Category — MMA

While Dan Henderson was waging war with Mauricio “Shogun” Rua and Eddie Alvarez was battling Michael Chandler in two of the best fights of the year, the once greatest fighter on the planet, Fedor Emelianenko, ended his three-fight losing skid with a unanimous if unspectacular victory over Jeff Monson at an M-1 Global event in Moscow. Wary of being knocked out (as he was against Henderson) or submitted (as he was against Fabricio Werdum), Fedor appeared cautious, peppering Monson with punches and kicks to the legs and body for much of the fight. In classic Fedor style, he’s expected to face Satoshi Ishii on the New Year’s Eve Dynamite! card in Japan.

My arm hurts just watching this insanely slick reverse omo-plata. I’ve watched it a few times and I’m not even sure how he got to that position.

Chances are you don’t know who Enson Inoue is. Maybe you remember him from UFC 13, his lone UFC appearance that saw him submit Royce Alger. Or his four Pride fights, including a loss to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira. Maybe you’re a hardcore Shooto fan, or you recall when he armbarred Randy Couture at Vale Tudo Japan back in 1997. I first noticed Inoue as one of the bad-asses in Redbelt, and I later interviewed him about the movie and have been Facebook friends with him ever since.

Inoue’s status updates have often been interesting, with mentions of hanging out with Yakuza and refereeing underground fights in Japan. But this year, he’s mostly been writing about helping the people affected by the earthquake and about traveling into the restricted zone near the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It’s incredible work that he’s been doing, paying for supplies out of his own pocket and sneaking them past security checkpoints in the region. He’s even made special trips just to feed all of the homeless dogs and cats in the affected area.

Inoue is the subject of a terrific profile in the latest issue of Sportsnet Magazine and is definitely worth your time.

For the

MMA trainer and Team Tompkins top dog Shawn Tompkins died of a heart attack, according to his brother-in-law Sam Stout, who confirmed the news with the London Free Press. Tompkins, 37, died in his sleep Sunday. An autopsy was performed Monday although those results have not been made official. Meanwhile, thoughts about Tompkins, both the person and the MMA trainer, have been flooding the internet. For my part, I’ll just direct you to a remembrance piece by “Showdown” Joe Ferraro, who knew “The Coach” pretty well.

A couple of weeks ago I witnessed a cringe-inducing limb-mangling at the Copa Ontario jiu-jitsu tournament hosted by my club, Toronto BJJ. It was entirely unintentional and a complete fluke. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone win a match simply by pulling guard but it happened. I know that the competitor who caused the injury, FW’s Jesse Katz, felt horrible afterward.

I happened to catch the match with my iPhone and posted the video on Toronto BJJ’s Facebook pages, which sparked a bit of a debate among a few from the club, to wit: posting the video puts BJJ (and by extension Toronto BJJ) in a poor light and misrepresents the beauty of the martial art.

I say it’s no big deal, that these kinds of “man gets hit in groin with football” type videos are a dime a dozen and we all watch them, that if the video had been from another tournament no one would be complaining, that sure BJJ is a beautiful martial art but it is a martial art and injuries happen and you have to expect that so nut up or shut up. I mean, how many times have you been injured playing sports, and how many times have you turned that injury – a black eye, broken nose, dislocated shoulder – into a war story, something that you’re actually sheepishly proud of? So, what do you think? Was posting the video a bad idea?

And in an effort to erase that injury from your mind, I give you this. Just skip ahead to the 1:18 mark and turn the volume up.

The next time I want to see featherweight Shooto vet Antonio Carvalho in a cage it’ll require a road trip to Rio. Carvalho, who fought last weekend on the Score Fighting Series card, has signed with the UFC and will face Yuri Alcantara at UFC 134 on August 27. Hopefully, we’ll get to hear the Conan the Barbarian theme as his entrance music again.

UFC 134 will be headlined by the middleweight title bout between Anderson Silva and Yushin Okami, with the Mauricio “Shogun” Rua vs. Forrest Griffin rematch and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Brendan Schaub rounding out the heavy hitters.

