MMA News and Discussion Thread

[Guest Lt Gen Potato Head]

UFC94 complete thoughts:

Spoiler: Click here to view

Called it! This wasn't a case of Penn looking bad, it was just that GSP looked that much better. Fuck, I don't think anybody can stop this guy unless maybe Anderson Silva decides to cut some more wait (Thiago Alves has the best shot of anyone, and that's still not much).

Machida looked almost as impressive in his win, good to see him finally in title contention.

Poor Stephan Bonnar. He's not the fighter he was on TUF anymore, and he'll probably hang around for a bit because of name value, but he's never going to be a major player. Jon Jones might be okay if he were in any other division, but 205's too stacked for him to make much of an impact.

Kim/Karo started off all right, but the third round was one of the most boring rounds I've ever seen. Don't think either of these guys will ever be near the top.

Guida/Diaz was exciting and I think the right guy won.

Great show overall.

[Guest Lt Gen Potato Head]

Okay and even though we saw a full nelson, an awesome suplex, and some hilarious commentary, Thiago Alves won the night with his saying he deserves a "shitle tot".

[Enter Blue Guy]

Spoiler: Click here to view

Vintage GSP. He even made it look easy against BJ. I dunno who beats this guy for the belt, but I guess if the unbeatable Welterweight defends his title against the unbeatable Lightweight, doesn't it only makes sense he challenges for the unbeatable Middleweight's title next? How many guys does GSP have to beat in this fashion until the UFC green lights Silva/GSP at 185? My guess is not many. I'll call Silva/GSP somtime by next January at the latest.

Guida stole that fight from Nate. Most other fighters would have been stifled by Nate's reach and been hesitant to get in close quarters. Clay Guida is exactly what Joe Rogan said, glue, craziest of crazy glue. Guida survived whatever exchanges he had to and put on the best wrestling clinic anybody at 5'7 could against somebody as tall, lanky, and wiley as Nate. After eating all those shots in the third only to say "fuck you" and take back control of the fight. One of the hardest fought victories I've seen. Clay is an animal. Anybody who has anything ill to say about his guy is as nuts as Guida is in the cage.

Beautiful win for Lyoto. Great finish. Leg trip, bomb through the guard, another for your trouble. Lyoto ends fights with his hands now, folks. I hope this trend continues. I can't wait to see the speed and strength of Evans vs. the ELUSIVENESS and counter genius of Machida.

I missed the entire Bonnar/Jones fight. No comment. For some reason I keep on calling Jones, Jon Jonas. I have the Disney Channel on my mind apparently.

The huge Judo showdown hardly caught my attention after the first. So Karo won by decision I assume? But seriously, I think Kim has some nice tools. Karo is a tough up in opponents for him. Title material? I dunno, but he should provide for some nice competition. I hope they keep him around for a bit longer, unless the whole point of having Kim in the UFC was to up Karo's credentials.

[Fitzy]

Spoiler: Click here to view

Good fight between Guida and Diaz. Guida is so much fun in the cage. Very exciting and explosive. He never stops and keeps coming for you. I wouldn't mind seeing him next in there with Griffin again. I think they could have another awesome fight. Maybe Gray Maynard or Spencer Fisher against Guida too. Either of those three would be good stuff.

Parisyan vs. Kim was not very good. Neither looked good in there, to be honest.

Sucks about Bonnar. He is pretty much a gate keeper of the Light Heavyweight division.

Lyoto Machida! I hope this finally shuts people up about him. He continues to improve with every fight and is one of the smartest fighters out there. I really don't think he should have to wait for the decision of Quinton Jackson vs. Keith Jardine, though. He should be the number one contender right now.

Awesome performance by GSP. Total domination. Looks like BJ Penn eats his words saying that he would never quit, give up, or have a towel thrown in for him. GSP vs. Alves should be next and if he wins that which I am sure he will, then bring on Anderson Silva.

Also on fiveouncesofpain I read that Penn's camp is filing a complaint to the NSAC about Vaseline on the back of GSP between rounds one and two.

Las Vegas - During Saturday’s UFC 94 main event that featured UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre defending his title against UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn, Nevada State Athletic Commission Executive Director Keith Kizer could be seen entering the cage between rounds.

Kizer approached the corner for St. Pierre and the two parties exchanged words. At the time, the nature of the conversation was unclear but the blog CagePotato.com is now reporting that Penn’s camp has filed a formal complaint with NSAC.

According to Cage Potato, Penn’s camp has accused one of St. Pierre’s cornermen of applying Vaseline to St. Pierre’s back between rounds. It’s an accusation that was supported by UFC President Dana White during the event’s post-fight press conference.

