Archive for the 'MMA' Category

People get all kinds of tattoos for all kinds of reasons, but the fighting world seems to have a special affinity for the art. Dutch Muay Thai standout Melvin Manhoef sports the above scroll with a listing of all his KO’s in both Muay Thai and MMA competition on his rib cage; I suppose he updates it regularly. Closer to the source, in Thailand it’s not uncommon to see all kinds of traditional talismans protecting practicioners of Muay Thai from hexes and the like. In this video, several castmates of Contender Asia including Yodsenklai Fairtex receive yantras: sacred designs inked by Buddhist monks to offer protection.

But then, there’s the following fighters whose tattoos are in a class all their own. Any big MMA fan has seen what happens when odd ink happens to great fighters, and I am no exception. So, what follows is a listing of my top bizzare tattoos sported proudly by MMA elite:

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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.

I, for one, enjoy looking over the links provided on fightopinion.com because there are lots of stories and opinions that are either interesting or laughable. Hearing that the UFC is releasing guys like Sokoujou and Werdum and is replacing them with folks such as Ray Steinbeiss is really funny in how transparent the reasoning is. No offense to Steinbeiss, but he is not a world class fighter. Hasn’t beaten a world class fighter. Probably belongs on MFC undercards. Maybe headlining an ICE show in the midwest. He’s in the UFC because he is cheap and because people who watch the UFC do not really care who is fighting in the UFC outside of the main event. 

Now wait, I know what you’re thinking: Stacked cards! Not like boxing! After all, Nate Quarry was really a top end fighter when he fought Maia, right? Well, he wasn’t really, and you didn’t need to be any sort of genius to realize that. The UFC 91 undercard was amongst the weakest ever done by the organization, however the number of “clean finishes” (read as KOs and submissions) allowed lots of fights on the air with the “action” hardcore fans crave. That few of the fights featured guys who were very good was brushed away easily. Its easy to pretend that Jorge Gurgel in a bad kickboxing match was meaningful, but much tougher to make the authentic argument that it really was.

UFC 91 has since been lauded by more than a few internet pundits to be perhaps the best show of the year. I naturally disagree and think it wasn’t even as good as UFC 81, but then again what has my opinion ever mattered? Instead, it is reiterated repeatedly as to the value of branding over stars (even when there’s a 550,000 buy difference in the course of 4 weeks) and undercard bouts that are the comparative equal of some undercard NJPW juniors match done 15 years ago between some roided up guys that are now dead. It should be no shock then that the burst of interest in MMA mimics that of pro wrestling circa 1997, with tons of poorly coded websites bursting with ridiculous rumors from unconfirmed sources, in large part because many of the writers (thanks chiefly to the puro and Meltzer connections) are people who lived through that very era. Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t what I have in mind when I hear Shonie Carter’s nom de guerre “Mr. International.” But…

Two days ago, the veteran MMA welter, well known for his offbeat personality, posted asking for help at the Underground Forum:

Ok last time I was in california when it all starterd, but this time I have really messed up! I was out one night pARTYING IT UP AND BEFORE I knew it, I am on a private jet. I laughed at first and passed out on the plane. I woke up in istanbul, turkey. The reason I know because I am looking at the Black sea! WTF! I got a ride to bulgarian/ turkish border looking for American Embassy. Does anybody have any ideas on how to get back? The onetime I leave my friggin passport at home I need the damned thing!

The thread is here.

My first reaction to this kind of thing is that it’s got to be fake, but this is Shonie Carter we’re talking about, so nothing would surprise me. For what it’s worth, the site’s owner says the posts are indeed coming from Bulgaria.

So, Total-MMA readers, if you’re in Bulgaria and have some pull, or if you’re in the US and would be kind enough to feed Mr. Carter’s pythons and tarantuals in his absence, by all means, please help a brother out.

The fallout from EXC’s demise has struck an un-nerving tone for many:

As a writer, if you have information that not only can advance a story in the media with new details but also impact a current, on-going investigation, then start talking. By admitting this news item in the manner in which it was stated, it comes off as if you’re saying, “Well, if Elite XC hadn’t closed its doors, I might have not said anything about this.”

This is not the first time in the week that Zach Arnold has said something to this extent. Included along in his editorial was this post by Fightlinker, citing similar issues with the fashion in which MMA’s best journalists are conducting business. Alternately, he makes sure to give high fives to opinion/link based websites who made sure to “put the heat on” for an investigation that ultimately lead to EXC’s deal with Showtime Networks collapsing. Its an interesting dichotomy: Sources and Journalists bad, those republishing aspects of their stories for opinions good. 

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Live from (a dude in California blogging a show in) Newcastle Birmingham!

Joe Rogan has a mightily impressive beard, almost a tribute to Evan Tanner. Let’s proceed with the proceedings.

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As a 12-year old boy first discovering the UFC in 1994, I can remember thinking this was pretty much the coolest thing I’d ever seen. As a fan of Enter the Dragon (1973), and even moreso Bloodsport (1988), the early UFCs made those films a reality for me. Finally a tournament with “no rules” to decide what martial art was superior. With three out of four tournament wins, and countless submissions, Royce Gracie and his grappling-centric approach showed many what would work in an actual fight. As much as I yearned for them, there were no spectacular roundhouse kicks that I had seen from the likes of Jean Claude Van Damme and Loren Avedon in the movies. As the sport grew and evolved though, kicking techniques became much more commonplace, and currently kicks are some of the most dangerous techniques in a fighter’s striking arsenal, and have provided some of the most spectacular finishes in MMA history.

In this first installment of the Total MMA Top 10, I have compiled a video-list of the ten greatest high kick finishes in MMA history. My only rule is that no winning fighter can be listed more than once(sorry Mirko). Read the rest of this entry »

This right now is a pivotal point in history for the fledgling sport of Mixed Martial Arts. In the past few months we have seen one of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s self-proclaimed rivals, the IFL crumble to the ground, with EliteXC looking like it might follow. Both are publicly held companies, and if anything, there are lessons to be found in each one, as every aspect of their business plans are available for us to view. There is still no word if Zuffa has outright purchased the IFL or if they have simply bought out a few fighter contracts and licensed some footage to use for highlights for said fighters. The IFL announced earlier today that they are 35.7 million dollars in the hole, with a grand total of 4 remaining employees right now. It is safe to say that the International Fight League was an interesting approach to capitalizing on the MMA boom, but an untimely failure.
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To coin a phrase, you may not know his name, but you certainly know his work.

One of the most important figures in the history of North American Mixed Martial Arts is unquestionably former Extreme Fighting and UFC matchmaker John Peretti. He can be credited with discovering a huge amount of martial arts talent, innovating rounds, gloves, and weight classes into North American MMA, and putting together some of the best matches in MMA history at a time when you might be rewarded with jail time for it.

He’s also always just struck me as one odd duck.

Listening to Peretti’s latest interview at Carson’s Corner did nothing to change that impression, but between hyping his bizzare and still unnamed new sport (which sounds like a strange brew of of MMA and an early Italian form of football) and startling his interviewer with brusque rebuttals, he also offered some interesting insight on the MMA game.

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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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