Category — MMA

I know I’m going to get flack for saying this but as of late I’m seriously underwhelmed by Fedor Emelianenko. Fighting the likes of Brett Rogers, Andrei Arlovski, Tim Sylvia and Hong-Man Choi are not the makings of “The Baddest Man on the Planet.”

I know he is a business man and I’m sure Affliction (at the time) and Strikeforce are great business decisions, but that makes him business savvy, not the baddest man. Long story short, I was glad to see this brief interview with Randy Couture where he talks about “Fedor needing to step and fight top-level guys.” Check out the latest on the Fedor/M-1 Global/Strikeforce contract debacle here.

I was a guest on “Showdown” Joe Ferraro’s radio show on the Fan 590 a couple of nights ago and inevitably the subject of MMA sanctioning in Ontario came up and inevitably I got a little incensed at the foot-dragging going on by Premier Dalton McGuinty. For a guy who shares a first name with Patrick Swayze’s Roadhouse bad-ass you’d think he’d be a bit more on-board with MMA.

I know Joe’s just as livid that the sport isn’t allowed in the province – yet – but he managed to keep his cool. The wheels are turning to make it happen no matter what McGuinty says publicly. There’s an inevitability about it. And Showdown Joe is very much at the center of it (and has been for a long time). Now it’s time for you to do your part.

There’s an online petition demanding that the sport be sanctioned that Joe will hand-deliver to McGuinty (or he’ll get the door slammed in his face trying). It will take you 30 seconds to fill in your name. That’s it.

But it’s not enough. If you want MMA in the province of Ontario – not just the UFC, not just the WEC or StrikeforceDalton McGuinty or whoever, but local fights with local fighters, too – then you need to let that be known. Tell . Tell your Member of Provincial Parliament. Send them an email. Phone them. Fax them. Hand-deliver your massage to their office. I’ve made it easy for you by including links to McGuinty’s contact info as well as the MPPs. You want something, ask for it.

Can I just say how depressing it is to know that my home province, New Brunswick, has sanctioned MMA before we do here in Ontario? Not only that, but the city of Moncton will be hosting the first amateur MMA card in the Atlantic provinces when it does so on March 20. This is in addition to the pro MMA event featuring former UFC champ Tim Sylvia scheduled to take place in nearby Saint John, NB, in June that I wrote about just last week.

Now, when I was growing up we always looked to the west – to Ontario and to Toronto, specifically – to lead the way, to blaze a trail and chart a new course in terms of all things trendy, cool or otherwise awesome and necessary for daily living.

I never would’ve thought that tiny backwater New Brunswick – and I mean that humorously and with tremendous affection and the understanding that the entire population of the province is about one-fifth that of Toronto – would be the one to machete its way through the jungle like this. It’s revelatory, as in a revelation, as in a sign of the Apocalypse.

Consider this a public service announcement: Sam Sheridan has a new book out called The Fighter’s Mind. It’s a sequel of sorts to A Fighters Heart, a “must read” about fighting that saw the Harvard grad study traditional Muay Thai in Thailand (he even had a couple of fights) and MMA with Pat Miletich.

The Fighter’s Mind obviously is about the psychology of fighting and he’s interviewed the likes of Greg Jackson, Randy Couture and Mark DelleGrotte.  I haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet (I’ll have it by the weekend and will give you a review as soon as I’m done), but in the meantime, I thought I’d point you in the direction of this better-than-decent interview with the fighter-writer over on Cage Potato. Here’s an excerpt:

I was surprised to find chapters on ultra-marathons and chess in this book. Do you think their inclusion made it a different and better book than it would have been otherwise?

Absolutely. I think it would have gotten maybe a little boring and repetitious if it had just been trainers. These guys that are kind of on the edge of the fighting world, even though Josh Waitzkin’s now a brown belt and competes in Jiu Jitsu and is looking to win Mundials in 2012 or whatever, he’s in it now, he comes from the chess world and from the Tai Chi world.

