brashleyholland

There was a big scandal in Japan a while back involving Kid, some friends and some other celebrities getting busted at 'Marijuana Parties'; basically small parties where people were getting high. In Japan, there is a huge social stigma surrounding weed. Imagine Brock Lesnar getting caught cooking up a yummy batch of Heroin (apparently it's very more-ish) and you're in the right ballpark. He was blacklisted from TV for a while, lost all his big sponsorship deals and left FEG with a huge mess to sweep under the carpet. Even having a high profile employee associated with Marijuana in Japan is a huge no-no for any company that needs to be in the public eye (TV, advertising) to survive. The best they could do at short notice was a "knee injury". They pulled his Dream debut with Benavidez and he was basically told to keep his head down and stay out of the press for 12 months through 2008/09. Hence the year of reflection. He did have a knee op during his sabbatical, but that was absolutly not the reason for it. It was just one of those things that everyone in Japanese MMA knew, but nobody talked about - very much like the Yakuza/Pride bust (from the same magazine that busted Kid) and the Enson Inoue weed bust. When they finally brought him back, they got a ton of stick for it and kept him out of the spotlight as far as promoting the shows in Japan. The fact that he came back and performed poorly, without the Japanese 'Yamato-Damashii' fighting spirit reflected very badly on him. It was basically viewed (in Japan) as him getting a second chance and not preparing for it properly, hence insulting those who gave it to him. Not cool in Japanese culture. Hence why he is fighting on the unaired portion of the SF card...it's a message being sent to Kid, while at the same time letting him fight out of the spotlight. If he looses, I expect FEG will cut him loose.

I see it like this: If you're over 12 years old, those Transformer movies were never meant to entertain you. Like the original cartoon, they were made to exploit kids (and by extension their parents) into buying toys, merchandise, DVD's, games etc. They were never supposed to make the 80's kids amongst us who grew up on the cartoons happy. I have every single episode of the Transformers cartoons on DVD...they're super, super childish. I don't know how you could make them into a cartoon that would entertain people in their 20's. That said, I'm really, really looking forward to the Battle for Cybertron game that is coming out this summer. Looks great in comparison to the garbage movie tie-in games and seems to have quite a serious theme.

Don't be silly. There's about as much chance of them making a nine-foot, vaguely Jamaican sounding human/fish hybrid a main character in...oh, wait...

It was more of a declaration of my love for giant transforming robots in general than any kind of praise for Bay's Transformer movies I'll give him this though, every 10 or below year old kid I know who has seen them seemed to enjoy themselves. I think it was more a case of a big budget Transformers toys advert aimed at young kids than a serious attempt to gain approval from fans of the original. Going by the box offices, it worked. Lol, saying that, wasn't the original cartoon commissioned to sell toys to us when we were kids? :-p

I'm a massive movie geek...but not the pretentious kind. I know a good film when I see one, I like some stuff that isn't mainstream, but I'm not going to rave about a black and white, silent, 7 hour long Lithuanian cinema 'masterpiece' or anything. Unless it has giant transforming robots in it, in which case, cool. I was really sceptical about 3D this time around. I remembered the old 3D with the red and green glasses looking vaguely interesting...but this new stuff is off the charts, streets ahead of the old stuff.

I'm quite lucky in this respect as there is an indy cinema just down the street from me with really high quality projectors, a bar in a sound-proofed booth in each of the two screens and a 'no-kids' policy. It's slightly more expensive, but the bar alone makes it worth it. They show all the big movies as well as some awesome indy flicks and classic movies. I don't know if they do it everywhere, but my local Vue cinema has started doing 18+ screenings of popular U, PG, 12 and 15-rated movies. Saw Wall-E, Up, Transformers 2, etc all on weekends without a screen full of kids.

I love films, so for me, paying a few extra pounds to see something like Avatar at a 3D IMAX was well worth it. One of my local cinemas has started charging for 3D glasses AS WELL as charging extra for 3D films, which certainly grinds my gears. I don't mind paying a little extra, but when you charge me a little extra for 3D and then tell me that I have to pay for the glasses as well...thats pushing it. I have a season pass, so I keep my glasses, but I imagine many others are getting stung. They've started showing 3D football down my local pub. It's really popular and looks amazing. Caught my first game last weekend and it definatelly added to the experience.

That's exactly how I feel about Moore, funnily enough...

