym.
• Cung Le versus Scott Smith is official for Strikeforce's Dec. 19 Showtime event: Le vacated his middleweight title when film roles began conflicting with his training; Smith recently lost to Nick Diaz. If Le only has enough sweat for a couple of more fights, Smith wouldn't be in my top five choices.
• UFC play-by-play announcer Joe Rogan declared Emelianenko "got exposed a bit" in a Tweet; Rogan is not typically a company line-tower, but even if the feeling is genuine, it'll still be seen as sour-grapes propaganda. Fedor was "exposed" no more than St. Pierre was against Serra or Anderson Silva was in a round against Travis Lutter. It's a testament to Emelianenko's reputation that looking human is seen as a disappointment.
You know how it is when you invite friends over who are only "casual" about MMA: They eat all your food, ask dumb questions and fidget when the fight goes to the ground. By the time the "fat foreign guy" comes out, you will pray for a blackout.
These people are not your friends. Disown them immediately, then watch this space for live coverage of "Strikeforce: Fedor versus Rogers" beginning at 9 p.m. ET. Interact with peers, ask questions -- and best of all, no cleanup.
Because Saturday's network television broadcast of Strikeforce pre-empts "CSI: NY," we have, in a sense, already won. But event producers might not be satisfied with paving over the career of Skeet Ulrich: What they really want is to snag an appreciable share of the coveted 18-49 male demo, that segment of the population most likely to enjoy repeated punches to the head and advertisements for beef jerky.
To attract them, CBS and Strikeforce are hoping the monosyllabic Russian Fedor Emelianenko will outgrow his cult popularity among tape collectors to become a mass-audience draw. On their side: He's exciting, dangerous, and far less likely than Kimbo Slice to be knocked out by a man in a dress.
Working against them: He's a bit flabby, has never seen the inside of a tattoo shop, and comes from a country that once threatened us with nuclear decimation. (The last one is especially disturbing: Americans tend to root for the home team.)
Like Slice before him, Emelianenko appears to be gaining notoriety in the farm league known as YouTube. His fight with the giant Hong-man Choi has netted nearly 2.5 million views; versus Matt Lindland, 2 million. This is a far cry from a Slice video that grabbed 10 million hits; it's also, as popularity gauges go, pretty shaky. (But we live in a viral era. Beats phone surveys.)
People obviously care about this guy. Whether it's enough to satisfy network television standards is what we're about to find out.
What: "Strikeforce: Fedor versus Rogers," a 10-bout card hosted by the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates, Ill.
When: Saturday, Nov. 7, 9 p.m. ET.
Why you should care: Because Emelianenko is inarguably the best, most dominant heavyweight the sport has ever seen; because opponent Brett Rogers doesn't seem to care one bit about it; because Jake Shields looked ferocious in his first 185-pound bid; because Fabricio Werdum has a hell of a puzzle to solve in a fellow jiu-jitsu stylist who happens to be twice his size; and because mixed martial arts on the network that once employed Walter Cronkite is progress.
Fight of the night: Emelianenko-Rogers, both in status and styles, can't disappoint.
Sleeper fight of the night: Marloes Coenen and Roxanne Modafferi, who are likely to show off the women's division preference for competitive, fast-paced fights.
The confusing alterna-show of the weekend: Strikeforce Challengers Series, a minor-league event airing at 10 p.m. ET Friday on Showtime.
Hype quote of the show: "I never really was a Fedor fan. … I only watched the [Andrei] Arlovski-Fedor fight. … It's just another man to me." -- Rogers on life in a cave, to the OC Register
Five questions: Strikeforce edition
Sherdog.com
It's hard to imagine Rameau Sokoujdou, right, putting up much resistance against Gegard Mousasi.
A: Rogers is being given (slight) chances to beat Emelianenko based on his ability to punch a hole in concrete; little has been seen of him working the canvas, where Emelianenko is incredibly slick.
In Rogers' favor: Mark Hunt, a ground novice who clocked in near Rogers' 280-pound frame for his 2006 fight with Fedor, kept Emelianenko immobile for several minutes. But if all he can hope for is some brief control, it's less a shot at winning and more a stay of execution.
Q: What happens to Emelianenko on the feet?
A: A victory is a victory, but for several minutes against Andrei Arlovski, Emelianenko looked uneasy and ineffective. Rogers doesn't have the "clean" hands of Arlovski, but he's quick and can send you to the triage with one solid shot. Emelianenko can't afford to take that kind of pressure during a first-round warm-up.
A: The manner and method in which Mousasi disarmed the durable Renato Sobral in August cemented the idea that the fighter could make as big a name for himself in the U.S. as he has in Japan. Fighting Rameau Sokoudjou, who has long since removed himself from top-10 status, would appear to be a step back; the judo player lost to Sobral earlier in the year, and his two most recent victories came against non-ambulatory bodies like Bob Sapp and Jan Nortje.
A: Mousasi-Mohammad Lawal bout would be interesting; Dan Henderson, if he signs, could rattle some people. Get past that and Strikeforce's 205-pound division wouldn't fill a phone booth.
Q: Will Jason Miller's MTV fans follow him to CBS?
A: Miller, who appropriately parades around with a megaphone as the host of MTV's deaf-and-dumb "Bully Beatdown" series, will contend for an interim 185-pound belt against Jake Shields on CBS. Strangely, there's been little attention paid to that built-in audience: If Jeff Probst had a prizefight scheduled, you'd think people would want to check it out.
Q: Can Antonio Silva establish himself as a reputable opponent for Emelianenko?
A: Before an unexpected knockout loss doled out by Eric Pele in 2006, Antonio Silva's combination of size, striking and jiu-jitsu had him earmarked as a serious problem for Emelianenko. While it's still the only blemish on his record, Silva has seen that talk die down in light of a positive steroid test in 2008 and a lack of high-profile opponents. Defeating the respected Fabricio Werdum on Saturday could help his case considerably, particularly if he impresses viewers biding time and burping nachos before the main event.
Red Ink: Emelianenko versus Rogers
Jeff Sherwood for Sherdog.com
Fedor Emelianenko is all that stands between Brett Rogers and heavyweight supremacy.
The Walmart/Sam's Club monolith is known for stocking virtually everything anyone could possibly want: paper towels, dress socks and even coffins. And if you need someone to try to beat Fedor Emelianenko, they've got one of those, too.
Up until the spring, Brett Rogers was working in a Minnesota Sam's Club tire department, changing radials and likely getting a slight buzz from the stacks of rubber piled around him. Beating Andrei Arlovski in June has kept him from any job but training: At 10-0, he'll attempt to spin a heavy set of hands in his favor.
Emelianenko has been threatened with paper analysis before: Against the 6-foot-10 Tim Sylvia, he was expected to be eating jabs; against Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic, he was expected to be dazed by sharp, precise striking; against Antonio Nogueira, we thought he might be submitted.
The point is that Emelianenko has had answers for virtually every kind of style he's been matched against, and with few exceptions -- moments of humanity against Kazuyuki Fujita and Arlovski -- he's barely looked bothered doing it.
Before Arlovski, Rogers had faced fighters who would have had trouble headlining a King of the Cage event. He has only a fraction of Emelianenko's ring time and has displayed no indication of a rounded mixed martial arts game. Hitting exceptionally hard is valuable, but it takes you only so far. It got Rogers in this cage, but it might not be enough to get him out in the same shape.
Wild card: Emelianenko's debut in a caged fighting area: All 31 of his bouts have been contested in a ring. Against the ropes, you can lean your head back to evade strikes; you can also make life more difficult for wrestlers to trap you. There's no give to the fence.
Might look like: Emelianenko versus any number of hyperaggressive opponents, with Emelianenko refusing to let Rogers think about offense by beating him to the punch.
Who wins: Rogers could pull it off, but picking him isn't based on any statistical support. If he's in trouble on the feet, he won't fare any better on the ground; if Emelianenko finds himself losing a fistfight, he has other options. Emelianenko by submission.
Red Ink: Shields versus Miller
Sherdog.com
Don't be surprised if Jason Miller's scrap with Jake Shields steals fight of the night honors.
Most of Saturday's attention will be focused on Fedor Emelianenko, but the product of that hype may last less than a round: A middleweight contest between Jason Miller and Jake Shields could be the dominant "did you see?" Sunday talk of the event.
Shields, who has had virtually no problems at 170 pounds, moved up a class in June to submit the dangerous Robbie Lawler; Miller, while never dominant at either class, has a workman's ring ethic and typically forces fighters to put in their time. Taking two athletes who rarely bend and don't fall asleep in the guard tends to be worth the watch.
Wild card: Miller's guard: Shields will probably get him down, which means Miller's ability to contain or shut him down from his back will determine how his face looks after the fight.
Might look like: Shields versus Renato Verissimo, with Shields dropping air strikes down to an outmuscled jiu-jitsu player.
Who wins: Shields is going to have issues with some of the larger middleweights out there, but Miller isn't one of them. He can negate Miller's grappling for a decision.
It's been more than three years since Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic has looked even remotely dangerous, but that isn't preventing the UFC from capitalizing on his foreign-territory fame: The stoic kickboxer looks to have a date with Ben Rothwell in Australia on Feb. 21.
You know how this goes: Filipovic will swear up, down and sideways that he's changed his training, mentality or diet, resulting in a "new" fighter. He will proceed to deflate everyone with a lethargic, ineffectual performance that adds nothing to the heavyweight division or his career. Considering his recent UFC appearances, this is pessimism he's earned.
It's a slow burn, but the sport and its participants are increasingly being perceived as something other than Neanderthals: Georges St. Pierre, who recently signed a deal with Gatorade, is now a spokesfighter for apparel brand Under Armour. The company previously had outfitted Frank Mir for his UFC 100 weigh-in.
What took them so long? St. Pierre is what the sport could use more of: a respected, respectful athlete who looks and moves as though he comes from a different genetic area code. It's good for St. Pierre, but it's better for other athletes in the sport who may now benefit from the "me too" companies following UA's lead. Randy Couture will get his Wheaties box soon. It's inevitable.
There were many reasons Joe Frazier was upset at Muhammad Ali, but Ali drawing a cartoon of Frazier and encouraging him to engage in certain sexual acts was not among them.
This kind of layered psychological warfare is exclusive to mixed martial arts: Specifically, the bored, barely mature contestants of "The Ultimate Fighter." Without exception, each episode is like having video surveillance of a community college dorm. Mike Wessel's caption for opponent Jones -- which earned him a nasty armbar loss -- was among the more tasteful: Later, Quinton Jackson's image took another hit when he grabbed the breast of a male cast member, squealed the nickname "Titties," and then appeared surprised when the man considered attacking him.
Rampage would have been well-advised to use his "A-Team" money to buy every available master of this season, burn them and then consider a PR campaign that doesn't end with apologies. Wessel's sentiment applies, but only for describing Jackson's attitude.
Mononucleosis managed to do what no fighter could so far: Take out Brock Lesnar.
Being physically fit is expected to protect you from the ailments of the paunchy, malnourished fast-fooders.
Brock Lesnar, who looks like he could gore a bull with his bare hands, does not fit the profile of someone who has to think about the sniffles.
Yet here he is, via trainer Greg Nelson, floating the idea that the illness keeping him from a Nov. 21 date with Shane Carwin is likely to cost him a Jan. 2 booking -- and beyond.
"I'm not sure exactly what it is he has, mono or whatever, but I know that he was sick and couldn't get a good, hard workout in," Nelson told Yahoo's Kevin Iole.
"Mono or whatever" isn't terribly specific, but according to Dave Meltzer, Lesnar was more concise to his employers, informing Dana White on Wednesday that he contracted the mononucleosis virus. The repercussions could be considerable: Mono in adults can linger for months after the initial onset, and prolonged fatigue is not uncommon. I came down with it at 17, and it was -- next to some ProElite telecasts -- one of the worst experiences of my life. Mono doesn't settle in for a week and then disappear. It squats in your cells for a good, long time and it's fond of flaring during physically or mentally arduous stretches in your life.
