MMA News and Discussion Thread

[Enter Blue Guy]

The rest of the event schedule for the rest of the year, both confirmed and rumored, stolen shamelessly from MMA Weekly rumors section. The rankings are the MMA Weekly rankings.

UFC 74: AUGUST 25, 2007 IN LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

venue: Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada

-Randy Couture (#5 Heavyweight in the World)* vs. Gabriel Gonzaga (#6 Heavyweight in the World)*

-Georges St. Pierre (#2 Welterweight in the World)* vs. Josh Koscheck (#4 Welterweight in the World)*

-Joe Stevenson vs. Kurt Pellegrino

-Marcus Aurelio vs. Clay Guida

-Renato "Babalu" Sobral vs. David Heath

-Kendall Grove vs. Patrick Cote

-Travis Lutter vs. Ryan Jensen

[ACCBiggz]

That Cage Rage event is only 10 dollars on Dish Network (dunno if available on others.)

-Mauricio "Shogun" Rua (#1 Light Heavyweight in the World)* vs. TBA (could be Machida)

Edited July 10, 2007 by ACCBiggz

[naiwf]

How do they still have Cro Cop ranked 3 spots ahead of Gonzaga after the MURDER DEATH KILL kick that robbed Mirko of his title shot?

[ACCBiggz]

Because CroCop was #2 and Gonzaga wasn't even on the board. With that said some of their rankings are quite...stupid shall we say. But yes, in my rankings I still have Cro Cop over Gonzaga.

[naiwf]

It just seems a little odd that if Gonzaga beats Couture and wins the UFC title he'll probably still be ranked a spot or two lower than Cro Cop *assuming he beats Kongo). It's not really important, just something that stood out to me.

[apsham]

If someone wins a title don't they just jump to the top anyways?

[Enter Blue Guy]

Cro Cop had a strong 2006, which left him at least at #2 or even arguably #1. Nobody really seemed to care about Gonzaga until he was signed to fight Mirko. I wouldn't have ranked him in my top 10 before he beat Cro Cop either.

[Fitzy]

If someone wins a title don't they just jump to the top anyways?

Edited July 10, 2007 by Wild Fitz Hickman

[naiwf]

If someone wins a title don't they just jump to the top anyways?

Edited July 10, 2007 by naiwf

[Enter Blue Guy]

Also neither Rampage or Henderson are #1 at 205. But yeah, it's MMA Weekly's rankings, not official rankings. I mean, it's the closest thing to "official" out there, but it's not like they hold the power determine who the top contenders are out there.

Personally, I think title holders should be #1 or #2 if there are two belts in a division. Problem is there are belts not being defended, due to Pride being MIA and everything moving to the UFC.

Edited July 10, 2007 by Enter Blue Guy

[ACCBiggz]

I personally don't rank champions, I move them to the top. But it was hard to do that with 2 champions and the like. I don't have Gomi #1 lightweight either, I would actually probably either have Sherk or Penn sitting in that position (regardless if Penn's first 155 match in years was just last month). And I agree with Shogun #1 205 pounder.

[ACCBiggz]

Silva-Liddell fight quashed

By Kevin Iole, Yahoo! Sports

July 11, 2007

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is scrambling for a main event for the company's planned Sept. 22 show at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif., after light heayweight Wanderlei Silva told UFC president Dana White through an intermediary that he did not want to fight Chuck Liddell.

White said he had reached terms for Liddell, arguably the UFC's most popular fighter and its recently deposed 205-pound champion, to meet the Brazilian Silva in a highly anticipated bout at UFC 76.

But White said Wednesday he was told by a member of Silva's Chute Box team that Silva did not want to fight Liddell. White said the deadline for having the fight made was Wednesday.

"This is the worst news I could have possibly gotten," White said. "It's horrendous. I have been trying to make this fight for six years. I have done everything in my power I could do over the last six years to make this fight and it's still not happening. I just don't see it happening now."

The UFC has already signed two bouts for the Sept. 22 card. Light heavyweight Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, a long-time star in Japan's Pride Fighting Championship, will make his UFC debut by taking on Lyoto Machida. Diego Sanchez will also face Jon Fitch in a welterweight bout.

Neither of those is a main event-type of bout that could carry a pay-per-view card in a large arena. Given that most of the UFC's other top draws are already scheduled, White is left without a main event for a significant card.

"This just happened (Wednesday afternoon) and I'm not sure what we're going to do," White said. "We're trying to figure it out. It's not a fun time right now."

Silva, 31, hasn't fought since losing his 205-pound Pride belt to Dan Henderson on Feb. 24 in Las Vegas. He was knocked out in the second round of that bout and was stopped in the first round of a Sept. 10 fight with Mirko Cro Cop.

He's also lost three of his last five, which White conceded took some of the luster off a potential fight between the two.

