Archive for July, 2008

How have you weathered these thirty days since Kazuhiro Nakamura’s untimely release from his UFC contract, friends? Have you felt adrift? I admit that I have, a little. But I have found some measure of comfort in this disproportionate career retrospective of ours, and I hope you have as well. Disproportionate career retrospectives comforteth like sunshine after rain, it is said, and I hope this has been as true for you as it has been for me.

When we began our look back, we proceeded from three essential Kazuhiro Nakamura truths: (i) that he came to mixed martial arts from a fine career as a judo player, holding championships in international B and C level tournaments, and an impressive third-place showing in the 2001 Japanese national championships; (ii) that he managed to adapt his judo nage waza or throwing techniques to mixed martial arts better than some others (such as his training partner Hidehiko Yoshida or Polish judo legend/walking pharmacy Pawe? Nastula) who possess far more impressive judo credentials; and (iii) that while he has competed well against the best light heavyweight competition this sport has to offer, he has always been on the outside of that group looking in, never quite able to make the leap from his division’s second tier into its highest ranks. Despite having more going for him than most on the level of technique, both grappling and striking, Nakamura has never really turned out to be what it looked like he could be. Imagine Bas Rutten’s disappointment, and what the burden of that must feel like.

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First the Ultimate Fighter started using amateur fighters (and one of them even won the whole thing). Then some crazy fools actually volunteered to fight Fedor. Now Cage Rage is getting into the reality TV game.

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I was watching the fantastic Margarito vs. Cotto fight on Saturday, and all of the talk surrounding Margarito was that nobody wants to fight him. He has an aura around him as a legit tough contender that can damage a money-making reputation. This brought up one name in my head, one fighter in MMA that fits that profile: Lyoto Machida. Lyoto is a fighter that has, in just a short amount of time, made quite a name for himself. Right now, the name is one that high level competition are flat out looking to avoid right now. Lyoto has always had an aura around him, always been met with a certain degree of hype, only to then confuse both fighters and fans.

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That’s right, we’ll be here live to give you the play-by-play and analysis on tonight’s EliteXC/CBS Saturday Night Fights!

The Showtime portion of the night has kicked off, so no rest for the wicked!

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Its time for another weekly roundtable with the wonderful crew of Total-MMA.com. We try to focus on the upcoming EliteXC event as well as some of the fallout from this past week.

IL: Iain Liddle
JS: Jonathan Snowden
LC: Lee Casebolt
DW: Dave Walsh
CH: Chris Henderson
AC: Alan Conceicao

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…and they are proving as controversial as ever.

Click the link at the top of the page for an overview of the changes made or alternatively view the full, and utterly comprehensive, lists by clicking on the relevant weight class to you left.

Last time, we looked into Kazuhiro Nakamura’s strange bout against Wanderlei Silva in Pride’s 2005 Middleweight Grand Prix, and made what sense of it we could — which is of course very little, as the match is an inscrutable, incomprehensible singularity, utterly without precedent or apparent cause. As you’ll recall, Nakamura decided to disrobe mid-match, as his short-sleeve gi jacket (itself an inexplicable choice, but let us not travel down that road again) all at once became somehow unbearable to him. And so Wanderlei Silva knocked him to the ground and pounded him out. To that point, Nakamura had perhaps surprisingly held his own against one of the young sport’s all-time greats, certainly one of its most feared strikers. The first, say, four minutes and forty-five seconds of the Silva match is arguably the finest showing of Nakamura’s mixed martial arts career; the thirty seconds that end the fight most perhaps his worst. Bas Rutten, as always, found just the right words: “He should have never, again, thrown away his gi.”

You might expect such an enormous and embarrassing mental gaffe to be the kind of thing that would lead a fighter to give his head a good shake, to reflect on his strengths and weaknesses, and approach the game with a renewed sense of focus and a singularity of purpose. Some fighters, perhaps, yes.

But Kazuhiro Nakamura?

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This past Saturday marked the entry of what was hailed as the first independent sanctioning body in mixed martial arts, the World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts. Its been a source of controversy since inception among many MMA fans, a large number of whom fear what happened to boxing happening to their beloved sport. What seems odd is that very few fans of MMA understand how the so-called “alphabet soup” of sanctioning bodies came to exist, much less fully understand how it is that YAMMA could change the sport. Before answering those questions reasonably, let’s briefly look at boxing and its numerous sanctioning bodies.

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“The fight contract is up today…July 19th according to the contract. That was 18 months or four fights.That’s the way the contract is written, by the language that I’ve read in the contract that my attornies explained to me. That’s the rub. They say I owe them two more fights. And, we need the State to settle the dispute and give us a declaration as to what they say the contract says. I either owe them two more fights and I’ll fight Nogueira or find a way hopefully for the UFC to make the Fedor fight happen, that’s what means most to me. Or retire if that’s the case…I don’t know what’s going to happen there. Or they’ll say no, the contract term ended, you’re free and clear to go and fight wherever you want.” - Fox Sports’ Alex Marvez got a one-on-one with Randy post-Affliction.

Randy does go on to say that whoever loses the decision might take it to the Supreme Court, but this has to be seen as a positive step as far as this whole debacle is concerned. I for one think ‘Minotauro vs. ‘The Natural’ is just as compelling a match-up as the Emelianenko fight. Couture’s “Fedor-only” approach is a bit of a slight to a guy with a resume like Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

Despite coaching on The Ultimate Fighter against the presumed contender Frank Mir, one can only think that the UFC would jump at a Couture-Nogueira unification match, putting the Mir fight on the backburner. No matter what happens in the legal arena, fans and media alike deserve to see Randy Couture fighting again in the near future. *fingers crossed*