brashleyholland

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="damonster" data-cite="damonster" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="26660" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>for free?</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Well ESPN is £10 a month (or included in some premium packages) so it's not technically free....but once you have it you can access all their on demand stuff without additional charges.</p>

Not considering PPV at the moment, they know the situation with it over here. And yeah, if you've got ESPN, just find ESPN on demand/sport on demand or whatever it is and there will be the last couple of cards and some Unleashed etc

I dunno what time the clocks actually go back, but the prelims on FB start at the same time as usual (11:30pm), so the Spike/UFC.tv prelims will start at 1am and the main card at 2am, same as usual. I'll be changing my clocks after it's started, just to avoid confusion. Don't expect much from ESPN with regards to UFC programming now. Now that the Fox deal is done, UFC will be going to Sky in August. It seems they're content to use Premier Sports/UFC.tv/FX for the Fight Nights, UFC on Versus/Fox/Ultimate Finales etc instead of renegotiating with ESPN like they used to, and ESPN have basically taken a 'screw you guys, then' approach. Less advertising, less replays, less broadcast consistency for things like MMA Live. Are you on Virgin Media/BT Vision? You should be able to get the main card OnDemand by Sunday morning though if you are.

Hopefully they pair him up with Florian for the Fox and TUF Live shows, great chemistry there. Gutted Quadros didn't get the call though.

I've got Diaz, Kongo, Jorgensen, Nelson, Hioki, Cerrone, Griffin, Vera, Nijem, Camozzi and Jacoby. £10 to win £880, rubbish for betting this card.

I don't think anyone is expecting fighters to have $50,000 stashed away for medical expenses, but you'd thing that having an insurance policy would be a top priority for an athlete. A mate of mine is a footballer, he has insurance that specifically covers knee and ankle injuries, because if they go he can't make a living. I think the point people are making is that she should sell the car before asking people for $5,000. Although if she's paying in instalments, the devaluation on the car might remove that as an option. And agreed, it's not Bellator's fault, but it damages their image to have a prominent fighter, one of their champions no less, on the scrounge for her medical fees while their calling her a 'world champion' or whatever. I suppose you could always make the argument that she's not exactly a prominent fighter after the way they've promoted her. True that. I don't know the area where his school is, but I'm told it's not exactly a financially solvent area. As for pros, the biggest names training with him are Rich Franklin and Dustin Hazelett, so it's hardly a champion factory. There was also some story a while back about him supposedly getting screwed over by his business partners, but I can't remember the details off the top of my head.

Interesting story doing the rounds at the moment regarding Bellator champion Zoila Gurgel (Frausto), wife of former UFC and current (I think?) Strikeforce fighter Jorge Gurgel. Basically she tore her ACL (horrible injury, from multiple personal experiences) and due to some lapse/mix up with her medical insurance, she's asking for fans to help foot the bill. Bellator don't cover out of competition injuries, leaving the couple saddled with something like $5,000 worth of medical bills. $2,000 has been raised so far. That number is crazy to me, as here in the UK we typically don't pay for healthcare. I guess that's just the reality of life for folks in the US...but without getting into a politics debate on healthcare, what do people think about the Gurgels asking fans for money? To throw some fuel on the fire, someone on the UG trawled her twitter and brought up the fact that she purchased herself a flashy new car a couple of months ago. Not cool if she's then asking for handouts. On the flip side, if people are willing to help out, where's the harm? From a strictly MMA point of view this makes Bellator look really second rate, especially in light of the UFC's healthcare policy. Sure, they can't do something similar, but when one of your champions is essentially begging in public for money to cover an injury sustained in training for a Bellator fight, the promotion comes off as seriously bush league.

Nobody is picking TUF coaches based on their coaching ability though. It's personality first and foremost, and Jones has that in spades. Coaching against a perfect foil in Rashad would do wonders for his profile. Remember, TUF is 'live' as of next year, so filming will actually take 10-12 weeks, with the coaches moving their own camps to Vegas to run simultaneously with the show. If the finale is at the end of April/early May, Jones will have a nice long break between the Machida fight and the coaches fight.

On the press call he said he's looking at Superbowl weekend. He'll be ready to go back to regular training by the end of November, but wont be ready to fight until the end of Jan/early Feb. GSP vs Condit and Diaz/Penn vs Koscheck makes sense for a Superbowl card, and means they don't have to rush the Machida/Jones winner back. If Penn loses he'll probably call it quits. If Condit vs Diaz would be a good fight though, but I can't see Penn beating Diaz.

Pride versions of Mark Coleman and Heath Herring have been confirmed for UFC Undisputed 3.

