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MMA-GAF |OT5| Father Time Is Undefeated

D

Dipz

Banned
alr1ght said:
Coker is going to go all 1985 Vince MacMahon and bring in a bunch of roided up monsters.

That girl's face looks like some guy's that I can't place.
Click to expand...

6ea9ab1baa0efb9e19094440c317e21b_635x325.jpg
 
dream

dream

Member
Some more notes regarding last week’s ratings. The weigh-ins for UFC 175 drew 205,000 viewers on FS 1. The weigh-ins were part of “America’s Pregame,” that airs in that slot and was the most-watched episode of that show in history. The prelims on 7/5 averaged 1.01 million viewers, the second largest on FS 1, trailing only UFC 168 prelims (1.55 million), but UFC 168 was a far bigger show. The prelims peaked with the Urijah Faber vs. Alex Caceres fight, doing 1.17 million viewers. I’d be disappointed in that number. As far as Faber thinking more people would watch his fight on free TV than PPV, it’s doubtful that was the case. I would think that easily 1.25 million to 1.5 million people would have watched his fight on PPV, not to mention it would have been taken as a bigger fight by its positioning. FS 1 was 12th in its time slot overall, which is good for them since they are a low rated station, but beat ESPN, which is their big goal for these shows. 7/6 was the second highest rated Sunday in the history of the station. The 7/6 show did 774,000 viewers for the prelims and 1.02 million for the main show, peaking at 1.19 million viewers for B.J. Penn vs. Frankie Edgar. Again, for a Penn fight on free TV, with the talk of it being his last fight, and against Edgar, who is not a draw on his own but a name fighter, I’m disappointed in the peak number. But it was a tough task putting on a show the day after the biggest show of the year, especially when most of the base audience that would be watching this show had watched five hours of UFC the day before and was faced with another five hours here. The post-game show on Fox Sports Live after 7/6 did 391,000 viewers, the ninth most watched edition of Fox Sports Live ever, and highest rated ever on a Sunday. The UFC Tonight pre-game show on 7/6 did 174,000 viewers, the third most watched episode of a UFC Tonight show thus far.

Chris Weidman was signed this week by William Morris Endeavor, and was assigned Brad Slater as his rep for potential movies, acting, merchandising, etc. Slater is a major heavyweight as he’s Dwayne Johnson’s guy, as well as Ronda Rousey’s. I could see Weidman being a quiet asskicker boy next door type.

Holly Holm, the multi-time world womens’ boxing champion, signed with UFC this past week, which got kind of an incredible amount of publicity. Holm, 32, has a 33-2-3 record as a boxer, a 2-1 record as a kickboxer and a 7-0 record with six knockouts as an MMA fighter. None of those seven opponents were of UFC caliber, but she does have very obvious standup skills at a different level than most MMA women. She trains at the Jackson/Winkeljohn camp in Albuquerque and is obviously being groomed for a fight with Ronda Rousey. As a boxer, she was named Women’s Boxer of the Year in both 2005 and 2006 by Ring Magazine, but there’s really no money in women’s boxing. She retired last year as a boxer to concentrate on MMA. As far as MMA goes, thus far she’s faced mostly unknown opposition, and has been able to avoid takedowns and use her boxing and kickboxing skill to dominate fights. Her pure boxing skill is better than any woman in UFC right now, but Jessica Rakoczy was a woman’s boxing champion and hasn’t been able to do much in MMA and Jorina Baars was a tremendous woman kickboxer (she’s the one who recently beat Cris Cyborg in kickboxing) and she didn’t do a thing in MMA. But Holm does have some of the best MMA trainers around. The idea would be to give her a credible opponent (the best idea would be Jessamyn Duke because of the Four Horsewomen connection) or two. Dana White said that Holm would not get an immediate shot at Rousey. She’s coming off a broken arm suffered in her last fight but hopes to be ready to debut in late October or November. Holly Holm was the third most searched item in the U.S. on 7/10, behind only the Emmy Awards and Garth Brooks.

