Category — UFC

Dan Hardy is talking – better than half-jokingly, I assume – about how he’ll beat Georges St. Pierre on the ground at UFC 111 thanks to Eddie Bravo’s rubbery 10th Planet jiu-jitsu system. Meanwhile, the welterweight champ has been training with BJJ and MMA legend Renzo Gracie, who is prepping for his own bout with Matt Hughes at UFC 112.

It’s official: Kimbo Slice vs. Matt Mitrione will take place at UFC 113 in Montreal on May 8. The UFC confirmed the bout today after a week of rumours that had the fight bumped to a still-hazy Fight Night in April opposite Strikeforce and Mitrione bumped in favour of newly acquired boxer James Toney. Much ado about nothing on both fronts.

Things just got messy in the battle between the UFC and Strikeforce and for once, it’s the UFC that looks bad.

UFC president Dana White has confirmed that the promotion will hold Fight Night 22 on Spike TV on April 17 – the same night that the biggest card in Strikeforce history airs on CBS.

Strikeforce has the option of moving the event to April 24, a date it had previously avoided because it would put it head-to-head with the WEC’s first pay-per-view card.

Zuffa, which owns the UFC and WEC, has thrown down the gauntlet with this latest bit of counter-programming and the whole thing could backfire. And I’m not just talking about Strikeforce conceding the date and going up against the WEC PPV, a battle – in terms of eyeballs – that Strikeforce easily wins.

I understand the desire to crush your enemies, to eliminate the competition no matter how weak a challenger you consider them to be. No mercy, sweep the leg, winner takes all, and all that.

But what does the UFC gain by stealing a little of Strikeforce’s thunder? Not only does this move by the UFC smack of egoism and pettiness, it could bite them in the ass. Set aside the entirely valid “competition is good in a free market society” argument. Never mind the fact that any MMA event getting mainstream exposure on an American TV network is good for the sport in general and thus good for all promotions. Forget about the bad PR that might waft up from the smell of such a dirty move.

Think about this: would you rather watch a free UFC card featuring Kimbo Slice and Matt Mitrione (the rumoured headliner or co-headliner) or a free Strikeforce card featuring title bouts between Gegard Mousasi and “King Mo” Lawal, Jake Shields and Dan Henderson, and Gilbert Melendez and the long-awaited North American debut of DREAM champ Shinya Aoki?

From a fan’s perspective the answer is a no-brainer. If you even have to think for a second about which card you’re watching then you’ve less sense than Junie Browning.

Sure, the UFC will shore-up the card with some other notable bouts. They tried – and failed – to lock in Matt Serra vs. Mike Swick, who pulled out with an arm injury. And I haven’t forgotten that the UFC just signed boxing champ James Toney and there’s speculation he’ll face Kimbo Slice out of the gate. Except Toney says he plans to box at least once more before making his UFC debut sometime in June or July. Still, the UFC has a big stable to draw from.

Does. Not. Matter. Free or not, I’m watching Strikeforce. Does not matter that Fedor Emelianenko isn’t on the card, that Alistair Overeem isn’t defending the longest undefended border, er, belt in all of combat sports, that Cris “Cyborg” Santos and Gina Carano aren’t on the card.

The three title fights the Strikeforce card is offering is enough to trump even the best UFC Fight Night. On that count, I’m all in.

A couple of weeks ago I started hearing a rumour that IFL vet Claude Patrick was going to the UFC. Patrick confirmed to me – off the record – that he was in negotiations with the promotion. Now, it’s a done deal.

The Toronto welterweight, whom I’ve had the pleasure of training with a few times at Toronto BJJ, has a four-fight contract in his back pocket. Patrick is 11-1, with nine first-round stoppages to his credit – eight of them by submission. Yes, he’s dangerous on the ground.

