It’s in those establishments where fighters not only hone their skills, they also compete in smokers and unsanctioned underground fights which are a by-product of archaic lawmakers who refuse to legitimize the sport.
MMA opponents like Bob Reilly likely look at MMA gyms in the same light as his counterparts in Washington look at Al-Qaeda training camps.
The irony that fighters can legally train to break the law and trainers can supply them with the tools to commit such "crimes" in these locales is head-shakingly ludicrous, yet in 2010 we continue to fight for ordinance of a sport that is in essence, the oldest and purest form of competition known to man.
Our boy, KahL-One, has put together an incredible series of mini-documentaries about the thriving fight community in New York.
(Word Life? Nevermind. Cena is brilliant. He can communicate without the use of verbs, adjectives or pronouns.)
Before all the Pro Wrestling fanatics jump all over me for the title of this post, read the quote below, then take a deep breath and think about things in perspective.
Cena, who is a native of Newbury, Massachusetts, was asked about what he thought about the UFC coming to Boston last weekend, likely by an oblivious reporter ,who, like many mainstream scribes, think that MMA and WWE are just variations of the same acronym. Why else would you ask a wrestler to talk about a sport that has as much to do with his profession as hunting does to being a butcher?
Here’s Cena’s well thought out reply which likely earned him a bonus from Vince McMahon:
"It’s just not something that particularly interests me," Cena told The Boston Globe ahead of UFC 118. "UFC is where boxing was years ago, and I was never really into boxing, either."
In town for last night’s WWE "Monday Night Raw" at the TD Garden, Cena said he prefers professional wrestling because it’s "regulated entertainment that’s safe for anyone to enjoy." And UFC? "It is what it is," he said. "It can be pretty over the top, and it’s not something I’d want my children to watch."
(Funny, these quacks aren’t calling for a ban on hockey.)
When a syndicated story run in the majority of Canada’s newspapers begins with "Ladies and gentlemen; boys and girls; children of all ages! In this corner, weighing in at a staggering mass of popularity, we have the blood sport known as mixed-martial arts!"
Pause for applause.
"And, in our other corner, sporting a stethoscope and look of genuine consternation, we have . . . Canadian doctors!" it usually isn’t a positive story for the sport of MMA.
According to the report, the B.C. Medical Association held a caucus meeting and passed a resolution stating it wants the full-contact sport banned in Canada last month and now the body, which acts as the voice of doctors in B.C. is planning to bring that resolution to the Canadian Medical Association’s annual general meeting at Niagara Falls, Ont., from Aug. 23 to 25.
If the national group votes in favor of adopting the resolution, it will lobby the federal government to work with the provinces to bring an end to MMA contests in the country.
"We know there are a number of serious injuries that can occur, including broken limbs, lacerations and brain damage," said Dr. Ian Gillespie, president of the B.C. organization.
Apparently Gillespie doesn’t drive a car, ride a bike or walk down the street in the presence of traffic, since each of these activities carry similar inherent risks.
Seriously you guys, how many patently bad ideas can the mixed martial arts industry possibly support before it collapses inward on itself like a dying star? Answer: At least one more.
Props to the boys at MiddleEasy.com for pulling our coat to this thing, which frankly sounds like the worst proposal since Nick Cannon married Mariah Carey. It seems a couple of impresarios previously responsible for a video series called “Felony Fights” – which reportedly pits recently released prisoners against each other in what we can only imagine are incredibly gripping no rules fights – are bringing their singular promotional talents to MMA with an event called “Cage vs. Cons,” … and yeah, it’s exactly what you think it is: Professional MMA fighters battling ex-cons inside the cage.
(BJ painting a masterpiece in his preferred medium)
Looking around at the walls of my office, I’m reminded of a cold, hard reality: Most MMA artwork sucks.
That’s why I’m staring right now at a few framed MMA magazine covers and some vintage boxing posters, but no drawings or paintings of anything MMA-related. There just isn’t a hell of a lot cool stuff out there.
(“Go ahead and strap that black belt on right here, Deano.”)
