I started to think about the Heavyweights in MMA, and it struck me that we haven't heard a thing about Josh Barnett, former UFC Heavyweight champ. His own site JoshBarnett.tv, has precious little info. It does have a lot of pics of Josh. Anyone have any tips?
You know, during the WEC event recently, they were heavily hyping promos of the show TapouT, featuring the people who run the eponymous clothing store travelling and interacting with fighters while running their business. The premise is they're looking for fighters to sponsor, tho I'm not too sure how that works out in practice, as so far two of the three episodes I've seen feature fighters from established camps and with relatively decent records. My first reaction was "Wow, that looks ridiculous", mainly because of the three hosts, "Mask" "Sky Scrape" and "Punkass". Mask wears face paint. All the time. Anyways, the show looked like a joke. But then I read Sam Caplan's rundown on 5 oz. of Pain and thought I'd give it another shot.
I'm going to spoil episodes so don't read any further if you don't want to know. I watch most MMA on DVR except UFC events, so I assume I'm behind everyone.
The episodes featuring Damacio Page and Matt Major have some interesting items, some feeling more staged than others. The staged bits feel like mini-infomercials, as much of the show does. Everything possible has a tapout logo on it, including the crotches of the models Mask shoots some catalog pics of in the first episode. The crew does some business, running a warehouse and acting confused by where things are. Then Mask calls Greg Jackson, one of the most well-known MMA trainers in the country, and asks if he has a fighter in one of the light classes who's "tatted up" and hispanic. Wouldn't you know, he does! There's a funny moment where Mask is going on and on about what he's looking for, then realized the call got disonnected. When he gets Jackson back on he tells him he's got just the guy.
The interesting part is when they show up at the gym, and You see the fighters working, with their coach instructing. At one point Diego Sanchez is chatting about his personal philosophy, which is kind of a lame and uninspired "Kill or be killed", as if that's some revelation. Page himself is smaller, tatted up hispanic guy. They decide he's driving with the Tapout kids from New Mexico, where Jackson's gym is, to Iowa, where the promotion is being held (It's Extreme Challenge 74, by the way. It looks like it was a regular card mixed in with a four-man tournament). Page's opponent's nickname is "The Mexicutioner", which makes me giggle. Page utterly destroys this kid, with a KO coming by way of elbow from the mount after nearly breaking his arm with an armbar. The other guy is a hometown boy, and Page is greeted with near silence up entering and leaving the cage. The real reward for Page is watching his opponent get helped gingerly making his way down the stairs, his cornermen saying "One at a time, one at a time". Like he's going to go skipping down stairs after getting his head nearly clean plucked from his body by a completely viscious elbow.
The last episode I watched featured Chuck Liddell's personal assistant Antonio Banuelos, the Iceman himself, John Hackelman (Chuck's trainer and longtime MMA legend, proprietor of The Pit), and a number of smokin' hot ladies. Chuck Liddell has a stripper pole in his house. And the base is all scuffed up from use. I'm going to pray it's chicks, because the thought of Chuck on that pole makes me a little woozy with dismay. This kid Banuelos is really endearing, he speaks earnestly and gets super-hyped for his bout. They show him talking about his past, training, doing his work ("I'm basically Chuck Liddell's bitch"), cleaning jocks ( don't need to see that again, by the way, TapouT crew), etc. They also show him going through cutting weight, which is intense. The fight itself is a tough one, and he gets caught by a wild uppercut in the scramble and flash-KO'd by Valencia, who all the people on the show say is "Really tough". Banuelos runs to the locker room and is quite emotional. Not quite "pulling a Wang" emotional, but close. To me it looked like he got hurt by Valencia's power and never really recovered. The KO came after Banuelos nearly secured a choke. Watching Chuck trying to console a fighter was fascinating, frankly. You never see the losers on most MMA shows outside "The Smashing Machine" and The Ultimate Fighter, and then it's pretty short. "That little bastard" crybaby Matt Wiman comes to mind. The TapouT crew is kind of silly too, with too many "Bro"s thrown in for my comfort. That's the emotionally skurred word to use when you're dealing with a man who's hurting but you're terrified of sounding like you have or understand feelings. "Bro, it's cool" "I was like bro, bro" "Brobrobro". Bro?
The thing is, even the obnoxiousness of the hosts in some cases doesn't take away from the fact that we're getting a look at the regimen and dedication these fighters need to prepare for a fight. The one exception was the Matt Major episode. This kid looks like an idiot. He was basically fighting a large brown marshmallow and was dead set to show off how well he could do spinning kicks. So instead of listening to his corner and finishing the guy, he lets it go to the cards. He wins, but seems to be more concerned with his own coolness than with winning. Add to that a near brawl after he gets in a much smaller man's face in the dressing room (kudos to the smaller guy for not backing down), yelling "Do you know who I am?!" Who cares, jerk. Frankly, guys like that piss me off, and they usually end up in jail. Or getting K'd the FO.
Overall, I'd recommend watching an ep or two, give it a shot. If you've got the DVR grab it. Try to get past the foolishiness of the opening credits and get to the actual fighters. That's where the meat in this sandwich is.
but TWO MMA interviews up.
Phil Baroni Sherdog, who's fighting Frank Shamrock this Friday, and Manny Gamburyan Sherdog, who's fighting Nate Diaz for the Ultimate Fighter 5 title this Saturday. I'm rooting for Manny.