The Score Fighting Series made its first foray into Ontario on Friday night, bringing a card packed with as much promise as the province’s first sanctioned MMA event, April’s Slamma’ in Rama.

The matchmakers did a great job for the  tilt at the Hershey Centre (just up the highway in Mississauga), but unfortunately the card turned out to be much more uneven than anticipated. The 10 fights saw no submissions and a few of the bouts were snoozers despite their promise. That’s not to say there weren’t a few dandies.

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Tonight’s UFC 131 in Vancouver will deliver several reasons for me to tune in. The main event between heavyweight contenders Junior dos Santos and Shane Carwin top the list. Former lightweight contender Kenny Florian’s first bout at 145 (against Diego Nunes) is another. Likewise jiu-jitsu ace Demian Maia vs. heavy-handed wrestler Mark Munoz. I’m also pulling for undercarder Dustin Poirier, especially after seeing his story in the documentary Fightville. He was outstanding in his UFC debut against the heavily-favoured Josh Grispi, a bout he took on four weeks’ notice, dropping from lightweight to featherweight to make it happen. And his personal story, as told in Fightville, is pretty stirring stuff.

And Yves Edwards has also given me another reason to check out the prelims. The thug-jitsu master will square off with Sam Stout. But how did Edwards kill time yesterday while cutting weight? He answered some questions from FightingWords about his upcoming film, Warrior, which looks like a serious and cool MMA movie in the vein of The Fighter and Rocky (as opposed to straight-to-the-bargain-bin Never Back Down 2).

FW: Tell me about your role in Warrior.                                                                                                                                              YE: I play a fighter named Houston Greggs, and he punches people in the face for a living, but other than that he’s a very nice guy. Just like me.

photo by Vernon Anthony Kee

Mike Reilly got the inaugural Score Fighting Series off to a flying start on Saturday by slamming fellow Ontario 130-pounder Tyler Hardcastle into unconsciousness in the second round. And Muay Thai specialist Alex Ricci survived an early flurry to knock out Mike Sledzion with a brutal overhand right and a couple of nasty follow-up hammerfists on the ground.

But it was all down hill from there as the remainder of the 10-bout card all went to the judges’ scorecards. It made for a long, often dull night at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, which saw the lackluster crowd of 2,000 or so dwindle to less than half by the time Alberta’s Jordan Mein took a unanimous decision over DREAM 170-pound stand-out Marius Zaromskis. That’s the downside of frontloading a card with local fighters – the friends and family they brought with them are quick to exit once their boy has fought, leaving only diehard fans and those too drunk to stand up to witness the final fight.

And that’s too bad as it might be one of the last times Mein fights in a local promotion. The 21-year-old improved to 22-7 and has won five straight, including wins over UFC vets Josh Burkman and Joe Riggs. It won’t be long before the UFC comes calling, even if it’s to fill a preliminary card slot at a Canuck-heavy event like December’s Montreal UFC.

Still, I can’t blame folks for checking out early as it was a tough slog through some of those three-rounders and the atmosphere left something to be desired. The fights might look good on TV, but in person it looked and felt like any of the Indian Reserve events I’ve attended, and that’s surprising given The Score sports network was behind it. Again, when much of your audience consists of friends of family of fighters who don’t care about nine of the 10 bouts on the card, it’s hard to create – and sustain – an atmosphere of excitement. The large swaths of empty seats didn’t help the cause, either.

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photo by Vernon Anthony Kee

I would normally never let someone drive me to the Hershey Centre, the  sports complex in Mississauga, unless they wined and dined me first. A rule I should have heeded. Last night was theScores Fighting Series, the first MMA event fully organized by the network.

The Score had done a great job of promotion leading up to the fights, making video promos of some of the local fighters and giving the event a lot of coverage on their station. But after the shock and awe of UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre (and the smaller yet no-less-remarkable rumble created by The Reckoning at Casino Rama), theScore Fighting Series had big shoes to fill. Of course, there’s no way for a promotion to compete with the UFC juggernaut. That said, I could not help but feel that the event lacked production value.

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