MMA Opinion

Press Release

NEW YORK (May 8, 2009)–Two-time NCAA Division I National Wrestling Champion and former UFC Heavyweight Champion Kevin “The Monster” Randleman (17-12) will make his long-awaited return to mixed martial arts (MMA) action when he squares off with fellow grappling expert Mike Whitehead (23-7) during the live SHOWTIME® telecast of Strikeforce: “Lawler vs. Shields” from the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Mo. on Saturday, June 6.

Making his first appearance in over a year and his debut with Strikeforce, the 37-year-old Randleman of Columbus, Ohio will attempt to reclaim the glory he achieved almost a decade ago when he was crowned UFC heavyweight champion after scoring a knockout on Pete Williams at UFC 23 on November 19, 1999.

A tremendous athlete with explosive power, Randleman captured back-to-back NCAA national wrestling titles in 1992 and 1993 while competing for Ohio State University. His stellar colegiate career gained him entry into the school’s Hall Of Fame in 2004.

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Yvel (pictured) and Rizzo will come ready for war

Nobody is talking about it, but there’s a fight that I think any MMA fan (hardcore or casual) will enjoy. That’s the matchup between former UFC top contender Pedro Rizzo and infamous badass Gilbert Yvel.

Gilbert Yvel is always exciting, even when he’s getting his ass kicked (given his poor ground game, that happens a fair amount of the time). He’s also a great personality and once, when asked what he would do as a career if he were not a fighter claimed, “I think I’d be a porn star, because I’m really good at that too.”

Yvel is one of the most entertaining and most poorly marketed fighters in the world. His role as a heel should be exploited by any organization that decides to take the legal liability of putting him on their roster. He’s punched out a ref and been DQ’d for biting and eye gouging (on separate occasions). Rizzo, on the other hand, is a legendary Brazilian muay thai fighter and one of the first mixed martial artists to establish himself as a Vale Tudo fighter on the big stage.

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We know you wanted to see these, so here they are!

Two more after the jump!

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Well, I haven’t done one of these in a while, but it’s always good to show some love to the guys who are talking on what seems to be a pretty slow day as far as stuff worth writing about.

Former top boxer (with an emphasis, in many minds, on the “former”) Roy Jones Jr. is looking to take on Nick Diaz, who seems to have forgotten what weight class he fights in. Sort of makes me wonder if Diaz is thinking that, as he gets older, he’s going to look to have to make the weight increase permanent. That said, we’ll see if he does end up making a run at one of the Strikeforce titles or if he continues to fight in these catchweight bouts against bigger opponents. Diaz will fight Scott Smith on June 6th in St. Louis.

Before UFC 100, the UFC will induct two fighters into it’s Hall of Fame. The MMAJunkie says White alluded to Chuck Liddell as a possible inductee, and other discussed candidates include the late former middleweight champion Evan Tanner. This will expand the Hall from five fighters to seven. The current list includes: Royce Gracie, Randy Couture, Ken Shamrock, Mark Coleman and Dan Severn.

Five Ounces has the full card for the “Ultimate Chaos” event, which will be headlined by Pedro Rizzo vs. Gilbert Yvel (which should be an awesome fight between two basass strikers) and Bobby Lashley vs. Bob Sapp (in what should be the weirdest bout since, well, about a month earlier when Sapp fought Ikuhisa Minowa). The card also includes Chris Horodecki, Din Thomas and the MMA return of Tom Atencio, the wealthiest shirt manufacturer with the balls to step into a cage. Also, my favorite submission grappling dummy, Danny Abbadi (from TUF 3) will appear on the card.

Antonio Rogerio Nogueira will be fighting in his home nation of Brazil for the first time in a long while. After being knocked out by Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou in February of 2007, Nogueira has strung together four straight wins, including a brutal TKO of Vladimir Matyushenko on the Affliction: Day of Reckoning card in Los Angeles.

And, in your bizarre news of the day: Dana White, Forrest Griffin and Kenny Florian will appear on the May 14th episode of Dr. Phil. While I will not be watching, I will be sure to search for youtube for highlights and post anything newsworthy from the segment.

On the battle of two (or eleven, depending on how you count) belts.

Before Anderson Silva vs. Forrest Griffin was officially moved to UFC 101 in Pennsylvania, there was a lot of talk about the possibility of a fight between Anderson and welterweight king Georges St. Pierre, under the presumption that he would defeat Thiago Alves at UFC 100.