To me, variety is the spice of life and I think coming at this problem from different angles is more effective than just getting different trainers in there. It’s funny, I read somebody wrote about the book on Amazon, “Oh he’s doing filler with these guys,” and to me these things were as interesting as anything; because I don’t know anything about ultra-marathons, I don’t know anything about the chess world. It was so interesting to see the parallels. Everybody you talk to, every single person you talk to about Jiu Jitsu will compare it to chess. I mean, it’s so boring. Or, MMA is physical chess, you’ve heard it a million times. But is it really? Let’s ask this guy who’s competed at the highest level in chess and is a serious competitor in Jiu Jitsu, are they alike? And there are some similarities but there are also a lot of differences. I think people use chess as a cop-out to mean something is complicated. It’s not checkers, its chess. But what chess actually is, and what Jiu Jitsu actually is, mentally, there are some corollaries and you can learn from each but I think it’s important to sort of understand those.

And the ultra-marathon guy, I just got interested in this because it is sort of surreal. All the long-distance runners I’ve ever met swear up and down that it’s mental. One of the first guys I ever met that did triathlons, and I think I mention it in the book, he ran a half marathon and then two months later he ran a marathon in the same time as his half marathon just because he realized he could go faster. I said, “You’re crazy.” And he said, “No, you just don’t know because you don’t know about the push. You don’t know how hard you can make yourself work.” Of course there is a direct corollary to fighting and mental toughness and conditioning.

I think Greg Jackson had the most interesting and the most directly eye-opening thing to say about mental toughness and teaching mental toughness and training mental toughness. About pushing that line where you might break, back further and further away so that your opponent can never take you there. That was really interesting to me.

Is this one of the grossest arm breaks in MMA history? Cage Potato says it is, claims you’ll puke on your keyboard when you see it. I’m not so sure. I mean, I appreciate the hyperbole and all, but I’m not typing through this morning’s breakfast.

The fight was at Tuff-N-Uff (stupid name, stupider spelling) in Las Vegas on Friday. John Gettle, a student of Frank Mir’s, gets mount on William Kowalski, who seems to have channeled Renzo Gracie and decided that tapping is for pussies (also stupid, very very stupid).

The results are certainly cringe-worthy and wince-inducing. And there is something about the way the arm rubber bands after the snap. But I wouldn’t even say it’s the worst of the of the last couple of months. It’s nothing compared to Shinya Aoki’s brutal mangling of Mizuto Hirota’s wing. What do you think?

Just saw the ad for OxyMorons, a new film starring Tim Sylvia (and, strangely, sponsored by Affliction; watch the end of the trailer) about OxyContin addiction. A powerful – and powerfully addictive – opiate, Oxy is also known as hillbilly heroin.

Someone must think that the same people who watch MMA are the same people who like to get high. Which is maybe why Sylvia, whom Barrett wrote about earlier today, is scheduled to fight against five-time World’s Strongest Man Mariusz Pudzianowski this April 23 in Worchester, Mass. The event is being promoted by Butterbean.

Laugh all you want, but half of you reading this are probably high right now…

I’m finding this hilarious. Tim Sylvia was supposed to fight Wes Sims at an Adrenaline MMA show on March 20, but the Ohio Athletic Commission killed it by deeming the bout “non-competitive.” That’s an understatement. I can’t think of a less-competitive match-up not involving Kalib Starnes or Junie Browning.

But that’s not what I find so funny. No, what makes me laugh is a story I read in the Telegraph-Journal, the first newspaper I ever worked for back in New Brunswick. Turns out that MMA is coming to Saint John, NB, and it’s bringing the Sylvia-Sims sideshow with it.

The battle of the heavyweight has-been vs. never-was will headline a ten-bout International Fighting Confederation event tentatively scheduled for June 5. Never mind that nobody wanted to see Sylvia face Sims the first time it happened, at another no-name event six years ago.

Now, I’m all for MMA coming to my hometown. I think it speaks to the sport’s exploding popularity that an MMA event would be put on in such a small community. And it’s great that the first event there has managed to land a couple of fighters with UFC experience. Hell, Sylvia was UFC heavyweight champ for a while and has lost to some of the best fighters in the game (Fedor Emelianenko, Minotauro Nogueira, Randy Couture, Frank Mir) and Sims was on The Ultimate Fighter.

