Misc. - Page 4

(“Hey, is this one of those kiss cams? Because if it is, I invite Dana White to come KISS MY ASS.” Photo via Getty.)

“At the end of the day, the person who laughs last, laughs loudest and hardest. And that’s me.” — Jacob Christopher Ortiz

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Tito Ortiz is an entrepreneurial genius who has been working one over on us since at least 1999. What? You thought he was just making that whole “I Put an Undercover Double Agent in Stephan Bonnar’s Training Camp” stuff just for the sake of making stuff up? You ignorant sluts. Tito Ortiz knows what audiences eat up. He watches Scandal. He knows that the only thing MMA fans love more than a grudge match is a grudge match with a twisty, turny backstory, and he manipulated us like a blob of silly putty in the palm of his hand. And don’t you feel like dum-dums now.

What am I blabbering on about? Oh, just that the ratings figures are in from last weekend trifecta of MMA events and Bellator 131 CRUSHED IT, setting a live gate and attendance record for the promotion and shattering a heap of viewership records as well. From a press release sent out earlier today:

Bellator 131 knocked out the competition on Saturday, November 15 with record ratings for the emerging MMA franchise under new president Scott Coker. The Bellator 131 main event between Tito Ortiz and Stephan Bonnar (11:50pm-12:16am) drew 1.8 million viewers, peaking at 2 million, making it the most-watched and highest­rated MMA fight on cable in 2014.

The Ortiz-Bonnar fight ranks as 2nd highest-rated MMA fight telecast in all of television with Men 18-34 and Men 18-49, including broadcast, in 2014. Also, Ortiz-Bonnar ranked #2 in its timeslot in all of cable with Men 18-34 and Men 18-49.

Overall, the entire fight card delivered (9:00-12:16) delivered 1,241,299 viewers, a record for Bellator MMA on Spike TV.

(That about says it all. via @JeremyBotter)

In a classic example of their Run-Before-You-Can-Walk approach to business, the UFC held a press conference in Las Vegas this afternoon, auspiciously dubbed “The Time is Now.” The promotion had been teasing a quote unquote “huge announcement” for quite awhile in the lead-up to today’s conference, which was held in the legendary Smith Center as if to remind us that, yes, epic shit was about to go down. While the UFC has become nothing if not a river from which hyperbole flows like the mighty Ganges, their decision to name this conference what they did would lead you to believe that a) the event would start on time and b) something big was headed our way.

Of course, to assume either of those things would be to turn a blind eye to everything you’ve learned about MMA this year. So instead, Dana White kicked things off by announcing that Matt Brown vs. Tarec Saffiedine will headline “Fight Night Broomfield” in January, and when asked point blank what the big announcement (aka the reason the press conference was being held) was, said that they “didn’t get it done in time” and that everyone could go home.

Seriously. That’s what happened. No announcement was made, and not one “reporter” in attendance had either the interest or the spine to even press Dana further about what the announcement was supposed to be. Instead, what followed was an hour and half of awkward silences, occasionally punctuated by the MMA media’s usual brand of fluff and fan questions that made the MMA media’s fluff seem thought-out and insightful by contrast. It was the most MMA thing ever, basically, and a bright, blaring warning sign of what’s to come in 2015.

Ah yes, 2015…

In the MMA marketing game, the list of tactics used to promote a fight card goes something like this:

1. Bring in a recently disgraced legend from your more popular rival promotion to play skeeball/sign autographs.

2. Everything else.

Unfortunately for Bellator, option 1 is no longer on the table, as Wanderlei Silva has been contractually cock-blocked from appearing at their Dave & Busters party this Friday. So with their backs against the wall, Scott Coker’s crack team of ad execs have been forced to reach deep into their idea banks to promote this weekend’s Bellator 131 card. The results have been nothing short of hilarious — like something Jackie Moon would come up with if he was stuck in a creative slump.

Bellator kicked things off in style last night with (what I can only assume was) their first “Taco Tuesday” event, hosted at Dave & Busters and MC’ed by Bellator colorman Jimmy Smith — who I absolutely refuse to talk trash about because he seems awesome. If you hadn’t guessed, “Taco Tuesday” pitted 10 or so diehard MMA fans against one another in a taco-eating competition, with the winner earning a ticket to Bellator 131. And right now, AS WE SPEAK, the promotion is hosting a scavenger hunt across San Diego for, you guessed it, tickets to Bellator 131.

After the jump: Play-by-play analysis of said scavenger hunt (not really), and a few of our ideas about how Bellator can promote themselves in the future.

(via reddit/MMA)

“Missed weight, eh buddy? Gotta cut another three-fifths of a pound? Sucks, man. You must be super thirsty right now, huh? Dehydrated? That’s just the pits. Anyway, I’m gonna go ahead and chug this coconut water in front of you. Damn that’s good, better have a little more. Yeah, that’s the stuff right there. Welp, good luck in the sauna bro.”

LMAO…props to Ian McCall for a truly classic dick-move.

We know what you’re thinking, “How could someone with the kind of dexterity displayed above ever suffer from back problems?” And to be honest, we can’t really tell you, but we do now know that back issues were to blame for the most recent delay in the Ronda Rousey vs. Cat Zingano title fight.

If you recall, Zingano vs. Rousey was supposed to serve as the co-main event of UFC 182: Jones vs. Cormier on January 3rd, but was suddenly pushed back 2 months to the co-main event of UFC 184 in February for undisclosed reasons. The online community’s reaction to this development came swiftly and with vengeance, falling just below their reaction to the title of the next Stars Wars movie on the scale of Faux Internet Outrage.

