MMA/UFC/PRIDE/K-1 discussion thread

dunkamania · 12-06-2008 8:15am

Doesnt Rampage have a back injury which would have "nurtured" his sitting around eating all day long

Fozzy · 12-06-2008 2:18pm

dunkamania wrote: »

Doesnt Rampage have a back injury which would have "nurtured" his sitting around eating all day long

I hadn't heard anything about a back injury. He went into his last fight with an injured hand and came out with it broken though

Fozzy · 14-06-2008 9:11pm

The Fedor/Sylvia fight is now going to be a five round fight for the WAMMA heavyweight title. You might remember WAMMA being set up last year as a supposed governing body for MMA but they haven't done a thing since then

I'm not sure who that favours. Sylvia's 2-1 in fights where he fought five rounds, and that loss to Couture is the only decision loss on his record. Fedor has never fought in a fight that could go 25 minutes before

goo · 15-06-2008 1:28am

Affliction's definitely going to have fights in cage, yeah? Dodgy for Fedor.

dunkamania · 15-06-2008 3:30am

I thought Affliction was ring based?

Fozzy · 15-06-2008 7:58am

First event will be in a ring

goo · 15-06-2008 10:15am

Oh good. Well, good for Fedor.

dunkamania · 15-06-2008 10:31pm

not really, his first fight in a cage is against Randy, who needs the cage to beat him

Fozzy · 15-06-2008 11:34pm

Three big MMA shows on this weekend. Or one big one and two "big" ones. I didn't watch Adrenaline MMA's first show and it doesn't sound like I missed much. EXC had a show in Hawaii. Nick Diaz came in eight pounds overweight. His fight was alright. KJ Noons defended his lightweight title in the main event. But the interesting stuff came afterwards.

Bill Goldberg was interviewing KJ when Diaz came out with his brother and some others. KJ asked the crowd if Nick deserved a rematch for the title because he didn't see Nick's fight. Of course, the hometown crowd booed Diaz. Diaz said something to KJ and KJ lunged at him. Then the whole place went crazy. Diaz's gang ran out of the cage and Goldberg and two or three security guys had to hold back KJ's dad from getting to Nick. Nick and Nate then went up the ramp giving the audience the middle finger. They're pricks, but this rematch will be watched

DREAM 4 was on too. I really enjoyed it. There were some great fights. Pick of the bunch would be Mousasi vs Dong Sik Yoon, Jacare vs Jason Miller and Tokoro vs Uyenoyama. None of the other matches were bad though. If I see any videos on the internet I'll post links

Fozzy · 15-06-2008 11:55pm

Pride Fighter · 16-06-2008 4:30am

Dana White is taking Affliction deadly serious. He plans to destroy its first show by putting on a rival UFC show the same night for free on Spike. Wanderlei Silva vs Brandon Vera is the rumoured main event.
Man I hate Dana White but I can understand the logic of this business decision.

dunkamania · 16-06-2008 9:45am

I heard nothing of the Wandy Vera match, but Vera dropping to LHW is long over due

Fozzy · 16-06-2008 12:42pm

I don't know if the UFC will hurt Affliction much by doing that. The hardcore fans will be watching Affliction for Fedor and nothing the UFC does will stop them from watching Fedor in his first real test in a long time. Any casual fans watching Affliction will mainly be for Arlovski but I really can't see there being that many of them. I just don't think that Affliction is going to do very well anyway

Dragan · 16-06-2008 1:04pm

Fozzy wrote: »

I don't know if the UFC will hurt Affliction much by doing that. The hardcore fans will be watching Affliction for Fedor and nothing the UFC does will stop them from watching Fedor in his first real test in a long time. Any casual fans watching Affliction will mainly be for Arlovski but I really can't see there being that many of them. I just don't think that Affliction is going to do very well anyway

Affliction will do fine in time. They have a long term backer who has shown he is willing to take short to medium term loss in order to effect long term gain.

16-06-2008 2:18pm

I thought DREAM 4 was great,

Aoki's gogo was awesome and Overeem looked great but the best fight on that card was Jacare vs Mayhem, great fight. Ralek Gracie fights kinda similar to rickson, it was like a reversal of 5 years watching that fight, so old school! The injury in the Galesic fight was preety horrible to watch.

Ive only seen the Ninja fight and the Noons v Edwards fight. Ninja used the "rape choke" that Wandy used on Jardine, must be an old Chute Boxe favourite!! The guy ninja fought realy asked for a beating pre fight though! U have to see it. Diaz acts like he is a real idiot but he knows how to market a fight.

