MMA Review

Hey everyone, finally, the return of MMA Review.

Tomorrow or today or last night, depending on when you read this, the UFC is having their latest event, UFC 88 featuring the main event of Chuck Liddell against Rashad Evans. I’m mad that its in Atlanta and I won’t be there. I had to cover an event on Friday and just can’t make the trip. Maybe next time.

Here’s my breakdown of the main fights on the card:

Rashad Evans vs. Chuck Liddell: This matchup doesn’t look well for Rashad. Chuck is an excellent striker and if Rashad tries to take him to the ground, Chuck’s takedown defense is great as well. Furthermore, if Rashad tries to stand with Chuck, that’s not good. If Wandy Silva can’t knock out Chuck, Rashad isn’t. This fight is pretty much a warm-up for Chuck to take on Forrest for the light heavyweight title in December. However, this is MMA and anything can happen. I just don’t see Evans winning this fight.

Matt Hamill vs. Rich Franklin: This fight is interesting. Franklin was the king of the middleweights until Anderson Silva became a bad ass. Now, he’s coming back to light heavyweight to test that weight out. He’s fought at this weight before, so it isn’t unique to him. However, while he was a big middleweight, he’s an average-sized light heavy. Hamill is a great story as well. His wrestling skills are excellent and he showed some strong hands against Bisbing. He’s also a large light heavy. Rich is an excellent striker, but we haven’t seen much of his ground game. I’m taking Hamill in a mini-upset.

Dan Henderson vs. Rousimar Palhares: I must admit, I’ve never heard of Rousimar, but if he’s fighting Hollywood Henderson, he’s a legit fighter. Hollywood is on a two-fight losing streak, but when those two losses are a tough decision to Rampage and a destruction to Silva, that’s not the worst thing. Anderson beats everyone up. I think Hondo gets the win and fights his way back up the rankings.

The other huge news of the week was the resigning of Randy Couture to the UFC. Furthermore, he’s now slated to face Brock Lesner in November for the interim heavyweight title that he currently holds. The winner of this fight will face the winner of the Nogueira and Frank Mir fight to truly crown a legit UFC heavyweight title.

It also means the imminent end of the Affliction promotion.

The whole time that Affliction has been in business, they have been hyping a Fedor vs. Couture under their promotion. Well, since Randy has signed an exclusive three-fight deal with the UFC, that ain’t happening.

The UFC is eventually going to work on getting Fedor in the fold, but why did Couture go back to the UFC after all of the bitterness he expressed towards the company.

I read somewhere that Couture may be Captain America, The Natural and a whole bunch of nicknames, but he isn’t Perry Mason.

He took the UFC to court to get out of his original contract and lost. He tried to openly promote himself as a free agent at other promotions but lost. In the end, we’re looking at a 45-year old fighter who knows that he only has about three fights in him anyway. The more time he sits, the weaker his skills will become. Furthermore, if he’s not fighting, he’s not making money and that ain’t funny.

Why did I just sound like Deion Sanders in that last sentence?

Anyway, Randy now gets to face Brock in a potentially highly entertaining fight and Dana White looks like the man once again.

That’s it for the MMA Review. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, even if you’re a novice fan and want to learn more about the sport. No question is too dumb. Even I started out as someone who was watching TV one day and saw Tito Ortiz fighting Chuck Liddell and found it interesting. The Ultimate Fighter then premiered on Spike TV and a MMA hardcore fan was born.

As usual, I have the latest edition of MMA Live linked below for your viewing. Until then, good fight, good night.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?categoryId=2881270&brand=null&videoId=3569166&n8pe6c=2

MMA Review

It’s time for my MMA Review. Sorry that I didn’t do one last week but I was out of town taking care of family business. But I’m back now and ready to start.

-It’s not a really active week coming up in MMA because no events are coming up. However, it has been a bad week for Elite XC, a new promotion.

If you’re reading this, you’re of course familiar with the promotion that has brought us Gina Carano, Kimbo Slice and other characters. They’ve made an assertive effort to confront the UFC directly and become the top dog in mixed martial arts.

Plans haven’t gone so well.

