Happy New Year: A Little Taste of Last Year

Sorry I haven't been as active over the break. I will say that I enjoyed UFC 79, despite some of my favorite fighters from the good old days underperforming (damn you, Soa Palelei). I also enjoyed the M-1 Global event, though I wish JZ might have been able to offer us the fight of the year with Aoki.

I have a collection of moments in a year that has been a roller coaster ride for many fans of the greatest sport in the world, but before I get to that, which I'll try to get out tomorrow, I want to give you guys something fun to celebrate the New Year.

A friend of mine linked me this post I made before thanksgiving and I realized I hadn't put it up on the blog for you guys.

To put it in context, this is a bit I did after Jeff Lacy came out with his outburst against MMA. I enjoyed writing this alot, and I hope you guys like it as much as I did. Happy New Year.

Are you f*cking kidding me? Jeff Lacy is a credible source on boxing?

First, the guy's an idiot. Second, all of his comments are only aggravating an argument that could be made so much better.

Any boxer that wants to bring up Maywether vs. De La Hoya as an example of why MMA is an inferior sport is an idiot. I watched the fight, and usually I can appreciate boxers for their hands and head movement, but both of them proved to be complete p*ssies in that fight. Great competition comes from having two guys who want to win, who want to finish and who want to really show how great they are, not who want to line their pockets.

Boxing is a better sport because there's more money in it? No!

The international boxing market has fallen apart, while international MMA continues to grow at a speed no other sport in the world can keep up with. Boxing continues to be a waste of time and talent because guys with lots of potential would rather make money than actually fight.

Then there are all of these ridiculous boxing contracts. De La Hoya gets to pick the color of Floyd Maywether's shorts and gloves? That's a disgrace not just to the sport of boxing, but to anyone who associates themself with being a "fight fan."

Then you have guys like Valuev who continue to put on raucous displays against opponents that are hand selected by Don f*cking King. At least for Hong Man Choi to get a title, he's got to fight real opponents (and I'm not just talking about Fedor, I'm also talking about Jerome LeBanner, Semmy Schilt and some of the other great guys he fought in K-1).

Honestly, I wish I could say boxing was dead, so that I could ignore it, but instead it's just flopping around like a fish out of water, gasping for air. It can't die quickly enough. It makes me sad to say that some of the great eastern European fighters I grew up watching, like the Klitchko's, are part of a sport that is falling apart, and I have as must respect for the guys that realy fight in boxing as I do for the guys in K-1, but the vast majority of boxers are killing this sport. It can't even just be blamed on the promoters and shady managers any more.

I've done enough talking about boxers as inferior athletes, because they are. They don't condition themselves to perform as wide a variety of tasks or endure as much punishment as an MMA fighter. If you want to see what I have to say about that, here's a quote from one of my old posts:

"Obviously, your new, so I'll be gentle.

None of the guys you have seen in MMA punch for sh*t? What about:

Fedor Emelianenko
Mirko "CroCop" Filipovic
Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Mark Hunt
Andrei Arlovski
Tim Sylvia (in his younger days)
Aleks Emelianenko
Sergei Kharitonov
Igor Vovchanchyn
Randy Couture
Chuck Liddell
Mauricio "Shogun" Rua
Wanderlei Silva
Quinton "Rampage" Jackson
Rich Franklin
Anderson Silva
Denis Kang
Georges St. Pierre
BJ Penn
Takanori Gomi
Joachim Hansen
Hayato Sakurai

That's just off the top of my head. A handful of those guys are, or were, professional boxers. If you don't think they can punch, you obviously have no idea what a punch looks like.

You see, the difference between these guys and boxers is that they can do other things. Bas Rutten even proved that a boxing stance was useless in MMA (and, thus, a streetfight) when he had Duane Ludwig pound on Jens Pulver's more traditional boxing style.

Boxers have come over, but they rarely make it up the top ranks. If you want to know what I mean watch PRIDE's Butterbean v Ikuhisa Minowa. You have to know submissions and wrestling, and that's not just something you can pick up over night. It's much easier for a wrestler (who can control the pace of the fight and where it goes) to transition to MMA than a boxer, because a wrestler has much more applicable skills in MMA.

Even if you're a boxer in MMA, you can't win a fight with just boxing. There's more than just hands in boxing. You have to deal with the added dimensions of leg-kicks and clinches that your opponent can hit you in, in addition to the constant threat of being taken down.

I've been saying this for a long time:

Show me a boxer who can take leg-kicks from Mirko CroCop...

