Posts from — November 2009

If you’d asked me a week ago if Dan Henderson was going to re-sign with the UFC I’d have said not likely. I was certain Hendo was Strikeforce-bound as UFC president Dana White seemed adamant that the fighter was asking for far more than the promotion was willing to pay. And Henderson would make a great addition to the Strikeforce roster, especially considering his willingness to fight at middleweight and light heavyweight. Well, I spoke with Henderson yesterday at the grand opening of the Grant Brothers MMA & Boxing Gym in Toronto and I my opinion has changed.

No, Henderson didn’t give any indication one way or the other on the UFC-Strikeforce contract debate. “I expect it will be all sorted out and a new contract signed in the next week or two,” he said cryptically, avoiding confirming which promotion he might be leaning toward. “And I hope to be back in the cage fighting sometime in February.”

But the way he spoke I got the distinct impression that the UFC might be coming around. It makes sense. Two weeks ago the UFC roster was looking fairly solid, so they held all the cards when it came to contract negotiations. But injuries and illnesses have sidelined a number of name draws – including three belt holders and at least as many top contenders – and the UFC is scrambling to put together solid cards for the next two or three months. Dan Henderson would make a heck of an anchor for a card in search of a headliner. I’m sure Henderson realizes this and feels he now has the upper hand in the contract negotiations. Just my gut reaction.

After Josh Koscheck choked out Anthony Johnson is a bizarre affair at Saturday’s UFC 106 that saw both fighters receive inadvertent eye pokes and one knee in the head while on the ground, he made a bid for a rematch with welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre. He even went so far as to call out current top contender Dan Hardy, who was sitting cageside: “I know there’s somebody here that thinks he’s the number one contender,” Koscheck said in his post-fight interview. “He thinks he’s the number one contender, but he hasn’t fought anybody.”

Well, Jason Whittington over at The Fighting Spirit hit speed dial to get Hardy’s reaction: “Josh Koscheck is like a piece of shit that wont flush away. He loses and you think you have seen the last of him, then he wins one, and he’s back. He is inconsistent in his last five fights, and he has already had a shot at GSP, and we all know how that story ended. The only good thing about the fact that he is always floating around in the back ground, is that we get to see him being punched in the face on a regular basis.”

Multiple-time world gi and no gi champion Xande Ribeiro was at Toronto BJJ on Saturday for a seminar and UFC fighter Mauricio “Shogun” Rua was on hand to try and strengthen his ground game. Ribeiro, who has a pair of MMA fights under the Sengoku promotion, attended Shogun’s MMA seminar on Sunday to pick up the finer points of the flying head stomp and the Superman punch pass.

Besides Amir Sadollah, I was really impressed with PRIDE veteran Antonio Rogerio Nogueira in his UFC debut. Lil Nog scored an impressive first-round technical knockout against Luis Cane at the 1:56 mark at UFC 106. Nog rocked Cane with a couple of sharp lefts and then stalked the retreating Cane, putting him on the mat with a couple more lefts that gave him the win and Knockout of the Night. How awesome is it to see the Nogueira brothers tearing through their respective divisions?

How impressive was Amir Sadollah last night? The Ultimate Fighter 7 middleweight champ was coming off a 29-second knockout loss to Johnny Hendricks at UFC 101 so I really wasn’t expecting much when he stepped in against veteran Phil Baroni in his UFC return at UFC 106.

But after being rocked early in the first frame Sadollah collected himself and matched Baroni blow for blow en route to a lopsided and bloody unanimous-decision win. It was a textbook display of Muay Thai as he picked the increasingly gassed Baroni apart with front kicks, leg kicks and punching combinations. Suddenly, I’m excited about a TUF winner.

Last night, as I sat in a bar with some friends watching Tito Ortiz and Forrest Griffin battle to a mildly controversial split decision – a mirror result to their first bout three years ago, with Griffin having his hand raised this time – all I really kept thinking was “we should be watching Brock Lesnar and Shane Carwin right now.” The UFC 106 poster in the bar even had Lesnar vs. Carwin and Ortiz vs. Mark Coleman as the co-headliners. The UFC that never was.