Amid concerns this week that James Toney may not yet have signed his formal bout agreement to face Randy Couture at UFC 118, reports surfaced that the former boxing champion had tabbed one-time Xtreme Couture affiliate Dean Lister and Strikeforce light heavyweight champion Muhammed Lawal to help shore up his ground game. To this, I say: Bullshit. Toney might be rolling with Lister and Lawal a bit just to keep up appearances, but there’s no way he’s making an honest effort to learn to grapple.
Look, in his day James Toney was nothing short of an unmitigated badass. He was a guy who took on all-comers in numerous weight classes and more often than not came out on top. Even at his advanced age he can still hit very, very hard. But Toney has never, especially in recent years, been overly committed to training. The idea that he would suddenly attempt to augment his skill-set three months before his MMA debut is far-fetched. The notion that – even if he did – he could close the grappling gap on Couture in that short amount of time is, well, ludicrous.
(“Hey sweetheart, you ever seen the missing frames from the Zapruder film? Would you like to?”)
If MMA folks sometimes seem a little suspicious that The Man is out to get them it’s because there was a time in the sport’s short history when The Man really was out to get them, and not just in the Rampage-Jackson-on-the-55-Freeway kind of way. A number of factors, including efforts by finagling lawmakers to kill MMA in the late ’90s and the glut of misinformation about the sport that still percolates in many mainstream media reports, have created a bit of a bunker mentality among its hardcore supporters.
At this point, when events fall apart, judges issue hinky decisions or another fledgling organization goes under, some of us are all too quick to assume that it’s the work of sinister forces beyond our control. Whether true or not, MMA’s past is rife with rumors of secret plots, backroom deals and widespread collusion.
In light of that, here are CagePotato.com’s Top 10 MMA Conspiracy Theories. Many of them you’ve probably heard before, but perhaps a few will be new to you. Some are ludicrous, while others probably contain a kernel of truth. At least a few are enough to make a man question everything he thought he knew about life and the universe around him.
(Pictured, from right to left: Mike Whitehead, Tim Sylvia, unidentified plant.)
According to multiplesources, former UFC fighter and “Ultimate Fighter” contestant Mike Whitehead is being sought by Las Vegas police on sexual assault and drug charges. And when we say drug charges, we aren’t talking about a half-smoked joint and a couple of Percocet in the ashtray of his car. We’re talking about a full-scale marijuana growing operation, with about $500,000 worth of plants. And that’s in addition to, you know, the sexual assault thing.
Las Vegas police reportedly went to Whitehead’s house in the first place because of the sexual assault allegations, but while there they discovered the stockpile of marijuana plants. At that point we can only assume that the investigating officers simultaneously dropped their flashlights, turned to one another with mouths agape, and exclaimed, ‘Dude.’
Released in 2007, Sam Sheridan’s A Fighter’s Heart took readers across the globe and inside some of the best camps in the world to access and understand the physical realities of professional fighting. The captivating and often personal tale became a national best-seller, and now Sheridan has followed it up this year with The Fighter’s Mind, which delves into the psychology of competing through conversations with everyone from Randy Couture to top neuroscientists. Sheridan sat down with CagePotato.com to discuss his new book.
CAGEPOTATO.COM: What is this book, A Fighter’s Mind, about to you? SAM SHERIDAN: Well, A Fighter’s Mind sort of came out of conversations I had with the Victory Belt publishers, Erich Krauss and those guys. They had taken on fifteen or twenty contracts and they were looking for writers to help them. They said, “Hey, do you want to write one of these books?” Like BJ Penn’s “Book of Knowledge,” or whatever. I looked at it and said to myself, “You know, I’m not really interested in doing a technique book. There are plenty of questions I want to ask these guys. But most of these questions have to do with the mental game.”
