MMA Review

Welcome to my second installment of the Friday MMA Review.

Once again, even if you aren’t a mixed martial arts fan, you can like this post. I try to speak in generalities to give you an idea of what’s happening in the MMA world today.

This past week has some outstanding fights that were enjoyed by all. This Saturday, Elite XC will have their second network TV event on CBS, which I will watch with high anticipation. I think that the best way to do this is to list each fighting organization and give you my thoughts:

Elite XC: On Saturday, we will get to see the rematch between Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith for the middleweight title. These two guys gave an excellent effort in their last fight and it ended unnecessarily. However, Lawler is the better fighter and should win this one easily.

Jake Shields and Nick Thompson square off for the welterweight title as well. Shields should take care of business in this one.

Don’t get persuaded to not watch these fights because it’s not the UFC. Lawler is no joke and I think would give Anderson Silva a run if they ever fought. Shields is legit too and would be an even fight against Georges St. Pierre.

Finally, Nick Diaz squares off against Thomas Denny. Diaz should win this fight if he stays away from the bong! Ha, I make myself laugh sometimes. Seriously kids, stay away from the weed.

UFC: Last Saturday, the UFC had their Fight Night event featuring the main event of Anderson Silva vs. James Irwin. Silva looked sick. People kept talking about how Anderson was moving up in weight from middleweight to light heavyweight and that would be a problem. I didn’t see that happening because Silva is a big and lanky guy anyway and carries his weight evenly. He looked pretty much the same physically. He made James Irwin look like an amateur. Silva wants to go back to middleweight, but I think he should stay at light heavyweight if you ask me.

The rest of the card showed some interesting stuff. I love Brandon Vera and his potential. He a minority, has a good personality and usually has a fighting style that’s aggressive and exciting. However, he has looked weak in his last few fights and his recent win against Reece Andy was troublesome. Hopefully he can get his stuff together at light heavyweight and I just heard that he’s fighting Keith Jardine, which is interesting.

Frankie Edgar and CB Dollaway looked good in wins. BTW, Dollaway’s finisher, the Peruvian Neck Tie, is classic and may have to be my nickname in the future.

The person who looked the most impressive however besides Silva was Cain Velasquez in his win over Jake O’Brien. Cain is an impressive heavyweight who has a pleasing style to view. The UFC is starving for some new heavyweight contenders and Cain may be that guy in the next year. His potential is amazing.

On Saturday, Spike is replaying UFC84 which featured the title fight between B.J. Penn and Sean Sherk. I won’t be watching that because I’ve seen the event already,

UFC 87 on August 9 is shaping up to be an outstanding PPV with GSP facing Fitch for the welterweight title and some other good bouts. My preview of that will come closer to the event.

Affliction: The main event was both a good and bad thing, but you can blame Fedor for that. The man is a beast. Fedor is the man and no heavyweight is going to stop him. He made Sylvia look like a little kid out there fighting.

Arlovski looked good in his fight as well and I believe that he’s going to fight Fedor later this year, which is a fight that everyone wants to see and would represent progress in the heavyweight division.

There were two intriguing parts to the event. One, look at the salaries that some of these guys got: http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/CSAC-Sylvia-Arlovski-Lead-Affliction-Paydays-13758

The fact that Sylvia made $800,000 for that fight is crazy. Those figures are straight salaries and don’t include potential percentage of PPV profits and endorsements. Affliction won’t last long if they keep paying guys those salaries. However for MMA fighters in general, this is a good thing because they can use those figures when they negotiate new deals with the various fight leagues and the pay has increased.

The second thing about the event was that the fighting took place in a ring and not a cage. Since there isn’t a fight coming up next weekend, I’ll break down why this is a big deal. The cliff notes version of this is that one of the two main reasons that Fedor will probably never fight in the UFC is because of the cage. I’ll break that down more next week.

For Fedor, the main reason that he isn’t in the UFC is that it really doesn’t work with his business plan as a fighter. If he signed with the UFC, he would have to exclusively fight for that company. Fedor makes a lot of money fighting for various federations in Europe and Asia, specifically Japan and they don’t do business with the UFC.

If he wanted to fight in a sambo tournament in Russia or do a New Year’s Eve fight in Japan and make high six figures doing it, he can’t do it in the UFC because it’s an exclusive deal.

I was just happy to see the man fight in America. He needs to fight more in general and from what I’m hearing from his camp, this is going to happen.

That’s all from me, enjoy the fights and I hope to hear from some of you after Saturday.

Here’s a video showing the painful side of MMA.