Ali Bagautinov, who lost to Demetrious Johnson for the flyweight title on 6/14, tested positive for EPO in an unannounced test that Bagautinov was ordered to take on 6/2 by the British Columbia Athletic Commission. It’s amazing that no UFC fighter or MMA fighter ever tested positive for EPO before June, and then Bagautinov and Chael Sonnen did in tests from different commissions within days of each other. I wonder if this means they’ve improved detection methods for EPO. It’s got to give some guys second thoughts, but it’s probably more a virtue of increasing off season testing, which is a legit deterrent. The commission suspended him for one year. They didn’t get the test results back until this past week, which is why this news didn’t come out any earlier. UFC noted that they will abide by the commission ruling and Bagautinov will not be fighting for one year and will have to pass a full drug test before he will be booked for another fight. It’s fortunate for UFC that he lost the fight.

The person Johnson was going to defend against next, John Dodson, underwent reconstructive surgery for a torn ACL and a torn meniscus on 7/9. He will likely not be fighting again for another year. Dodson said he was told it would be six to eight months before he could seriously train. Dodson said his knee had been bothering him since last year. He pulled out of a fight scheduled with Scott Jorgensen, and then said he felt his knee go out on the first kick he threw in his win over John Moraga. He said he didn’t feel that bad after the fight, but the knee popped when he was running, and then got an MRI. It showed the torn ACL. In a big surprise, UFC announced Johnson defending against Chris Cariaso on the 8/30 show in Sacramento. Cariaso, who is from San Jose, but fights out of San Francisco, would be a Northern California guy given a title shot. Cariaso had already been announced for the 9/21 show in Saitama against Kyoji Horiguchi. He’s 4-2 in the division, having been submitted by John Moraga and losing via decision to Jussier Formiga. He only got a split decision win over Louis Smolka in his last fight on 5/10. The following challenger would probably be either the winner of the 7/19 Dublin fight with Brad Pickett vs. Ian McCall or the 8/16 Bangor, ME, fight with Zack Makovsky vs. Formiga. Pickett does have a win over Johnson, but that was years ago, when both were bantamweights, and I don’t think he could do it again.

Dana White told ESPN.com that he would be meeting with Gina Carano this week and was going to sign her and put the Ronda Rousey fight together. Most likely the fight will end up on the 1/3 show in Las Vegas. “It’s just a matter of me and Lorenzo going to jump on a plane to Los Angeles, get in a room with her and her lawyer, and get this thing done.” White said Carano has made it clear she wants to fight. Rousey has said that she would like to give her a title shot since Carano put women’s MMA on the map in 2007 in fights on Showtime and CBS. “There is no doubt about it, she wants to fight. And she wants to fight Ronda.”

This week’s show is a Fight Pass card on 7/19 from Dublin, which is a sold out show built around Conor McGregor. The show starts at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, with Patrick Holohan vs. Josh Sampo, Cody Donovan vs. Nikita Krylov, Trevor Smith vs. Tor Troeng, Mike King vs. Cathal Pandred, Phil Harris vs. Neil Seery, Ilir Latifi vs. Chris Dempsey, Naoyuki Kotani vs. Norman Parke, Ian McCall vs. Brad Pickett, Gunnar Nelson vs. Zak Cummings and McGregor vs. Diego Brandao.