White had announced that Silva and Liddell would meet during a UFC pay-per-view show in 2006, but he then was unable to finalize a deal with the then-owners of Pride. Zuffa, the company that owns the UFC, subsequently purchased Pride earlier this year.

"Look what I've done to get that fight made," White said. "I took Chuck over and had him fight in the (Pride) Grand Prix so he could fight Wanderlei. They (Pride officials) wouldn't do the fight unless we put Chuck in the Grand Prix, but then Chuck ran into Rampage Jackson and he (lost) and the fight with Wanderlei didn't happen.

"And then I bring him into the ring at one of our biggest pay-per-views, at a time when they were really in a lot of trouble, because I wanted to make that fight. It shows you how incredibly stupid those people were, because they took what could have been the biggest fight in this sport's history and blew it up."

Neither Liddell nor Silva could be reached for comment. There is a very brief video of Liddell and Silva on Silva's web site, but White was adamant that the bout that was a dream match for many hardcore mixed martial arts fans is dead, probably forever.

He said he's not certain if he'll keep Liddell on that card and match him with another opponent. A possibility would be to bring in more fighters who are under contract with Pride and have them fight in the main event.

White said he planned to go ahead with Rua against Machida and wasn't at the moment considering a Rua-Liddell bout.

"We haven’t really had enough time to figure this out because it all just came down," White said. "It's been a bad day ever since I heard that."

[Enter Blue Guy]

Shot to the balls.

I can't see Silva not wanting to fight Chuck, he's the type of guy who'll fight anyone. There has to be something to this, whether he has other arrangements, he's not happy with the contract or plans on taking time off. It just doesn't make sense that he flat out refused to fight Chuck, especially since it's been in the making for so long an he's never had a problem about fighting him before.

A possibility would be to bring in more fighters who are under contract with Pride and have them fight in the main event.

[ACCBiggz]

I see Fedor being announced at 74 and the announcement of him vs. the winner. Fedor is going straight for the title. As for who they could bring in, I have no clue.

[ACCBiggz]

Sport, not savagery

Just like any sport, education is required to fully understand it

By Mike Chiappetta

NBCSports.comUpdated: Jul.12, 2007, 12:50 pm EDT

Wednesday on Sidelines, the daily sports commentary Web show run on this site, NBCSports.com's Jimmy Roberts denounced the sport of mixed martial arts, saying, "Don't try and pretend it's anything other than what it really is: savagery."

In full disclosure, Roberts has won multiple Sports Emmy Awards, has worked in the journalism field for three decades and is generally respected as one of the top reporters in the field.

Without a doubt, it's an enviable resume, but it doesn't make him right about this topic.

Roberts goes on to liken his argument on MMA's "savagery" to former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous explanation of obscenity, "I know it when I see it."

Here's the problem with that argument as its stands. History shows that Potter later recanted his obscenity explanation, saying it was an untenable definition, one that was baseless and simplistic. So, in the halls of justice, it doesn't stand up as an argument, and I will not let Roberts get away with it here, either.

There are certain things we "know" as soon as we see them. As a simple example, we know right away whether we think someone is attractive. But the problem with such quick judgments is that there is always subtext below the surface. We often discover that the attractive person may have an abrasive personality, a drug problem or some other characteristic that diminishes our original assessment.

At first glance, mixed martial arts is indeed a violent sport. That is indisputable. It is no different than football, hockey and boxing in that regard. But the subtext – the beauty to the sport – is in the layers beneath, the techniques that must be learned through years of practice, and for fans, years of viewing.

Think back to the first time you watched a football game. Maybe you were five or eight or even 16 years old, but what did you think the first time you saw a tailback run off left tackle on fourth-and-one and get stopped for no gain? You probably thought, "What was all that effort for? They accomplished nothing."

But look deeper; there is more to the play. The quarterback hard counts to draw the opponent offside. The center snaps the ball and seals the nose tackle. The right guard pulls to open a lane. On the defensive side, the down linemen engage their blocks, the middle linebacker reads the center and anticipates the play, beats the right guard to the spot and stops the play cold.

In time we learn that we have just seen more than a pile of humanity. We learn to watch Brian Urlacher or Ray Lewis read the play, avoid the blocker and tackle the runner. We know there are 11 players on each side working together to achieve a goal. There is give and take, push and pull, and there is no way to know that without being educated about the sport. It is not hard-wired into our brain, even if you've been watching so long that you've forgotten that you actually had to learn about it.

It is no different in mixed martial arts. "I know it when I see it" suggests that there is nothing more than two unskilled beasts fighting without any plan or goal. It disregards that most fighters come from disciplines like Greco-Roman wrestling, boxing, judo, karate and jiu-jitsu. Separately, these fighting forms are respected; some are even Olympic sports broadcast on this network. Yet somehow, when put together, they become "savagery"?

Does that make sense?

