brashleyholland

Rashad has about as much chance of lasting five minutes as a 17 year old virgin.

Good lord Jon Jones straight up wrecked Shogun tonight. Different class.

They haven't changed the start times yet, it's just that the clocks went forward in America recently and they don't do so in the UK until the end of the month.

(To the tune of 'Spiderman') Jackson's Camp, Jackson's Camp, Friendly neighbourhood Jackson's Camp, Spins a web, any size... http://middleeasy.com/images/stories/Author_Cat/2011/03/bonesstopattacker.jpg ...catches thieves, just like flies! Look out! There goes the Jackson's Camp

Lol, have you ever seen anyone weed or acid high? They don't act like he did. Also, coke = Alert and hyper, not stumbling at tripping over things. I'm guessing a mix of painkillers and booze.

Yes. YesYesYesYesYes. This fight is going to be off the hook. Definably the one I'm most looking forward to outside of the main event. I've probably said this before on here, but I often suffer from fight burnout. Combat sports are my entertainment, my hobby and how I make my living...it's rare that I get genuinely excited for a fight or event. I'm really looking forward to this Saturday though, and next weekend's Fight Night.

Meh, I was really looking forward to Sadollah vs Bang and even Sadollah vs Wilkes...it's go big or go home time for Amir with this one. This *should* be amazing *if* my boy Kongo gets his ass to the Wolfslair more than two weeks before the fight and in shape for a change. Fingers crossed. Meh. Not really interested. Penn doesn't want it anymore, and I don't want to see a guy who doesn't want it go out there for a payday, especially not BJ. Aldo has Hominick first and Kenny is fighting Diego Nunes at 131. IMO there are still guys out there who are more deserving of a shot than Kenny...maybe if he absolutely obliterates Nunes I could see it. Best fight news of the week for me has to be Garcia vs The Korean Zombie 2...even though I was looking forward to the Phan/Garcia rematch, which I'm sure will still happen down the road. I doubt it'll live up to excitement of the first one, but with Garcia and Jung, you know it's money.

Snap. I think Arkham and Red Dead are the two most 'fun' games I've played in years. Had an absolute blast with Batman...I don't care if Arkham city doesn't improve a single thing, I just want to play more. Is there any word on which bad guys will be appearing yet? I'm assuming from the trailers etc that Joker, Two-Face, Strange and Catwoman will be in it....hopefully Croc and Bane are back too.

Finally had time to have a crack at Fight Night Champion and am loving it. So much better than Round 4. Unfortunately I injured my thumb doing real boxing recently, which hasn't helped my cause :-p Still, finished the story mode, which was an awesome new addition, just getting started on the career mode. It gets a (sore) thumb up from me so far!

CHAPTER 1: LET YOUR MANAGER DO IT! Fin

It's one of the curses of modern social media. Ten, even five years ago, this statement would never have been seen outside of Daley's inner circle. But now Daley has a facebook, a twitter, an account on the UG...all of which he has control of. We're all idiots sometimes and we all say things without thinking sometimes. In this modern age though, these things get said on twitter or facebook, where they're only a couple of clicks away from the rest of the world seeing them. From what I've heard, Dana was still adamant that he wouldn't fight in the UFC again before this outburst, so I'd imagine his chances are less than zero now. If he pulls out of the Diaz fight then he's an even bigger idiot.

Basically what will happen is that whenever a fighter's contract runs out (and most, if not all of the 'big money' contracts are between the fighters and Showtime, not Strikeforce) then Dana can (and will) negotiate to bring them to the UFC. So Hendo for example, his contract has one more fight on it. After that, it's open season; he can listen to offers from UStrikeForCe, Showtime, Bellator, whoever. The assumption is obviously that the only people with the money to sign him will be UStrikeForCe... ...but there is obviously a lot more to this than meets the eye. Why would the Zuffa, a (alleged) billion dollar company buy a rival brand with a turnover reported be me mere millions? That makes no financial sense. They can't get any of the guys who are contracted to appear on Showtime any sooner than they would if they had just waited for their contracts to come up and taken a seat at the negotiating table. Sure, they might not be able to get the current champions due to champion's clauses...but if there's one thing we know it's that the UFC are bigger than ANY individual fighter, especially anyone that Strikeforce has. If they need more fighters, they can sign more fighters. They don't need Strikeforce for that. If they want a 'minor league' then why close down the WEC? Or why not use the IFL, WFA (which was included in their recent video game) or even Pride FC (which they have promoted with their 'Best of' series? One interesting school of thought I've heard is that Strikeforce were in the process of (or about to be) receiving an offer from Gary Shaw's ProElite. Makes sense.

