By Jonathan Snowden

We will honor the UFC’s KOTC level live special by live blogging throughout the evening. That means I will be telling you, the gentle reader, what I think of the show in real time. Uncensored views will follow.

These may end up being great fights. It’s just that there isn’t a single fighter or fight that would make a PPV broadcast if the promotion was still running bi-monthly shows. Many of these guys really would have been KOTC fighters a few years ago before the TUF expansion. I didn’t intend it as an insult, more just the lay of the land. The fighters that are almost ready for the big time are now main eventing television shows instead of fighting in Indian Casinos. Just another sign of how fast the sport is growing.

Show Begins:
Goldberg explains the idea of cutting weight, setting the stage for Swick’s cut to 170 tonight. Burkman and Swick is truly Beauty and the Beast. Burkman may be an “incredible athlete” but he’s sure hastily put together.

IT”S HERE! Commercial for a fourth Rambo movie complete with a Drowning Pool song at least as old as Sylvester Stallone. After the success of Rocky 6, can Demolition Man 2 be far behind? Will we finally learn the purpose of those damn three sea shells? Will anyone understand my Demolition Man jokes?

Fight 1: Alvin Robinson vs. Nate Diaz

Diaz has the reach advantage on Robinson. He’d have the reach advantage on anyone this side of Inspector Gadget. Damn he’s skinny. Diz with an immediate takedown and Alvin is real close to securing the guillotine. Diaz is so skinny he looks like Santa’s Little Helper. Great back and forth action on the ground including an omoplata sweep from Diaz. Diaz finished the fight at 3:39 with a triangle. Nice fight and solid win for Diaz. Robinson was no can and Diaz made it look easy. Diaz talks like one of the Wayans brothers doing a Mike Tyson impression. Which is awesome.

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By Lee Casebolt  

2007 was The Year of the Upset in MMA, as evidenced by such unlikely happenings as Matt Serra, World Welterweight Champion, and Randy Couture, three time World Heavyweight Champion.  No one gave Serra a realistic chance of defeating the younger, larger, stronger, and generally better skilled Georges St. Pierre.  Similarly, the enormous Tim Sylvia was popularly thought to be too much for an aging Randy Couture who had moved to light heavyweight, after all, specifically to avoid 270+lb monsters cutting down to the 265 limit.

 This year’s upcoming title fights are, on paper, much more balanced encounters than those two contests, so if you think anyone really knows how they’re going to go down, you’re insane.  Which is not to say I (and thousands of others) will not make our predictions, based on either sound logic and keen observation or raw emotion and pure guesswork; it’s the internet, and that’s what it’s for.  For you, the fan, though, the important question at this juncture is not “Who’s going to win?” but “Why should I care?”  A belt is just a shiny piece of metal riveted to a leather strap.  In and of itself, it means nothing with regard to the quality or importance of a fight.  Today we’ll take a look at the upcoming title bouts which have been announced, and go over why they should be both good fights and significant fights. 

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Brock Lesnar: Apparently untested

Brock Lesnar: YAHOO

DON”T BET ON BROCK LESNAR!!!

Has any untested fighter gotten such undeserving hype in the history of the sport? Has anyone ever had a worse tattoo?

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Last night in Newcastle, England the Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC, held an event, but this wasn’t just an event, it was a warning to the rest of the MMA community. B.J.Penn is back, and it is a very scary prospect for the rest of the MMA world indeed. However that wasn’t the warning that the UFC sent out, their warning consisted of exciting fights, titles awarded, new faces discovered, and the prospect of a big time lightweight showdown. In an environment where everyone is after the UFC they took the time last night to make sure that all of their pursuers once again realized who the big dog is and why it’s not always the best idea to make the big dog mad.

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by Tommy Hackett

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It’s a new day for Mario Sperry, the newest coach for the International Fight League.

The two time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champion and 13 year veteran of MMA is busy creating not only a new competition team and school, but one in a new home, in a new country, and for a new organization. While plans for his Las Vegas school are being finalized, he’s imparting his wisdom to students at seminars across the US, like yesterday at Marcelo Alonso’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Seattle. The occassion marked Sperry’s fourth visit to the Emerald City to visit his old friend from the Carlson Gracie Team.

“Mario Sperry demonstrates an entry into an armlock at last night’s Seattle seminar”

Working with MMA and BJJ champions like Rodrigo Nogueira and Ricardo Arona may seem like a world apart from conducting a seminar where he may be expected to help introduce the “gentle art” to a new student. But in conversation with Sperry, the two appear to have a surprising amount in common.

