brashleyholland

So the latest 'word on the street' is that Showtime had a hand in there being no five-round fights in the heavyweight tourney. Apparently Ken Hershman and co did not want a repeat of the 'Nashville' situation - with numerous bouts going the five round distance, especially heavyweight fights. That's completely understandable and makes perfect sense from Showtime's point of view. Again though, it's no excuse for Strikeforce's poor handling of the situation. They took a lot of stick last year from people suggesting that Hershman ran Strikeforce - hell, the man himself said that every single fight that airs passes by him for approval - so it's understandable that Coker didn't want to come out and say "Showtime says three rounds". But if you're gonna lie, sorry, be political, then at least come up with something that isn't going to get you caught out and made to look stupid. How about... "These guys are going to be facing a heavy schedule of three tough fights in nine months. We want to give our fans the best action possible and the fights that they want to see. With 25-minute bouts there is a huge risk of injury - to mitigate that risk and to prevent fighters pulling out of the later stages due to wear and tear, we've decided to make all tournement bouts 3X5's." The worst anyone can accuse them of then is putting their champ in a tournament where his belt isn't on the line. The hillarious part is of course that if Coker had just kept his mouth shut and never mentioned rounds/titles in the first place until he had everything confirmed, he'd have avoided all of this criticism in the first place. Someone needs to get that man a better press officer.

It's potentially only a short-term problem though. Let's be honest, nobody knew who Chael Sonnen was until last year. Now, I'm not saying that Frankie Edgar is going to turn into Chael Sonnen overnight, and nor should he - but if the UFC are going to be spending more time in NJ, Boston and (fingers crossed) NY over the next 18 months, he could very well become the champion they need. He's a good interview and he comes across well on MMA Live on ESPN etc...who knows what he can do in the right market given the chance?

Might know something tomorrow.

UFC 130 will eclipse UFC 125 in terms of PPV buys and live attendance - whether that is Edgar vs Maynard 3 selling better their second encounter - I'm not so sure. Looking at the positives - the UFC 125 fight was great, and there is plenty of highlight-reel action to splice into video packages, countdown shows and previews. Frankie Edgar is getting the ESPN treatment. So there's an added promotability to it. Also, it was a good fight with an ambiguous ending - I'd like to see it again. On the flipside, you have Rampage Jackson on the undercard; that's going to stick at least 200,000 buys on the 350k baserate, so you've got a false economy in terms of knowing how well the Edgar/Maynard fight is going to do as a draw. You also have the card taking place on a better date, and a stacked undercard with some great fights in the aforementioned 'Page vs Silva and Mir vs Nelson bouts. I think the undercard for this fight tells you all you need to know about the UFC's confidence of it selling on it's own.

Interesting fact about the lightweight division: Maynard vs Edgar at UFC 125 was the first time that a 'modern era' UFC PPV has been headlined by a lightweight fight not featuring BJ Penn. Lets look at the numbers: 5,896 of the 12,874 strong crowd got in free. Even after comping around 45% of the house, there were still nearly 1000 empty seats. A mitigating factor was the date: Jan 1st isn't a great day to sell tickets to the hungover 18-35 market, plus there are other forms of entertainment competing for the dollar on a national day off. Also, this was the first time either fighter had headlined a PPV - with all due respect, it was Couture, Toney and Penn's names up in lights for UFC 118. The only Vegas card that it outsold in the last 6 six yeas was UFC 106. This was the card that was set to feature Lesnar vs Shane Carwin, with Coleman/Ortiz on the undercard. In the space of a few weeks, first Coleman, then Lesnar pulled out. This really hurt ticket sales - people weren't pre-ordering because they were waiting for a replacement main event; when that event never came, late sales were virtually non-existent. But I digress. You could say that the lightweight division was a vanity project for BJ Penn - remember, between 2002 and late 2006 there was no title in the weightclass and only a handful of fights. Sherk for Florian and Franca, then they set Penn up with a winnable fight in England to get the belt on him. So the numbers say no, the lightweight division wont be alight without Penn. They're going to struggle - Henderson and Pettis are relative nobodies. Sherk and Florian have already 'been there', Dunham and Miller are very 'generic'. Guida is a gatekeeper. But keep in mind that compared to the 170-256lb divisions, 155 is still a baby. People say that nobody cares about the lighter fighters, but when the UFC brand is involved, who knows. If anyone can make people care about lightweight MMA - it's Zuffa. Besides, who's going to draw at 170 if GSP moves on? Jake Shields? Jon Fitch? Dan Hardy? Maybe it's not an issue that's exclusive to 155...

