Misc. - Page 9

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Our buddies over at Fightnomics continue to crank out the finest in UFC-related empirical data. They’ve given us a breakdown of everything from how fights end by division to submission success rates by technique, and now they’ve released a statistical compilation of every single significant strike thrown in UFC history. And in even better news, it appears that the average pace at which significant strikes are thrown has nearly tripled since the promotion’s inception, even with Jon Fitch’s seventeen fights taken into account:

Since 2007, UFC fighters average 6.8 significant strikes per minute (SSpM) of fight time. Again, this is not just while standing, but also from dominant clinch and ground positions.  Significant strikes do damage, score knockdowns, set up submissions, or cause referees to jump in for the save.  Significant strikes generally define the action in a fight, and as the analysis shows, fighter output by this metric has changed drastically since the early years of the UFC.

Through the 1990’s, UFC fighters attempted an average of only 2.8 significant strikes per minute.  Averages for UFC fighters then more than doubled to 6.9 SSpM after the sport matured under Fertitta’s Zuffa umbrella.  Modern UFC fighters also score more knockdowns and throw a slightly higher percentage of power strikes than the old guard, further suggesting greater endurance. In terms of accuracy, about 42% of these significant strikes land on target.

My main question, of course, is whether or not those girly leg kicks Carlos Condit used to outpoint Nick Diaz at UFC 143 were factored into these figures. If so, this graph is therefore invalidated by the gold standard for significant strike measurement: The Unified Rules of Stockton. Obvious trolling attempts aside, this data should at least hinder the notion that lay-n-pray is the fastest rising trend in MMA, despite that scared bitch Georges St. Pierre’s endless attempts to prove otherwise.

After the jump: Fightnomics breaks down the most active and least active strikers in the UFC. And somehow, Jon Fitch is nowhere to be found.

(Meanwhile in the Kingdom of Heaven, God continued to watch NASCAR. Photo courtesy of The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette)

Four months after his ill-fated light-heavyweight title bid against Jon Jones, Vitor Belfort will be returning to the UFC middleweight division on January 19th to face Michael Bisping in the main event of UFC on FX 7. Though he’s well into his 16th year of professional MMA competition, Belfort insists that he’s never felt so good in his entire life. Obviously, that particular fighter-cliche has become so overused that it’s virtually meaningless. But if the Phenom is telling the truth, maybe there’s a reason for it. And so, ESPN’s Brett Okamoto pointed out the elephant in the room during an interview published yesterday. Hilarity ensued:

ESPN: Some fighters in their 30s have been diagnosed with low testosterone levels and received exemptions to use testosterone replacement therapy [TRT]. Have you ever applied for TRT or would you consider it?

Belfort: If a question is private, I have the choice to answer or not. If I make it public, it’s not private anymore. If I want to say something private I will say it, but I keep to myself and I respect the laws of the sport. Whatever the organization, whatever the law — they know what to do. This is too controversial, why am I going to say something that doesn’t accomplish anything? If it’s legal, they know what to do. If it’s legal, there’s nothing to say about it. It’s legal.

(Props to Fightlinker for the find.)

Before you guys start jumping on your soapboxes in regards to the legitimacy of street fight videos on an MMA website, just check this shit out right here. I’m not one to unnecessarily hype up a video, but I am going to go ahead and declare this THE GREATEST STREET FIGHT KNOCKOUT OF ALL TIME.

Here’s the backstory as I imagined it: Aryan Abe Lincoln was just coming home from a rough day at work. He blew a tire on the way in, forgot to pack a lunch, and got royally chewed out by his boss because Johnson in accounting had botched his quarterly reports (again!). And to make matters worse, his whore of a wife — I say “whore” because it was well known by Aryan Abe’s neighbors that she was a Bulgarian prostitute he had mail-ordered — had gone and jumped into bed with the pool boy, Ronie with one n, who was now standing outside Abe’s house declaring that he would fight for her love.