I sort of resented this claim because I didn’t think it was much of a fight. Anderson has a decisive size advantage (four inches of height and probably between fifteen and twenty pounds of weight) and is used to destroying fighters either his own size or larger, while Georges, great technician and complete warrior that he is, has fought guys his own size or smaller. There’s no one that Georges has fought that has been much bigger than him, certainly not in the way Anderson would be.

Now, that’s just my opinion on the fight (and I’ve talked a great deal about how I thought this bout would play out on the message boards), but more recently, as I’m looking at the way Anderson Silva has chosen to move through the lightheavyweight division, I’ve started to wonder why it is that fans were so eager to put the Canadian in a title shot, while Anderson has had to pay his dues and work his way through the pool of contenders with everyone else.

The truth is, one might have said the same thing about a potential fight between B.J. Penn and St. Pierre, as B.J. had only ever lost at welterweight in recent memory, but got a title shot anyway, though I tend to ignore that, as the bout was clearly put together as a rematch for what was a great bout when they fought initially, and an attempt to put on a great show for fans (not to mention that B.J. had a history at 170, however far removed he was from it, while Georges has little, if any, credentials in the 185 pound weight class).

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The new school MMA fan hears names such as Matt Hughes, Pat Miletich, and Ken Shamrock and they usually roll their eyes.  They have even been called the Larry Bird short shorts wearing types from back in the day before Brock took over.  The old school or MMA purist looks at these athletes completely different.  They understand that these once of a kinds athletes are the MMA fore fathers and helped built what is now an empire, and one of the most popular sports in the world.

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Update: Now Showtime VP says it’s “a long shot” to have Roy Jones Jr. fighting in Strikeforce under MMA rules.

And MMA fans will go back to 1993, when it was style vs. style, boxing vs. jiu-jitsu, and Gracie vs. the world. That’s because Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker said that a fight between boxer Roy Jones Jr. and Gracie Jiu Jitsu fighter Nick Diaz may happen in Strikeforce. Things will be a little different this time around as Nick Diaz has shown he has much better boxing skills than most Gracie fighters (and some standup guys). Roy Jones Jr. was looking forward to fighting Anderson Silva in the UFC, but Dana White said no. So, the next best thing happened. Here’s what Coker said to GracieFighter:

“We would absolutely set this fight up. Of course we would have to run it by Showtime for final approval, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t have this fight”

Will Diaz stand with Jones?  Or will he take the boxer down to that mat like the original Gracie fighters in the first few UFC events and show them what jiu-jitsu is all about? Or will Jones keep the fight standing and deliver a stunning knockout in front of millions of viewers?

There have been a rash of injuries forcing a handful, nay, a gaggle of fighters off UFC 98. Injuries suck, which is why I prefer not to get injured. I’ve been thinking UFC 98 is going to suck, be horrible, be worse(r) than UFC 97. But I don’t think UFC 98 isn’t going to suck. I’m going to back up my claims with 5 reasons…5 awesome reasons.

Rashad Evans is the UFC light heavy weight champion and I couldn’t be more not happy for him. I don’t like how Evans fights, showboats and all of the above. Maybe it’s because he knocked out some of my favorite fighters, and I’m not talking about Sean Salmon. The first reason why UFC 98 isn’t going to sucks  Rashad will finally lose. Rashad losing isn’t a sucky situation. ‘Shad Nips, as I like to call him, will be picked apart and hopefully finished by the elusive challenger, Lyoto Machida.

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That seems like a massive understatement to me, but listen to Bobby Lashley (who will fight Sapp on June 27th) say it, so you can judge for yourself.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I03JX8E-SwU[/youtube]

Admittedly, Lashley is hardly a small guy, and will probably be 265-275 at the time of the bout. Sapp, however, will have around a 100 pound weight advantage on Lashley, as well as three inches of height.

Still, it’s hard to train for a guy like Sapp, who is a solid athlete, given his football and kickboxing background. If Lashley can get the fight to the mat, he should be  in good shape, but Sapp is a powerful fighter known for his (often stupid) aggressiveness in the ring, and that may be a problem is Lashley thinks he can in any way overpower the giant.

Hopefully he’ll have the wisdom and good coaching (which he should, as he trains at a very good camp in American Top Team) to use his wrestling, get the fight to the mat, and submit a very mediocre grappler in Bob Sapp, without getting powerbombed (which Sapp has been known to do occassionally).

Silva may not fight Jones soon, but he will at some point. When there's money in it, it'll happen.

There’s an interesting piece over at CBSSports.com talking about a bout offer made by Roy Jones Jr. to fight Anderson Silva in MMA.