“I’ve always believed that jiu-jitsu is a very simple art,” the world champion begins, taking a break as the seminar breaks between its gi and no-gi instruction.
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I will be joining Ian Hamilton of ‘Ringside Live’ to talk about tonight’s UFC 80 show in Newcastle, as soon as the event has finished.

It’s a live show so you can call in and make your opinions heard as well. More details can be found at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/ringsidelive.

The show will be live from 23:00 - 00:00 Saturday night (UK time) and 18:00-19:00 (eastern USA time).

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By Jonathan Snowden

While promoters in MMA typically follow the pro wrestling model with a huge emphasis on promotional branding and over-the-top feuds, some of the sport’s biggest stars have quietly been studying their sister sport of boxing. In boxing, there is no brand that attracts an audience. The fighters are the stars and people pay to see Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Trinidad, not a “Don King Production.”

The role model for fighters everywhere looking to take control of their career, and their finances, is Oscar De La Hoya. De La Hoya used his own celebrity and drawing power to create his own company, Golden Boy Promotions. Now instead of a simple fight purse, Oscar gets a piece of the whole pie. He gets a cut from the PPV gross, the gate, the site fee the casino pays, the foreign broadcast rights, ringside advertising, closed circuit, everything. “You know, being a promoter now, it’s kind of like opening the door and finding out what really is inside the house, so to speak. You know, a fighter doesn’t know what’s going on when it comes to how to promote a fight and where the money comes from and now that I’ve been a promoter for four years, I’ve learned the insights of how this boxing world really works,” De La Hoya told doghouseboxing.com. “And one of the main reasons why I turned promoter is to educate the fighter and little by little, with my company, we can hopefully educate the fighters and the way they handle their careers.”

De La Hoya doesn’t have opponents, he has partners. Bernard Hopkins is now the president of Golden Boy East. Shane Mosley is president of fighter relations. These fighters are determined to take their name value and use it to make every penny possible in the waning years of their careers, while at the same time building a stable of younger World Champions to follow in their footsteps.

Frank Shamrock has been watching De La Hoya closely and is ready to make his own leap. After he completes his commitments to Strikeforce and EliteXC he will be ready to make the giant jump from fighter to promoter. The fight that he thinks is attractive enough to draw the money he needs to go it alone has been announced: Brother versus brother. Frank Shamrock versus Ken Shamrock.

“I think it’s going to be the event that opens MMA up to the mainstream world. And that’s brother versus brother. We’ve got a quarter and a year so far, when we’re going to do it and that’s first quarter of 09,” Frank said. “We’re talking to every major network and distributor and arena. We’re going to change the way that mixed martial arts is promoted and also the way that the talent are paid. Right now the companies own everything. They own the show, they own the fighters, they own the distribution, they own the product. They own everything. These guys go in as basically hired talent, so they go in and fight and walk away with whatever purse is negotiated.”
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by Kendall Shields

Shari Spenser has big plans for Georges St. Pierre. She takes the long view. In an article posted yesterday on Sherdog, Spenser, St. Pierre’s manager, lays it all out for writer Andy Cotterill (and for us). She tells Cotterill not only what St. Pierre is after — not surprisingly, “[h]e wants to leave a legacy” — but how he’s going to get there. Spenser sets out an ambitious program for Georges St. Pierre to prove himself “the most dominant fighter the UFC and MMA has ever seen.” And here it is: “he intends to accomplish that by dominating the 170-pound weight class, moving up to the 185 weight class and then eventually the light heavyweight class.”

On the one hand, for a man who has yet to avenge his loss against Matt Serra to be thinking about taking on Anderson Silva or Quinton Jackson or Chuck Liddell suggests hubris on a Sophoclean scale. But on the other, wow: this could be really, really awesome.
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By Lee Casebolt
Once he was referred to, derogatorily, as “Ken Shamroid,” a reference to his sculpted – but suspect – physique in a sport he then co-dominated with a lanky Brazilian and a doughy wrestler. Now he is mocked as “Can Shamrock” due to his greatly diminished skills. Ken Shamrock has been derided for winning fights (“work!”), losing fights (“Petey, my heart!”), neither winning nor losing a fight (“boring!”), and making some admittedly unfortunate facial hair decisions. From the height of his powers to the depths of his (relative) dotage, Ken Shamrock can’t get a break.

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