- 7,925
- 914
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2002
so now where can fighters go after they get released from the UFC?! smh.
Official MMA Thread-UFC on FOX 3, 5/5/12 - Anyone asking for stream links = banned.
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by monopolyman630,
- Start date
- 64,964
- 196,091
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2009
People might be going
but I think this might be really bad for fighters in the long run. Sooner or later there will be a merger and some guys will be left out of the cold.
Frank Shamrock is definitely out of a job though
Frank Shamrock is definitely out of a job though
- 7,925
- 914
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2002
This. and UFC will have all the leverage with how much to pay a fighter, and will be able to pay them at a lower rate.Originally Posted by RustyShackleford
People might be goingbut I think this might be really bad for fighters in the long run. Sooner or later there will be a merger and some guys will be left out of the cold.
J
jawnstockton
Guest
Bellator or MFC...decent promotions...until those get bought up, too
I honestly think the large majority of the fighters...the ones that do their job and don't tick off their boss...will be just fine, just like the NBA. Paul Daley can keep digging himself a bigger hole if he wants. They probably have cage fights in Turkey.
I can't see the UFC not putting on more/bigger cards now. Dana talked about needing more quality fighters as they expand. The real story will come the day these guys try to organize a union. Zuffa does not do well with unions
At the end of the day, Coker won. Big props to him. As long as he works well with DW, I see things panning out.
And yeah, Frank Shamrock
- 2,573
- 10
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2009
Dana interview about Strikeforce purchaseOriginally Posted by chino905
This. and UFC will have all the leverage with how much to pay a fighter, and will be able to pay them at a lower rate.Originally Posted by RustyShackleford
People might be goingbut I think this might be really bad for fighters in the long run. Sooner or later there will be a merger and some guys will be left out of the cold.
He wants to put on more shows and more fights. He needs these fighters, and he wants more fighters. He still wants MMA to take over the world. To do that he can't really afford to leave guys out in the cold.
- 9,928
- 572
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2006
Originally Posted by LLCoolMichael
Originally Posted by RustyShackleford
Frank Shamrock is definitely out of a job though
- 3,152
- 12
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2002
I wonder if Goldberg and Rogan will address this during UFC 128
- 30,184
- 1,991
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2000
Just scares me. Look what happened to WWE when they bought WCW. Of course, when you're dealing with legit fights, it's a different scenario.Originally Posted by LLCoolMichael
My first thought.
- 8,065
- 118
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2005
Paul Daley is such an idiot. As soon as the news hit he started talking %+$@. What he should be doing is kissing Dana's asssss. Dude is like a woman. All emotional and doing things without thinking. Once his contract is up, expect to see him headlining some BAMMA and Shark Fights cards.
T0INE
formerly toine2983
- 66,987
- 73,248
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2005
Originally Posted by RustyShackleford
People might be goingbut I think this might be really bad for fighters in the long run. Sooner or later there will be a merger and some guys will be left out of the cold.
Frank Shamrock is definitely out of a job though
I understand what you're saying.
EA Sports probably isn't liking this deal either. Their MMA game was built primarily around Strikeforce fighters.
Dana White has had beef with EA for years and is known for holding grudges so the likelihood of EA Sports MMA 2 is slim.
Also what's the deal with the Frank Shamrock comment? Did he and Dana have a falling out?
- 53,474
- 21,055
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2009
he really is a buffoon. he's mad because he has a lifetime ban from the ufc, a ban that he deserved for the way he acted. he has the biggest fight of his career coming up for the title and he's thinking about dropping out. dana white and the ufc are the ones who should still hold a grudge against him, not the other way around. he has a chance to show that he has changed and they might let him stay in strikeforce or join the ufc again. he said he'll be fine just fighting for bamma since he gets paid the same anyway.
- 3,251
- 70
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2005
Never saw UFC buying strikeforce coming... atleast not in the near future...
and off topic question.. but any of ya'll wear/buy some of these mma brand tee's? Like the walkout tee's? I own a dethrone Cain of Rock tee, and thinking about buying some more.. Anybody know how bad boy shirts fit? and quality on them? they trying to tax $40 for the shogun 128 walkout tee...
and off topic question.. but any of ya'll wear/buy some of these mma brand tee's? Like the walkout tee's? I own a dethrone Cain of Rock tee, and thinking about buying some more.. Anybody know how bad boy shirts fit? and quality on them? they trying to tax $40 for the shogun 128 walkout tee...