I’m not really interested in Randy Couture’s Greco clinch trip takedown. I’m not so interested in diagramming the steps to that. I’m interested in Randy’s mental strength, and his ability to gameplan and his ability to stick to a gameplan. He can take a guy and put him the one place that, well, take the Gabe Gonzaga fight. Randy took Gonzaga the one place that he’s going to beat Gonzaga. I mean, anywhere else, Gonzaga is going to have his lunch, pretty much. He’s too big, he’s too fast, he’s too rough. But holding him against the cage, Gonzaga doesn’t know what to do and Randy basically drowns him right there, he just mashes him up. It was an amazing example of how having the right gameplan and sticking to it can allow you to beat somebody that should beat you.
So that was where it came from for me. I started thinking, “I can’t believe nobody has written this book. Why hasn’t somebody written this book?” It was a way to re-pay the fighters and my friends who had helped me in the first book, who are wondering about these things. Because I think a lot of guys wonder how Randy does his thing or how Marcelo Garcia thinks about Jiu Jitsu. A lot of people wonder that stuff but they don’t get a chance to ask it, so this was my gift back to fighters, friends and trainers that were so good to me in A Fighter’s Heart.
Please, Ciarán, e-mail us at feedback@cagepotato.com and tell us how exactly you have a hundred-point lead on the next closest competitor, this early in the game. There might be a free t-shirt in it for you.
And now for the shameless gloating part of this post. After BG and BF went head-to-head in a Palooka Pool, I (BG) am proud to say my picks were on-point enough to tie for first-place (!!!), while dickface over there tied for fourth. The other winners of Palooka Pool 30 #173 were: nine one siccness, Steve Rowbotham, James Cowley, Michael Aitken, GSPs Swollen Elbow and Torn Groin and Tim Prothero. Take an e-bow, fellas. And I should mention that there was one genius in the pool named James Berberich who managed to get every question wrong. I feel sorry for your mother, bro.
For those who fell short with their UFC 109 picks, you just have to dust yourself off and get back on the horse. Here’s what’s going on in FightPicker this week…
If you didn’t follow his pre-UFC career, you probably figured that Anderson Silva’s Octagon debut would be relatively competitive. Chris Leben was a dangerous brawler who had won five straight in the Octagon against solid competition, while Silva was…some sort of Brazilian from Japan, I guess? In actuality, the Spider was quickly becoming the most lethal striker in the business, and had spent the previous two years brutalizing guys like Lee Murray, Jorge Rivera, and Tony Fryklund as the middleweight champion of Cage Rage. So all that stuff the Crippler said about pressing the action against Silva, rough-neckin’ him, throwing him around, blasting him in the face, breaking his jaw, then sending him back to Japan where the competition’s a little easier? Oh my God, player. He might as well have been talking about how he was bringing the karate aspect back into jiu-jitsu — that’s how out of touch with reality he seemed, in retrospect.
Chances are, you’ve watched this clip a hundred times by now, so you know what happens next: Anderson Silva makes his name in the U.S. with one of the most flawless victories in MMA history and earns an immediate title shot against Rich Franklin, while Leben begins his slow drift out of relevance. And these days, all of Silva’s fights look like mismatches.
It was a classic matchup of skill vs. morbid obesity. The comically large son of legendary Brazilian scrapper Rei Zulu, Wagner da Conceicao Martins (aka "Zuluzinho") managed to build up a sizable undefeated record in vale tudo matches before joining PRIDE in 2005, where he mauled sumo wrestler Henry "Sentoryu" Miller in his debut. But things like size, pedigree, and professional record mean very little when you’re fighting Fedor Emelianenko. To the untouchable PRIDE heavyweight champion, Zuluzinho was nothing more than a giant punching bag.
In just 26 seconds, Fedor put ‘Zinho on his ass with an inhumanly fast left hook, abused him on the ground a bit, knocked him back down with a right as soon as the giant got to his feet, then went into beastmode until Zuluzinho tapped from the onslaught. This fight proved once and for all that "big and slow" is not the best combination for beating Fedor. If only Hong-Man Choi and Tim Sylvia got the message in time.
(It’s a girl! You can tell because of the bow stuck to her head!)
