Elsalvajeloco Posted February 10, 2016 Author Share Posted February 10, 2016 Instead of the end of the week, Sterling is announcing where he signed on the MMA Hour on Monday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 FYI, UFC's Fight Night 82 card pulled in an average 1.3 million viewers for the main card and about 1.467 million for Hendricks vs. Thompson. Prelims did 1 million viewers and were second highest rated FS1 Fight Night prelims since Cruz/Dillashaw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 11, 2016 Author Share Posted February 11, 2016 FWIW, Michael Page got hurt again and so he is out of his fight with Fernando Gonzalez. TUF vet and RFA champ Gilbert Smith is replacing him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 11, 2016 Author Share Posted February 11, 2016 Rin Nakai vs. Leslie Smith and Ben Nguyen vs. Justin Scoggins have been added to the Brisbane card. Good to see Scoggins getting a quick turnaround like he wanted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hail Sabin Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 Rin Nakai vs. Leslie Smith woo! another woman's fight. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted February 11, 2016 Share Posted February 11, 2016 I guess good to see that Rin Nakai is still alive and fighting at least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 12, 2016 Author Share Posted February 12, 2016 So Eric Winter has been able to ink a deal with Glory for their SuperFight series events to begin airing on UFC Fight Pass. Their first show in Fight Pass will be 2/26 in Chicago with Joe Schilling on the card. In addition to Glory, the Eddie Bravo Invitational and the returning Cage Warriors (I'm assuming the CWFC library as well) will be on Fight Pass. Another big thing is that the K-1 tape library has been acquired in the deal with Glory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jiji Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 (edited) Woohoo! The K1 library is awesome and I'm hyped to go back and watch some tournaments. Cage Warriors have had some good fighters back in the day. Fight Pass is one of the few great things to come from a (virtual) monopoly. I was a bit disappointed they didn't eventually add huge chunks of the Pancrase catalogue, but we did get 22 single fights involving Bas/Funaki/Rin Nakai/Shamrock. Better than nothing. Have you been watching the Pancrase shows from 2015/16 at all? Anything worthwhile? OH, and it would be lovely if they could get Shooto Japan and their library on board too. So many fun li'l Japanese dudes back in the day. Edited February 12, 2016 by Oyaji Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 That's a pretty good deal to try and make Fight Pass more enticing. Something that other people picked up, but the website that's been pushing that Yoel Romero is "not a cheater" and failed a drug test for a "diuretic" and not steroids is Ent Imports. Ent Imports is co-owned by George Mathews, who is a coach at ATT Atlanta, and ATT is Yoel Romero's gym. The story was originally written to push that Romero's b drug sample was "clean" which Malki Kawa was trying to imply earlier but that wasn't true either. In other words, yeah, avoid those spammy posts on Facebook involving Ent Imports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 12, 2016 Author Share Posted February 12, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 12, 2016 Author Share Posted February 12, 2016 http://espn.go.com/blog/mma/post/_/id/22916/no-excuses-but-weidman-fought-rockhold-with-broken-foot I don't want to make excuses... *makes excuses* 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Edwin Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 I was a bit disappointed they didn't eventually add huge chunks of the Pancrase catalogue, but we did get 22 single fights involving Bas/Funaki/Rin Nakai/Shamrock. The problem is those fights were already available online on YouTube. They didn't really upload anything that wasn't really out before. Have you been watching the Pancrase shows from 2015/16 at all? Anything worthwhile? Last card was fun. Give it a watch. A ton of guys got knocked out and choked out. Plus Hatsu Hioki's on there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 12, 2016 Author Share Posted February 12, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted February 12, 2016 Share Posted February 12, 2016 Not trying to make excuses for Weidman, but he did look off and a touch slow during the fight. However, Rockhold also didn't look his best either and was battling a staph infection and other various injuries. So in other words, if Weidman was hurt, then so was Rockhold so it wasn't like Rockhold was 100 percent and didn't give Weidman a handicap of sorts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 13, 2016 Author Share Posted February 13, 2016 Not trying to make excuses for Weidman, but he did look off and a touch slow during the fight. However, Rockhold also didn't look his best either and was battling a staph infection and other various injuries. So in other words, if Weidman was hurt, then so was Rockhold so it wasn't like Rockhold was 100 percent and didn't give Weidman a handicap of sorts. Yeah, he did look off as I mentioned in the 194 thread. However, I think there is an inherent problem with the "No excuses but..." thing especially with injuries. It's not just discrediting a win because that's really obvious. In this case, it's obvious that people like Longo aren't and shouldn't be PR people. Thus, they shouldn't really make decisions like one. If Weidman pulls out of 194, then the narrative becomes why can't Weidman stay healthy, Gian Villante pulled an Alcides Nunes (even though it wasn't Gian's fault really), UFC needs to strip Weidman, etc. Part of being a trainer, coach, or manager is not having those regrets even when you do have them. So if you throw him in there against a fighter who is stylistically his toughest matchup, is the injury the problem moreso than the actual decision to throw a fighter in there (under those circumstances) with a debilitating injury? Meaning it's an easy out to