Jimmy Vo – It’s personal.

It would seem that a vast majority of fighters are in it for the glory. They are after the cash, the fame, conquest and ways to inflate their ego. There are exceptions to the rule, but most fighters tend to fall into one trapping or another. Jimmy Vo is breaking the pattern by making the affair deeply personal.

Jimmy is a 22 year old amateur fighter out of Galloway, NJ. He juggles his MMA training with earning his Computer Science degree and working for Apple. Spreading your time so thin is a tall order for anyone, but when you add his profound personal motivations, the story starts to make sense.

“When I was 16, I got jumped.” Says Jimmy of his younger years. “It wasn’t easy after that, having something like that happen to you makes you paranoid.” The psychological damage that was was brought about from being attacked caused Jimmy to start getting into trouble. He would carry around brass knuckles just in case he had to relive the experience. As we all know, carrying a weapon around with you can lead to plenty of other troubles if you’re found with them. Of course, this happened to Jimmy.

“I needed a more practical way to defend myself. To build my confidence, to erase the worry that I was living with. MMA doesn’t translate perfectly to a real fight, but it’s pretty close.” Jimmy started training BJJ and Muay Thai, as well as normal strength and conditioning, to build his physique and confidence at the same time.

The motivations for Jimmy came from a practical start, but soon developed into a way to improve himself mentally. How do you explain the fact that you strap on gloves and enter a steel cage with the intent of beating someone unconcious? “It’s tough. It’s hard to explain what I’m doing to other people in a way that doesn’t make me sound crazy. When I was getting a pre-fight physical from my doctor, it certainly wasn’t easy rationalizing it to him.” Most people don’t catch wind of it when talking to someone so easy going, so it’s not an explanation that has to be made all the time.

When I spoke to Jimmy, I wanted to focus on what he has to deal with by going to college at the same time as trying to be a fighter. Most fighters are broken into those who are full time and those who have a job. Jimmy’s task is especially difficult because of his college career on top of it all. Jimmy agreed with the sentiment, “It’s hard. I’m really only able to fight through May to August. Otherwise I just don’t have the time. I have a full time class schedule and I work around 20 hours a week still. I usually can put in two days a week of MMA training and then strength and conditioning on top of that.” He was unabashed about his goals, “School is my primary concern. Getting my degree has been taking longer than I was expecting. I need to graduate, my social life has been suffering from being spread so thin.”

“I don’t know if I will ever go pro. This is a martial art for me, it’s not about anything more than that.” Jimmy surprised me quite a bit by his lack of knowledge of MMA outside of his own training and fighting. He genuinely didn’t seem concerned with what the stars were doing or who was going to be fighting at UFC 103 that night. I was thoroughly amused when I wanted to know which fighter could be considered a role model for him. My question was met by silence and then finally, “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone. I’m not really into that.”

I find that Jimmy’s take on the sport and his reasoning for getting into fighting are some of the most pure that I’ve heard so far. He genuinely didn’t seem to be caught up in the hype of the sport or talks of pay days, sponsorships and training camps. It was a personal affair that is tightly compartmentalized within the rest of his life. My curiosity got the better of me and I had to inquire about whether or not he had intent to take this full time. Jimmy replied, “I won’t know until I win. I’m 0-1 right now and if I lose my next ten fights, then obviously I’m going to hang it up. But if I KO all ten of them, well, that changes things a bit.”

I had Jimmy detail his fight to me. He sounded well-prepared. He spent ten weeks training, had a gameplan figured out but things still didn’t work out for him. “I got a bit awed by the whole experience. I didn’t really feel like I was in a fight. It felt like a spectacle, with the audience and the cage. My hits were weak, it seemed like I was sparring but I couldn’t put my full strength into it. It was a weird feeling. He took me down. A lot. His BJJ was good and I’m more of a stand up fighter, I managed to get out of an armbar because I wouldn’t let myself tap, but he eventually caught me in a rear naked choke.”

Losses are a funny thing. For some fighters a loss will derail their career, take them to a negative mental place to deal with issues they’ve never experienced. For Jimmy it did the opposite. “The experience was worth it. Frank Trigg gave some advice that really helped me along. He said that you just did what 95% of men want to do, but don’t. That helped put me in a good place mentally, and I think that I’ll grow from the loss.”

