MMA NOTES ON UFC, WEC, STRIKEFORCE!
February 16th, 2010 By Pedro Fernandez
MMA LADY CHAMP CYBORG ABUSED
Dallas, TX- Having gone back and forth over this subject, there will now be an MMA column each and every Wednesday, this in addition to our weekend/event coverage. That being said, let’s get started. The World Extreme Cagefighting, (WEC) is the Triple AAA farm club of the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) that has fighters from bantamweight & 125 to middleweight at 185 lbs. They will return to Sacramento, CA on April 24 with Jose Aldo Jr. vs. drawing card Uriah Faber for the WEC featherweight (135) belt, while Ben Henderson-Donald Cerrone (WEC 145 belt) and Mike Brown-Manny Gamburan. Three great fights that I’d like to see LIVE. I think the Dana White and company (Zuffa Sports) that run both UFC & WEC, that their charging $44.95 on PPV is NOT even slightly cool! HEY, REMEMBER FREE TV?
There is a darn good chance Strikeforce will go on that same date on free CBS TV. If that happens, the PPV #’s are doomed, if they aren’t already! SPEAKING OF STRIKEFORCE: Herschel Walker was blasted by UFC head Dana White in a Las Vegas radio interview. Saying Walker, who at 47 won his MMA debut a fortnight ago on Strikeforce Miami, an ex-NFL great who won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, to call him worse than a fraud was way over the line, even for the bombastic White. This is pure BS and jealousy for if Dana had Walker, he’d be saying what a great example Walker is seeing he donated his entire six figure purse to “Project Turnaround,” a Dallas, TX charity for street kids. The card, held in Sunrise, FL did 4,927 paid, 2000 in comps, and 1,100 in the luxury boxes for $317,000. According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, they only sold $8,000 in merchandise. Two things come to mind here 1) No real star power on the Strikeforce roster. 2) Horrid salespeople as that’s about $2 bucks a head. The UFC and WWE, they get about $35 bucks a head in merchandise sales…MMA LADY CHAMP ABUSED!GROAN TIME AS COUTURE TO GET TITLE BID: Randy Couture’s victory at UFC 109 over Mark Coleman, who at 45 wasn’t much of a barometer of sorts to determine what Randy has left, means he will get another title shot at either 205 (light heavy) or heavyweight (over 205). To see Couture face Brock Lesnar at heavyweight might bring us the first major MMA death, the same one that Dana White tried to attribute to Herschel Walker. MAS STRIKEFORCE: Cris Cyborg, who beat Gina Carano to within an inch of death last year, is clearly the best female MMA fighter in the world. She only got $35,000 for a tough fight on STRIKEFORCE MIAMI, man is she getting ripped off! Lyoto Machida, the 205 lb. champ is the likely target for the soon to be 47-year old, but that’ll be after the May card in Montreal in which Machida (16-0) must face Shogun Rua (22-4) who beat Lyoto in their first encounter but wuz robbed by judging that reminded you of boxing…WRESTLING NOTES: TNA Wrestling is moving to Monday nights on Spike TV at 9 PM ET to go toe to toe with Vince McMahon’s WWE…The signing of Hulk Hogan, not as a wrestler but a major player in the theme of the company along with Eric Bishoff is a plus for wrestling fans. Speaking of WWE, they just released 3.5 million of their video game “Smackdown vs. Raw 2010.” Although this is early, that puts them slightly ahead of the UFC’s video game which should surpass the WWE numbers by the end of the year.
Pedro Fernandez
Pedro, why bother with this MMA garbage, it is not out grossing boxing, if you look at the official paid numbers, they are far less then claimed, so White is either lying to us or to the IRS
Brad, there’s room for both. Many of us are fans of Boxing and MMA. However, I don’t know too many Boxing fans who like Pro-Rasslin.
He bothers with it because people watch it!!! I like both myself and i’m sure many people watch both. Don King and Bob are no better or worse than Dana.
They’re both combat sports and I love em both, but lean heavily towards boxing…But when I see how UFC evolved, I think of Bruce Lee. Way ahead of his time. He tried to study ALL forms of combat. Literally, he collected as much literature and magazines as he could that had to do with health and fitness, as well as working out. This was in addition to training in as many different fighting systems he would come accross. Fast forward years later, when the UFC first came out, it was to test which fighting system was the “Ultimate” fighting system. You had a friggin guy with one glove (Art Jimmerson) thinking he had the advantage because he was a professional boxer. Art decided to handicap himself against another Martial Artist who became notorious for beating down guys bigger than him, who outweighed him at times by almost as much as 50 pounds! The man who became a legend was by the name of Royce Gracie. His Martial Arts, his own family created in Brazil literally changed the way the world looked at fighting, just like Bruce Lee did before him. Of course Gracie got his ass whooped as fighting in the UFC evolved, because he didn’t change with the times and relied solely on one type of martial arts in fights.
Brad: There’s room for both brother! Just like there’s room for football, basketball, etc..Different sports
Glad to see machida rematching Rua right away…Boxing, take notes! Based on that decision in the first fight (rua vs machida), i agree with you pedro…looks like m.m.a. already has taken notes from boxing (regarding bogus decisions)!
better question, why do non MMA fans bother to click through and tell Pedro not to post MMA articles? who cares about the numbers? MMA has his own little niche, it does very well.
Hate to break the news to you but Couture already faced Lesnar, and fairly recently as well. And WEC is hardly the AAA of the UFC, it actually has phased out most of its overlapping weight classes. It is more like the flyweight division of the UFC.
True, but he was said to have a choice. This came from the mouth of Dave Meltzer, whom I respect greatly as a reporter and writer. It would be crazy to fight Brock again , Couture could get seriously hurt. Dana White talks about Herschel Walker being an MMA death waiting to happen, match Randy and Brock and you’d have to call it like the Undertaker in the WWE, a casket match!