- 5,974
- 352
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2005
im a big loser (sarcasm.... kinda not really) and have a couple mma brand/walkout tee's of some of my fave fighters.
The shirts from tri costa fit and feel nice (Korean Zombie shirt). The RVCA (Belfort walk out) shirts have noticably shorter sleeves. No experience with Bad Boy shirts. Sorry.
I usually hate mondays (going back to work) but today can be summed up with a
I musta slept on the announcement over the weekend, too busy watching Bellator on standard def MTV2 (I hate you time warner cable).
Walk into work today and start reading the UG and mind = blown. 5 minutes later, my wife forwards me an email from her Showtime rep who was able to get us some comped tix for the SF event down in San Diego next month. I hope that bum Daley doesnt back out, I wanna see Diaz snap his friggin arm.
- 53,474
- 21,055
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2009
saw some cool ufc fight records from fightmetric via cagepotato. i know you guys will like the jon fitch one.
- 8,762
- 13
- Joined
- May 14, 2009
[h1]Has UFC Found Its Transcendent Star? [/h1][h2]The Athletically Gifted and Charismatic Jon Jones Has Given Mixed Martial Arts Fans a Glimpse of What It Can Become[/h2]
Getty Images
Jon Jones overpowers Brandon Vera in a UFC fight March 21 in Broomfield, Colo.
You can watch it a dozen times and not believe it. The first man cinches his arms around his opponent's waist from behind, bucks forward and then simply dead-lifts him up and drops backward with him, tracing an arc of perhaps 140 degrees so that they land together, their weight on the neck of the man being thrown.
As they grapple for leverage on the mat, the first man catches onto the second man's left leg, working down toward the ankle as they rise, and then drops it, spinning to his right and catching his opponent flush with an elbow to the head that knocks him down to the mat, helpless again. From impact to impact, the whole fluid sequence lasts 10 seconds
"I've never seen anyone throw anything like that," said the second man, a tough veteran fighter named Stephan Bonnar. "I didn't even know it hit me. I was laying there thinking someone from the audience threw a bottle or something."
The fight was a test, Jon Jones's eighth in less than a year and his second in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the leading mixed martial arts promotion. Five fights, four wins and just more than two years later, Jones, 23, is preparing for his first chance at a UFC title.
Saturday at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., he is scheduled to fight Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, champion of the 205-pound division, a feared Muay Thai artist and Brazilian jiu-jitsu player who has finished two-thirds of his 24 professional fights by knockout or technical knockout.
At stake, though, is more than a championship. Since first gaining purchase on the American consciousness five years ago, fighting has won a hard sort of semi-legitimacy as a sport. Major televised bouts draw around six million viewers, top fights regularly sell more than a million pay-per-view orders and an upcoming show in Toronto has, according to the promotion, sold about 55,000 tickets, with an estimated gate of $11 million.
View Full Image
[img]http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NY-AV366_SPRTS__D_20110314175902.jpg[/img]
Getty Images
Jones makes weight at the UFC 100 Weigh-Ins at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on July 10, 2009.
[img]http://si.wsj.net/img/BTN_insetClose.gif[/img]
The gap between a status as underground freak show and grudgingly tolerated niche sport, though, may be smaller than the one between fighting as it is now and as it aspires to be. If it is ever to become anything near a major sport, it will have to present a transcendent athlete. Jones may not be that man, but he's likely closer than anyone yet has been—which in its way just shows how far fighting has yet to go.
Jones grew up in Rochester, N.Y., younger brother of Arthur Jones, currently a defensive tackle with the Baltimore Ravens. He took up wrestling in seventh grade. In 2006 he won a NJCAA championship while at Iowa Central Community College, where his roommate introduced him to the gentle art of jiu-jitsu. In April 2008, out of school and needing an income, he took his first fight, and his second, and his third, training with local fighters and picking up moves by watching fights on YouTube.
"I would meditate on fighting," Jones said. "I would shadow box, I would kick the wall, I would kick the corner of a door just to work on form. I would spinning-back-kick my couch. I was always flowing. I'd go out to a party and I'd come home a little wasted and shadow box, like, forever, just start moving around, just loving fighting, loving shadow boxing, loving MMA."