The trial by fire can give someone a lot of strength and I’m looking forwad to the school year wrapping up so I can see how Jimmy does on his return to the cage. Fighters like Jimmy are excellent for the sport, because it’s not a sport to them. It’s a matter of personal maturity and improving one’s self. As I talk to more fighters, it would seem that this theme of finding inner strength is most prevalant. So if you can shy your eyes away from all the gaudy t-shirts, ridiculous ring girls and talk of going to war and dropping bombs, it is easy to find a true grit and determination in most any up and coming fighter. It is a refreshing thing.

You can find Jimmy on Twitter as @JimmyVo – Jimmy’s fitness blog can be found at http://mmastuff.ws/

So starts an era of dominance

We’re coming into UFC 103 this weekend and despite no titles being on the line, I’ve been thinking about the UFC title picture. It certainly feels like the UFC has rounded a corner. Years and even months ago, most of the weight classes had title situations that were very muddled, or in the case of 205 – a revolving door. Despite the tumultuous past the UFC is looking at solid locks for its title holders for the foreseeable future, with the Heavyweight division being the only contentious division.

Starting with the lightweight division, BJ just threw Florian to the back of the bus. There are a few contenders in Sanchez, Maynard and Edgar, but none of them really seem to possess the necessary skills and ability to dethrone BJ. With the lightweight division you do run the risk of BJ randomly losing focus and motivation, but this has not seemed to be as large of an issue with BJ as of late.

Welterweight is an even narrower window. Georges St. Pierre has devastated the division, taking out all comers with relative ease. The kinds of people that are being discussed as title contenders for 170 are people like Swick and Kampmann. These are skilled fighters, but a world away from the likes of GSP. Jon Fitch could arguably be in title contention again soon but there is little to make me believe that the fight would go any better than their first encounter.

Anderson Silva has dominated the Middleweight division so badly that he’s already started working on clearing out Light Heavyweight. The contenders are 185 are essentially Marquardt and Henderson. You could maybe consider Maia a contender, but after he dove face first into Marquardt’s fist it would seem he has a ways to go before being viable. Marquardt and Henderson are both excellent fighters, but they have flaws in their game that Silva can exploit with too much ease. The greatest threat to Silva’s 185 reign of dominance is his own talk of retirement and his desire to travel up in weight classes, showing his boredom with the division.

Light Heavyweight is in a similar situation as Middleweight, but not quite so direly locked. Machida is world class talent and in a division of strikers who have bad defenses, it doesn’t seem to me that he will be threatened any time soon. Rampage is tied up with TUF and rehashing old TV shows on the big screen. The other viable contenders at this weight class would be hard pressed to defeat him, let alone challenge Machida’s legacy. Shogun has a sliver of a chance but we’re talking about a complete fighter versus a weight class full of incomplete competitors.

Oddly enough, Heavyweight is the division that has the most competition. Despite all of the UFC’s new acquisitions and the on-going season of TUF, the division is still razor thin. There only a few notable characters towards the top of the food chain to even challenge Lesnar on a marquee. Challenging the man in the ring is another issue entirely. The people who have the best disposition to defeat Lesnar are Carwin, Dos Santos and Duffee. Carwin is up against Lesnar in 106 and will most likely write the playbook for how strikers fair against Lesnar. Dos Santos is a smaller man than Carwin and the UFC doesn’t seem to want to throw him in against top tier competition just yet. Duffee is far too green to readily be considered for the title picture. This leaves one fight where Lesnar has a chance to lose. As talented as Valesquez and the rest of the division may be, they don’t have the proper size, strength and skillset to dethrone Lesnar.

So my advice to you – get excited about the undercards, these main events are most likely going to be one-sided no brainers for a while. The only other option we have is waiting for people to retire. Other than Silva and perhaps BJ, I don’t think we can put much hope into that either.

Mark Matthews – The face of adversity

When you ask someone what MMA is they will likely give you a blank stare. If you’re lucky, you may get a “Oh, you mean the UFC right?” While MMA is a growing sport, it’s not glamorous or full of wonder and awe. The sport requires a high level of sacrifice, dedication and self-discipline that most fans are unaware of. These concessions are often made with no guarantee of success, adequate payment, or even enough money to cover injuries received in training. I recently had the opportunity to discuss the sport, the upstart fighter’s burdens and lifestyles with Mark Matthews of Jackson, California.