Lesnar may have contracted it by drinking from someone else's glass, getting coughed on or kissing someone. (You can float that last one by him. I'll wait here.) Alternately, he may have had it when he was younger and it's re-activating.
At best, it will dial down Lesnar's training to embers for the next couple of months. At worst, he'll never be the same fighter again. And that's no exaggeration.
Tito Ortiz, right, hopes Chuck Liddell has slowed down enough so this won't happen again.
In an era in which Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva are openly petitioning management for heavyweight fights, the idea of Tito Ortiz trying to chip away at the ego of Chuck Liddell should underwhelm you like nothing else.
"I think if I call him out enough times, I think he'll be a man and step up," Ortiz told MMAWeekly. "Why wouldn't he? That's a huge fight and a big payday for him. It will be good."
Why wouldn't he? Because Liddell, unlike Ortiz, had a gamesman's attitude toward the sport: taking bouts that risked his guaranteed title bids, never turning down a fight and generally looking happy to be in there. He never headhunted graying fighters, something Ortiz does with alarming regularity.
After being slaughtered twice by Liddell, Ortiz has seen him softened up on successive occasions by Rashad Evans and Mauricio Rua. If you can't beat a fresh Liddell -- and he clearly could not -- then the next best thing must be to wait for an encouragingly bad MRI scan to come in before pursuing a third fight. Picking at a carcass doesn't flatter him.
MMA is a "team sport" for only the duration of a training camp: Once you're tying up with someone, the idea that you've got three guys in jerseys in your corner means squat. (Unless they're carrying a stretcher.)
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The International Fight League learned this lesson painfully, and at considerable cost. Promoter Roy Englebrecht is either altogether unaware of that organization's implosion or very stubborn. His Professional Mixed Martial Arts League (PMMAL, also known as BRKE) is set for a 2010 debut, with eight teams of amateurs on the West Coast. Wisely, Englebrecht is offering to sell the teams as "franchises" to owners in an effort to spread the risk around.
"I know the fun and profitability that an investment in a professional sports team can provide," Englebrecht said in a release. "I know about the dreams of most every sports fan to be just like Jerry Jones, Jerry Buss, Arte Moreno or George Steinbrenner and own a pro sports team, as I realized that dream with the [minor league baseball team] Quakes. Now the dream of owning a professional sports team can become a reality with the purchase of a PMMAL team."
Other realities: bankruptcy, soup kitchens and medical bills. MMA will never be able to emulate mainstream ballgames, and this is a concept without brakes or an air bag.
Who needs the UFC? Fedor Emelianenko has built quite a following almost entirely on his own.
A pal of Fanhouse's Michael David Smith risked severe eye strain on several glorified scalping Web sites to report that large blocks of seats for Saturday's Strikeforce event in Chicago are no longer available. Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker told the media that the show is 85 percent sold out. (Floor seats, at upwards of $500 each, probably will remain idle.)
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What we can infer from the business figures of Fedor Emelianenko to date: He's a draw in a climate in which virtually no non-UFC athlete has such potential. He's doing steady, reliable business for stateside promotions. And even if his bout with Brett Rogers draws record-low ratings Saturday, he still will be seen by millions of people, elevating his status as a pay-per-view attraction.
And unlike Affliction -- which "loss led" with Emelianenko and other pricey talent -- Strikeforce considers its business to be more of a marathon than a sprint. It's a climate in which decent business isn't a disappointment. Solid footing -- but it can all be undone by Brett Rogers taking away Emelianenko's selling point of invincibility. Coker & Co. will be as nervous as family that night.
If "The Big Show" is a mixed martial artist, then Vince McMahon is Francis Ford Coppola.
In the spirit of the great film studios announcing closure of classics such as "Gone with the Wind" and "The Godfather," the WWE has announced that production is complete for "Knucklehead,"
a film starring Paul "Big Show" Wright. This would normally be cause for alarm in any context, but MMA fans might feel especially unnerved by the idea that Wright portrays Walter Krunk, a church orphan who finds himself in a New Orleans mixed martial arts tournament.
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"The kitchen fire Walter caused will close down the church's orphanage in a week unless he comes up with $50,000," reads the synopsis. "Upon overhearing Walter's predicament, Eddie convinces the no-nonsense head nun, Sister Francesca, that Walter can win the $100,000 grand prize at the tournament to pay off the church's debts." (Never mind who Eddie is. This is as detailed a summary as I'm willing to offer.)
"Knucklehead" is an intentional comedy, which means the WWE's surprising embrace of MMA could feature some groin shots to the sport's growing influence. Since I doubt any of Dorothy Parker's descendants had a hand in the script, I don't anticipate they'll be all that cutting.
The film is scheduled for a Target bargain bin release sometime in 2010. In the interim, I sincerely hope there's a plastic shortage. The first order of business would be, naturally, to melt all copies of "The Marine."
Filipino fighter Brandon Vera is doing his part to provide relief for typhoon victims.
I'm growing bored with HBO's "24/7" series -- it's about boxing, which I find numbing -- and it has been done over and over again. There are a finite number of ways to film a fighter training and coping with family duties. But the channel had some morbid luck when it went to the Philippines recently to film Manny Pacquiao's preparation for his fight against Miguel Cotto on Nov. 14: Typhoons had razed much of the surrounding area, creating an obstacle of deep water for local inhabitants.
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Pacquiao has offered financial and morale assistance; stateside Filipino athletes are doing similar work. Brandon Vera, Mark Munoz and others have assisted Their Fight is Our Fight, a charitable entity devoted to helping victims of the torrential weather. Vera, who faces Randy Couture at UFC 105 on Nov. 14, hosted a workshop last weekend in Los Angeles and told the Asian Journal that he "had to do something. … I know it's hard in the Philippines right now. There are people who lost a lot -- their homes, cars, aunties and uncles. I just want to tell them to keep their heads up and keep moving forward."
Maybe Jake Shields just needs an airtight excuse for wolfing down that last apple fritter.
Boxer Roy Jones Jr. tried straddling weight classes, and it virtually ruined him. Apparently, mixed martial artist Jake Shields isn't paying attention. The welterweight who defeated middleweight Robbie Lawler last June told MMAJunkie Radio on Monday that he feels capable of contending for belts at both 170 and 185 pounds.
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"I've bulked up," Shields said. "I'm still not a true 185-pounder. But I've bulked up. During training, I weigh 191 or 192 and it kind of sticks. I don't want to go much higher. … The main reason I went up was because of the lack of good opponents for me."
The analogy is a little shaky: Jones tried his hands at heavyweight, adding considerable mass, whereas Shields appears to be simply cutting less and climbing into the cage as a smaller middleweight. But it does speak to the lack of focus precipitated by Strikeforce's welterweight division: Shields appears bored at his natural weight.
Shields didn't have much of an answer for his training partner and friend Nick Diaz seemingly having the same attitude: take fights at whatever weight they're proposed. One seems equally likely of sabotaging the other's career arc at random. If you're a fan with OCD, these can't be two of your favorite fighters at the moment.
This is the great sickness afflicting virtually every name prizefighter who has ever walked -- then hobbled -- the planet: There is a psychological concrete wall covering the graceful exit. Recall the last time a noted fighter succeeded in the ring, then swore to never return.
It doesn't happen. They lose. Badly. They announce their doubts over performing. Their relieved neurons throw a party in honor of their continued existence. Then they come back.
This is the direction Chuck Liddell insists on pursuing, and it's the direction Jens Pulver has already succumbed to: The former UFC lightweight -- who left that organization and then assembled a 1-4 record as a featherweight in the WEC -- has circulated word that he plans on returning soon. Since returning to the UFC three years ago, he is 1-6.
A win percentage of 14 isn't a bad streak. It's the end of the line.
Pulver is a fine fighter, and he may yet get some momentum. But his opponents are only getting younger and faster. Don't we know how this ends?
Fans will have to wait a while longer to see Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua lock horns again.
Dana White, Mauricio Rua and the fans wanted it: Lyoto Machida's metacarpal did not. According to Yahoo Sports, the Machida-Rua rematch, originally (and optimistically) eyed for a Jan. 2 date, will have to wait until Machida's hand is cleared after surgery.
Why is this good news? Because if the fight had gone on as scheduled, it would've given both men only eight weeks for a training camp just weeks after they had first prepared for one another: That's a grueling schedule for anyone. The last thing the world needs is another bout filled with footnotes.
Amateur wrestling, which had its first major North American presence in MMA with Dan Severn's 1994 UFC debut, has long been a very rough way to make a living: There just isn't much of one unless you get an Olympic medal and some endorsements. (This on a good day: If you can name 2008's gold medalist, you've seen Bob Costas more than I care to.)
Recognizing the financial pitfalls of that career, Colorado wrestling organizer Ed Gutierrez is making more overt attempts to indoctrinate his wrestlers into a pro fighting career. Over the weekend, he tied in an MMA event with a wrestling meet, creating a fairly seamless connection between "amateur" grapping and pro fighting.
"This weekend is a pilot for us," he said. "But if we have the interest, we'd like to link the two together."
Some (Daniel Cormier) don't have a problem graduating to the mayhem, while others (Cael Sanderson) don't have it in them. There probably isn't any total normalcy in a life of punching people in the head, but tethering it to wrestling could make it appear a little less lurid.
Presenting Strikeforce's latest hard-to-pronounce big-name signing: Marius Zaromskis.
Even after paying Fedor Emelianenko whatever it is he's worth to them, Strikeforce isn't cutting costs: They've signed scary Lithuanian Marius Zaromskis to a multifight deal.
Why should this interest you? Because Zaromskis is one of the most exciting fighters to emerge in the past several years: He's ended his last three fights via head kick -- a run not even Mirko "Cro Cop" could manage -- and appears as coldly methodical about hurting people as an Army sniper.
It would be more fun to have an unsedated colonoscopy than to fight Zaromskis. This is a compliment.
Zaromskis is a welterweight, which means bouts with Nick Diaz and Jake Shields are possibilities. Stockton versus Lithuania sounds brutally promising. (Front row: Maybe bring one of those plastic partitions, like at a Gallagher show.)
With only a week left to introduce CBS viewers to Fedor Emelianenko -- viewers who consider David Caruso dangerous -- CBS and Strikeforce are taking their marketing viral.
There's this package, which introduces Emelianenko as a fearsome heavyweight and endorsed by Frank Shamrock as the "world's best." (Shamrock's opinion of himself has, understandably, dropped off after losing three of his last four.) This kind of hype has a glass ceiling, as CBS is unable to air any of Emelianenko's past bouts: the UFC owns all of his PRIDE and Affliction-era footage. You'll have to take them at their word that the monosyllabic Russian is that good. (Note: He's pretty good.)
More effective is the footage of Brett Rogers, which casts the challenger as a hard-luck scrapper coming out of obscurity to get a crack at the best. The echoes to "Rocky" are intentional, but Rogers should hope for a different outcome: before that series turned into a comic book, Balboa only managed to go the distance with Apollo Creed.
This might be you, Houston Alexander (taking the beating, not giving it).
Rumors continue to insist Kimbo Slice has a Dec. 5 date with mixed-result martial artist Houston Alexander locked in; Slice's Twitter is warning an unnamed foe that his first mistake was saying, 'I accept.' This could refer to Alexander, or it could refer to Slice's account being chaired by a 14-year-old wiping Accutane off his keyboard.
• Roxanne Modafferi and Marloes Coenenwill take part in Strikeforce's Nov. 7 CBS broadcast: Gina Carano, still the biggest draw in the women's division, isn't expected back until mid-2010. The same might be said of her fans.
Most street predators would feel confident in rolling Placido Domingo over: In addition to being wealthy, he's not very ambulatory. But some UK thieves picked the wrong opera singer to accost on Oct. 12. That's when, according to the Kilburn Times, singer Jake Furey defended himself as only a fighter-slash-singer could: By punching and screaming at them.
"One of [them] hit me in the face but it was nothing so I jumped back into the road to give myself more room and got my fists up ready," Furey said. "A couple of them then started going for their pockets as if they were grabbing a knife and I had to think 'do I want a fight or should I play safe?' … I decided to play it safe so [I] called out for help and at that point they ran off. I'm classically trained as an opera singer and I think that helped scare these guys off as they did not expect me to be so loud."
