brashleyholland

Come on. Mir is overrated? How? It seems as though you win a fight these days and you're 'overrated'...

Fitch will now face Ben Saunders, leaving Jake Ellenberger without an opponant and killing a potentially excellent match in favour of a potentially dreadful one. The UFC pay fighters if their opponant drops out and they can't find a replacement, usually their full fight and win money, and an extra chunk to cover endorsement money that they will miss out on by not appearing on the broadcast. I guess it's more financially viable to pay Jake Ellenberger not to fight (less than $30 grand, possibly a touch over) than paying Fitch not to fight (well over $100,000).

Clearly Vince is right, and proven so when you look at his company's balance sheet and ratings compared to TNA. 'The People' don't want 'pro wrasslin' anymore...the YouTube generation want things loud, fast and new. There are so many options for entertainment these days between TV, games, internet, fresh air (LOL, just kidding!!)...if you don't keep peoples atention they just turn to something else. WWE provides short matches, quick transitions, flashy presentation etc. Sure, it's not pro-wrestling as we'd like to to be...but it's 'what the culture wants' these days.

The latest is that Ricardo Liborio (ATT leader) wants this fight switched to 112. First of all, I seriously hope that he is under the impression that this is a formality that can be cleared up. If, on the other hand, he wants to take this fight to Abu Dhabi because he knows that there isn't a commission to prevent the fight from happening there, then I'd have to question whether or not he has his fighters best interests at heart. From the UFC's point of view - It'd be absolutely horrendous PR for them if they let this fight happen in two weeks time at 112. Unless he is cleared 100% fit by an independent doctor, they'd be crazy to have him anywhere near the cage. Even if nothing happens to him, it's the kind of thing MMA critics will lap up. Imagine the headlines "CAGE FIGHT PUMMELLED TWO WEEKS AFTER FAILING BRAIN SCAN". Lol, bit of a rant there, but I have no interest in seeing anyone with serious medical issues putting themselves in danger. Paying Thiago Silva to fight through a mild back injury at 108 was one thing...hopefully common sense will prevail here.

Alves is out of the Fitch bout after failing a CAT scan. That does *not* bode well for him. There is an irregularity with an artery in his brain. Let's hope this is not as serious as it sounds... Seems like Fitch is off the card with Pellegrino/Camoes promoted to the main card. Was looking forward to that anyway. There's nobody else on the card at welterweight they could have put in with Fitch. Riddle/Soto wouldn't have been sanctioned against him. Diaz, Markham, Almeida and Brown were already in featured bouts on Spike that have been selected especially for the excitement factor to help sell the PPV. Plus it's unlikely that any of those guys would have wanted to fight Fitch on late notice, considering his propensity for grinding out boring decisions. No upside in that. Poor Fitch, this was pretty much his only chance at a guaranteed title shot.

Couple of interesting news bits - Scott Coker has confirmed Fedor-Werdum for June at an unannounced show. You'd have to assume it was a CBS show due to Fedor's wage demands. I'm sure CBS wont mind putting another show on in such close proximity due to Emelianenko's popularity. Will be very interesting to see the difference in ratings between the Hendo-Shields bout and this. - Carwin missed the press conference yesterday, which started immediate rumblings through some of the 'press' there that he was still cutting from 726lbs and wouldn't be on weight or in a good condition come fight time. In reality he was getting his clearances finalised after his flight was delayed. Still, fun to see everyone jumping on the "OMGZ he's gonna cut 400lbs and 3ft in height the day before the fight!" bandwagon. And people wonder why MMA journalism has a bad name... - Wanderlei Silva vs Yoshihiro Akiyama is on for 116 on July 3rd, as part of the undercard of the Lesnar vs Carwin/Mir/Velasquez fight. Should make for a very entertaining fight considering the principles. Winner could very well fight Mike Bisping at later this year in London, should he get past Dan Miller. - Was contacted by Alessio Sakara's translator yesterday to send him some interview questions. He's very interested in calling out Mike Bisping for a fight later in the year. Should they want to go in a different direction with the Silva/Akiyama winner, or god-forbid should Bisping lose to Miller, Sakara-Bisping would be a great fight for both men. - Dana White isn't interested in Velasquez vs JDS just yet. Doesn't want to kill either of their momentum before a title shot apparently. All well and good, but when you have a division with so many guys on similar levels, you're always going to have a bit of a round-robin type thing going on. Otherwise you're either A) Keeping guys on the shelf for months or B) Feeding your top guys cans, which hurts them even more if they lose.