Now we just need to confirm another rumour – that his first fight will be at UFC 115 on June 12 in Vancouver. Also rumoured for the card are the threematch between Ultimate Fighter coaches Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, Wanderlei Silva vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama; Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic vs. Pat Barry; Ben Rothwell vs. Gilbert Yvel; Tyson Griffin vs. Evan Dunham; and Carlos Condit vs. Rory MacDonald.

It’s no secret that boxer James Toney fancies himself the next UFC champion. Like the most-persistent Washington lobbyest, he’s hounded UFC president Dana White for months to get a contract. Ambushing him at press conferences, making taunting videos, calling him a “straight up ho.” Basically, he’s been stalking and trash talking the UFC. And it’s actually worked.

Five Ounces of Pain has the exclusive: the 41-year-old Toney has signed a multi-fight deal with the promotion. No word on when or who he might fight first.

So how will a pure boxer fair in MMA? And who will he face first? The answer to the first question depends an awful lot on the answer to the second. If he’s pitted against a grappler who can get the fight to the ground, well, I don’t have to spell it out for you. If it’s a striker he faces, then it comes down to all those things Toney hasn’t been training – kicks, knees, elbows, clinching, cage control, etc. (Although apparently, he’s been working with Quinton”Rampage” Jackson’s former trainer, Juanito Ibarra.)

And the UFC could go either way – test him with a submissions guy (unlikely as that would probably result in an Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites-style snorefest) or a puncher a la Kimbo Slice. Although who knows what weight Toney will want to compete at. After all, he’s a former middleweight, super-middleweight and cruiserweight boxing champion and currently holds the NABO and IBA heavyweight titles.

And for the record, he’s not all hype when it comes to his skills in ring. He’s got a 72-6 record (plus three draws and two no contests), and he’s knocked out 44 opponents.

I absolutely don’t want UFC welterweight contender Dan Hardy to die of AIDS or any other disease, unlike Marcus Davis, who tweeted the vulgar, vile sentiment earlier today. It’s worse than Frank Mir wanting Brock Lesnar to die in the octagon. Mir’s a loudmouthed goofball. What he said was outrageous to the point of ridiculous and a classic example of poor judgment. But Davis takes it much further.

Davis is obviously still sore about losing to Hardy via split decision last June and derailing his run toward a title shot while one fight later Hardy earned exactly that. But there’s something reprehensible about throwing out AIDS in an insult like that. If he was joking the it’s a sick, tasteless joke. If he was serious, then he’s just sick.

Besides, the death of Dan Hardy would deprive us of this napalm strike he leveled at fellow UFC fighters from the comfort and safety of his blog:

I am a big underdog against GSP and every interview, every day, in emails from fans, I’m getting asked: ‘How do you expect to beat GSP?’ and ‘Do you think you deserve a title shot?’

I am getting those questions all the time, like GSP is some kind of god and shouldn’t even have to defend his title.

GSP has already beaten most of the top contenders. They’ve had their chance, while I haven’t.

I’ve beaten everyone the UFC has put in front of me; I’ve never turned down a fight and I am not about to now.

I would have been happy having a couple more fights before getting my shot, but I was offered a spot as a late replacement against Mike Swick in a final eliminator in November, accepted, and beat him up.

It’s funny Swick is now moaning that I didn’t deserve this shot. Swick should have kept his mind off me and on his last opponent, Paulo Thiago, and maybe he wouldn’t have been beaten again.

Nate Marquardt is another guy who has been vocal that I am getting some sort of preferential treatment from the UFC.

He’s a middleweight, so I can’t see how this concerns him. But all I can say is if I don’t curl up into a ball and get blasted in one round, I’ll do better than he did in his title shot against Anderson Silva.

I’ve won four UFC bouts to get here, not-so-great Nate had three, none of which were against world-beaters.

I am very amused Josh Koscheck is still bitching his lungs out that he deserves a title shot, not me.

