greasing

(Photo courtesy of Strikeforce.)

As first reported by f4wonline.com and confirmed by FiveOuncesofPain, members of Mitsuhiro Ishida's camp have issued a verbal complaint to the California State Athletic Commission that Gilbert Melendez was illegally greased up during their fight at Saturday's Strikeforce event. Melendez defeated Ishida by third-round TKO in a one-sided match marked by Melendez's flawless counter-punching and takedown defense. During their first meeting in 2007, Ishida was able to control Melendez with his takedowns and grappling, which could explain why Ishida thought something didn't feel right in San Jose. Melendez, of course, dismissed the charges as ludicrous, telling Sherdog:

Ishida has until the end of the week to file a formal complaint in writing if he wants to further pursue the charge. As we've seen in the past, greasing accusations can be effective if you're Japanese, and the guy who beat you is Korean, and the fight took place in Japan. It's a lot harder to find sympathy in the U.S., even when you have an entire music video's worth of evidence.

I spoke to Kenny Florian last week for this SportsIllustrated.com article on the effects of the dreaded “Octagon jitters,” and naturally our conversation turned to his upcoming UFC lightweight title fight against B.J. Penn at UFC 101.  When I asked about Penn’s claims that Florian had warned him of potential “greasing” by Georges St. Pierre before their UFC 94 superfight, Florian did his best to downplay the dust-up.

“I’m not sure what that was.  Maybe it was a miscommunication, after what I had said about Roger Huerta.  Maybe it was head games on his part.  Maybe he genuinely believes that.  I don’t really know.  But I have a lot of respect for B.J.  I think he’s a proud champion.  I think he worked hard for that fight against Georges, and he just wasn’t able to deliver.  That can be hard to deal with.  I think that loss hurt him.”

Hey everybody, look who has a sense of humor!  Responding to renewed Lubrigate allegations, Georges St. Pierre admits that he did cheat, only not by greasing up his body.  Instead, he hired some long-hair to kiss B.J. Penn on his way down to the Octagon and sap all his strength before the fight even started.  That devious French-Canadian.

GSP also insists that his best revenge against B.J. Penn now would be to "'elp Kenny Florian to kick ‘ees ass.”  Or maybe he can just keep Penn tied up in hearings and out of the gym all the way to fight time.  Although judging from how he talks about the outcome of this week’s hearings, it seems as if GSP is under the impression that he won.  I guess that’s kind of true, in the sense that he didn’t lose.  Maybe his legal representatives are giving GSP a simplified account of what happened at the NSAC.  That's probably for the best.  The guy doesn't want to hear all the back and forth.  Just tell him 'we won!' and he'll sleep better.

(Props: Cage Writer)

So you want B.J. Penn to stop his courageous fight for truth, justice, and a no contest?  That probably means you’re a bad person who hates MMA.  Bummer.  Penn continues to frame this as a crusade to clean up the sport, which would be great.  But odds are the UFC is still not going to give him that "fair fight" rematch he wants.  And maybe he should be thankful for that.

(From All Elbows, via Fightlinker)

King Mo tries to entertain himself while he waits for his Sengoku bout.  I have to admit that it’s refreshing to see how much pleasure he gets out of old episodes of “Martin,” but when he starts telling the Japanese media how much he loved pro wrestling as a kid and mentions both The Ultimate Warrior and “Ravishing” Rick Rude as favorites, that’s where I get suspicious.  How can you like both guys, Mo?  Don’t you know they were mortal enemies?!  Just ask Bobby “The Brain” Heenan.  He’ll tell you.

(Welcome to the world, Jameson twins.  You're screwed.)

Tito Ortiz and Jenna Jameson have put the unfathomable power of their two super-brains to work and come up with names for their newborn twins: Jesse and Journey Jett. 

You know, considering who their parents are, I’d say these kids got off pretty easy.  Although it is a bit of a screw-job to give one kid a normal name and then name the other after a band that won’t even be ironically cool anymore by the time they’re in junior high.  But hey, as long as they’re both carrying around the illustrious Jameson surname neither one of them is going to be lacking in emotional baggage.

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