The Jose Aldo Jr. vs. Chad Mendes fight has turned into a grudge match over the last week. It started with Mendes saying that he thought Aldo was avoiding him by pulling out of the 8/2 date due to neck and shoulder injuries. Aldo was so mad that he wrote a letter to Combate.com in Brazil, where he all but said he thought Mendes was on steroids. “Concerning my injuries, maybe I have so many because I’m probably not taking the same `supplements’ you take. I have injuries because I work very hard to beat your ass as I did last time, and I think you remember well, and have nightmares about it to this day.” “If you are also a doctor, I can send the exams for you to evaluate. Maybe you could prescribe one of your `supplements’ for me to get better faster.” Mendes then pretty much insinuated in a Sherdog radio interview that he thought Aldo pulled out over PEDs. When asked, he said, “I definitely do. This is something that’s been ongoing, but for him to all of a sudden drop out, I mean he drops out of a lot of fights, but I think it’s pretty coincidental.” There may be nothing to this, but why fighters would think so is UFC apparently told all the fighters on the Los Angeles show that they need to get licensed immediately for random drug testing for that show, and the next day was when Aldo reported the injury. UFC has doctors and they do check on injuries to headliners to make sure they are legit. Mendes estimated 80 percent of fighters were taking something. Mendes questioned out of competition drug testing to foreigners and being skeptical. “Guys in Brazil, guys in Japan, can we trust those random drug tests? I was thinking about this the other day. If someone were to knock on Aldo’s door in Brazil and say, `We need to give you a random drug test,’ and he says, `Here’s $1,000, go away,’ it’s done. I feel like something like that could happen very easily.” He also said he thinks Aldo accusing him of PED usage means he’s in Aldo’s head. “He’s reaching big time. We’ve never seen Aldo lash out like this. We’ve never seen him lose his temper. I’m in his head. I own him right now.” He also noted what we wrote, saying, “as soon as the whole random drug testing started popping up, the next day, he is injured and out of the fight.” Mendes said he’s been told it’s 50/50 the fight ends up in Brazil, but he wants it in the U.S. because he thinks the drug testing for things like EPO and HGH won’t be as stringent there.

A few weeks ago, Miesha Tate saved the life of boyfriend Bryan Caraway’s mother. In a story by Ben Fowlkes at MMA Junkie, Caraway said he decided to take his parents on a vacation with himself and Tate to Cancun. They went snorkeling. Caraway’s mother, who is in her 60s, suffers from severe asthma. She carried an inhaler with her in her bathing suit. While snorkeling the inhaler fell out of her bathing suit. As she was swimming back to the boat, she had an asthma attack and found that her inhaler was gone. Tate and Caraway weren’t on the boat, but were a few hundred feet away and heard Caraway’s father scream her name and they saw the snorkeling guides pumping frantically on her chest. They rushed there and everyone was in panic. They didn’t know if she had an asthma attack, a heart attack, if she had drowned and tried CPR but it wasn’t working. They got out an extra inhaler she had left on the boat and sprayed it into her mouth but it did no good. She had turned purple with blood vessels bursting in her face and her eyes were rolling in her head and Tate said she thought she was going to die right there. Tate, not knowing what to do, gave her ten puffs of the inhaler and started giving her CPR and finally she started breathing a little. Tate would then take a few puffs of the inhaler in her own mouth, and breathe them into Caraway’s mother’s mouth and she ended up okay.

Chris Weidman said he nearly pulled out of the Lyoto Machida fight on 7/5 because of sprained ligaments in his left hand. “I went through a two day period where I was very nervous, and felt, you had mentioned my hand, and I thought I was going to have to pull out of the fight” he told Ariel Helwani on the MMA house. “I couldn’t touch my thumb to any of my fingers. I couldn’t grab anything. I couldn’t squeeze a toothbrush, couldn’t brush my teeth. I could do it with my right hand, but not my left.” He had an MRI done, and found out about the sprained ligaments. He got a cortisone injection. He was able to train grappling but threw no punches the last two-and-a-half weeks of camp, but he was fine punching the night of the fight. He said he thinks Machida was the toughest guy and best fighter he was ever in the cage with.

