Posts from — July 2009

No doubt Emanuel Augustus is one of the most-entertaining boxers in the game (assuming he’s still in the game; he hasn’t fought since November of last year). He’s a bit of a clown in the ring, not a joke, but an entertainer known for his “string-puppet dance.” I wonder how good he’d be – he’s got a 38-30-6 pro record – if he stopped with the antics and just boxed. Would he not lose so many close decisions? Or is he like the Sundance Kid – he has to move to get his shots off and hit his target?

UFC 102 has a pretty solid main card considering there are no title belts on the line. The headliner, of course, should be dubbed “when legends collide” as former UFC champion Randy “The Natural” Couture battles former Pride FC champion Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira. And perennial light heavyweight bridesmaid Keith Jardine will throw down in a 205-pound slugfest against hard-hitting Brazilian import Thiago Silva.

But the most significant bout on the card is the middleweight matchup between jiu-jitsu phenom Demian Maia and Greg Jackson-trained all-rounder Nate Marquardt to determine who will get a crack at Anderson Silva for the championship. Maia is the best BJJ tactician in the UFC with five straight wins by submission. Marquardt is a seven-time Pancrase champ who’s big, strong and punishing in the cage. Tough call either way.

UFC 102 main card:

Randy Couture (16-9) vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (31-5-1)

Keith Jardine (14-5-1) vs. Thiago Silva (13-1)

Chris Leben (18-6) vs. Jake Rosholt (5-1)

Nate Marquardt (28-8-2) vs. Demian Maia (10-0)

Krzysztof Soszynski (18-8-1) vs. Brandon Vera (10-3)

Under card:

Gabriel Gonzaga (10-4) vs. Chris Tuchscherer (17-1)

James Irvin (14-5) vs. Wilson Gouveia (12-6)

Mike Russow (11-1) vs. Justin McCully (9-4-2)

Todd Duffee (4-0) vs. Tim Hague (10-1)

Nick Catone (7-1) vs. Mark Munoz (5-1)

Matt Veach (11-0) vs. Evan Dunham (8-0)

Really, there’s no reason to post this video, except it’s Sunday, it’s pouring rain, and this makes the day a little bit brighter.

Forty-year-old Roy Jones Jr. is set to prove he’s still got it. The 53-5 boxer, who has held belts in four weight classes and eight different promotions, goes back in the ring against former super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy on Aug. 15.

Okay, if my math is correct and Rich Franklin fights the returning Tito Ortiz at UFC 103, then the vacancy opposite Franklin’s original opponent, Dan Henderson, could be filled by Vitor Belfort, who was fighting for Affliction until the company decided it only needed T-shirts, not fighters. Just speculating but, as Spock would say, my logic is sound.

Well, this promo certainly lives up to the moniker of the fight card cuz there’s a whole lot of folks declaring a whole lot of things. Pound-for-pound this, tougher than that, better, badder, unbeatable, blah blah blah.

Spending time on the mats at Toronto BJJ I’d often hear Professor Jorge Britto talk about how we are a family, how our rolling partners are not just our teammates but members of a great jiu-jitsu family. A nice sentiment, I always thought, but little else. Well, this week I got a better sense of the jiu-jitsu family Jorge often speaks of when I heard about the plight of Fernando “Terere” Augusto.

Terere was one of the Alliance Team’s brightest stars. A Pan American and Mundial champion from the slums of Rio de Janeiro who has beaten some of the best in the game, including two wins over Marcelo Garcia. Bright, brilliant, flamboyant, a “real showman,” Jorge called him, “one of the best competitors in all of jiu-jitsu.” And he understood the importance of giving back, once selling a car he won at a jiu-jitsu tournament to open his own school, the TT Academy, located beneath the Cantagalo Favela where he grew up and where other under-privileged kids could come and train. He was a teacher to some, such as World and Pan Am champion Andre Galvao, and a hero to many.

And, as Jorge told us this week, he is in desperate need of his jiu-jitsu family. Terere has been plagued with personal problems for several years. He once spent three moths in a U.S. detention facility after he caused a disturbance on a 2004 flight from Washington to Sao Paulo. Drugs and likely mental illness have destroyed his life and he has sometimes been living on the very streets he fought so hard to help others avoid. In and out of rehab, nothing seems to work. Each step forward toward normalcy, a return to training, a return to competition, is followed by a greater step backward.

Now, the 28-year-old fighter’s family is making a desperate plea for help from the jiu-jitsu community. As a result, Elan Santiago, instructor at Alliance Rio de Janeiro, contacted Gracie Mag: “A lot of people are calling me offering money, but what we urgently need is specialized help. From the public clinics he’s been going to he comes back worse. He needs a private clinic. Terere’s case is very grave. We’re racing against time to avoid something worse. I’m certain that in the Jiu-Jitsu family there’s some father of an athlete, some psychiatrist who can help us.”

That is why this week Jorge has made a plea to his jiu-jitsu family at Toronto BJJ and to the jiu-jitsu family at-large to make a small donation to help Terere get the medical attention he needs. A collection is being taken up at TBJJ’s front desk and anyone wishing to contact Elan Santiago for more information on how they may help can do so by telephone: (21) 7858-7244. He can also be reached via Gracie Mag at gracie@graciemag.com.