say that you take responsibility, but then ignore how you looked past how big that situation was. You blew it and now have an option to discredit what someone else did. "Hey, I'm not going to discredit someone else's win....but hey, let me discredit it in a roundabout way." If you're really thinking about your fighter's rep, sometimes you gotta give those generic stock answers. That's why I love Greg Jackson when it comes to this. He will find his own flaws instead of ardently defending or straight out making excuses for his fighters when they lose. Personally, I've never seen him go, "I didn't want to say this, but so and so broke his finger in the Thursday practice before we flew out to Vegas. Then, his cat died back home while we were on the plane to McCarran." You never heard that shit. He is never giving you those soundbytes that you can turn into an article with a deceiving, clickbait headline. It's like that situation with Roach and Pacquiao's shoulder. You have someone in Freddie Roach talking cash shit for not months, but years on end. The fight with Floyd happens and Manny loses. Roach's out went from "we won and the judges are blind" to "we won, but his shoulder ya know" to "he shouldn't have fought with his shoulder injury". How do you screw that up on the highest level especially knowing your fighter's strengths and weaknesses? Like Longo said in Okamoto's article, everybody comes in injured pretty much. The thing is you can't say "all things aren't equal" and then expect certain situations to be equal. That's ridiculous. If Weidman tore his ACL or worse yet, Rockhold tore his ACL in a loss, Longo, Serra, or whomever would have been all over that shit talking about how Rockhold is making excuses and needs to shut up. You have to accept that is the downfall of combat sports, especially announcing something three, four, or five months out. Shit is bound to happen. I mean I like Longo and he is a hell of a coach for someone who isn't at a gym people dickride for, but this whole "I want to take responsibility, but I don't want to really take responsibility" thing from coaches bothers me quite a bit. Moreso than the actual injuries because that's the nature of MMA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 13, 2016 Author Share Posted February 13, 2016 Looks like Thatch vs. Siyar Bahadurzada has been moved to UFC 196 from next week's Pittsburgh show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted February 13, 2016 Share Posted February 13, 2016 I like Thatch so I'm glad he's got a fight coming up. Siyar seems to be a good get back on track fight for him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 Alistair Overeem has re-upped with UFC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 15, 2016 Author Share Posted February 15, 2016 Alistair Overeem has re-upped with UFC. I wonder if that means he headlines the Rotterdam card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 15, 2016 Author Share Posted February 15, 2016 Aljamain Sterling has announced he is also staying with the UFC. The UFC was his only real suitor with WSOF trying to make a bid for him as well. MMA free agency will only get interesting once companies become interested in the same guy. Bellator only wants to names so they're not really going after fighters who have bright futures (meaning they could be arguably top 15-25 in their division already) who aren't complete mysteries with a ton of potential upside like an Aaron Pico and Ed Ruth. I believe FrontRowBrian made this point a couple days ago in reference to Will Brooks. The UFC isn't signing people who Bellator isn't even interested signing. Even though the people who already wanted to leave UFC have more impetus to leave to get more sponsorship bucks (and/or avoid stringent drug testing), we're still pretty much in the same place we were two or three years ago with free agency. Promotions are only still interested in who they are interested in. Unless you have like some package deal or a boatload of people becoming stars out of nowhere, there are going to be very few blockbuster deals in MMA. So it's going to also take people changing to their business models and philosophies as well. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 15, 2016 Author Share Posted February 15, 2016 Lineker is out of the fight with Garbrandt because of dengue fever. Oh well. Alistair Overeem has re-upped with UFC. I wonder if that means he headlines the Rotterdam card. Overeem just confirmed he indeed is headlining that card. I'm glad he isn't playing the title shot waiting game. More advantageous for him to fight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 Yeah this was hardly some dramatic new era of MMA free agency that MMAjunkie was trumping up. No different than it was a few years ago with UFC and Strikeforce at play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twiztor Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 Aljamain Sterling has announced he is also staying with the UFC. glad to hear this one. 4-0 in the UFC, undefeated overall in MMA, and a great prospect. look forward to seeing what he can make of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 15, 2016 Author Share Posted February 15, 2016 I think he is one of the few charismatic and talented guys who actually knows how to market himself. Throughout the years, we've gotten guys who know how to market themselves but really were not all that talented. We've also gotten fighters who are extremely talented, but don't have a ton of personality or anything remotely unique about them. If he can keep winning and showing charisma, he can easily become someone who the UFC has no qualms about throwing in a main event with or without a title belt that people actually look forward to watching in numbers that matter. That way, when it comes to re-up again, he will see some real coin. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsalvajeloco Posted February 15, 2016 Author Share Posted February 15, 2016 Aguilar vs. Ju Thai is finalized for UFC 197. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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