Nate Diaz, still holding out for more money, tweeted, “Some people just suck way too much UFC d**k an (sic) they where (sic) cowboy hats.” Dana White responded, saying, “Nate can do whatever he wants to do. Nate can sit out and not suck any UFC whatever, for as long as he wants to. Who cares? He’s a grown man. Sit out for as long as you want. Sit out the rest of your career. It’s your decision. But to start making fun of guys who actually like to fight, and guys who go out there and put on unbelievable fights and people love to see, (Cerrone) steps up and does what he does. People love Cowboy Cerrone. Nate wants to talk about making money, but there’s only one way to make money, and that’s fighting.” .

Cat Zingano will join Dominick Cruz as top contenders who return on the 9/27 show in Las Vegas after a long absence. Zingano, who was the No. 1 contender for Ronda Rousey after beating Miesha Tate on April 13, 2013, in one of last year’s most exciting fights, will face Amanda Nunes. A win by Zingano would put her in line for a title shot with Rousey, likely on 1/3, unless either Carano or Cris Cyborg Justino are signed and fast-tracked into the bigger money fight. With Cyborg fighting on an Invicta show in December, she is more likely to go into UFC later in 2015, but Carano would probably move ahead of Zingano if she’s signed due to greater marketability. Zingano was scheduled to coach against Rousey on TUF and get the UFC 168 title shot, but suffered a torn ACL and Tate was put in her spot. She later suffered a second torn ACL, and her estranged husband and coach, Mauricio Zingano, committed suicide in January. Zingano is 8-0 in MMA and competed last week in a grappling match at the UFC Fan Expo, and won with a flying armbar. Nunes is 9-3, with two first round stoppages in her two UFC fights, and with a win over Zingano would put her into a contenders slot. Also added to that show is Stephen Thompson vs. Patrick Cote. Both have three straight wins in mid-card level bouts.

Rousey underwent arthroscopic knee surgery on 7/15. She had been working through knee issues since early in the year and had multiple knee surgeries during her judo career. Rousey didn’t need surgery for her broken thumb, suffered in the 16 second win over Alexis Davis.

Michael Johnson was injured and had to pull out of his 7/26 FOX main card slot against Josh Thomson. Bobby Green, who was to face Abel Trujillo on 8/16 in Bangor, ME, agreed to fight three weeks earlier than planned for a shot at a much bigger name on a bigger stage. Trujillo will now face Ross Pearson in Bangor.

Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira is being credited for saving the life of woman fighter Duda Yankovich, after she suffered a stroke while training. Nogueira rushed Yankovich to one of Rio de Janeiro’s best hospitals when she started showing signs of a stroke. “If Rodrigo had not been as fast as he was, and if she had not had a high level of care, she would have died,” said Dr. Angela Cortes to Fight AG.

The first live non-UFC show on Fight Pass will be the Invicta show which was announced for 9/6 at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City. That building holds 10,000. They had been running the Ameristar Casino, which holds 1,000, and only sold that out I think for Cris Cyborg vs. Marloes Coenen. Before that they ran the Memorial Hall, the old pro wrestling building, which held 3,000 and they never sold that out. The plan right now is to run Invicta events about once every two months. While it’s not announced that this is Invicta’s purpose, and it’s probably not it’s goal, it is going to end up as a feeder system for women fighters to be noticed by UFC and give them experience. The biggest news regarding the first show is no Cyborg. Apparently she wants to lose weight to compete next at 135, and doesn’t think she can make the weight until December, which would be when the second Invicta show on Fight Pass is scheduled. The full card, with the prelims, will air live, and the complete library of all Invicta fights is already on Fight Pass. The main event is Michelle Waterson defending the Atomweight (105 pound) title against Yasuke Tamada of Japan. They also have a fight to determine the strawweight champion with Stephanie Eggink vs. Katja Kankaanpaa. The champion had been Carla Esparza, who was signed to UFC and is in the UFC tournament for the 115 pound title that is going on behind closed doors on the TUF set in Las Vegas. Peggy Morgan and Roxanne Modafferi, who were in the women’s season of Ultimate Fighter, but each lost their fight that they needed to win to stay in UFC, are on the show. Ediane Gomes, who was expected to face Cyborg for the featherweight title, has dropped to bantamweight and will face Tonya Evinger.
 
dream

dream

Member
The 7/26 show from San Jose is going to have four plus hours on FOX, starting at 6 p.m. Eastern, with eight fights. There will be nothing on FS 1 that day except probably a post-game show. There will be four fights, starting at 4:15 p.m., that air on Fight Pass. There will be a post-game show on FS 1 after the main event ends.