Furey -- who sports a name that would be right at home in a pulp novel -- added that police were unable to locate the gang. The Times indentifies him as a "cage fighter," which might be a bit of a misnomer, but, still -- good for him.
Cracking the introverted veneer of notoriously press-shy Dana White, Sportsnet.ca recently sat down with the UFC president for some conversation-slash-spin.
Best bits:
On Dan Henderson: "We offered him a very good contract, that's more than fair … nobody can pay him what we offered."
Reality check: Almost certainly true. Virtually no promoter is in the position of laying out a contract as generous. Henderson isn't going anywhere. Meeting with other promotions is the fighter equivalent of stomping your foot: It's usually just for effect.
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Reality check: There was probably more intrigue in how Ortiz would fare against a better wrestler in Mark Coleman, his originally scheduled opponent. Griffin's benefits are at low tide: If he beats Ortiz, he beat a guy on a year's layoff and after back surgery. If he loses, it's the same story -- only worse.
On Lyoto Machida's desire to face Brock Lesnar: "He'd have to clean out the light heavyweight division, beat Anderson Silva … Brock would have to clean out the heavyweight division before I'd ever do that."
Reality check: This will never happen.
On Chuck Liddell: "I've ever even thought about Liddell and Coleman … I'm putting together a proposal for [Liddell]. He's always going to be with me … it's just a matter of whether he fights again or not."
Reality check: This will happen. If he's still adamant about doing so seven months after his loss to Mauricio Rua, he's not going to taper off now.
On Quinton Jackson's snubbing of the UFC in his blog: "I'm very disappointed in him. We've been there for him. We've done a lot of stuff for Rampage on and off camera … the worst thing to happen to a fighter is for a Hollywood agent to get their hands on him."
Reality check: Without the UFC, there's no "A-Team" offer for Jackson. Somebody should force him to sleep on those blog entries before posting them.
On watching the Nov. 7 Strikeforce CBS telecast: "I don't know … I'll probably be sitting at home watching the Spike ['UFC Main Events'] show that night."
Realty check: Everyone keeps an eye on the competition; White can afford a television with picture-in-picture.
On his disappointment with MMA's portrayal on "The Simpsons:" "[They said,] 'A couple of guys ran out into the parking lot to watch [ a fight].' Couldn't be further from the truth."
Realty check: Never happens. Well, except that one time at UFC 91. Or that other time at 101. Say, maybe the Canadians will be better behaved. Oh, guess not. Dallas? Nope. It's almost like testosterone and alcohol are combustible.
Big surprise: Lyoto Machida gives the judges' decision a thumbs-up.
The excellent Marcelo Alonso was first in the line to receive Lyoto Machida's comments regarding his controversial UFC 104 contest with Mauricio Rua. And it will surprise, shock and seize you to discover that Machida -- the winner -- believes the decision was justified.
"I had the opportunity to see the fight again and I thought I won four rounds and Shogun took the last one," he said. "Some people say he won the fourth and fifth round, but for sure I won at least the first three rounds. The American commentators were pretty much biased. If you see the fight without audio, you will probably see a different fight."
Machida added that he felt he was the one closer to ending the fight, having "put him in danger" multiple times during the 25 minutes Rua threatened him.
Unless a fighter is noticeably staggered (prior to the after party) it's virtually impossible for judges to take that into consideration. But if head strikes should count more than kicks or strikes to the body, the rules need to articulate that. An MMA town meeting is long overdue.
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What the sudden postponement of the Brock Lesnar-Shane Carwin bout does for Velasquez's immediate future is TBD: The soonest he'd get a title shot would probably be in late spring or summer, assuming Carwin-Lesnar happens in January or February. If Velasquez fights before then, he risks that placement. On the other hand, he might want another bout before trying his luck against two guys who could palm a Swiss ball.
Los Angeles was also good to Chael Sonnen, who posted his third underdog victory in a row by defeating the very tough, very bathroom-break-worthy Yushin Okami, moving him to a No. 7 slot. He's already lost to middleweight contender Demian Maia, though; his best hope is that Dan Henderson bails for Strikeforce, leaving him and Nate Marquardt in the immediate title loop.
The only man in immediate danger of losing top placement in any division is Fedor Emelianenko, who fights Brett Rogers on Oct. 7. And if that happens, you can expect one uniform response from any rankings system: server unavailable.
I don't fish and can barely remember the rowboat expeditions I took as a kid, but I know the look: the oxygen-starved vacant stare and the flapping mouth.
Matt Mitrione and Scott Junk are two indisputably tough guys, but they looked like dying carp on Wednesday's episode of "The Ultimate Fighter." The first round was haymaker central, which both men paid for in the second. If the UFC ever invites either one to compete in Colorado, they should run the other way. (But pace themselves.)
This is more or less par for the course for the season, the purpose of which has been to identify a quality heavyweight contender but has mostly succeeded in identifying who is not. Fans must also be growing weary of Rashad Evans' pulling the cord of Quinton Jackson, and vice versa: The idea that neither one will get the satisfaction of punching the other by season's end just makes the whole operation stall out. It's like watching two men pull over on the side of the road, jaw at each other, but never make any motion to open the door.
Mitrione took the decision, incidentally: I suppose judges found his gasping to be less alarming than Junk's. On Mitrione, who admitted he listened to "voices" in his head, Evans observed that "this boy's cheese has fallen off his cracker." Evans, a former heavyweight on the show himself, has to do something to amuse himself.
So maybe 15 meals a day is a little much: Jeff Monson has informed Fighters.com that he's considering a move to 205 pounds in order to better adapt his 5-foot-9 frame to competition. (Monson, you may recall, once fought 6-foot-8 Tim Sylvia. It looked something like this.)
Out of the three primary body types -- ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph -- Monson is classified as the brickwallmorph, with the kind of mass you'd expect to find only in cartoons. He will probably appreciate the lessened size differential, but it's not as though light heavyweights are particularly short: Jon Jones is 6-foot-4. The deflated Monson is expected in Strikeforce sometime in 2010.
"He said he's never been this sick in his life," Dana White told Yahoo Sports. "He said it's been going on for a long time and he just hasn't been able to shake it."
The unspecified illness has allegedly kept Lesnar from performing for the past several weeks at his training camp.
As binds go, this puts the UFC in one straight out of Houdini's notebook: Having been promised a title shot, it's all risk and little reward for Carwin to take another fight; moving the co-main Tito Ortiz/Forrest Griffin rematch to headlining status is suspect considering Ortiz's lengthy absence and Griffin's flatlining against Anderson Silva in August.
One bright spot: At least Carwin knows Lesnar is human. Touch and go for awhile there.
Velasquez and trainer Javier Mendez spoke to Sherdog.com's Greg Savage to evaluate the issues involved with facing either Brock Lesnar or Shane Carwin, whose Nov. 21 bout has been postponed, according to Carwin's Twitter account, until UFC 108 on Jan. 2. And unlike some camps that promote the idea their athletes could hang with mace and small-caliber weapons, Mendez was practical.
"[Lesnar] is an extremely hard fight for us," Mendez said. "We're going to definitely have to win the standup game and the kicking game. And then the wrestling, the size of Brock could potentially neutralize us, but Cain's cardio is going to neutralize him, so it's going to be a really, really interesting fight."
I'm not sure there's anything to neutralize in Lesnar's cardio conditioning: He had no problem staying in Heath Herring's face in a 15-minute fight, which is downright demoralizing considering his near 280-pound frame. Big men are supposed to wear out easy. That's how life stays fair. Lesnar doesn't.
And on Carwin: "Should Carwin get past Lesnar, it's going to be a little different fight. We can't attack the same as against Lesnar because Carwin is to be respected because of his incredible power, and his wrestling is top-notch also. We will have to take a different path because he is a different fighter with different strengths."
More ambiguous: Carwin is more or less Lesnar's mirror image. But if anyone's cardio should be open to debate, it's Carwin's, who hasn't seen a second round anywhere but in a gym.
If you had trouble sleeping Saturday night and happened to possess the attention span of someone with a gun to his head, you could've watched virtually eight hours of prizefighting with a tandem UFC 104/Dream 12 marathon. One session like that and you'd be ready for a job as an EMT: nicely desensitized.
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Dream aired on HDNet in the early-morning hours Sunday with big names throughout -- but none in any particular mood to be fighting one another. Alistair Overeem, looking like he has ingested the 2003 Alistair Overeem for the proteins, sunk in a trademark guillotine choke against James Thompson; in the newest chapter of the world's slowest public execution, Kazushi Sakuraba took another few years off his life by eating several flush punches to the head courtesy of Zelg Galesic before securing a kneebar. Not an even trade. Bellator lightweight champion Eddie Alvarez survived a demoralizing first round -- and gave Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney some slight palpitations -- before getting an arm-triangle submission against Katsunori Kinuko.
Bouts for the event were held in a white circular cage, a departure from most Japanese events using a ring. Eventually, Dream will adopt Michael Buffer and possibly ring girl Edith, and the bizarro world will be complete.
No amount of complaining, debate or controversy will change the fact that Lyoto Machida entered Staples Center as the light heavyweight champion and exited the same way during Saturday's UFC 104 event. He's 16-0, and only a positive drug test -- unlikely at best -- will change that. It is what it is.
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But the fight result tells an incomplete story: The "unanimous" decision for Machida doesn't apply if you count fan reaction, with many in the media and on the couch believing Mauricio "Shogun" Rua had edged him out. (I had the fight 49-47 for Rua, with a rare-but-allowable 10-10 first round and Rua taking all but the third.) Rua found a home for his kicks to the torso with increasing accuracy; Machida parried and landed with less frequency. Watch the entire fight over without trying to measure strikes and see how often Rua comes forward while Machida steps back. Aggression counts.
There was no "robbery" and Lee Murray was not seen fleeing the arena. Rua may have appeared to look better than he did because we've grown accustomed to Machida operating in complete control. Rua has a right to be upset, though: He should've woken up next to something beautiful and shiny Sunday morning.
Next
Dave Mandel for Sherdog.com
Mauricio Rua's aggressiveness should have counted for more in the judges' eyes.
"Don't hold out, Mauricio. Show us that airplane move you do when you get hit in the stomach."
The-MRI-fund award:Eric "Red" Schafer, for taking a disturbing number of blows to the head -- and then fighting for 10 more minutes. No more Kazushi Sakuraba footage for you.
The zoom-zoom-airplane award: Mauricio Rua, for getting staggered by Machida and then making the body-language gesture for airplane wings. (It would've been better if he had made the propeller noises.)
The I-don't-care-about-the-camera award: Rua, for looking incredibly morose backstage after the bout, like a title had been stolen from him and an orphanage had just blown up.
The building-cannot-contain-this-much-mediocrity award: To Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and David Spade, some kind of unholy trinity responsible for movies I wouldn't watch in solitary confinement.
New questions
Ed Mulholland for ESPN.com
"Your striking is no good here, Ben Rothwell."
Q: Will the UFC get philanthropic about the Machida-Rua rematch?
A: The last time a main event was marred by questionable ruling, Ken Shamrock was forced to get his head thumped by Tito Ortiz a third time -- on free television. If the UFC is looking to tranquilize fans upset by the outcome, airing the rematch on Spike would do it. "Manswers" plugs are a small price to pay for closure.
Q: Do heavyweight strikers have a chance?
A: While a sizable number of athletes in lighter-weight classes can wrestle and kick with near-equal credibility, style versus style is very much a factor in the heavyweight division. Ben Rothwell was bulldozed by Cain Velasquez, a fate shared by Cheick Kongo; two grapplers -- Shane Carwin and Brock Lesnar -- are set to decide the titleholder in November. If heavyweights still operate in one dimension, we generally know what grapplers do with strikers: this division could begin to resemble the NCAA finals, and soon.
Q: Should Anthony Johnson's fight have been canceled?