“I saw the commission jump up there and flipping out,” Cage Potato quotes White as saying. “They said one of the guys was rubbing Vaseline on Georges’ back in between rounds. It was one and two, I think.

“The guys from the athletic commission went up there and started screaming at them. Knocked the Vaseline and kicked the Vaseline out of the Octagon.”

Regardless of what the commission decides, it’s very unlikely that NSAC would rule to change the outcome of the fight. At most, if a corner person is determined to have committed the alleged act, he could face displinary action on an individual basis.

“Some Vaseline on a guy’s back didn’t change the outcome of that fight, but you don’t do it,” White stated.

[IAceI]

GSP/Penn and some Machida/Silva probably.

Spoiler: Click here to view

GSP! GSP! I love both fighters but GSP is just simply phenomenal. Claiming his stake on the P4P rankings to be near #1 now that's for sure. He dismantled an extremely good opponent. Rogan/Goldberg said the first was even, I had it 10-9 GSP with ease. Penn was mountain no offence and I'm not sure GSP really took much of a blow. Plus GSP was doing all the work, and that's the price you pay if you're trying to counter, it doesn't work for you on the scorecards. By the end of round 4 I had the fight 40-34 to GSP. I had 2 and 4 as 10-8 rounds, but there wasn't too much between 2 and 3 in terms of domination on GSP's part. Top bloke as well, really admirable, first thing he done was make sure Penn was okay. None of this cuntish 25 minute celebration followed by a consolation pat on the shoulder to a phenomenal fighter. Then again GSP is probably quite aware that Penn was feeling pretty beaten up given the fact he'd been punching him in the face for 20 minutes. Annoyed with the Herb "Don't punch the back of the head" bullshit. Because GSP wasn't even able to see, he had his head contorted in the other direction and Herb was making it out like he's a cheating bastard or something.

Still, that was meant to be a close fight and it was anything but. Total and completely utter domination on the part of the French-Canuck and quite frankly, I wasn't expecting it, but it was great to see. Can't see who can stop GSP now, although I'd love to see Anderson Silva and GSP go at it sometime, just for the sheer spectacle but both are too valuable commodities and there'd always be the fact someone would be fighting down or up their best weight to overshadow it.

The ELUSIVE Machida with a win. I saw the file wasn't very big in terms of megabytes so I feared the worst as Silva was just going to come at him and I didn't expect Machida to stop him. So I assume Silva was gonna punk him out, but anything but happened. Silva paid the price for doing what everyone tries to do and catching Machida, he didn't just chase him though.. he did it ten fold and he did it badly. Obviously the dull moment was the low blow, unintentionally of course, but it's never good to see, especially as a male. It started off pretty meh I thought, Machida was being TOO ELUSIVE if you ask me, I mean, he's ELUSIVE~ but it seemed overly at first. Probably just getting the feel of him. But then he started countering a bit more and landing blows and if anything showed strength I don't think many people knew he had. I mean, it wasn't so much a take down at the end as he just threw Silva on the mat and then planted him in the face. I think to a degree Silva thought it was too close to the end of the round but clearly Machida didn't and knocked him out with that first blow. Second one was on the buzzer but the damage was done. So Machida showed something we don't see or hear much about him. To a point I think his ELUSIVENESS is built up to such a high degree even by his opponents, people forget that he can knock you out and don't seem to expect it. Will catch the other fights sometime, was just mainly interested in them two though.

[bolleje]

Spoiler: Click here to view

What do you have to do exactly to score a 10-8 or 10-7 round??? Rip the other guy's arm off? I really don't understand how Jon Jones could not have gotten a 10-8 or 10-7 in that first round.

Or how fair is it that Parisyan won because of two mediocre rounds (both 10-9) while Kim had a very good first round (but that one also scoring 10-9...). I just think there should be a greater difference in the point-scoring each round.

[ZJ Penn]

Yeah everyones got a different opinion on fight scoring. Either the 10 point must system or the Pride "score the fight, not the rounds" both have their +'s and -'s. I liked the Pride scoring as even with two rounds that were pretty even, a dominating round for one fighter can be enough to take the fight. But saying that, they had more than their fair share of bullshit decisions.

And just out of interest, can anyone remember a fight featuring a 10-6 round? I know that it should probably be stopped in that instance, but a 10-7 with a foul is easily possible.

[Gabriel]

Spoiler: Click here to view

My personal scoring for the Kim/Parisyan fight, was as follows: 10-8 Kim, 10-9 Karo, 10-9 Karo.

Even then, I figured the second or third round could have been given to Kim without an argument from me... so I expected either a draw, or a Stun Gun victory... needless to say, I was shocked that Parisyan won the fight.

