My Take Radio

UFC makes its debut in Boston with a stacked card. Check out the count­down to UFC 118 along with my picks for the tele­vised por­tion of the card.

(con­tinue reading…)

Once again, I just have to pref­ace this by say­ing that this is my opin­ion and mine alone. Please feel free to agree or dis­agree. I am no sports writer or ana­lyst, I just call it how I see it. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Dos San­tos on win­ning last night’s bout against Roy “Big Coun­try” Nel­son – espe­cially since the win guar­an­tees him a title shot against the win­ner of Velasquez vs. Lesnar at UFC 121.

A quick note on UFC 121. My money is on Lesnar this time. Ryan Bader says that once Lesnar gets tired it will be Cain all the way. I say if get­ting beaten in the face repeat­edly by Shane Car­win for three min­utes will make any man tired and look what hap­pened – Lesnar still has his belt. (con­tinue reading…)

I need to pref­ace this edi­to­r­ial with the fol­low­ing: I am not the My Take Radio MMA writer nor do I pro­fess to be any kind of expert on the sport. I know just enough about what is legal and not legal in the cage. The rea­son for this arti­cle is that when­ever Rich, Andrea and I watch an event together, they com­ment on the fact that I have insight­ful things to say about the fights. Regard­less of what I say, I don’t try to take any­thing away from these fight­ers; I know I could not do what they do and I only speak in ref­er­ence to what one man (or woman) did to the other.

Silva vs. Son­nen was a fan­tas­tic match and both men per­formed well. Silva said after the fight that a rib injury almost kept him out of the fight and if that is true then his per­for­mance was beyond what we could expect. That said, let’s face facts, the cham­pion was put through his paces, he was hum­bled before he got down on his knees and praised Son­nen and if I were him, I would be some­what embarrassed.

(con­tinue reading…)

It os really unfor­tu­nate that Roger Huerta will  pos­si­bly face fines and sus­pen­sion and crim­i­nal or civil charges because in my eyes he did the right thing. Since I can­not do it for real, I am say­ing right now that I send you a big high five for what went down and I hope all goes well for you.

This past week­end found Huerta at a bar in Austin, Texas where some sort of scuf­fle spilled to the out­side street. Dur­ing the com­mo­tion, a rather large black guy broke the car­di­nal rule of man­li­ness and punched a woman in the back of the head. Huerta’s man­ager has said that Roger is known for being pro­tec­tive of women and this time was no dif­fer­ent – he imme­di­ately stepped to the guy and got into a fight with him (video cour­tesy of TMZ.com).

You can see that a friend of his is scream­ing out “Roger, Roger!” and try­ing to hold him back as Huerta yanks his shirt off. I don’t know if the black guy sud­denly real­ized who he was fac­ing or if some­one told him, but he appar­ently tried to make a run for it and the actual fight is obscured in this video. It looks like Huerta pulled one out of the Akuma school of Dark Hadou and just did a rag­ing demon – all you see next are peo­ple check­ing on the uncon­scious black dude.

I am glad to see that UFC pres­i­dent Dana White seems to be sup­port­ive of Huerta (while still denounc­ing his actions) stat­ing that hit­ting a woman is just not right. Truth be told, hit­ting any­one when their back is turned is a clas­sic bitch move and since he knocked the girl out, the guy got what is com­ing to him. No arrests have been made thus far and I hope it stays that way. Huerta, this MTR staffer is pullin’ for ya.

Son­nen has become one of my favorites, and while I feel he may lose I am not going to dis­pute the fact that it will be a war.

Now, I can’t put a pre­view with­out my picks. Red & Bold are mine of course:

Main card:

  Ander­son Silva © vs. Chael Son­nen– Silva will win but I guar­an­tee it will be a wild fight.
  Jon Fitch vs. Thi­ago Alves- Huge fan of Alves and feel he matches up well with Fitch. I think Shields should fight the win­ner before get­ting GSP.
  Clay Guida vs. Rafael dos Anjos-I can never count out Guida and he deliv­ers awe­some fights.
  Matt Hughes vs. Ricardo Almeida–While I think Hughes has a shot and can win, Almeida is hun­gry and younger than Hughes which can be a fac­tor.
  Roy Nel­son vs. Junior dos San­tos– Nel­son has grown on me, and how can I not love his hum­ble­ness. The guy is hun­gry for a title shot (no pun intended hahaha).

