My Take Radio

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…)

On Sat­ur­day we marked the end of another sea­son of The Ulti­mate Fighter, and while I was excited about the fights on the finale, I was left unim­pressed with the sea­son as a whole. If you remove Kimbo  and Ram­page I think the sea­son wouldn’t have been as suc­cess­ful . I expe­ri­enced many emo­tions as I watched this sea­son - many times it was anger, but it was only because of what was going on with Ram­page and the UFC as well as the over­all lack of con­nec­tion with any of the heavyweights.

At the end of the day, the right guys won and lost and gave us some high­lights which will be talked about for a long time. Moments like:

• Ram­page call­ing Schoonover “Tit­ties” on national tele­vi­sion the first time
• Kimbo and Ram­page dancing
• Kimbo’s debut in the cage
• Justin Wren dominating
• The many ver­bal alter­ca­tions between Ram­page & Rashad
• The “power of the belly” get­ting Nel­son to the finals
• Big Baby snapping

All of these moments and fights cul­mi­nated with a great card that gave us a new heavy­weight TUF win­ner and put Kimbo on the map in the octa­gon. Here is My Take On: The Ulti­mate Fighter Finale -

Mar­cus Jones vs. Matt Mitri­one– After their heated exchange on the last episodes of TUF, I expected Mar­cus to come in there and kill Mitri­one dead. Sadly, Mar­cus got knocked out by Matt. Mar­cus had very robotic standup and it showed in his per­for­mance. With a good camp behind him though I see Mar­cus being a major player in the heavy­weight division.

Frankie Edgar vs. Matt Veach–Edgar and Veach gave us a great fight and Edgar con­tin­ued to move up the rank­ings, cap­tur­ing the sub­mis­sion vic­tory. I see Edgar in the title pic­ture in 2010 if he keeps hav­ing such solid performances.

Kimbo Slice vs. Hous­ton Alexan­der–The fight I was most excited to see of course was this one. While I have always liked Kimbo Slice, I admired how he car­ried him­self in the house as well as the hum­ble­ness he dis­played at hav­ing this once in a life­time oppor­tu­nity. Hon­estly, I expected some­one get­ting knocked the fuck out but sadly that did not hap­pen. In the 1st round, Alexan­der danced around the cage being elu­sive and try­ing to bait Slice for the KO. In the 2nd though it was all Kimbo and he was show­ing some of the new tools in his arse­nal such as this :

In the end, Kimbo got the deci­son win and showed us some of the things we fans can look for­ward to in future fights. Well done Mr. Slice.

Bren­dan Schaub vs. Roy Nel­son– I fully had Schaub tak­ing this given my dis­like for Nel­son, but I have to admit I was wrong in my assess­ment of Roy Nel­son. I con­sid­ered Roy an hon­est to good­ness tub o’ shit that used his girth to squeak by, but I have shame in admit­ting that the big man has power and knows how to use his size not only to smother oppo­nents, but to aid in his punch­ing power. These tools are what got him the KO vic­tory. While Roy Nel­son is by no means a won­der­ful phys­i­cal specimen, he, my friends is an Ulti­mate Fighter! I was sur­prised at his sub­dued demeanor upon being awarded his tro­phy and dur­ing his post fight speech.  As some­one who hates to be under­es­ti­mated, I really felt bad that I failed to look beyond Roy Nelson’s physique  to see an ath­lete that is a stu­dent of the game. I owe Roy Nel­son an apology.

Matt Hamill vs. Jon “Bones” Jones — Matt Hamill has been a favorite fighter of mine since his stint on TUF. As some­one who is rais­ing hand­i­capped chil­dren,  it is inspi­ra­tional to watch him fight with only four senses at the ready and be suc­cess­ful at it. Jon Jones came in to this fight ready to make a state­ment - and boy did he do so by dis­man­tling the fan favorite with his unique offense . Sadly, the hunger for the vic­tory ended up get­ting Jones dis­qual­i­fied due to an ille­gal elbow strike from the 12–6 posi­tion. In addi­tion, Hamill suf­fered a dis­lo­cated shoul­der. Jon Jones impressed me with his unique moves and strikes. The DQ was unfor­tu­nate for sure, but the sky is the limit for the 22-year old Jon “Bones” Jones. As for Hamill I wish him a speedy recov­ery and look for­ward to see­ing him fight again soon.

Awe­some take­down by “Bones”

As always these are my opin­ions and if you agree or dis­agree by all means leave your com­ments below.