As much as we like to bust Matt Hughes‘ chops about being the Fox News of MMA fighters, Cage Potato would like to extend our sincere congratulations and warm wishes to him and his new baby daughter, Katelyn Mae Hughes, born this past Saturday morning. Actually, maybe the congratulations are more for his wife, Audra Hughes, since she did all the hard work. Matt presumably stood by the hospital bed and shouted at her that she ‘has to want it,’ until the doctors finally kicked him out of the delivery room.
We’re not going to pretend to know what it’s like to be a girl growing up in the Hughes household, but we are going to go ahead and speculate that it will probably be tough to get a date when all the boys in school are scared to go to your house and pick you up. If that’s not bad enough, even when you ace your chemistry test you’ve got Georges St. Pierre‘s kids dropping by to say they aren’t impressed with your performance, and Matt Serra‘s kids fist-pumping in your face at the homecoming dance. Stay strong, Katelyn.
(Just imagine the disappointed faces on Christmas morning…)
This is an actual Chuck Liddell baseball cap in an actual dollar store (see, I wasn’t kidding about that) in Missoula, Montana. I photographed it myself earlier today, but only after overhearing the following conversation between a father and his petulant pre-pubescent son:
Dad: Hey, look. It’s an Iceman hat. You love the Iceman!
(Askren’s most recent fight vs. Matt Delanoit, 8/28/09. Props: Pure Fight.)
Ben Askren was a four-time All-American wrestler at the University of Missouri and an Olympic hopeful at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. He came home without a medal, his dreams temporarily dashed, and has since turned his focus toward MMA, racking up a 3-0 record in smaller promotions. But now the former wrestling standout has signed on to compete in Bellator’s welterweight tournament in the spring of 2010, though that doesn’t mean he’s forgetting all about his goals in the world of wrestling. Far from it, in fact. He seems to think he can someday be the best in the world at both MMA and wrestling, and nobody can talk him out of it.
CagePotato.com: You’re one of the more well known wrestlers. You were a two-time national champ at Missouri and you got a lot of press heading into the Olympics. What made you decide to sign with Bellator?
It’s the best offer I had right now. They made me a good offer and they said they’d let me keep wrestling on the side, so that played a big part in my decision.
You know you’re a big deal when Frank Shamrock is handling color commentary for your striking drills. Herschel Walker‘s MMA debut is slated for next month, and even though his opponent is still TBA, Strikeforce decided to shoot some footage of the former football star working out at American Kickboxing Academy to prove that he can hit pads without injuring himself. Of course, this tells us nothing about the ground skills that he may or may not be picking up, but hey, those roundhouse kicks look pretty sharp for a 47-year-old. Tickets for Strikeforce: Miami go on sale to the general public tomorrow at Ticketmaster; as of now, no matchups have been officially announced, so purchase at your own risk.
Polish strongman Mariusz Pudzianowski will test his power against something other than inanimate objects this Friday night, as he takes on pro boxer Marcin "El Testosteron" Najman at KSW 12 in Warsaw, Poland. It will be the MMA debut for both men, but neither is a novice to the fight game in general. Pudzianowski has done a little karate and some amateur boxing (though you’d never know it from the above training video) and Najman is 13-4 as a boxer. But if he thinks Pudzianowski is just going to stand there like an immobile mass of muscle and bronzer, he better think again. As M-Pud told Fight Magazine:
“If Najman wants to exchange punches with me I wish him luck. I won’t be as slow as an ox and I won’t let him beat me up. My mother didn’t raise me to be a bum. These hands can hurt; believe me.”
You know what really intimidates and confuses opponents? Telling them all the things you’re not going to do. Also, whose mother raises them to be a bum? That’s just terrible parenting. After the jump, now that you’ve seen Pudzianowski lumbering around the ring with boxing gloves on, check out what this Najman character can do with his fists. The strongman might be in trouble here…
"Let me ask you a question. Do you think that there’s any guy we can’t get that I want? Other than Fedor [Emelianenko]? So far, he’s been the one guy we can’t get. But everyone else that we’ve wanted, we got. If I wanted Dan Henderson, I could’ve signed him…
For the money he wanted, he’s not worth it. He’s not a big pay-per-view star, he’s not a big attraction, and he’s not going to sell out arenas. He wants way too much and he doesn’t bring anything to the table…I could care less. Here’s the reality: If I wanted him, he’d be in the UFC. It’s not like, ‘F***, Strikeforce beat me out.’ He’s been a free agent for a long time. If I wanted him, I would have signed him by now."
