As most avid MMA Fans have already heard the UFC (Zuffa) has purchased Strikeforce from Scott Coker, West Coast Entertainment and Silicon Valley Sports and Entertainment. Dana White broke the news with the great Ariel Helwani early Saturday afternoon.
Sudden Death in MMA
There has been a lot of talk going around the mma forums and mma analysts about the amount of Draws there have been in lieu of conclusions to fights as of late. Let’s begin with the Lightweight title fight between Frankie Edgar and Gray Maynard at UFC 125.
Did Anthony Pettis get passed over for his shot at the UFC Lightweight title?
The answer is a little more…tricky than that. Yes he did because he doesn’t get the next fight right away like we all thought, but no he didn’t because he does get the winner of the Edgar/Maynard fight. See the annoying, yet, business man logic behind the whole wording of the claim. Anthony Pettis gets the winner of the Frankie Edgar/Gray Maynard fight and as we all by now know…anyone??It was a draw, so no winner and so it was still not decided. I can understand some fans being upset because we have to see another instant rematch between two fighters we just seen fight, but if you look at it more positively, you can say we get to watch another great fight between two guys who put on a great 5 round fight and it’s not like he isn’t going to get his title shot. He will just have to wait a bit longer before he wins the title, yep I said it. Anthony Pettis is a young man with a bright future. He is the evolved version of a mixed martial arts fighter, just like Jon Jones and Anderson Silva. It is what the title holders of the UFC will look like. That’s the type of champion that these up and coming fighters are going to have to dethrone in the cage. You can see it when they fight, no offence to their opponents, but they are on a different level. The first time you watch fighters of that calibre fight, you can see that they are very special. I mean who springs off the cage and kicks a guy in the face??Jackie Chan is the only person I can think of. Anthony Pettis does those kinds of crazy moves all the time in his fights and I don’t see him stopping now that he’s in the big show.
Vitor Belfort Challenging for Anderson Silva’s Belt
Only a couple of weeks away from UFC 126 and we are treated with another great card courtesy of the UFC. The main event is a “weekend warrior’s” dream fight. You got the champ Anderson Silva, the man who has defeated a lot of the best in the UFC at both 185lbs and some at 205. Anderson has never fought a man who has the combination of speed and power that Vitor is going to unleash on him. Yes he fought and submitted Dan Henderson, who does have sick power, but Dan doesn’t have close to Vitor’s speed. I think we seen in the Chael sonnen fight that Anderson can be thrown off when you press the attack and bring the fight to him. Anderson even got rocked a couple times, which hasn’t been seen inside the UFC or Pride (If I’m not mistaken). If you look at Belfort’s record you can see that 90% of his wins are in the first round by KO/TKO and most of his defeats come in the later rounds and often by decision. What does this say? Well it says to me that he is very explosive outta the gate and kinda slows down and makes mistakes in the later rounds. Now a lot of that used to be from his older days at heavyweight and light heavyweight, I think he had too much muscle back at those weight classes and I found he would gas out. I like him at 185, it’s good because he has been at, or around this weight (190 Rich Franklin catch weight) for quite a while now, which means he does not have to cut a shit load of weight around fight week. He should be well hydrated and coming into the fight strong and well nourished.
What Makes Great Corner men?
If you’re like me, you love to watch MMA and each time you do you seem to find more and more things that make you love this amazing sport. I have been watching mixed martial arts for quite some time and I have always enjoyed the pay per view events more than the free live events on Spike or Versus. The biggest reason is not so much the card quality but instead that on cable the networks take their commercial breaks in between rounds, which is understandable because that’s really the only time. Due to this commercial break we miss some informative, and sometimes, like in Clay Guida’s case, some entertaining stuff that happens in the corners. I really enjoy the interaction between the fighters and the corner men that takes place for a brief period in between rounds.
UFC 119 Recap
This event had the potential to be one of the best cards of the year. Instead it turned out to be just an OK UFC event.
Twitter? Yeah your favorite fighter is on it! (List of 100+)
Face it, who isn’t on Twitter these days. There are several fighters from all events including UFC, WEC, and Strikeforce on Twitter. Some fighters you have never heard of before are on Twitter and it’s definitely helping their careers. If you have never heard of Twitter before and are wondering what it is, well to keep it short it’s basically a micro-blogging service that allows people to share 140 character status updates also known as “tweets”. You can check it out for yourself at www.twitter.com. Twitter is allowing fans and fighters to get closer then ever.
Evan Dunham’s open cut from UFC 119. WARNING: bloody pics included!
Dunham’s cut on his upper right eyebrow was something that most or all fans watching the fight last night were grossed out by, especially when they got a close up of it. It was a quite a deep cut and from this Dunham was bleeding everywhere. A cut like that must hurt quite a bit, especially when Sherk punched him in the same spot many times over.
Check out the pics.
UFC 119 Picks (What do I know?)
I have always found the fight picks kinda silly. No one really knows who is going to win on any given night. That’s one of the reasons this sport is so great.Any way here are my picks of how I feel the fights will go.
Fighters that I initially didn’t like
For one reason or another there were fighters that, when I first seen them fight, I did not care for them, but over the months and years I have come to, at the very least, respect what they bring to the table.
