Posts from — October 2009

This is sort of funny. Seems Julia Lillis has a little crush on Fedor Emelianenko. She’s no Sarah Silverman, but not bad.

As if the bar for The Ultimate Fighter couldn’t get any lower, current cast member Zak Jensen is facing a wrongful death lawsuit following the death of a Minnesota college student while on spring break in Mexico.

According to the Stillwater Gazette, the family of the late Josh Gunderson filed the suit on Thursday claiming negligence in Gunderson’s death.

I’m not going to go into this in too much detail. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, has nothing to do with MMA, and nothing has been proven one way or another in regards to Jensen’s culpability. The basics seem to be that Jensen, a friend named Ashley Jones and Gunderson were in Puerto Vallarta in March. Gunderson may have attacked Jones, or at the very least come on too strongly, gotten physical, and when she screamed Jensen intervened. The exact nature of the intervention is unclear, although Gunderson did end up dead. Jensen was questioned by Mexican police at the time and released and the death was ruled accidental. Autopsy reports show that Gunderson had a 0.12 blood alcohol level and the cause of death was that he choked on “gastric contents” and died.

What we can learn from all of this is that bad things happen in Mexico. It’s like Turistas down there.

The 2009 No Gi World Championships are being held next week in Long Beach, CA, and if you’re interested in watching them, they will be streaming live and for free at NoGi.com. Thanks to Scott Wallace over at ScottOnTheNet for bringing this to my attention as he and I have several teammates from Toronto BJJ competing.

Tito Ortiz might be married to a porn star but Ultimate Fighter veteran Jon Koppenhaver, who legally changed his name to War Machine, is going to go one better by becoming a porn star.

The above email was posted on War Machine’s Myspace page (I found it via Bloody Elbow, not because I was trolling MySpace). In it he talks about having shot his first porn scene, how it was “fucking awesome,”and that he wants to be both a professional fighter and a fucker. “I’m living the dream,” he writes.

That’s right, War Machine, the “dream” that everybody wants to live is to get punched in the face and have sex on film for money, sometimes at the same time.

Of course, War Machine has had a few dreams come true, like the ones about threatening President Obama, “terrorizing chicks,” avoiding felony assault charges, getting fired by the UFC and Bellator FC and brawling at a gay nightclub. Now he’ll get paid to star in things like Gangbangs of New York, Schindler’s Fist, In Diana Jones and the Temple of Poon, Saturday Night Beaver, 28 Gays Later and White Men Can’t Hump. He’s such an inspiration.

Dream big, Jon Koppenhaver, dream big.

There’s nothing particularly enlightening about “Showdown” Joe Ferraro’s interview with Tito Ortiz. It’s about as relaxed mellow as I’ve seen the light heavyweight. He’s obviously excited to be back in the UFC and I’m looking forward to him squaring off with Forrest Griffin at UFC 106 on November 21. Is that a great main event? Not really. But it does have significant entertainment value, both heading into it (Tito’s return and Forrest’s first fight since fleeing Anderson Silva being the two main storylines) and the fight itself (caution is not something I expect when these two step into the cage).

Two minutes after I post about all the injuries and illnesses screwing with the UFC schedule and mention that Anderson Silva’s return at UFC 108 on January 2 is looking less and less likely, John Morgan over at MMA Junkie confirms that the middleweight champ’s bout with challenger Vitor Belfort is definitely off. Morgan reports that Silva’s manager, Ed Soares, says that Silva needs more time to recover from surgery to remove bone spurs from his elbow. Soares also indicated that he expects Silva and Belfort to square off whenever he does return to the cage.

Thankfully, heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar has the flu, forcing his title bout with Shane Carwin to be shifted from UFC 106 to UFC 108.

Mauricio “Shogun” Rua is ready for his rematch with Lyoto Machida but don’t expect it to happen any time soon as Machida must undergo hand surgery first.