But something about it has the feel of the Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling cards that used to swing through town like a traveling circus when I was a kid. I’d plunk down two bucks to see guys like Leo Burke and “Big” Stephen Petitpas smackdown with the Cuban Assassin and “Killer” Karl Krupp at the Lord Beaverbrook Arena on Tuesday nights.

Maybe it’s that the event’s promoter, Jack Livingston, is more accustomed to putting on shows featuring Aerosmith and 50 Cent than pro fighters. Maybe it’s his PT Barnum shpiel, declaring Sylvia vs. Sims “a world championship fight with these two super athletes.” A fight that a lot of people – including one very important athletic commission – has declared non-competitive.

Obviously, Livingston knows nothing about MMA and is just looking at this as an opportunity to make a buck. Speaking of which, tickets for the event range in price from $59.50 to $99.50 for cageside, which Livingstone notes is a lot more affordable than similar events in Montreal that charge upwards or $300 or more. I’m assuming he’s referring to the pricey UFC cards Montreal has hosted, although he sounds pretty ridiculous comparing his little event to anything remotely resembling the UFC.

Almost makes me wish I still lived back east so I could see what all of Livingston’s fuss is about.

I’m pretty sure most or MMA’s female fans would prefer Georges St. Pierre had made that naked workout video. They’ll have to settle for him fully clothed in this Under Armour ad. As a side note, is it just me or does Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps look like Office star John Krasinski?

Toronto BJJ regular Andre “Dida” Amade will be back in action at DREAM 13 on March 22. The Chute Boxe-trained striker will face former EliteXC lightweight champ KJ Noons.

Dida will be looking to end a three-bout losing skid that last saw him fall to DEEP lightweight champ Katsunori Kikuno at DREAM 10. Noons, meanwhile, recently signed with Strikeforce and is on a three-fight winning streak, although he hasn’t fought since he knocked out Yves Edwards at EliteXC: Return of the King two years ago.

Also on the DREAM 13 card are Ikuhisa Minowa vs. Jimmy Ambriz, Ryo Chonan vs. Andrews Nakahara and Kikuno vs. UFC vet Kuniyoshi Hironaka.

In other TBJJ-related news, Murilo “Ninja” Rua, brother of Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (who’s pictured above working out with Dida), will face Falaniko Vitale at May 15’s Shine Fight III.

Rua (18-10-1) is a PRIDE vet with a pair of knockouts in his last two bouts for the Brazil-based Bitetti Combat promotion. Vitale is a 35-fight workhorse who hasn’t competed since a loss to Frank Trigg under the Strikeforce banner two years ago. Ricardo Mayorga and Din Thomas will headline the Shine event.

"I know nothing. Absolutely nothing."

A couple of months ago, mixed martial arts got into a scuffle with racism when the WEC, UFC and Strikeforce all banned Hoelzer Reich, a “Naziesque” clothing company, to put it politely. It wasn’t the sport’s first encounter with the face of hate, and sadly it won’t be the last.

The story – racism in MMA – lasted all but a single news-cycle, which in the internet era is about seventeen minutes. It was December, after all, and Christmas and Chanukah and BJ Penn vs. Diego Sanchez were on everybody’s mind. Nazis are such a total downer. Complete killjoys.

Hoelzer Reich may have gone out of business or underground or under a rock or wherever it is fine neo-Nazi clothiers go, but when it comes to fighting racism – or at the very least, racist imagery – MMA continues to be a horribly disappointing opponent.

Okay, so lets refresh our memories on what brought all this up just a few weeks ago: Hoelzer Reich is a clothing line that incorporates Nazi imagery in its designs. The company somehow managed to sneak its hate couture onto the Ultimate Fighter finale on the back of fighter Joe Brammer.

Zuffa banned the company from future UFC and WEC events. Ditto Strikeforce. And that put an end to the story.

What someone decides to wear is their own choice; it’s called freedom of expression. However, there are professional repercussions for an athlete and their sport if they choose to wear something controversial.