Mark is a tattoo artist in Sacramento who also dedicates his time to training and fighting.  Talented tattoo artists are hard to find and it’s a profession that I’ve always viewed as something of a dream job to those who have the talent. So what makes someone who has these skills want to put it all on the line in a cage in Northern California towns that most people don’t want to drive their cars through? Challenging one’s self.

Mark is a pragmatic speaker, getting right to the point when asked a question. “Life is nothing if you cannot challenge yourself and grow yourself into something better. If something is too easy, it drains your motivation. MMA, like tattooing, is something that you can always improve but never master.” I found the relation of his two trades to be apt. Tattooing requires confidence, technique and a desire to give your all – MMA is no different. One exercises the artistic side of the mind and the other, the physical. As an aspiring fighter, it seems that Mark’s life, while busy, is very fulfilling.

“I’m not going to lie, I’m a 1-3 fighter right now. I’ve lost by submission, I’ve lost by KO and I’ve lost by decision. I’ve tasted each kind of defeat. I’ve done that, and now it’s something that I don’t have to experience again.” From these challenges Mark has found the sport to be just as challenging as he was hoping for. The defeats and set backs have only induced a sense of hunger, speaking of it Mark relates “I want to be a champion, even if on a local level. I am hungry for it. I find that people who are not up against a wall, who don’t have that kind of hunger will eventually quit when times get hard enough.”

When asked about his previous fights, Mark detailed a recent situation where he was called up by a promoter to take a fight. No big deal, that’s what fighters do. The catch to his tale is that the promoter was looking to find a replacement for a fight that was scheduled on the next day. Mark fights at 185 lbs, with considerations of dropping to 170. The fight the promoter was inquiring over was at 205. Mark, upset over a recent performance, didn’t give it a second’s hesitation and agreed to show. He came in to the fight around 195 against an opponent who had clearly cut weight to make 205. The crowd quickly grew an appreciation towards Mark despite his being outmatched by the heavier fighter who was a BJJ brown belt under Dave Terrell.

“I gave him what I had in me. Despite what he threw at me, I wouldn’t back down and you could tell people were getting behind me based on my determination. I got handled in that fight, all the worst things I would worry about for this sport happened to me. I realized that they weren’t that bad and I can handle it. It evaporated any doubts or fears I had for the sport.” Even though Mark lost, the defeat was an experience that allowed him to realize that his heart and determination in the ring won him new fans, the extended appreciation of the promoters, as well as a new level of respect for himself. Although, Mark did concede that his days of fighting at “205” are over.

So where does a fighter go? How does someone at this stage feel they can progress, to climb the mountain of being in one’s 30s and having a rough start to a sport that is considered a young man’s game? Perseverance and dedication. “I’m using my next fights to really gauge where I’m at. I’m fighting a guy in 2 weeks, and then another guy in 2 more weeks. After that, I have a third fight in 6 weeks. ” 3 fights in 10 weeks is a tall order for any fighter. I couldn’t help but wonder if someone fights so frequently, they must not have the time to train and work a straight job. Somehow Mark manages to fit both into his schedule. “I train about 30 hours a week, I have an hour commute each way to Sacramento, where I train at Ultimate Fitness and where my tattoo shop is located.” I dug in a bit to try to figure out how much time he dedicates to his tattooing. At first Mark tried to be conservative, but his wife silenced him with a more accurate answer of roughly 60 hours a week.

“My wife, Christina, gives me her undying support and I know I have to give it everything I have. When you have two kids who look up to you and admire you, you have to silence your inner complaints and get the job done. Without Christina and my kids, Marcos and Sevena, I wouldn’t be anywhere.”  Mark seems to handle the pressure well, never once giving a negative sentiment about his situation or the work he must put in. He relays it as work that must be done to improve and to achieve better things in life, all while discovering everything he can about himself along the way. “I like what I’ve found out.”