Affliction, IMO, will do well. The clothing brand will give it good exposure, they have good investors and a great HW Div (better than UFC's). Plus with timmy and Arlovski there along with Vitor they have fighters that the casual fan will know. i disagree with Fozzys pessimisnm. they have to put on a card like that to start out, UFC put on strong crads almost every event so the only way to keep up is to follow suit.

Fozzy · 16-06-2008 10:41pm

The word is that the UFC thought about doing a show on July 19th but it's not going to happen. Wanderlei turned down a fight for that date

Dragan · 16-06-2008 10:51pm

Fozzy wrote: »

The word is that the UFC thought about doing a show on July 19th but it's not going to happen. Wanderlei turned down a fight for that date

Wandy is clever. I didn't see him taking that fight to be honest. It doesn't gain him anything to knock out a man coming down a division because he can't hang in the one he wants to. I assume Wandy's eye are firmly on the man with the belt now....he's bested him twice in pretty brutal fashion. Although i think Rampage is a different man now.

Fozzy · 17-06-2008 12:21am

Dragan wrote: »

Wandy is clever. I didn't see him taking that fight to be honest. It doesn't gain him anything to knock out a man coming down a division because he can't hang in the one he wants to. I assume Wandy's eye are firmly on the man with the belt now....he's bested him twice in pretty brutal fashion. Although i think Rampage is a different man now.

The reason Wanderlei gave was that it was too soon rather than anything to do with the opponent, although maybe that played into it

Whenever Rampage talks about a fight with Wanderlei now he always brings up that he had the better of Wanderlei on the ground in one (or both, I forget, I haven't watched them in a while) fight but the ref stood them up because they didn't want Wanderlei to be beaten. I can't actually remember if the call was that bad or not, but if they do rematch that issue will be one of the big talking points I'm sure

Here's the updated news on the UFC July 19th show from the Wrestling Observer:

Here is the basics on the story going around regarding a UFC show on 7/19, head-to-head with the Affliction show. The sherdog.com story is correct in that fighters have been called, including Wanderlei Silva and Brandon Vera, but that match is likely not happening even on the chance there is such a show on that date. It was an idea talked about in preliminary stages but Spike officials have said the next live special after Saturday will be on 9/17 and Dana White had also not green-lighted the idea as of earlier today and it was considered a no-go this morning. Fighters have been contacted and based on updated stuff, I expect it is happening and most likely the final decision and an announcement will be made tomorrow. The fact they are still working hard on getting a quality main event says something.

dunkamania · 17-06-2008 9:48am

Wandy and Vera were both contacted about fighting on a possible show on this date, but not necessairily to fight each other.

Wandy has the potential for a lot of headline matchups which could do huge PPV's for UFC, Shogun, Silva, Lidell, Hendo and Rampage. A fight with Vera makes no sense, especially for what would be a free show, that would essentially me counter programming

Fozzy · 17-06-2008 12:17pm

This wasn't mentioned yet, was it? Liddell vs Rashad Evans is confirmed for UFC 88. The only thing about it now is that Rashad will have three more months to train for Chuck and Chuck is coming off that injury. It's not a major one, but I don't think he's fully healed yet

goo · 17-06-2008 12:37pm

Fozzy wrote: »

I don't know if the UFC will hurt Affliction much by doing that. The hardcore fans will be watching Affliction for Fedor and nothing the UFC does will stop them from watching Fedor in his first real test in a long time. Any casual fans watching Affliction will mainly be for Arlovski but I really can't see there being that many of them. I just don't think that Affliction is going to do very well anyway

There are definitely thousands of fans in America that are fans of guys fighting on the Affliction card that don't know or don't give a **** about Fedor. Somewhere between the huge amount of very casual fans and the comparatively small number of "hardcore" ones there will be thousands of fans who'll be easily swayed from Affliction to the familiar UFC brand with fights that could effect people's title contention, stuff like that, and especially considering its free.
In those groups of people that get together to watch fights if there are people there who are less in to the sport I could see them watching the UFC so that everyone's interested. I keep on making such needlessly long posts sorry.