Good lord, HD is not kind to Sting's hairline... If it got that bad, and you're supposed to look all painted up and cool for a living, you'd shave your head, right?

Just to clear a couple of things up...the UFC cannot 'suspend' Bisping, or anyone else. They don't have any authority to suspend a fighter's licence. They can, of course, not offer him fights...so any 'suspension' will end exactly when they need him back in the cage. They also can't cut him coming off a win. Not how the current contracts work. If they wanted to 'cut' him, they would have buy out his contract, which is a significant amount of money when you consider that his basic show purse is around $200,000. Better yet, they can't even fine him in the traditional sense. Like Josh Gross said on ESPN this week, there is nothing in the current UFC fighter contracts that provides for fining a fighter after the fact. Now, most people know that a UFC fighter's pay differs significantly from the 'basic' fight/win money that is released by certain commissions. Any 'fine' handed down by the UFC would come in the form of a reduction or non-payment of additional bonuses. Which means Bisping will still take home at least $325-350,000 for his troubles. Details of his 'punishment' will come out today-tomorrow-ish, btw

Rogan really gets on my tits with his lavishing of praise on BJJ guys, or anyone who was once in the same room as Eddie Bravo. That in itself made it sweet to see the Tavares/Roller KO. Main event was great. Plenty of arguments to score it both ways. Personally I had Kampmann by virtue of effective striking and grappling, no problem at all with it going either way though. Saturday is going to be an great day for fights. M-1 Challenge free on M-1Global.com to kick things off, then Bellator, then Strikeforce. It's Showtime on Sunday to cap of a quality week of fights. Only problem is that Bellator overlaps with Strikeforce by an hour, so I'm gonna have to have a lappy hooked up to another TV for a bit of simulcast action, which will be annoying. Dumb move by MTV.

Maybe if they went with Jim instead of Jerry, they'd have a better chance of filling the place :-p

Just started watching Impact, because I heard Sting was on it and I have nothing better to do this afternoon. "Who are you, Jermaine Hardy?" - line of the year from Kazarian.

Isn't that like, 100,000 seats? I saw a cool clip of someone playing Xbox on the big screen there :-p Lol, I've never actually seen the SF message board, I dread to think!

That is from the official press release. I don't know who they're paying to come up with this crap, but if they ever need to replace him, I've got some monkeys with typewriters going cheap...

There's your answer in bold. Strikeforce doesn't have any :-p Even Pride, who were notorious for finalizing most of their line-ups a week from fight day, had three/four buildings booked out and announced for the GP's from the start.

I was actually talking to someone a couple of days ago who told me straight up that Oregon have absolutely no issue with sanctioning Barnett. I'm not 100% on Washington, but I can't think of them ever being particularly picky when it comes to licensing guys off the top of my head...

Basically, Cali require him to answer questions about his three previous failed tests before they re-licence him. He knew the process before his last hearing, but decided to claim that he was ambushed by the commission and needed legal advice. Apparently he thought he could just walk in there, say sorry and get reinstated. Unfortunately when you cost a commission tens of thousands of dollars by factoring in the cancellation of an event (and it's your third infraction), it's not that easy. Anyway, until he gets that situation ironed out (which after cancelling his application for re-licensing in Cali he clearly has no intention of doing in the immediate future), Nevada, New Jersey and Ohio wont touch him. Almost anywhere else, including numerous places they have run before, will...provided he pee's clean prior to the event. In fact, Coker reeled of a list of commissions who had confirmed that they would do this when he initially announced the GP in Jan. So the "We needed to find somewhere that would licence Josh" excuse makes no sense. There are more places that will let him fight than not; throw a dart at a map. I'm not saying that they planned to do the fights in Japan to avoid AC testing, but they did know when they held the April 9th date in Cali that if Japan fell through, they would be screwed. So why hold an April date in Cali for a proposed event featuring someone who can't fight there?

