I started this weeks episode pretty tame but my com­po­sure slowly unrav­eled over the course of the broad­cast. Here are some of the things that were discussed

MMA

• UFC on VS was discussed
• UFC PPV events
• Andrei Arlovski returns to Strikeforce
• Strike­force on CBS
• James Toney signs with the UFC and will trained for MMA by Juanito Ibarra.
• UFC will run an event on 4/17 to com­pete against Strikeforce

Wrestling

• Umaga’s cause of death revealed
• Awe­some Kong’s TNA status
• Upcom­ing RAW guest hosts
• Recently released WWE superstars
• Impact becomes the “Whole Dam Show” on 3/8

Video Games

• Heavy Rain is # 1 in the UK
• Activi­sion vs Infin­ity Ward
• Splin­ter Cell Con­vic­tion Xbox 360 bundle
• Sony acquires Media Molecule
• Halo Reach — Multiplayer

Movies

• DC movie plans
• Max Steel becomes Stretch Armstrong
• Tron:Legacy a trilogy?
• My thoughts on Zoolan­der 2 & the Arthur remake star­ring Rus­sell Brand
• Trans­former movie news
• Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter– WTF!!!
• Gilligan’s Island : The Movie
• Iron Man 2 on Kim­mel after the awards on 3/7
• Doo­gie Howser and the smurfs ?
• Green Lantern in 3D
• Marco Polo the movie?

Spe­cial thanks to Don Ander­son from Tum­blin with Tum­ble­weed for his awe­some call with the late Dud­ley Moore

This weeks plugs

• GirlGamer.com
• MMAValor.com
• MMAHotstuff.com
• Darksiders.com
• Haydndalton.wordpress.com
• VGNRadio.com
• ClevelandSportsRadio.net
• Bornstubbornradio.com
• OCRemix.org
• MMAJunkie.com
• 411mania.com
• Filmdrunk.com

Next week : Dark­siders returns to MTR!

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…)

Strike­force has shown that they can be a major con­tender in MMA against the UFC, just check out any media web­site where they nor­mally talk all about UFC. Strike­force flooded the MMA web­sites this past week­end due to the Jan­u­ary 30th Strike­force: Miami event.

Although I really enjoyed Strike­force: Miami, it wasn’t any­thing spec­tac­u­lar, but still a good show. There were a total of 12 fights on the card,  6 of which had major impor­tance to Strike­force. I’ll break down those 6 cards real quick before get­ting into the upcom­ing Women’s Tour­na­ment at Strikeforce.

Jay Hieron vs. Joe Riggs
This fight was shown free on www.easportsmma.com, obvi­ously to pro­mote the upcom­ing EA MMA game (which actu­ally doesn’t look too bad, but I’m still unsure whether or not I will buy it). It’s dif­fi­cult to for­give a hyp­ocrite game com­pany like EA for bash­ing MMA a cou­ple of years back when the UFC wanted to make an EA MMA game, and then they come out with an MMA game of their own. But we’ll see.

Any­way, the Jay Hieron vs. Joe Riggs fight was sub-par, end­ing with Hieron win­ning via Unan­i­mous Deci­sion. Hieron won, and there­fore was sup­posed to get a shot at whomever won the fight that night between Nick Diaz and Mar­ius Zarmon­skis for the Wel­ter­weight Title. Though, it now looks like Diaz may be head­ing over to Japan to fight in Dream against Hay­ato Saku­rai for one fight, since Strike­force has aligned them­selves with the Japan­ese promotion.

With that, I’ll jump into the head­lin­ing fight of the evening.

Nick Diaz vs. Mar­ius Zarmon­skis
Mar­ius Zarmon­skis was sup­posed to be the man to give Diaz the most dif­fi­cult time in the Wel­ter­weight Divi­sion (out­side of the UFC), but Diaz pretty much picked apart Zarmon­skis through­out the whole fight, never let­ting Zarmon­skis estab­lish a game plan. Diaz ended the fight 4 1/2 min­utes into the first round via TKO.