The thing about Affliction that I'm most interested in is what they do after this Banned show. Are they only putting on shows every 3/4 months and just swapping opponents (FEDOR/BARNETT) or are they going to be every one month, two months, stuff like that. Whatever about HW, at the lower weights there aren't so many fighters not with the UFC that have big names in the US that they can snap up, unless they spend a lot of money. Picking up disgruntled IFL fighters and matching them up with EXC fighters on non-exclusive contracts is not going to sell their brand.

Dragan · 17-06-2008 12:56pm

goo wrote: »

The thing about Affliction that I'm most interested in is what they do after this Banned show. Are they only putting on shows every 3/4 months and just swapping opponents (FEDOR/BARNETT) or are they going to be every one month, two months, stuff like that. Whatever about HW, at the lower weights there aren't so many fighters not with the UFC that have big names in the US that they can snap up, unless they spend a lot of money. Picking up disgruntled IFL fighters and matching them up with EXC fighters on non-exclusive contracts is not going to sell their brand.

Don't forget that the UFC started with a bunch of no names and survived for a long time because people still traded tapes back in the day.

Affliction are putting on a quality card the should, hopefully, get a lof of interest on it's own merit.

It's a clever business strategy to sign up fighters for the card, let them fight, see who wins, who is injured, who the crowd responded to and THEN go searching for more fighters to build up the second card.

Right now they have to put on 1 card and they have the fighters to do so. It's pointless thinking about the future, investing a load of money in signing fighters when your brand/show/production have yet to even receive a Litmus test.

If i was at the helm i'd be doing exactly the same thing and that is playing the patient game.

dunkamania · 17-06-2008 12:57pm

In terms of UFC counterprogramming, if it goes ahead, it would be free on spike compared $45 on ppv for Affliction. When you are going to have to go to the internet for one of the events anyway, the $45 price tag is gonna come in to play.

18-06-2008 2:45pm

dunkamania wrote: »

In terms of UFC counterprogramming, if it goes ahead, it would be free on spike compared $45 on ppv for Affliction. When you are going to have to go to the internet for one of the events anyway, the $45 price tag is gonna come in to play.

I was gonna be watchin Affliction online anyway! No change for me!! :pac::pac:

Interesting article about Lebens time in jail.

Nothingcompares · 19-06-2008 9:57pm

How did people rate the coaching of Forrest and Rampage? i think there's a lot of Matt Thornton in Forrest and a lot of Rampage in Rampage.

Fozzy · 19-06-2008 10:11pm

Rampage by his own admission wasn't a great coach. Sure his corner advice consisted of "get up!" and "hit him!". Forrest seemed to have some of his guy's opponents scouted and he knew the best way to go about beating them

They both went about training better than Matt Hughes did last season I think, he sent a good few of his guys into fights wrecked from overtraining towards the end

dunkamania · 19-06-2008 10:20pm

Some of Forrest guys were overtrained going into fights. Forrest told them he would push them hard and they needed to know when to take rest days. Some of the less experienced guys didnt know when to rest and were overtrained. Rampage's corner were poor, this is not a problem for rampage as he doesnt listen in fights (imo). It was clear in most fights that Forrest guys had a better corner, especially the Dante JT fight. Cameron was a particularly good cornerman. Having Rampage crack jokes cant be helpful when your fighting.

Final episode spoiler

Fair play to Amir, I didnt think he could do it. I feel the JT thing was overblown, it wasnt the most schocking TUF moment ever, and the 2 week buildup was ridiculous. Anyone else feel they should have told Amir right away bout JT, as he was training to fight him, instead of waiting 3 weeks, or maybe they did and just acted it out? Not sure what to make of Tim, he didnt look good in his prelim fights, but he put in a solid showing against CB. CB's cardio is suspect, he got himself into trouble against Tim and Amir.

muckwarrior · 20-06-2008 10:36am

Fozzy wrote: »

Rampage by his own admission wasn't a great coach. Sure his corner advice consisted of "get up!" and "hit him!".

Don't forget "Knee him in the butt!!"

20-06-2008 11:23am

Lads in fiarness Rampage gave better advice than that. He did give some technical advice when it came to escapes from positions/subs in all fairness. He wasnt, by his own admission, a great coach, but dont sell him short either. At least he was better than Shamrock!

Dragan · 20-06-2008 11:48am

The coaches are not really chosen for coaching power, more personality and then the fight at the end.

For me Forrest was a damn fine coach.....he was very aware of what point the fights were at and made sure his fighters were too.

"THIS TAKEDOWN IS THE FIGHT!" i loved that. Also, Amir may just be my new favourite fight. The little engine that ****ing could!

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