Yay for Kawajiri/Melendez and Daley/Diaz, two great fights. Also hearing Aoki/Thomson. Supposedly Takaya and Noons will feature on this card as well...hoping that Takaya isn't moving up to fight KJ, although with Mousasi/Kyle also rumoured, I can't see them going for a 6-fight card, so maybe that's what they're looking at? As for the Barnett thing, I don't blame him one iota for this mess that is the HW GP. 100% Scott Coker/Strikeforce's fault. *IF* (and I don't believe this for a second) the delay is due to not finding somewhere that Barnett can fight, then it's Strikeforce's fault for booking a thrice-busted, unrepentant drug user. If they at any point held out hope for him getting re-licensed in Cali, they should have dumped him the second he withdrew his application. The fact is, they gambled on Japan and didn't have a good alternative date in place for when it fell through. That's all it is. They could have held that April 9th show in any number of places, but they didn't. There's no excuse for such piss-poor organising. And the excuses...more time to promote? You had three months from announcing the GP. Want to capitalise on the momentum of the first round? Then don't leave a five month gap between it and the remaining quarter finals. I don't claim to be a profit, because even a blind man could have seen this one coming, but I said that this wouldn't work from the day it was announced. Absolute shambles by Strikeforce. GAAAAHHHH STRIKEFORCE DO SOMETHING RIGHT SO I CAN LOVE YOU!!!!!! :-D ...excuse me

I didn't ask what went wrong (I'm not exaggerating, the dude didn't look like he was capable of a conversation at the weigh-ins), but my guess would be that he had a set of cheap or badly calibrated scales that he was using during his cut. So when he was killing himself to get rid of those last couple of pounds, he was probably already dead on 155-156. Oops!

Couple of other notes from BAMMA - - Alex Reid was lording it up as expected...he'd been in town all week and at one point went backstage during the fights to film something - presumably a promo piece for a future show. - Hung out with many a cool/interesting person. Big Mike Passinier (of Mike's Gym fame) at the weigh-ins, trying my best to remember how to speak Dutch after a good four years away. He was hilarious, spent the entire thing mocking fighters junk, and telling the official that he'd need a bigger towel to hide a certain big black fighter's modesty when he had to completely disrobe when he got on the scales. - Someone who had the opposite problem to Paul Daley was Peter 'Slam' Duncan, who came into the weigh-ins staggering and swaying, literately looking like a zombie. He'd obviously got his cut seriously wrong, and could barely get on the scales. Then he took his shirt off. I have NEVER seen someone look so dried out before. If anyone remembers how bad James Irvin looked at the weigh-ins for the Sakara fight, it was worse than that. Sickening. Then as if to make matters worse, he stepped onto the scale and came in 2.6lbs UNDER the limit, causing the entire room to groan...well, everyone except Big Mike, who started doing an impression of Duncan, swaying and wobbling around the back of the room :-p On a serious note, Duncan should never have been allowed to fight. He was in no fit state ether at the weigh-in or on fight day, and suffered a brutal knee KO in his fight. Poor showing from BAMMA. - Ken Shamrock was in the house! Had a brief word, but he was staying tight-lipped on why he was there. Do NOT be surprised to see Ken vs Dave Batista at BAMMA 6 in London this May. Seriously. - Ryo Chonnan (the last man to properly beat Anderson Silva, with a flying heel-hook no less) was there as Yuya Shirai's head cornerman. He speaks a surprisingly large amount of English. - Joachim Hansen had to get into the cage to separate his boy Mohsen Bahari from Leeroy Barnes after their fight. Barnes had given some pretty inflammatory interviews in the run up to the fight, only to get stopped in 40 seconds. He then jumped up, clearly still out of it and wobbling all over the place, and pleaded an early stoppage, which angered Mohsen. - The MEN was empty. They had curtained off two thirds of the arena and the top deck was completely closed. So there was only the 'horseshoe' of the bottom deck open, and the floor seats. And it was still, I'd say...65% full. They announced the card on a month's notice, and only hired the PR firm 3 weeks beforehand...so I can cut them some slack...but they'll need a better showing at Wembley in May. - A personal gripe...it took me an hour from arriving at the arena to get my press credentials. How hard is it to leave an envelope at the desk? Worse than that...there was no actual press area set up, despite BAMMA contacting everyone on the press list two day prior to offer wi-fi dongles (as there was no wireless in the arena) and confirming that there would be powerpoints. So while we had nice cageside seats, I couldn't use my laptop to work. In fact, there was only one journalist there with a pen and pad to take notes. Everyone else just got drunk and ate hotdogs. Swings and roundabouts I guess. Note to BAMMA though, if you give me a £400 ticket for free, I'd really like to repay that by reporting on your show...it'd be just dandy if I had the facilities to do that!