2017 Non-Event General MMA Talk Thread

[Elsalvajeloco]

4 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

In crazy, sad, and bizarre news:

 

Update: Cejudo only sustained burns and didn't break his ankle. I'm assuming they're minor since he is heading to Brazil to begin his training camp for the Sergio Pettis fight. I dunno what it means to start off a camp after a brush with death, but you at least have an unbelievable story to tell.

[ChesterCopperpot]

Mark Hunt isn't happy about being pulled from UFC Sydney due to "medical concerns".

Being replaced by Werdum.

 

[Elsalvajeloco]

At this point, they will gladly accept a meaningless lawsuit over the concussion/CTE class action lawsuit years down the line.

I don't see them letting Hunt fight without a battery of neurological tests. You can't make those comments and then expect that you didn't force the UFC's hand. Imagine how pissed Hunt would be if his opponent said he was using PEDs publicly (joking or not) and the UFC didn't pull that fighter. It's too hot out on the streets for fighters to make comments they know will lead to action.

The precedent is Cain in the lead up to UFC 207. With possible brain injuries, they can't fuck around.

[Elsalvajeloco]

 

 

[supremebve]

3 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

 

 

This is not a great card, but it is one of the reasons I'm such a huge MMA fan.  I bought the first 10 or so Pride shows in a crazy box set I found at the mall.  I spent a whole weekend watching Takada in fights of questionable legitimacy, Gary Goodridge giving and receiving head trauma and Sakuraba being a grappling wizard.  

[Elsalvajeloco]

Yeah, some of the early PRIDE FC shows were rough. But then again, you can say that for the first 30 or 40 UFC shows and some of the Vale Tudo/NHB orgs (those 3 and 4 hour tournaments in Russia come to mind) that were around pre unified rules. 

[Elsalvajeloco]

 

[Craig H]

My earliest Pride memories, or at least the ones I remember the most, were thinking that the horrendously long Saku vs Royce match was great (it's not, at least not in the traditional sense), Shamrock's "Petey! My heart!," thinking that Igor was unstoppable, and Igor trying to finish a fight with a rape choke.

Man, there has to be a better name for that choke than that, but that's what I've always heard it referred to as.

[Elsalvajeloco]

There was like a 3 or 4 year period where I stopped watching MMA (starting around the tail end of the Monday Night Wars or when Nitro's ratings began to dip), and then got back into MMA from watching puroresu back when Inoki was on the MMA kick. So my first real experiences of actually watching PRIDE (and not just reading the PBPs and various news sites) was 2001/2002ish and full time in 2003. From there, I went back and watched the older stuff because I didn't back into the UFC as a fan until just before the The Ultimate Fighter. So there was about 3 year period where I kinda disliked the UFC product and was watching PRIDE/K-1/Shooto exclusively other than the big UFC title fights. This is back when people actually rented videos as well.

[Craig H]

Shooto. I remember getting an invite from someone on here to an MMA torrents site and downloading a bunch of Shooto shows from it. I bet I still have all of that on an old hard drive since I never throw anything away.

[supremebve]

32 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

There was like a 3 or 4 year period where I stopped watching MMA (starting around the tail end of the Monday Night Wars or when Nitro's ratings began to dip), and then got back into MMA from watching puroresu back when Inoki was on the MMA kick. So my first real experiences of actually watching PRIDE (and not just reading the PBPs and various news sites) was 2001/2002ish and full time in 2003. From there, I went back and watched the older stuff because I didn't back into the UFC as a fan until just before the The Ultimate Fighter. So there was about 3 year period where I kinda disliked the UFC product and was watching PRIDE/K-1/Shooto exclusively other than the big UFC title fights. This is back when people actually rented videos as well.

It was so fucking hard to be an MMA fan back in the day.  I was interested in the 90s, but it wasn't like I could just turn on the television and find a fight.  I rented those UFC Hits videos about 75 times, but I don't know if I ever watched MMA outside of that until about 2003 or so.  I remember wanting to watch more once I started doing Judo around 2001, but had no idea how to find it.  I remember playing the videogame on my Dreamcast but it was insanely hard to find an actual MMA bout.  I think UFC 43 was the first "modern" UFC video that was available at any of the video stores.  That is what finally hooked me.  Me and a couple of my friends would rent UFC DVDs and spend all day drinking beer and watching fights.  I rented or bought every UFC DVD I could find until The Ultimate Fighter, and I've only missed about 10-15 since. 

I don't remember exactly when I got into Pride, but it was after the Playstation 2 game.  I remember going to Best Buy and looking for Pride DVDs to watch Heath Herring of all people, because he was utterly impossible to beat in that game.  