Bobby Lash­ley vs. Wes Sims
This fight went pretty much as expected. The out-of-shape Wes Sims, who had a week to pre­pare for the fight, was dom­i­nated through­out the fight, and was taken to the ground, and treated like an ama­teur. Lash­ley fin­ished Sims two min­utes into the first round, which prompted Sims to start a bar­rage of name-calling after the fight. He even called Lash­ley a “juiced-up turd” in a post-fight inter­view.….. really? It wouldn’t break my heart if we never see Wes Sims in the MMA cage again. Unfor­tu­nately, he is get­ting back into the cage in March, against for­mer UFC Heavy­weight Cham­pion Tim Sylvia in an MMA event in Ohio. You know, I’d actu­ally love to see Tim Sylvia vs. Wes Sims - at a hot­dog eat­ing con­test. That would be more entertaining.

So, what’s next for Bobby Lash­ley? Strike­force needs to give him a step-up in com­pe­ti­tion, and he just might get that step-up in Brett Rogers. Strikeforce’s CEO Scott Coker has talked about the pos­si­bil­ity of Bobby Lash­ley vs. Brett Rogers, and although it would most cer­tainly be a great fight to watch, I don’t see Lash­ley sur­viv­ing that fight. Lash­ley is a very lik­able guy, and is fun to watch, so I’ll be root­ing for him in that fight.

Her­schel Walker vs. Greg Nagy
Her­schel Walker didn’t look too bad in his MMA debut, but he was fight­ing against Greg Nagy, some­one who nobody knew any­thing about until he fought in the cage. It didn’t take long to see why they put him in against Walker. Nagy shouldn’t have been in there in the first place. Nagy went after Walker like a zom­bie goes after brains. Hands out front, wav­ing around, and he even ducked down like he was going to ram Walker with his head. It took three rounds to for Walker to fin­ish off Nagy, and even that fin­ish wasn’t very con­vinc­ing. Again, I like Her­schel Walker a lot. He is a tremen­dous ath­lete and great per­son­al­ity, but he should prob­a­bly just retire from MMA undefeated.

Rob­bie Lawler vs. Melvin Man­heof
It’s been seven months since Lawler’s defeat against Jake Shields, and in this fight he was look­ing to get his grove back. Man­heof was dom­i­nat­ing Lawler through­out the entire fight with dev­as­tat­ing punches and leg kicks. 3 1/2 min­utes into it, Lawler threw a hail mary punch which con­nected with Manheof’s chin and knocked him clean out. Just goes to show that any­thing can hap­pen in MMA.

So, what’s next for Rob­bie Lawler? Noth­ing has been dis­cussed as of yet, but per­son­ally, I would really like to see Rob­bie Lawler vs. Cung Le. I think that would be a hell of a match!

Cris­tiane “Cyborg” San­tos vs. Mar­loes Coenen
This was pos­si­bly the fight of the night, and was also the fight that showed how well Cyborg can take a punch. Coenen hit Cyborg with every­thing she had, and Cyborg barely flinched. At the end of the fight, Cyborg became vic­to­ri­ous 3 min­utes and 40 sec­onds into the third round via TKO, and the pun­ish­ment she dished out showed on Coenen’s face. I don’t think there is any­one in the 145-lb women’s divi­sion that can defeat Cyborg right now.

Strike­force is now set­ting up tour­na­ments in the 135-lb. and 145-lb. Women’s Divi­sion, which is some­thing I’m look­ing for­ward to! There are a lot of great fight­ers in those divi­sions. Unfor­tu­nately, unde­feated 135-lb. fighter Sarah Kauf­man will not be com­pet­ing in the tour­na­ment, but instead, she may be fight­ing for the vacant title against Smack­girl vet­eran, Takayo Hashi.

Other nota­bles to look for in the upcom­ing 135-lb. women’s tour­na­ments are Miesha Tate, Kaitlin Young, and Shayna Bas­zler; and pos­si­bly Kerry Vera and Kim Cou­ture tak­ing their spot in the 145-lb. tournament.

No set date for the tour­na­ments as of yet, but expect them to start in the spring.

After three oppo­nents have been denied the chance to fight Bobby Lash­ley by the Florida Ath­letic Com­mis­sion, all being called “not com­pet­i­tive” fights for the 4–0 pro wrestler-turned MMA fighter; Strike­force has finally got an approved oppo­nent for Lash­ley. His oppo­nent for Jan­u­ary 30th’s Strike­force: Miami event will be Wes Sims (22–12-1). This Ulti­mate Fighter alumni and UFC vet  is best known for his two losses against for­mer UFC Heavy­weight Cham­pion Frank Mir (one loss being a DQ due to ille­gal stomps to the head), and his antics on The Ulti­mate Fighter Sea­son 10.