A: Commissions normally make a one-pound allowance for nontitle affairs; Johnson weighed in at 176 for a 170-pound bout against Yoshiyuki Yoshida, which was a greater differential than it appears. If Johnson couldn't cut six pounds, he was straining his own credibility. Someone should have put him on a scale five minutes before the fight, just to rub it in. Victory via glycogen isn't that impressive.
Q: Does Cain Velasquez have power?
A: Beat a guy bad enough to take his wallet -- if he had one -- and it's still not enough for some observers who criticized Velasquez's inability to deliver definitive loss of consciousness to his opponents. (Ben Rothwell, alarmingly, could still stand up at the time of the stoppage.) A 240-pound man is going to be able to hit and hurt whatever he wants; but Velasquez, still just 7-0, may not have fully adapted to a style yet. Chuck Liddell won three fights in a row by decision before going on an 11-bout T/KO streak.
This and that
Ed Mullholland for ESPN.com
Mauricio Rua has no one to blame but himself (and maybe his corner) for losing to Lyoto Machida.
• During the postfight press conference, Mauricio Rua said his team had assured him he was winning the fight and he didn't feel the need to press the action. When you want objective scoring, maybe stay away from your own corner…
• No major media outlet on my radar scored the fight for Machida; athletes Twittering didn't express any support for the champion, either: Frank Trigg and Jorge Gurgel used the word "robbed." Strikeforce lightweight Josh Thomson voiced minority attitude: "Machida won. You have to beat the champ to be the champ." …
• Pat Barry knocked out $120,000 in bonus dough, taking $60,000 each for KO of the night and fight of the night against Antoni Hardonk …
In 2007, when Pride folded into the origami shape for failure, Mauricio "Shogun" Rua took his 16-2 record to the UFC, where he was expected to beat his chest atop a pile of corpses.
Instead, he was thoroughly battered by Forrest Griffin and barely eked out a win against a man 15 years his senior in Mark Coleman. Knocking out Chuck Liddell, the new statistical norm for that fighter, resulted in confidence that the "old 'Shogun'" had returned. It also resulted in a title shot. Not exactly a walk through the gates of fire, but OK.
I remain skeptical, mostly because "old 'Shogun'" is a nightmare of punctuation and I loathe typing it, but also because he has looked good for roughly five minutes of a 35-minute UFC career. Oddsmakers believe he has only a 33 percent chance of defeating Lyoto Machida, whose base style of karate should have given him only a 0.005 percent chance of success in the sport. So maybe odds aren't everything.
Dave Mendel/Sherdog.com
Lyoto Machida and Mauricio Rua won't have to look far to find each other Saturday.
What: UFC 104: Machida versus Shogun, an 11-bout card from the Staples Center in Los Angeles
When: Saturday, Oct. 24, at 10 p.m. ET on pay-per-view, with a live preliminary show airing on Spike at 9 p.m. ET.
Why you should care: Because Machida is the closest thing we have to a profound, peerless Martial Artist (capitalization intentional); because whether "Shogun" has found his old form or not, he will make it exciting; because Ben Rothwell is going to force Cain Velasquez to scramble and work like hell to overcome his size; because judo remains an underrepresented style in MMA and Yoshiyuki Yoshida can counter Anthony Johnson's stand-up with the highly technical ploy of dumping him on his head.
Fight of the night: Machida's unblemished record raises stakes for every second he's in the ring; Shogun will stay in his face.
Sleeper fight of the night: Joe Stevenson-Spencer Fisher: Three rounds of Fisher getting scooped up and then working overtime on the feet to compensate.
Pre-emptive complaint: Chael Sonnen-Yushin Okami might be a concentrated effort to keep blood pressure among viewers steady; Okami, talented as he is, makes Ricardo Arona look like Jet Li.
Hype quote of the show: "I just saw what he wrote about me, and I am going to punch him in the face for that, plain and simple." -- Fisher on Stevenson's verbal warfare. At least he's not in Fisher's head.
BAM (Back Against the Mat): UFC 104 Edition
Sherdog.com
Defending his title and unblemished record will be added pressure for Lyoto Machida.
Guys with more to lose than just teeth.
Lyoto Machida: The 15-0 record is a pressure cooker -- without the "unbeatable" tag, would Machida's eccentric style be as captivating?
Joe Stevenson: A strong UFC start was sidetracked by the B.J. Penn loss; Stevenson is 2-2 since that bout. To flirt with the top of the ladder again, beating Spencer Fisher isn't optional.
Yushin Okami: On numbers alone, the 7-1 Octagon record should have earned Okami a title shot against Anderson Silva. Beating Chael Sonnen decisively could make him harder to ignore (although both fans and the promotion are doing solid work on that front).
"Saw VI": "Saw V" was the "Au Revoir Les Enfants" of movies featuring fake and displaced intestines. Expectations are high.
Five Questions: UFC 104
Dave Mandel /Sherdog.com
Will Cain Velasquez be biting off more than he can chew when he meets Ben Rothwell?
A: In 15 career fights, the UFC's light heavyweight champion -- or as pronounced by Machida himself, champeeon -- has rarely been tested by a high level of Muay Thai. Thiago Silva has good stand-up, but few wins against top opposition; Sam Greco, virtually a pure kickboxer, took Machida the distance in 2004, but also outweighed him considerably. There's not much precedent to draw on.
Rua is a Muay Thai Tasmanian devil -- all arms and legs. Aggression and accuracy could be a proper solution to Machida's head movement. So could a hammer. Rua can pick only one Saturday.
Q: Does Rua deserve his opportunity at a title?
A: A multiple-time felon of Pride -- suspected in several attacks on mismatched Japanese -- Rua has looked underwhelming in his UFC bid. A knockout over Chuck Liddell was a claimed return to form, but Liddell's descent is a poor marker of recovery. Has the lack of other deserving challengers created a fight that shouldn't really be happening?
Q: Is Cain Velasquez being brought up too quickly?
A: Talk of title shots and gym terrors makes Velasquez sound like a seasoned artist, but he's only six fights into a career that's expecting him to perform as if he's had 20. The inexperience showed against Cheick Kongo, who found his chin on multiple occasions. Ben Rothwell is a big test: hard to handle standing or grounded, and a fighter who has gotten into deep water against Andrei Arlovski and others without wilting early. Velasquez might very well be the next heavyweight champion -- but he could very well lose this fight.
A: Barren: One way to describe the UFC's welterweight division in the presence of St. Pierre, who has rendered virtually every contender demoralized. That's why fresh talent like Johnson makes for compelling television: Depending whom he fights and how he fights them, he could be shaping up to present problems for the champion -- particularly if he has some answers for the clinch and ties of Judoka Yoshiyuki Yoshida. (Staying upright against GSP improves your night substantially.)
Q: Are Spike's live preliminary broadcasts a risk?
A: Basic cable wafflers might be persuaded to order UFC 104 Saturday based on the quality of the preliminary fights offered during a one-hour special on Spike at 9 p.m. ET: Ryan Bader will take on Eric Schafer, and Antoni Hardonk will face Pat Barry. Good fights sell events, but a stinker -- a statistical possibility if every major event picks up this tactic -- could turn off fans who can't spell "Machida" without cheating.
Red Ink: Machida versus Rua
Sherdog.com
Should fight fans expect the old Shogun or an old Shogun come Saturday?
Machida fights two wars in Saturday's UFC 104 main event in Los Angeles: the war against Rua, and the war of perception that this Rua might not be the same one we remember.
Rua, once believed to be the most promising 205-pound athlete in the world, has looked human in recent outings against Mark Coleman and Forrest Griffin. He believes -- and fans believe --knee surgeries have corrected his cardio and aggression issues. What they might not correct is his tendency to take a punch in order to give one. In Machida's case, he's not open to a fair trade.
In Rua's favor: Machida's relative inexperience dealing with jiu-jitsu in live competition. Rua is not Rickson Gracie, but he's grades above Tito Ortiz, who sank in a triangle choke on Machida in 2008.
Might look like: Machida versus Thiago Silva, a snub-nosed striker swinging at air while Machida laughs quietly to himself and waits for an opportunity to resurrect 5,000 drafty karate schools around the country.
Third-party investor: Anderson Silva, who might be persuaded to fight Rua if pal Machida comes up short.
Who wins: I would love to be contrary and spin an elaborate scenario that results in Rua winning. But I can't. Someone will figure Machida out eventually, but Rua -- no master of the rigid game plan -- isn't the guy to do it. Machida by TKO.
Fighters are a superstitious lot. Some believe prayer before a bout is necessary to achieve victory. Others get uneasy unless they've enjoyed a good puke. And then there's Lyoto Machida, who seems convinced that swigging his own urine is the best path to retaining his UFC light heavyweight title.
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Machida joins other combat athletes -- Juan Manuel Marquez and Luke Cummo, among the outed -- who recycle their own waste products, presumably to boost the immune system and retain nutrients normally lost to the urinal cake.
Because I have a Ph.D. in common sense, I am qualified to comment. And here it is: Odds are excellent that if the body is excreting vitamins and beneficial minerals, it probably doesn't have a use for them and won't allow them to enter the bladder the second, third and fourth times around. If you want to take in more vitamins, why not just … take more vitamins?
If the argument is that pee breath has a placebo effect, well, fine. Sometimes that's just as effective. Maybe this really is the secret of Machida's success. Let's just hope he doesn't try to bottle it.
"Listen up, brother: Ain't nothin' fake about these 24-inch pythons."
Earlier in the week, I dutifully reported the infection of MMA personalities and techniques in professional-wrestling theater: Sunday's TNA pay-per-view event had hybrid athlete Bobby Lashley enjoying a "submission" contest with Samoa Joe. While I found the idea moronic and expressed an ignorance of the appeal in watching someone apply fake grappling holds, I also petitioned readers to enlighten me. Choice excerpts -- including a winning submission -- below.
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Short and sweet: For many, the stark reality of a real armbar is painful, hard and disturbing. The WWE variant is just cartoonish enough to remove the humanity and therefore the relatability. For those folks, that makes their own bloodlust easier to digest when they look in the mirror later.
-- Gary W.
The purpose of the "fake armbar" is simple: ENTERTAINMENT. Some people just want to be entertained rather that watch legit fighting. Some people prefer legit fighting to "sports entertainment." (See: yourself.) It's simply a preference … and one I am glad is afforded to me.
-- Ryan B.
I think that the reason organizations such as TNA and WWE are using more MMA moves, positions, finishes, fighter, etc., in professional wrestling is to target the people in their teens. If wrestling can blur the lines for young teens, they stand to keep at least some of their future money instead of losing them to MMA outright.
-- Tim L.
Pro wrestling and MMA have always been linked. If you go back and tune in to Hulk Hogan's matches, you can even see him throwing an armbar against some opponents. I think an armbar is just something that is, today, relevant in American society, so it's kind of predictable to see that kind of thing in American pro wrestling nowadays. They've been doing that with Japanese pro wrestling for ages, so it's not much of a shocker, really.
-- John
Relevant to society -- interesting. So will we see a wrestler float in on a giant, tin-foil coated balloon?
With that logic, why do people still watch "Bloodsport" when we have real fighting on TV? Why would someone read a novel about people surviving in the jungle when they could watch a reality show about it instead? The truth is, real life is pretty boring and fiction manipulates time and space so that we can see nothing but the good parts.
-- Rufus B.
This logic assumes wrestlers are better actors than Donald Gibb. How dare you.
A fake armbar serves to make it look real. What is worse is someone trying to do an awful neck crank that would never be used outside of a match between the Iron Sheik and Hulk Hogan. What would you rather watch: a torture rack or someone at least attempting to mimic MMA?
-- Ryan N.
Is there a third option?
A major aim of any wrestler is to have credible moves that the audience believes can win a match. MMA provides these. A "fake armbar" has new credibility in the eyes of the wrestling audience -- of which many also watch MMA -- and so we see it used to build tension or finish a wrestling match. As for grown men in role-playing situations, I'm assuming that you have an equal degree of deference for the cinema and stage, yes?
-- DK
You got me there. I'd definitely pick wrestling over anything directed by Jim Jarmusch.
