Misc. - Page 6

(Seagal, seen here donning various items of clothing he had stolen from the cubbies of children he cared so dearly for.) 

Somewhere between Hard to Kill and Cockpuncher, Steven Seagal experienced a Christ-like resurrection of his career using only the power of audacity and the “free member for life” coupon to Old Country Buffet he had secured through a sponsorship deal in 1989. Seemingly overnight, the aging sensei emerged from a bargain bin of straight-to-DVD cop films (which to be fair, is a game he’ll never truly leave behind) and gut-bustingly awful musical endeavors to become the personal mentor of the pound-for-pound greatest fighter in the world, inventor of the front kick, and a “respected” member of the law enforcement community. Like the Phoenix who rose out of the Arby’s wrappers of its former self, Seagal was able to successfully come back from the dead and reconnect with semi-fame. And he is not letting go this time.

Take the events of this past weekend, for instance, in which Seagal was able to use said fame to join forces with the Maricopa County Police Department and assemble a posse (his words, not mine) of school shooting response specialists. Because if anyone knows how to react to a real life crisis situation, it’s the guy who has made a career terribly pretending to react to fake ones.

After the jump: A video snippet of this hilariously misguided endeavor, featuring paintball warfare, some misplaced picketing, and a surprising lack of firing range goggles*.

(Props: ESPN Sportsnation)

Ready to get your hearts broken again, MMA fans? ESPN’s SportsCenter and Sport Science programs are collaborating on a new Greatest Athlete of All Time bracket, in which legendary athletes from 16 different sports go head-to-head based on a “unique metric that factors in attributes such as speed, power, reaction time and more.” Naturally, the MMA representative is UFC middleweight deity Anderson Silva, whose astounding 16-0 record in the UFC includes 10 consecutive title defenses.

Let’s get one thing straight: Anderson Silva is not going to win this little competition. To advance out of the first round, he’ll have to beat Olympic swimming golden boy Michael Phelps, and if by some miracle he pulls that off, he’ll face the winner of Michael Jordan vs. Tiger Woods in the quarterfinals. Silva is just a patsy here. Roadkill. A half-assed nod to fans of a fringe sport. To demonstrate how little ESPN cares about us, here’s how Sport Science host John Brenkus sums up Silva’s career:

(“Progidy.” “The 30-something Randy Couture of the 40-something crowd.” “I don’t speak-a the Portuguesa.” “Leg kick to the midsection.” All the classics are here. / Props: zombie00713 via MiddleEasy)

Thiago Tavares ‘Surprised’ By Recent Failed Drug Test Following UFC On FX 7 (Fightline)

‘Bigfoot’ Silva’s Manager: Cain Velasquez Rematch Possible, but Slower Path to Title Preferred (MMAFighting)

Johny Hendricks Calls Georges St. Pierre an ‘Idiot’ for Thinking Nick Diaz Deserves a Title Shot Over Him (MMA Mania)

Anthony “Showtime” Pettis and the Evolution of Mixed Martial Arts (BleacherReport)

If Condit Gets Hurt, Tyron Woodley Wants to Fight Rory MacDonald at UFC 158 (MMAConvert)

Jack Slack’s Greatest Strikers: A Brief Look At Giorgio Petrosyan (BloodyElbow)

Pictures: Joe Lauzon Competes In Food Decathlon (FightDay)

Steven Seagal and Joe Arpaio Are Training a ‘Posse’ of School Shooting First Responders (FilmDrunk)

The 40 Softest Athletes in Sports History (Complex)

2013 Valentine’s Day Gift Guide (MensHealth)

7 Must-See Photos That Haven’t Been Photoshopped (DoubleViking)

Everyone Is Doing the Harlem Shake Right Now (Break)

50 Horrible Photos Taken By Horribly Professional Photographers (WorldWideInterweb)

(By the way, he’s supposed to be Danny Zuko from Grease. I’m guessing these costumes were not his idea.)

Dan Henderson fans, get your cash out. MMA Mania gives us the heads-up that Hendo is as high as a +196 underdog for his UFC 157 fight against Lyoto Machida on February 23rd. (In other words, a $100 bet on Henderson would return $196 in profit if he wins.) Considering that Henderson is coming back from a knee injury, it’s understandable that the oddsmakers don’t have complete faith in him. But considering how dangerous Henderson has looked in his last four fights — the epic war with Shogun Rua at UFC 139, and his knockouts of Fedor, Feijao, and Babalu in Strikeforce — it still feels like he’s being sold short.