Machida defeated Rua in a controversial unanimous decision at last Saturday’s UFC 104 to maintain his light heavyweight title. Just about everyone except the three judges felt Rua had won the fight, including UFC president Dana White, who promised a rematch as soon as possible, potentially at UFC 108 on January 2. That is now out of the question. Hand injuries are a tricky thing – there are 27 bones in there, break one of them and it can take months to heal properly. So we might not see Machida vs. Rua II until mid-2010.

This is only the latest in a string of injuries and illnesses to plague the UFC roster in the past few weeks. Middleweight champ Anderson Silva is supposed to defend his title against Vitor Belfort at UFC 108, but that’s looking less and less likely as Silva recovers from elbow surgery and claims Belfort doesn’t deserve the title shot.

But that’s okay because heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar has come down with the flu (or something to that effect) and has had to postpone his UFC 106 heavyweight title defense against Shane Carwin. So they will now likely square off in the main event at UFC 108.

Then there’s welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre, who’s been out of action since he tore his abductor muscle in his win over Thiago Alves at UFC 100. No one seems to know when he might return, although the Super Bowl weekend card on February 6 would be ideal.

All of these date changes and question marks are on top of Jon Fitch’s rotating dance partners, from an injured Ricardo Almeida scrapped from UFC 106 to an injured Thiago Alves scrapped from UFC 107. Don’t be surprised if Matt Hughes steps in to fill the vacancy on the December 12 card.

Then there’s Kurt Pellegrino, a fighter I root against simply because he has his own name tattooed on himself like a vanity license plate. Pellegrino was supposed to face Frank Edgar in a lightweight fight on the Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale on December 5 but has withdrawn due to a back injury and will be replaced by Matt Veach. Veach had been paired against Canadian submission ace Mark Bocek, who will now contend with UFC newcomer Joe Brammer.

And speaking of guys I don’t like simply because they have their name tattooed on themselves, 10-time UFC veteran Josh “Tramp Stamp” Neer has been dropped from the UFC following his unanimous-decision loss to Gleison Tibau at UFC 104: Machida vs. Rua. Neer’s biggest wins were over wins over Mac Danzig, Din Thomas, Joe Stevenson and Melvin Guillard. Too bad he never fought Pelligrino.

Speaking of Urijah Faber (22-3 MMA; 7-2 WEC), the former WEC featherweight champion is finally set for his return to the cage after recovering from a severely broken hand suffered in a loss to 145-pound champ Mike Brown at WEC 41. Faber will face Raphael Assuncao (14-1 MMA; 2-0 WEC) at WEC 46 on January 11. That card is also rumoured – and I do mean rumoured – to be c0-headlined by a lightweight title unification bout between champ Jamie Varner and interim champ Benson Henderson.

Anybody notice anything strange or unusual about this poster for WEC 45? Like that there are three fights/six fighters listed but only five fighters’ photos. Where the heck is Chris Horodecki? If they knew his name in time to put that on the poster there should have been time to Photoshop in an image, too. It just looks bizarre to only see five fighters. Maybe the baby-faced IFL vet just didn’t look menacing enough. Horodecki (13-1) was scheduled to face Dan Lauzon at Affliction: Trilogy until the promotion closed up shop and he now faces Anthony Njokuani (11-2 MMA; 2-1 WEC).

That said, this is a good card for a WEC card. The headliner between Greg Jackson student and Muay Thai striker Donald Cerrone (10-2 MMA, 3-2 WEC) and karate fighter Ed Ratcliff (7-1 MMA, 3-1 WEC) has barnburner potential, although I wouldn’t expect anything close to the fight-of-the-year-level five-round battle Cerrone fought with Ben “Bendo” Henderson at WEC 43. And with Cerrone walking away from that bout without the interim lightweight title he’ll be hungry to get back on track with a win. (As a side note, it’s strange to refer to an MMA fighter as a karate fighter or karate stylist; we can thank Lyoto Machida for making the art cool again.)

Also on the card is a bantamweight bout between DREAM vet and Urijah Faber training partner Joseph Benavidez (10-1 MMA, 2-1 WEC) and K-1 Hero’s vet and ADCC sub wrestling champion Rani Yahya (15-4 MMA, 4-1 WEC).