And your winner:
Pro wrestling is feasible thanks to the overly artificial society we live in. We are surrounded by fakeness. We live in it. For many people, MMA is too real. It hits too close to home. Faking the sport of wrestling with pro wrestling is the same as faking submission grappling with acted-out submission grappling. The people who watch that don't want to watch MMA. They don't want to have to pay attention to details. So whether it's submission grappling, wrestling, boxing or Judo that's simulated in these shows, it's all the same principle.
-- Adam B.
Fair enough. Adam wins a UFC 100 DVD courtesy of Anchor Bay Home Entertainment, where the only fakery on display is attached to the ring-card girl. Enjoy.
It has been three years since the Gracie name headlined a UFC pay-per-view event -- a miserable bit of business against Matt Hughes -- and 14 since Royce Gracie was the promotion's most popular and dominant fighter. Considering that the family seems to have the breeding philosophy of rabbits, you'd think it would be relatively simple business to get another one in the cage.
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Not so, but that's irrelevant now: According to the fighter's Twitter account, Rolles Gracie has signed a three-fight deal with the UFC that could commence against the 0-2 Mustapha al Turk in February.
Rolles, age 31 and a Mir-size 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds, is 2-0 in the largely stagnant Chinese MMA scene and 3-0 overall. His father, Rolls Gracie, was considered by many to be the family champion until his premature death in 1982. Rolles doesn't possess quite the same grappling credentials as Roger -- a recent Strikeforce acquisition -- but he is one of the first Gracies to adopt a modern training philosophy, dividing his time between Renzo Gracie's academy in New York and Greg Jackson's gym in New Mexico.
Fair or not, that last name is probably going to earn him a main-card slot and a push in advertising. If the UFC doesn't capitalize on the most famous name in martial arts, its marketing team needs to start mainlining Red Bull.
An ultra-qualified ref who is already commissioned in the state of California? Nah, we'll pass.
No plans for Saturday night? Maybe you could hang out with John McCarthy: The sport's most recognizable official told Sherdog.com he won't be working UFC 104 in Los Angeles this weekend. This, despite having officiated several-hundred UFC bouts, being licensed in California and generally having as much business in between two angry prizefighters as anyone on the planet.
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You might guess that McCarthy's absence from the Octagon stems from his critical comments about the UFC during his broadcasting stint and after "retiring" from refereeing. Either the California Athletic Commission perceives a possible conflict of interest -- no official should comment on the business practices of fighters or promotions -- or the UFC has put the word out that it doesn't want him around.
If it's the former, the CSAC is correct in discouraging freelance employees from offering critiques -- but McCarthy was not a referee at the time. His role as a commentator was to form an opinion, and he shared it.
And if it's the latter? I find it unlikely the UFC is making edicts about officials. It would be a lurid, cheap move by a promotion that often has bemoaned boxing's lurid, cheap moves. But if it did feel like squeezing, the promotion is in luck: The CSAC has an open-door policy regarding controversy.
Even his handlers admit Kimbo Slice is raw, but he obviously has something going for him.
Read enough of Kimbo Slice's press and you begin to get the idea that this is a man who may have no idea what he's doing. Sherdog.com spoke to Slice's current boxing coach, American Top Team's Howard Davis Jr., and Davis was candid about his protégé's abilities.
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Or lack thereof. "He needs a lot of work," Davis said. "He puts a lot of turning and effort and committing to punching hard that sometimes, if he misses, he knocks himself off balance where people can take him down."
This Davis fellow? He's a no-B.S. type. Which is nice. And for a guy who once noted on camera that he doesn't know "what the f---" Greco-Roman wrestling is, Slice is still 3-1, including a decent showing against Roy Nelson and a sufficiently tenacious bit of resistance against James Thompson. This might come off like a Kimbo apologist's note -- "please excuse Kimbo's lack of skill, he's still new at this" -- but I've seen fighters with a better foundation do far worse. ATT is about the best idea his management ever had. That, and the whole YouTube thing.
So Sean Salmon tapped out on the early side against Allan Weickert? Hey, this stuff hurts.
Recognizing that the MMA community couldn't possibly take any more "bad Salmon" puns, the Ohio State Athletic Commission finally put to rest a summertime mini-scandal -- the one involving mid-tier fighter Sean Salmon and his curious admission to tapping too quickly in a match with Allan Weickert on June 6. According to MMAMania, Salmon got a $2,500 fine and a suspension from competition until June 2010.
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Salmon wasn't the first (and won't be the last) athlete to escape further fight trauma by exiting at the first sign of real trouble: Some competitors in Brazil's IVC promotion of the 1990s would sometimes quit because they just felt tired. TKO via malaise was once a viable finish.
Unfortunately, Salmon broke the cardinal rule: Never admit to it.
MMAMania's article, incidentally, was titled "Poached Salmon." Let's end it on that high note.
After some months of gamely facing the media with a "tell you later" shrug, Bellator CEO Bjorn Rebney has circulated that his upstart promotion -- previously aired on ESPN Deportes and YouTube -- has scored a multiplatform deal with three networks.
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Beginning in April, Bellator's second "season" of tournament-style fighting will air live on Fox Sports Net; a predigested package of highlights will circulate during NBC's insomnia-curing Sunday morning programming block; Telemundo will carry footage for Spanish-speaking viewers.
All of this sounds important and impressive, and Bellator is one of the few promotions to crop up in the post-"The Ultimate Fighter" climate that doesn't prompt fans to shake their heads in embarrassment. But the idea of building a brand using the Fox Sports Net infrastructure as a crutch is suspect. FSN has never given birth to any cultural "event" programming -- unless you count Tom Arnold's inexplicable multiyear employment on "The Best Damn Sports Show Period" -- while prior broadcasts by UFC and Pride on the network frequently were disrupted and stuttered by ballgames. This is not a station that puts a lot of emphasis on a regular schedule, and that's a fairly crucial component to building an audience.
But Bellator has respect for its cash flow, doesn't distract itself with gimmick programming and doesn't appear to be treating its business model as a sprint. FSN may not be a ticket to sold-out arenas and public stock offerings, but it may be the right fit at the right time.
"Yes, I see. But tell me: Will I have to pay extra for Lifetime Channel at the Motel 6?"
Minority report: I still think Andrei Arlovski is one of the most dangerous heavyweights in the sport. Slow down the fight footage of the Fedor Emelianenko bout and you can just about make out the slightest bit of frustration on Emelianenko's face. (Could've been gas. I'm open to other theories.)
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After being knocked out by both Emelianenko and Brett Rogers, Arlovski is taking a 10-day sabbatical from Chicago to train with Greg Jackson in New Mexico. The first-day footage is now a YouTube destination: See Andrei close the distance against a heavy bag with alarming proximity to a brick wall; see Andrei roll with Joe Stevenson; see Andrei collapse into a seriously dilapidated hotel room bed, surrounded by bags of ice and about to be disappointed by Albuquerque's pathetic cable lineup.
It's a good move, although Jackson, for whatever reason, has never turned out a heavyweight who has made as much of an impression as lighter-weight fighters such as Rashad Evans, Keith Jardine or Nate Marquardt. But there's a lot of malleable clay in Arlovski, who is still very capable of hurting a lot of people.
"One question: At what point do I get to inflict bodily harm on another human being?"
After spending several weeks among the androgynous and befeathered contestants of "Dancing with the Stars," Chuck Liddell knows what he wants to do next: something incredibly macho.
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The former light heavyweight champion told Sherdog.com's "Savage Dog Show" Monday that he has not abandoned the idea of returning to the ring. Liddell, 39, was stopped by Mauricio "Shogun" Rua in April. It was his third knockout in five fights.
"I want to get back there and move around with some people and see how I feel," Liddell said. "If I feel good, I'm going to keep fighting to come back."
So, fine. We know what Liddell wants. What does his neurologist want?
Liddell could dance around the circuit for another few years, staying relatively healthy by taking fights against athletes unlikely to damage his brain any further. But that's not the UFC's M.O., which is more like: You're either in it to win it, or you're not. And winning has not been Liddell's specialty lately.
News flash: Kimbo Slice stirs up interest in "The Ultimate Fighter" -- and even his opponents.
His talent may be in question, but his marketability isn't. And when the UFC negotiated an offer for Kimbo Slice to demote himself to "Ultimate Fighter" status, it shouldn't surprise anyone that there were a number of waivers in the contract.
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In addition to Dana White's admitting Slice's UFC deal would be "different" financially than any other contestant's, cast member Mike Wessel disclosed to Heavy.com that Slice's entourage was in attendance for the Roy Nelson fight.
"There was, like, three big black guys and what I was told was his wife," Wessel said of the taping. "They were like, 'Yeah, that's his wife and one of his sons, along with his posse. That's Icy Mike, his promoter and manager.'
"I was furious! Not at Kimbo, but at the Spike team for letting that happen. … Everyone has their own things going on, but because it's Kimbo, everyone wants to kiss his ass."
To drive the point home, Wessel explained that, like all cast members, he was not allowed to interact with family -- even though his wife was scheduled for cancer surgery.
Indefensible? Maybe, maybe not: I'd wager Wessel knew of his wife's ailment prior to joining the show, which means he made a conscious decision to remove himself from the role of moral supporter for that period of time. And it's hardly news that notoriety gets you special treatment: Slice brings more eyeballs to the show, which in turn makes everyone -- including Wessel -- more recognizable.
Former Xtreme Couture trainer-to-the-stars Shawn Tompkins confirmed to Fighter's Only this week that his split from the Las Vegas-based gym was amicable, precipitated by the desire to develop his own Team Tompkins brand.
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"I resigned this week from the Xtreme Couture gym as the head trainer on good terms; there is no war or battle," Tompkins said. "The gym and the direction it's going and the direction I am going are two different things. A few years back, I set some goals for myself. One of those is to bring back the Team Tompkins brand and try to put together a bit of a legacy for myself."
Makes sense. As successful as Tompkins has been coaching athletes, he has no claim to the Couture banner, a trademark that's effectively benefiting from his status as a contracted employee. Not quite as catchy on a T-shirt, but what are you going to do?
Dan Henderson thought crushing Michael Bisping would launch him into a big-bucks UFC contract.
Most of the weekend talk surrounded Friday's news that Dan Henderson wasn't seeing eye-to-eye with UFC management on a proper contract negotiation. (Henderson finished his last deal with the Michael Bisping fight and was expected to face Nate Marquardt in a contender bout in the winter.) Dana White informed Yahoo's Kevin Iole that things didn't look promising: "He had a figure he believed he was worth, and we had our own figure, and we weren't able to get together."
While Iole implied Henderson would move to Strikeforce, Henderson's management downplayed the possibility, saying only informal meetings had occurred and that Henderson wouldn't make any decisions until later in November.
End objectivity, begin speculation. Henderson remains with the UFC. Here's why.
• There are no money trees in MMA. Whether he signs with Dream, Strikeforce or a backyard wrestling league, Henderson is unlikely to receive compensation that's significantly better than the UFC's offer. If the world's leading and most profitable promotion is unwilling to retain a modest draw, there's little sense in Strikeforce exceeding its offer.
• Henderson is a legend -- which is not to be confused with a draw. Henderson's visibility is at an all-time high thanks to his participation at UFC 100, which allegedly set all kinds of business records. And there's clear sniping value in swiping a high-level UFC attraction from his position as a co-No. 1 contender for a title. But Henderson's dry personality has done him few favors when it comes to selling tickets.
The question Showtime executives should ask themselves: If we pay Henderson what he believes he's worth, will he provoke the appropriate spike in ticket sales and viewers?
• Henderson Wants Silva. Disgruntled as he might be that Vitor Belfort has secured a title bout, waiting -- or fighting Marquardt -- still gets him closer to Anderson Silva than fighting in San Jose ever would. And Henderson has perennially been an anywhere-anytime type of athlete. Would he really be satisfied fighting Jason Miller?
• Bargaining. Tito Ortiz freely admitted to using Strikeforce and other promotions as leverage against his desired deal: A UFC renewal offer. If you want the girl, go be seen with another girl.
If Dan Henderson, age 39, is serious about pursuing a career cap, he really doesn't have any options at all.
