Chunk

On 5/11/2017 at 6:16 AM, Egg Shen said:

This poxy sport...

MVP/Anderson is off due to an MVP knee injury.

Oh FFS! I've got a ticket for this and I'm gutted by that loss to the card.

SHIT!

Awesome production on this promo for Cage Warriors 84:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aXT5B-uRDY

Edit: what's up with video embedding? Sometimes it automatically works, other times it doesn't.

What's even more insane than the idea of Silva / Romero?

Silva / Romero for an interim belt!

Bisping isn't injured and is actively campaigning for a fight (that's already agreed by the UFC) with GSP as soon as possible.

Not sure if this made it in here or not but Nathaniel Wood has a shot at the vacant Batamweight Cage Warriors belt at the London show in June. Opponent announced as Marko Kovacevic. Never heard of him but he's 9-1 as a pro with 8 finishes.

Rizin 5 is this Sunday. Here's the card:

Tatsuya Kawajiri vs. Anthony Birchak
Amir Aliakbari vs. Gerônimo Dos Santos
Kyoji Horiguchi vs. Yuki Motoya
Rena Kubota vs. Dóra Perjés
Tenshin Nasukawa vs. Francesco Ghigliotti
Satoshi Ishii vs. Heath Herring
Reina Miura vs. Alpha Female
Yusuke Yachi vs. Daron Cruickshank
Saori Ishioka vs. Bestare Kicaj
Kanna Asakura vs. Aleksandra Toncheva
Kizaemon Saiga vs. Seiichiro Ito

My MMA knowledge isn't really deep enough to recognise most of the names on there. What's interesting to me though is the debut of Horiguchi. He left the UFC on a 3 fight win streak, from a division that was already shallow. It was widely accepted that his shot at DJ came too early and he's looked great since. Be interesting to see how he gets on.

Edit: Is buying the online PPV the only way to watch Rizin in the UK?

On 4/7/2017 at 5:29 PM, Egg Shen said:

Bit of a weird one tomorrow. Bellator are promoting an MMA/Kickboxing show in Italy that has little on it to make it resemble an actual Bellator show.

The actual fight that resembles a Bellator fight is weird as well. Rafael Carvalho/Melvin Maneheof 2 for the Middleweight title.

The first fight if you remember was one of the worst fights of 2016. You stick Manheof in with a Brazilian muay thai fighter and you think its guaranteed fireworks? Wrong...it sucked, but people believe Manheof was robbed his chance of winning a major belt, i guess thats why its being played back. Im intrigued to see, theres no way it can suck again.

Anyone watch this? Flicked through it today. Main event looked better than last time but still pretty dull. Melvin seemed to give up a bit when he suffered (an admittedly horrible) tooth injury.

By UFC 16 Mike Goldberg was already using "the veteran voice of the octagon" to describe Bruce Buffer. Despite the fact that he didn't debut until UFC 10.

On to UFC 17, which sees the debut of Dan "Hollywood" Henderson:

And a typical 12 minutes of Coleman snooze-fest followed by the first head kick stoppage in the UFC (courtesy of Pete Williams):

Yeah the holes in his standup and take down defence were shown up pretty significantly last night. The crowds reaction to Nirimani after the fight was ridiculous. Andy  Friedlander (who's terrible by the way) even having to appeal for a show of respect.

Nathaniel Wood got an impressive win over Vaughan Lee and was told in the cage that he'll get a shot at the 135 lb belt at the London show in June. Works for me!

Just on the Friedlander comment ... I hate to be down on the guy and he's obviously doing a better job than I ever could but I just find his delivery excruciatingly clumsy. "FIIIIting out of the RED corner". It's just so awkward.

Didn't realise the Nathaniel Wood / Vaughn Lee fight has been rebooked on this weekends Cage Warriors card. Result.

Chael's stuff goes so far that it stops being at all believable and just sounds stupid. Before the Tito fight he was calling himself "the best in the world". Nobody is buying that. I'm all for a fighter exaggerating to sell a fight but it has to be believable on at least some level to work.

Just think though, we could've ended up with a Sakuraba vs Tank Abbott final. Imagine that for an odd fight.

Sounds better than Randy Couture / Maurice Smith fight ended up being!

Yeah the Sakuraba thing wasn't a restart. What happened was Sakuraba vs Conan Silviera took place in the tournament semi final. Big John made a rare cock up and stopped the fight prematurely and Conan won. Big John admitted that he'd stopped the fight too early on reviewing the tape. And as Tank Abbott was hurt and couldn't do the final, they decided to just re-do Saku vs Conan in the final.

Yeah, that's it. It's weird though because I'm sure they say on the broadcast that the result of the first fight was to stand. Looking at it now though it looks like it was over turned to a no contest.

Clearly tapped the first time!

Edit: Come on! Spoiler alert.

don't know about the UFC 16 situation. I've seen the Sakuraba fight though, that has to be the only fight in history that has been restarted after the ref has called it off surely? are there any others?