British fans will know Koscheck as the Fraggle-haired guy who got sparked out in one round in London a year ago, only to take his loss out on an innocent chair backstage, scoring a split decision points win over the unsuspecting piece of furniture.

If you’ve forgotten that fight (and if you blinked, you’d have missed it) you’ll see something very similar in May when Paul Daley knocks him out.

Koscheck says I have beaten nobodies but my latest win was over his supposed friend and team-mate in Swick.

How loyal. That’s why Jon Fitch isn’t improving, why Koscheck has so many one-sided losses on his record and why Swick will never fight for a title.

They aren’t really a team, they don’t have each others’ best interests at heart and clearly there’s a lack of respect in that gym.

Here’s how it breaks down, according to the comments made in this promo video:

Georges St. Pierre is on a whole other level than everybody else in the welterweight division. Dan Hardy says that doesn’t matter because he’s has had more fights than GSP.

GSP says that Hardy is the toughest opponent he’s ever faced. Either he’s forgotten about BJ Penn, Matt Hughes, Jon Fitch, Thiago Alves, Josh Koscheck, hell even Matt Serra, or he’s just being really, really, really generous.

Hardy’s plan is to hit GSP as many times as he can before he gets taken to the ground and then to get back to his feet and do it again. Okay, I’m with him on the first two parts of that plan. It’s the whole “get back to his feet” part that I’m stumbling over. Who gets back to their feet that St. Pierre doesn’t let get back to their feet?

Hardy also asks how many of the fans’ favourite fighters does he have to beat before they take him seriously. Hmm…good question. First, let’s consider all those fan favourites that Hardy has beaten – there’s Mike Swick maybe, or Marcus Davis, or maybe he means Akihiro Gono. All fan favourites compared to Hardy, who sets himself up as the heel, but none of them are what I’d call favourites in the sense that fans are buying their T-shirts and cheering them on regardless of who they fight.

Okay, on to Frank Mir vs. Shane Carwin for the utterly meaningless interim heavyweight belt and a “guarantee” of a shot at Brock Lesnar’s title. Hyperbole all the way considering UFC president Dana White was clear that Cain Velasquez is also in that mix following his destruction of Minotauro Nogueira at UFC 110.

I do get a kick out of Carwin’s comment about his penchant for rendering opponents unconscious: “I’m just competitive and I know that knocking ‘em out wins.”

Oh, and Mir’s obsession with Lesnar is creepy and borderline unhealthy.

A little dosey doe is going on with the June 15 UFC 115 card in Vancouver. Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic was expected to meet Ben Rothwell, who pulled out of their UFC 110 fight with an illness, but instead will square off with Pat Barry. Meanwhile, Rothwell will fight Gilbert Yvel, who was expected to face Barry. I really like this switch-up. It puts Cro Cop against an equally dangerous striker in Barry, a former K-1 kickboxer, while forcing Yvel to let his hands fly against Rothwell. Somebody’s going to get knocked out.

Saturday’s UFC 114 in Australia was a B card on paper that played out like a B card, maybe a B+.

Cain Velasquez made sure everybody knew all the pre-fight hype about him being “the future of the heavyweight division” might not just be hot air. He did it by making Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira look as bad as he did against Frank Mir when Nog was coming off a staph infection and a knee injury. I’d expected Velasquez to use his wrestling to put Big Nog on his back, where Nog would work for a submission while eating punches. But Velasquez took a shortcut and put Nog on his back with punches (after softening him up with kicks) and followed up with a few consciousness-questioning blows for the KO a couple of minutes into the opening frame.

Now Velasquez will have to wait to see how Mir and Shane Carwin fair in their interim title bout at UFC 111; only then will UFC president Dana White decide who faces champ Brock Lesnar when he returns in July. As for Nogueira, it was sad to see a legend fall like that and it certainly drops him from the contender mix, probably forever.