He's not going to quit...he's just lulling everybody into a false sense of security....

Look at the fighter's names.

Don't be commin' around here with your fancy common sense!

I feel exactly the same way. In a perfect world, Strikeforce would say "Look, we're not the UFC and we never will be. We've got some decent guys on the books, so we can put on some fun fights. Roll up, roll up, come see the show! Come and enjoy yourselves, but don't take it too seriously!" The December show was interesting to me. If you judge it against the UFC, or even if you judge it as a sporting event, it was horrible. Stupidly overmatched guys like Smith and Lindland sent to the cage to be knocked out by Daley and Lawler. A guy who just lost at 185 vs a guy who's heart isn't into causing violence anymore and who just won at 195 in a number 1 contender bout for the 205lb title. A man who should be banned from the sport against a guy who had to have a tumour removed from his head in order to compete. What a mess. With that said, if you look at it as simply a fun night of fights, based purely on entertainment value - it was a great show. An MMA legend vs a guy who has fought some of the best in the main event. A couple of crazy KO's. A huge comeback win. You've got a house full of mates playing video games, drinking your place dry, some good tunes on in the background and a Strikeforce show with 4 big finishes...what more do you want? If Strikeforce/Showtime could look at it as the later, rather than the former, they might actually get somewhere.

Josh Gross from ESPN contacted them personally. I may do it myself if I have the time over the weekend next week, but Gross did it today. He tweeted it first then expanded on it in his ESPN article later. From his twitter... From his ESPN article... Oops!

Because people don't care for MMA in Japan at the moment. There is no money to put on shows. The business is cyclical and it's in a down cycle. If Dream suddenly hired GSP, Anderson Silva, Brock Lesnar and Shogun, it wouldn't change anything. The UFC's success elsewhere is irrelevant to what was being discussed, because they aren't making waves in Japan. No, no cares about Gomi in Japan right now, at least, not to the extent that they did a few years ago and certainly not to the extent that it would be a big deal if he jumped back. One thing that Japanese MMA has always been good for is getting the money together for the fights people want to see. If people cared about Gomi, TBS or someone would be falling over themselves to stump up the cash for Gomi vs Aoki, or sticking him in with a load of foreign lightweights. They're not, which is why he ended up fighting Kenny Florian in the UFC for forty grand. Same goes for Okami, Omigawa, Kid...and...erm...and I can't think of any other Japanese fighters the UFC are taking away. It's not competing because Japanese promotions never tried to expand overseas to all these countries that the UFC are targeting. Because they're broke and HDNet pays them money to air their programming, because Mark Cuban is an MMA nut with money to burn. I don't know who all these American's they are bringing in are..the last three Dream cards had 3, 1 and 3 Americans on them respectively out of a total of 50 fighters. Diaz and Miller were the only relevant ones, and they were sent over for very 'safe' fights A) Because of Strikeforce's promotional agreement with Dream and B) Because Strikeforce didn't have fights for them. As for sending their fighters to the US...well Dream sent Zaromskis, Ishida and Aoki, and none of the fights were broadcast in Japan, so I don't see how that's of any benefit to Dream. I didn't see many causal fans in the US clamouring to find Dream shows after those guys came over. Like who? Can you name a Japanese heavyweight on a winning streak at the moment? I suppose Ishii technically fits the bill, but he's dead in the water in Japan, and they'd have the problem of finding someone for him to beat to give him the title. The Dream belt is a marketing gimmick, it was created for the Overeem Duffee fight. Overeem is doing TONS of TV and media stuff in Japan at the moment. Sherdog had a great story about it a couple of weeks back. At one point he was mobbed in the street by a huge crowd. Nobody knew his name; they were all shouting "It's the guy from the K-1!! The new champion!". What Dream want is people shouting "It's that guy, the champion from Dream!" Overeem is a unique quantity in Japan at the moment. He'll do all the humiliating gameshows and photo ops with 10 Japanese girls hanging off him, like Sapp used to. He's a relative giant, like Sapp was. But he's also a champion. If I was a promoter in Japan, I'd make a belt and put it on him. Hey, don't take it personally....I'm not trying to go after everything you said, I'm just telling it like it is. I don't know if expert is the right word, but I'm halfway through writing a book on Japanese MMA, I spend a large amount of time researching it with friends and associates in many areas of the Japanese fight game; fighters, agents, trainers etc. I'd put it to you that I know what I'm talking about. There's no need to take it personally just because what I know opposed what you wrote, and I'm not saying anything you wont hear from anyone else who knows the Japanese fight game. It's not like I'm saying anything radical here.