I think it's because they buy a three-hour block of PPV time...anything more than that and it costs them more from the PPV providers. They had a situation in the past...I want to say UFC 33...where they had 6 of the 8 bouts (three of which were 25-min title bouts) go to a decision. The main event (Ortiz vs Matyushenko) ended up being cut off. It would cost so much more for a 5 and a half hour PPV (thats how long a live show lasts) that they'd have to pass the cost on to viewers. To be fair to them, on PPV they do usually fill up the time they have with prelims. You often see 7-9 fights, which is value for money I guess. Then again I'm not paying for it on a per-show basis here in the UK so that's not for me to say. I know that if you buy the online PPV, you get the prelims free. You can also buy them from the UFC Vault the very next day. They're all about the money in that respect. LOL, we shouldn't really complain at the moment though...two STACKED cards back to back, UFC on Versus and UFC Fight Night on free TV on consecutive weeks :-p

Anyway speaking of Big, Natural Rob , I get the awful feeling that we're going to be seeing an awful lot of squash matches in the comming weeks as they attempt to make something of him. Seems strange that they haven't kept him closer to the British Invasion - both those guys can wrestle rings around him, would have thought it'd make sense for them to have a few bouts together to make him look good (or better). Unless, shock horror, they're actually going to make something of Doug Williams as X-Division champ...

Lol, maybe it's all these steroids I've been taking skewing my judgement :-D

Those biceps look the same to you? :-p

I never said you did, I was just saying. A lot of people see a cut guy and assume OMGZ ROOOOIIIIIDDDZZZ!!!! Because there is a big difference between this... http://quizilla.teennick.com/user_images/X/XX/XXX/XXXSTORYCHICKXXX/1241806157_3975_full.jpeg ...on a 6'4 frame and this... http://thumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp/@0_mall/b-drop/cabinet/photo/pphoto-sste.jpg ...on a guy of 6 feet tall. Stiener's wiki has him at 6'1, but that's my height and I was taller than him when I met him years back. His body is totaly out of proportion for his height. There's nothing natural about that man :-p There's not a noticable difference with any of them really. Barnett has drifted between that pic, slightly pudgyer and fairly sloppy over the years...but he's been done for 'roids' in all three conditions. Royce has never looked bigger or smaller, outside of him naturally getting a little thicker with age. Plus, with athletes who take roids for reasons other than looking like Stiener, it's tough to know when they are not using and when they are just not getting caught using. I personally know a number of high-level MMA and K-1 fighters (competing in the UFC, WEC, K-1, It's Showtime and Strikeforce) who use banned substances and pass pee tests with alarming regularity :-p It's a long and convoluted process that involves adding a minimum of muscle mass in order to increase your performance in work-outs to hit a peak amount of calories burned and shred off every bit of excess non-muscle weight that you can. It's not healthy and is very much down to getting the science right and the individual's reactions :-p Now I remember it, thats what Tim Sylvia was doing when he got busted...he was doing it wrong :-p

Just a quick note. Roids does not equal muscles. You can have a body like Rob's without 'roids'. You can't have a body like Stiener's without 'roids'. Also, when people say 'roids', alot of the time they're getting it confused with HGH (human growth hormone). Steriods are used for a variety of things; repairing internal tissue damage, for example. In some cases they can help you *lose* weight. The three guys below were all on steroids at the time...no Big Rob look-a-likes here :-p http://www.mmatko.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/sakaruba-gracie.jpg (Royce) http://www.cdn.sherdog.com/_images/news/2006_12/6380.jpg http://www.fcfighter.com/PICTURES/UFC36/barnett-belt.jpg