I wanted to let my fans know that I’m going to come back to the UFC & finish my contract. Not because the haters are talking shit about me being scared of Rashad or Titties or anybody else. I’m coming back for my fans & to shut Rashad’s mouth up & shut Dana’s mouth up. Then after that I’m going back to doing movies & I might do a boxing match once a year just to stay in shape. Hate on dis!
You know, it’s easy to dismiss San Do as a crackpot gimmick created by mentally handicapped people. (See also: Xtreme Arm Wrestling, Kung Fu Football) But watching this promo trailer for a new three-man MMA league, I can’t help but wonder if "Triple Warrior Combat" could be the future of the sport. Think about it: MMA is popular because human beings — particularly dudes in the 18-34 age range — have a weird compulsion to watch people fight. (Remember Dana White’s four corners analogy?) And fight promoters have always assumed that one guy vs. one guy is the smartest way to do things — and it is, without question. But is a fight between two people inherently more interesting than fights involving three or more people?
In other words, which would you rather see: This Saturday’s lightweight tilt between Frank Edgar and Matt Veach, or an out-of-control Russian supermarket brawl? To me, San Do seems like an attempt to regulate street fights and present them to paying audiences. People love street fights. Who knows what the combat sports landscape will look like in another 20 years, but I won’t be surprised if a multiple-combatant league becomes a legitimate option for fight fans. All I know is, one day there will be an undefeated heavyweight champion of beating-two-guys-at-the-same-time, and you will not want to fuck with this man.
Okay, as far as we can tell, the above images are not photoshopped. At a recent media appearance somewhere in the Old Country, Fedor Emelianenko set aside his usual pastel stripes for a brand-new Daffy Duck sweater with matching Daffy Duck jeans, courtesy of Lot 29. I don’t even know how to interpret this. Is it a public "F U" to all us Internet knuckleheads who are obsessed with the Glorious Sweater of Absolute Victory? Did he find it at a Salvation Army, and figure "hey, it fits, so why not"? Or does he genuinely love Looney Tunes and ugly sleeves? Considering Fedor’s drawings, his child-like tastes shouldn’t surprise us. And yet here we are, dumbfounded.
On a far-less-important note, Fedor’s November 7th bout with Brett Rogers may have been the most watched MMA fight in history. According to a new press release sent out by M-1 Global and Strikeforce, the fight was viewed by over 25 million fans worldwide, including 16 million in Russia, 5.46 million in the U.S., and millions more in South Korea, Japan, China, Latin America, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ukraine, Finland, Africa, Turkey, Israel, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Malta. Said M-1 Global CEO Joost Raimond: "All early accounts and indications tell us that ‘Fedor vs. Rogers’ delivered worldwide more than any other MMA show in the history of the sport."
So did you guys do anything crazy this weekend? Like, maybe beat the shit out of half the guest-list at a porn star’s birthday party? No? Well, you’ll never believe this, but that’s exactly what MMA tabloid hero War Machine did on Saturday night. Multiple reports are coming in, so we’ll try to piece this together from what we have…
— Things quickly turn south when War allegedly punches his girlfriend, Alanah Rae, then drags her outside. This part of the story is hazy because although Terez Owens reports that Rae personally confirmed with him that War Machine decked her, she later went on Twitter to deny it. Still, there seems to be no difference in opinion over what happened next…
(Don’t worry, buddy, Cory Booker has done wonders with the murder rate.)