The interesting thing here is that many of these sports exist in an amateur setting, yet despite the fact that many pursue the sport for years, there has been no professional outlet for, say, a judo practitioner or an All-America collegiate wrestler. And so, it makes sense that over time, the participants wondered, "What is the practical use of the sport I've spent a lifetime on? "

Mixed martial arts is a simple extension of that, the interest in finding out which discipline and ultimately, which man, is best in a fight.

Just because you don't understand that the man on the bottom, with his opponent in guard, is in a 50-50 position (meaning he is just as capable of winning the fight as his opponent), doesn't mean it's barbarism. Just because you don't understand that a choke hold has been medically proven to cause no lasting damage when applied properly doesn't mean it's savage. And just because you don't understand the complexity of the gogoplata doesn't mean it's not a thing of beauty.

See, there is education involved in any sport, and nobody is forcing you to learn it, but if you're going to criticize it, you should probably know something about it first.

To call it savage and barbaric is an insult to its practitioners, who are incredibly well trained, and respectful of one another.

At UFC 73, I sat ringside in Sacramento watching Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira and Heath Herring battle for 15 minutes. When it was over, Herring's left eye was bruised and his face was bloodied, but only after he'd nearly knocked Nogueira silly with a head kick. The two had clearly been in a battle. Still, after the fight, the two shook hands and spoke of each other with high praise. Hours later, many of the fighters who had just competed against each other were celebrating together in the same hotel bar. Does that sound like a roomful of savages?

Disliking mixed martial arts is anyone's right. The sport is not for everyone, but no sport is. Roberts' quick dismissal of MMA as a savage sport is akin to dismissing a book by its cover. So next time you are flipping by a channel showing MMA, feel free to flip right on by if you don't like it. That is your right. But if you've never taken the time to learn about it, you don't have the right to attack it. Instead, allow yourself the very real possibility that unlike the famous quote that Justice Stewart not-so-famously recanted, you have no idea what you just saw.

[Fitzy]

MMAWeekly posted this today about Silva stating he never said he wouldn't fight Chuck and says he had the option to fight him in September or November and he has chosen November from the start.

Wanderlei Silva responds via video posted on his website to the allegations that he turned down a fight with Chuck Liddell for UFC 76 in September.

In the video Wanderlei stated, "I never said that I wouldn't fight Chuck. I've wanted this fight for a long time"

The former Pride champion continued, "I received a contract with two options, I could fight in September or November. I have chosed to make this fight in November. I was the first to want this fight, but they kept avoiding this fight. Now there's a lot of people saying that I have ducked Chuck. This is not true"

According to Silva, the timing for the fight to take place in September did not work for him. He explained, "I am in a moment of transition in my life. I'm going to move to the U.S. in a few weeks. I'm going to live in the U.S. and there's a lot of things happening, and I'm not focused on training the way I want to be. I always fought at the time the promoters wanted. Sometimes I did things I should not have done, but this time I won't do that anymore."

Denying he ever turned down a fight with Chuck Liddell, Silva said, "I want to fight chuck in November and make a huge show, and make it the biggest show ever...I have no doubts it's the most important fight of my life. I know Chuck is a great name in the U.S., we'll do a great fight. I think I must be in my best shape, so I want this time to train better to be in my bets shape ever."

Wanderlei asserted, "This fight is on, if he Chuck doesn't hide behind this mess."

[ACCBiggz]

Liddell vs. Jardine is currently rumored to be agreed upon.

[ACCBiggz]

This isn't news... but it's just awesome.

[Enter Blue Guy]

All news stolen from MMA Weekly, except for the last one, which I stole from Sherdog.

The following is an article from Multichannel News:

Spike TV Set to Wrestle UFC Deal

Men’s-Targeted Network to Retain Ultimate Fighter, Air More Live Events

By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 7/13/2007 5:22:00 PM

Spike TV is on the verge of pinning down a multiyear, multimillion-dollar renewal of its Ultimate Fighting Championship distribution deal, according to sources close to the network.

The new deal, which is expected to cost Spike in excess of $100 million, will allow the men’s-targeted network to keep its popular Ultimate Fighter reality series. The pact will also give Spike more live UFC events than the previous agreement, which expired at the end of last year.

Executives from Spike would not comment, and UFC executives could not be reached for comment at press time.

Edited July 14, 2007 by Enter Blue Guy

[Godfatha]

I'll say this as a...middle ground watcher of MMA (someplace between casual and hardcore watcher), I personally think UFC should try their best to get Gomi. His bout with Diaz, while wildly chaotic, was gripping. That said, UFC can't really have a lot of those type of fights because it goes against their edict that this is about skill and not clobbering people.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on my experience with the people around me, and Joe Rogan's constant ranting during bouts, the common person who's familiar with boxing but not familiar with the nuances of MMA (i.e. a significant portion of the viewing audience) would much rather see KO's than submission victories or mat based MMA action. With Gomi on board and his hammer hands, it could really spice up an already hot division. That said, his bout with Diaz showed how gassed Gomi can get in a short amount of time, but dammit, I still like him.