Posts from — July 2009

Okay, the clip I was going to post below has been pulled from Youtube thanks to Zuffa. I understand them wanting to keep a lid on things like their fights, although they do go a bit Fahrenheit 451 on things by clamping down on anything UFC-related. The clip in question was of BJ Penn working out for his UFC 101 lightweight title defense against Kenny Florian. (Yo Zuffa! You want to clamp down on something, how about the use of Ken Flo screaming “I want BJ’s belt” in every damn clip? Give it a rest already.)

The reason I wanted to post the clip was mostly because it’s not of Penn doing something stupid like jumping out of a swimming pool or trying to put his foot behind his head. He’s actually training, and looking pretty fit, fast, agile. As he should.

See, the grey-haired old fart coaching him in that video (as well as the one I did find below) is the infamous Marv Marinovich out of the Sport Science Lab.

Marinovich is a former college football star (he was ejected from the 1963 Rose Bowl for fighting) whose NFL career lasted just three years because he over-trained himself into a physical mess. He went on to study Eastern Bloc training techniques (hello East German women’s weightlifting team!) and became one of the NFL’s first strength-and-conditioning coaches. Unlike his own pro days, his training approach now focuses more on speed and flexibility.

He’s also notoriously known as the father of ex-USC and Oakland Raiders quarterback Todd Marinovich, another sports a prodigy whose career went down the toilet due to drugs. Why notorious? Well, Marinovich started training little Todd to be a superstar athlete from the moment he left the womb.

In a 1988 Sports Illustrated story, Marinovich was described as raising “America’s first test-tube athlete”:

He has never eaten a Big Mac or an Oreo or a Ding Dong. When he went to birthday parties as a kid, he would take his own cake and ice cream to avoid sugar and refined white flour. He would eat homemade catsup, prepared with honey. He did consume beef but not the kind injected with hormones. He ate only unprocessed dairy products. He teethed on frozen kidney. When Todd was one month old, Marv was already working on his son’s physical conditioning. He stretched his hamstrings. Pushups were next. Marv invented a game in which Todd would try to lift a medicine ball onto a kitchen counter. Marv also put him on a balance beam. Both activities grew easier when Todd learned to walk. There was a football in Todd’s crib from day one. “Not a real NFL ball,” says Marv. “That would be sick; it was a stuffed ball.”

First off, the New York Daily News is a tabloid rag dressed in journalism’s clothing, so this story from Saturday’s edition was already fish wrap the moment it was printed. Secondly, the story’s writer, Bill Gallo, is 86 years old. He used to be a boxing writer of some note and he’s also a cartoonist (he got his start in journalism as a boxing cartoonist; I guess they had those things back before they used cameras to take pictures of the fights).

Anyway, Gramps Gallo is flipping channels the other night and comes across one of those Ultimate Fighting “things,” with two fighters – he actually puts a question mark in brackets after “fighter” as if to call into question whether the fighters were actually, you know, fighting – he calls Tub and Skinny beating on each other in “a deliberate attempt by one guy to maim the other in an anything-goes, no-holds-barred struggle.” Anything goes and NHB haven’t been a part of mixed martial arts in quite some time, Gramps, and maiming, which is defined by good ol’ Merriam-Webster as “to mutilate, disfigure or wound seriously,” is a sensationalistic overstatement. Definitely not good journalism.

At this point he wondered when the cops were going to show up put a stop to the “slaughter,” and he then made sure his readers knew that he had not “exaggerated at all in my description of this so-called ‘up-and-coming’ sport. I reported exactly what I saw.”

And now I’m reporting exactly what I see: an over-the-hill grouchy old man trying desperately to still be relevant by targeting the hottest sport going while coming across as narrow-minded and uninformed. (At least I can only be accused of the former.)

