MMA: Mixed martial arts

By Staff “MMA is harder than K-1, well that’s really a comparison if any K-1 fighters step with me in the cage or the ring under MMA rules, nobody would last more than three minutes so if you make that comparison, I’m 100% true. If I would win the K-1 everybody would be embarrassed? I don’t know, I’ve bee...

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By Staff Every fighter that fights in The Ultimate Fighter, yeah, they’re good, you know, they can be considered the best at what they do. The biggest challenge for Dana White this season on The Ultimate Fighter was to try to build up Kimbo Slice after all the horrible things he said about him in the me...

By Staff The school that I was going to at first was uh it had like a lot of stuff going on, you can do hip hop dancing, you can do breakdancing, you can do uh kickboxing, American kickboxing. Uh, so I was doing uh some martial arts over there for my breakdancing so I was doing martial arts for my breakdanci...

By Zach Arnold The way UFC uses bonuses to pay off fighters came to light in a big way a couple of years ago when the organization had a very public feud with Randy Couture. Couture talked about shower room bonuses and UFC in turn produced receipts showing how much they paid Couture in bonuses. It got ugly very...

By Zach Arnold “Yeah, listen, Koscheck’s in the mix. I said it to open this thing I was you know I was impressed with everybody here tonight, you know, this is the first time the American fans have seen Nogueira fight, he looked awesome you know everybody knows how good Luiz Cane is, you know Koscheck, Kosch...

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By Jim Genia Another November weekend, another MMA offering, this time with UFC 105 broadcast live from England on SpikeTV. In the main event, aging veteran Randy Couture headlines with a light-heavyweight match-up against on-again/off-again stud Brandon Vera, but the real meat and potatoes is t...

By Jim Genia Also impressive was West Coast submission specialist Luke Rockhold. Taking on the more experienced UFC and TUF veteran Jesse Taylor, Rockhold found himself defending takedowns early and in danger when Taylor almost took his back. But a reversal to a scramble and Rockhold was suddenly ba...

By Jim Genia If you’re reading this, odds are you already know who Fedor Emelianenko is. If you’ve watched a non-UFC fight show, Googled “best pound-for-pound fighter”, or even just scanned any MMA website out there, the Russian heavyweight’s name has had to have come up. Fedor is the best, the destroy...

By Zach Arnold There are a lot of interesting quotes from Paulson during this interview, including his unique defense of Brock Lesnar after railing against coaches and fighters lacking integrity and respect in the MMA business today. MATTHEW KAPLOWITZ: “So, do you think that having a traditional mar...

By Jim Genia Hopefully, if there is ever another TUF season with heavyweights, we’ll have better. But that’s doubtful. Any capable heavyweight out there would likely already be under contract – with the UFC, with Strikeforce, with one of the promotions in Japan – and the resulting depleted talent poo...

By Zach Arnold In a recent interview with MMA Fanhouse (m m a . f a n h o u s e . c o m), Brandon “The Truth” Vera talked about his upcoming fight with Randy Couture at UFC 105 (November 14th in Manchester, United Kingdom). The fight will air on Spike TV on a delay. Here is a transcript of the Vera interview with Fanhous...

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By Zach Arnold On the idea of pushing guys like Jake Shields and Scott Smith instead of gimmicks and ‘big name stars’: “You’re telling me? You’re speaking, you’re preaching to the choir. Jake Shields is a world-class fighter. If you got a fighter of that ability at 185 or 170, you take him, you promote him, y...

By Zach Arnold Thompson drew much more media attention than other fighters on the card. He was asked by one reporter if he viewed the fight with Overeem as something that gave him more motivation because Overeem was the Strikeforce champion and Thompson is a Strikeforce fighter.

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By Jim Genia Light-heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida, heretofore believed to possess an aura of invincibility, lost that aura thanks to Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. And Rua, at one time believed the best light-heavyweight in the world from his performances in Pride, lost his UFC 104 match-up against the c...

By Zach Arnold Yushin Okami has long been a UFC Middleweight who has drawn sympathetic heat online for continuing to get shafted to UFC undercards because of his boring fight style. In a real sport, it doesn’t matter if someone is boring but as long as they continue to win. Well, Okami put the UFC promoters [......

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By Zach Arnold Before the UFC 104 fight, Rothwell was arrogant in comments he made about how good he was and what he was going to do in the fight against a superior amateur wrestler like Velasquez. He might want to ask Kimbo Slice about Roy’s ability to take fights to a decision.

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By Zach Arnold DANA WHITE: “It’s huge. The things all lined up to be here and uh in LA and have him fighting, you know and now it’s up to him to win, I think that uh you know the Mexican community loves their fighters, man, and uh they’ve never had a Heavyweight champion. This guy can be the first Heavyweight cham...

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By Zach Arnold RON KRUCK: “Randy, you return to the Octagon at UFC 105 November 14th and will drop down to the Light Heavyweight division for the first time since 2006. Why did you decide to do that?” RANDY COUTURE: “Oh c’mon, I can fight 10 more years, Ron!”