I try to avoid the typical cliche questions, really desiring to get to the root of someone’s personality, but I found it unavoidable to ask Mark which fighter he would model his life after. He came back with two, “Evan Tanner – The challenges he faced in life are inspiring. On a more basic level though, I see a lot of Rampage in myself. Simply because we’ve come from similar backgrounds and it took fighting to make me discover that I don’t need those negative influences in my life, we’ve both elevated ourselves to another level where we have replaced the bad with good.”

“MMA made me a better person. To succeed, you have to be honest with yourself, with the people in your life and the influences on your life. It has taught me to control my circle of influences, to steer my life.  This has taught me so much about myself that I may have never found out in any other fashion. I can accept the bad and the good.”

I’ve concluded from talking about life and MMA with Mark that this is a sport for purists. He is a living example that proves if you are faced with adversity, the only way to expunge it from your life is to face it head on, with a never say die approach.  In terms of self-preservation, it may not be the easiest way to go, but one can’t say they haven’t felt alive if they have laid it all on the line multiple times.  Both Mark and I had a laugh at how this can be related to the movie Fight Club – after all, what can you know about yourself if you have never been in a fight?

MMA Legends

Where do popular fighters go when their age exceeds their ability and worth? For the first time, MMA is starting to see a point where its perennial favorites are unable to keep up with the competition that the next generation brings. Many legends of MMA are strong favorites in one department of the sport or another but rarely put all the pieces together. Fighters like George St. Pierre, BJ Penn, Fedor Emelienanko and Anderson Silva are some of the first fighters to really put all the pieces together and not simply excel at one aspect of the game. As new fighters become less green, getting their 15th and 16th fights under their belt and hitting the 8 billion hour mark in the gym we are likely to see an entirely new breed of complete MMA practitioners.

Where does that leave the legends? Mark Kerr’s recent defeat to King Mo typifies the example of a washed up veteran who simply cannot put down the gloves. Kerr’s case is especially sad because it is obvious that the years of steroid abuse has not been kind to his body and he is merely a shell of his former self, even if mentally he cannot resist the urge to step into the ring. What do you do with a guy like this? The current model is to simply let them fight until they have abused their bodies so badly that they cannot continue. Kerr is a prime example of this waiting to happen. Bas Rutten and Igor Vochancyn are a few more examples of fighters who wanted to keep fighting, but the reoccurring injuries to their hands and knees have left them to pursue other facets of their life.

Could organizations like the UFC hire old school fighters as ambassadors for the sport? It’s an ideal, utopic vision, but hiring them on to run youth clinics, help troubled kids or some other practical application of their skills, background would be a service to the sport of MMA. While sporting these fighters adds a kind face to an organization like the UFC, it also prevents a catastrophe that will inevitably happen. After all, it really will do the sport no good whatsoever if a washed up has been who simply cannot turn off his internal drive to fight gets crippled, or in the worst case, killed in the ring.

It’s a nice idea and very altruistic, but quite unlikely. Even if you could manage to get Zuffa to comply with such a feat, you would still have to physically force the fighter to stop fighting. As we have seen with fighters such as Kevin Randleman, even if their body has come to the brink of disaster, they still want to get in there to fight it out. I don’t have to tell you that Rich Franklin was a math teacher because the UFC has hammered that into your head already. Despite their efforts and zeal with Franklin, most MMA fighters are not the brightest of the bunch, nor very wise. You can see this evidently in day one fighters like Tank Abbott and Ken Shamrock. Kerr paints a very vivid picture in The Smashing Machine that he is no exception to this sentiment. The abilities that makes someone a successful fighter in MMA tend to come with the price of stubbornness and being over-driven. The result is almost always the PRIDE – NEVER DIE spirit. Unfortunately, this means that Kerr gets scraped off the mat with a shovel and you find Ken Shamrock pit wrestling with a bear in Alabama.

Being unwilling to hang up one’s gloves is not a new phenomena. Boxers fell victim to the same pitfall. Anyone who knows an ounce about boxing knows that even Muhammed Ali fought far past his prime. In Boxing and MMA both this just makes opportunities for legends to put the beat down on scrub fighters or suffer embarrassing losses. Neither does anything but tarnish their legacy. You can bet your bottom dollar that if Dana fails in his efforts to populate every reality show with Liddell, you will see him show up in Strikeforce, Jungle Fight or God knows whatever new gimmicky organization pops up in between now and then.