Time to get new bifocals, there, oldtimer, maybe get tested for cataracts. I don’t mind reading opposing viewpoints on a subject I love, especially viewpoints of the asleep-at-the-plate, out-in-left-field variety. I just wish that instead of writing about the Ultimate Fighting “things” he watched, Gallo had drawn a cartoon so I could stick it on my fridge.

The showdown between Renato “Babalu” Sobral (35-8) and Gegard Mousasi (25-2-1) that was part of the now-scrapped Affliction: Trilogy card is back on at part of the Strikeforce: Carano vs. Cyborg card on August 15. Even better, since Sobral is the Strikeforce light heavyweight champ the belt will be on the line. (Thanks to MMA Connected’s “Showdown” Joe Ferraro for the update.)

The 33-year-old Sobral, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and former national wrestling champion for Brazil, is riding a five-fight winning streak and is coming off asecond-round choke submission of Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou at Affliction: Day of Reckoning in January.

Mousasi, meanwhile, has won 12 straight and was crowned the first DREAM middleweight champion and middleweight grand prix tournament champion last year in Japan. The 23-year-old’s last win was a first-round sub of former K-1 heavyweight champion Mark Hunt in May.

The addition of Sobral vs. Mousasi certainly bolsters a sagging lineup that saw two title fights hit the skids in the last week. Alistair Overeem had to back out of a heavyweight title defense against Fabricio Werdum due to a hand injury and Joe Riggs pulled out of the welterweight championship bout with Nick Diaz because of medical issues.

Mixed martial arts has always battled its reputation as a blood sport and human cockfighting (thank you, John McCain). Now, in this ABC News interview Father Edward Beck argues that not only is MMA or “ultimate fighting” immoral, it’s no different than murder and prostitution (I’m not sure how he’s able to equate killing someone with the world’s oldest profession, especially considering Jesus’s fuck buddy Mary Magdalene wasn’t above taking a few coins for getting Biblical). He went on to argue that MMA should be outlawed and its participants punished. Thankfully, interviewer Chris Cuomo is an MMA fan and puts up a spirited and rational defense of the sport. Click on over to the clip, it’s worth checking out.

But Father Eddie did get me thinking, if only for a moment, about what the Bible does say about fighting. Yes, generally, fighting is bad, we all know that. Cain killed his brother Abel out of jealousy (and some serious anger management issues, I suspect) and we can all agree that that was pretty harsh. But there’s plenty of bloodshed in the Good Book, much of it spilled in His name. There’s fighting temptation and fighting persecution and then there’s that whole “eye for an eye” thing, which people often dismiss as the words of the warlike and wrathful Old Testament God, not the kinder, gentler “turn the other cheek” New Testament God, failing to realize that OT God and NT God are the same God (James 1:17 says that God does not change, and Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus Christ (aka God) is the same yesterday, today and forever.)

For a Sunday school lesson, MMA-style, check out Deuteronomy 25:11-12:

When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.

Now, I’m no theologian, but puthething all the smitething aside, what that’s saying is that if two dudes got in a fight and one of their wives stepped in to try and stop it she should have her hand cut off for interrupting. And I’m thinking that part where she “taketh him by the secrets,” well, I’m pretty sure “secrets” means “balls,” but I could be wrong.

And over in Exodus 21:18-19, it says that if men are quarreling and one strikes the other and injures him seriously but not permanently (even with a weapon), he is responsible only to compensate the injured man for loss of time and medical expenses. So two guys get in a fight and even if it’s clearly started by one guy all he’s responsible for is damages; no punishment for fighting at all. In fact, fighting is pretty okay.

Amen.

Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal has responded to Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s claim that King Mo is all “butt-hurt” as a result of a disagreement the two had in the back of a van during the UFC 100 festivities in Vegas. Go here if you want to read what Rampage said, and go here to read King Mo’s response because honestly I can’t be bothered wasting any more time on this shit.

There’s irony in watching this video of UFC fighter Anthony Johnson volunteering to be chewed up during a police K9 unit training session. The welterweight was arrested on June 27 in Hayward, California on misdemeanor charges including domestic battery involving his ex-girlfriend, criminal threats and the destruction of a cell phone to prevent the reporting of a crime. He was arrested shortly after contacting police about the incident, posted bail and was released later that day.