Wanderlei Silva, who is in complete denial that he’s going to be out of action for around a year for avoiding a drug test and thinks he’ll be able to fight soon, believes that when Chael Sonnen’s suspension is up that the two will fight. He told the Brazilian publication, Tatame, he doesn’t buy Sonnen’s retirement and noted the amount of money on the table for both of them as the reason he thinks the fight will still happen.

Nancy Gay, who formerly worked for the San Jose Mercury-News and San Francisco Chronicle, was hired as the new Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of the UFC web site. Of late she was working for Comcast Sports Bay Area.

Ben Rothwell vs. Alistair Overeem, Matt Mitrione vs. Derrick Lewis as heavyweight battles have been added to the 9/5 show in Ledyard, CT, which is the show that also features Ronaldo Jacare Souza vs. Gegard Mousasi. Also added is Charles Oliveira vs. Nik Lentz which is a strong featherweight bout, so that is looking like one of the better FS 1 shows of late.

Urijah Faber suffered a broken rib in the first round of his fight with Alex Caceres on 7/5. He was actually hoping to fight on the 8/30 show in Sacramento, which would have been pushing it. Dana White, while in Japan, had talked about Faber vs. Kid Yamamoto as a possibility for 9/21 in Saitama, but the injury eliminates any chance of the first date and perhaps the second as well.

According to manager Lex McMahon, Stefan Struve is 100 percent that he wants a fight. He said Struve’s doctors said he suffered a panic attack but there’s nothing wrong with him physically that would prevent him from fighting.

UFC Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Marc Ratner is going to Puerto Rico to help set the stage for a 2015 show in San Juan.

A quote that got a lot of play was at a Floyd Mayweather press interview when asked about Ronda Rousey and the silly story of who would win a street fight between the two of them, Mayweather responded, “I don’t know who he is.”

Kyle Noke is being talked about as the opponent for Yoshihiro Akiyama’s return on that same Saitama show.

Tim Kennedy is asking for random drug testing before his fight with Yoel Romero on the 9/27 show.

Mirsad Bektic vs. Max Holloway has been added to 8/16 in Bangor, ME. Also added to that show is Gray Maynard vs. Fabricio Camoes, a fight that was originally scheduled for the 8/2 canceled show in Los Angeles.

Neil Magny vs. Alex Garcia has been added to the 8/23 show in Tulsa. The fight was first scheduled for 8/2 in Los Angeles.

Al Iaquinta vs. Rodrigo Damm, Nik Lentz vs. Charles Oliveira, Rob Font vs. Chris Beal and Chris Camozzi vs. Rafael Natal were announced for 9/5 in Ledyard, CT. Oliveira beat Lentz in 2011 via submission, but the decision was reversed and ruled a no contest due to Oliveira using an illegal knee to the head of a downed opponent, which opened Lentz up for the submission.

Santiago Ponzinibbio vs. Sergio Moraes, Lukasz Sajewski (from Poland, debuting with a 13-0 record vs. Leandro Santos, Paulo Thiago vs. Mike Rhodes, Francisco Trinaldo vs. Efrain Escucdero (TUF winner in 2008 who debuts for his third run with the promotion after being cut in 2010 and 2012, but has won four of his last five), and Igor Araujo vs. George Sullivan were added to the 9/13 show in Brasilia, Brazil.