Unfortunately for Ronie, Aryan Abe had been studying Muay Thai over the past few years, you know, to cope with the fact that his wife was a whore, and quickly put the kibosh on Ronie’s proposal in emphatic fashion. That sound you heard, believe it or not, was not that of a bologna roll being dropped from a roof off screen, but that of poor Ronie’s dreams and aspirations coming to a crashing halt.

(We highly recommend Margold’s dystopian sci-fi novel, “A Future Without Kleenex.” Check out 29 more amazing real-life job titles at WorldWideInterweb.)

- Jim Miller Looking to Avenge Losses; Calls out Gray Maynard (BleacherReport)

- Invicta 4: MMA’s All-Female Promotion Tests Pay-Per-View Waters (MMAJunkie)

- New Video Promo For The Ultimate Fighter: Jones vs. Sonnen (Fightline)

- Ronda Rousey Isn’t a Box Office Knockout for UFC 157 Tickets (MMAFighting)

- Check Out Joe Lauzon’s Super Bloody UFC 155 Fight Vlog (MiddleEasy)

- Someone in New York City Voted for Chael Sonnen for President (CageWriter)

- Eddie Alvarez Almost Ready to Say ‘F!@# it’ as UFC and Bellator Contract Negotiations Get Ugly (BloodyElbow)

- 10 Awesome Photos of Head Kicks (FightDay)

- The 100 Hottest WAGS in Sports History (Complex)

- What’s the Right Way to End a First Date? (MensFitness)

- Vince Gilligan Tells Us What To Expect From The ‘Breaking Bad’ Finale (ScreenJunkies)

(This will become relevant by the end of the article. Until then, let’s just bask in its glory.) 

We’re not sure if we’ve conveyed our feelings regarding middleweight contender Michael Bisping in such articles as “Michael Bisping Asshole Quote of the Day” or the sarcastically-titled “Michael Bisping, Most Understood Fighter in the UFC,” but suffice it to say, we aren’t too high on “The Count.” If you’re someone who appreciates a humble fighter who puts on entertaining fights each and every time they step into the octagon, chances are you aren’t too high on him either.

I can honestly say that I haven’t been outright entertained by a Bisping fight since he fought Wanderlei back at UFC 110, so perhaps he is the correct source to consult when determining whether a fight was boring or not. Luckily for us, Michael could only fit so much dickishness into his schedule each day, so he went and started a blog to make sure we could all be privy to this exact kind of information. In his most recent post, he took aim at Tim Boetsch and Alan Belcher, two fellow middleweights who came up short in somewhat disastrous performances at UFC 155.

We’ve collected all the best snippets, along with our running commentary in bold, after the jump. So join us as we honor (that’s code for “Spill Haterade on”) the nastiest hater since Silky Johnson, won’t you?

(The best part about wearing a cowboy hat to a press conference? You can be dead asleep, and people will just think you’re carefully considering your answer. / Photo via MMAWeekly)

Donald Cerrone is the type of guy who will go for the kill at every moment of a fight, then blow his resulting bonus-check on a pontoon boat cooze-cruise. He’s not the kind of guy who will hold his tongue when he sees some bullshit go down, even when that bullshit is related to one of his Greg Jackson teammates.

During a recent fan Q&A session, Cowboy was asked about Jon Jones‘s refusal to fight Chael Sonnen at UFC 151 — which led to the unprecedented cancellation of that event — and what he would do if he were put in the same position. Cerrone racked his verbal shotgun and said the following:

“Yes, I’d have fought. They could call me tomorrow and ask me to fight. I think you need to fight. That’s our job. I don’t think you should curl up and find a way out. So yes, that’s my answer…He’s my teammate, and we have this discussion all the time. I said, ‘You should’ve done it.’ And he goes, ‘Well, you don’t make a million (dollars) to fight.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re right, but I f—ing fight every time with all my heart.’“

(Video courtesy of Joe Lauzon’s Youtube page)

UFC lightweight “Baby Joe” Lauzon, as MMA insiders know him, is one day away from the biggest fight of his career at UFC 155 but he’s still keeping fans plugged into his life and training camp with the latest installment of his video blogs. The world’s toughest nerd has released two vlogs thus far and will no doubt be releasing more after today’s weigh ins and tomorrow’s actual fight night.