I just hope it doesn't get to a point where they hold off on showing decent prelims on free time during the PPV because they are saving them up to have 'first time on TV' content to go against Strikeforce etc. It's not so bad for us here in the UK because we don't pay for the PPV's like folks in the US...but if I was laying down $55 every 3-4 weeks I'd want my $$$'s worth.

If anyone was confused as to why they didn't show the great Clay Guida/Shannon Gugerty fight or the quick Schaub/Gormley KO on Versus, it turns out that they are showing a special UFC Unleashed in the US on Wednesday night on Spike. Those two fights will feature, as well as Jeremy Stephens vs Justin Buchholz from last September and the very entertaining Paul Kelly vs Dennis Siver fight from the UFC 105 prelims. It's the first time that any of these fights have been shown on TV.

He didn't look in any fit state to continue. There were 12 guys in the ring at one point, including Tanigawa (FEG's Dana White) all hassling him to continue, even though he was repeatedly saying "I can't fight like this". Pretty disgraceful, but then Barnett can't have come cheap and there's nothing like geting you're money's worth! :-p

On the UK broadcast we only got the Howard prelim; I'm pretty sure that the US one was the same. I don't know how it was on Versus, but on ESPN in the UK the number of commercials was absolutely mind boggling. Bare in mind that in the UK we're only used to one commercial break per half hour...I counted two in the first 13 mins; before the first fight had even started. Usually ESPN are great with only minimal commercial breaks - so I don't know if it was just a case of a lot of commercial time on the US broadcast. But yeah, you'd think they'd have managed 47 seconds to squeeze in the Schaub fight. Just watching DREAM 13...decent opener with Escovedo scoring a big head kick KO and a plodding but watch-able back and fourth effort between Andrews Nakahara and Ryo Chonan. Which as I type this turned into an all-out slugfest! Looking forward to the main event and seeing if Josh Barnett can submit Mighty Mo quicker than the time it takes me to type out "Winner: Barnett, Submission, 1st Round"

<p>Duane Ludwig just snapped his ankle really badly in the 1st round. Tried to brace after a double leg and his ankle snapped underneath him. Possibly a career ender, depending on how bad the break is. <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/frown.png.e6b571745a30fe6a6f2e918994141a47.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p> On the plus side, couple of short, exciting prelims that we should get to see on the main broadcast, time allowing!</p><p> </p><p> EDIT: To save repeated posts :-p </p><p> </p><p> -Absolutely top notch call from Josh Rosenthal in the first fight. I had nightmares of Irvin being allowed time to recover and coming back to win the fight. Not sure if instant replay was used, but it was 100% a punch that landed. Irvin looked shocking at the weigh-ins and didn't look like he wanted to fight all that much on the night.</p><p> </p><p> - Kongo-Buentello wasn't great...Cheick stuck to the gameplan well and didn't get drawn into a brawl on the feet. His rolling defence looked really good in the couple of exchanges near the fence; it's becoming a real trademark of the Wolfslair guys. </p><p> </p><p> Thoughts on the show so far: It's turning into a real stinker of a début on Versus. When you put brawlers together you take a chance. 75% of the time you'll get the slugfest you want, but there's always the chance you'll get one of the guys taking the methodical and logical route to win...exactly what we saw from Kongo. </p><p> </p><p> Also (and this isn't the UFC's) fault; the first two fights have been VERY stop and start with injuries, illegal moves etc, along with two very anti-climatic finishes. Certainly not what the UFC expected when matching up two heavyweight brawlers and two chinny strikers. </p><p> </p><p> Ah well, JDS vs Gonzaga is about to start; hopefully business will pick up!! <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/smile.png.142cfa0a1cd2925c0463c1d00f499df2.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p> ...and how! Dos Santos looked great again. I really, really hope that the winner of Carwin/Mir is fit to face Brock, because I want to see JDS vs Cain Velasquez more than any other fight right now.</p>