I’ve gone on record that I’m not a huge fan of the heavyweights and I hate Kimbo Slice. I also think Quinton “Rampage” Jackson is more entertaining outside the cage than in, and there’s obviously some bad blood between him and fellow The Ultimate Fighter coach Rashad Evans. Makes for a mixed bag of mayhem come showtime. But I’ll be watching, just like everybody else.

The Roy Jones Jr. highlight reel I posted a couple days ago got me thinking about Anderson Silva. The UFC middleweight champ has a 1-1 boxing record and has said he’d like to box Jones. That’s old news, but it gives me an excuse to post this video of Silva’s second fight, a 2005 second-round TKO over Julio Cesar De Jesus, who was making his professional debut. Silva looks good, sharp, crisp, but not Roy Jones Jr. good.

Jason “The Athlete” MacDonald has a reputation as a TUF slayer, having beaten The Ultimate Fighter competitors Ed Herman, Chris Leben and Rory Singer. Now, he faces TUF season 4 champ Travis Lutter in a middleweight showdown at the Alberta-based Maximum Fighting Championship event MFC 22: Payoff on October 2.

It was no surprise when MacDonald was released from the UFC last May despite having two fights left on his contract. The Canuck fighter had gone 5-5 in the UFC and was coming off two straight losses, including an embarrassing performance against Nate Quarry at UFC 97 in April.

Lutter has a less-impressive 2-4 UFC record, with wins over Marvin Eastman and Patrick Cote, but losses in his last two fights against Anderson Silva at UFC 67 (an intended title fight until Lutter failed to make weight) and Rich Franklin at UFC 83.

I’m not a reality TV fan, beyond the occasional episode of Survivor and Celebrity Rehab, but I’m telling you, give Quinton “Rampage” Jackson the Jon & Kate Plus 8 treatment stat. He’s actually way more entertaining outside the cage than he is inside. Just check out this Rampage dance clip. The dude is off-the-chain insane.

And a couple of weeks ago I came across the video clip below of him chatting with some fellow fighters in the back of a van while they were being shuttled around Vegas during the UFC 100 festivities. It’s basically Rampage telling prospect Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal (the guy on the right with his back to the camera) that he talks a big game for someone who’s never fought anybody of consequence.

It’s amusing and I considered posting it then, but it wasn’t much of a story and something told me to hold off, that this little verbal showdown between the former UFC champ and King Mo isn’t over yet. And I was right.

Last night Rampage Twittered that he had some thoughts on this feud-in-the-making. Over on his blog he had this to say:

“This punk ass dude King Mo is all butt-hurt because I don’t know who the hell he is. Straight up, if you’re not one of my friends or fighting one of my friends or a potential later opponent, I might not get a chance to watch your fight. So I didn’t know who the hell King Mo was and now [he's] crying like a little girl… Now this guy is running his mouth, but if I was him, I would shut the hell up ‘cause he seriously don’t want none… King Mo would be half-cool if he didn’t have those gay-ass nipple rings and didn’t talk so much.”

For the record, King Mo is 4-0 in Sengoku action and is slated to fight Don Frye at M-1 Global: Breakthrough on August 28. Breakthrough is an upstart event started by the former Affliction partner prior to the collapse of Affliction. And I have no opinion on his gay-ass nipple rings and its effect on his level of coolness, although I do agree that nipple rings are gay-ass.

Rampage also had this advice for anyone who meets him and wants to say hello:

“People, straight up, if you guys ever bump into me, treat me as a normal guy or the way you would like to be treated. If I’m talking to people or in the club dancing with a hot chick or with my kids or in the restroom with my dick in my hand pissing, it’s probably a bad time to talk to me or ask for a picture. Other than that you’ll see I’m just like everybody else.”