If MMA Fanhouse is to be believed, Georges St. Pierre‘s next welterweight title defense against Dan Hardy won’t go down in Canada, Las Vegas, or the U.K. According to a source with knowledge of the situation, the scrap will instead go down in March at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. It would be the UFC’s first visit to Jerz since UFC 78. Fanhouse offers the only possible explanation:
With neighboring New York likely to host a crucial vote on MMA sanctioning in 2010, the UFC’s visit next door could also serve as a lobbying tool, giving New York legislators an up-close look at the organization and its financial impact in bringing an MMA fight night to the state.
Following UFC 105, Hardy told reporters "I’ll fight [GSP] in Canada, in Vegas, in the U.K., on the moon, in a phone box on the corner, in the car park. As long as he brings his belt along for me to take off, I don’t really mind. This is a great opportunity and I’ll fight him anywhere." He then added, "Well, anywhere but Newark, obviously. Good Lord, man, have you seen that place?"*
* Clarification: Hardy didn’t actually say this last bit. Our apologies to any Brick City residents who took this seriously…
Kim was NEVER training MMA before she met Randy. Even if I married Randy (being at the "level" I am now) it would NEVER make me a world class Greco Roman wrestler lmfao thru marriage.
Kim has gone on record numerous times saying she "built" the Couture name/brand & it was nothing b4 her. Kim was interviewed post "sparring" with Wand Silva saying, "Silva had to turn it UP, when I turned it up" lol believing that she was actually making Wand spar HARD. She has said "it’s really hard for Randy to pass my rubber guard" lol believing that her "guard" can keep the ICON away. Kim had lunch w some ladies from the XC gym b4 her fight. She had some lip augmentation done. Girls askd howd it affect her fight? Kim said, "It would not. I dont get hit in sparring OR when I fight. I have a ‘black style’ when it comes to boxing". That is word for word and it blew me away lol Kim has "improved everywhere" and has taken 3 weeks off from training in a year…yet lookd like she has been training for 3 weeks, total.
In the 17 months that Josh Thomson has been Strikeforce’s lightweight champion, he has defended his title exactly zero times. His only fight since grabbing the belt from Gilbert Melendez in June 2008 was a non-title squash match against Ashe Bowman last September, and he hasn’t been able to compete at all this year due to a series of leg injuries. And even though a planned rematch with now-interim-champ Melendez has been canceled three timesalready, Strikeforce is rolling the dice again. According to GracieFighter, Thomson vs. Melendez II will go down at "Evolution," Strikeforce’s December 19th show at the HP Pavilion in San Jose.
Despite being constantly jerked around by Thomson’s withdrawals, Melendez has been able to fight twice since last June, scoring stoppage victories over Rodrigo Damm and Mitsuhiro Ishida. The Ishida fight at Carano vs. Cyborg avenged Melendez’s first career loss; beating Thomson would clean his slate completely. With Thomson coming off a year-and-a-half of injuries and inactivity, you have to like El Niño’s chances. The current lineup for Strikeforce: Evolution looks like this…
As Dana White pondered when Walker’s Strikeforce signing was first announced: "Which athletic commission is going to let this guy fight? Who the fuck are they going to find to fight Herschel Walker? A guy in a wheelchair?” We now know the answer to the first question is "Florida," the state that previously signed off on Kimbo Slice vs. Ken Shamrock at the same venue last October. As for Dana’s other hypotheticals, we hope that Herschel Walker’s opponent has some kind of disability, considering that Walker has only been training in MMA since last month, and it wouldn’t really be fair to make him fight a guy who has both fighting experience and the use of all of his limbs. I mean, if Strikeforce really wants to put Walker against Fedor Emelianenko in the spring, they’d better give him a beatable first opponent.