Athletes represent their sport when they compete. Inappropriate behavior is a liability to athlete, sponsor and sport alike. Some sports contracts have morality clauses to keep athletes in line. For example, if you’re in the NHL or NBA, you wear a team uniform when playing and a suit when on the sidelines. And players must conduct themselves in the best interest of the team and the sport, like model citizens. It’s that simple. Get nailed for DUI or running a dogfighting ring and there are repercussions, not just in terms of the law, but penalties enforced by the respective leagues. Hell, Frank Mir is catching heat this week just for saying – in typical attention-grabbing Mir-perbole – in a radio interview that he wants nemesis Brock Lesnar to be “the first person that dies due to octagon-related injuries.”

A sponsor, in essence, tries to buy an athlete’s reputation to enhance theirs. In return, the athlete endorses the product giving it support and approval. When the sponsor is a merchant of hate, it reflects dreadfully on the athlete and the sport they represent.

Despite a T-shirt proclaiming “The Fourth Riech has begun” in German, Hoelzer Reich claims they’re not racist: “We do not have any political affiliations with any organizations, nor specific views of any controversial parties,” read a statement on the Hoelzer Reich website back when it still worked. (A more complete sense of the HR side of the situation can be found in a statement they released here.)

The similarities between Hoelzer Reich and neo-Nazi clothing company ayanware.com are blatantly obvious. Until recently, Hoelzer Reich prominently displayed a picture of WestWall, a band with neo-Nazi ties, on its website. WestWall’s lead singer, Ed Wolbank, is the former leader of a white supremacist skinhead organization called the Northern Hammerskins and is a member of Bound For Glory, one of America’s most-influential hate-rock bands. He also was one of the founders of (BFG) Productions, a white power music company.

Furthermore, Hoelzer Reich is the proud sponsor of Niko Puhakka, a fighter with neo-Nazi tattoos, including one that reads “blood and honor,” which sounds really cool and bad-ass and MMA except for the tiny fact that it was the slogan of the Hitler Youth and later the name of a neo-Nazi music promotion network. Puhakka also has the Life Rune tattooed on his chest. The Life Rune is associated with the National Alliance, which was one of the largest and most dangerous hate groups in America.

Hoelzer Reich looks neo-Nazi, it is worn by neo-Nazis, and it sponsors fighters with neo-Nazi tattoos. If it talks like a goose and steps like a goose… Enough said.

Your clothes in many ways are a reflection of who you are. Often they represent your interests and personality. Affliction says you like MMA, Prada does not. Wearing Sean John makes a statement about you that Hoelzer Reich does not.

Mac Danzig is a vegan MMA fighter and has lent his voice to animal rights causes. He was also sponsored by Hoelzer Reich. I doubt he would use his reputation as a vegan athlete to help bolster sales of KFC (if he had, we would call him a hypocrite). By allowing Hoelzer Reich to be his sponsor he gave them credibility, in the same manner he did with animal rights. Danzig no longer has Hoelzer Reich as a sponsor.

Zuffa and Strikeforce seriously messed up and let this slip through. What is equally disturbing is that a clothing company with no moral compass has enough money to pay the UFC’s sponsorship fee (upwards of $100,000 in some cases).

Interestingly, this is not the first time the UFC has been in a racist T-shirt incident. All-American golden boy Matt Hughes was once photographed holding a T-shirt that said “White Boy” and featured the SS symbol. Hughes had been signing autographs and posing for pictures all day and he was unaware of the shirt’s logo. An easy mistake to make, I suppose, but it still reflected badly on both the fighter and the sport. You would have thought afterward that fighters and the UFC would have exercised more caution. As Joe Brammer’s Hoelzer Riech T-shirt clearly demonstrates, you would have thought wrong.

Melvin Costa

Obviously this is not just a UFC problem or a Hoelzer Riech-related problem. Melvin “Man-o-war” Costa fought for King Of the Cage. He also has a classic Nazi eagle-and-swastika insignia tattooed across his chest. A loyal following of skinheads used to show up to watch him fight; he is openly racist, to wit:

Sherdog: In regard to the swastika that is tattooed to your chest, is that an accurate representation of your views?

Melvin Costa: Yeah.

After some complaints, Gary Shaw, the live events president of the parent company that owns King of the Cage, issued this statement:

“I try not to allow anyone to fight in the cage or the ring that has anything inappropriate either on their gear or tattooed permanently on their body. And that means either ethnic, or racial, or anything offensive to the general public. I was unaware of the situation but I’m in the process of handling it now. Hopefully, it will never happen again.”