I don't. It's not fair on the fighters who have trained for a 3 round fight. At that level everything is a fine science; you train in a certain way to peak at a certain time, so asking someone to nearly double their amount of athletic output time is a big ask. Cheap move by Diaz' camp if you ask me. There's no way Penn can come out of it looking good. Diaz' biggest asset is his cardio, so Penn has to either put himself at risk in that respect, or look like a coward in the eyes of the majority of fans who don't know any better by turning it down. Typical Cesar Gracie douchebag move :-p If GSP could return before the end of the year, and Diaz won emphatically/quickly, I wouldn't be massively surprised to see him leapfrog Condit into a title fight. They REALLY need Lesnar and GSP to fight in 2011 to up the PPV averages, but at this point, they've probably written it off. But lets say Diaz wins and Condit still fights GSP early next year. I guess the only fight that makes sense for Diaz in the meantime is Koscheck. Terrible fight for Diaz though.

Isn't it the same guy who played him in Thor? Anyway, as a...casual, I guess...comic book fan, I can probably answer this for you. I don't really have any idea who Hawkeye is, other than that he's a dude with a bow and arrow. I think I have an Avengers book where he comes back from the dead and turns into a ninja. And he's called Clint Barton? Burton? That's genuinely all I know about him, and I'm a nerd. I expect that a large portion of the people who see that trailer, and the film itself, will remember him as 'the guy with the bow and arrow from Thor' if at all. The selling points are gonna be Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Cap...then you have Samuel L Fury and the pretty red head lady...that's more than enough. I'm guessing Hawkeye is gonna be filler/background, lest they fall into the X-Men 3 trap of flooding the screen with as many characters as possible. Have the villains been confirmed yet, outside of Loki?

So there's some interesting stuff that's been going down with K-1 over the past couple of days. - Over the past few weeks, Simon Rutz (head of It's Showtime) has said that his fighters will not participate in the K-1 WGP until he is paid at least the $400,000 they are owed in fighter purses. (He's also allegedly owed on other contracts to the tune of over $1mil). - Rutz had set a deadline of sometime last week for K-1 to pay up, and it passed. He extended it, and that passed. - A couple of days ago, a Dutch blog revealed that K-1 had offered packages to certain fighters to secure their participation. If fighters agreed to the terms, they would have money owed transferred immediately. The catch? They would waive the legal right to 50% of the money owed... - Rutz has said today (Friday) that unless K-1 transfer the money by close of business, it's not going to happen. (The 'Final 16' is in two weeks time). He told me earlier that they didn't come through, and that fans should look to the 'It's Showtime' event in Jan for their HW kickboxing fix. It's Showtime have ramped up their advertising for that card today. What does it mean then? Essentially, unless K-1 pull a miricle (and by that I mean a ton of money) out of their hat over the next few days, we'll see one of two things. 1) No WGP this year (Boo, although it will make the value of the signed poster I have of last year's much more valuable, lol) or 2) A massively, massively watered down tournament that will be an insult to the memory of the ones that crowned Aerts, Hug, Hoost et al champions over the years. Crazy thought: If they go with a weak field of fighters, Kyotaro could actually be in with a chance of becoming the first Japanese fighter to win the WGP!

There's no real evidence to suggest that Pride fans buy PPV's though. Pride's PPV's were doing something abysmal like 20,000 buys in the US. That was some time ago and I think they were delayed a day or so (not 100% on that though) but its still a shockingly low number. There wasn't a big pop in buyrates for his first UFC appearance; in fact, it only did 24k more buys than the Bisping vs Evans PPV two months later, which was widely regarded as the worst PPV main event/card churned out by the UFC to that point. And this was at the hight of Shoguns popularity amongst Pride fans, when people were literally fearing for Forrest Griffin's safety. Lol, I remember Sherdog imploding when that one went down :-p

...and there's your answer. This is a huge, huge fight for the UFC. Promote it on Fox, sell it on PPV and you're probably looking at 900k-1m buys. Sonnen will milk it for all its worth and with the drama and controversy surrounding the first one, it's a sure-fire winner at the box office. Its important to remember that the UFC is a business, not a sport. They will go with what sells over what's 'right' or 'fair' 100% of the time. When you're selling a fight, you're selling the intangible; the idea that people need to watch to see what will happen. That's one of the reasons Anderson Silva isn't as great a draw as the likes of GSP, Lesnar etc. He's *so* good, that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Every contender seems to have a way to beat GSP; Shields would sub him, Hardy would KO him etc. It's almost impossible to sell the idea that people should tune in because Fighter X might beat Silva somehow. Then along comes Chael Sonnen. Sonnen came within seconds of completely dominating Silva from bell to bell. So now you have the doubt, the uncertainty, the chance that Sonnen goes the whole 25 mins this time. Maybe. Or maybe not. Buy a ticket and find out! The other main way to sell a fight is by selling the characters or stories involved. Again, Sonnen is a dream here because he polarizes the audience. You either love him and want to see him send Anderson on a donkey ride back to Brazil with the Nogueira brothers, or you think he's a delusional [insert naughty word of your choice] who needs a good kicking. Either way, you want to see what happens to him. Mayweather has been making millions that way for years. Of course with Bisping you have a similar situation; he's the 'bad guy' and people want to see him lose, and lose big. What you don't have with Bisping is the perception amongst the masses that he has a chance to win, or at least push Silva to his limits.