“I’ve gotta wait two more months for this sh*tty fight? Rousey is so fake!” cried @DopeBeatzforJeezus.

“Oversaturation in MMA is the single biggest problem facing America, and this is proof of that. #ThanksObama #TBT #PrayforWeezy” wrote @Uzi4U2.

Well, it turns out the UFC actually had a legitimate reason for delaying Rousey vs. Zingano…AND YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT IT IS.

(Quick Cat, now’s your chance! It’s literally your only chance!!)

Back when Ronda Rousey and Cat Zingano were originally booked to fight following a coaching stint on TUF 18, the champion was being given something around 7-to-1 odds over the undefeated #1 contender. One ACL tear and a little over a year later, Rousey and Zingano have once again been booked to throw down — this time in the co-main event of UFC 184 in February. And if the early odds are any indication, Zingano is even deader than before.

While it’s true that “Alpha Cat” looked impressive in her come-from-behind TKO of Amanda Nunes at UFC 178, Rousey has been making mincemeat of so-called “top contenders” lately and appears to hold a definitive size advantage over Zingano to boot. What I’m saying is, if you add all these factors together, you wind up with an even bigger squash match that what already was. You wind up with Ronda Rousey being listed as a flabbergasting -1300 favorite over Zingano, which is exactly what happened when the gambling lines opened this morning.

To be fair, Rousey has since dropped to around a -1000 favorite, and Zingano’s chances have improved slightly (from +700 to +600), but you’d have to be Lloyd Christmas to find those odds even slightly intriguing. For context: Rousey was listed at 20-1 over Alexis Davis, and that fight lasted 16 seconds.

So basically, Rousey should still wrap things up inside a minute despite the fact that Zingano is arguably her toughest challenge yet (she’ll be marketed that way, in any case). Are all the incredibly awkward interviews worth this, Cat? GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

We now go live to our gambling expert, Stephan Bonnar, for analysis…

(“The Greatest Movie Deaths Of All Time” via Drafthouse Films. I dunno, it seems appropriate to me.)

Chael Sonnen Says He Turned Down a $5 Million Offer From WWE (BloodyElbow)

Once Unworthy of a UFC Video Game Spot, TJ Dillashaw’s Life Has Changed in a Hurry (MMAJunkie)

Yoshiyuki Yoshida Withdraws From Title Fight With Mike Ricci, Subsequently Released by Titan FC (MMAFighting)

The Creepiest Fighters in MMA Right Now (Bleacher Report)

Shannon Knapp and Julie Kedzie don Dana White and Joe Silva costumes at the Invicta 9 Weigh-Ins (r/mma)

GSP Tells Chael Sonnen About Childhood Alien Drawings, Erased Memories, and a Real-Life UFO Encounter (MiddleEasy)

Ranking the Many, Many Deaths of Michael Myers By Improbability (Screen Junkies)

The Best Pumpkin Flavored Items Ever (31 Pics) (Radass)

Amazing Moment Quarterback Throws 42-Yard Touchdown to Himself (EveryJoe)

Blood, Ghosts, and Zombies: A Halloween Cosplay Gallery (Escapist)

TBT: The Worst Halloween Decoration Fails in the History of Halloween (PopHangover)

(Full gallery is after the jump.)

UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey was recently named the new female face of Buffalo Pro, a clothing line from Buffalo David Bitton, and our dear friends at Bro Bible have dug up some rather sexy photos of Rowdy’s first promotional shoot for the label, in which she cavorts shirtless with some dude. Yes, my friends, the hand-bra is in full effect. Check out some of Ronda’s best shots in the gallery below (along with a wonderful behind-the-scenes video from the shoot), and see the rest right here.

(The full photo violates our “no bare asses on the homepage” policy. Check out the whole thing after the jump.)

Let’s get one thing straight: Posting Yoshihiro Akiyama nude photos is absolutely a ploy to generate search traffic. But even hetero dudes can’t resist the allure of the MMA fighter/model/singer known worldwide as SEXYAMA.

We found this tasteful nude photo of Akiyama on reddit/MMA, and after some research, we learned that it came from the book Super Akiyama by Singaporean photographer Leslie Kee, which was published way back in 2011. Check out the photo below, along with one more shot from the book with Akiyama’s junk censored out. It will be your new desktop wallpaper image, probably.

(“You have brought great shame upon your chest hair on this day, Mr. Drysdale.” — Brian Ebersole. Photo via MMAJunkie)

When we last checked in with the Nevada State Athletic Commission’s crack team of regulators, we learned that they had yet to drug test middleweight contender/former TRT user/former steroid cheat Vitor Belfort since relicensing him on July 23rd. That NSAC commissioner Anthony Marnell had promised to test Belfort “until the day he retired” before immediately shirking the responsibility to the California State Athletic Commission probably should have come as a big surprise to us. Yet it did not.

And for our second installment of “Great Job, Nevada!”, we return to July, which was apparently a pretty busy month for the NSAC. Aside from the whole Vitor Belfort re-licensing issue, they had to deal with Kevin Casey and Robert Drysdale, who tested positive for drostanolone and elevated testosterone, respectively, at UFC 175 and the TUF 19 Finale (respectfully). While Casey was hit with a $5,600 fine and a year-long suspension almost immediately, Drysdale’s case was pushed back for whatever reason, despite the the fact that it had been his second-such failed test in less than two fights under the UFC banner.

In any case, the word has been handed down and it looks like Drysdale is destined to become one of those “what could’ve been”-type fighters…