That's exactly it. Champions should not be in tournaments where they aren't defending their belts. It makes no sense. The Super Six was/is a disaster, but at least titles were/are on the line. Why not have Overeem defend against Werdum midway through the year, setting the tourney up to be Fedor's to lose, then have the tourney winner fight the HW champ this time next year?

Well, that's what Scott Coker said on the press call. Unfortunately, he lied. Josh Gross contacted the commissions in Cali, New Jersey, Minnesota and Tennessee...ALL of them said they were fine with 5-round fights in the tourney and ALL of them said that Strikeforce had not contacted them about the possibility of five-round fights. And to be fair, the Strikeforce heavyweight title is meaningless. It's the "World Championship of Beating Up Paul Buentello 3 Years Ago and Brett Rogers Coming Off a Loss." I don't think you'll find any blind hate here (unless I'm talking about Tim Sylvia or Brandon Vera. I HATE those guys)...only justified constructive criticism. The trouble is, on most MMA boards, things are so black and white in the eyes of 95% of people who use them that anyone who dares criticise anything (justified or not) is a 'hater' and anyone who supports anything is a 'nuthugger'. Take the two above examples. There's no way that any sane person can make the case for Strikeoforce's HW strap meaning anything. And as for Coker's little stunt...it's things like that which cause people to 'hate' on Strikeforce. I mean, is the guy an idiot or something? Did he honestly think that he could lie on a call to a bunch of journalists (guys and gals who get paid to verify things) and get away with it? Or that when the audio of the call got out that the thousands of forum-dwellers wouldn't pull him up on it? One email/phone call is all it takes (and indeed, was all it took) to catch him out. It's a head-scratcher.