I know quite a few guys who have been on TUF personally, and they all say to me the same thing: The show bares little to no resemblance to their experience. You've got what, 5-6 weeks of filming parred down into 10 episodes, about 42 mins of footage per episode. Most of that is taken up by the fights and house antics; you're only really getting 10 mins per show focused on the actual training. They do a good half-day shift of training every single day, so there's no way of knowing how much time/effort etc any coaches put in. The UK vs US show was a funny one; the guys on the US team were terrible and were essentially there to lose at the expense of finding a couple of British stars. I don't know how good of a coach Bisping is...personally I don't like his style of shouting 'Stand up! Get up!' regardless of whether that's a good idea or not, but that's just me. Some fighters need the Drill Sargent treatment. I do know that Mike isn't happy about getting side-swiped for the title shot though. The feeling there is that he accepted the TUF slot against Sonnen as a 'winner gets a title shot' kinda deal, and felt that the same was up for grabs (for him) if he beat Miller...obviously that's not going to be the case.

Meh, I guess it's got most people that anyone will actually care about. I'm not gonna lose sleep over not playing as Terry Etim or Cole Miller. Who's that Denis Silver guy btw? And (seriously) who's he fighting in the screenshot? Looks like we could be seeing 20+ spaces for 'Pride' fighters or legends then. I'm just hoping that the 'Pride versions' of fighters (Rampage's Stars and Stripes gear, pre-surgery Wand etc) count as an alternative attire, not a whole other character. OK, (realistic) legends/Pride wishlist... Bas Rutten Dan Severn Royce Gracie Jens Pulver Mark Coleman Kevin Randleman Kazushi Sakuraba Hayato Sakurai Yuki Kondo Heath Herring Ninja Rua Pedro Rizzo Randy Couture Giant Silva

C'mon, I just reeled off 130+ names without checking wiki or anything, I was sure to miss one or two :-p What's crazy is that doesn't amount to even half of the UFC roster

Only real surprise there is Diabate made it in but Gustafsson isn't. Also, pretty sure that's Wandy getting clocked by Franklin in that pic. Maybe they are only listing guys who are native to the LHW division, which would explain the absence of Anderson Silva, Vitor Belfort and Wand, all of whom were selectable at 205 last time, if I remember rightly. Anyway, I'm bored, so here's my guesses for the other weight classes HW: Velasquez Lesnar Dos Santos Barry CroCop Meathead Struve Nogueira Mir Carwin Hunt Kongo Schaub Nelson Overeem (Diaz is in, so why not?) Coleman Severn Broughton Browne MW: Silva Sonnen Stann Belfort Miller Bisping Santiago Munoz Leben Wandy Belcher Maia Akiyama Okami Boetsch Cung Le Weidman Palhares Miller WW: GSP Penn Condit Fitch Koscheck Nick Diaz Ellenberger Sanchez Kampmann Hardy Story Brenneman Hendricks Hathaway Johnson Hughes Alves Thiago Shields Sadollah Ludwig LW: Edgar Maynard Guida Pettis Henderson Guillard Lauzon Sotiropoulos Pearson Barboza Jim Miller Wiman Sherk Dunham Cerrone Siver Tibau Ferguson Nate Diaz Cole Miller Etim Fisher FW: Aldo Florian Nunes Mendes Garcia Phan Roop Hioki Jung Elkins Omigawa Brown Gamburyan Hominick Griffin Garza Pulver BW: Cruz Faber Bowles Benavidez Pickett Johnson Yamamoto Torres Mizugaki Barao Jorgensen Wineland McDonald Johnson Menjivar Escovedo I'm guessing that FW and BW will be boosted by the TUF finalists too. (They've been known for a while, so plenty of time to get them scanned in). That should leave somewhere between 10-15 slots for additional characters. Wouldn't be surprised to see a couple of Strikeforce peeps, and maybe some UFC and Pride 'legends' pop up.

