All Purpose UFC/MMA/That Kind Of Thing Thread

Yeah I can't stand the UFC marketing either that plays into my comments on people just watching just to see blood. MMA isn't just about knocking the other guys head in though as many wins come by submission. I am not interested in converting anyone to the sport coming from a quaker background proselytizing isn't my thing. I am interested in simply educating what is a very ignorant general public and press about the sport.

 

Flip over to Vs. sometime when Tapout is on.

It's a "reality" show following the guys from Tapout brand gear trying to find the next MMA superstar. The president of the company calls himself "Mask," and wears facepaint like he's a Navy SEAL on a combat mission and dresses like a redneck pimp.

 

Sports Illustrated recently did piece on who’s who in MMA.

The basic premise is thus…

While I don’t agree with all the comparisons (for one I’m not seeing Tim Sylvia/Lennox Lewis) it’s interesting none the less.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/todd_martin/08/13/comparisons/

 

The UFC have finally got Wanderlei.

How much he has left in the tank is interesting.

I suspect a lot.

A lot.

In my mind two back to back losses to elite level fighters don’t, in anyway, equate to done.

Plus the Cro-Cop who beat Wanderlei, and ultimately won the Pride Open Weight Grand Prix , was beating any MMA fighter not named Fedor.

http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/wo/news/headlines/default.asp?aID=20472

 

A nice piece from the Sports Illustrated website on Gabriel Gonzaga who challenges, and will probably beat, Randy Couture for the UFC Heavyweight title tonight.

Gonzaga is simply a horrible stylistic match up for Couture. Big huge grapplers like Ricco Rodriguez (before he ate, you know, everything) and Josh Barnett are the reason that Couture left the heavyweight division in the first place. Gonzaga is another fighter in that mould.

Also, with Gonzaga we might be watching the emergence of the next great heavyweight. He might just be a fighter that can join Fedor Emelianenko, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic and Josh Barnett in the list of truly great active heavyweights.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/more/08/23/gonzaga.ufc/

 

Classy move MMA, real classy...

http://www.withleather.com/post.phtml?pk=3734

 

Classic move football, real classy...

Classic move baseball, real classy...

 

Big difference. Huge difference.

Why was that fat kid in the ring with him to begin with? Who sanctioned that?

(And, for the record, I've been watching UFC since Gracie's glory years. Crap like on that video hurts the sport.)

 

Hey, I'm not fat. I just have a problem with my glands, specifically the ones stuffed with pounds and pounds of fat.

And this sport is no more violent than gardening. After all, I just read about a guy who killed his neighbor with a steel rake.

 

That video is pretty bad.

The fight, if you can call it that, took place on June 25, 1999 at a show Monte Cox promoted in Cleveland, Ohio. The fat kid's name was Nick Bartlett. His MMA record, which consists of that one fight, can be viewed at the link below.

http://fcfighter.brinkster.net/fighter.asp?FighterID=239819

If there's anything about that fight that can be defended, and I really don't think that there is, it's that Ben Rothwell would only have been seventeen at the time, and it was also an amateur fight.

The whole thing is embarrassing though. It should never have been allowed to happen. What’s even worse is that Monte Cox manages some of the UFC’s top stars, such as Matt Hughes and Rick Franklin, and Jeremy Horn is refereeing that debacle. It really is a group of people who should have known better.

The whole story is actually worse. The fat kid was a pro-wrestling fan and supposedly asked at the rules meeting if various pro wrestling moves were legal. He was still let fight. As the story goes Monte Cox was short on heavyweights.

It was a black eye for the sport. It was over eight years ago though. The sport has moved on a lot since then. That said at lower levels in MMA, and this is true in boxing as well, you're going to get mismatches. However, mismatches of the degree shown in the video should never happen in any combat sport. No one should have put that fat kid in a fight.

I can't emphasis enough though that the fight was also a long time ago in terms of MMA.

Take Jeremy Horn for instance. Jeremy Horn is one of the most respected MMA fighters in the world. He’s fought all over the world for all the top organisations. He's competed at everything from middleweight (where he belongs) through heavyweight (where he has no business but where he has gone the distance with Randy Couture and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira). Horn has been in with a who’s who of top MMA fighters.

He made his professional debut on March 1, 1996 at a small show in Atlanta called, “Atlanta Fights”. His opponent was Rick Gravesen, who would finish his career in 2002 with a record of 18-13.

This is what that fight looked like…

It’s night and day compared to these days.

Fights like Horn’s debut, and the Rothwell fight as well, took place at a low level shows when even top-level MMA was, somewhat, underground. You’re talking about the era of the cable ban. As far as MMA is concerned that era was truly the dark ages. I doubt even low level shows would put someone like that fat kid in the ring (or cage) these days.

 

My point is treating MMA as a monolith in your logic is inherently flawed. Yes that video is bad and the people involved should be vilified. It is just the type of thing people point to when painting MMA in a bad light even though that type of thinking is so obviously wrong. MMA is a sport not a monolithic being responsible for all that happens in relation to itself.

 

Lighten up, it was a joke. I know there's a whole alphabet of different organizations with UFC atop the pile.