This is the part where I tell you I don't like professional wrestling, do not watch professional wrestling, and do not possess the neurological tools necessary to understand professional wrestling. It exists beyond my ability to appreciate it. In deference to pro wrestling fans that are consistently embittered by my reaction to grown men in role-play situations, it's possible I'm simply not intellectual enough to spot the sport's nuances. I'm sure this is it.
But even the most dyed-in-the-wool fan has to have a problem with wrestling's latest gimmickry: Aping a shoot-style MMA template in the service of a choreographed match. During Sunday's "Bound for Glory" TNA attraction, hybrid fighter/actor Bobby Lashley engaged in something billed as a "submission" contest against the very dangerous Samoa Joe. The contest ended when Lashley applied a choke.
If we accept that wrestling works for some because of its broad physical showmanship, I'm lost on the purpose of replicating submission grappling -- often a fairly low-key game of inches -- in order to satisfy their expectations of mega-violence. In an era in which you can get the real thing on television free and regularly, what purpose does a fake armbar serve, exactly? (I'm honestly wondering: A valid explanation gets a prize.)
TNA's preoccupation with MMA did not end with Lashley: During a women's bout on the same telecast, semi-pro fight athlete Kim Couture was heard to be attacking a competitor off-camera. She later posted that her victim "needs to stick to the fake stuff" on Twitter. Couture fights Kerry Vera on Nov. 20 on Strikeforce. I sincerely hope she doesn't get confused.
226-39-7: According to a recent piece by MMAJunkie's Kyle Nagel, that's the combined combat-sport record Travis Fulton credits himself with. Fulton, who was for a time -- and may still be -- the go-to guy for regional Midwestern shows that needed a name, says he is preparing to get serious.
"I'm in a hard place where I have to reinvent myself," Fulton said. "These next two fights could really be a good start for me."
Fight No. 273 is a somewhat inauspicious place to start. Because of his location and the state of the sport at the time of his debut, Fulton fell into a trap of getting lots of fights against mediocre competition for very little effort. And there may be some psychological comfort in figuring you could have been an elite athlete, but just never felt like putting the time in. If you don't train, then you can't know. Maybe that's how he preferred it.
Tito Ortiz, right, will be at full strength when he meets Forrest Griffin on Nov. 21.
If you believe Tito Ortiz -- and who wouldn't trust that face -- then you accept the former UFC light heavyweight champion's recent performances have been diluted as a result of recurring back injury. (I would wager the competition getting better while Ortiz more or less stagnated had a little to do with it, too.)
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That will not be a factor for a Nov. 21 date against Forrest Griffin: Back surgery corrected his lingering problems and, according to Sport Illustrated's Josh Gross, Ortiz is beginning a seven-week training camp, his first since the procedure in 2008.
"After the Machida fight, I couldn't go a day without Vicodins," Ortiz told Gross. "And painkillers aren't the way to go."
Ortiz fought Griffin in April 2006: Though Ortiz won, Griffin impressed with his second- and third-round perseverance. I'm usually cool to rematches, but both men have taken different paths since the bout. It will be interesting to see which one culminates in a comeback.
Getting a soundbyte from Dana White isn't the hardest thing to do in MMA.
"It's the most controversial and most vilified of all professional sports," intones a Bloomberg talking head. Is it curling? It must be curling.
No -- it's MMA. Naturally. Bloomberg's Greg Miles spoke to UFC president Dana White recently; White expressed interest in his company selling a 10-15 percent stake to a potential investor. (White owns 10 percent; the Fertitta brothers, 90 percent.)
"It's a possibility," he told Miles, "but for what we value this thing at, you'd have to find someone right now with a lot of cash laying around."
Of course, you come to this space for serious financial analysis. So here it is: From the mood of White's response, this smacks of a case of someone speaking in hypotheticals in response to a hypothetical question. Saying he'd consider selling a minority stake doesn't mean he's pursuing it. But if someone wants to sign over eight zeroes, he'd consider it. So would most.
This trend -- making something out of nothing -- is referred to in blog circles as "Oh Don Piano": The act of baiting subjects for a quote on something that can then grow viral, like that cat that vaguely sounds human.
A good example:
Me: "Say, Kimbo, if you felt your life was in danger, would you consider an act of homicide?"
Lyoto Machida makes me proud to be a fan and observer of this sport. He's respectful, appreciative and the ignition for the most talked-about platform shift in fighting sports since Royce Gracie began choking out people with his thighs.
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"My focus is on my class, but in the future I would like to do a couple of [heavyweight] fights, like Brock Lesnar," Machida said. "I respect Brock Lesnar as a fighter, but I know I can fight with him. Brock Lesnar is a big challenge for me because he's a big guy, very strong, very fast. For me, I like the challenge."
Painfully ambitious guy. Lesnar-Machida, if it ever happens, could represent the largest-scale style-versus-style match in the sport's history. There's probably no way Lesnar could tag Machida standing, but I would have a hard time imagining Machida could get out from underneath Lesnar. That's not a character flaw: He couldn't out-grapple a Kodiak bear, either, but I don't hold it against him.
Said before but maybe worth repeating: Machida is a new incarnation of Rickson Gracie, a near-mythical fighter whose value comes from a seemingly flawless execution of a house style. Thankfully for fans, Machida is actually interested in fighting.
Fighters cut weight. It's an ugly thing to watch, and it's not doing their organs many favors, but it's a port from wrestling and it's not going anywhere.
Most of the time, the ceiling is roughly 20 pounds. If you're making 155, you're probably walking around at 175 during camp.
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Anthony Johnson, a welterweight (170 pounds) UFC contender, recently admitted to Yahoo's Kevin Iole that he plans on dropping 50 pounds to face Yoshiyuki Yoshida on Oct. 24 in Los Angeles. He's at a reasonable 190 now but clocked in at 220 when camp started.
"The only pressure I feel, honestly, is the pressure to make the weight," Johnson told Iole. No kidding.
I'm not going to psychoanalyze Johnson, but the precipitous weight gain of some fighters in their "offseason" appears to be a little bit more than just letting go: Gorging is a sign of looking for some emotional fulfillment, or as a stress leveler. Quinton "Rampage" Jackson has been known to swell up to 250 after some bouts; Forrest Griffin, the same. No one is confusing this space for "American Physician," but rapid weight gain is probably not the best idea for already-stressed bones and joints. And heart disease probably appreciates the additional stress on blood vessels and muscles.
Go pick up a 50-pound sandbag; your body will like you a little less for it.
Spike's "The Ultimate Fighter" has recorded as many cases of career self-destruction as success stories: For every Forrest Griffin or Diego Sanchez, there's a Jason Thacker or Gabe Ruediger, more punchline than puncher. While part of the blame falls on the athlete, producers can take a fleeting moment of bad behavior and turn it into a six-episode running narrative.
The latest alleged victim of the show's character assassination: Quinton Jackson, who disputed on his members-only blog his portrayal on the series.
"They edited the show to make me look like I didn't care about my team …" he wrote. "I just talked to them back in the locker room, in private. Rashad thought the show was about him, about how good of a coach he could be and how fake he could be."
All clear now? Jackson has been leaving his fighters unconscious and bleeding in the Octagon while shaking his head ringside because the show should be about them, not the coaches.
Jackson's argument might make some sense if Evans had been jumping in the cage to administer first aid and oxygenbut he wasn't. He was simply doing the humane thing and offering physical and emotional support to a downed athlete. (In several cases, to Jackson's own downed athlete.)
As we've seen in seasons past, the ability to beam your heel persona into millions of homes every week tends to affect the crowd reaction during a live event. Junie Browning wasn't booed because of a bad dye job.
If and when Jackson decides to fight again, he'd better hope the UFC is ready to return to his own Memphis. Otherwise, his training camp should include learning how to dodge beer cups.
Weighty matters: Expect to see a trimmer Ben Rothwell the next time he steps into the cage.
Like virtually every other contact sport, being good doesn't necessarily correlate with doubling as a fitness model. Some guys can manage it: Nate Marquardt didn't look at all out of place on the cover of Muscle & Fitness.
Ben Rothwell is not one of those guys. His parents gave him the body of a lumberjack on a white-flour diet, and he's likely to raise suspicion among new fans of the sport who question his conditioning. (They shouldn't; he can go.) Nonetheless, Rothwell's manager Monte Cox informed Yahoo's Kevin Iole that the fighter is shooting to become a before/after example.
"When you see him at the weigh-in, you're not going to believe it's the same Ben Rothwell," Cox said. "He's always been a little pudgy and carried extra weight around his midsection … He's changed his diet, he's gotten seriously into lifting and I think it's going to mean a totally different Ben."
MMA is a sport that tends to favor the marketability of well-sculpted athletes. Brock Lesnar's pre-fight hype usually involves a discussion of his concrete deltoids; Kimbo Slice probably wouldn't be as big an attraction with a burrito gut. Rothwell's transformation may not necessarily help him win fights, but it could help his checkbook.
There will always be a special footnote in the history of this sport for "Merciless" Ray Mercer, who did a lot of fans -- boxing and non -- proud by bucking ageism and a near-total lack of mixed-fight skills to clock Tim Sylvia silly in an MMA bout earlier this year.
And if you believe Mercer, he offered to do it again.
"I'd rather box, but I would do either," he told Eastside Boxing on his combat sports preferences. "I'd like another name from MMA to step forward. I even offered Sylvia a rematch, but he wasn't interested -- he wanted no part of Ray Mercer! I hope someone else will step up 'cause this boxing versus MMA thing is pretty hot right now."
If Mercer is having trouble locating fights, it may be -- as interviewer James Slater proposed -- that there's not much upside in fighting him. Lose to a 48-year-old boxer and you become as popular a viral video as LOL Cats; choke him out and people will treat you like you just beat a hospice patient.
In MMA, Mercer's best role is probably as a regional attraction against the Tank Abbotts of the world. But he probably wouldn't like the pay.
Speaking to collected media Wednesday to hype the Nov. 7 Fedor Emelianenko/Brett Rogers network special, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker did what most executives do on these kinds of calls: He got pestered about something else.
Coker indicated that he'd be open to an official unification title project with Japanese promotion Dream, allowing his champions to fight theirs in order to crown some cross-ocean absolute winner.
Swell in theory, but both Strikeforce and Dream have some holes to patch before that begins making sense: Dream currently has no middleweight, light heavyweight or heavyweight champion; Strikeforce has no welterweight title holder and heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem -- who also has contractual tethers to Dream --hasn't defended his belt in years.
But so what? Whether you put a strap on the line or not, there's a wealth of talent that would make for some truly compelling match-ups, particularly if anyone with either company holds a soft spot for a Frank Shamrock/Kazushi Sakuraba match, something rumored during the first Bush administration.
Like any fine art, "The Ultimate Fighter" frequently flirts with obscenity. Is the act of peeing in one's own food to dissuade others from eating it not a commentary on the self-sabotage of the human condition? Likewise, is Wes Sims complaining that Zak Jensen left a shower something less than clean not a metaphor for the guilt subconsciously suffered by selfish combat athletes?
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Looking out for numero uno was apparently the editing room thesis for Thursday's episode: Jensen's poor toiletry habits, Matt Mitrione's bellyaching over a sore shoulder and Quinton Jackson's inexcusable negligence toward his losing fighters. When Dana White mentions Jackson's frustrations mirroring that of Ken Shamrock's in Season 3, he was alluding to the fact that both men can't seem to coach a back rub, let alone a winning fight team. He may as well have been talking about how poorly both are processed by television cameras: As aloof, selfish and perhaps confusing being popular with being well-known.
Jackson is certainly notable; whether he'll wind up being liked after this season is over is a question best left to his PR department.
The UFC's global business model, although surely complex, appears to be taking some of its cues from Wal-Mart and Starbucks: Plop your brand down in any far-flung corner of the world and ignore the disgruntlement of the natives. They'll get used to it.
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Latest hostile takeover: Australia, possible site of a February UFC event. Already, the country's Sydney Morning Herald is delivering a litter of kittens over the idea.
