Monday, April 30, 2007

WEC and VERSUS

Previously known only for me not watching NHL playoff games on it, the VERSUS channel is going to have my eyeballs starting on June 3, since they'll be showing WEC events live, on cable! I'm only 20 days late with this news! Hooray!


June 3 8-9 p.m. WEC One-Hour Event Special 9-11 p.m. WEC LIVE Event

June 6 9-10 p.m. WEC One-Hour Event Special

June 13 9-10 p.m. WEC One-Hour Event Special

August 5 8-9 p.m. WEC One-Hour Event Special 9-11 p.m. WEC LIVE Event

August 8 9-10 p.m. WEC One-Hour Event Special

August 15 9-10 p.m. WEC One-Hour Event Special

September 5 9-11 p.m. WEC LIVE Event

Good on VERSUS! WEC has some exciting fighters, like "Mayhem" Miller, "Diesel" "Look out for that knee" Riggs and "Razor" Rob McCullough. I for one look forward to having even more MMA options on cable, even if it's still comin' from Zuffa. Don't forget IFL, although I am still having trouble keeping track of everything in that league. They don't do such a great job of tying the teams to the cities, to get that local fan base going that makes a "team" a team.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Thoughts

UFCJunkie.com has an article up noting Tito Ortiz saying something stupid. Someone said on sherdog, I believe, that "if Tito couldn't talk shit, he'd never speak."
In thinking about his upcoming bout against Rashad Evans, I found myself somewhat depressed at the possibility of Rashad losing. He's a fresh, interesting fighter, who we've watched develop from day one into a contender, and yet there's a strong possibility that he could go down to defeat against the old guard.
In the end though, you better win your fights. If Tito beats Rashad, good for him, and bad job training by Rashad. I'm picking Rashad to win it by TKO in the third.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

You know what sucks?

UFCJunkie.com has a "no-spoiler" policy in effect for the UFC event tonight in England, since they're showing it on tape delay in the USA. But Sherdog.com doesn't. So if someone saving the fights from UFC 70 for later, someone like me, goes to sherdog.com to look up, say, BJ Penn's record since they're watching Penn highlights on Youtube, they'll see a shocking result.
That just screws my whole viewing enjoyment.

Friday, April 20, 2007

This weekend

Lots o' stuff.


04/21/07 Shooto Professional Shooto 2007
04/21/07 CW Cage Wars
04/21/07 UFC 70 Nations Collide
04/21/07 CR 21 Judgement Day
04/21/07 No Limits Proving Ground
From Sherdog.com


Looks good. There's one next weekend for KOTC, I'm going to see if I can get up to Soboba for it.

NCFC

I'm trying to track down info on North County Fight Club Sherdog.com to feature on the site. Manny Rodriguez, KOTC Heavyweight champ, and Jason Lambert, who recently busted my card by beating the living hell out of Renato Sobral (who beat Shogun, by the way), are current fighters for NCFC, as well as Eddie Sanchez, who was recently TKO'd by Mr. Cro Cop. That is not the last you'll hear from Sanchez, in any event. Rest assured that I'll post anything I hear.
I met Manny at the pub in San Marcos, Churchill's, and frankly have not run into a more mellow, laid-back big guy in a while. You know, it's the guys who just chill and could care less that you have to be the most careful about. Like "Ha, sure, take a shit on my head, what does it matter? Enjoy your rehab!" then your arm is across the street in the baseball field. Just thinking.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

just thinking

I was reading UFCJunkie and some rumors pointing strongly to a St. Pierre-Koscheck matchup to determine who gets a shot at the welterweight crown and the thought came rushing back:

Welterweight Champ Matt "The Terra" Serra


Image from http://www.fcfighter.com/

Still messes with my head.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Saturday Bodogfight

• Fedor did what Fedor does: dominate. Lindland clipped him over the eye, brought out some of the red, red vino, but it wasn't much. Matt Lindland tried some greco-roman action, and actually had Emelianenko up off his feet, but when he tried a slam, Fedor reversed it like he so often does, seemingly in mid-air, and that was the beginning of the end for Matt. Still, a good fight. Brutal armbar ended it.

• Sherdog's round by round blog is funny as hell:

10:18 p.m. During his pre-fight interview, Aleks uses the non-word "fiercefully." You tell him it doesn't exist.

He also mentioned up-and-coming PRIDE Light Heavyweight fighter Sudoku.

• Bodogfight put on a decent show. Lots of skinny Russian girls.

Like her.

• It seems Bodogfight is turning into an "organization"...belts and all. It felt a bit disorganized, like, who's the champ? Why? They also did the same shit UFC does, not show fights. I freaking hate that. SEVEN fights were not televised. We paid $30 bucks for six fights and endless, boring talkup. Just show fights! Screw the blather! I don't care! Arrgh! Blarrgh!

