Archive for the 'Lee Casebolt' Category

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part preview of this weekend’s UFC. We’ll cover the undercard today, the televised card tomorrow, and the main event on Friday.

Your round-tablers today:
Lee Casebolt (LC)
Dave Walsh (DW)
Alan Conceicao (AC)
Chris Henderson (CH)
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Your round-tablers today:
Lee Casebolt (LC)
Dave Walsh (DW)
Alan Conceicao (AC)
Chris Henderson (CH)

Topics being discussed:
- Josh “The Punk” Thomson “punks” top fighter Gilbert Melendez out.
- Cung Le vs Kazuo Misaki rumored for Strikeforce.
- Bisping vs. Leben to Main Event UFC 89 in the UK.
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Your round-tablers today:
Lee Casebolt (LC)
Dave Walsh (DW)
Alan Conceicao (AC)
Iain Liddle (IL)

Topics being discussed:
- Affliction planning future shows already - brave or foolhardy?
- Nick Diaz vs. Thomas Denny booked for CBS - the correct decision?
- Have you been able to watch the Kim Couture fight?
- Will you miss Ivan Salaverry?

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Your Roundtable:

IL: Iain Liddle(UK)
DW: Dave Walsh(USA)
AC: Alan Conceicao(USA)
LC: Lee Casebolt(USA)
KS: Kendall Shields(CAN)
JS: Jonathan Snowden(USA)
MS: Marc Staehling(CAN)

Jake Shields vs. Nick Thompson for the first Elite XC Welterweight Title Live on CBS

DW: As fun as it is to make fun of EliteXC or anything involving Gary Shaw, this is unquestionable content. I can’t wait to see it, but this really isn’t going to wow a CBS crowd. As much as people complain about subpar displays like Kimbo Slice, that is what your average person in the audience is expecting to see.

JS: think the Shields-Thompson matchup is great and should add some much needed technical prowess to the Elite XC CBS show. Read the rest of this entry »

Your roundtable:
DW: Dave Walsh
AC: Alan Conceicao
LC: Lee Casebolt
JS: Jonathan Snowden

TUF Final: CB vs. Amir

LC: Picking the finale is (almost) always hard. A case like this, where you’ve got two guys with very little previous experience, is even harder. Anybody who watched the show has seem Amir’s entire career, and now he’s had, what, six weeks to change up his game. CB’s case isn’t quite as dramatic, but isn’t far off. I’d have to go with Amir, though. He won the first fight, he trains at a better camp, and he appears (disclaimer about the dangers of television editing HERE) to be way less cocky. Amir by decision.

AC: If the finale itself is as good as their first fight, all bets are off. I’m thinking CB will look back at this performance on the show and work his cardio and then wrestle down Amir repeatedly. Amir’s gonna give as good as he gets for awhile. What does bother me is the question of where Amir goes from here, regardless of whether he wins or loses. He beat a lot of very solid pros on the show with no actual pro MMA experience. A slight bump up in competition puts him in really deep water very fast.

DW: I only know of what I’ve read in Kendall’s posts, so I must say go Amir. That is all.

JS: There is no reason that CB shouldn’t win this fight. When you take two relatively inexperienced fighters and put them in together, the rule of thumb is always bet on the wrestler. So I’m betting on the wrestler. But my heart will be with Amir.

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Your roundtable:
DW: Dave Walsh
AC: Alan Conceicao
LC: Lee Casebolt
JS: Jonathan Snowden

The Ultimate Fighter: CB Loses, CB Wins

AC: Among the better episodes of the show ever. There were two fairly decent, well contested fights that weren’t merely subpar pugilism. I think there’s been a fair amount of criticism regarding CB’s stamina, but it should be noted that the guy fought 5 fights in the course of about 2 months. Not only that, the rematch between him and Amir should be spectacular based on their initial clash in the semifinals. My assumption going in is that it will finish the way I expected their first confrontation would go with a decisive CB win either by stoppage or unanimous decision.

LC: It was pretty much one fight for the price of two last night. CB/Amir and CB/Credeur were basically the same fight - more or less competitive standing, with CB able to hit a takedown more or less at will and follow up with decent but unspectacular ground and pound while the bottom man threw up halfhearted submission and sweep attempts. The difference, of course, being that Amir’s late attempts got more desperate instead of less, and consequently one of them worked.

JS: It’s interesting that CB didn’t learn anything from his loss to Amir. It should have been a lesson in humility. Instead, when given a second chance, he was still talking about how he “deserved to be in the finals.” No. The person that wins the fight deserves to be in the finals.

LC: The creative editing (there’s always creative editing) on Amir has worked - I like the kid. He’s got that Forrest Griffin self-deprecating tough guy goofball thing going on and sincere or not I prefer that persona to stereotypical drunk tough frat boy, which is generally the only alternative on TUF. Plus he’s the only guy this side of Semmy Schilt who uses the front kick as an actual strike instead of a push and that wins a couple points from me. Read the rest of this entry »

With Zuffa’s latest ill-titled PPV offering fast approaching, it’s time for a thorough analysis of the bouts on offer this weekend.  The card is one I expect to have, at best, limited appeal to the casual viewer.  Neither Penn nor Sherk, the putative headliners, is renown as a draw.  The only man on the card who has any drawing history, Tito Ortiz, is third from the top and fighting someone who appeals only to hardcore fans.  Make that “a few hardcore fans”.  There are a pile of guys even most hardcore fans haven’t heard of.  That said, there are some intriguing matchups in store. 