Between April 12 and May 9 he fought four times for regional promotions in the Northeast, defeating all his opponents and going past the first round just once. By July he was 6-0, and when the UFC needed an opponent for a prospect named Andre Gusmao at short notice, Jones got the shot.
"I was nervous," he said, "but I'm like, 'I gotta take it.' ...I got in shape and ended up squeaking out a decision."
His next fight, against Bonnar, was another decision win, and the one that marked him as something special.
"He was like 10 feet away from me," Bonnar said, "and he threw this step-forward back kick and it landed. I went to counter him and I'm like 10 feet away from him. It's something you're not used to dealing with. I mean, 85-inch reach? That's incredible."
Jones's reach, officially listed at 84.5 inches, is probably his most unique attribute. At 6 feet, 4 inches, he has a reach advantage of an inch and a half on Stefan Struve, a heavyweight fighter seven inches taller. Between his size, sheer speed and wrestling base—in seven UFC fights, not one opponent has been able to take him down or even attempt a submission on him—he presents a physical problem with no obvious solution. More impressive, though, has been the way he took to the art of fighting.
"He took one move and turned it into a hundred different possibilities, instead of learning a hundred moves and only having a hundred possibilities," said Firas Zahabi, a trainer who worked with him early in his UFC career.
Most of the work fighters do takes place in the gym. The actual bouts, which last up to 25 minutes and take place, at the higher levels, just two or three times a year, briefly punctuate months of unrelieved tedium. Belonging to a good camp makes all the difference. After his third UFC fight, Jones joined one of the best.
Jackson's Submission Fighting, run by top coaches Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn out of Albuquerque, N.M., has trained UFC champions such as Georges St-Pierre and Rashad Evans and frontline contenders in nearly every major weight class. Known for its emphasis on intricate game plans and crisp execution, it is a sort of finishing school for elite fighters.
The differences between Jones's performance before and after joining Jackson's camp are impressive. According to FightMetric, which provides statistical services to the UFC, in his first three UFC fights he landed 112 significant strikes to 82 landed by his opponents. In his next four, against increasingly difficult competition, the difference was 90-15. In the first of those, against a fighter named Matt Hamill, he secured a full mount and began smashing down with elbows, looking up at the referee, seemingly begging him to stop the fight. The ratio was 44 to 5 when the fight ended, as Jones was disqualified for throwing an elbow to the head in a 12-to-6 line, a rules violation. It is his only loss to date.
Lloyd Irvin, a well-regarded fight trainer, expressed the common line on Jones when asked what he saw when he watched Jones fight.
"When I see him fight," he said, "it looks like a next evolution of the type of athlete that's coming in the future. I would say he's a next-generation fighter."
Irvin, though, is a lot more realistic than many fight people are about just what that means.
"We have a crop of high-level wrestlers, national champions that are coming out and going straight into MMA. But," he said, "these aren't guys that are Olympians at their sport." He figures that it will be five to 10 years before a crop of fighters who have been training in MMA since they were young children raises the athletic level of the game to that comparable with major sports.
It's a point backed by just how dominant Jones has been over a series of opponents who have looked, while fighting him, as if they're at work in a different, lesser game.
"You almost look at these guys after the fight starts," Rami Genauer of FightMetric said, "and you're saying, 'I cannot conceive of nearly any scenario where Jon Jones doesn't win.'"
"Does he deserve a title shot?" asked Forrest Griffin, himself a top contender and a former champion at 205 pounds. "Let me ask you this: Do you see a lot of people asking to fight Jon Jones? You put that question out and you get crickets."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...760299210364.html?mod=WSJ_NY_LEFTThirdStories
- By TIM MARCHMAN
Jon Jones overpowers Brandon Vera in a UFC fight March 21 in Broomfield, Colo.
You can watch it a dozen times and not believe it. The first man cinches his arms around his opponent's waist from behind, bucks forward and then simply dead-lifts him up and drops backward with him, tracing an arc of perhaps 140 degrees so that they land together, their weight on the neck of the man being thrown.
As they grapple for leverage on the mat, the first man catches onto the second man's left leg, working down toward the ankle as they rise, and then drops it, spinning to his right and catching his opponent flush with an elbow to the head that knocks him down to the mat, helpless again. From impact to impact, the whole fluid sequence lasts 10 seconds
"I've never seen anyone throw anything like that," said the second man, a tough veteran fighter named Stephan Bonnar. "I didn't even know it hit me. I was laying there thinking someone from the audience threw a bottle or something."