To be honest, I'm looking forward to this card more than I was UFC 108 and 109, Couture-Coleman aside. I knew there was something else I'd forgot about Irvin as well...he's also coming of a methadone addiction. Yikes. He seemed like a broken man in a recent interview I saw...so who knows where his head is. Hopefully he can come through it all, because at the end of the day he's a great fighter to watch. I love watching Guida; but Matyushenko's been too much of a snoozer lately. It's crazy to think that a guy in his prime 7 years ago is still competitive at some level though, and he makes a good gatekeeper. I'm guessing they'd love to get Schaub on the card, I see a lot of promise in him and Joe Silva has a serious man-crush on the guy. I'm proud to say that Duane Ludwig kicked the bejeezus out of me at a seminar in Amsterdam a few years back. Aside from turning my legs purple, I've never been punched so hard by a guy so small. Always pulling for that guy.

She hit him first! Lol, the chick in the top GIF is from a Dutch show...she did all sorts of stuff during a 'hands on' interview with him...she got him to hit her in the stomach and choke her out a couple of different ways as well. Talk about suffering for your craft. That said, the same woman spent some time in a window in Amsterdam's Red Light District as part of a report on the 'oldest profession in the world'...so I imagine being play-tapped by AA is no big deal!! The little girl is called Larizza, she was part of a kickboxing class that Overeem dropped in on. The first time he kicked the pad she laughed at him and told him to do it properly

Absolutely. If Vera tries the clinch he's going to get rag-dolled. If he tries to pick him off with leg kicks Jones is going to blast him with a straight right down the pipe and swarm him in a corner. Agree again. Gonzaga's BJJ is insane, but he's always going after a stand up fight. I don't even think that JDS will need to use his wrestling to keep it on the feet. Gonzaga will oblige him and get knocked out for his trouble. Can you keep a secret? Kongo has only trained for two weeks for this fight. Gassed HARD in the first round of sparring at the Wolfslair. Still, I don't see him needing the gas tank for this one. I'm thinking that he cracks Buentello hard and early, before finishing him with some of that sick G'n'P. The only one I'm going to disagree on. Both guys are chinny, but Irvin is coming off two serious knee injuries, a near 20-month lay-off AND cutting to 185 for the first time. I think Sakara makes it three in a row. Man...the UFC have really gone out of their way to get some 'guaranteed excitement' style fights on the main card of this one..

As I've said above, I think Taker should remain undefeated at Mania until he calls it quits for good...but to play Devil's Advocate to your Devil's Advocate... Can the WWE rely on Taker and HBK being physically able to perform a quality match a year from now? I've read that both are winding their schedules down for health reasons; is either man in a possition to say "I can commit to a year long build and perform at the end of it"?

Thats a couple of pretty big assumptions though, unless he's publicly said something to that effect.

Who said anything about buying Panda Energy? He said Trump should buy TNA, not Panda.

The only way I want to see Taker lose at Wrestlemania is A) If it's his last ever match and B) if it is putting over a member of the next generation of WWE superstars. I know that wins and loses don't mean anything in wresting, but *that* win, ending Taker's WM streak would be huge; I'd argue that it'd do more for someone than any title belt at the moment. HBK stands to gain nothing from beating Taker, as he's winding down himself. What I'd like to see is Taker working a very light schedule in the next 12 months. Hopefully by next years Mainia, they'll have someone in a position whereby they can end the streak and become a megastar. Question...is there anyone else of note with a Mainia streak? Even if it's just a couple of years?

Oh for sure, can't blame anyone for trying to make some scratch. I just find it funny when these guys say 'good for the business' when what they mean is "we can make more money".