For now, you can check out Lauzon on the last sparring day of his training camp, how he spent Christmas, his arrival to Las Vegas earlier this week and his final days of prep for the fight against Jim Miller. Also, “meet” Joe’s great grand father, father and camera-shy fiance and hear him talk about the time he crapped his pants. There may or may not also be a bit of head shaving.

That last part probably dissuaded you from watching. But if not, you’ll get access to one of the most fan-friendly and involved fighters in the UFC. Part three is above, parts one and two are after the jump.

If you were to ask someone like Tim Kennedy why so many fighters have been pulling out of their scheduled fights due to injury this year, he would likely tell you that more often than not, they were faking it. And while he would have at least one case to cite as an example, we’d still like to believe that 90% of the fighters who have gone down with injuries recently were being honest with us. Still, even BG was suspicious when Forrest Griffin withdrew from his UFC 155 contest with Phil Davis, because let’s be honest, it was a terrible matchup for him to begin with. FoGriff has repeatedly stated over the past year or so that his retirement from the sport was looming on the horizon, so one would imagine that he’d like to go out on a win, or at least a fight he saw as winnable heading into it.

Well, you’ll be happy (and disgusted) to know that Griffin wasn’t faking anything, unless by faking, you mean “intentionally taking a sledgehammer to his knee until he passed out from the pain.” Because if the above photo that Forrest tweeted on Christmas is indeed legitimate (and we’re not sure how it couldn’t be), then there is no way in hell he could have possibly faked the gruesome MCL and ACL injury he suffered in training.

(Sure, when Jade hangs out naked surrounded by photos of herself, it’s sexy, but when I do it, my neighbors call the cops.)

Here’s what we’ve learned about Bellator ring girl Jade Bryce in recent months:

1. She is a staunch supporter of the “No pants, no problem” policy when it comes to photo shoots. Seriously, there is not a problem on this Earth she wouldn’t attempt to solve by dropping trou, God bless her.

2. She could whip even the fattest of asses into tip top shape.

3. Her looks are only surpassed by her incredibly humble humanitarian efforts.

So with all that in mind, it makes sense that Jade — who has been nominated for “Ring Girl of the Year” at the 2012 Fighters Only World MMA Awards — will be auctioning off her plus one ticket for the event to the highest bidder in an effort to raise money for the children’s charity St. Jude’s. It’s an incredibly kindhearted move on Bryce’s part that deserves recognition, although if you ask us, the real charity here is that Bryce is willing to spend an evening being ogled at by someone like this while reminding them that “No, I will not demonstrate a proper triangle choke on you later tonight.”

(“Jon Jones can count on three things: Death, taxes, and Chael Sonnen whippin’ your ass.”/ Video via YouTube.com/UFC)

- Tim Kennedy Takes Shot At Fighters Who Pulled Out Of Strikeforce Bouts (Fightline)

- Dana White on Gay Fighter Liz Carmouche: ‘I Love What She Did’ (MMAFighting)

- Mata Leon’s Sexy New BJJ Kimono Ad (BloodyElbow)

- MMA’s Top 10 ‘Holy S#!t’ Moments of 2012 (BleacherReport)

- Check Out the 20-Second Fight That Almost Ended in a Double KO (MiddleEasy)

- Video: Reshat Mati, 13 Year Old MMA and Boxing Prodigy (FightDay)

- 5 Other Apocalypses That Didn’t Happen (Besides the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse) (EgoTV)

- The Quentin Tarantino Soundboard (Complex)

- 6 Supplements You Shouldn’t Be Skipping (MensFitness)

- The 50 Best Viral Videos of 2012 (WorldWideInterweb)

- RAW COMMENTARY: ‘Muppet Christmas Carol’ (ScreenJunkies)

- Adorable. (Facebook.com/CagePotato)