• The Welterweight championship featured Nick "The Goat" Thompson vs. a tiny midget. The midget looked game, but overmatched, as he was tiny. The Goat won.

Other stuff:
• I didn't make it to the Total Combat event in San Diego, as I decided to stay home and have a long boring talk about my relationship (all my decision of course). MMAFighting.com (Great site!) has results & pictures.
Here's a good one:

If anyone has an actual, firsthand report from the event, drop me a line. Here's another "Bodog Girl" for the road:

Monday, April 9, 2007

D'Arce Choke

Kendall Grove won with this. Wild!

UFC & Pride Saturday/Sunday

Quickies...
UFC
• MATT SERRA? THE TERRA? OH...MA....GAWRD.
• What the hell happened to Diego Sanchez? I didn't think he was afraid of anyone in the world, and he looked positively timid in the ring against Koscheck. Boring fight!
• Garcia v. Huerta! What a battle! We were standing and cheering, my youngest brother was jacked up.
• Kendall Grove looked good.
• I won the jackpot, and my sister stiffed me. I didn't even get my $5 back. She was bitter that I'd won the poker game we played earlier (Winning $55 in a nickle game is pretty kickass, I have to admit). You know, I was never bitter when she nailed my ass to the wall at earlier fight night games. SO fooey. I did manage to pick 6 out of 9 fights dead on tho. Thanks to Performify at UFCjunkie.com. I was wrong (with everyone else) on Serra-St. Pierre, Koscheck-Sanchez, and I picked Garcia over Huerta. Though by the end of the fight I didn't care who won, that's what we watch MMA for, in a lot of good ways. Congrats to those two dudes for bringing it!
• Sanchez-Koscheck may have been just as surprising as Serra-St.P. I mean, who would have thought these two action guys would do their best Tim Sylvia impersonations, standing and jabbing for three rounds? Of course we had to swallow that crap for five rounds when Sylvia had the belt. Just an aside: THANK YOU RANDY.
• I think everyone saw the smile on Matt Hughes' face when Serra took out GSP, but is it warranted? Does he deserve and immediate shot at Serra, or should he still rematch with GSP? Part of me says give someone entirely new the next shot, the other part has to constantly be reminded about how long Hughes defended his belt and how hard he fights. I'm undecided.
PRIDE
• It didn't come on until WAY after midnight. The production values were pretty poor, often with some simple graphic left up for long periods of time. Soukodjou was impressive, knocking out Arona in the first round with a viscious uppercut. This kid looks good but my bro asked me: Who does he fight? Fedor? Fedor would DEVASTATE Soukodjou. But I thought Nog would too, soo.....
• Butterbean apparently didn't fight. My brother was sad (everyone else was pretty much passed the hell out, and I was on my way...drinking and poker and a whole fight card had passed already...), a little, but I didn't notice (see parenthetical note)
• I was excited to see Zelg Galesic fight in the big ring, and he really didn't disappoint, even showing us the feared sack drop on Takimoto's face, but it didn't work out in the end, and he was submitted. His strikes are still awesome though. He's a kid.
• Frye, Shinjo, two old guys who got whupped. James Thompson has almost no striking power, and got dropped in the first ten seconds, but Frye soon gassed and was whacked in the grill repeatedly. He eventually gave up his back and the ref stepped in. Everyone kept joking that he looked better than Donna Frye, our San Diego councilwoman. I think her moustache is a little less distinctive.
• The founder of Pride brought out two old school rivals in Sakuraba and Tanamura, with Sakuraba in a weird mask the whole time. Then he talked for about 74 hours. They would not stop talking. On and on. My word.

More as I think it over.

Friday, April 6, 2007

So-so UFN


Okay, I thought I'd weigh in briefly on last night's Ultimate Fight Night & TUF 5.


• Kenny Florian is cool. I liked him early and I still like him. He was fired up after that fight, screaming his head off. Anyone know what he was saying? I couldn't make it out. He showed tremendous brains & heart in that fight, getting snagged in the knee bar and escaping. The near tapout was very dramatic, and Florian/Mishima was the best fight of the night.

• Rogan made a great point about Ken-Flo: He's a normal guy who works really hard. I think that's why I like him. I hope he gets another shot at Sherk, or whoever the title holder is. Florian/Franca might be freaking great.

• Guillard has to watch his damn melon. He pretty much stuck his head in there like he was begging to be choked out.

• McNully/Hardonk was boring as hell. Ranks above, slightly, Herring/O'Brien in boredom and ineptitude.