When the crowd gets small and pay day is smaller, it’s time to hang up the gloves. Unfortunately, this is not a point well traveled to MMA’s heroes of yore. I don’t believe every old school fighter needs to take the first bus home. Some, as Couture continues to show us, are perfectly able to carry on and quite a few, like Bas Rutten, exercise good judgment. However, these are not things you can count on. Certain fighters, such as Kerr, need to get the message that it’s time to go home.

MMA – No Partners, No Teams

I have been getting a bit agitated by the means in which most MMA viewers choose their favorite fighters. I find that it is often based upon a fighter’s persona rather than their fighting credentials. For example, Brock Lesnar is one of the most gifted wrestlers to ever grace the UFC’s octagon yet he is universally despised by fans, casual or hardcore. On the other hand, fighters like Chris Leben, Roger Huerta, and Michael Bisping seem to get a lot of favoritism from both the UFC and its fans, purely based upon their personalities and antics out of the cage. Why does this exist when most other sport’s fan affiliation is governed by locality or playing ability?

I think the first thing to consider is the lack of a team. There is no local team for fans to get behind. They can like fighters based upon where they are from, but it does not seem to follow the same sort of fervor as baseball, football or any other team-based sport. With this being the case, fans all over need a reason to be a fan of a MMA fighter. Most of this fandom seems to be derived from fighter’s crazy cage antics (i.e. Joseph Benavidez, Clay Guida), excellent personality (Randy Couture, Nate Quarry), or even due to a sick fascination at a fighter’s inevitable fall from grace (Chuck Liddell, Drew Fickett).  Let’s face it, a lot of MMA fighters are terribly similar in styles and abilities and their character and home lives tend to lead our tastes to like or dislike.

Personality is not the golden rule that determines our favorites, but it does lend a hefty weight to it. Unfortunately, some fighters have such terrible and boring fighting styles that you can’t really help it. For example, if Jake O’Brien or Justin McCully (now listed as “the Nsane1” on UFC’s website – what the fuck?) opened a home where they housed runaway children who spent their time spaying and neutering animals, I would still only tune to their fights for the chance to see them get beat.

Magnanimous personalities and larger than life attitudes and words make people appreciate fighters whose skills are substantively worse than the fighters they face. Phil Baroni has not been relevant in quite sometime, yet his attitude and NYBA diatribe makes a fan out of nearly all of us.

While I complain about this favoritism due to personality as a fan of the true elements of mixed martial arts, I find that even I’m guilty of it from time to time as you just can’t help but hate someone’s guts. Aside from that, there are attributes possessed by some people that make me love them and always root for them even if they could fuck up a cup of coffee.

So, who are your favorite fighters? Why do they deserve this title?

Montana – MMA Culture.

I’ve been road tripping around the country for the past six weeks. Just yesterday I rolled into Missoula, Montana in an effort to catch UFC 102 at a sports bar. I found the Broadway Sports Bar and Grill, they had cheap pitchers, cheap food and only a $5 cover to watch the fights. Not bad.

My first lesson learned from this experience is that Missoula is Mountain time. I had not realized as I crossed through Idaho that I changed from Pacific to Mountain time. When 7pm rolled around, I was thinking the UFC became delayed. At 7:30 my stupidity caught up with me and I figured it out.

Around 8, when the event began airing, the otherwise empty bar room started filling up with a sizable crowd. I’ve mainly watched the UFC at bars in the Pacific Northwest and I was rather surprised at the lack of jockitude or Toddcore going on at the bar. I overheard some people’s conversations about fighters and the fights coming up and it seemed really educated rather than talk about bashing someone’s face in. One guy, who had a mohawk no less, even commented about Nogueira’s name being spelled incorrectly at one point during the broadcast.

The event offered some great fights, especially Couture versus Nogueira. There was a lot of appreciation for the finer aspects of the sport that tend to get glazed over by less educated fans. Keith Jardine received a ton of cheers and Silva received a lot of boos by virtue of Jardine being from Butte, MT.