Fighters are getting tested positive for drugs, the promotion is losing millions and millions of dollars (55 Million to be exact), weakened TV ratings, shakeups in the leadership and many other things. A good detailed breakdown is here if you really want to read about it more: http://www.sherdog.com/news/articles/elitexcs-impending-doom-averted-for-now-14140

This isn’t uncommon in sports. There have been countless leagues over the years that have tried to compete with the big professional sports leagues. For every NFL, there’s the XFL, USFL, CFL (when the league tried to expand into the USA in the 90’s). For the NBA, there’s the CBA, Developmental League, ABA and some others. Even sports that have solid followings like auto racing have seen their viewership decline over the last year or two.

The key with all of these organizations is that each of them knew their role and the ones that were stubborn ended. Elite XC should have approached their product slowly and built up their fan base before taking on the UFC, because that’s a battle that you’re going to lose.

I’m not saying that Elite XC shouldn’t exist. In fact, I love all of the different federations besides the UFC. A monopoly is not good for any sport, especially MMA. We need to see as many fighters perform as possible for a diversified product. Furthermore, every fighter has to start somewhere and the lower leagues give these fighters a chance to improve their skills.

-The last UFC event was solid. Brock Lesner is a beast and is a scary, scary dude. I don’t like his taunting, but he does play to a crowd well and brings a much needed personality to the UFC heavyweight division. Him and Cain Valasquez are going to fight for the title in two years, mark my words.

St. Pierre did what he does and made Fitch look like an amateur. Good win by Florian over Huerta as well.

-That’s all for this week. Enjoy MMA Live below.

MMA Review

What’s going on everybody, hope your week was good. Mine was tiring going back to work full-time, but it was good getting back to a consistent schedule. You can only play video games and watch daytime court shows for so many days, right? OK, bad question. It’s time for your MMA Review!

Like last week, I’ll go over each promotion and give you my thoughts:

Elite XC: They had a major program on CBS this past Saturday and I watched every minute of it. Even before it took place, I knew that the ratings would be down for several reasons. First, the second show is always a let down from the first one. CBS put a lot of promo into that first show a few months ago and had their two biggest stars Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano fighting. In this show, none of those two were fighting. Secondly, there was actually a big boxing PPV match that took some viewers.

However, I liked the card because it established the promotion. There are actually other fighters besides Kimbo and Gina. The women’s fight featured a victory by Cyborg, who is a Brazilian fighter out of the Chute Box Academy, which is one of the premier MMA training camps in the world. She is no joke and can beat a respectable amount of men. She dominated and hopefully will fight Carano because those two are probably the premier women fighters in MMA right now.

Nick Diaz picked up a victory and continued his quest for a lightweight title. I look forward to his future fight with Noons whenever that takes place.

The two title fights that were on the CBS portion of the show established two men in their respective weight classes in MMA. Lawler kept his middleweight title and showed that he’s legit. I would love to see him go to the UFC and give Anderson Silva a shot. Robbie is in the same boat as Jake Shields, who won the welterweight title.

Both men are legit top-10 fighters in their classes but have minimal competition in Elite XC.

WEC: They have a big, big show coming up this Sunday on Versus with three title defenses. Jamie Varner defends his lightweight title against an undefeated and dangerous Marcus Hicks, Brian Stann makes his first title defense against Steve Cantwell and my man, the Natural Born Killer, Carlos Condit defends his welterweight title against Hiro Miura.

I think that all three guys will keep their titles, even though Varner needs to be careful and it’s always tough defending the title for the first time, no matter who you are, just ask Georges St. Pierre.

I really want to see Condit continue his rise in the welterweight division. I love the attitude, the swagger he has, the look, and most importantly the game. He fights a very aggressive, pleasing style to view. He’s the best non-UFC welterweight in my opinion. Check this fight out if any on this card.

Affliction: It looks like Fedor will fight Arlovski in his next fight. That’s a good test and it’s nice to see two top-ten heavyweights fight.

UFC: Everything is pointing towards their amazing event next Saturday, UFC 87. I’ll have an in-depth preview of that card next week so I’ll save my opinions on that.

It looks like Silva will defend his middleweight title against Patrick Cote in UFC 90 on Oct. 25. Wow, they’re really stretching to find a middleweight contender for Anderson, that’s all I’ll say.