Kid Yamamoto is a very naughty boy...he's lucky that he's allowed to fight at all at the moment... Great card though, couple of compelling fights. Rogers vs Overeem has been brewing for a while...we had Brett on our radio show recently and to say that he's pumped is an understatement. That said, I have a soft spot for Overeem as I used to take classes from his brother when I lived in Holland. I keep forgetting that this is for a title...guess that shows how much the SF heavyweight title means... AA vs Silva should be good as well. This is a HUGE fight for Arlovski if he is going to get his career back on track. I don't think Silva will be nimble enough to catch him, and AA usually does ok against that type of opponant. Jacare will roll through Villasenor, Britt vs Feijao should be an interesting scuffle and Gracie will hopefully restore a bit of faith in the family name.

I think it's just a situation whereby being good at adapting wrestling for MMA doesn't mean that you are a good wrestler. GSP learned wrestling for MMA, for example. After training with actual wrestlers with a view to competing in the Olympics, he realised that he was sorely out-gunned and would have been in waaay over his head. Fitch is simply one of those guys who uses wrestling in MMA very well.

Couple of things on weight classes. -A curiserweight division is absolutely unnecessary. As has already been mentioned, there aren't enough talented fighters to facilitate it at this point. Maybe in 10 years, when there is enough money in MMA for the 250lb collage athletes to chose MMA over the NFL/WWE, but as it stands, it's just not needed. - Adding more weight classes dilutes talent pools for the existing divisions. There are only so many shows the UFC can run per year, and they're already hitting critical mass. Having additional champions who have won titles in shallow divisions does not make stars. You end up with less stars if anything...see boxing for reference. Guys will hop between weight divisions, titles will become cheapened as champions also move up and down and it will be confusing for the fans. Pro-Elite tried to do it and failed miserably. This isn't wrestling where stars can be created by giving them a spotlight. The best drawing fighters in combat sports history are those that rule over strong divisions. - There are some big misconceptions about cutting weight here. Cutting an additional five pounds makes no difference WHATSOEVER to a 200lb man who does it properly. With the correct diet, exercise and supplement regime, it's no more difficult for a 220lb fighter to make 195 than it is 205. I have seen with my own eyes Mark Coleman step on a scale at 184lbs while doing practise cuts a few years back when he was considering a 205lb run in Pride and wanted to make sure he could do it easily. That was without the numerous doctors, dieticians and trainers that say, Randy Couture uses to get into fighting shape. - Adding divisions will not stop weight advantages. If you have a 220lb division, guys like Forrest, Chuck and Tito would not fight in it, they'd get down to 195. Otherwise they'd be fighting 240+ pound guys who can get down to 220, which is the reason they cut to light heavyweight in the first place. The mentality is always "As low as you can go"..adding more divisions wont change that. - The UFC will never give up any of it's weight classes to WEC. They don't want brand confusion. For as long as the WEC lasts, they'll keep the divisions separate. I expect that 155 will fold into the UFC sooner rather than later, making way for a Flyweight division. Long term though, there still aren't enough fighters in the US for a sustainable 125lb division. The top-ranked 125lb fighter has a record of 3-0, that's how shallow it is. Add to the fact that most of the fighters of note at that weight are Japanese (BJ Kojima, Mamoru Yamaguchi, Urushiitani), and it's unlikely that an MMA promotion in the states would be able to find legit stars. As for 115 and 105lb classes...it's not happening.

Not that I know of. He's certainly never competed in any professional combat sport, which is the main thing. Brock and Lashley were both high level wrestlers, Lesnar moreso than Lashley.

That guy just gave half his pay cheque to orphans...orphans with diseases!

They've even taken it off the gloves.

Here's a fun game. Count how many times you see the WEC logo or hear the name WEC mentioned during this broadcast. I'm thinking you won't need to take your socks off.

Appologies if you thought I was flaming you, didn't mean to at all. Got a house full of idiots watching WEC and eating/drinking me out of house and home, so I only had one eye on what I was typing. What I do know, is that Toney really, seriously hasn't been taking his training with Juanito's crew seriously. This is from guys who were brought in for wrestling and grappling sessions, made to sign confidentiality agreements stating that they wouldn't discuss his training, then sent away after less than an hour because Toney didn't like being taken down/tapped out. I know of two separate guys this has happened to, neither of whom we're paid by Ibarra. They're taking about having it as the co-main event (or possibly even the third fight behind Maynard/Florian) in Boston on the Edgar/Penn 2 card. It'll do a massive, massive gate if thats the case. Penn has been a good draw on PPV of late, will be interesting to see if Toney adds much to the numbers. Read alot of PPV numbers recently indicating that those who purchase boxing PPVs and MMA PPVs are still two very different groups. I don't see Toney having the broad appeal of a Brock Lesnar, who brought tons of WWE fans with him. With those fights, I'd bank on a 600k buyrate; pretty good, going off current figures.