[Elsalvajeloco]

Just now, supremebve said:

It was so fucking hard to be an MMA fan back in the day.  I was interested in the 90s, but it wasn't like I could just turn on the television and find a fight.  I rented those UFC Hits videos about 75 times, but I don't know if I ever watched MMA outside of that until about 2003 or so.  I remember wanting to watch more once I started doing Judo around 2001, but had no idea how to find it.  I remember playing the videogame on my Dreamcast but it was insanely hard to find an actual MMA bout.  I think UFC 43 was the first "modern" UFC video that was available at any of the video stores.  That is what finally hooked me.  Me and a couple of my friends would rent UFC DVDs and spend all day drinking beer and watching fights.  I rented or bought every UFC DVD I could find until The Ultimate Fighter, and I've only missed about 10-15 since. 

I don't remember exactly when I got into Pride, but it was after the Playstation 2 game.  I remember going to Best Buy and looking for Pride DVDs to watch Heath Herring of all people, because he was utterly impossible to beat in that game.  

I beat everyone with Semmy Schilt. 

I didn't follow UFC religiously at the time, but the Best Damn Sports show constantly talked about UFC and boxing stuff. I remember stuff surrounding Tito/Shamrock 1 and stuff with Mayorga cursing people out in Spanish. Trying to balance out school and  watching boxing in addition to wrestling was a bitch. So whatever that didn't get watched at that time had to be watched months later. So the various video stores helped me catch up on early Zuffa UFC and um... possibly illegal means to find PRIDE stuff.

[supremebve]

6 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I beat everyone with Semmy Schilt. 

I didn't follow UFC religiously at the time, but the Best Damn Sports show constantly talked about UFC and boxing stuff. I remember stuff surrounding Tito/Shamrock 1 and stuff with Mayorga cursing people out in Spanish. Trying to balance out school and  watching boxing in addition to wrestling was a bitch. So whatever that didn't get watched at that time had to be watched months later. So the various video stores helped me catch up on early Zuffa UFC and um... possibly illegal means to find PRIDE stuff.

Tito Ortiz does not get nearly enough credit for being the face of MMA at that time.  If you watch any UFC between 20-44 EVERYTHING revolves around Tito.  I honestly don't know if the UFC survives without him.  Other than Matt Hughes, who wasn't nearly as marketable, he was the only consistent fighter in the company who could be paraded around on television as THE champ.  Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell don't become nearly the draws that they were without their victories over Tito Ortiz.  He was the one guy that casual fans knew, and until he put Randy and Chuck over, they were not stars.  

[Elsalvajeloco]

3 hours ago, supremebve said:

Tito Ortiz does not get nearly enough credit for being the face of MMA at that time.  If you watch any UFC between 20-44 EVERYTHING revolves around Tito.  I honestly don't know if the UFC survives without him.  Other than Matt Hughes, who wasn't nearly as marketable, he was the only consistent fighter in the company who could be paraded around on television as THE champ.  Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell don't become nearly the draws that they were without their victories over Tito Ortiz.  He was the one guy that casual fans knew, and until he put Randy and Chuck over, they were not stars.  

Pretty much. They use to do highlight shows on Fox Sports Net like they do with Unleashed now and all of them were Tito fights w/ a few select other fights from Liddell, Hughes, and BJ Penn.

What's funny is that if you just saw those fights with the elaborate entrances (at least by early 2000s standards) and the ramp w/o the prior knowledge of those guys, you would think that this was just another wrestling promotion that sprung up in the wake of WCW going out of business. And all that was built on the crux of a heel like Tito Ortiz, who at that time was still managed by Dana White IIRC. The irony is Dana hated pro wrestling. Ortiz, who probably would have been out of the UFC after the loss to Guy Mezger, was kept on after his first loss by a huge wrestling nerd and at that time consultant Joe Silva. Silva got the matchmaker gig because Tito recommended him. So without that first larger than life (by that standard at least) persona in the new era of MMA and the pro wrestling aesthetic, I am not sure what identity the UFC would have going into the reality show idea.  I mean Ortiz/Shamrock I (w/ Liddell/Babalu I on the undercard) got PBP coverage and drove traffic on major pro wrestling websites. Even if they were losing money, they were still planting the seeds.

The whole reason I wasn't really following UFC heavy at the time is I had to choose with the limited precious time I did have and PRIDE FC just felt like an overall cooler product especially with the international flavor. UFC just felt like a bunch of pasty midwestern lunkheads with a handful of notable fighters. It took a few years for me to realize that people like Robbie Lawler were integral, and I got the context later on.