I can’t say I’m a large fan of Montana as a state in general, but I found this experience to be much more enjoyable than I was expecting. It certainly outshined the crowds in Sacramento and Tacoma.

Anyway, it’s time to watch the prelims from last night. If you’re East of this point and want to say hello or grab a drink, leave me a comment!

Are injuries worth it?

I was reading an article today about Dan Lauzon on MMA Weekly. He has dropped out of his upcoming UFC 103 bout against Rafaello Oliveira due to a “back injury.” While this may be beneficial to Oliveira as the replacement for Lauzon is likely to be of a lower caliber, it does make me wonder.

Dan Lauzon - Out of UFC 103 via back injury.

If you’re a top level star, making several hundred thousand per fight in disclosed payouts, taking a slice of the PPV percentage and also have sponsors trying to clad you in their $100 bills, then hey, injuries can be worth it. Even if wind up with a lifelong debilitating injury, you will have a large bankroll to fall back on for a safety net. Unfortunately, for young up and coming fighters, that safety net is made of barbed wire, if it exists at all.

Dan Lauzon is a ‘name’ fighter. People know of him through his brother, UFC fighter Joe Lauzon. Dan fought in the UFC one time before being released to compete in feeder organizations.  It appeared likely that Dan was about to get his big break by appearing on the ill-fated Affliction Trilogy card. Of course, the card was canceled throwing Dan back into contractual limbo. Lucky for Dan, he was scooped up by the UFC once again to make a reappearance. After all, he has name recognition and a shiny 12-2 record.

Enter Dan’s back injury. We all know that the spine is the worst place to be injured. Even the least severe injuries to the spine can cause extreme pain and weeks, if not months of rest periods. The worst injuries can cause paralysis. I’m sure Dan’s injury isn’t too severe, otherwise the MMA news corp would be all over it. It still leaves me to wonder though, are the pay days that a fighter like Dan receives worth the risk of injury? What about a fighter who doesn’t even have his prestige?

Entry level fighters into the UFC, the biggest organization within Mixed Martial Arts as we know it, receive payouts of $3,000/$3,000. What that means is the fighter gets $3,000 to show and another $3,000 to win. The UFC does offer additional bonuses, such as Fight of the Night and Submission of the Night among others. These bonuses usually land around $75,000 or so. So at best, a first time UFC fighter can get about $160,000 for his fight. The UFC does give some undisclosed bonuses to high performing fighters, but first time fighters are likely to not even be on the PPV card and will very rarely get something that wonderful. Worst case scenario – $3,000 and ejection from the UFC.

Can low budget fight promotions cover these costs?

$3,000 can hardly sound like a lot of money. Most of us have had cars that required instructions to get inside of, let alone drive, that cost more than $3,000.  That’s not a living wage, let alone a fighting wage. This is the UFC, the preeminent fight promotion out there. Billy Bob’s Battle Barn would be lucky to give you fish & chips and bus fare.

So how do up and coming fighters, with no name recognition and no inheritance get by in this fight world? It’s a big mystery. Over the next few weeks you will see some interviews with fighters regarding how they can manage this lifestyle.

Fireside chat with MMA Money Line

Eric over at MMA Money Line has been kind enough to indulge me in a discussion about some upcoming fights. My motivations in the conversations have been three fold:

1) To cover the most important points in terms of betting on a particular fight

2) To benefit my readers with both MMA Money Line’s expert knowledge on MMA combined with my analysis.

3) To bolster the knowledge of my readers, as well as my own, in deciding factors towards a fight that may not be known otherwise.

This time around we discussed the upcoming UFC 102 headline fight of Randy “The Natural” Couture versus Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueria. This fight is very interesting for a variety of reasons. Both fighters are perennials of MMA and the Heavyweight division of the sport. Couture has primarily been a UFC fighter and has faced only the best of competition, which accounts for his somewhat lopsided record. Big Nog is a BJJ blackbelt, and general submission wizard from PRIDE. Upon PRIDE dissolving, Nog has come to the UFC.

Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira

Let’s first consider Nogueira for this fight.  Nog trains out of Black House in Brazil. Nog is renowned for the “get your ass kicked until you pull a sub out of no where” style of fighting. His best traits are his submission abilities and general toughness. He has boxing talent, but lacks power in both stand up exchanges and ground and pound. When Nog fights, the usual method of victory is through taking the fight to the ground, whether by takedown or pulling guard, sweeping if on the bottom and then controlling from the top or sinking a submission. Despite Randy’s experience, Nog has a significant edge in quantity of fights.