Japanese promotions have never tried to compete with the UFC though. Nor do they need to. Pride had a tiny PPV deal in the US and were doing pathetic numbers. Roster comparisons are irrelevant from a talent standpoint, as even when Pride (maybe) had the best roster, nobody in the US cared. Similarly, people in Japan weren't tuning in because it was 'better than the UFC'. It doesn't matter. Nobody in Japan knows what Strikeforce is. Only the hardcore fight fans, the equivalent to supergeek western fans who can tell you who the current Shooto 132lb champion is (it's Shuichiro Katsumura) that care about these fights. Japanese MMA isn't taking a hit because Gomi and Aoki are getting tooled in the US. If they meant that much to the Japanese fight industry, they wouldn't be fighting in the US in the first place. It doesn't. They've always done it, and it's always been financially and promotionally successful for them. That's why Dynamite, featuring MMA/K-1 and various other fighters/attractions has been the biggest show of the calendar for almost a decade. How is Overeem useless? He's one of the biggest stars in the Japanese fight game at the moment. Dream don't have a heavyweight division, but it looks good from a promotional standpoint to have their belt on a guy who is the K-1 champ and has more title belts than testicles. I don't think a promotion in Japan has ever relied on freakshow fights. But look at K-1's most financially successful years - they were the years of Sapp, Botha, etc. It's all about getting the balance right. Why not? History has proven otherwise. Reliance on entertainment has absolutely nothing to do with why the Dynamite ratings are going down. The serious cards, without the added 'entertainment' fights, are seeing much, much bigger rating drops. Japanese MMA, even in it's biggest boom period, never made money in the US. Japanese people in general simply aren't interested in the UFC/Strikeforce, and American's similarly aren't interested in Dream/SRC. The ring, that has been used in boxing and wrestling in the US for 100 years? This ring is far more recognisable as a combat sports fixture worldwide than the cage. I think what you're trying to say is that UFC fans are conditioned to watching fights in a cage, but that's irrelevant to the Japanese scene. Japanese MMA is a TV product, and TV companies don't like the cage because the ring makes for better, more viewer friendly visuals, both in terms of logistics and the imagery. This is a big piece of the puzzle, for sure. Fewer good fighters seem to be coming through the ranks, and now that there is no money in the Japanese fight game anymore, a career in the sport isn't as attractive a prospect as it was five years ago. It's a vicious circle. - Finally, no major exclusive star. This is of course very hard to do but can help out tremendously. If they had a fighter in any weight class who was running through Japanese talent AND american talent it would give them reason to stick out their tongue at the UFC (ala Fedor and M-1 before) but as of now, they have no one even close. You're missing the point again. It's not about 'sticking their tongue out' at anyone; it's about getting the general demand for MMA in Japan at such a level that the big TV networks will open their chequebooks again. How does sticking their tongue out at the UFC by having a dominant fighter help them get the women and children of Japan selling out the 40,000 seat arenas and garnering the multi-million viewer ratings? You can't look at Japanese MMA like a game of WMMA. In the real world, Alpha-1 does not need to compete with, mimic or take cues from GAMMA in order to be massively successful. They need to get rid of the apathy, boost consumer confidence and boost commercial confidence. They won't do any of that by trying to do things the UFC way, or by competing on their playing field.