The fight was a test, Jon Jones's eighth in less than a year and his second in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the leading mixed martial arts promotion. Five fights, four wins and just more than two years later, Jones, 23, is preparing for his first chance at a UFC title.
Saturday at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., he is scheduled to fight Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, champion of the 205-pound division, a feared Muay Thai artist and Brazilian jiu-jitsu player who has finished two-thirds of his 24 professional fights by knockout or technical knockout.
At stake, though, is more than a championship. Since first gaining purchase on the American consciousness five years ago, fighting has won a hard sort of semi-legitimacy as a sport. Major televised bouts draw around six million viewers, top fights regularly sell more than a million pay-per-view orders and an upcoming show in Toronto has, according to the promotion, sold about 55,000 tickets, with an estimated gate of $11 million.
View Full Image
[img]http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NY-AV366_SPRTS__D_20110314175902.jpg[/img]
Getty Images
Jones makes weight at the UFC 100 Weigh-Ins at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on July 10, 2009.
[img]http://si.wsj.net/img/BTN_insetClose.gif[/img]
The gap between a status as underground freak show and grudgingly tolerated niche sport, though, may be smaller than the one between fighting as it is now and as it aspires to be. If it is ever to become anything near a major sport, it will have to present a transcendent athlete. Jones may not be that man, but he's likely closer than anyone yet has been—which in its way just shows how far fighting has yet to go.
Jones grew up in Rochester, N.Y., younger brother of Arthur Jones, currently a defensive tackle with the Baltimore Ravens. He took up wrestling in seventh grade. In 2006 he won a NJCAA championship while at Iowa Central Community College, where his roommate introduced him to the gentle art of jiu-jitsu. In April 2008, out of school and needing an income, he took his first fight, and his second, and his third, training with local fighters and picking up moves by watching fights on YouTube.
"I would meditate on fighting," Jones said. "I would shadow box, I would kick the wall, I would kick the corner of a door just to work on form. I would spinning-back-kick my couch. I was always flowing. I'd go out to a party and I'd come home a little wasted and shadow box, like, forever, just start moving around, just loving fighting, loving shadow boxing, loving MMA."
Between April 12 and May 9 he fought four times for regional promotions in the Northeast, defeating all his opponents and going past the first round just once. By July he was 6-0, and when the UFC needed an opponent for a prospect named Andre Gusmao at short notice, Jones got the shot.
"I was nervous," he said, "but I'm like, 'I gotta take it.' ...I got in shape and ended up squeaking out a decision."
His next fight, against Bonnar, was another decision win, and the one that marked him as something special.
"He was like 10 feet away from me," Bonnar said, "and he threw this step-forward back kick and it landed. I went to counter him and I'm like 10 feet away from him. It's something you're not used to dealing with. I mean, 85-inch reach? That's incredible."
Jones's reach, officially listed at 84.5 inches, is probably his most unique attribute. At 6 feet, 4 inches, he has a reach advantage of an inch and a half on Stefan Struve, a heavyweight fighter seven inches taller. Between his size, sheer speed and wrestling base—in seven UFC fights, not one opponent has been able to take him down or even attempt a submission on him—he presents a physical problem with no obvious solution. More impressive, though, has been the way he took to the art of fighting.
"He took one move and turned it into a hundred different possibilities, instead of learning a hundred moves and only having a hundred possibilities," said Firas Zahabi, a trainer who worked with him early in his UFC career.
Most of the work fighters do takes place in the gym. The actual bouts, which last up to 25 minutes and take place, at the higher levels, just two or three times a year, briefly punctuate months of unrelieved tedium. Belonging to a good camp makes all the difference. After his third UFC fight, Jones joined one of the best.
Jackson's Submission Fighting, run by top coaches Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn out of Albuquerque, N.M., has trained UFC champions such as Georges St-Pierre and Rashad Evans and frontline contenders in nearly every major weight class. Known for its emphasis on intricate game plans and crisp execution, it is a sort of finishing school for elite fighters.
