Category — WEC

Brian Bowles, the dude with the ’70s helmet head, TKO’ed WEC bantamweight champion Miguel Torres in a stunning first-round upset at Sunday’s WEC 42. The win improves Bowles’ record to 8-0 while Torres, one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world, drops to 37-2.

After exchanging blows and a takedown of Torres that only earns Bowles a trio of up-kicks to the head, Bowles counters a barrage of punches with a hard right that drops Torres. As Torres tries to transition to an armbar Bowles unloads until Torres is out cold and the referee steps in at the 3:57 mark.

Saturday night is a big night of fights – Anderson Silva vs. Forrest Griffin, BJ Penn vs. Kenny Florian – but UFC 101 isn’t the only big show this weekend. Let’s not forget that WEC 42 is Sunday night with bantamweight champ Miguel Torres taking on contender Brian Bowles for the belt.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love watching the little guys bang. And with Torres, the 5-foot-10, 135-pounder with the Energizer engine, you know it’s going to be a good fight. Torres is 37-1 and for my money one of the top one or two pound-for-pound best fighters in the world. Solid grappling, fantastic boxing, Muay Thai, the complete package, and unlike Anderson Silva, say, he doesn’t play it cautious. He’s balls-to-the-wall for the win every time out, like fucking Mighty Mouse.

MMAnia has a good interview with Torres, in which he talks about training, his upcoming fight with the 7-0 Bowles and whether he’d ever consider moving up to 145 pounds to face WEC champ Mike Brown.

The Mark Hominick vs. Deividas Taurosevicius bout from the cancelled Affliction: Trilogy card has been relocated to September 2’s WEC 43, Sherdog reports. The headliner for the event is an interim lightweight title fight between Donald Cerrone and Benson Henderson.

A UFC, WEC and Affliction veteran and London, ON., native, Hominick last fought in a July 2008 submission win over Savant Young. Hominick has suffered submission losses to Josh Grispi and Rani Yahya in his two WEC appearances. Taurosevicius last fought in a May 2008 unanimous-decision loss to Ryan Schultz. The loss snapped a six-fight win streak for the Lithuanian, including three wins in the now-defunct IFL.

Mark Hominick (16-8), a former UFC and WEC fighter from London, ON, who was slated to fight at Affliction: Trilogy, has signed a multi-fight deal with World Extreme Cagefighting and will debut at the organization’s WEC 43 show on September 2.

UFC president Dana White mentioned the signing during Friday’s media call, although no opponent has been scheduled for the featherweight bout.

Hominick returns to the WEC after a 19-month break, having last fought for the organization at WEC 32, where he suffered a first-round submission loss to Josh Grispi. He suffered a submission loss to Rani Yahya in his WEC debut at WEC 28.

Hominick also went 2-0 in the UFC with impressive wins over Jorge Gurgel and Yves Edwards and has won three of his last four fights, including a second-round submission victory over Savant Young at Affliction: Banned in July 2008.

White also revealed that L.C. Davis and Javier Vazquez have also signed WEC contracts while Paul Daley, Ben Rothwell, Chase Gormley, Dan Lauzon and Rafaello “Tractor” Oliveira are now with the UFC. Lauzon will likely face Oliveira at UFC 103. Both fighters were originally on the Affliction: Trilogy card, with Lauzon scheduled to face Hominick’s London training partner Chris Horodecki and Oliveira set to meet Takanori Gomi.

Oh, and White has no interest in re-signing former UFC and Affliction heavyweights Tim Sylvia and Andrei Arlovski. No kidding.

Miguel Torres, the WEC bantamweight champion and good luck charm for the Chicago White Sox, is one of the most exciting fighters in all of MMA. And he speaks his mind.

Torres spoke with the folks over at Yahoo! Sports about his title bout with Brian Bowles on August 9, but it was the stuff he had to say about MMA salaries, Anderson Silva, Brock Lesnar, boxer Floyd Mayweather and the soon-to-be-in-toy-stores Miguel Torres doll (“It has a mullet!”) that makes it worth reading. I just wished they’d asked Torres his thoughts on Bowles’ Ken doll ‘do. Wowzer! Does the guy not own a mirror? Does it offer some sort of protective helmet head?

Anyway, here are a few excerpts:

On not getting paid as much as much as heavyweight fighters: I put in the same training time, if not more. I believe I possess more skill, because I don’t have the size to overcompensate. I can’t Brock Lesnar somebody and lay on them, and punch them with my right hand the whole time and knock them out that way.

On not being as big a draw as heavyweights like Lesnar: I’m more interesting than he is. I’ve heard Brock Lesnar. I’ve interviewed him. It’s like talking to the Hulk. “So Brock, what did you think about the fight?” “Brock smash Mir, Brock eat baby, I’m gonna drink a Coors, and maybe get on my wife.” That’s Brock’s interview! He’s getting paid millions of dollars for that.

