March is a great month for UFC fans, with a ton of great events lead­ing the way towards this year’s install­ment of The Ulti­mate Fighter. With the UFC on Ver­sus on March 21st,  fol­lowed by UFC 111 - St. Pierre vs. Hardy on March 27th, and of course, Ultimate Fight Night 21 on March 31 ‚the UFC has all the bases cov­ered in terms of pro­mo­tion and great events lead­ing towards TUF’s Sea­son 11 pre­miere — also on March 31st.

This sea­son, a new for­mat will debut that plans to freshen up and rein­vig­o­rate the TUF pro­gram. With coaches Tito Ortiz & Chuck Lid­dell, you can expect great coach­ing, great fights and bad blood between these two that will make this another must-see season.

It’s a  great time to be a UFC fan. Here are this season’s competitors:

 

The Ulti­mate Fighter pre­mieres on SpikeTV on Wednes­day, March 31st — check your local list­ings for showtimes.

It feels like only yes­ter­day when I watched my first MMA event - which hap­pened to be the orig­i­nal UFC Super Fight. After watch­ing, I real­ized that this sport could only be on PPV due to the sheer amount of vio­lence it pre­sented. Since those days, the UFC obvi­ously has come a long way — not only in terms of fights but also in allow­ing MMA to tran­scend the moniker of a “bar­baric” sport­ing event. While the sport has numer­ous orga­ni­za­tions and tons great fight­ers, the suc­cess of sport has always hinged on fans and it cross­ing over into the main­stream. The UFC slowly started get­ting real spon­sors like Harley David­son, Burger King and a host of oth­ers. MMA was slowly gain­ing accep­tance and com­pa­nies were embrac­ing the pro­mo­tion the sport got their prod­ucts. Com­pa­nies like BSN, which aren’t usu­ally widely heard of, are a per­fect exam­ple of MMA help­ing them become known in main­stream media. Now when I enter a GNC and see a Syntha-6 bot­tle it has a lit­tle UFC logo next to it. It is things like this that help move the sport forward.

Nowa­days, you open a mag­a­zine and you see MMA fight­ers (both male and female) endors­ing prod­ucts. Whether it’s t-shirts, sup­ple­ments or apparel, Mixed Mar­tial Arts has become a viable mar­ket­ing machine that cap­tures the key demo­graph­ics for a lot of prod­ucts across the board.

Let’s not for­get that MMA is now seen on broad­cast TV, thanks in part to the now defunct Eli­teXC, as well as Strike­Force, which broad­casts on CBS. In addi­tion to that, com­pa­nies like Fat­head are now acknowl­edg­ing MMA fight­ers as “main­stream” ath­letes with “main­stream” appeal. You can now hear names like GSP, Fedor, Gina Carano, Chuck Lid­dell and many oth­ers men­tioned in the same sen­tences as ath­letes like Michael Phelps, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwayne Wade. This shows that com­bat sports other than box­ing have now assim­i­lated them­selves into today’s sports cov­er­age and beyond. 

Here are just a few exam­ples of how MMA is now part of main­stream media.

(con­tinue reading…)

Last night, after some B.S with the cable com­pany, I had the chance to sit down and watch UFC 109. Before I get into the fights, I must say that the card was very good and a lot of the fights had sur­pris­ing fin­ishes. I also stand by the fact that UFC has the best event prepa­ra­tion in the game today. Strike­force take notes.

I will give my thoughts on the main card since I did not get to watch the the prelims.

Matt Serra (16–6) v Frank Trigg (19–7)

Every­one I spoke to expected this fight to go the dis­tance. But after the trash talk­ing and the fact that this was a make or break fight for either one of these guys, you knew a lot was on the line. The fight started as you’d expect with Trigg keep­ing Serra away with punches and Serra work­ing the body. Then the unex­pected hap­pened — not a mir­a­cle sub­mis­sion or a ground bat­tle but a big right hand from Matt Serra that lev­eled Trigg. Serra cap­i­tal­ized on the K.O with a pound­ing and the ref stopped it.

Matt Serra is a favorite fighter of mine because he is tena­cious and has a real “no quit” atti­tude that makes him fun to watch. It helps that he’s a fel­low New Yorker, but let’s not let small details like loca­tion take away from the fact that he always enter­tains and sur­prises me.

Serra by K.O.

Dan Miller (11–2, 1NC) v Demian Maia (11–1)

Demian Maia came in to this fight with some­thing to prove after his KO loss to Mar­quardt, and Dan Miller was a great oppo­nent for him on his come­back trail.

First round was a healthy mix of standup from Miller with some take­down attempts from Maia. There was an inad­ver­tent strike to the groin that Maia deliv­ered, but the pace was solid and it was a great first round for both guys.

Sec­ond round had more strik­ing from Maia, but noth­ing that really changed the tide of the fight. Miller con­tin­ued work­ing the strik­ing game but couldn’t hit his stride which annoyed the crowd. Why does the crowd boo this really solid chess match? It bog­gles my fuck­ing mind.

Third round had Maia really work­ing on some take­downs. Miller con­tin­ued to land solid shots and even cut Maia but it was not enough.

Maia wins by Decision

Brian Stann v Phil Davis

Phil Davis at first glance reminded me Jon “Bones” Jones due to his ath­leti­cism and explo­sive­ness. Stann gave him some trou­ble in the first half of the round, but Davis woke up and put in some work in the sec­ond and  third rounds to take the fight via unan­i­mous decision.