The differences between Jones's performance before and after joining Jackson's camp are impressive. According to FightMetric, which provides statistical services to the UFC, in his first three UFC fights he landed 112 significant strikes to 82 landed by his opponents. In his next four, against increasingly difficult competition, the difference was 90-15. In the first of those, against a fighter named Matt Hamill, he secured a full mount and began smashing down with elbows, looking up at the referee, seemingly begging him to stop the fight. The ratio was 44 to 5 when the fight ended, as Jones was disqualified for throwing an elbow to the head in a 12-to-6 line, a rules violation. It is his only loss to date.
Lloyd Irvin, a well-regarded fight trainer, expressed the common line on Jones when asked what he saw when he watched Jones fight.
"When I see him fight," he said, "it looks like a next evolution of the type of athlete that's coming in the future. I would say he's a next-generation fighter."
Irvin, though, is a lot more realistic than many fight people are about just what that means.
"We have a crop of high-level wrestlers, national champions that are coming out and going straight into MMA. But," he said, "these aren't guys that are Olympians at their sport." He figures that it will be five to 10 years before a crop of fighters who have been training in MMA since they were young children raises the athletic level of the game to that comparable with major sports.
It's a point backed by just how dominant Jones has been over a series of opponents who have looked, while fighting him, as if they're at work in a different, lesser game.
"You almost look at these guys after the fight starts," Rami Genauer of FightMetric said, "and you're saying, 'I cannot conceive of nearly any scenario where Jon Jones doesn't win.'"
"Does he deserve a title shot?" asked Forrest Griffin, himself a top contender and a former champion at 205 pounds. "Let me ask you this: Do you see a lot of people asking to fight Jon Jones? You put that question out and you get crickets."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...760299210364.html?mod=WSJ_NY_LEFTThirdStories
- 7,925
- 914
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2002
Shogun is dangerous and I think he might KO Bones, but I'll be rooting for Jon Jones. I was soo hyped for UFC 126 cuz of Jones/Bader, so I can not wait for this Saturday.
- 29,014
- 4,130
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2004
I still have 2 tickets to UFC 128 if anyones interested in the NY/NJ area...
- 3,251
- 70
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2005
Jon Fitch
- 7,925
- 914
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2002
more info?
- 29,014
- 4,130
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2004
Check your PM.Originally Posted by chino905
more info?
Also... When did Sexyama get taken off the card???
- 8,762
- 13
- Joined
- May 14, 2009
It has to do with the recent natural disasters in Japan.
Edit:
http://www.mmafighting.com/2011/03/12/yoshihiro-akiyama-out-of-ufc-128/?ncid=txtlnkusspor00000002
Edit:
http://www.mmafighting.com/2011/03/12/yoshihiro-akiyama-out-of-ufc-128/?ncid=txtlnkusspor00000002
- 29,014
- 4,130
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2004
I figured. So sad, I hope him and all his family are well.
- 53,474
- 21,055
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2009
people are still unsure of kawajiri's status. he says he'll fight but that might change. if he does withdraw i hope they put noons in. melendez vs noons would be great.
not sure about jones being a transcendent star. when you think of well-known and mainstream fighters you think of chuck, brock, gsp, and faber. i've found jones annoying since day one and it seems like people are getting tired of him the more he talks. it's really difficult for an mma fighter to stand out and catch the attention of the sports world. you need a cool image and story that people like. brock and talks of his fights are always on espn. you can't say the same for any other fighter.
not sure about jones being a transcendent star. when you think of well-known and mainstream fighters you think of chuck, brock, gsp, and faber. i've found jones annoying since day one and it seems like people are getting tired of him the more he talks. it's really difficult for an mma fighter to stand out and catch the attention of the sports world. you need a cool image and story that people like. brock and talks of his fights are always on espn. you can't say the same for any other fighter.
- 3,251
- 70
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2005
Jon Jones -185
Shogun +165
Eddie Wineland +335
Urijah Faber -420
Kamal Shalorus +210
Jim Miller -250
Dan Miller +250
Nate Marquardt -300
Brendan Schaub -270
Mirko Filipovic +230
Anything looking good guys?
Shogun +165
Eddie Wineland +335
Urijah Faber -420
Kamal Shalorus +210
Jim Miller -250
Dan Miller +250
Nate Marquardt -300
Brendan Schaub -270
Mirko Filipovic +230
Anything looking good guys?
- 590
- 10
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2007
That Kamal Shalorus fight looks like it can make a few bucks, and to a lesser extent the CroCop fight.