The person in your spoiler was shooting some training footage at the Affliction centre with their CEO recently. I've heard nothing about him wanting to fight, but he is training. Not sure if that means anything or not.

Ah, their showing the Brad Pickett fight! Good to see the lad getting the exposure he deserves. Shocked at the result of the Brown/Gamburyan fight!

I'd say that taking Couture over Toney is more sensible than easy. It doesn't matter if he's Floyd Mayweather, Pac Man, Sugar Ray, Tyson or Ali himself...Toney's not in a boxing match against Randy. Everything is different. You can't stand like a boxer, you can't move like a boxer and you can't punch like a boxer. Randy may not be able to take a punch anymore, but he has a few things going for him. He's one of the best-prepared fighters in MMA. Toney isn't. From what I here he has absolutely no interest in learning takedown defence, submission defence etc. He actually believes that MMA fighters are chumps, that nobody will have their way with him and that he will KO anyone they put infront of him. The other thing in Randy's favour is his attitude. He's mid-40's, has a couple of fights before he retires and wants to see out his contract. He's told lots of people that if he gets knocked out, he'll walk away from the sport - he was saying that before the Vera fight. He's too smart to put himself in any position where Toney can knock him out. Only Randy knows what's going on inside his head, but the schools of thought are that either A) He genuinely wants to go out on a high note and finish his career with some good wins or B) He wants to ensure that he doesn't get knocked out so that he can complete every fight on the contract before laughing all the way to the bank. Either way, he's not putting himself in danger, and Toney has very, very few assets that are dangerous to Couture. All Randy has to do is come out win a waist-high shot or an ankle pick and Toney won't be able to hit him sweetly. From their he'll be on his back or against the cage, and it's game over. If Toney was fighting an Arlovski or someone of that ilk who thinks they can box, then I'd be right with you...but not Couture.

I avoid Church *and* do the stuff church goers condemn others for doing. Best of both worlds :0)

Jung vs Garcia is one of the most entertaining fights I have ever seen. Talk about leaving it all in the cage. Brilliant. I was having far too much fun to score it, but I was VERY surprised at the decision. LOL, was it me, or did Rogan get caught on camera saying that he thought it was 'pretty obvious' that CSG should have got the W?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/kmeyers/motivator4753024pt6.jpg I love this

Tried it for the first time (I'm normally a baked beans man when it comes to KFC sides) and it was tasty. What it wasn't though, was gravy. Call it KFC grey sauce or something and I'll be happy :-P

Holier-than-though 'intellectuals' who blast religion/politics and those who believe/subscribe to them grind my gears waaaay more than religion or politics themselves. Like you pointed out with the guy above, they're mostly very similar in that they feel the need to 'educate' the world as to why 'Religion X' is crazy/wrong/obsolete, usually in the most vitriolic way possible. I'm a fully paid-up Anarchist (and have the tattoo's to prove it!!!), which has nothing to do with rioting, mayhem etc by the way, we're mostly a peaceful people. I'm wearing fluffy pink slippers as I write this. Point being, you wont find someone who despises organised religion or religious oppression more than me. At the same time, I absolutely advocate the right of the individual to believe in whatever they so chose. Is your religion absurd to me? Absolutely. Am I going to call you mentally ill or wrong for believing in it? Absolutely not, the opposite infact. Everyone should be free to live their live however they want, without being told that it's wrong by someone who thinks they know better. In my experience the intellectual Atheists often have the least conviction, because they don't believe in anything. Y'know what else grinds my gears? KFC gravy. Seriously, gravy is *not* that colour.

Absolutely. I have literally lost friends to MMORPG's, I just can't get my head around that. They play before and after work, all weekend, days off. One of them regularly calls in sick to play. They won't come out, or even come over to watch a movie because they are 'meeting people on WOW'. Everything is cool in moderation, but MMORPG's by their very nature suck your time away. Some people would be better off with some good old fashioned fresh air.