* Thanks to Scott Wallace over at ScottOnTheNet for some of the background info.

The Josh Barnett pile-on begins. A day after Affliction announced it was getting out of the fight promotion game – the end result of bad decision-making and a brutally tough competitive market dominated by an 800-pound gorilla – the fighters from the just-cancelled Affliction: Trilogy event are lashing out. And unfortunately, Barnett, whose positive drug test was the straw that broke the camel’s back, is being blamed.

“Bottom line is, Josh Barnett should pay everybody,” Ben Rothwell told MMA Weekly. The heavyweight was scheduled to fight Chase Gormley and is now out of a job. “He (expletive) up, bad.”

Yeah, he fucked up bad. He juiced, got caught, got banned from fighting in the main event against Fedor Emelianenko, leaving the promoter without their only real draw on the card. But come on, it’s not his fault Affliction put all their eggs in one Russian basket. Fedor was the only real reason to watch the fights and the promoter, for whatever reason, couldn’t come up with a suitable replacement on short notice. Is that reason enough to cut their not insignificant losses and run? I guess so. Doesn’t make it Barnett’s fault. If it had been an injury instead of steroids that had forced him out of the fight I’m sure Rothwell and Paul Buentello and other Barnett blamers would keep their yaps shut. Just because Barnett did it to himself doesn’t mean he’s responsible for Affliction folding. Yet Barnett has become not just a scapegoat for a failed fight promoter, he’s the most-hated man in MMA, which must make Brock Lesnar deliriously happy.

Besides, if you’re a good fighter you’ll find a new home. The UFC may pick up some of the fighters’ contracts, or none of them, nobody knows for sure. UFC president Dana White wants to bring in Fedor but he’s under contract with M-1 Global, not Affliction, which could make it a bit hairy. White has also expressed strong interest in middleweight Vitor Belfort, who was slated to fight Jorge Santiago and who had volunteered to replace Barnett against Fedor. Both Belfort and Santiago are considered top-10 middleweight fighters, which the UFC could certainly use to throw at champ Anderson Silva.

Belfort and Santiago could also do a lot to strengthen a deep Strikeforce middleweight division that already includes a quasi-retired Cung Le, Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith along with Jake Shields and Nick Diaz (when they fight at a catch-weight).

As for the others, Strikeforce could certainly stand to bolster its roster if it wants to improve its position in the marketplace. Affliction was actually negotiating a partnership deal with Strikeforce this week that fell through resulting in Affliction shuttering its doors. But it would be easy to see who else from the card Strikeforce would be interested in.

In fact, Strikeforce had a serious shake-up this week with its Carano vs. Cyborg card. Strikeforce is already in need of a replacement for Joe Riggs, who pulled out of his August 15 match-up with Nick Diaz due to medical problems. Affliction opponents Jay Hieron or Paul Daley (preferably Hieron) could easily fill that vacancy.

Likewise, Rothwell or Gilbert Yvel could step in for the injured Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem, who had to withdraw from his title defense against Fabricio Werdum.

And the second-most-exciting fight on the Affliction: Trilogy card is till one I’d like to see: Gegard Mousasi vs. Renato “Babalu” Sobral. Mousasi had effectively cleaned out the middleweight division (outside of the UFC) and was moving up to 205 pounds while Sobral is a top-10 light heavyweight.

And who doesn’t want to see lightweight Japanese supestar Takanori Gomi? Somebody please adopt him.

There’s something truly horrifying in this video from last Saturday’s boxing match between junior welterweights Omar Chavez and Marco Antonio Nazareth.

The 23-year-old Nazareth died four days later at a hospital in Puerto Vallarta as the result of a brain hemorrhage sustained in the loss to Chavez, the son of former champion Julio Cesar Chavez.

It’s a tragic loss, sad, regrettable. What makes it even worse is that, as this video shows, Nazareth wasn’t knocked out during the fight, there was no single killer punch. You can actually see him finish the fight, sit on his stool in the corner, take a drink from a water bottle and then gradually slip into unconsciousness. The repeated punishment his brain took, during the fight, during training, during previous fights, it all adds up and in this case the bill was as steep as it comes.

Found this on Rich Franklin’s Twitter about an hour ago: “Ive heard the ufc pulled my fight off the website for 103. I dont kno y. They hvnt spoken to me @ this, n i assume the fight is still on.”

Franklin was slated for a rematch with Dan Henderson at UFC 103 on September 19. But he’s right, that fight is no longer listed on the official UFC 103 site. Add to that the very real likelihood of Tito Ortiz’s return to the UFC, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to do the math.

The only thing that gives me pause is that Ortiz hasn’t fought since May of 2008 when he lost to current light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida and he’s been recovering from back surgery. A bout with Franklin certainly wouldn’t be the tune-up fight you’d expect the UFC to hand him. Franklin is a bruiser, a bit softer in the head thanks to Anderson Silva’s knees, but still no walk in the park. Maybe this is UFC president Dana White’s way of welcoming his former friend-turned-bitter enemy back into the fold, settling their grudge. White’s going to let Franklin bury the hatchet for him. Could be. Then again, I never was very good at math.