Here's Baroni on Shamrock, from Sam's Five Ounces of Pain blog on cbssportsline.com:
As a person, he's not a good guy -- I think he's a scumbag, and I think he's an idiot. I really don't respect him as a person. I think he's a horrible businessman who f---s with a lot of people. He tries to play by his own rules. He's not honorable at all. I think he's a hypocrite in what he says.
While his most recent result, against Houston Alexander, was...uh...less than impressive, Keith Jardine had three fights in a row which were very impressive. He lost via decision to Stephen Bonnar, which I still cannot fathom how that came about, as Jardine whipped his ass for all but about 2 minutes of that fight, and had a win over Wilson Gouveia which impressed the heck out of me, and a picture-perfect devastation of Forest Griffin, ending it with what my friends and I called the "Hand of God"...reaching his hand up as far as he could and dropping it like massive thunderbolts on Griffin's helplessly-flopping melon. Of course, he came out and got his keister handed to him by a little-heralded 4-1 underdog who was a late replacement and a man who impressed the heck out of me.
So where does that leave Jardine? he's in the light heavyweight division, currently stocked with pretty much the best fighters in the world. Rampage, Shogun, Chuck, and Hendo to name the best four light heavies in the game today. Add to that guys like Wanderlei Sliva, Rashad Evans, Stephen Bonnar, Forest Griffin, and Tito Ortiz...and Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou, Vitor Belfort, Michael Bisping, Ricardo Arona, Jason Lambert, Babalu Sobral, and Jeremy Horn, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (Little Nog)....whew. Jardine's place also depends on whether Brandon Vera decides to fight in light heavy permanently. When's that guy going to fight again anyways?
Jardine's shown heart in his fights, great takedown defense, and technical expertise with an unortodox style. His fight against Gouveia had a great example of strategic adjustment mid-round, after losing the first round Jardine switched up and took the dude apart with pinpoint strikes and his bread-and-butter viscious leg kicks. Of course, Gouveia's rumored crap cardio comes into play here too... As I mentioned before, I feel like he absolutely destroyed Bonnar, that's one of the worst judges' calls I've ever seen. True, Bonnar nearly knocked him out, but still, that doesn't count more than 13 minutes of total domination. Bonnar could barely walk!
Ah well. My personal top light heavies would go like this:
1) Mauricio "Shogun" Rua
2) Quinton "Rampage" Jackson
3) Dan "Hollywood" Henderson
4) Chuck Liddell
5) Wanderlei Silva
6) Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou
7) Antonio Rogerio Nogueira
8) Ricardo Arona
9) Kazuhiro Nakamura
10) Tito "If I couldn't talk shit, I'd be silent" Ortiz
There's a lot of caveats in there, and a few fights coming up that will change things. I put Shogun on top because he beat Jackson badly. Jackson did a good job on Chuck, but I thought it was an a-typical result. Of course, if you beat a guy twice, the typical result for your sample size is you beat that guy. I had a hard time not putting The Pride of Murrieta higher, with no head-to-head showdown with Shogun. Dan holds two belts. He beat the living hell out of Wanderlei. He beats people up. He has shown inconsistency in the past.
But that's my top ten and I'll live with it. If Tito loses to Rashad he's off, but I don't know who I put up there in his place...I mean, what, Rashad? Not proven in a lot of ways. It's a hard thing for me to figure, since I don't have the long experience of other commenters. I'll ask for anyone who happens by to give me their list, and I dig feedback. As for Jardine, the point of this whole thing, I'd say he's somewhere down around 13-14th right now, maybe a notch lower after getting whupped. But every fighter gets whupped. That's what fighting is all about: getting your ass kicked, and coming back strong. We all get beat up, every day. These guys just do it with fists, and knees, and bad-ass flying guard passes.
why not, for the ultimate fighter, let the coaches bring two fighters they recruit in to the comeptition?
that would be interesting, and we'd likely have fewer Berube's, Geraghty's, and Noah's.
whatching the Bodog show on ION from Costa Rica, they've shown Nick "The Goat" Thompson vs. a guy named Denes who doesn't show up on Sherdog, and Eddie Alvarez vs. Henze. Nick and Eddie dominated, and they're going to show the pay-per-view from the Fedor-Lindland event from a couple months ago that I watched with my brother. Alvarez is a pretty interesting fighter...I'd like to see him in the UFC some day. He got dominated by Thompson in that fight tho, and Thompson won the "belt" for Bodog's Welterweight division. rewatching this bout, there's no damn way Thompson should be a welterweight...he's 6'1" and Alvarez looks like a midget...I guess if a guy cuts weight...
The first round on a second viewing was closer than I remembered. But still, I'd like to see Thompson as a middleweight. He's got great standup and he's a crafty fighter...Thompson vs. Spider Silva might be a good fight.
The Pride "sale" is just a big old cluster-fornication. They're also leaving some of the best fighters in limbo, like "Hellboy" Hansen, and quite a few others. Mach Sakurai, Wand, Fedor (Fedor insists he's a free agent), Aleks, also. Many sources are saying Pride is finished for good...I'd hate to see that, Pride serviced a unique niche, and some of the fights, and fighters, it produced were and are legend. Shogun!
Of course, most of these guys will fight where the money is, and were probably only in Japan because they were offering more cash...but still, I'm a fan, and have a simplistic view of life, mainly drawn in crayon. Pride's fate puts a big steamer right in the middle of my construction paper.
