Archive for February, 2010

This week, Total-MMA staff writer Bryan Belangia began his monthly rankings of MMA’s top ten fighters, Lightweight through Heavyweight — including some commentary about his selections.

Next month, we will add Featherweight and Bantamweight.

Please enjoy, and feel free to comment!

Pictured: A Screenshot from WMMA 2. So, You Wanna Be A Fighter Promoter?

The popularity of mixed martial arts is exploding, with TV shows, books and films springing up all around the sport, along with the newest of mediums, video games.

Most notably, a great deal of media attention was placed on ZUFFA’s release of UFC Undisputed last year. The game had flaws, and many hardcore MMA fans complained that it failed to capture the styles of the fighters. But it seperated itself by capturing the ebb and flow of the fight on the ground, and the deadly “puncher’s chance” that is so widely renowned in our sport. Overall, it give us a reasonably accurate representation of the sport, and easily the best representation of said sport on console today.

Or is it?

World of Mixed Martial Arts II offers a very different option for gamers; and it’s one that I highly recommend.

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What a night UFC 110 was.

A prospect in Cain Valasquez turned into a contender with a vicious one round knockout over a legend in Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira. Bader continues to impress against an awkward and dangerous Keith Jardine. A more cautious Wanderlei Silva picked his spots to earn a decision over a younger (and much better than I anticipated) Michael Bisping. Even the mismatch to begin the show was made memorable, as Mirko Cro Cop hailed his overmatched opponent as showing the world what a Croatian heart is — reminding us that his Australian opponent was, like him, of Croatian heritage. All of these were punctuated by a wild Australian crowd, which contributed some of its own — at one point, hilariously chanting “Bisping’s a wanker!”

But to me, the UFC 110 highlight reel really belonged to one man: George Sotiropoulos, whose potent mix of jiu-jitsu and boxing carried the day in the fight of the night against Joe Stevenson.

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It’s fight night! Looking back at our last round of predictions, where I spent more time complaining about advancing age than any actual analysis of UFC 109, it’s hard to miss how uninterested I was. What can I say? Trying to drum up interest for Couture vs. Coleman was like bleeding water from a stone. But ZUFFA’s making me forget it tonight (unless, of course, it’s my old age making me forget things again) — by assembling as strong an MMA card we’ll get in 2010 without the luster of a title fight. It also marks the first ever UFC to grace the shores of Australia, so expect a wild crowd screaming along every kangaroo hop of the way.

This, friends, is more like it.

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As Wanderlei Silva prepares for his first fight in the UFC at 185lbs, that’s the biggest question.  Silva has now lost 5 of his last 6 fights and has only one win since returning to the UFC.  The losses though are nothing to get down about.  Many fighters have fell to the hands of Chuck Liddell, Quinton Jackson, and Rich Franklin.  The test that he faces now is much different.

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Pictured: Demian Maia being Knocked Out by Nate Marquardt at UFC 102.

Demian Maia is a world-class grappler. That needs to be said before I start to point out his flaws, and the flaws in his gaining of a title shot at UFC 112 next month in Abu Dhabi. His MMA record of 12-1 suggests a fantastic competitor – and he is – but he is far from the finished article, and far from the real deal. So let’s take a little look at Demian’s MMA journey, before we look at why he shouldn’t be next in line for the UFC Middleweight Title.

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It’s always a pleasure to hear from the greatest of all time.

Yesterday, two guys on the Underground Forum offered a translation of an interview with Fedor Emilianenko conducted recently by a Ukranian website. One of he two is Igor Karaev, a Moscow-based MMA promoter who has been a great asset at the Underground for some time now. I don’t highlight them or really any other folks’ work too often here, but an exception is in order. There is just a “humble pride” about Fedor which we simply don’t see enough, in any sport, and MMA fans owe it to themselves to give it a look. Total-MMA readers who can read Russian can enjoy it here, otherwise, click on the link at MixedMartialArts.com for the translation from Kareav and his pal who goes by the nick, TMR.

Among the highlights:

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There are many good things about living in the United Kingdom. Free healthcare. Our currency is vastly superior to yours. All the big MMA cards are on free TV. But there is one major problem, and that’s the fact that MMA events tend to start at 10pm Eastern, which is 2am over here. Last Saturday night/Sunday morning I sat up with a mate and watched a long, long night of TV, including UFC 109. Below is what my poor, poor brain made of it all.

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Anderson Silva destroys Chris Leben

Anderson Silva was originally brought into the UFC to bolster the middleweight division and to give it some depth.  Fast forward three and a half years later, and while he’s been a certified killer inside the cage, he may have succeeded in killing the division as a whole.

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One of the effects of MMA’s boom in popularity has been, predictably, a rise in MMA-themed merchandising. For a while it seemed everybody and their brother was beginning a line of MMA-themed apparel. Generally these companies featured T-shirts with awful “tap or snap” slogans, pitbulls, skulls, and the like. They were generally, to be perfectly honest, crap. Some have survived, some haven’t. A few, like Triumph United and Six Deuce, actually put out some nice designs — and it’s good to see them do well.

But there was an old guard, too, from the days MMA wasn’t all the rage: and some are still alive and kicking. Bad Boy, whose fight shorts were worn by seemingly every other fighter in the late 90’s, has made a return to the spotlight with such fighters as “Shogun” Rua — and the old “squinting eyes” logo, which I was always found somewhat irritating? It now seems, oddly enough, kind of classy. Of course, the TapOut story is well-known. Far from the days of hilariously cheap commercials like this one which showed up at the end of Hook n Shoot DVDs (and please accept my apologies if the implied nudity there offends anyone — it’s really not my style), they now have a big budget, their own reality TV show, and have become one of the biggest employers in their Southern California hometown.

But there’s one company from the “old days” which, more than any of the others, had two things going for them which would seem to be a combination for success. First, and most importantly, they have always put out great and unique designs. Second, their shirts were worn by Dana White in season one of The Ultimate Fighter, the show that really sparked MMA’s recent surge in popularity. If there were one company I’d have picked to break through, this would have been it.

Yet, despite some continued local success in their native Guam and a few parts beyond, they seem to have disappeared from the US mainland and had no part of MMA’s move to the mainstream.

I’m talking about Fokai International. Anyone else miss them a bit?

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