Nog’s recent fight history includes a solid decision victory over Josh Barnett, a questionable decision over Heath Herring, a submission victory over Tim Sylvia, and a complete destruction at the hands of Frank Mir.

The Herring fight was  questionable due to the fact that Herring landed a massive kick to Nog’s face that put him all but out on the ground. Herring failed to capitalize and allowed Nog to get his wits about him again. Nog controlled the fight but could not put Herring away, pulling out a decision. Nog was being beat soundly by Sylvia until he pulled guard, swept the behemoth and choked him out. Mir demolished Nog in their fight, but many discount this due to Nog’s staph infection.

SweetMMATH points out:

– Nog nearly always looks awful until he pulls victory out of thin air

– Nog is incredibly durable – far more so than what Randy can dish out to him

– Nog’s submission skills and traditional boxing skills exceed Randy’s.

MMA Money Line points out:

– Nog has looked particularly terrible in his last 3 bouts.

– Nog has been TKO’d and nearly KO’d twice in those 3 bouts.

Randy “The Natural” Couture

Randy Couture trains out of Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas. Couture’s recent history has been surrounded more by controversy outside of the cage rather than his abilities within a fight. After “retiring” Couture returned to the UFC in 2007 to grind out a decision against then champion Tim Sylvia. He defended his title as an underdog to Gabriel Gonzaga, enduring a broken arm suffered during the fight,  via TKO. Shortly after this bout, he entered contractual limbo until his title defense against Brock Lesnar. Lesnar simply overwhelmed Randy and defeated him via hamfisted ground and pound in the second round.

Randy’s skill set is quite apparent to anyone who knows anything of his history – Greco Roman Wrestling. Randy’s strength come in the form of securing takedowns, dominating the clinch with dirty boxing and a solid ground and pound. Randy’s boxing has been improving over the years, but is still not a prominent factor in his abilities.

Randy’s sweet spot in this fight is the clinch. He has the greatest advantage when pressed against the cage. Both Nog and Randy are rather underpowered with their boxing and while Randy does have solid, functional ground and pound, it is not likely to be so overwhelming that it KOs Nog. However, this fight could easily be stopped by the ref if it looks like Randy is being particularly effective with his ground and pound. Finally, Randy is in excellent cardio condition despite his advanced age.

SweetMMATH points out:

– Randy is 46 years old. He is an amazing athlete, but anyone of this age is going to be at a disadvantage against someone over 10 years younger.

– Randy is a master of the gameplan. His strategies tend to be right on the money for what needs to happen in order to win. Even in his defeats, his tactics have been sound.

– Randy has an amazing training camp of some of the best fighters in the world.

– Randy’s submission skills are deficient compared to Nog’s.

– Randy’s power on the feet and on the ground is under par compared to the remainder of the HW division.

MMA Money Line points out:

– Couture’s strength, wrestling and submission defense are fully capable of negating Nogueira’s BJJ.

– Couture’s striking (evidenced by the Sylvia fight and against Gonzaga) paint him to be the better striker of the two.

– Couture has more ways to win the fight. KO standing, TKO/KO on the ground and control based decision.

– Couture’s only real option to lose this fight is via KO – which is quite unlikely.

As you can see from the analysis given, I’m in Nog’s camp for this fight and MMA Money Line is siding with Couture. Either way, this is an exciting fight to complete a picture that has been in the making for the entirety of MMA history. It is only natural that these two fighters should meet, especially before Couture’s retirement. Additionally, this fight should cement people’s opinions about where both fighters stand in the apex of their careers.

Once again, thanks to Eric over at MMA Money Line for his thoughts on the fight. Hopefully I will be able to present additional analysis as hashed out by the two of us in the future.

Liddell is putting on his dancing shoes.

Word on the street is that Chuck Liddell is going to be on Dancing with the Stars. I can’t say I’ve ever watched Dancing with the Stars but I already feel like this is a bad idea, but will still manage to be great for MMA (and the UFC).