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We celebrate too much, sometimes, the failures of our heroes.

This point was brought home to me last night by the Twin Towers of American sports media - Sports Illustrated and ESPN.  I have an SI subscription.  I couldn’t tell you exactly why; the issues tend to sit around unread for a few weeks before I finally get to them.  When I do, the first thing I do is comb through for anything fight-related - an upcoming boxing match, a wrestler mentioned in Faces in the Crowd, the rare MMA fighter featured on the Pop Culture Grid, or even the rare full sized article - then football, then basketball, and then, if I’ve very, very desperate for reading material, whatever else is between the covers.  The April 14th issue, which focused on the NCAA basketball finals, had one of those rare full sized articles.  It wasn’t about Floyd Mayweather and it wasn’t about some young wrestler you’ve never heard of.  Unusually for SI, it wasn’t even about an American. 

It was about a Brit.  A British MMA fighter, of all things.  Not the rising British MMA scene, not UFC prospect Michael Bisping or soon to star on CBS James Thompson.  No, instead it was about (arguably) British MMA’s greatest public embarassment - Lee Murray.  His career is addressed, and his devotion to training, but that’s not what the article is really about.  It’s about one of the most stunning robberies in history.  Murray and his associates, many of them fellow fighters, got 53 million pounds, or about $100 million.  Then they absconded to Morocco, where Murray holds dual citizenship and a nation which forbids extradition of its nationals.  Of course, Murray’s history of non-professional violence caught up with him there, too, and he sits in jail while the Moroccan and British governments argue over who gets to sentence him to something.

Murray’s story is a crime story; it’s sports related only because of Murray’s other profession.  ESPN2, though, had a story of pure sports, and a story of pure loss.  In south Florida sits Brandon High School, nondescript enough except for one spectacular thing.  The school’s wrestling team, as of the 2007-08 season, had a winning streak dating back to the mid 70s.  It spanned 440 meets - a record for any high school sport, besting the old record by over 150 contests.  The Streak, they called it - both the record and the program about the record.  ESPN2 spent two hours showing BHS’s ‘07-’08 season.  The team won early meets by ridiculous scores - 65-2, 66-6, 75-0.  Then came the Graves.

The Graves was a mid-season tournament conceived by the Brandon High wrestling coach for one reason - to end the streak.  Local competition simply couldn’t challenge his team, so he opened it up to anyone in or out of the state of Florida.  For decades, no one who showed up could manage the job.  This year, someone did.  And ESPN showed it to the world.

Imagine that.  You’re a seventeen year old kid.  You excel in a sport with no promise of monetary gain.  You’re never going to be LeBron James or Peyton Manning, and you know that.  Your sport might get you to college, but it won’t get you further.  In the meantime, though, you’re a local celebrity.  You are the caretaker of a legacy with a lifespan that doubles yours.  It was carried by your older brother, even your father, before you.  Thirty four years without a loss.  The record is celebrated throughout town - at the local garage, in the newspaper, even in church.  The coach has teenage girls wearing t-shirts with his face on the back; a grizzled, middle-aged Justin Timberlake.

And you just lost that.  Furthermore, ESPN just showed it to the entire country, and to significant portions of the rest of the world.  How do you feel?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Too often in sports, we remember competitors’ losses rather than their victories.  The New England Patriots won eighteen consecutive games last season, an unprecedented feat, but lost in arguably the greatest Super Bowl upset of all time.  The accomplishment is now portray as some sort of tragicomdey, as if eighteen times some other team rolled over to set up the Patriots for a great fall at the end.  No match of Dan Gable’s legendary career is talked about as much as his final collegiate contest - the one he lost.  In years to come, it’s a fair bet that the same will be true of the Olympic career of Aleksander Karelin.  In MMA, we talk about Royce Gracie’s defeat at the hand of Matt Hughes and Kazushi Sakuraba more often than his tournament victories.  Is this because the defeats are more recent, or because they satisfy something in us?

Do we, the ones who watch, get some sort of glee in the failures of those who do?  Perhaps.  Many fans seem to show up in the hopes of seeing something bad happen to someone, rather than because of any interest in seeing athletic competition or of a genuine rooting interest.  Truth to tell, I haven’t been to a live event in six years, despite living in an MMA hotbed.  In eastern Iowa, I could see live MMA every weekend if I had the money and the time.  I don’t, partially because I don’t have the money or the time.  Mostly, though, the crowds I saw disturbed me.  My first live show featured a riot in the crowd.  My second had a spectacularly drunk gentleman offer to fight security, in the person of Andre Roberts.  Since then, I’ve seen people boo ground fighting (”No wrestling!” they scream, like drunken Heath Herrings), and cheer as a young Robbie Lawler pummelled an overmatched and punch-drunk amateur in a bout that should’ve been stopped much earlier. 