Instead, we got Ortiz vs. Griffin II, which saw Griffin overcome Ortiz’s strong takedowns to pick him apart with stiff jabs, crude rights and lefts and the occasional front kick to the jaw that sent Ortiz’s mouthpiece flying. For the record, I saw Griffin winning all three rounds, although the opener was a close call. I’m sure a rubber match is in the future – Ortiz even pitched himself and Griffin as Ultimate Fighter coaches at the post-fight press conference – but I have no interest in seeing it (or Ortiz and Griffin on TUF).

While I didn’t care about the outcome last night, I’m glad Griffin has gotten over his embarrassing loss to Anderson Silva and Ortiz, well he’s back and I still dislike him, especially after his less-than-gracious post-fight interview. He was obviously a sore loser and claimed he was suffering from bulging discs in his back and a broken orbital bone heading into the fight. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I’d rather he ran from the cage in tears. As for Griffin, he claimed to have a broken foot suffered during training.

And that says a lot about the state of the UFC. Would either Ortiz or Griffin still fought if the UFC 106 card, and the UFC in general, weren’t already decimated with injuries and illnesses? Would the UFC have allowed them? A broken foot and orbital bone both sound serious enough to prevent a fighter from fighting and – not knowing the severity of either injury – fighters have backed out of fights with lesser injuries. But the UFC needs all the big-name fighters it can get right now.

It’s been a very busy weekend with MMA seminars with Rich Franklin and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua taking up a good chunk of it, so I’m a little behind with some of the things I’d planned to write about. One of those things was Friday’s Strikeforce Challengers V, which brought a satisfying conclusion to a Couture/Vera fight for a change.

Kerry Vera, wife of UFC fighter Brandon Vera, tooled up Kim Couture, Randy Couture’s ex, to win a decisive first-round TKO thanks to strikes. Vera looked strong, sharp and dangerous and Couture did not, although her hugging against the cage looked awfully familiar. Thankfully, Vera was able to create space and swarm Couture, picking her apart with punches and kicks.

Main card results:

* Tyron Woodley def. Rudy Bears via submission (arm-triangle choke) – Round 1, 2:52
* Kerry Vera def. Kim Couture via TKO (punches) – Round 1, 3:35
* Bobby Voelker def. Erik Apple via TKO (punches) – Round 2, 1:23
* Rafael Cavalcante def. Aaron Rosa via TKO (punches) – Round 2, 3:25
* Kevin Casey def. Chad Vance via submission (rear-naked choke) – Round 1, 1:41

I’m going to go out on a big thick ol’ limb and say that a UFC interim heavyweight title fight isn’t going to happen for at least five months – assuming Shane Carwin is one of the two fighters vying for the belt – and by that time it’ll be so pointless as to be unnecessary.

UFC president Dana White would love to set up an interim bout at UFC 110 in Sydney, Australia, on February 21, according to MMA Junkie. The problem is that Carwin’s wife is expecting a child on February 11. There’s no way I can see Carwin being able to devote himself to training for the biggest fight of his career while also be there for his wife and child and then leave them a few days after the birth to fly halfway around the world for a fight. I just don’t see that happening. Especially given how nice, for lack of a better word, Carwin is.

So that pushes an interim fight back at least three or four weeks in my estimation, maybe more, which puts us into late March or early April. And the word out of current champ Brock Lesnar’s camp is that he’s recovering from having a hole in his intestines repaired and should be ready to fight again in six months (it’s unclear of that means he’ll be ready to step into the cage at that time or just return to training).

If he’s back to 100 percent, though, then why bother with an interim fight just a few weeks before his possible return? If it means he can begin training in six months then his actual return fight is probably eight months off. Can the heavyweight division afford to go championless for eight months? Absolutely, especially when, as I’ve said before, an interim belt is a paper title. Besides, Carwin himself has already gone on record saying he sees no need for an interim belt at this point.