Wes Sims is cur­rently on a three-fight win streak (his first round loss on The Ulti­mate Fighter does not count on his record), and is look­ing to upset the unde­feated Lash­ley. Bobby Lash­ley has fin­ished 3 out of his 4 wins, only once going the dis­tance with Ulti­mate Fighter Sea­son 8 cast mem­ber, Jason Guida. Lashley’s only other notable win is against Bob Sapp at Fight Force Inter­na­tional: Ulti­mate Chaos in June.

Strike­force: Miami will also have sev­eral other high pro­file fights, includ­ing Heis­man Tro­phy win­ner Her­schel Walker (0–0) in his MMA debut against Greg Nagy (1–1); Rob­bie Lawler (18–5) vs. Melvin Man­heof (24–6-1); Strike­force Women’s Light­weight Cham­pion Cris­tiane “Cyborg” San­tos (8–1) vs. Mar­loes Coenen (17–3) for the title; and Nick Diaz (20–7) vs. Mar­ius Zarom­skis (13–3) for the Wel­ter­weight Championship.

You can watch Strike­force: Miami on Show­time at 10pm EST on Jan­u­ary 30, or live at BankAt­lantic Cen­ter in Sun­rise, Florida. Tick­ets are going for around $50.

Last week, I shared with you some footage of Fedor vs Rogers 360 on Show­time. This past Sat­ur­day, M1 Global and Strike­force pre­sented Fedor vs. Rogers on Sat­ur­day Night Fights. While this card had a lot of hype going in, I’ll be the first to admit that I expected most of the fights to be for­mu­laic in terms of the right guys win­ning and the card lack­ing   any drama. I’ll start off by say­ing that all the fights on the card delivered.

I am going to go fight by fight shar­ing my thoughts.

HEAVYWEIGHT BOUT — Anto­nio Silva (13–1) vs. Fabri­cio Wer­dum (12–4-1): Werdum-Decision

Excit­ing heavy­weight bout that showed a wealth of tal­ent with plenty of action. I expected Silva to come away with the vic­tory but Wer­dum (pro­nounced Ver-Doom) showed great cage aware­ness as well as great scram­bles and solid stand-up to defend against the larger opponent.

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT BOUT — Gegard Mousasi (26–2-1) vs. Rameau Thierry Sok­oud­jou (7–4): Mousasi-TKO 2nd Round

HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE BOUT: Fedor Emelia­nenko (31–1-1nc) vs. Brett Rogers (10–0): Fedor-TKO 2nd Round
 

Fedor and Rogers were fight­ing for the WAMMA Heavy­weight Title instead of the Strike­force title which is cur­rently held by Alas­tair Overeem. Rogers came into this fight as the under­dog, but boy did he promptly intro­duce him­self with a swift jab to Fedor’s face which may or may not have bro­ken his nose. Rogers showed zero fear in tak­ing the fight to Fedor, at one point secur­ing the mount and pum­mel­ing Fedor in the first round. Fedor has not seen a sec­ond round in years but seemed unfazed as the round started. Sadly, like I said last week, Rogers made a mis­take and was hit with a huge right that put him to sleep.

I must say Rogers got a lot fur­ther than I gave him credit for and had a decent chance. Fedor is a great strate­gist and knows to wait for his oppo­nent to make a mis­take. Rogers will see Fedor again since I am sure Fedor enjoyed the competition.

In clos­ing I’d like to com­mend Strike­force for a great card, but you guys need to get rid of Gus John­son because he sucks.

EA treated us to some footage of EA Sports MMA which showed not only what the game looks like but the main event we were about to see. While the footage was wel­come, the fight­ers didn’t look as real­is­tic as the ones in UFC Undis­puted 2009. Given that it was a just a trailer, I am sure EA will tighten up the graphics.

I am not sure I’d buy the EA game given how they gave the UFC a hard time when their game needed to be pub­lished but that may change if the game is good and has a good roster.Have a look for yourselves

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9M7d3osNYQ]