Show me a boxer who can hurt Mark Hunt standing up...

Show me a boxer who can avoid a takedown from Mark Coleman...

Show me a boxer who can defend a submission from Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira...

Show me a boxer who can get off of his back with Fedor Emelianenko pounding his face in...

... and that guy'll be great in MMA. He, however, has not shown up and does not, in the real world, exist.
Simply put, Jeff Lacy is a dumbass, as so is anyone who doesn't give MMA fighters the respect they deserve as athletes and as warriors."

To finish, I'd like to add:

F*ck boxers... I'm going to eat some Turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving.

See you all in January.

TUF Finale: Hot and Cold

The overall tone of the fight wasn't set by the main events, as it usually is. The two main bouts between top lightweight contenders Clay Guida and Roger Huerta and Ultimate Fighter finalists Mac Danzig and Tommy Speer were interesting fights, but the rest of the card was, for the most part, not.

While I will say that I expected more from Tommy Speer than was displayed, I knew how the fight was going to end (though I hadn't anticipated it being so short). Danzig, the more experienced and more agile fighter, choked Speer out in about two minutes.

The fight between Huerta and Guida was the best fight on the card, and the two fighters went to war. Huerta eventually won with a choke in the third round.

While the card was full of exiting submissions, most were like the one in the Danzig fight, coming early and not really giving us the chance to see a war. Here are the results from the other fights:

Jonathan Goulet chokes out Paul Gorgieff in the first.
Roman Mitchyan finished Dorian Price with an ankle lock submission in the first.
Matt Arroyo submitted John Kolosci with an armbar in the first.
Troy Mandoloniz KO'd Ritchie Hightower in the first round.
Ben Saunders beat Dan Barerra unanimously on the judges scorecards.
Goerge Sotiropolous choked out Billy Miles in the first.
Jon Koppenhaver TKO'd Jared Rollins the third round.

WEC's Next Big Event: WEC 31

The WEC is starting to look suspicious. After all, the UFC has had a handful of cards that have not had a single title fight, and barely a high profile matchup. Now, UFC fans are considering themselves lucky if they are getting a single title shot.

So where does the WEC get off putting three title fights on their upcoming card. It is, really, about putting together a high quality product for the fans, but also doing their best to get some serious attention while promoting some of their less famous fighters.

The biggest matchup on the card is the first title defense of undefeated Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu machine Paulo Filho (15-0-0). Some fans rank Filho as the number one fighter in the world at 185 pounds, and nobody has him ranked outside of the top three. He's set to fight UFC veteran Chael Sonnen (19-8-1) who, as a wrestler, provides nothing that Filho hasn't seen before in an opponent, but really offers Filho the opportunity to show his strengths as a grappler while also facing an opponent who can't simply be written off as a nobody. Really, the matchup is to further introduce American fans to the style of fighting they can expect from the WEC, display the dominance of Filho and give the main even on the card some notoriety.

The most interesting fight on the card is the match between current WEC featherweight champion and resident organization animal Urijah "The California Kid" Faber (19-1-0) and Jiu-Jitsu legend Jeff "Big Frog" Curran (28-8-1). Curran is a long time veteran of the sport and his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu chops and experience will prove an interesting test for Faber, who has been no less than devastating in his three fights in the WEC, where he has yet to hear the bell ending the first round.

Both of those fights will provide most of the draw, but the great unknown champion of the infant WEC organization is the lightheavyweight champion working lower in the card: Doug "The Rhino" Marshall. While little is known about Marshall (6-2-0) as a fighter, because he has only had 8 fights, all have been in the WEC, so he is established in the organization and may become the first big star brought up in the organization. The WEC certainly has a good deal riding on Marshall, but his opponent, Cuban Ariel Gandulla (4-0-0) isn't considered a serious threat to his title, because he only won his title shot by a split decision.

Still, the lighter weight classes for which the WEC is fast become noticed, are set to provide an interesting backing for the quickly expanding lightheavyweight division, and the installation of Filho as champion of the middleweight division shows that the WEC is serious about expanding it's ranks of champions from the bottom up. So expect the announcement of some heavyweight contracts in the next six to ten months, and the emmergence of a belt in about eighteen.

The WEC is going to really put some pressure on and may put together a show that makes MMA fans drawn in by the publicity behemoth that is the UFC start turning to smaller options and the quality of fights they are seeing in the UFC start diminshing.

It's almost as though WEC is offering a challenge to its big brother cagefighting organization:

If you're not going to give people title fights, we will.

And I'm excited to see what will happen