Less than two months later, Costa fought in another King of the Cage event.

Toni Valtonen is another fighter with “white is right” tattoos. The Finn has a swastika tattoo on his shoulder and the words “white pride” tattooed on his back. Valtonen claims they part of a misspent youth of which he is not proud. M-1 Global had required him to wear a patch over his ink while he fought. During a televised bout in the U.S., the patch fell off.

M-1 Global issued a statement saying, “M-1 does not allow Mr. Valtonen to fight with any of these tattoos exposed. Before each of Mr. Valtonen’s fights there are patches placed over his tattoos. M-1 regrets the fact that there were still tattoos shown when the patches got loose in the fight. By this statement M-1 wants to state that we do NOT in any way support the views of any individual in particular.”

Not exactly the thorough condemnation of his tattoos or the beliefs behind them that one would have hoped for.

Even Fedor Emelianko’s brother, PRIDE and sambo vet Aleksander, has questionably racist tattoos. Fedor is also a part-owner of M-1 Global, for which Valtonen and Puhakka have fought.

What your brother chooses to have tattooed on his body has nothing to do with you. Just like his beliefs are his business, too. Except when those beliefs reflect on your business. Having people with racist tattoos or wearing racist clothing represent your company makes you an ignorant fool at best and a sympathizing douchebag at worst.

MMA must be more vigilant with racist imagery if it ever wants to be considered a legitimate sport. It is up to MMA where it draws the line. For better or worse, any sponsor that might alienate any viewing audience is probably best avoided. This is not censorship of an athlete’s views but a standard that needs to be upheld so MMA’s audience is inclusive to all and exclusive to none.

Last week, in an utterly dunderheaded move, Premier Dalton McGuinty said that it was not a priority to legalize the sport of mixed martial arts in the province of Ontario – henceforth to be known as the Alamo of MMA, the last, desperate, died-with-their-boots-on holdout against the inevitability of being over-run by the fastest-growing sport in North America.

Well, today McGuinty announced that the province was seriously considering legalizing something far more insidious and harmful to the public good: internet gambling.

Now, I’m no gambling prude. I bet on the fights among friends and drop a few bucks when I’m at a casino. It’s fun, it adds a little extra juice to fight night (especially when the match-ups struggle to hold my attention).

But gambling can also be one of the most-destructive socially acceptable activities there is. Like drugs and alcohol, it’s addictive and it can tear lives and families apart. Certainly it does far more harm to the social fabric than one single solitary sport, even if that sport involves a cage and some five-ounce gloves.

McGuinty sees money to be made in gambling. Too bad he doesn’t see the same thing in MMA.

Here’s an excerpt from the Canadian Press news story about McGuinty’s view of online gambling. As you read it, mentally replace every reference to gambling with “MMA” or “MMA fighting.” It makes for a much better read.

Ontario is looking at cashing in on Internet gambling, following the lead of other Canadian provinces in having its lottery corporation possibly deliver online wagering.

Virtual gambling is a reality and the Ontario government obviously cannot ignore it for long, said Premier Dalton McGuinty.

“The issue is whether or not we should be involved in that, and I think we’re going to have to make a call,” McGuinty said.

“It’s something we can’t avoid.”

Paul Godfrey, the freshly minted chairman of Ontario Lottery and Gaming, said last week he wants the province to provide Internet gambling instead of watching potential revenues go to other provinces and offshore websites.

Canadian governments know they’re losing out on money that’s being spent at the more than 2,000 online gambling sites, said Jeff Derevensky of McGill University.

“They’ve done the studies,” said Derevensky, with the university’s International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and High Risk Behaviours.

“If they can recoup a slice of it, then that (money) could be better used in government-run programs.”

Allowing the gaming corporation to offer gambling in the wild, unregulated world of the Internet doesn’t raise the same type of ethical questions as blocking the sale of beer and wine in corner stores, said McGuinty.

“We can control whether or not there’s corner-store sales for beer and wine, (but) Internet gambling is taking place,” he said. “The issue is what do we want to do in the face of that.”