By all appearances, Ed Soares (Anderson’s manager) and Jones’ management seemed happy to put the fight together, but when the matchup was brought to the UFC, it was killed by Dana White. There are a few reasons why that makes absolute sense to me, despite what will inevitably be a great deal of handwringing from those who insist that a huge selling pay-per-view ought to be the be-all and the end-all for Dana, and that this is a great chance to prove it.

The first reason why this would have been a bad idea for the UFC is simple: it does nothing for Anderson Silva’s credibility to beat Jones in MMA.

If Anderson beats Roy Jones Jr. in a boxing match, all of a sudden he’s one of the top boxers in the world, as well as the top mixed martial artist. That boosts Silva’s credibility and the credibility of all of the strikers in MMA. If Anderson puts Roy in a thai plum and breaks his face, what does that tell us about MMA? That MMA strikers know how to use the clinch better than boxers? That boxers can’t defend knees?

It tells us nothing we didn’t already know if Anderson beats Jones using his muay thai skills. It does nothing to increase the credibility of the sport if Anderson demonstrates how stupid and out of place boxers look once a fight hits the mat. So, as a fan of the sport, I see absolutely no reason why this fight needs to happen.

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When Serra was a title holder, this was a fight I would watch to see who Georges was taking the belt from.

With UFC 98 only a few weeks away, there’s an important question I have to ask myself about the co-main event bout between two former UFC welterweight champions named Matt.

Why should I care?

It won’t be hard for my brother, a long time Matt Hughes fan, to find a reason to sit on the edge of his seat. It won’t be hard for the New Yorkers who back Matt Serra to hit the sports bar and watch the hometown hero prepare for war against an inevitable UFC hall-of-famer.

But as someone who doesn’t like Hughes or Serra, I find that I have to have another reason to care. I mean, I’ll watch the card, because the main card as a whole is going to be very good (Sherk vs. Edgar, Foupa Pokam vs. McFedries and Miller vs. Sonnen are going to be exciting, and the title fight is interesting enough, though not mindblowing). Still, with a co-main event bout like this one, that would have been a huge deal ten UFC’s ago after the close of their season of the Ultimate Fighter, but with Hughes’ destruction at the hands of Thiago Alves and pair of losses to Georges St. Pierre, as well as Matt Serra’s more than year long hiatus, it’s hard to look at this fight and see an immediate impact on the 170 pound division worthy of a co-main event fight.

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The ability to watch mixed martial arts and other sports content in high-definition is a wonderful thing, but not for many of us who are currently unable to subscribe to Mark Cuban’s HDNet channel.

As a Comcast subscriber I have continually been disappointed that I have been able to subscribe to HDNet in my area — the San Francisco Bay Area — though it seems that change is under way across the nation.

“We are rolling out on Comcast… Denver, Chicago, etc. are already done,” HDNet Fights CEO Andrew Simon told me during a recent e-mail correspondence. Read the rest of this entry »

For those who haven’t seen the video, it’s worth checking out . I’ll repost the video below the fold, but it’s worthwhile to open a new window (that’s what I generally do when putting together analysis).

The match was set up courtesy of M-1 Global, which possesses Fedor’s contract, and was largely regarded as a freak matchup because of the blatant size difference. The matchup was structured as a grappling match with very limited strikes, and both fighters began the fight in Sambo gi’s (though Aoki shed his before the end of the fight).

Whether the gi added an advantage to Emelianenko’s game is not really a question, but when I get to the play-by-play, that reason will become clear.

The nature of the matchup might be percieved as a matchup between Aoki’s strange style of Tobikan Judo and Fedor’s world champion sambo skills, but Fedor’s judo background played a large roll in the bout, though he won with one of the leglocks more or less standard among sambo (of course, Fedor’s execution is exemplary, as always).

Personally, I see this as practice for Fedor’s scheduled summer appearance at Abu Dhabi. So let’s take a look at what some of his competition will be looking at.

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Josh Stein and Curtis Clontz talk about Dream 8, the Fedor vs. Aoki exhibition fight, and UFC 98! This is the twenty-third episode of the MMA Opinion podcast.

You may have noticed that we are using a new naming scheme…no more “Opinionated” for the time being.

To listen to the podcast, you may subscribe to the Opinionated podcast in iTunes, download it using the link below, or stream the audio by clicking the link. Please leave some comments about the topics and let us know what you want to hear. We hope to have more guests on our next shows along with some podcasts immediately following live events.

(To listen to file without downloading it, click the play button on the audio player)

At long last…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QSzFpxLPss[/youtube]

EDIT: This video was removed from youtube due to a copyright claim by M-1 Global. The video remains up at other locations.