Technically I don't think it was restarted. I think the result of the first fight stood, but then they had a second fight later on in the night.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazushi_Sakuraba

If you look there, actually it says that the first fight was recorded as a No Contest and then the second fight took place. Pretty sure on the UFC broadcast the commentary team say the result from the first fight stands. Might've been a mistake on their part or an over ruling at a later date.

Anyone know more about the reason Big John was dumped as exclusive referee at UFC 16? Was it in reaction to the bad call he made at UFC 15.5 in the Sakuraba fight? Sakuraba shot for a takedown on Silveira and Big John called it as a knockout.

Yeah, McCarthy does and absolutely bang up job in there. Ok he's a big guy himself but considering he's putting himself between two men having a fight, he does an amazing job of maintaining authority. The fighters in those early days just do whatever he tells them to. He makes it look easy, but it really can't have been.

In other news, where the fuck did Maurice Smith come from? Mark Coleman is looking like a killer that nobody will be able to touch and then before you know it a stand up guy makes his UFC debut and demolishes him. I love the wild swings back and forth at the moment between what works and what doesn't. The sport is really finding its feet and because it's so young it's just completely unpredictable. The obvious takeaway from UFC 14 is that strikers can compete with grapplers after all. But, more than that, it's a win for cardio. If you come into the cage jacked up like crazy, you best be ready to win within 5 minutes. Otherwise, as Coleman discovered, you're in big trouble when you get stood up and can't strike.

Nobody outside the UK can understand him, has a shit haircut and he's very annoying and struggled in his last fight.

 

He'll probably always be able to get a pop in Liverpool but Ariel Helwani was talking about buzz and the last person with the same level was Conor McGregor, providing he's good enough at that level, he would have to tone down his accent, up his shit talk a million times to get to that level.

 

Tom Dequoney is much more marketable, good looks, training at a top team Jacksons, exciting style and has the nice guy French accent and is basically a 135/145 GSP.

 

Its just a pity MMA is banned in France with him and Nganno they have future top guys and even in Cage Warriors/BAMMA they have a few French champions

Mcgregor hardly speaks BBC English and he'd done OK ...

yeh, Pancrase had been going before that, im not sure how much of it was legit though, the lines were always blurred in Pancrase.

Just been reading a bit about it. Yeah, sounds like there were a good few worked fights in the early days there.

Big John used to have a much more 'hands on' approach to refereeing! Tony Fryklund lands a few shots after the stoppage and Big John goes all protective-father-keep-your-hands-to-yourself-young-man on him!

Cage Warriors back in London on June 2nd. I think I might try and get along to this one.

There were MMA style events pre-UFC, obviously Pancrase existed in Japan but that had a varying rule-set and Brazil had long since been hosting Vale Tudo events. Im not sure if there fights set in a cage before the UFC though.

Cool, thanks. Wasn't obvious to me!

Was the UFC genuinely the first organisation to start staging MMA fights? There's reference to the Gracie invitational events on the early UFC shows and at UFC 14 they show footage from an event where "Battlecage" is written on the mat. Obviously the Gracie stuff pre-dates the UFC but did everything else start popping up after the UFC started?

It's interesting to note too that they used the term "reality combat" pretty consistently on shows from around UFC 13 onward. I guess they were trying to uniquely define the sport in some way. At that time, reality TV must've just about begun showing signs of becoming a thing. I guess 'reality combat' fit the demographic and the image they were trying to get across.

The first UFC show I watched was UFC 156 Aldo Vs Edgar. I'm currently (on and off) watching from UFC 1 onward using Fight Pass. It's really interesting to see the way the sport has developed and to see the debut of fighters that go on to become big names. I've largely no knowledge about the UFC pre 156 so it's kind of equivalent to watching it like it hasn't already happened.

Not sure how interesting this will be for other people, but it might be fun to be reminded of some of the old stuff. I've just finished UFC 13, which felt like a bit of a turning point in the way the successful fighters were approaching the sport. Royce Gracie dominated in the early days because he had a ground game and nobody else did. Then came the guys that could dominate the wrestling contest and hold a guy down (Severn, Frye) - even when they had no striking they usually came out on top because their opponent couldn't do anything from the bottom. By UFC 13 though we're starting to see fighters that have a mixture of wrestling, stand up and ground skills. MMA fighters!

Like 19 year old Vitor (or Victor as half the presenters pronounce it):

Or debuting Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz:

And what the fuck happened to Joe Rogan:

Cool little promo video (with some sweet production) for the next Cage Warriors:

Chris Fishgold and Paddy Pimblett both defending titles in their hometown.

The GSP fight is for the 185lb title though isn't it? If Bisping loses, the Yoel fight goes up in smoke.

 

Oh, just letting you know guys. If GSP loses, I'll be in the process of moving house. Tidy.

Good point. I keep thinking it's not for the belt.

Difficult to give a shit about this card. I find the smaller Bellator shows to be a bit like the big show under cards - I.e. nothing there to really make it something you can't miss.