Despite Michael Bisping’s whining to the contrary, Wanderlei Silva clearly won his middleweight debut over the mouthy Brit. Although it wasn’t the highlight reel knockout many – myself included – were hoping for. Nor was it a ground-and-pound TKO or an arm-snapping submission or choke out, any of which would have been acceptable, satisfying outcomes.

Instead, Silva took a unanimous decision. He staved off most of Bisping’s takedown attempts, out-punched him on the feet and had him in serious trouble in the closing seconds of each of the three rounds (including a deep guillotine in the middle stanza that Bisping survived only because time ran out).  In other words, it was a win, just not a domination. No matter. Silva gets back on track with a confidence-boosting win and a likely date with Yoshihiro Akiyama while Bisping gets knocked down a peg or two, literally and figuratively.

Fight of the night was Joe Stevenson versus a much lower-profile George Sitoropoulos, who put on a three-round grappling clinic en route to a unanimous decision in front of his hometown crowd. Definitely keep your eye on Sitoropoulos. It’s a name people are going to be mispronouncing for a while as he makes some waves in the lightweight division, and is probably just one or two wins from a title shot.

Keith Jardine may look like what bikers get tattooed on their biceps, but it wasn’t enough to scare up a win over Ryan Bader. In fact, the sight of Jardine crumpled to the canvas in the third round seemed all too familiar, as though it’s the only way he knows how to lose.

And give it up for Anthony Perosh. He took the fight against Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic on just two days notice and took a beating from the Croation that left him looking like a walking crime scene until the fight was stopped after two rounds. Perosh had heart and it was splattered all over his face and chest. Cro Cop, meanwhile, was less than impressive, to say the least. He dominated, but he didn’t finish the fight against a clearly over-matched opponent. I’m in no rush to hear Wild Boys in the octagon.

A couple of prelims worth mentioning: Chris Lytle kneebarred the hell out of Brian Foster for a first-round submission win that made my knees ache. And Stephan Bonnar and Krzysztof Soszynski battered and bled all over each other until the fight was stopped in the third due to a huge gash in Bonnar’s forehead. Soszynski took the TKO win even though replays clearly show the cut was due to an accidental head butt. The fight should’ve been declared a no contest, although both fighters said afterward that they’d be up for a rematch.

I’ve been batting around the match-ups for tonight’s UFC 110, trying to make some picks. My buddy, Evan, who trains at Toronto BJJ and knows fighting, hit me up for some thoughts, as well. Mostly he was looking for a pigeon, I think. He’s taken a dime or two off me the last two UFCs. So I hit him back for some picks. Here’s how the card shakes out for us (and yes, Evan, I’m even giving you the last word, although you may regret having written it):

Evan: I got Minotauro Nogueira just because he’s been there before and this is Cain Velasquez’s first international trip to fight, his BJJ is suspect under Dave Camarillo, and Nog’s half-guard sweep pass and top game is too stellar. However, all that being said, if Nog doesn’t show up then Cain will look really good.

Joe Stevenson vs. George Sotiro – who the fuck can spell his name really! -  is the fight to watch, I think. Two really well-rounded guys who have to figure each other out. Stevenson should win but he may just walk into a knee. Man, I’m tripping over the Michael Bisbing vs. Wanderlei Silva fight – I just can’t pick. Everything in my head says to go for Bisbing: he’s been able to adapt different game plans in the past, he’s a outside striker, if only he’d learn some fucking defense and footwork, geeze! But it comes down to whats left in the tank of the Axe Murderer – is it still an Axe or is it more like a small hatchet??? I love Wanderlei, he always leaves it all in the ring but I think maybe it’s time for him to hang it up. He’s tried something new however, well it’s old but working with Rafael Cordeiro hopefully has put some air back in the sails of the old warhorse. We shall see though.

Keith Jardine over Ryan Bader. I don’t care how hard he hits I think Jardine’s length and experience will be the determining factor. Stephan Bonnar over Team Quest’s Kimura-liking Krzystof Soszynski. Mirko Cro Cop got a can to kick so that should be fun. The thing that scares me most about the card is that I’ll once again have to put up with the BS of Goldberg and Rogan, and with that it’s ALL OVER!!!