Then again, you have to consider how Henderson matches up with Machida specifically. Sure, Hendo can turn your lights off with that H-Bomb if you stand in front of him, but he might have a problem with Machida’s skill at evasion and his perfectly-timed attacks from unorthodox angles. Are the odds juicy enough to warrant a bet on the old ‘dog?

In a related story, Ronda Rousey — who opened as a ridiculous -1500 favorite against Liz Carmouche — is currently sitting at a still-ridiculous -1050.

(“Dwayne, you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to go back to a sport that has been consumed by PED usa…you know what, nevermind.”) 

I was shocked to come to the realization that the first Fast and the Furious movie came out when I was only 11 years old. I vividly recall that a friend of mine started quoting the film like it was scripture in the weeks that followed. “It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile,” he would say whilst aimlessly staring out the nearest window, presumably dreaming of a life that involved less social studies and more drifting. We stopped speaking shortly thereafter.

All I’m saying is, my former friend must have been onto something, because here we are some 12 years later discussing the upcoming release of the sixth film thus far in the franchise. And while the extended trailer for Fast and the Furious 6 is almost unidentifiable from the trailers for any of the other films, it does contain some footage of Gina Carano that was sadly cut from the trailer during its Super Bowl spot. Mainly, this kind of stuff (gif courtesy of Fightlinker):

Somebody just went from six to midnight.

Trailer after the jump. 

(“And he’s nothing without his ground-and-pound. And he’s nothing without his groin strikes, which still haunt my nightmares.”)

After Alistair Overeem‘s upset knockout loss to Antonio Silva at UFC 156, it seemed like every MMA fan on Twitter wanted to be the first to say “Called it!” Overeem, as the narrative goes, has a cat-heart, folds under pressure, doesn’t have the cardio to go three 5-minute rounds, his monstrous physique came from unnatural means, it was just a matter of time before he was exposed as a fraud, and everybody knew it all along. Well, you can add Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic to the list of notable Reem-haters. As the legendary striker explained in a recent interview with fightsite.hr, he predicted Bigfoot would beat Overeem, partly because Overeem wasn’t fighting with his usual chemical enhancements. Here’s what Mirko had to say (translation via BloodyElbow):

“I wasn’t surprised by Silva’s victory at all and I had believed he would win. I don’t want to come off as a smart-ass or say I knew it all along, so I’ll explain why I’d believed so. First, Silva is a big tough guy with a huge heart who had demolished Fedor and he needs no better reference than that, and Alistair hugely underestimated him and belittled him with his arrogant statements, so this mobilized Silva in the best possible way. Second, Silva is a natural heavyweight, and Alistair — for the first time since way back in 2007, when he began to gain huge weight — fought without the drugs he had used constantly for years, including testosterone and all the other shit that goes with it.

“Watching the weigh-in, I saw that his muscles mass was nowhere near his usual, he had the weight, but he wasn’t nearly as carved out and defined, since he couldn’t take anything because he was watched by the Athletic Commission. This also reflects on the psyche of a man who’s been using stuff to increase his strength, endurance, pain tolerance and aggressiveness for years, and now there was none of that. Alistair is an excellent fighter, but he still owes that excellence to something that’s dirty and unpermitted, and, in the end, very dangerous to health.

(Now it can be told: Vitor Belfort caught this gash in sparring ten days before his fight against Michael Bisping. It needed 20 stitches. Props to reddit_mma for the tip.)