Forrest Griffin’s stock dropped faster than his ass hit the mat following his loss to Anderson Silva at UFC 101 and it had nothing to do with getting clowned.

It started falling as he was running out of the octagon and continued its descent through weeks of media silence. In his eventual post-fight interviews he came across as a bit of an ass. As I wrote on 09.27, “The chucklehead factor is turned to eleven. He doesn’t get into the loss to Anderson Silva at all, claiming he doesn’t know how it ended because he hasn’t watched it yet and that the one thing he learned from it was to not fight while on quaaludes.” In a subsequent interview he explained his hasty octagon exit as a need to get a backstage blowjob from a reporter’s mother, a comment which “rates pretty high on the drunken fratboy douchebag meter,” as I wrote on 10.03.

Now, a pair of new interviews have surfaced, ostensibly to promote Griffin’s rematch with Tito Ortiz at UFC 106 on November 21. But they also serve another purpose – to redeem Griffin by showing people he’s still the likable jug-headed hick he’s always been. And they are somewhat successful.

The first is a well-prepped promotional interview in which the Silva fight is addressed and dismissed in just 19 words: “Obviously people want to know what happened with the Anderson Silva fight. I don’t know. It was pretty bad.” That’s the sum total of his insight into fighting Silva. Personally, I preferred his “I don’t remember because I was on quaaludes” response but I understand that he wants to put the fight firmly in his rearview.

As for him fleeing the octagon, he was a bit more forthcoming, saying, “It’s easy to criticize. It’s easy to kind of stand on the sideline and criticize a person’s blood, sweat, and toil. Anyone who says that, I feel bad for them because they’ve never given of themselves so much and cared about something so much that not getting it broke them. You know, those people have never truly lived, you know.” Still, not very illuminating (it was pretty obvious Griffin was devastated by the loss but a little more introspection would’ve been appreciated).

The interview wraps up with him talking about Ortiz, how the fire has been rekindled inside him and that he really wants to punch somebody in the face. Pretty standard – rehearsed – stuff.

As for the second interview, it’s basically the goofy dick-joke-loving Griffin we all remember. Nothing too douchey. Although I am beginning to wonder about his obsession with his own penis.

Five Ounces of Pain is reporting that Thiago Alves has been forced to pull out of his UFC 107: Penn vs. Sanchez bout with Jon Fitch on December 12 due to an injury (a torn knee ligament, apparently).

This is the second opponent to drop out against Fitch in recent weeks. The welterweight contender was originally slated to meet former middleweight King of Pancrase Ricardo Almeida, who pulled out of their UFC 106 clash – also with a knee injury.

Word is that a replacement for Alves is being sought. Fitch has just one loss in 18 fights, to division champ Georges St. Pierre, and last fought at UFC 100, earning a unanimous decision over Paulo Thiago, who was originally scheduled to fight Alves at UFC 107 until Alves was moved into the vacating Almeida slot (got that?).

So who would you like to see sliding in against Fitch?

Here’s how UFC 107 now looks:

MAIN CARD

* Champ B.J. Penn vs. Diego Sanchez (for lightweight title)
* Cheick Kongo vs. Frank Mir
* Jon Fitch vs. TBA*
* Kenny Florian vs. Clay Guida
* Paul Buentello vs. Todd Duffee

PRELIMINARY CARD

* Alan Belcher vs. Wilson Gouveia
* Shane Nelson vs. Matt Wiman
* Ricardo Funch vs. Johny Hendricks
* Lucio Linhares vs. Rousimar Palhares
* Edgar Garcia vs. DaMarques Johnson
* Kevin Burns vs. T.J. Grant

If you don’t like light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida’s unanimous-decision win over challenger Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at last Saturday’s UFC 104 then “you can go to hell,” says Cecil Peoples, one of three California State Athletic Commission-assigned officials who misjudged the fight.

