Olympics

The good people at famed gentleman's magazine Playboy have an interview with UFC prez Dana White in their September issue (which drops Friday, August 15) and one of the more interesting nuggets to come out of it are White's remarks on what torpedoed the HBO deal:

“I pulled the plug at the 23rd hour. HBO was pi**ed off… I would have had to sell out, literally. They would have owned the UFC… I took meetings with HBO’s boxing guys. I’ll tell you, if I had to hear one more time about how many fu**ing Emmys they had won, I was going to dive out the window. I said ‘You won a bunch of Emmys, but I’m kicking your a** on pay-per-view."

Awesome. Do I believe Dana White actually said that to HBO executives? Not really, but it's still a good story. As much as people criticized him for not making the HBO deal happen, you have to respect his desire to maintain his autonomy, even if it means not blowing up big time with HBO's Emmy factory.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Dana White interview if he didn't bash Tito Ortiz:

(Props: MMA Scraps)

When we wrote about American judoka Ryan Reser and his plea for more love from MMA fans, some of you responded with disappointment that there wasn't a lot of judo on tap during NBC's Olympic coverage. Here's a clip courtesy of Korean TV and, no matter what Reser says, I don't see it catching on the way MMA did. Maybe it's just me, but the most exciting part of these clips is the announcers losing their minds during the brief bursts of action. Anyway, you people said you wanted to see it. So soak it up, jerks.

Randy Couture was featured in Wednesday night's episode of Biography, which covered the Natural's fatherless upbringing, his background in wrestling, his four failed attempts to make the U.S. Olympic team, his transition from wife #1 to wife #2 to wife #3, his discovery of mixed martial arts, and his championship successes. The documentary suffers from a lack of approved UFC footage — hence all the random IFL and Pancrase clips — but it's a good way to learn about Couture's backstory if you aren't already a Randy fanatic. Check out the full video above; props to MMA Scraps.

Ryan Reser (above, right) is said to be one the United States' best hopes in judo at this summer's Olympics in Beijing, but apparently that doesn't mean he isn't still chapped about judo being largely ignored in the U.S. while MMA enjoys a growing a fan base. From a story in yesterday's New York Times:

“It blows me away and upsets me because we’re not to that level,” he said at the Olympic judo trials in Las Vegas. “We’ve been doing a lot of that stuff all along. Not the punching and kicking, but the arm bars and chokes.”

[...]

Reser is hoping that the M.M.A. crowd will watch judo during the Olympics. He said the similarity between the two sports would lend to natural crossover appeal. And maybe get some athletes intrigued by the M.M.A. cage wearing a gi.

“We’re just not a very big sport,” he said. “We have a lot of judo, but it’s spread across the United States. It’s hard for us to get partners and news coverage. We’re hoping we can get more interest in judo.”

This is the second time in the recent lead-up to the Olympics that we've heard a judo-lover expressing frustration over the lack of interest in the sport stateside. First it was Karo Parisyan, and now Reser, who says he's taken up training with some MMA fighters to learn a few new tricks. I'm not going to point out that the issue of "crossover appeal" for an Olympic sport that incorporates one aspect of MMA only reinforces my belief that MMA (which incorporates all the aspects of MMA) should be an Olympic sport all its own.

Instead, I'm going to hypothesize that crossover appeal is never the issue with the Olympics. Not really.

(Unfortunately, his fight with "Da Spyder" won't be a pick-axe death-match.)

— Fedor Emelianenko recently carried the Olympic torch in St. Petersburg. There were no survivors.

— In a match where the loser may have to re-think their current career path, Kendall Grove and Evan Tanner have been booked to face each other at the Ultimate Fighter 7 finale on June 21st in Las Vegas. Grove, the middleweight winner from the third season of TUF, has dropped back-to-back contests against Patrick Cote and Jorge Rivera, while Tanner has lost three of his last four UFC matches, most recently a second-round KO loss to Yushin Okami at UFC 82. By the way, Tanner's blog is back up, after being taken down temporarily in the wake of his gambling bender post.

— Kenny Florian will join Mike Goldberg in the broadcast booth at UFC 83 (April 19th, Montreal), filling in for Joe Rogan, who will be unable to attend due to previous obligations. We look forward to a new voice constantly correcting Goldberg, as well as less references to the "rape choke."

— Kim Couture won her first MMA match on Saturday in Portland, Oregon, taking care of Jessica Cruz via ground-and-pound TKO at 1:43 of the third round. "It was a good fight for Kim because Cruz was scrappy," Randy Couture said. "You don't want your first fight to be too easy, but you don't want to be over your head either. It was a perfect first fight." Speaking of Randy, he addressed his future in a new interview with MMAMadness, saying "More than likely, I will end up signing with HDNet and Affliction. Realistically, that is the best option."

— In his first match since his back exploded during Strikeforce at the Dome in February, Joe Riggs will headline Phoenix Fight: Street Justice on April 26 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, facing Mike Gates (5-3-1). Gates is a natural welterweight, and the match will be fought at a catchweight of 180 lbs.

— You know that skinny, nerdy looking new UFC ref who handled the Hamill/Boetsch and Maynard/Edgar fights at UFN 13? Well, apparently he has an open marriage.