My Take Radio

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.

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…)

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.

This week was guest free and back to the usual lunacy that goes on for 2.5 hours every week. I dis­cussed the new ini­tia­tive in place by devel­op­ers to adjust game dif­fi­culty on the sly as well as the reper­cus­sions that has on gamers. The TUF Finale was dis­cussed at length as well as the futures of Brock and Hendo.  I also dis­cussed the pass­ing of for­mer WWE super­star Umaga.

Video game & movie seg­ments were a gem as usual. My venom and rage was directed at Spider-Man 4’s rumored cast­ing choices.

If you didn’t get a chance to lis­ten live head over to Blog Talk Radio or Lib­syn and of course Itunes for your MTR fix.

Art con­test entries will be posted in the com­ing days on the MTR Face­book fan page as well as here so check back in a few days.

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.

Dana White is one guy that keeps things real hon­est and when he was inter­viewed by MMA Fan­house regard­ing Kimbo favoritism and Rampage’s blog let’s just say he han­dled it in typ­i­cal Dana fash­ion. Dana han­dles things straight up even though the deliv­ery is brash the man speaks truth. Do you agree with is comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhQysipfJhY&feature=player_embedded]

Video credit goes to 411mania

Video footage credit goes to MMA Fan­house