Davis by Decision

 

Paulo Thi­ago (12–1) v Mike Swick (14–3)

Swick was sub­sti­tut­ing for Josh Koscheck here and wanted to avenge the losses of fel­low A.K.A mem­bers to Thi­ago. Swick and Thi­ago exchanged a bit in the first, but nei­ther fighter dis­played a clear advan­tage. The sec­ond round started fairly the same but Thi­ago dropped Swick with a left and applied a darce choke for sub­mis­sion victory.

Thi­ago by Sub­mis­sion (Darce Choke)

 

Chael Sonnen(25–10-1) v Nate Mar­quardt (32–8-2)

Chael Son­nen came into this fight with a great per­for­mance against Yushin Okami and Mar­quardt was expect­ing a title shot after this vic­tory. Son­nen proved to be the spoiler and pro­ceeded to use his supe­rior wrestling to bully Mar­quardt for the entire fight.  Son­nen may have got him­self into the title pic­ture with these last two great performances.

Chael Son­nen by Decision

 

Mark Cole­man (16–9) v Randy Cou­ture (17–10)

Cole­man gets props off the bat for com­ing out to Lil’ Wayne. Both of these leg­ends have made some of  the great­est con­tri­bu­tions to the sport of MMA, and at the end of the day their per­for­mances will some­thing we can all remem­ber. Cou­ture came out and pro­ceeded to bully Cole­man into the fence in typ­i­cal Cou­ture fash­ion. Cole­man had no answer for Randy’s offense and Randy eas­ily took the first round. Cou­ture came into the sec­ond round using the same game plan and scored a take­down and the sub­mis­sion vic­tory via rear naked choke.

Randy Cou­ture by Sub­mis­sion (Rear Naked Choke) 

It wouldn’t be a post fight inter­view with­out some fire­works and those fire­works came in the form of the one and only Tito Ortiz who made some dis­parag­ing remarks to Cole­man. I am sure what­ever Tito said was far from cor­dial when it ends with Cole­man say­ing “Fuck you, Tito” and “Any­time douchebag”. I am sure Dana saw some dol­lar signs with a poten­tial Cole­man v. Ortiz match.

Over­all it was a solid card with some great fights. Randy Cou­ture con­tin­ues to improve with age and is a his best every time he fights. He is still dan­ger­ous at 205 lbs. and poses a threat in the divi­sion. Con­grats to him and Cole­man for going in there and putting on a great show. Noth­ing but respect for those two legends.

On Feb­ru­ary 6, 2010, leg­ends will col­lide as the UFC presents UFC 109 —  Relent­less live on PPV. Randy Cou­ture vs. Mark Cole­man is your main event. As an MMA fan, when you hear the nick­names “The Nat­ural” and “The Hammer” you know you are in for a good fight. This fight between two Vet­eran fighters, to me, is a make or break for Cole­man, given his recent string of oppo­nents. He’s cur­rently 1–1 in the UFC and a loss to Cou­ture would surely put his future in ques­tion, but if there is any­thing that has been learned in the past,  it is that leg­ends can never be counted down and out at any point. This fight has the mak­ings of being an instant clas­sic and given it’s his­toric nature (this will be the first time these two Hall of Famers have ever fought),  it will be watched by mil­lions of eager peo­ple, includ­ing me.

I am not mak­ing a pick on the leg­ends’ main event fight because it would be way too tough, but here are the other notable fights on the card as well as my picks (in orange):

Main Card

Mid­dleweight bout: Nate Mar­quardt vs. Chael Son­nen — Mar­quardt

Wel­ter­weight bout: Mike Swick vs. Paulo Thi­ago — “Quick” Swick is dan­ger­ous when he is focused. Going with Swick on this one.

Mid­dleweight bout: Demian Maia vs. Dan Miller-  I am a big fan of Maia. The guy has incred­i­ble tal­ent. I say Maia by Sub­mis­sion (of course).

Wel­ter­weight bout: Matt Serra vs. Frank Trigg — I am a big fan of both of these guys but I have to go with my boy from NY.  Matt Serra

Spike TV Card

Light­weight bout: Mac Danzig vs. Justin Buch­holz — Danzig

Light­weight bout: Melvin Guil­lard vs. Ron­nys Tor­res — Got to go with “The Young  Assas­sin” Guil­lard here.

Watch UFC 109 live on PPV on Feb­ru­ary 6th. Check you guide for listings.

I had the chance to watch the Spike VGA Awards this past week­end and while I did not like cer­tain aspects of the award show or some of the win­ners, I did enjoy some of the trail­ers for the upcom­ing titles. As a gamer and an MMA fan, one of the titles that got my atten­tion was of course the newest UFC game which was intro­duced by “Street Cer­ti­fied” Kimbo Slice. The trailer was sim­ple in exe­cu­tion and wasn’t overly styl­ish, but that my friends is the  appeal of the UFC game. It’s not meant to be pretty - but it is meant to be the most accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of MMA today. With smoother graph­ics and even more real­ism this game will be a wor­thy follow-up to the pre­vi­ous UFC Undis­puted. EA may have EA MMA in the near future, but right now the fight game belongs to the UFC.

Are You Ready To Fight?

Be Ready 5.28.10