I have issue with this game not because of the fight­ers involved but because EA allegedly told UFC to go fuck them­selves when the UFC wanted to cre­ate Undis­puted 2009. After a suc­cess­ful out­ing by THQ it seems EA wanted a piece of the MMA pie. Based on the trailer they seem to have a solid for­mula but I notice a rub­bery tex­ture to the fight­ers and some fight­ers do not resem­ble their real life counter parts. Of course the sell­ing point is Fedor vs Cou­ture which is a fight many have wanted to see but which has been eclipsed by the need to see Fedor vs Lesnar. Does this game have tools to dethrone the UFC offer­ing or is this just a lame attempt by EA to cash in on the hottest sport today? I have to admit that the dif­fer­ent fight­ing are­nas are nice though hahahaha

This Sat­ur­day the coaches from this season’s Ulti­mate Fight col­lide. Rich Franklin and Chuck Lid­dell are com­ing in with some­thing to prove and have the poten­tial to deliver a great main event. The co-main event with Pat Barry and Cro Cop has the poten­tial to end in dev­as­tat­ing fash­ion. Still on the fence about order­ing it? Check out this pre­view and see if it changes your mind. 

Here are my fight picks: 

Main card

Light Heavy­weight bout:  Chuck Lid­dell vs. Rich Franklin–Chuck by KO hope­fully. Focused Chuck is very dan­ger­ous
Heavy­weight bout:  Mirko Fil­ipović vs. Pat Barry–Barry by TKO
Wel­ter­weight bout:  Paulo Thi­ago vs. Mar­tin Kamp­mann–Thi­ago
Heavy­weight bout: Ben Roth­well vs.  Gilbert Yvel–Yvel
Wel­ter­weight bout: Car­los Con­dit vs. Rory Mac­Don­ald–Con­dit 

Pre­lim­i­nary card (Spike TV)

Light­weight bout: Tyson Grif­fin vs. Evan Dun­ham–Grif­fin
Light­weight bout: Mac Danzig vs.  Matt Wiman–Danzig 

So, by now, if you fol­low UFC and have been watch­ing TUF-Team Lid­dell Vs. Team Ortiz this sea­son, you are aware that the grudge match that was set between the two leg­endary coaches ISN’T hap­pen­ing. (If not, be ashamed of your­self, as you are a sucky fan.)

Specual­tion and rumors be put to rest right now — here is Tito Ortiz’s offi­cial rea­son for pulling out of the fight.

Many of you are say­ing “Tell us a story we haven’t heard from you Tito”. What do you think? Do you believe the story Tito’s spin­ning? Hate him or love him, it’s not good to fight hurt. Unless you do this for a liv­ing, we as spec­ta­tors can­not fully com­pre­hend what these ath­letes go through train­ing day in and day out.

Being a loyal Tito fan and Team Pun­ish­ment sup­porter, I think if he really is hurt (and I think he is), he shouldn’t be try­ing to do any­thing but heal up. One day, I am hope­ful we will get the third fight in this epic rivalry. Sound off in the comments.

UFC 114 is this week­end and what I am most look­ing for­ward to is what Ram­page so elo­quently stated as “black on black crime”.

Here are my fight picks:

Main card

• Light Heavy­weight bout: Quin­ton Jack­son vs. Rashad Evans- Ram­page via B.A beatdown
• Mid­dleweight bout: Michael Bisp­ing vs. Dan Miller-Bisp­ing needs the win and I know he’s gonna push the pace in this fight
• Heavy­weight bout: Todd Duf­fee vs. Mike Rus­sow-I’ve haven’t seen Rus­sow fight so it would be unfair of me to make an edu­cated pick.
• Light Heavy­weight bout: Antônio Rogério Nogueira vs. Jason Brilz- Lit­tle Nog nuff said!
• Wel­ter­weight bout: Diego Sanchez vs. John Hath­away-Diego wins! YESSSSS!

Pre­lim­i­nary card (Spike TV)

• Wel­ter­weight bout: Amir Sadol­lah vs. Dong Hyun Kim-Amir with a muay thai clinic.
• Light­weight bout: Efrain Escud­ero vs. Dan Lau­zon-Escud­ero

Pre­lim­i­nary card

• Light­weight bout: Melvin Guil­lard vs. Way­lon Lowe-Guil­lard
• Light Heavy­weight bout: Luiz Cane vs. Cyrille Dia­baté-Cane
• Light­weight bout: Aaron Riley vs. Joe Bram­mer-Riley
• Mid­dleweight bout: Ryan Jensen vs. Jesse Forbes-Forbes

It’s hard to believe that The Ulti­mate Fighter has been grac­ing our tele­vi­sion sets on Spike TV since 2005. I credit TUF with being the show that made me a Mixed Mar­tial Arts fan. Hon­estly, I really didn’t know much about the sport before then, since obvi­ously it was not as main­stream as it has grown to be now. My knowl­edge of the UFC was sadly, only that of Ken Sham­rock and Dan Sev­ern – and that was solely based upon my being a WWE fan.

I’d like to take a look back at all of the sea­sons and refresh our mem­o­ries on what we have seen over the past five years. On top of all the MMA action, let’s not for­get things like the Coaches’ Chal­lenges, as well as all the drunken chaos and other enter­tain­ing stuff that has hap­pened in the TUF house.

(con­tinue reading…)