Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 26, 2022 Paid Members Posted December 26, 2022 I'm doing this for my own benefit really, but i'm trying to recapture abit of that old New Years Eve spirit by getting fired up for this years New Years Eve offerings. There's a few notable shows and whilst they lack the much missed freak show elements and weird crossovers from back in the day, there's some high quality fights taking place. Bellator vs. Rizin is the big one. I'm really up for this despite having no knowledge of any of the Rizin fighters involved. That said, it is the cream of the crop of Rizin fighters and going off their records these guys are not to be fucked with. The show comes in a few sections. The 5 fight main card is the Bellator portion, the rest stacks up as a standard Rizin card, but there's some notable names involved that's how the Bellator vs. Rizin portion stacks up. The whole card is as follows (I love these graphics, saves me typing this shit up): The Rizin debut of John Dodsons and Rogerio Bontorin have my attention. I'm sure there's some weird and wonderful Japanese fighters taking part but im unfamiliar with the names. Ren Hiramato vs. X sounds interesting though. The Bellator vs. Rizin portion could be great. * AJ McKee fights Roberto Souza who is a high level BJJ fighters and the Rizin Lightweight Champion, he's 14-1, never been to a decision and most his fights end around the 3 minute mark, this guy doesn't fuck around. * Patricio Pitbull fights a fellow Brazilian Kleiber Koike. Like Souza he's a finishing machine, only 2 wins by decision in 31 wins. His last loss was a decision loss to Gamrot over in KSW. Also the reigning Rizin 145lb Champ. Champion vs. Champion. * Horiguchi fights a Japanse veteran Hiromasa Ougikubo. He's 35 but recently won the Rizin Bantamweight Grand Prix. * Juan Archuleta fights Sool Chul Kim. 18-6, new to Rizin but was Road FC Featherweight as of May this year. On paper, these seem like quality fights. I'm not entirely sure if iPlayer will be showing this yet. Away from that... Cage Warriors has a show live on New Years Eve. If I wasn't busy with the missus, i'd have watched this one live on Fight Pass with a bag of cheese puffs, but it'll have to wait. Cage Warriors has stacked the deck here and are doing their own vs. concept as well as 3 title fights. I won't list the whole card, but i'll post a fancy graphic when I see one. Then, not NYE but Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye is happening on the 28th. Finding any infomation about this is pretty tough and it's not entirely clear whether or not it's actual MMA or Pro Wrestling despite there being lots of MMA fighters involved. This feels like a classic New Years Eve card: Pick the bones out of that. Still, not sure what the rulesets are or if it's a bit of everything? Nothing is listed on Tapology so who knows? Then for shit's and giggles, there's a Fury Pro Grappling event on December 30th. I'm yet to watch a full grappling event but this is live on Fight Pass and if I get chance i'm going to give it a go. All but one fighter involved is a current UFC fighter including this main event... and this undercard: I reckon that could be a bit of fun to watch. That's everything anyway. Not a lot of detail there but might give you an idea of what's happening. I might go old school and just spam the thread with highlights from the day and the day's leading up. I'm assuming a few of you may check out bits and pieces but most of the fun of the old days was just following along with everything that was going down, back at a time when streaming wasn't an option. I'll just do it for my own satisfaction ? Happy New Years Eve! Quote
Dai Posted December 27, 2022 Posted December 27, 2022 Great Post! Unfortunately there's not much there tickling my fancy. The Inoki show is, I assume, alot of pro wrestling. You'd have to assume that main event is going to be worked, as Lawlor has dabbled in pro wrestling for a while now. New Years Eve means freak shows for me, so there's not much here for my fancy. I've watched a few grappling matches and have been bored stiff by them so will be giving that a miss. Less grappling, more Bob Sapp and random Sumo guys for me! Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted December 27, 2022 Paid Members Posted December 27, 2022 Them were the days ? Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 27, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 27, 2022 ahhh yes, great days! My fondest memory of NYE MMA was in 2003. I was going out for a piss up and spent the early morning/afternoon before I left getting results in through the Sherdog message boards. I think really bad quality gif's would appear but it was generally just following the results. I'll never forget the feeling reading that Gary Goodridge has headkicked Don Frye in under a minute. Quote
Dai Posted December 27, 2022 Posted December 27, 2022 You would spend at least 3 hours downloading .mpg files in 700mb chunks so they would fit onto a CD from that site I can't remember the name of. Three letters it was. Those Pride shows would be at least a 4 CD operation to burn on Nero. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted December 27, 2022 Paid Members Posted December 27, 2022 Yeah I hated having to download them but it was the only option back then. And usually just waited the 24 hour delay for the Sunday night Bravo showing for UFC. If we had something like Fight Pass back then I probably wouldn’t have left the house in my 20s. My main memories of the New Year’s Japan shows are mostly the later years where I’d be finding live streams on the New Year’s morning with a hangover. For some reason the most vivid one for me is Melvin Manhoef knocking out Mark Hunt in seconds. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 28, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 28, 2022 10 hours ago, Dai said: You would spend at least 3 hours downloading .mpg files in 700mb chunks so they would fit onto a CD from that site I can't remember the name of. Three letters it was. Those Pride shows would be at least a 4 CD operation to burn on Nero. ahh yes, i remember the 2 parter files. I bet the quality was proper lousy on them compares to what you see now. Im sure i picked up lots of MMA around that time on Kazaa. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 28, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 28, 2022 Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye is underway, they are fighting in the Ganryujima pit, there's a moat and everything. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 28, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 28, 2022 Marcus Aurelio took advatage of the moat, Jesus... Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 28, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 28, 2022 ol' Melvin should have stayed retired. Returned 3 months later and got tapped to a heel hook in under 2 minutes. Quote
Dai Posted December 28, 2022 Posted December 28, 2022 He got paid a handsome sum I assume, and didnt actually get KO'd, so I bet hes not that bothered about losing. Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 29, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 29, 2022 Probably. It's gotta be one of the quickest turnarounds in MMA retirement though. Bellator gave him a decent send off, there were tears and everything. Quote
Paid Members wandshogun09 Posted December 29, 2022 Paid Members Posted December 29, 2022 The Manhoef thing was depressingly predictable. Great seeing Josh Barnett do his thing though. Oh and… Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 30, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 30, 2022 i dont know if its because there's been nothing on for a couple of week or if the NYE thing (probably both), but im fired up for this! Still unsure if iPlayer are showing it though. In Amercia I believe the Bellator vs. Rizin main card is being shown on a 24 hour tape delay, so maybe it'll be similar here? Quote
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted December 31, 2022 Author Paid Members Posted December 31, 2022 Rizin is taking place now in case anyone is looking to avoid spoilers Quote
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