Peoples made the remark – along with many others that call into question his ability to judge anything more complex than a pie-eating contest – in an interview with MMA Weekly. He also confirmed that he hasn’t seen the fight on video nor looked at any of the statistics that give Rua an overwhelming advantage. It’s the second time this week that Peoples has spoken up about the fight to the media. Obviously Peoples isn’t smart enough to stay quiet on the subject, instead choosing to open his mouth, insert his size tens and further fuel the controversy.

Cory Brady over at Five Ounces of Pain does a great job of breaking down Peoples’ comments, so instead of me rehashing them, I’ll excerpt the highlights here:

“My thing is, Rua did hit him more,” explained Peoples. “But Machida hit him harder, especially in the early rounds.”

So according to Mr. Peoples, the man admits that Shogun landed the bulk of the strikes, but Machida “apparently” landing the harder shots canceled out Mauricio’s strikes because they were somehow perceived as softer.

What sense does this make?

With this logic, the gameplan for all fighters in the UFC going forward should be to absorb as much punishment as humanly possible while landing an occasional haymaker. Are you kidding me?

And since when did Peoples become an on-site human measuring stick for the velocity and impact of strikes. Being convinced that Machida’s blows were somehow more devastating reeks of favoritism.

“I’m really perplexed about how you give (Rua) this round, because Shogun was kicking (Machida) a lot in the legs, but every time he kicked him in the legs, he got hit in the face,” continued the repeatedly controversial judge. “Shogun would put his hand up, and Machida would go right through, sweat’s flying off (Rua’s) face. Shogun kicked (Machida) in the belly – that’s how he got the red mark.”

Perplexed as to how anyone could give Rua a round where he clearly landed more strikes?

I think the world of mixed martial arts is a lot more perplexed as to how one of its most frequent outcome deciders could so easily toss out all of the powerful kicks landed by Rua just because he didn’t knuckle Machida up to his liking.

I could understand giving a few shots to the face more leverage than a few dozen hard kicks back during UFC 1-10, but the year is 2009 and this was UFC 104. If the fossils in place to rule on MMA bouts currently are frozen in time, its time for them to be replaced. Simple as that.

“But you gotta remember, Machida is stepping back, so when he gets kicked, he’s getting brushed,” said Peoples. “But he counters Shogun with a hard kick to the belly. Which one counts more for the exchange? I give it to the (second one), because it was harder. It wasn’t brushed.”

So the same hard kick to the “belly” of Machida that caused the red mark that Cecil so easily explained away as meaningless is no longer meaningless when Lyoto lands it?

Again, somehow Machida must have been landing the harder kicks. Disregard the fact that “The Dragon” was taking steady, visible damage to the legs and body, Lyoto’s kicks were…… well, they were just harder according to the impact expert.

“Machida was controlling that round because he was dominant in not getting beat up in that round,” Cecil attempted to rationalize. “He was the general in that first round.”

I don’t know, but if Machida was dominant in not getting beat up in that round, wasn’t Shogun even that much more dominant being that not only was he “not getting beat up,” he was also pushing the action?

Is this the cast of The Ultimate Fighter 11? I really like giant Afro dude, opera boy, hockey player face, Uncle Morty (aka legendary boxing trainer Al “Stankie” Stankiewicz), the guy with Sho’nuff on his T-shirt and capoeira guy (please let capoeira guy into the house, seriously, he’d just be fun to watch, like Cirque de Soleil). The final cast of middleweights and light heavies will be decided over the next few weeks with season 11 airing starting sometime in April.

Taking the fight on just 10 days notice and moving up a weight class, Roxanne Modafferi has agreed to replace Erin Toughill against Marloes Coenen on November 7’s Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Rogers card. The winner could be in line to face women’s 145-pound champ Cris “Cyborg” Santos.

Modafferi (13-4) and Coenen (16-3) faced each previously at K-Grace 1 in 2007 with Modafferi getting the nod via split decision.

Okay, now if we can only firm up Sarah Kaufman’s next fight.