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By Jim Genia Joe Stevenson is good at takedowns but bad at absorbing punishment on the feet. Spencer Fisher is bad at avoiding takedowns but really good at delivering punishment on the feet. What will that translate into at UFC 104? Either “Big Daddy” is going to execute the most boring lay-and-pray eve...

By Zach Arnold Shane Carwin: “Uh, you know, I’m hoping to knock Brock out and you know get my hand raised at the end and the new heavyweight champion of the world you know in the UFC, that’s you know it’s going to be a great feeling and you know be able to salute the fans.”

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By Zach Arnold “Well first and foremost Junie isn’t your typical fighter, you know, he came to me and he has some mental issues he has to deal with and we have to work on together, you know, he suffers from severe depression, he’s bi-polar, so we have to get that in check first,” said Tompkins in an interview...

By Zach Arnold “You know that’s not my decision obviously stepping away, I do know that Randy Couture has a lot of options. I mean he’s Randy Couture. Um, and will it be successful without me, absolutely. I mean, when I was over at Xtreme Couture, I was just a piece in the puzzle.”

By Zach Arnold Is Kimbo damaged goods? And speaking of another fighter at an older age trying to learn the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, Strikeforce is ready to promote Herschel Walker for this December or January in a fight. Aren’t you excited, Mr. White?

By Zach Arnold “I’m going to continue to practice MMA. That’s very embarrassing as a fighter of my calibur, a world-class athlete, to show a display like that but when I come back to challenge again for MMA, I’m going to be a much better MMA fighter. I’m sure standing up, no MMA fighter can do anything with me. I...

By Zach Arnold If there’s one pattern we’ve seen with foreign fighters in DREAM, it’s that they all hate Japanese referees. Some fighters express themselves a certain way about it (like Bob Sapp) and others don’t say much (like Joachim Hansen). Put Joe Warren in the Bob Sapp category.

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By Zach Arnold UFC President Dana White has been very critical of Strikeforce signing Walker to an MMA contract. Walker addressed the criticisms during his ESPN interview. Dana White, in a recent interview with u l t m m a . c o m, reacted to Walker’s comments about him on ESPN.

By Zach Arnold We’ve seen brutal fights before in the UFC in their heavyweight division, but Kimbo Slice vs. Roy Nelson was a terrible fight to watch and probably did more damage to Nelson’s image than Kimbo’s. However, you wouldn’t know that given the spin that’s being pushed on the MMA forums, the blogs,...

By Zach Arnold A decade later and Mixed Martial Arts is the new fad for athletes, active and retired, who want to show that they still are bad asses to the public. Last week, Strikeforce announced that 47-year old Herschel Walker would fight for the promotion in early 2010. Bob Cook, who helps run the ship at...

By Jim Genia In the heavyweight match-up between K-1 kickboxer Ray Sefo and UFC veteran Kevin Jordan, things didn’t quite go as either man planned. Jordan wisely wasted no time taking Sefo down in the opening frame, and he spent the duration on top sticking knuckles in the kickboxer’s face. But in Round...

By Jim Genia Stuck between Strikeforce’s “Carano vs. Cyborg” epic and November’s “Gurgel vs. Evangelista” and “Fedor vs. Rogers” double-header, Friday’s Strikeforce Challengers may seem meager. But for those who like wrestlers – and wrestlers and wrestlers – it might be worth it to tune in.

By Jim Genia In his last two bouts with the now-defunct Affliction promotion, Belfort ventured down to middleweight to add a pair of nasty KOs to his record at the expense of Terry Martin and Matt Lindland. It was a glimpse of the “old Vitor”, and the prospect of a drive down Middleweight Lane has served t...

By Zach Arnold There are many in the media who are trying to frame this with the lazy storyline of UFC vs. boxing. UFC President Dana White is taking advantage of this. White, in a video put on YouTube with a chroma key screen hyping up Franklin/Belfort, trashed Mayweather and disrespected Marquez as a no-na...

By Zach Arnold Despite being the UFC Heavyweight champion, Brock Lesnar is a man who has a lot of people gunning for him in the MMA business. Every time you read an article about another fighter talking about him, it’s almost as if Lesnar is looked upon as this cancerous tumor on the business. It doesn’t [...]

By Kal Thompson Professional MMA fighters are not only among the best trained and most highly skilled athletes in the world, but (as a whole) they are currently counted as the most personable and fan-friendly. While early MMA fighters such as Royce Gracie and Bas Rutten helped to put this sport on the map,...

By Staff How does Boxing compare to MMA? What will the bout order be? ROY JONES JR: We are going to mix them up till the main event fight. We’ll do an MMA event then a boxing match then an MMA fight then a boxing match. Would you fight Anderson Silva? On MMA…

By Paul Kocoras Does this signal an end to the pay-per-view era? It certainly doesn’t appear so. The UFC retains control of the most widely recognized brand name in the MMA universe, as well as many of the world’s top fighters. The UFC’s pay-per-view franchise continues to be the most profitable entity in a...