fired

 
(Look out, "The Manic Hispanic" is off his meds again.)

You might not have noticed this – and no one would blame you if you didn’t – but way down on the bottom of tomorrow night’s “UFC Fight For The Troops” card is a wacky little match-up between Justin “The Insane 1” McCully and Eddie “The Manic Hispanic” Sanchez.  And I swear to you I am not making those nicknames up. 

Neither of these guys has set the UFC heavyweight division on fire, with Sanchez going 3-2 and McCully going 1-1 in the organization.  Considering that they’re both about as marketable as mud gum, in addition to being two heavyweights who can’t even get on the televised portion of Wednesday night Spike TV card, I smell a good old-fashioned loser-gets-fired match. 

What’s weird is, they may not even realize it. Our friends at Fightlinker kicked themselves for missing this article on McCully, wherein he talks as if he’s just one or two victories away from a title shot.  He even tries to tell himself that coming in and fighting first Antoni Hardonk and then Gabriel Gonzaga was “probably the two toughest fights I’ve ever seen anybody have in the UFC.”

Sanchez similarly told UFC.com that he hopes to be in title contention by the middle of 2009.  Which means at some point between now and then he’d have to jump ahead of guys like Shane Carwin and Cain Velasquez and, hell, even Cheick Kongo.

I’m not saying it can’t happen for one of these guys, but they can’t both be contenders.  Whoever loses here is going to have a really hard time justifying his continued employment.  The only question is, who’s it gonna be?

(He's the one getting his ass kicked.)

Looks like the UFC was serious about that whole shedding dead weight thing: Travis Lutter has made history as the first Ultimate Fighter winner to get his contract shredded. Lutter made the announcement yesterday via a MySpace blog entry, which was later confirmed by FightTicker.com. The blog entry suggests that Lutter might have hit the bottle directly after getting the bad news:

I have been released from my UFC Contract.

Friday afternnon I was told by my manager that UFC matchmaker Joe Silza had left my him a message on his phone that I had been released from my UFC contract because of my 2 losses in a row.

And that's it. At the time of this writing, the post had accumulated eight "kudos."

Lutter made his Octagon debut at UFC 50 (10/22/04) with a knockout victory over Marvin Eastman, but lost his next two UFC matches against Matt Lindland and Trevor Prangley. After winning a couple of matches outside the Octagon, Lutter was chosen for The Ultimate Fighter 4 ("The Comeback"), where he defeated fellow middleweights Scott Smith and Pete Sell before submitting Patrick Côté via armbar in the final. But Lutter's been skating on thin ice since he failed to make weight for his championship match against Anderson Silva at UFC 67, causing the card's main event to be downgraded to an absolutely pointless non-title fight.

The last straw turned out to be his disappointing performance against Rich Franklin at UFC 83, where Lutter was so gassed by the second round that he barely had the energy to get to his feet after Franklin shook out of a leglock attempt. Following the loss, Lutter did an anger-venting interview with FightTicker where he notably said, "fans of this sport just suck...I definitely don’t fight for those people." Lutter had four fights left on his contract.

The question is, who will get the ax next? So far, the UFC's roster cuts are following a simple, cold logic: Boring fighting style + one or two losses + nobody likes you = fired. The most obvious upcoming win-or-leave matchup that comes to mind is Evan Tanner vs. Kendall Grove, which headlines the TUF 7 finale on June 21st. Tanner looked like a shell of his former self in his loss to Yushin Okami at UFC 82, and his personal stability is still a question mark; another loss for Grove would make it an unacceptable three in a row. But it would be very surprising if more cuts didn't take place before that. Any predictions?

All things must pass. And so it went with Tito Ortiz, who found himself on the business end of a "y'fiyahd" last night on Celebrity Apprentice. Coerced into leading Team Empresario by Omarosa (who knew the next losing project manager would likely get pink-slipped), Ortiz had to develop a four-page ad spread for Dove Yogurt Bodywash or some shit, with Omarosa, Trace Adkins, and Stephen Baldwin as his associates. Unfortunately, Ortiz was a bit lost on how to approach the challenge, and Baldwin stepped in as the team's de-facto leader, organizing a photo shoot that saw Trace seducing a hot model in a desert. It turned out surprisingly well, but Ortiz was a shifty, stammering mess when he was called on to present their work to a trio of Dove executives. Here's one line from his pitch:

"Of course we used Trace, the reason why we used Trace is the demographics that we did have were from ladies ranging from the age of 20, or excuse me, 30 to 59, which, uh, most country folk ladies that would love Trace's, uh...y'know, kinda push the product exactly."

And such as. He also pronounced perfect (adj.) as per-FECT, and risque as RISK-ay. In the end, the Dove execs picked Team Hydra's advertorial, which featured Carol Alt taking a bath and getting bitten, Marv Albert-style, by a male model. Thus, Ortiz was on the chopping block. And though Omarosa was called out for dodging a challenge that fit into her area of expertise (marketing, not washing), and Baldwin was criticized for being an overbearing prick who was directly responsible for their losing concept, the buck stopped at the project manager, and Tito was dunzo.

But Trump was so impressed with Ortiz's performance on the show that he gave the HBBB $50,000 anyway for his charity. He called Tito "really special" and "the best there is," which is strange because Ortiz honestly didn't do that well on the show; he never got a chance to show off his leadership skills or business acumen, and only lasted as long as he did by hiding behind the greater failures of others. It reminded me of that SNL sketch "The Sinatra Group" where Frank Sinatra (Phil Hartman) tells 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell (Chris Rock) "you don't need to work blue, kid, you got talent," and Rock is like "no, I really don't." I wish that video didn't cut off in the middle so you could actually see what I'm talking about.

"Issue #4: Milli Vanilli, what is this faggot crap?" Classic.