[Fitzy]

--An update on the Vaseline scandal involving Georges St. Pierre and his corner from Saturday night's match. As of press time, B.J. Penn's camp had not filed a complaint with the Nevada State Athletic Commission. According to Keith Kizer, Executive Director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, what happened was one of the commission inspectors saw Phil Nurse, as he rubbed Vaseline on St. Pierre's face after the first round, touch his back without wiping the Vaseline off. Several commissioners were aware as the second round went on, and were watching closely after the second round, where they saw a person they identified as Greg Jackson (most stories say it was Nurse again), do the same thing. If was between rounds two and three that the commotion took place with the commission reacting immediately and they wiped off St. Pierre's back. They also wiped off St. Pierre's back again after round three. Penn himself told an inspector on his side of the ring after round two that he thought St. Pierre was greased. Kizer said both Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White after the match and questioned whether Nurse or Jackson should ever be allowed to corner again. White, who saw the incident between rounds two and three and was also alerted to the round one incident at some point in round two, said that he thought the guy (s) who did it, without mentioning any names, should be banned by the athletic commission from every cornering again. Kizer said it was not gobs of Vaseline on St. Pierre's back, but the back was touched after the Vaseline was rubbed on his face, and before the hands were wiped clean with a towel. Jackson told MMAweekly.com yesterday saying Nurse was doing a ritual taught to him by a "witch doctor" named Steven Friend, who has worked with St. Pierre for years. "We told our side of the story, we said we didn't mean to put any grease anywhere," said Jackson. "If we were trying to grease the back,we'd be greasing up and down. We would make it count. We wouldn't do a little tiny spot in the back. The whole thing doesn't make any sense, so they were fine with it once we gave our explanation."

[Fitzy]

MPH won't like this.

Ben Saunders is out and Tamdan McCrory for UFC 96. He is out with a foot injury.

[Krone]

Damn, but the Barn Cat from up here in New York is headed back into the Octagon. Wo0t!

[Guest Lt Gen Potato Head]

Well the silver lining is that we might thus see Saunders/Hazelett in the future.

Also, look for a MMA scoring debate thread tonight.

[Gene Kiniski]

The Vaseline thing doesn't really bother me due to the fact that it seems like more of a simple "my bad" (poor wording, I know) type of thing rather than a cheating tactic. With the way the fight went I'm not sure that little hand prints would have made much of a difference.

Now, that is my thoughts as a fan. However, from a fighters perspective I'm pretty sure it'd be impaired.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

So I don't know why, but I've been thinking about UFC's television/PPV structure.

Most major sports (everything but boxing and wrestling) get the vast majority of their revenue from TV contracts.

Let's say UFC has four PPVs a year which do a million buys, and eight which do half a million (probably a slight overestimation for 2008, slight underestimation for 2009). At $45 each, that would be $360 million/year in PPV revenue alone.

Now, let's say that a major television player was willing to pay $500 million/year (unlikely as it's almost NFL-level money, but bear with me) for exclusive UFC rights. Let's say that provider was Disney, and they wanted monthly specials on ABC (basically what would be on PPV now), along with a live weekly show on ESPN2 (slightly lower quality than current Fight Nights). UFC could retain complete control over their broadcast other than that they'd have to say stuff like "UFC 105 on ABC" and maybe use ESPN graphics.

Should UFC take this offer? Is it worth beefing up their roster to accomodate weekly shows?

And then from the other side of the aisle, should Disney make this offer? It's hard to say how PPV buys translate into TV ratings, but past Spike specials have shown that big matches can get milliions of people to a cable network, could even bigger matches and a broadcast network (plus advertising and hype on ESPN) produce big enough numbers for this contract to be worth it to ABC?

[ZJ Penn]

I'm not sure that little hand prints would have made much of a difference.

But yeah, I don't think it amounts to much, given that he was soundly beaten all-round and I'm not sure if that .gif is a result of the vaseline or not. GSP took that fight hands down as shown by BJ being a punching bag in the later rounds. Vaseline or not, the result would have been the same.

Edited February 5, 2009 by Private ZJ

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Rumour has it that Strikeforce could be buying what's left of EXC as soon as Friday.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

And on another note,

Dana White being interviewed by a Canadian late-night talk show a few weeks ago.

[ZJ Penn]

That's certainly a spectacular surname.

Unionise? That guy couldn't even balance a cheque book. He's an idiot.

Edited February 5, 2009 by Private ZJ

[Gene Kiniski]

Rumour has it that Strikeforce could be buying what's left of EXC as soon as Friday.

I hope this deal goes through.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

It's official as per Meltzer (members-only report).

Strikeforce now has all the key EXC fighters and TV deals. There will be a show on Showtime on 4/11 headlined by Frank Shamrock. CBS will probably have quarterly shows.