UFC 156 Preview: 25 Fast Facts for ‘Aldo vs. Edgar’ on Feb. 2 in Las Vegas (MMAMania)

With Title Shot Dangling for Overeem, Tension Builds Between Dutch Star and ‘Bigfoot’ (MMAFighting)

Cris Cyborg to Ronda Rousey: ‘Step Up, Bitch’ (BloodyElbow)

TUF 17: UFC Contracts Offered to Every Fighter on Team Jones, Team Sonnen (BleacherReport)

Video: UFC’s Brittney Palmer Talks Art, Fighting & More (TheFightNetwork)

UFC’s Media Battles With Spike/Bellator, Photographers, and Rankings (FightOpinion)

Wrestling Gold Medalist Henry Cejudo Will Make His MMA Debut at Bantamweight (Fightline)

The Biggest Celebration Fails in Sports History (Complex)

4 Extremely Weird World Records You’ll Never Beat (DoubleViking)

Pulp Fiction Almost Starred Daniel Day-Lewis as Vincent Vega (FilmDrunk)

A Gallery of Super ‘Bowl’ Haircuts (WorldWideInterweb)

An Oral History of ‘The Super Bowl Shuffle’ (Grantland)

(Dear God, can you imagine how funny this is going to look when Silva puts his creative spin on it?) 

Before we begin, I’d like to take a quick poll: What is getting more annoying, the fact that Rampage Jackson continues to air out his dirty laundry with the UFC ad nauseam, or that everyone involved in deciding Anderson Silva’s next opponent continue to talk circles around us?

First it was Luke Rockhold. Then it was Michael Bisping. Then it was a film career. It was never Chris Weidman, until recently when it was Chris Weidman. And then, likely because Ed Soares is secretly suffering from Symphorophilia, it was Cung Le. And now, according to a recent interview with Dana White, it’s Rashad Evans, because he’s a thing:

A lot of people think Chris Weidman is the #1 contender right now. If Rashad made a move from 205 down to 185, it’d be safe to say he’s now #1. If Rashad won on Saturday night and wanted to go to 185, we would consider that. 

As much as I’d like to use this opportunity to get on my soapbox about the UFC’s recent insistence on matching up their champions with challengers from entirely different weight classes based solely on name value, I’d rather like to applaud Dana for actually considering Evans here. For starters, he would at least be theoretically coming off a win in this scenario, and that in and of itself is more than the UFC has been capable of delivering in recent times.

On the other hand, can you imagine how humiliating this must be to the fighters of the middleweight division? These poor bastards just don’t seem to have it in them to string together enough wins/talk enough trash to get their own champion on board for a title fight, to the point that the president of the promotion has been forced to find guys who would damn near kill themselves making weight just to fill in the void.

(Go on. Ask him if he gives a f*ck.)

The odds of Randy Couture getting a cushy no-show desk job with the UFC have officially dropped to zero. In the wake of Couture accepting a position to be the new superstar face of Spike TV and Bellator, UFC president Dana White tore into the Natural, blasting his lack of loyalty and even questioning his character as a human being. Here’s what DW had to say about it yesterday:

“I’ll say my peace on Randy Couture, and after today, I’ll never mention him again. The bottom-line is this: When that whole thing went down with Randy years ago, we weren’t on the best of terms. Now, before that happened, Randy Couture was on the Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell deal. He was getting a salary, he was in with the company, he was one of those guys. Then he tries to do all this stuff, pull all this bullshit with Affliction, loses and comes back. So, it took me a long time to warm up to him. His lawyer, who I can’t stand, calling our lawyer every day, saying, ‘We want to come back, we want that job again, we want to work for the UFC,’ and all this stuff. Finally, I just say, ‘yes,’ and give him the FOX [commentary] deal…

(Video via YouTube.com/KarynBryant. Skip to 17:35 for the money quote.)

Following his loss to Glover Teixeira at UFC on FOX 6 — allegedly his final performance in the Octagon — Quinton Jackson sat down with his old friend Karyn Bryant for a sprawling 44-minute interview about his relationship with the UFC and what he has planned for the future. The interview has become newsworthy for a couple reasons. For one, Jackson offers to drag his balls across Bryant’s face. It is what it is, I guess. No amount of bad publicity is going to stop Jackson from being weird with female reporters, and that’s not going to change no matter what he decides to do with the rest of his life.

The other interesting moment comes when Jackson starts opening up (or “complaining,” if you’re one of his haters) about the way the UFC reports its pay-per-view numbers to fighters. Many of the UFC’s marquee athletes earn a cut of PPV sales for the events they compete on, which makes it very important for those fighters to get an accurate assessment of what those numbers are. Unfortunately, the figures aren’t made public, so the fighters have to take their employer’s word for it — never an ideal situation when money is on the line. Here’s what ‘Page had to say (via MMMania):