The reason I would not want this to happen is purely due to Liddell’s lack of grace, charisma and any skills that don’t require punching people in the face. He’s a good fighter, although he may be on the decline at this point in his career, but he’s no social wizard. The UFC often sends Liddell to speak in interviews on behalf of the company. He has done numerous radio interviews and television interviews, including ESPN. His most famous interview was a little ways back. Liddell appeared on WFAA’s Good Morning Texas on March 1, 2007 to promote the movie, 300. His interview was an incoherent, rambling mess. Supposedly he was sick and doped up on cough syrup, but it was still a giant mess which did not speak kindly for the sport.

Why send Liddell? Surely there are much better ambassadors for the sport including Florian, Franklin and Couture. Hell, I would send nearly anyone on the roster (except maybe Lesnar) before I would send Chuck.

Despite the misgivings of the MMA twitter community and myself, this will still benefit Liddell. The mere fact that Liddell will be someone that is not typical for the show will attract attention. Having a big, tough, bad ass fighter on a show about dancing is clearly a gimmick, but the gimmick is chained to publicity for the UFC. After all, if Chuck is going to be in retirement limbo for the next few months, may as well cash in on his status. He is the most recognizable UFC fighter, as his style and haircut are exactly the same as they were in 2001. Anyone who has heard of the UFC would recognize Liddell. How this translates into actual viewers for the UFC? Well, I guess it doesn’t other than name association and osmosis. Like they say, any publicity is good publicity.

UFC – Razorblade Factory

I’m not understanding why everyone is up in arms over the UFC’s most recent cuts – Tamden McCrory and Thales Leites. It seems everyone is jumping on the anti-UFC bandwagon. The UFC and Dana White do employ some questionable decision making in terms of fighter treatment, but really, the cutting of these two fighters is not an example of that.

Let’s look at these two a little closer.

Leites began his UFC career back at the Ultimate Fighter 4 finale. He lost an unexciting decision to then Middleweight Martin Kampmann. Leites then gets on a bit of a roll, knocking off an unthreatening Pete Sell, new comers Floyd Sword and Ryan Jensen, robs Marquardt of a decision victory and then submits Drew McFederies who taps once he hits the mat. At this point, Leites is gifted a title shot by virtue of no one else being available at this time period to fight Anderson Silva. Leites had not defeated the kind of competition to justify the shot, but opportunities being what they are, you cannot fault him for taking it. He then butt scoots his way through one of the worst fights in UFC history to take a loss. At UFC 101 Leites graced fans everywhere with a repeat horrible performance against Alessio Sakara to round out his career to date.

Two losses alone are grounds for nearly anyone to be cut from the UFC roster. Leites was in title contention, so maybe he should get a break. However, I think the quality of performances he offered the world in his last two fights are more than enough justification to eject the Brazilian. Beyond that, his only notable win in the UFC was over Marquardt and that victory was based on technicality.

Tamden McCrory on the other hand has had a split UFC record of 3-3. His most notable win coming by way of submission through Pete Spratt. Spratt is a game fighter, but we all know his submission game is just shy of horrible. His only other victories were against a UFC newcomer and Luke Cummo who, despite drinking his own urine, has never been all that impressive.

Whenever McCrory faces off against mid-range competition, such as his battles against Akihiro Gono and Dustin Hazelett, he manages to come up short.  McCrory is a talented fighter and definitely has a lot of character and personality. However, even with these two attributes on his side, he needs more experience to be a tangible threat in the UFC. He could also stand to drop weight classes as well.

So where are we at? We have a fighter who has choked against top competition so hard that he is dropping fans as quick as he dropped to his ass for the vaunted “best butt scooter” title. Our other fighter is a middling fighter who can’t quite crack the UFC gatekeepers. Neither of these fighters have much justifications for why they should not be cut from the UFC ranks. They are both good enough that they will be able to clean house in some feeder shows, or they can be higher tier fighters over in Strikeforce. Neither are bad options – the first allows for reentry into the UFC after a few successful outings while the latter can turn out to be a decent payday if they do well in Strikeforce. Either way, the anti-UFC crowd needs to relent and see the logic behind the company’s decisions before immediately getting on the Dana rage bandwagon.