Despite the sport being banned in 10 U.S. states, UFC president of the British division Marshall Zelaznik confirmed that cage fighting was coming to Australia. "It's going to happen, we're coming," he said. "Planning is in effect, we've had a number of strategy meetings and we are on the verge of retaining some key partners in Australia."
Despite a byline on the story that featured three -- three! -- writers, the communal brainpower couldn't decipher that MMA is banned in only two states: New York and West Virginia. It's simply not regulated in the other eight.
More? Of course there's more.
Health experts have condemned UFC plans to introduce the contentious sport into Australia. "It's madness. If this was the animal world, the RSPCA would come down on you like a ton of bricks," said leading neurologist professor Mark Cook of St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne.
"As in boxing, the nature of sport means that brain injury is inevitable and this cage fighting may be worse, with people allowed to hit somebody while on the ground."
Two lessons learned: Humanity should act based on whether or not we would allow similar behavior from animals. And leading neurologists need not bother to check mortality rates when discussing the dangers of combat sports.
A prominent criminologist questioned whether UFC should be staged in Australia. "This is the last thing we need to be importing," said professor Rob White from the University of Tasmania. "UFC may have an even bigger impact than other forms of violence because it is a blood sport where we make heroes out of people who bash each other."
I'm checking out. You can't argue with anyone who has a degree from the University of Tasmania. If the Australian media is curdling now, it's probably not going to get any better: The rumored main event for the show is Wanderlei Silva versus Yoshihiro Akiyama, which might be MMA's violence equivalent to Freddy versus Jason. Hide the children.
Cain Velasquez is a legend in his own mind. Maybe he'll get a chance to prove it one day.
If you fight for a living, you had better believe you can beat anyone: Urijah Faber should like his chances against Hong Man Choi. (No, really -- he should.) So it should come as little surprise that undefeated UFC heavyweight Cain Velasquez is confident he could dethrone consensus badass Fedor Emelianenko.
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"Definitely me," Velazquez told Fanhouse when asked about who would win the hypothetical bout. "I'm a proud Mexican fighter. … I think he's an awesome fighter. He's the best."
Velasquez was wobbled regularly by Cheick Kongo, a proficient if unexceptional kickboxer who didn't have much of an answer for Velasquez's clinching when he got fuzzy-headed. It's also easy to forget Velasquez is only 6-foot-0. He'd probably like his chances even better two years from now.
Only a day after judges stared agape at his two-step performance, Chuck Liddell and partner Anna Trebunskaya were excused from any further appearances on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" on Tuesday. And not a moment too soon, as constantly spell-checking documents containing the word "Trebunskaya" might actually void my software warranty.
Liddell is clearly not meant for ballroom competition, which was sort of the point, but it doesn't really matter. That a UFC fighter could get airtime on a massively popular television monolith like "Dancing" is another indication that this sport is getting what it's wanted all along: to be treated like any other. Meanwhile, maybe not having to DVR this any more means I can try to taper off the T-gel.
Kimbo Slice could get a gift-wrapped opponent for his second fight on "The Ultimate Fighter."
In trumpeting the puzzling charisma of Kimbo Slice on "The Ultimate Fighter," the UFC has essentially given home to a pet they'll wind up serving up for dinner. No one gets a free ride in the organization: If you're friends with promoter Dana White, you're likely to get treated even more harshly. (Chuck Liddell, fed killer after killer in his twilight years, being exhibit A.)
Slice won't be getting any dock workers or veterans approaching senility, but he might luck out by getting a man virtually guaranteed to stand with him: light heavyweight Houston Alexander, a potential opponent for Slice at UFC 107 in Memphis, Tenn., on December 12. (Rumor spit up courtesy Fiveouncesofpain.com.) If Alexander has ever shot in for a takedown in his UFC career, I missed it.
This is about as much of a gift-wrapped opponent as you're likely to get in the UFC, and it's still not much of one: Alexander is faster on the draw than Slice, who's used to the relatively slower speeds of the bigger guys. But there aren't many alternatives: try to imagine him in a fight with a Cain Velasquez or Pat Barry. You'd have to put crime scene tape around the ring.
Vitor Belfort will need to get down to 185 pounds if he plans to fight Anderson Silva.
On a bad day, nothing less than Mothra would appear to get Anderson Silva out of bed in the morning. The UFC's middleweight champion and manager Ed Soares told MMA Weekly that they take some issue with Vitor Belfort's being chosen as Silva's next contender. (The bout is rumored for Jan. 2.)
"Vitor has not fought in the UFC at 185 pounds," Soares said. "Now, I know people can say Anderson fought for the belt after one fight, and that's true, but he fought at 185 pounds. At 195 pounds, he [Belfort] didn't make weight, at first. So he couldn't make weight at 195 pounds, but now he's going to fight for the title at 185 pounds?"
That might be construed as unfair; while Belfort did come in heavier than the 195 catch-weight limit for Rich Franklin, he also had been preparing to fight Fedor Emelianenko in a heavyweight contest the previous month. Prior to that, he had no issues clocking in at 185 for fights with Matt Lindland and Terry Martin.
Soares maintains the winner of a Nate Marquardt-Dan Henderson fight deserves the honor, but there's little reason why Silva can't occupy himself with Belfort while those two pummel each other. Even better, a Belfort bout is going to be an easier sell -- which could mean more money if Silva has a revenue share -- than a rematch against a guy he previously obliterated.
Did you like the sound of Frank Trigg and Matt Serra squaring off at some point? Both are coming off losses -- Trigg in a one-sided bout against Josh Koscheck, Serra in a competitive bout against Matt Hughes -- and both are near one another in age and career wear. Since we all know how the old lion/new lion matches typically end, why not pair athletes of similar abilities?
If the UFC agrees, they're not ready to discuss it. Speaking to FightHype, Trigg said that a proposed match with Serra is still vaporware.
"I was on some site and that was the first time I had heard about it," he said. "&Matt didn't say he was fighting me and, to my knowledge, I haven't heard anything about it at all."
Whether or not he meets Serra, Trigg's chances of success improve considerably with a move back to middleweight, in which there isn't nearly the volume of wrestlers who could stuff his shot.
Who knew the latest door of mainstream acceptance for MMA would be opened by ... Marge?
News travels so fast in this sport that commenting on something that happened nearly 48 hours ago seems akin to wondering aloud whether the DuMont Network has a future. But it's not every day that MMA gets as warm a reception in popular culture as it did during a Sunday episode of "The Simpsons."
Many of the show's fans have turned bitter, professing little interest in a show that exhibits little of the warmth toward its characters that it did 15 years ago. (The series is now in its 20th season.) But someone is watching: Seven and a half million people tuned in to "The Great Wife Hope," whose narrative had Marge concerned over the violent, impressionable content of the "Ultimate Punching Championship" and its Septagon. (That's seven sides, not eight, for you patent attorneys at Zuffa.)
"Because this is not to my taste, no one else should be able to enjoy it," Marge tells her collection of clucking mothers.
Ignore the ludicrous climax -- Marge fights the promoter in competition, a stunt that could play out only in cartoons or Japan -- and it is absurdly surreal to consider that one of the most biting satires on television thinks enough of the sport to riff on it. In the pre-"Ultimate Fighter" era, it was newsworthy if some UFC footage was playing on a TV in the background of a film; now Marge Simpson is applying an armbar on broadcast television.
Donald Cerrone, right, gave as good as (or better than) he got from Benson Henderson.
And suddenly, construction work begins to look a lot more appealing: Ben Henderson, a probable fight of the year finalist for his efforts in a win against Donald Cerrone at WEC 43 on Saturday, celebrated by collapsing in the locker room and being shuttled to three different emergency rooms. Originally believed to have suffered a detached retina, Henderson's condition was upgraded to simply and blissfully "messed up." His eye -- the recipient of a Cerrone kick -- still requires a diagnosis; he was put on IV fluids to replace the water lost during the five-round fight.
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Most fighters probably would tell you they'd do the actual fighting for free; it's the consequences that require compensation.
Scoring calculator FightMetric, meanwhile, had the bout tallied as a draw using the sport's 10-point must system. I still maintain the decision comes down to whether Henderson's two minutes of control and striking trumps Cerrone's 90 seconds spent locking him up in submission attempts, all in the first round. It's an obvious rematch candidate -- and possibly one worthy of a pay-per-view campaign.
If the UFC discriminates against Brazilians, as Paulo Filho asserts, it's news to, uh, everyone.
He hasn't helped author a lot of truly spectacular fights, but any boredom generated by Paulo Filho in the ring is more than compensated for his actions outside of it. In an interview with Tatame -- translated by Fighter's Only -- Filho mused that the UFC had an anti-Brazilian agenda to promote.
"The UFC is a great event, but the Americans do everything so that you cannot get the advantage," he said. "They [do] everything to get you down. American is American; they want to see Americans with the belt and so eliminate as many Brazilians as possible."
We'll assume Filho's Internet access is limited: Three of the UFC's five champions are foreign-born, two of them Brazilian (in Lyoto Machida's case, Brazilian-Japanese). Although it's true there are frequent matchups between Portuguese-speaking athletes, they also frequently match Americans against Americans. If anything, a duel between two non-English-speaking fighters guarantees one will continue to advance in the promotion. If this is discrimination, the UFC is doing a spectacularly poor job of institutionalizing it.
Shawn Tompkins' respected cage acumen is no longer at the disposal of Randy Couture's clients.
Look at fight footage from the past several years and you'll notice a recurring presence in the background behind several winning, beaming faces: Shawn Tompkins, the Xtreme Couture Mixed Martial Arts trainer whose fight IQ helped shape that Las Vegas brand into a Mecca for top athletes.
As reported by 5thRound.com, Tompkins is packing up his things and heading down the street to help establish a Tapout-branded gym. There's no word on whether the split from the Randy Couture-headed organization is amicable or not, but if Tompkins has engendered any loyalty among names such as Vitor Belfort, Gina Carano, Tyson Griffin and Forrest Griffin, he'll be bringing with him an immediate foundation for Tapout to build a sweat brand on -- although it's probably only a matter of time before Griffin and Carano open their own franchises.
Kids are dumb. Teenagers are dumber. This is not normally cause for concern, but when those same teenagers begin to mature physically before they do mentally, it usually results in stories like this one.
According to the Kansas City Star, a high school wrestler in Missouri is suing Blue Springs High over injuries sustained during an impromptu "MMA" bout in 2008. After wrestling practice was canceled one day last October, it's alleged that one student initiated an amateur fight card by pulling out some four-ounce gloves -- all under the consenting watch of an assistant coach.
The student -- who was apparently a willing participant -- had teeth knocked out that resulted in extensive dental work. The suit also alleges the school had a fetish for unarmed combat: wrestling apparel for the team featured the UFC logo. If things are bad now, wait until Zuffa's lawyers get wind of it.
Stupidity squared, but I always find it difficult to place blame on impressionable kids. Save the venom for the idiot coach who, according to the text, "watched and cheered" as the wrestlers traded punches. We're entering a generation that will take its behavioral cues based in part on "The Ultimate Fighter" marathons and men who beat each other up for a living. And it may not be pretty.
Because, hey, doesn't everything about Vince McMahon just scream "sophistication"?
The handful of times I've stumbled upon professional wrestling in the past 10 years, I've witnessed the following:
• A man getting hit over the head with a bedpan.
• A woman being dragged around by her hair by a man.
• Vague recollections of Ken Shamrock eating dog food and David "Tank" Abbott behaving as some kind of bodyguard for a faux boy band.
The latter made me tear up a little.
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Clearly, I have not been exposed to the right parts of Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment empire; in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News discussing his company's business climate and outlook, McMahon describes his product as "more sophisticated." More sophisticated than what? A lump of clay? Pots and pans clanging together? A test pattern?
No -- mixed martial arts. "You really can't compete with that," he said of the rival pay-per-view attraction. "Why not deliver a more sophisticated product and not go to those extremes? If the audience wants those extremes, they know where to go and how to get it." And if they want misogyny, bad acting and below-syndication-level scriptwriting, they know where to get that, too.
Benson Henderson didn't back into a win, but a case can be made for a Donald Cerrone decision.