MISC NEWS

-Its looks like the UFC vs. Randy Couture legal battle won’t end anytime soon. It’s a shame because both sides have good points, but we’re missing out on seeing one of the greatest fighters ever practice his craft and the most important people, us fans, end up losing. Sherdog.com gives a good breakdown of the situation here if you want the details: http://www.sherdog.com/news/news/coutures-legal-battles-continue-13838

-I was going to give you a breakdown of fighting in a ring versus a cage this week. However, I found an excellent link to an article with actual fighters explaining it. I think you would rather hear their opinions then mine. Here’s the article: http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f2/cage-vs-ring-big-nog-anderson-silva-other-former-pride-fighters-opinions-815846/

-Next week, I’ll have a breakdown of UFC 87 and my own top-10 fighters. Here’s a link to ESPN’s new online show, MMA Live. As much crap as I talk about ESPN, good job by them acknowledging mixed martial arts. Also, my boy Frank Mir is on the show. Love it!

I also threw in some Pride highlights. Gotta respect that.

Good fight, good night.

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.

Sunday Reflections (MMA Review Edition)

This weekend was a good time for mixed martial arts with two major events taking place.

I’ll get to this more on Friday with my MMA review, but I’ll give you a quick review.

I saw the entire UFC Fight Night, which was a decent event. Anderson Silva did what was expected by defeating James Irwin. Silva did look thicker as a light heavyweight, but he really looked the same. The scary thing about Anderson is that he was a super huge middleweight and a solid sized light heavyweight. If he wants to stay at 205, he definitely can.

Brandon Vera is one of my favorite fighters, so I was disappointed in his performance. He got the win, but you can tell that even he knew that his performance was sub-par.

The rest of the fights were ok. I’ll give you more Friday.

I didn’t see the Affliction card, but I did go to my sources and saw the Fedor/Sylvia fight. Not much here to say but Fedor won.

I’ll see the rest of the fights by Friday and have more info in my MMA review.

Until then, here’s are two video montages of MMA action.

B.J. Penn reaches his potential, I need to do the same

I was unable to see the latest UFC pay-per-view event because I was in Florida, however, my boy, B.J. Penn won his lightweight title fight against steroid boy Sean Shrek and rightfully claimed his title as the best lightweight in the world and arguably the top pound-for-pound MMA fighter in the world. Actually, B.J., GSP, Anderson Silva or Uriah Faber can make this claim, but that’s another post for another day.

For those not familiar with B.J., he’s considered the most talented MMA fighter in the world, maybe ever. When he’s focused and in top condition, there isn’t anyone who can beat him. He was the youngest and fastest guy to ever earn a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. To put that in prospective, it takes guys close to 10 years or more to achieve what B.J. did in only a few years. He’s been the first American to win international jiu-jitsu tournaments, including the Mundials in Brazil, which is like the Super Bowl of the sport. That’s why his nickname is the Prodigy, which is the most apt nickname for any fighter I know. He’s the only guy besides Couture to hold a UFC belt in two separate weight classes, welterweight and now lightweight. He also has wins over Gomi, Renzo Gracie, Matt Hughes and many others. He was just a beast in every weight class.

The problem with B.J. in the past was that he knew he was talented and didn’t have to train as hard as other guys to achieve his goals. He would get lazy and not come into fights in shape and lose focus. This caused him to lose a lot of fights he shouldn’t have and even balloon himself up to fight in the heavyweight division, which is not his natural weight class.

The key to B.J.’s new focus was two things. Actually it was one thing merged into two. Penn was fighting as a welterweight and just getting by until Dana White and the UFC told him that he had to move to lightweight to stay relevant. Furthermore, he was given the chance to become a coach on the Ultimate Fighter, a reality show that trains future MMA fighters in a competition to gain a contract with the UFC. The coach on the opposite team was Jen Pulver, someone that Penn lost to earlier in his career and the two didn’t like each other.

So, Penn was forced to move out of the 170-pound division and train hard to make lightweight, which is 155 pounds. He would have to watch his diet, stay in peak condition longer and become a more mature fighter.

Penn becomes an excellent coach, beats Jens in their fight, defeats Joe Stevenson for the interim lightweight title and finally beats Shrek for the true lightweight title.

It’s just happy to see someone finally realize his talent and focus on becoming the best fighter that he could. Even though it took him being in his late-20’s to have the light come of and focus, at least he found it.

It makes me realize that I need to fulfill my potential in all aspects of my life, professionally, personally, physically and everything in between. I have to improve every aspect of my life if I want reach my goals.

I have a lot of God-given abilities that I must utilize and not waste. Sometimes I feel that I don’t do that, but after seeing B.J. do his thing, its time for me to do mine.