I'll share a story with you all. About 7 years ago, I was cornering a very good friend of mine. I'd cornered one or two training partners before in various sports (mainly as a bucket carrier, lol), but this was the first time I cornered someone who I considered a good friend outside of the gym. People say it's a not the best idea to corner very close friends and it's a terrible idea to corner family. I was going to find out why. It was also the first time I'd cornered someone in anything remotely resembling a relevant fight. This guy was 30, nothing special, but he had been fighting (mostly unlicensed) to supplement his living for about 10 years. He hadn't had a single decent payday, but he would get regular work as a sparring partner and would take pretty much any fight offered to him. He had a criminal record for some fairly heinous stuff in his youth, so he struggled to get a decent job. His work as a sparring partner and taking random fights literally kept his head above water as he scraped by on bar and doorman work. Anyway, there had been an incident involving a stolen wallet at the bar he worked at. My friend had managed to recover said wallet and return it to the owner the same evening, who turned out to be the brother of a fairly well connected boxing manager in Germany. As a thank you, he offered to get my friend a look-in with his brother the next time he was visiting. He was told he might be able to get him a couple of decent paydays a year. So about four months pass, and this friend of mine is a man possessed. He started training hard; I could tell that this simple favour was to him the opportunity of a lifetime. The call came through for a fight; eight rounds of boxing against a professional punchbag. I actually ended up cornering him as a last minute thing; the second man couldn't get off work and I was there, so I stepped up to bat. Then came the fight, and it was rough. This guy was no punchbag, he was tough as nails and dirty as a Chilean Miner's underpants. I'd literally never seen anything like it up close before, let alone with someone I was so close to. Lots of blood, headbutts, elbows...it was a fight, not a boxing match. My friend started well, he won the first two, maybe three rounds but he was spent. He was dropped at the end of the 3rd but it was ruled a slip. In the 4th he was dropped twice...he was getting beaten up, but more than that he was getting hurt. The referee warned our corner twice after 4th that he was going to stop it. His eye was a right old mess, but what was really troubling me was his incoherence. He was dropped again in the fifth and I was almost looking to the ref to stop the fight. Before the sixth he was barely responsive, but I didn't feel it was my place to say. He went down again from a nothing punch, and I told Joop, the lead cornerman, to throw in the towel. I was told in no uncertain terms that the towel was not to be thrown in. He didn't go down in the 6th or 7th, and actually won those rounds by virtue of two docked points for fouls by his opponent, but by this point I was genuinely concerned. I asked him if he was ok before the final round and his reply was gibberish. Joop pushed me aside and as the fighters went out he told me that if I was going to throw the towel, I should leave. I stayed, and as my friend was put in the corner by another barrage of punches, I saw his legs sag and threw my towel at the ref. The ref caught it but waited a good 10 seconds before finally stepping in as my boy folded in the corner. I went to get in the ring, but was held back by Joop and told to "F**k off". My friend went to the hospital after the fight and all I could think of was if he was ok. I was angry at his coach, angry at the ref, but mostly concerned for my friend's health. Nobody would answer their phones and fearing the worst I got a taxi to the hospital, where I again bumped into Joop. I was told to leave and that he didn't want to see me. I've never actually spoken to the guy face to face since, he never forgave me for 'taking the fight from him'. I was told I was no longer welcome at the boxing club he trained at, and at one point I was told he was going to 'come after me' before a couple of people had a word with him and told him to drop it. I found out through mutual friends that he needed surgery on his cheek and now has serious vision problems in his left eye as a result of the fight. I'd only been looking out for his safety where others clearly weren't. I was genuinely fearful that something bad was going to happen, and I'm obviously someone who is desensitised to violence, so I don't feel like I was overreacting. It didn't matter to him though. As far as he was concerned, he had just over a minute to go, and honestly felt he could have won the fight. Delusional, yes - but that's the way it was. Some people say that throwing in the towel is a tough decision to make, but for me it was the easiest thing in the world. After that incident though, I was made to feel like I'd ruined someone's life, and it genuinely tore me up. I've never cornered a close friend since, although I'm going to in a couple of months. I've asked myself a ton of times if throwing in a towel is worth losing a friendship over...but I realise that it's a selfish question to ask. Nothing is worth risking someone's health or life over, not even a friendship. 99% of fighters are a special breed; they don't know when enough is enough. So when I corner my friend in a few months time, I won't care if he hates me for the rest of his life...if the towel needs throwing, I'll throw it.

Losing isn't really a problem in Japan (as much as it is in the states, for example) within reason. I mean, can anyone name a big Japanese MMA draw who went undefeated for a long stretch? I'm thinking Kid Yamamoto (he had a loss, but it was a 30 second doctor stoppage from a cut) was the only big name that fits that bill. I think it's going to take all the stars to align before Japan can produce another 'icon'...good fighter, charismatic, women/fashionable youth friendly, tough....and there's gonna have to be more than one of them. Even if that happens, you have to convince the TV networks of one of the world's most fad-based consumer nations that something old is new again.

Could be, I'm not sure how they work it out...I guess also he's only had six fights and not thrown a whole lot of punches in comparison to the average fighter, which could skew it. I see what you mean, and you make a fair point...but from a fighter's point of view there is a big sense of 'moving the goalposts', so to speak. You fight your ass off to earn a spot, then have to take another fight through no fault of your own for less money, less reward etc, and if you lose, bye bye title shot. It's a tough one, there's plenty of 'for and against'. In fairness to Rashad, he did publicly state that he wouldn't wait for Shogun until May/June when they originally thought he'd be back...seems he got corralled into hanging on.