Governments should be concerned about normalizing gambling, but they’ve already gone that route and even changed the name to gaming, said Derevensky.

“They’re selling a form of entertainment,” he said.

Young people who are taught about the dangers of alcohol, drugs and unprotected sex aren’t learning anything about gambling in school, added Derevensky, and many already use online gambling sites.

“It puts more young people at risk, (but) the reality is, they’re already doing it,” he said about governments getting into online gambling.

The Opposition said the Ontario government would need to make sure young people who shouldn’t be gambling don’t access gambling sites.

“The issue we need to deal with is the impact of it,” said Progressive Conservative critic Christine Elliott. “We need to make sure there are some controls in place to protect young people particularly.”

I’m not sure how I feel about this video by Bobby Razak, maker of glossy Tapout commercials masquerading as MMA documentaries. Certainly these two kids have amazing abilities. Their wrestling is particularly impressive. But…

It does give me a faint queasy feeling when I see little limbs twisted painfully behind little backs. And scripted or not, there’s definitely something unnerving about the two brothers announcing that they’re the future of MMA. That’s an awful lot of pressure and expectation to place on kids who aren’t even ten years old. The future of an entire sport? Let’s wait until they’ve been punched in the face a few times before we expect them to walk on water.

The sky is not falling. MMA is not sanctioned in the province of Ontario. MMA won’t be sanctioned here any time soon. Premier Dalton McGuinty says it’s simply not a priority. No big deal. “Showdown” Joe Ferraro, the most inside guy in MMA in the province, says the same thing over at Sportsnet.ca. Things are status quo, the wheels are in motion, MMA will be sanctioned eventually and when it does it’ll blow open the door for the UFC, Strikeforce, Bellator and any small-time McDojo mogul with dreams of being the next Dana White.

That’s all well and good. Nothing to get upset about, as Joe says. MMA is coming. Patience, Joe preaches, and what else can we do but wait? Slow and steady wins the race, they say, and this is one of those situations. Except I know, and Joe knows, and everybody else knows that “slow and steady wins the race” is only true if you do in fact win the race. Otherwise, you were never in the race to begin with.

The UFC has two huge targets for expansion in 2010: New York and Ontario (Toronto, specifically). MMA is currently illegal in both jurisdictions. But that’s about to change, at least in New York.

On Tuesday, NY governor David Paterson unveiled a bill that would lift the thirteen-year ban on MMA in the state, paving the way for the UFC to take Manhattan by the end of the year (assuming the bill clears the necessary hurdles to go into effect).

Now that just leaves Ontario, which is beginning to look increasingly behind-the-times and stodgy and out-of-touch with its refusal to sanction the sport.

Below is a plea to legalize MMA in New York. It’s a flashy promo/documentary created by filmmaker Bobby Razak (the guy behind the cool slow-mo Robert Drysdale flying triangle/armbar TapouT commercials) in conjunction with Mark Ecko of Ecko Unlimited. The problem is the doc just doesn’t work.

It’s preaching to the choir and would do little to convince non-MMA supporters to get behind the sport. It relies on fighters only fans would recognize (Frank Shamrock, Migel Torres) and provides no real information about the sport. And it muddies the water by bringing the situation in Ontario into the picture while relying on commentary from fighters in Montreal (which makes sense if you know the sport up north but again, would be useless in enlightening anybody else). Overall, it makes a nice commercial for Ecko, though.

Now, there’s a possibility that Razak might be making a similar film about legalizing MMA in Ontario. Sounds great – if he can give us more insight into the sport and maybe actually make a solid argument for its legalization, one that non-fans can understand and appreciate.

I really dig this twenty years of Japanese Shooto highlight video. So many great fights. I also really, really appreciate the fact that whoever put this together didn’t use the typical screeching heavy metal (or hip-hop) soundtrack. This is such a cool juxtaposition of image and sound. Very groovy. Oh, and for you Toronto-area readers, that’s Revolution MMA owner/head instructor Joel Gerson dropping the fight-ending armbar on Japanese NHB legend Rumina Sato at the 41-second mark (it also happened to be Sato’s first-ever loss).