Ramsey Nijem vs. Carlos Diego Ferreira, Justin Edwards vs. Yancy Medeiros, Derek Brunson vs. Lorenz Larkin and Ruan Potts vs. Anthony Hamilton have been added to 8/30 in Sacramento.



The World Series of Fighting numbers on 7/5 are not nearly as impressive as they first sounded. The number released by WSOF sources of 906,000 was the first number out. In the 4 p.m. Eastern time slot on NBC, WSOF was down from the 1.6 million and 1.2 million that the network did with two previous boxing events. However, the boxing events were far more heavily publicized, plus WSOF had a huge disadvantage of being on a UFC day, where a lot of the MMA fan base was already committing to three to five hours on television, so adding another two hours in the afternoon would have been overkill. However, that number was for NBC nationally. Because the show was preempted in several markets, most notably Philadelphia, the actual audience that saw WSOF was 781,000 viewers. Worse, of those viewers, 437,000 were above the age of 50 and 390,000 were above the age of 52. The show only did a 0.19 in Males 18-34, 0.51 in males 35-49 and 0.62 in Males 50+. As things stand right now, WSOF will have another NBC show on 12/27. The first show, on 7/5, was disappointing to me. It seems like there is now this idea that you just put fights on TV, like boxing. The problem is, that’s not capturing the general public interest. You need personality pieces and ideas regarding ring entrances. So little thought is given to the entertainment aspect, and making the shows look different. This was the exact same show, just with different fighters, you’d see on NBC Sports. There was no direction. Here they are, with more than four times their usual viewership, and they brought out Ray Sefo to hype future shows, and they had nothing to hype. He didn’t know the next show and didn’t know any big upcoming fights. The whole purpose of being on a network and having more viewers is to use that exposure to build your product, fights and brand, and they did none of that. It wasn’t until this weekend that they announced a new show, and it’s on 8/9 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Plus, the main event visually was going to be real turnoff to most new fans. I have so much respect for Nick Newell and he is an amazing fighter. I know he doesn’t want sympathy and the photo from the beach the next day with Justin Gaethje hanging out with Newell was tremendous. Watching Newell, born with a left arm that goes to the elbow, beating second tier guys on television was inspirational. Having him challenge a hell of a fighter, and getting beaten up badly, looked like a street fight with a bully beating up a crippled kid to someone unless they were familiar with Newell’s career. Newell wouldn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him for the beating or taking the fight, but there’s a reality of how an NBC viewer who doesn’t know who Newell is and never saw his prior wins would view that. The vast majority of people watching this would have never seen him before. To those people, you couldn’t help but have a negative reaction to MMA seeing this. Plus, Gaethje, who retained his lightweight title with an early second round stoppage, seemed like he was hating what he had to do, and nearly broke down. It was made worse because Newell was just so damn tough that the beating was prolonged. Newell was competitive early, and never quit, but once Gaethje took over, it became brutal. Gaethje will next be defending his title against Melvin Guillard, who is a former training partner.
 
dream

dream

Member
When you get battered in your hometown by a bum like Cowboy Cerrone, it is time to find a new vacation. Fucking retire, you unbelievable scrub. Retire and become a pipefitter.
 
K

Kogepan

Member
Ninja Scooter said:
UFC finally has a good card and they bury it on a Wednesday night, starting it when most west coast people are barely getting out of work. GJGE Dana.
Click to expand...

couple days again people were posting that this was a shit card with a bunch of nobodies. Now the UFC is 'burying it on a wednesday'? Make up ur damn minds.

Best action on any card this year. 9/10
 
D

Dipz

Banned
Kogepan said:
couple days again people were posting that this was a shit card with a bunch of nobodies. Now the UFC is 'burying it on a wednesday'? Make up ur damn minds.

Best action on any card this year. 9/10
Click to expand...
And in a month's time there will be a PPV with Chris Cariaso challenging Mighty Mouse for the Flyweight title in the co-main event.

$59.95 LOL
 
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