That's exactly it. You can't fight apathy. People aren't watching so TV aren't interested. I know very little about wrestling in Japan, aside from that it's popularity and MMA's are intrinsically linked. Once the rasslin' picks up again, so will MMA. For me, it's the Shooto network that is going to keep MMA in Japan alive. A lot of people don't realise this, but Shooto isn't a promotion, it's a governing body. The 'Shooto' shows you hear about are promoted by various promoters across Japan and the world (a couple of major ones and a spiderweb of small shows)...there is a full amateur and pro ranking system, different levels of pro licence that you have to fight to earn...it's amazing and unlike boxing, it works. As long as Shooto keeps going, there will always be an undercurrent of MMA in Japan, and as long as their network is so vast, there will always be talented foreigners on tap. When the bust cycle ends, there fighters will be there to bolster whatever it is that sparks the MMA craze off again. I think (and hope) they play up the 'Rocky' angle with him - dude comes out of nowhere to run train on the heavyweight division - it's a great story if people can get past the language barrier. My only fear is that this will end up being 'The Lesnar Show' at JDS's expense. Ok, it obviously *is* 'The Lesnar Show', but I see no reason why they can't have Brock as the surly bad guy to JDS fairytale hero...I just worry that it'll end up being a 12-week infomercial for Lesnar and his book. ...Although, if we assume that Brock will get a spanking in the fight and possibly call it quits, maybe they'll 'do a Rampage' on him, and paint him in a bad light. It'll be a good question answerer for JDS, that's for sure. We've seen him handle strikers and grapplers, but what's he going to do when a stud wrestler puts him on his back? I actually hope that Dos Santos doesn't cream Lesnar with the first flurry, just so we can see what he can do from the bottom.

It's not that great. You basically have a monopoly in the US, the British and European scenes have gone into regression, one reasonably-sized promotion in Canada ran by a man with a worse ego problem than Dana White and a Japanese scene that is both dying and largely irrelevant. 2000-2006/7 will always be the golden years of MMA, at least until the Japanese scene picks up again (if it does at all). The UFC has very cleverly saturated the market in the US; I'm guessing we're at least 5-10 years away from the sport being 'accepted' enough in the states that big TV money will back a number of viable alternatives to the UFC to have anything even remotely resembling a level playing field. It's an easy time to be an MMA fan right now - but not a great one. As for the Strikeforce tourney - I dunno....it's very much like my microsoft paint blueprint for a helicopter backpack - on paper it looks great, but that doesn't mean it's going to work and a lot of people will probably get hurt in the process.

He doesn't *have* to, he could have very easily just waited until August/September when Velasquez came back. It's all about the $$$ though - JDS hasn't exactly made his fortune and a year off between fights was apparently an untenable situation for him. TUF is a very decent wedge for a few weeks work, he'll earn more money from a PPV bout with Lesnar than he would with Cain and assuming he can stay on his toes, he'll steamroll the big fella in June and be ready for Velasquez in September.

You're not alone there mate, you're not alone. Nothing funnier than seeing a 'badass' get sparked out by a transvestite :-p

The Chuck Norris thing? Haha, quality! Might have to flick over to Extreme Sports once in a while then!

Not that I ever watch it on Bravo (as you say, they shows are never on live, if they're even on at all) but we can probably kiss Strikeforce goodbye now that Bravo is going (gone?). I can't see Sky picking it up to be honest, unless they were getting decent ratings, which I doubt. Hopefully they can do a deal with one of the smaller digital channels and get some live/next-day-delay thing going on.

If you like what you see with K-1, try and check out 'It's Showtime!' - There basically Europe's answer to K-1 - a long time MMA/Kickboxing promoter. They put on some great cards with some of the top kickboxing talent in the world; many of K-1's famous faces have, or still do fight for them. They put all their shows on webPPV, somewhere in the region of $10 a pop. They're also planning on making their US debut this year, as well as visiting the UK. I wouldn't be surprised to see them on HDNet if they manage to pull it off.

He's a 'cosplayer'. It's a Japanese fad whereby people make highly detailed costumes of Anime, Manga or video game characters, then go out dressed as them. I used to work with a guy who did it. Strange individual. Gotta give it to Nagashima though - he's got balls to do it so openly in such a 'macho' sport.