Me: I like your analysis. Everything except Bonnar taking it. I don’t see how he gets by Soszynski. Speaking of which, you can spell his name but not Sotiropoulos or whatever. And yeah, Bisping is a wildcard right now; we don’t really know what he can do, and with Wand dropping to 185 and hoping to prove something, well that’s a lot of ifs in the air.

I’m not sure about Jardine either. I like him, he fights like a drunk homeless man, which can be about as predictable as Machida at times. Other times he’s just a drunk homeless man. And Bader is no joke. Jardine throws a kick and Bader will hug it like it’s his high school sweetheart and once it’s on the ground, well, if Bader can keep it there that’s all she wrote.

Evan: That’s what’s awesome about MMA – it puts so much importance on one word, “if.” As far as Bonnar I just think he’s due. I mean it’s almost two years since he’s won so I think he’s got the stand-up to win a decision against a cardio-depleted all ‘natural’ Polish Experiment. I hope I’m right and the Polish experiment doesn’t “polish” him off! lol, I had too.

When it comes to Saturday’s UFC 110 co-main event, in my mind, there is no winning this fight for Wanderlei Silva.

Wanderlei is an MMA great, a PRIDE legend, having fought some of best the sport had to offer (Mirko Cro Cop, Dan Henderson, Sakuraba, Quinton Jackson). The only time Micheal Bisbing touched gloves with PRIDE greatness was against Henderson, who knocked him out so badly, I still flinch when watching the replay. Other than Henderson and Rashad Evans (both of whom beat Bisbing), Bisbing’s fights have been against far less impressive opponents – not that I’m dismissing a ‘roided-up Chris Leban – than Wanderlei’s.

Don’t get me wrong Bisbing is an asshole, a card-carrying douchebag. His behavior as coach on The Ultimate Fighter was immature and egomaniacal. Even if watching Henderson knock Bisbing out made me flinch, it also gave me a sense that justice and karma existed in this world. However, I did not gain any new respect for Henderson as a fighter for knocking Bisbing out – I could have only lost respect if Henderson did not win.

This is pretty much how I feel about tomorrow night’s fight. If Wanderlei wins he beat a fighter with a far less impressive career. If he loses, Wanderlei’s stock (which has already been taking a beating lately) continues to plummet. Even if Wanderlei wins tomorrow, all Bisbing will be is a stepping stone for Wanderlei as a middleweight. And how far can Wanderlei climb in that division when Anderson Silva is at the top of the ladder?

Wanderlei Silva says he’ll be “more aggressive” when he makes his middleweight debut against Michael Bisping at Saturday’s UFC 110. Think about that for a second – the Axe Murderer is going to be more aggressive. For his sake, given the 1-3 skid he’s posted since coming to the UFC, I hope he makes good. I’ll only be happy if the fight is as entertaining as the pre-fight press conference trash talk that the two engaged in.

Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic has to be thinking he caught a lucky break. The Croatian wrecking ball’s back is against the wall – he’s 2-3 in the UFC and was considering everything from retirement to suicide before steeling himself for one last run at MMA glory.

And while his bout with Ben Rothwell at Saturday’s UFC 110 certainly favoured him, the news that Rothwell has dropped out due to illness and has been replaced on just 48 hours notice by Anthony Perosh has to make him feel just a little bit better, maybe steady those killer legs of his a little bit. After all, Perosh is a UFC nobody who went 0-2 against Jeff Monson and Christian Wellisch four years ago and has been fighting in his native Australia ever since.

Anything can happen in MMA, but if Cro Cop loses this – strike that, if Cro Cop doesn’t knock Perosh’s head off like he used to do to opponents back in his PRIDE days, well, he should take his gold watch and go home.