Archive for January, 2009

As some MMA fans are aware, there’s a PPV show coming up in just a couple days featuring what was a dream matchup about 3 years ago. Its not necessarily the strongest card the UFC has ever put together, but given how many people who read this site will actually be paying $45 to watch, does it matter? Jonathan Snowden (now a regular at Five Ounces) and I go over this weekend’s bouts.

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Affliction’s second offering, “Day of Reckoning” is right around the corner, and it sort of seems like there is very little in the way of advertising muscle put into it. While one could easily argue that the first Affliction show was not advertised heavily either, there was at least a bit more hype surrounding the show. It even seems like the websites that pushed Affliction: Banned heavily in the lead up to it in July (this one included) have not shown the same levels of support. Let’s face it, this card isn’t the blockbuster that the first card was.

Affliction have been a bit more sparse with sending out interviews and promotional material to the media that supported them the first time around as well. That said, once in a while they send something that is just outrageous, today was one of those times. Today they sent around a press release ‘Demystifying’ the great Fedor. Did you know that Fedor likes American action movies? Apparently he hasn’t seen any in a while, as his favorite actor is Bruce Willis. Here is, in list format, why Fedor is a real man’s man.

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Yeah, I know we say it a lot, but it’s still amazing how far this sport has come.

Many of us here in the Pacific Northwest remember the days when Randy Couture & Maurice Smith (and later, Couture & Josh Barnett) were fighting each other for the UFC title while training out of our local gyms. It was a source of pride for us that many of the biggest names in this sport made our area their home. Unfortunately, our local media totally ignored the phenomenon.

Times have changed. This week, the story of Cindy Hales, the local BJJ phenom who fought Megumi Fujii in MMA last year, made the front page of Seattle Weekly. This is a story that sadly flies under the radar of even most MMA fans here, and yet it becomes a cover story for one of our better outlets. Now, that’s more like it. In Spoiling For a Fight, Hales expounds on her triumphs in jiu jitsu and MMA — and her struggles. She has sustained knee injuries which her boxing coach Mike Gavronski thinks have ended her fighting career, and suffered through a massive same day weight cut against Fujii.

Whether or not Hales gets the rematch with Fujii that she seeks, there’s no doubt the attention she gets from this article is well deserved. Whatever happens next, kudos are in order for Hales on her fine career, and respect goes to Seattle Weekly for recognizing it.

On December 27th of 2008, Frank Mir, a noted BJJ expert, shocked the world by mowing down the man generally considered to be second best in the world at heavyweight, Antonio Minotauro Noguiera. He did so primarily with his standup game, easily nullifying the boxing of Noguiera and instead punching straight through him with repeated right hand leads and combinations before finally stopping the former PRIDE champ. In gaining the Interim UFC Heavyweight title, many fans were quick to annoint Mir’s success as proof that he wasn’t “finished” and was in fact a clear elite level heavyweight.

The reason I preface an article about Matt Serra with that is fairly obvious: an underdog grappler winging bombs and beating a man he was favored to lose to isn’t exactly a new story line as far as the UFC goes. The most recent example of such fleeting success was Matt “Terra” Serra, who went from 155/170lb gatekeeper to world champion almost overnight. 

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Pro wrestling fans love comparisons to that pseudo sport, and Sengoku offers a great one. While sliding (but still solid) ratings continue to bury the WWE with each passing day, the one refrain they can constantly pronounce is that at least they aren’t TNA, a promotion who has generally operated like a retarded stepbrother. The same goes for Japan: DREAM is all ready to go in 2009 with a slate of shows, despite endless talk of that not going to be the case over here, and their “competition” in the market is a promotion that essentially does retarded versions of everything they’ve gone, right down to copying which weight classes they ran tournaments in. Last night, Sengoku fufilled the promises of this entire calendar year with another generally forgettable show with some bizarre highlights.

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