Donald Cerrone and Benson Henderson have made it difficult to argue against the WEC's continued existence: Their headlining fight at the promotion's 43rd event Saturday in San Antonio packed more action into 25 minutes than Michael Bay could manage in 120. (Actual running time of "Transformers 2": more than four hours. Look it up.)
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Years removed from first-generation guard work -- during which opponents might actually take short naps right along with viewers -- Henderson spent much of his early activity posturing and looking for ways to end the fight with his fists; Cerrone used his rangy 6-foot frame to tie Henderson up in knots of submissions. Often, he'd coil up his long legs, shoot them out as though they were powered by hydraulics and send Henderson flying across the ring. It was 2009's most entertaining fight to date, stained only by a contested judge's decision -- officials valued Henderson's work from the top over Cerrone's submission attempts.
There's little argument Henderson's control and strikes took Rounds 2 and 3, or that Cerrone turned on his ignition for 4 and 5. Round 1 was the deciding factor: Henderson spent roughly one minute, 30 seconds getting strangled and two minutes in Cerrone's guard landing shots. (The remaining 1:30 of the round was more or less a wash.) Which of those feats you consider to be more important determines who you think won the fight. For my money, whoever comes closer to ending the evening early deserves the favoritism -- and a nice, tight triangle is more promising than strikes you can't put your hips into.
Debatable? Maybe. Robbery? Not by any stretch. But if any fight should be considered a draw in principle, this was it.
Next for Henderson: A unification match for the WEC's lightweight title against frequently hobbled Jamie Varner.
Next for Cerrone: According to WEC matchmaker Sean Shelby, another fight or two before jumping back into a title bid.
Awards
Nobody Under The Age Of 60 Will Get Your Nickname Award: Dave "The Fugitive" Jansen, in homage to actor David Janssen's work as the wrongfully accused Richard Kimble in 1963's "Fugitive" television series. I desperately hope we get a good fighter named Fred Mertz, and soon.
"You OK, Dude?" Compassion Award: The referee of the Rich Crunkilton-Jansen bout, who reacted to an inadvertent crotch shot and a fetal-position fighter with the bedside manner of Keanu Reeves.
Anything Is Possible Award: Mackens Semerzier, a first-year rookie who was expected to get turned into ground chuck at the hands of jiu-jitsu black belt Wagnney Fabiano, but who submitted Fabiano with a triangle choke instead. You just don't know until you try.
Etc. …
UFC chair Lorenzo Fertitta instructed the WEC to award $20,000 in bonus money to both Cerrone and Henderson, doubling the usual take; Semerzier took home $10,000 for his implausible win. … Observers and participants were split regarding the outcome of the main event: Cerrone believes Henderson won, while Jamie Varner thought Cerrone edged out a victory. … The record for spinning back kicks landed in a single fight probably now belongs to Yves Jabouin, who lit up the torso of Raphael Assuncao en route to a decision loss. Frank Dux will not be happy.
So that's how Mark Coleman injured the knee that will keep him on the shelf for UFC 106.
Fighter's Only broke the news that Mark Coleman suffered an MCL tear in training, scrapping his bout with a returning Tito Ortiz on Nov. 21. Although the UFC hasn't confirmed the cancellation, it's probably not a huge cause for concern; Brock Lesnar headlines the show, and he's a fairly solid guarantee of business.
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Losing Ortiz appears academic at this point: The fighter is notoriously picky about opponents and has often enjoyed servings of 40-plus-year-old opposition. He probably saw Coleman -- right or wrong -- as the right foe to ease himself back into competition following major back surgery. In the meantime, Coleman's management has asked that the fight be moved to the UFC's Jan. 2 card.
Urijah Faber can buy a lot of Ramen with the earnings from his latest WEC contract.
If you're the modestly successful World Extreme Cagefighting, what do you do without Urijah Faber? The former 145-pound champion has headlined several of the company's most-viewed telecasts on the Versus network and appears to be the most charismatic and marketable of its fighters.
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The WEC didn't want to find out: The promotion signed Faber to a fresh six-fight deal that should keep him employed until the Mayan apocalypse of 2012. (Oh, it's happening, folks.) Faber figures to remain a key figure in the WEC's plans for expansion, which may include the addition of a pay-per-view model next year -- and, hopefully, the subtraction of a Ramen-noodle subsistence for cash-strapped fighters.
With WEC 43 scheduled for Saturday, recurring talk suggests the promotion is some sort of extraneous body part that the sport's evolution should have shaved off by now. The truth: There's a market for a different, small-guy brand, but it may need more than just the muscle provided by Versus to make it. For a show that has sometimes pulled over a million viewers, though, I wonder how the promotion would be perceived if it weren't chaired by Zuffa. I suspect most would congratulate it as a plucky upstart, not a smaller and weaker little brother.
Lyoto Machida could pave the way to a title bout for buddy Anderson Silva … by losing.
Diplomacy: an admirable trait for someone who makes a living beating his will over somebody's head. Although Anderson Silva is supporting friend and training partner Lyoto Machida in Machida's bout against Mauricio "Shogun" Rua on Oct. 24, he doesn't believe it will be as simple as Pat Morita often made it out to be.
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"I train a lot with Lyoto," Silva told Sherdog.com. "I don't have anything against 'Shogun.' I'm cheering for Lyoto for sure, but it's a tough fight for each man."
Silva may have more of an investment in this fight than he realizes. If Machida loses the belt to Rua, it opens an opportunity for Silva to make a run at the light heavyweight belt -- something he has adamantly refused to do for as long as Machida had the deed to it.
• Eric "Butterbean" Esch will match bellies with opponent Harry Funmaker in what's being billed as Esch's last boxing match. If you're in Wisconsin on Friday night, it's something to do. More specifically, the only thing to do …
• Carlos Condit confirmed to MMAJunkie that he's training at Greg Jackson's gym in Albuquerque; Kimbo Slice has stationed himself at American Top Team in Miami …
• MMAWeekly reports Bellator champion Hector Lombard's break-a-sweat bout with Kalib Starnes could be rescheduled for Nov. 20 due to a concussion suffered by Lombard in training; Starnes can now put his will aside …
• Dana White told "The Opie & Anthony Show" that Quinton Jackson "will fight" for the UFC in the future. Unless Jackson has somehow developed an allergy to money, there's no doubt …
Making more media rounds Wednesday and Thursday was "Ultimate Fighter" winner Roy Nelson, who did a very commendable job of making Kimbo Slice look like a white belt on the mat. (And so far as we know, he is.) So why does he sound slightly bitter about the whole thing?
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The problem, according to Nelson, is that his win was contrasted against the stacked deck that was the UFC's favoritism over Slice.
"First round was 44 punches to the face, and then Herb Dean doesn't know how to ref, but we've seen that before," Nelson told USA Today. "And then the next round was 22 punches. You could even see me yelling at Herb Dean, 'Come on, ref.' … But the thing is, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of money … So I think it was more that Herb Dean was afraid to lose his job, because there's a lot of people with a lot of money that can have a lot of influence with his career."
Insinuating the referee was colluding with management to keep Slice on the winning track is a heavy statement to put over Dean. If anything, you'd think that rationale would prompt him to stop the fight more quickly: Slice's odds against Nelson were never good and promoters could feed the "premature stoppage" angle to viewers to keep Slice's popularity from gassing out.
But that's only if you're into conspiracy theories. I'm not, but Nelson clearly likes to indulge.
Proof of some justice in the world: For at least 15 minutes Wednesday night, more Americans thought it would be more entertaining to watch a mixed martial arts contest than the tired, canned-ham patter of Jay Leno. Spike's "Ultimate Fighter" -- for rock dwellers, the site of a Kimbo Slice bout against Roy Nelson -- drew a high of 6.1 million viewers, while Leno drew a piddling 5.9 million. As if we even care.
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Slice was unable to break his own personal-best record, as roughly 7.2 million viewers watched him burst the ear of James Thompson during a 2008 CBS telecast.
A sad but true fact: Personalities will always sell more than accomplishments. Something about Slice makes people want to see him fight. Winning doesn't seem to matter much. Good work if you can get it.
Dan Henderon can fight, but moving tickets has been another story.
In at least one aspect, Dan Henderson is a priceless commodity: He's one of the few men to debut in 1997 that's still relevant today. A dozen years logged in any sport is an admirable feat. And so Henderson is thinking maybe the UFC needs to deliver a large sum of cash by way of appreciation.
Henderson's contract with the promotion ended at the final bell of the Michael Bisping fight; after being led to believe he was next in line for Anderson Silva's title, Henderson found himself shuffled over to face Nate Marquardt while Vitor Belfort stepped over both. It might be enough to make a guy feel jilted -- and money has a way of saying "sorry."
Henderson didn't reveal how much he was asking for, but it's certainly a raise from the $250,000 purse he netted (not including a knockout bonus) for the Bisping fight. With pay-per-view royalties factored in, a number of UFC headliners can bank seven figure paydays. It sounds like Henderson wants his black AmEx, too.
Is he worth it? Henderson has long been the blue-collar competitor: No flash, no ego; just a savage right hand and a willingness to fight anyone from middleweights to heavyweights. There's financial reward in consistently winning, but the money Henderson is asking for might be reserved for athletes who win and sell tickets. I'm not sure there's proof he's a big draw: Bouts with Anderson Silva and Rich Franklin were alleged to be among the least profitable on pay television in recent memory.
If Henderson wants to be paid, maybe he should consider attacking a plywood door.
CompuStrike, one of the two major number-crunching entities in MMA (the other is FightMetric) supplies the factoids spewed out by Mike Goldberg during UFC telecasts, released stats on Wednesday's Kimbo Slice-Roy Nelson bout. And Slice fans will need to be very selective about what they pay attention to.
Numerically, the fight was competitive on the feet, with Slice landing 31 percent of his strikes to Nelson's 29 percent. On the floor, it was like occupying France, with Nelson landing 67 strikes to Slice's zero.
This was the best-case scenario for the UFC's Slice push: With his limited skills, anyone in the house had a shot against him. If you're going to lose, better to lose to someone with Nelson's reputation and put up an effort. Half the time, at least.
How would Fedor Emelianenko fare against Bobby Lashley's brute strength and size?
Strikeforce might not have considerable depth in any division, but they have enough personalities to make any given evening interesting: Fanhouse is reporting that former WWE attraction Bobby Lashley is in talks with the promotion to make their Nov. 7 date on CBS.
Lashley has been stirring interest primarily for looking like an offseason Mr. Olympia and possessing credible grappling skills. His pressure positioning against Roger Gracie's stellar submission work would be something worthwhile. And there's obvious appeal in seeing a pro wrestling attraction take on Fedor Emelianenko: In 30-plus career fights, the Russian hasn't spent much time in the ring with a wrestler capable of keeping him down. Maybe Lashley can.
It's not official, but signs are still pointing to an Anderson Silva-Vitor Belfort title bout for Jan. 2. And if it transpires, Wanderlei Silva doesn't think it will be too enjoyable an evening for Belfort.
"Destroy" was his verb of choice when speaking to Sherdog's Marcelo Alonso about his onetime opponent's chances against Anderson.
"I think it's a very interesting fight," Wanderlei said. "Belfort has good boxing skills and is a good athlete, but everybody knows that he has a weak psychological aspect and I think he will shake when he gets in the Octagon with [Silva]."
Despite looking unshaken in recent bouts with Terry Martin, Matt Lindland and Rich Franklin, Belfort's past history with being a psychological mess continues to haunt him. (To be fair, none of those men got all that adversarial with Belfort -- and resistance was often all he needed to begin shrinking in the ring.)
Wanderlei also commented on the potential for a rematch with Belfort, which seems like a no-brainer for 2010. It could be the first instance of a fight sequel taking place 12 years after the original. Hopefully, it'll work out better than the film series that take their sweet time. (Have you seen "The X-Files: I Want to Believe"? No? OK. Don't.)
Jake Rossen's editorials appear weekly on Sherdog.com. Currently acting as editor of Real Fighter magazine, he has been covering the sport of mixed martial arts since 1998. He lives in Binghamton, N.Y.
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