[twiztor]

i fell in love with UFC when i rented the first event on VHS.

i fell in love with Pride immediately. ok, so it was more like 2001, when i saw a dvd of the first event, but i went out and bought a shit ton of Pride DVDs. my local video store had the first 20ish UFC vhs tapes, and i rented them a bunch, but i went gaga over the Pride events. So much craziness, plus Bas Rutten!  was also a big fan of the Extreme Fighting/Battlecade events that i saw on VHS. it seemed so much more of a clusterfuck that i totally enjoyed.  

i wish mma was still like that.

[Elsalvajeloco]

Walt Harris gets a consolation prize for taking the Werdum fight on short notice and will get the Godbeer fight remade for UFC 217.

[Elsalvajeloco]

 

[Casey]

All of this talk about how people got into MMA makes me remember watching DREAM events on HDNet and really liking Badr Hari, Gegard Mousasi, Jason Miller, Alistair Overeem, Shinya Aoki... I got my first (live) taste of Fedor, too. I always tried to stay up late (early?) and watch the Grand Prix tournaments, since HDNet aired them live so it was like 4AM my time or something. For a few years, my New Years Eve tradition was watching the Dynamite!! shows live. I remember watching the Ultimate Fighter 1 finale live, but honestly, DREAM is what got me into MMA, even if I'm still just a casual fan.  Oh, and watching Inside MMA. I had no clue who Bas Rutten was, then I searched for him on YouTube/DailyMotion... hot damn.

As for MMA VHS/DVDs.... I remember always going into places like Blockbuster, FYE or OnCue and looking for deathmatch tapes like XPW, etc. I always saw UFC stuff, never really knew what it was though. But I always thought their old logo was pretty funny and that's what always stuck out on the front of the boxes.

[Elsalvajeloco]

Via Tatame, Rani Yahya is fighting Aljamain Sterling on Swanson vs. Ortega card in Fresno.

[Elsalvajeloco]

On the last fight of his deal, Vitor Belfort is fighting Uriah Hall on a TBA show on January 14th. I'm guessing that will be the show coinciding with the NFL divisional round playoffs.

[Guest Edwin]

4 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

On the last fight of his deal, Vitor Belfort is fighting Uriah Hall on a TBA show on January 14th. I'm guessing that will be the show coinciding with the NFL divisional round playoffs.

I'm guessing Vitor tests free agency and Bellator bulks up a big offer the UFC decides not to match and Vitor ends his career in Bellator.

[Elsalvajeloco]

4 hours ago, Edwin said:

I'm guessing Vitor tests free agency and Bellator bulks up a big offer the UFC decides not to match and Vitor ends his career in Bellator.

Yeah, I'm going to wait on the one. He has always waffled between retirement and leaving the UFC only to not do either of those things. I think the only reason he has still been around despite looking ancient for the last few years is he has been a linchpin for what the UFC is doing in Brazil. However, the problem is he hasn't done anything to really to build off that since 2013 and the notoriety he had before then. So he could be either really expendable or they could just squeeze out the little remaining matter left in his run to pad out random cards in Brazil. I mean if you're still going to use a dude like Shogun to headline shows in Brazil, letting Belfort in his current state headline a card isn't a far cry from that.

[supremebve]

6 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Yeah, I'm going to wait on the one. He has always waffled between retirement and leaving the UFC only to not do either of those things. I think the only reason he has still been around despite looking ancient for the last few years is he has been a linchpin for what the UFC is doing in Brazil. However, the problem is he hasn't done anything to really to build off that since 2013 and the notoriety he had before then. So he could be either really expendable or they could just squeeze out the little remaining matter left in his run to pad out random cards in Brazil. I mean if you're still going to use a dude like Shogun to headline shows in Brazil, letting Belfort in his current state headline a card isn't a far cry from that.

If Vitor goes to Bellator and comes back looking like TRTitor, I don't know how he gets a license.  He looked like someone's "used to be in shape" uncle in his last fight.  I really hope we don't tolerate him coming back looking like an action figure.

[Elsalvajeloco]

1 minute ago, supremebve said:

If Vitor goes to Bellator and comes back looking like TRTitor, I don't know how he gets a license.  He looked like someone's "used to be in shape" uncle in his last fight.  I really hope we don't tolerate him coming back looking like an action figure.

With the punishment he has taken, I dunno if that is possible. I mean Wanderlei and Chael aren't in the UFC anymore and they really don't look all that much more impressive from when folks were doing TRT like hippies doing LSD in the late 60s. Bigfoot fought Verhoeven back on TRT and looked pretty awful physically. I think the only thing that Bigfoot gets from TRT since leaving the UFC is he doesn't automatically fall down from getting hit with a single strike. Other than that, he is pretty much the same Pezao from his long losing streak in the UFC. TRT can only reverse so much. I'm safely assuming 2013 Vitor Belfort was the best iteration we're ever going to see of Vitor on or off TRT.

[Elsalvajeloco]