I don't really have any set criteria, lol. Fitch is up there because he doesn't lose to anyone that isn't a slightly effeminate French-Canadian in hot pants. Hendo is up there because, well, he's Hendo, winning fights in three weight classes at 40 years old. Honestly, P4P is just something we do because people demand it. It's time I could spend doing something more productive, like arranging all my Transformers in a massive battle scene in the kitchen to annoy the Mrs when she comes home from work to cook dinner. I don't take it seriously, is what I'm saying :-p Any combination of Silva, GSP and Jones (used to be Fedor) goes in the top three spots, Edgar, Cruz and Aldo vie for 4-6 and we've had everyone from BJ Penn, Jake Shields, Miguel Torres and Lyoto Machida in the remaining spots over the past couple of years. Here's an interesting one: How do people feel about women in the P4P debate? As of right now, there's nobody I'd consider worthy, but if you're saying "all things being equal, who is more talented than who" could you argue that the likes of Cris Cyborg (straight after the Carano/Coenen wins) or Megumi Fujii (prior to the Frausto "loss") deserved a spot?

Also Sonnen's post fight interview was the best non-fighting thing I've seen in a cage ever. I'm so glad that he's offered Anderson Silva the next shot at the middleweight belt.

I've grown to really hate the 'P4P debate' over the last couple of years...If you think it sucks debating it with a few people on a forum (even one largely populated by reasonable people like this one), try writing a P4P list (and 7 weight class rankings) for a site that gets a couple of million visits a month. My inbox turns into a dumping ground for the wrath of the internet once a month when our P4P rankings go up. Everyone hates them, yet they're one of the most-read things on the site. So yeah, I'm not a fan of P4P, so without debating what anyone has said, and were you to put a gun to my head, I'd put both Edgar and Cruz above Aldo at the moment. My way of thinking is this: Aldo has been made to look human in his last few fights. Cruz on the other hand has been all over most of his recent opponents. Yes, Edgar got wrecked in the first round of his last two fights, but his efforts in coming back from the brink mean more in my eyes than Aldo getting past Hominick and Florian. So I guess our list next month will look something like... Silva St Pierre Jones Edgar Cruz Aldo Fitch Henderson Evans Velasquez

Rashad won't be cleared to do proper training for three weeks. That's gonna give him what, 6-7 weeks to get ready for the fight of his life? Nah, I'd want at least 8-10. The point is though, nobody has 'ducked' or 'pulled out' of anything...nothing was signed or announced. Both parties had been approached, knowing that Evans was already injured. When his prognosis came through, the UFC signed Jones and Machida. None of that is Rashad's fault. Also, with regards to putting the fight back a month...who headlines 140 then? And what do you do with Lesnar vs Brock at 141? Move that too? The UFC have a hectic schedule at the moment, and it's going to get worse next year. They need big fights, they need their champs on PPV...they have to rebook. What you're going to see in the coming years is a whole lot more of this, as Joe Silva scrambles to increase the live event quota from 27 (this year) to (I believe) 34 next year onwards.

There's money to be won on Brian Stann this weekend chaps. I've got an accumulator on. Elkins, Massenzio, Schafer, Miocic, Pettis, Maia, Guillard, Phan, Sonnen, Maynard, Aldo. Five quid returns £1,474.20. Thoughts? Sonnen/Stann is the question mark for me, I really think he's gonna do it, but at the same time, I know exactly why the odds are on Sonnen winning. Schafer/Simpson is a tough one to pick as well.

You know, now that I think about it, I'm getting a vague memory of him pulling out of a fight and letting Dave O'Donnell (Cage Rage/UCMMA promoter) down when he went to the UFC. Dave allows anyone approached by the UFC, Strikeforce etc to leave; he basically tears up their contract and always welcomes them back. He actually chases Dana White to sign his top guys...look at every non-Kaobon Brit in the UFC...they nearly all came from Dave's shows. Crazy trivia: Dave got Anderson Silva into the UFC. But yeah, I have a funny feeling that Neil took the UFC fight at very short notice, kinda leaving Dave in the lurch. Dave obviously had Neil back in the end, but it must have been a bit embarrassing for the big fella, if that's what happened. I'll ask him in a couple of weeks when I next see him. My pal John Maguire had a similar thing with his recent UFC signing. His manager got a call from Joe Silva on the Thursday before John's fight at UCMMA 23, telling him that Scanlon had pulled out and they wanted Maguire to fill in. His manager said yes, and was told that they'd have to pull John from the fight in 2 days time. He refused, saying that John wouldn't pull out on Dave with only two day's notice, and had also sold a ton of tickets to his gypsy mates, who'd be non too pleased. In the end Silva told him that if John won he was in, if he lost, he was out. John wasn't told by his manager until the after party following the fight. Was a pretty epic moment, especially as everyone was talking about Dave begging Dana to sign John on camera after the bout But yeah, John has a 5 fight deal with the UFC, which basically amounts to 'you lose, you leave'.