• TUF 5 looks like it'll be loud, but maybe not awesome. The kids seem like they're putting on a show for the cameras, like all of them do. As of now I'm going to Tivo through to the fights, but we'll see.

• Can't wait for Jens and BJ to fight. There's still some prime smack flying.

• The team Jens brought with him to TUF looks great.

• Jens and Lauzon being together has already been mentioned, but is it weird that both of these guys are training fighters they'll possibly have to throw leather with? The whole thing seems set up to make everyone spaz out as much as possible. I guess that's the point.

This interview with Joe Daddy is pretty good.

More as I think of it.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Total Combat Xtreme Fight Card

I got an email from Total Combat with the fight card for their upcoming event here in San Diego. Sherdog.com is the greatest.



Total Combat April 13th @ The 4th & B
Fight Card

1. Richard Dalton VS Ray "The Big Easy" Seraille – Heavyweight

2. Frank Salgado VS Virgil "Corn" Zwicker – 210lbs

3. Diego Cardijo VS Eric Urek – 155lbs

4. Tony Velarde VS Josh Griggs – Heavyweight

5. Ryan Bixler VS Mike Granche – 155lbs

6. Paul Ingrassia VS Joey Beltran – Heavyweight

7. Joshua Williams VS Mario Rivera – 170lbs

8. Courtney Thomas VS Jose Martinez – Heavyweight

9. Tony Roberts VS Paulie Ascala – Heavyweight

Card Subject to Change


I did a quick look around sherdog.com's fight finder (awesome resource) and found a few of the fighters. I'll take a more in-depth look and see if I can contact some of the fighters and get some words to put up here. I'm going to try and get down to this one, since its so close to my house. Stay tuned!

This weekend

As I mentioned before, this weekend is crazy. Here's the "Upcoming Events" sidebar at Sherdog.com:

» 4/5/2007 - UFC: Fight Night 9
» 4/6/2007 - CITC 2: CHAOS IN THE CAGE 2
» 4/7/2007 - IFL: Moline
» 4/7/2007 - UFC 69: Shootout
» 4/7/2007 - American Bushido: 2007 Grand Prix Semifinals
» 4/7/2007 - Turf Wars III: Extreme Fury
» 4/7/2007 - Warriors Cup: Stockton (myspace page...)

There's an assload of MMA stuff on myspace, which is good, I suppose, for the fighters and promotions, but not so good for the users. There's not much worse interface, design, etc on the web than myspace, AND it's owned by the reprehensible NEWS Corp & Rupert "Repressive Regimes are my BBF!" Murdoch. Meh.
That list doesn't even mention the fact that you can get PRIDE 34 at midnight on PPV and that the Ultimate Fighter 5 starts after UFNL on Spike! I'm hyperventilating a bit waiting for this evening. Even though I'll miss mc chris...some sacrifices must be made. Here's Performify from UFCJunkie.com running down some of the fights at Fight Night Live tonight.

Rich Franklin has been reported as fighting Martin Kampmann (from Sherdog.com):


The next chapter in Rich Franklin's (Pictures) quest to regain the UFC middleweight crown will unfold on June 16 Sherdog.com has learned, when "Ace" faces Martin Kampmann (Pictures) in the main event of UFC's first foray into Ireland.
In his return to the Octagon after losing the belt to Anderson Silva, the 32-year-old Franklin easily stopped Jason MacDonald (Pictures) in early March. On that same card Kampmann, 24, endured Drew McFedries' power before winning by arm-triangle choke.
Having won each of his three UFC contests, the Dane (15-2-0) gets a chance to prove he belongs among the best at 185 when he steps in against Franklin (21-2-0, 1 NC; 8-1 in the UFC).
It's expected Zuffa will officially announce the fight during Thursday's UFC Fight Night telecast from Las Vegas on SpikeTV.
Also, a fight between Forrest Griffin (Pictures) and Hector Ramirez (Pictures) is being discussed.



I'm looking forward to a rematch for Ace, personally. He's an impressive fighter, even if the UFC brass has a bit too big of a hard-on for him. I liked how he told the crowd to STFU when they started booing the amazing Spider Silva. Boo-birds always amazed me. Boo before, if you must, but after everything's been laid on the line, shut your porkhole. Anyone who steps up deserves at least respect.

I got lots more I want to talk about, so stay tuned!

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Start!

This week seemed as good as any to start an MMA blog. With Ultimate Fight Night and TUF 5 on Thursday as well as UFC 69 Shootout and PRIDE 34 Kamikaze AND an IFL show...it boggles the mind. I'm going to try and post from very much a fan's point of view, with none of the snotty "I could roll with Minotauro" BS you see in some other blogs.
Hang in there, check back, and thanks for coming by.

 
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