MMA’s a brutal game, and I’m kidding myself if I pretend it’s not.  The brutality is integral to it.  It is what brings out every positive quality of the sport.  The technical wizardry is all the more impressive for having been performed in the face of personal danger.  The athletic prowess, likewise, amazes all the more for being demonstrated under the most grueling conditions.  Courage, well, courage can, by definition, only be proved under the harshest duress.

As fans, though, we have a responsibility to not add unduly to that necessary brutality.  We should be celebrating victories, yes, and honoring defeats.  It is unseemly, though - no, it is inhuman - to celebrate defeats the way many of us do.  It is one thing to criticize a fighter for a poor performance, to cite poor preparation or lack of will as the reason for defeat.  It is quite another to actively root for that fighter’s ill health.  It is one thing to admire a fighter’s willingness to endure punishment, and another entirely to encourage the Nate Quarrys and Kazushi Sakurabas of the world to continue to fight long after they should have retired.  We owe them better.  We owe the sport better.  We owe ourselves better.

Oh, and if Eric Grajales is reading this, I’d like to remind him that Iowa has a very nice wrestling program that he’d fit into perfectly.

ZUFFA’s most recent PPV outing has met with, at best, lukewarm support.  I believe the word “crap” has popped up more than once.  In keeping with the Total-MMA commitment to balanced journalism (a commitment which I, in fact, just made up), it falls to me to present a slightly different view.  St. Pierre-Serra 2 was not a complete waste of your time and money.  No fewer than ten quality things came from that broadcast.  To wit:

10.  Rich Franklin’s sweet armbar escape.

For a guy who isn’t supposed to have much in the way of ground skills, that was a sweet little move.  I, for one, missed the Joe Rogan Experience and had to exclaim “That’s high level jujitsu!” to myself.  But it had nothing on…

9.  GSP’s Superman punch/leg kick combo.

As has already been said on our forums, that’s some wacky video game shit right there.  You might be forgiven for missing it in light of the complete beatdown being administered, but, seriously, damn.  This is why I stopped watching pro wrestling entirely - MMA has progressed to the point that I can see borderline impossible techniques performed under competitve circumstances.

8.  Someone besides me is talking about getting Nate Quarry out of fighting and into announcing.

Granted, that person is Nate Quarry.  Still, dudes with severe spinal injuries should probably not be involved in combat sports.  Quarry seems like a good guy, and I’d rather not see him paralyzed.  Can’t he do a Fight Night or something?  Please?

7. We should never see Kalib Starnes on PPV again.

Seriously, what was that all about?  Starnes has never impressed in previous outings, and this should be the final nail in his coffin as a PPV performer.

6.  Or Travis Lutter.

Don’t make weight once, shame on you.  Don’t get in shape twice, see ya later.

5.  Michael Bisping is that much closer to a middleweight title shot.

Wherein Anderson Silva will kill him dead.  But with two-time Silva victim Franklin and boring non-English speaking Okami the closest things to top middleweights available on the ZUFFA roster, you take what you can get.  The fight could be a decent semi-main, or main event in London and draw a decent house.

4.  I don’t really have a #4.

Maybe just nine good things happened.  Oops.

3.  The 170lb title has now been defended in five countries, more than any other major title.

Pat Miletich defended the then-lightweight belt in Brazil (vs. Mikey Burnett) and Japan (vs Kenichi Yamamoto), in addition to his US title defenses.  Matt Hughes and Carlos Newton added Great Britain to the list.  No other major MMA belt has as great a claim to being a true “world” title.

2.  Matt Serra’s presumptive return to the 155lb ranks where he belongs.

I don’t have strong feelings about Serra as a person one way or the other, but I like him as a fighter.  As a lightweight fighter.  Hey, if you’re a professional fighter and you get a shot at a world title, you take it.  Serra hit the fadeaway grandslam hail mary Rocky mixed sports metaphor jackpot in the first GSP fight and got to hold the belt for a few months, and good on him.  Now let him go fight Frankie Edgar, Kenny Florian, Roger Huerta, and other guys his own size. 

1.  The best man finally holds the welterweight title.   

This is a biggie.  Anyone committed to MMA’s credibility wants the best fighter in a division recognized as “world champion” by the sport’s premier company.  No one doubts GSP is that man.  Without meaning to denigrate Matt Serra as a fighter, he was a fluke champion and we all knew it.  Let’s start lining up challengers for the real champ now. 

by Lee Casebolt

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This is not a new rant.  I was perusing the Sherdog database a few weeks ago and came across an ad for an upcoming event from the “Xtreme Fighting Association”.  I was torn between my dismay at the death of literacy in America (even ECW could spell “Extreme” properly) and my interest in the main event of Mike Whitehead vs Vernon White.  Neither man is going to be frightening Quinton Jackson any time soon, but both are talented, veteran light heavyweights with versatile skills.  A fine main event for a fledgling promotion, I thought.  Read the rest of this entry »