On Floyd Mayweather: Mayweather’s got all the exposure in the world, and everyone thinks he’s a god because of all the exposure he’s gotten. If it was not for that 24/7 show, no one would give a fuck about Mayweather, he’d be some other punk, wannabe rapper… Everyone hates Mayweather, because of how they portrayed him on 24/7. He’s the cockiest, ghettoest dude you can look at. And he’s so cocky, so arrogant, everyone wants to see him lose. The other guy looks like a hero. The other guy could be nothing, but Mayweather looks so cocky, so arrogant, you want to see him lose, and you will watch for that very reason… I would love to fight Mayweather, just because of the simple fact that I think he’s a cocky asshole. He thinks that MMA was invented by white people because they couldn’t win in boxing any more. Well, I’m not a white person, and I will smash his ass. I don’t care. His style of boxing is all built on getting people in the clinch. He’ll hit them, and then he’ll get in the clinch with them. Then the referee breaks them, and he’ll hit them and grab them again. I think it’s a great strategy. It’s not clean boxing, but it’s smart boxing. He’s going to hit somebody and grab them in MMA, and he’ll be done for. They’ll take him down. That’ll be all. I’ll be on top of the list to fight him.

On the mulleted Miguel Torres doll: It’s going to be weird to see all the kids playing with the little dolls of me. My daughter will have five of them. They’re going to beat up all of her other toys.

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a pro MMA fighter? Maybe you just want a story to tell the guys at the office, to say you’ve stood toe-to-to with the best. Well, WEC fighters Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Leonard Garcia are going to give you that chance.

For just $500 a month you can live with the two in their home in Albuquerque, NM, and train with them each day at Greg Jackson’s camp alongside the likes of former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans, Keith Jardine, UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre, Nate Marquardt, David Loiseau, Joey Villasenor, Michelle Watterson and others.

Now, when I first read this an hour ago on somebody’s Twitter (actually on several people’s Twitter, the rumour was so popular), I thought two things: either the whole thing is just a rumour, a joke, or it’s the real deal but the dollar figure is wrong (maybe it needed another zero or something).

Well, I fired off an email to Cerrone’s manager, Bryan Hamper, and he called me back within ten minutes to confirm the story. Five-hundred bucks to live and train with Cerrone and Garcia at Jackson’s camp in sunny Albuquerque.

Hamper says this was an opportunity to help up-and-coming fighters, to give them an opportunity to be exposed to a top-level training camp with first-class fighters. The idea grew out of Cerrone’s experience of being “discovered” by the TapouT crew and featured in the fourth episode of their TV series (the one in which they visit Matt Hughes on the farm).

Cerrone, who is 10-1, will battle Ben Henderson for the WEC interim lightweight belt at WEC 43 in September. Garcia, meanwhile, is one of the sport’s top featherweights. His last fight was a submission loss to WEC featherweight champ Mike Brown. He puts his 12-4 record up against Jameel Massouh at WEC 42 next month.

“Whoever comes in for the month will certainly have their eyes opened to what a championship-level training camp is like,” says Hamper.

So just who will be bunking and battling alongside Cerrone and Garcia? Hamper says they only posted the offer a few hours ago on Myspace and Facebook and they’ve already received more than 200 inquiries. There are just three-to-five slots open and Hamper isn’t sure how they’ll narrow the list down. “We’ve had calls from 18-year-olds with a couple of amateur fights to 40-year-old lawyers who want the ‘MMA experience’ to pros with 50 fights who want to bring their game to the next level,” he says.

While Jackson’s is one of the best (if not the best) camps in all of MMA, Hamper says whoever comes in shouldn’t expect to step in alongside guys like Evans or GSP right away. “Jackson has top-level fighters, mid-level fighters, so you don’t want to push whoever we choose into something they’re not ready for,” he says.

Hamper also says that if the experiment works out you can expect them to continue the training camp offer for the next year.

I haven’t yet jumped on the Twitter bandwagon (everybody tells me I should but I can’t imagine anyone caring what I’m doing at any given time), although more and more fighters are tweeting their brains out 140 characters at a time. It’s a great way to build a fanbase by giving a glimpse of what life is like inside and outside the gym.

Mostly it’s stuff about how their training is going or what they’re doing to relax. Sometimes, though, there’s newsworthy stuff, like UFC heavyweight Shane Carwin tweeting about his upcoming fight with Cain Velasquez at UFC 104 in October. Trouble is that the deal isn’t quite done, an agreement has not been reached, nothing’s been signed, etc etc. Carwin also stepped in some non-Twitter shit last week when he called Brock Lesnar a “freaking liar” for saying something that Lesnar never actually said.

His mis-tweet, though, is the kind of oops that’s happening more frequently as fighters are anxious to share news with people without really considering who’s actually reading what they write. As Cagewriter reported, last week WEC lightweight champ Jamie Varner twittered about the problems with his injured hand before telling his managers and the WEC. The WEC quickly announced that it would organize an interim belt bout between Donald Cerrone and Benson Henderson in September.

It’s a strange time in journalism when someone’s Twitter update is used as a reliable source of information. Rumour yesterday, fact today, complete bullshit tomorrow. News in the Internet Age. Go figure.