“Karo’s had some problems with an addiction to pain medicine due to an injury he sustained a few years ago. Then when he started having these anxiety problems, it didn’t seem like the anxiety pills were helping him. The only thing that was helping him was the pain medication that he had been taking for his injuries. That’s when he just started down that slope. It’s just one of those situations where you have two guys that sit down to have a drink, and you have one guy that can go home and he’s fine, and the other guy has to go out and get wasted every single time because he’s an alcoholic. I think that maybe with the pills, that Karo is the second guy. Maybe he’s the guy that can’t take them here and there, or can’t use them effectively…
He told me that he was on pain medicine, but he wanted to get off. He had a plan and he was working his way to get off of it. About a month ago he was taking about half the amount that he usually does and he was pretty optimistic. He was really trying to push it. He was going through some withdrawals and he would try to push it as hard as he could to get off the stuff. He really had a plan to be off three weeks prior to the fight and he really wanted to clean up. He really wanted to do this right. It was really important to him and his family. I hadn’t spoken to him for just a little bit, and I guess he tried, but he couldn’t.
(Antonio Rogerio Nogueira vs. Dan Henderson, 4/23/05)
Of the 22 fighters testing their fates on Saturday night, three of them will be stepping into the Octagon for the first time — but don’t expect these guys to crack under the pressure. Read on to meet the MMA veterans and submission experts who will be trying to make dominant first impressions at "Ortiz vs. Griffin II"…
ANTONIO ROGERIO NOGUEIRA (LHW) Experience: 17-3 record, with notable victories over Dan Henderson, Alistair Overeem (twice), Kazushi Sakuraba, and Vladimir Matyushenko (in January, which avenged his first career loss). Has won his last five fights, most recently submitting Dion Staring via triangle choke in May. Will be facing:Luis Cane (10-1 with 1 no-contest, 3-1 UFC) Lowdown: Whether you know him better as "Minotoro" or "Lil’ Nog," there’s a good chance you’re already aware of Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira’s twin brother. The 33-year-old veteran of PRIDE, Affliction, and Sengoku has had a decorated career dating back to March 2001, and is considered by many to be one of the ten best light-heavyweights in the world right now. Though Antonio Rogerio comes from a BJJ background like his bro (who he trains with at Black House), four of his last six wins have come via TKO, and he won a bronze medal in boxing at the 2007 Pan American Games. Minotoro hasn’t lost a fight since his shock-upset KO defeat against Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou at PRIDE 33, nearly three years ago. Says Rogerio of his UFC debut: “For more than three years, UFC was my goal and now I’m just very happy to be here in the best event. The UFC has the best talent in the world, and I feel like now I’m going to be challenged like I’ve never been challenged before in my career…The fans can expect to see a very well-trained and well-prepared athlete who’s very focused and determined to win."
BISMARCK, N.D. — UFC President Dana White said Monday that heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar is recovering from a bacterial infection in his intestinal tract. "He’s in stable condition and should be released soon," UFC President Dana White said.
Asked if Lesnar was in a Bismarck hospital, White said, "I think he is," but did not want to say which hospital because he wanted to protect Lesnar’s privacy.
White said he is encouraging Lesnar to check into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for further treatment. He also said he did not know if the 32-year-old South Dakota native will fight again. "It depends on how serious this is," White said…
Heads up: WEC 44 goes down next Wednesday in Las Vegas, with featherweight champ Mike Brown defending his belt against terrifying knockout artist Jose Aldo, who has ended all five of his appearences in the WEC via highlight-reel stoppage; his last opponent, Cub Swanson, lasted all of eight seconds. But is Mike Brown scared? Nah. "He’s never faced the caliber of fighter that I am," Brownie says. "It’s not gonna be an easy fight of course, but if I do my thing, I’m gonna win the fight." Check out the full lineup here.
Though Renzo has had a long career in vale tudo and MMA, this would be the first time he competes in the venue that his family made famous. However, he hasn’t fought at all since his disqualification win against Frank Shamrock at EliteXC: Destiny in February 2007. By comparison, Matt Hughes’s last appearance was his unanimous decision over Matt Serra in May.
At 42 years old, Renzo nicely falls into that beatable aging legends category of opponent that Hughes is currently pursuing, at the expense of more meaningful fights against those AKA jokesters. We wouldn’t say Hughes vs. Gracie (Not That Gracie) is a bigger fight than Hughes vs. Swick, but it definitely gives Matt a better chance of retiring gracefully. And in the end, isn’t that what we all want?
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