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Sunday media slate: A Saturday full of surprises
By Zach Arnold | July 15, 2007
I took a beating over at MMA Predictions on my BodogFight match picks. I ended up picking Yoshiki Takahashi, Amar Suloev, Yves Edwards, and Roman Zentsov to win. Brutal. I did pick Yuki Kondo to lose, however. He paid the price against Trevor Langley.
Sam Caplan on the uglyness at the BodogFight show. He says there were several racist fans at the show. Sam’s comments about the racist fans is backed up both at 411 Mania and Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (in Japanese).
Order of fights on the HERO’s card at Yokohama Arena on Monday:
- Alexandre Franca Nogueira vs. Shuichiro Katsumura
- Andre Dida vs. Artur Oumakhanov
- Katsuyori Shibata vs. Ralek Gracie
- Middleweight Tournament (70 kg): Kazuyuki Miyata vs. Vitor “Shaolin” Ribiero
- Middleweight Tournament (70 kg): Black Mamba vs. Hideo Tokoro
- Middleweight Tournament (70 kg): Kaoru Uno vs. Katsuhiko Nagata
- Melvin Manhoef vs. Bernard Ackah
- Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Kin Tai Ei
Onto today’s headlines.
- MMA Weekly: Cage Rage 22 event results
- The Baltimore Sun: Full BodogFight report from Trenton
- UFC Mania: UFC eyes first outdoor event in Hawaii
- Fight Report: Kermit Cintron annihilates Walter Matthysse in two rounds
- Fight Report: Williams takes Margarito’s belt and spoils his superfight with Miguel Cotto
- Kevin Iole: Oscar looms over Williams, welterweights
- Prophet Fighting: Arturo Gatti KO’d by Alfonso Gomez, retires from boxing
- The Trenton Times (NJ): MMA far from passing fad
- The Boston Herald: Fighting his way through - Ludlow’s Gabriel Gonazaga is kickin’ it up in UFC
- The Reporter-Times (IN): Former area athletes getting their kicks in
- Sprawl ‘n Brawl: Cage Rage 22 coverage
- The Longview Daily News (WA): Kelso boxer Rich Lafever takes the cage tonight in his Ultimate Fighting debut
- The East valley Tribune (Phoenix): MMA fighters train for Ultimate Fighting
- The Washington Township Courier-Post (South NJ): Area athlets take up booming sport
- The Fightworks Podcast: Fabio Clemente interview
- The Saipan Tribune: Frank Camacho loses to UFC veteran Luigi Fioravanti
- The Chronicle Herald (Halifax, Nova Scotia): Pour Nick wins ‘bloodiest’ fight in King of the Cage history
- The Halifax Daily News: KOTC puts on a bloody good show
Topics: BoDog, Boxing, Canada, HERO's, Japan, K-1, MMA, Media, Pancrase, UFC, UK, Zach Arnold | | Permalink | Trackback | Share This
So.. Dida must feel pretty screwed over if he’s now out of the tournament because JZ got injured and gets a buy instead :S
These tournaments are completely useless anyways.
Someone I know used to say that about PRIDE tournaments every year and got ripped for it.
Don’t sweat it Zach, I picked with my heart at 73 and got killed. Some of my more infamous trolls just loved it. With this one, who could pick Chael over Amar anyway?
I miss Pride tournaments…
If Yuki Kondo was 185-190 lbs at fight time, Trevor P. looked like 205-210 lbs. Trevor seems to have mastered the MMA fighting skill of weight cutting. Trevor is champion of the 171-210 lb division.
I was at Cage Rage last night and the crowd were way louder (and far crazier) than it seems in the video. They really need to mic the crowd better and make sure Quadros calls the action instead of that other guy.
Tournaments are great as long as they are spread out over multiple events so the fighters only have to fight one time per night.
They made the cage wider in Cage Rage, and I am grateful for it cos it makes for better camera angles.
Anyone thought for a second Herb Dean was going for a sharpshooter for a second or two?
Herb fights like he is on the Herb. Lackluster, slow, no gusto. I like Cage Rage. They seem to embrace the silly factor. There isn’t too much lag inbetween the fights, and they enlarged the streaming window on ProElite since the last time I watched it. It would still be good to have options for window size to let the user pic, but for a startup site, ProElite isn’t doing a bad job.
Cage Rage was no nonsense, man. They had the fighters come out, the ring announcer would say the guy to my right is so-and-so, the guy to my left is so-and-so and they would fight.
None of this “this man is a mixed martial artist with a record of blah blah fighting out of blah blah, standing 6′whatever, a practitioner of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, weighing blah blah..”
It was: Here’s this guy. Here’s the other guy. Let’s fight.
I enjoyed the card quite a bit myself. There was a huge flying knee KO that was pretty sick. And of course, it’s only fitting that Herb Dean’s fight ends early and that James Thompson gets KTFO.
The point of tournaments to to find the best “Fighter”, not the best weight cutter, not the best at gameplans, not the best at focus training, but the best fighter. Tournaments are pointless if your not fighting twice in a night minimum. You cant prepare for three opponents, so the idea is that the most wellrounded fighter, or at least the best at his offense and can defend his opponents’ strengths, is the best fighter.
Sorry for the long post.
I was at Bodogfight last night. While Sam Caplan covered much of what I wanted to say, I don’t think he gave the most accurate account.
The fights were decent. The exception being Hinkle-Zentsov and Aggalar-Binky. Even the Tugman-”Caveman” match up was decent, it just came on a little too late, and people were getting tired. Roman’s match especially, showed many of the flaws in the unified rules and in how fights are judged. Zentsov was one of the main attractions for me and I was really ticked at how this turned out.
Prangley-Kondo was a really good match until the Doc stopped it, without good enough cause, from what I saw. It was shaping up to be a memorable match had it gone on. This despite Trevor dominating the two rounds.
I never watched a women’s match before last night. I respect their skills but I can’t stand the idea of two girls beating each other bloody and I don’t care what anyone calls me for thinking that way. The Kobold-LaRosa fight was a contender for fight of the night. I was entertained. It helped that I had moved back in the stands at that point and couldn’t see the bruises/blood that may have been obvious close up.
Alvarez-Lee was a big surprise and a fun fight. It wasn’t the squash people thought it would be. I don’t know what Caplan’s problem was with Love-Oroz, which was a fine fight. Sonnen-Suloev wasn’t fireworks, but Chael showed how to wrestle and finish, unlike some others.
The ugliness of the crowd. I have to strongly agree and disagree with what Caplan said. There was a large stupid element there, the identity of which Sam very adroitly identified as the Alvarez contingent. Part of their problem is many of them are not real fans of the sport and come there to see Eddie and only Eddie. If you put Alvarez on early in the card, they leave after his match. Make them wait 6-7 hours and it is trouble. What they pulled last night was the same garbage they pull at all the fights they go to. They even brag about their behavior.
The comments they shouted would have made me laugh at what a bunch of idiots they were, but hearing it in person was depressing. “Kill that Jap!” at Yuki Kondo, who has done nothing in his career to deserve that treatment but give all he had in the ring and against larger opponents. Shame to see a legend treated that way. Chanting Eddie’s name while two other athletes were fighting in the ring, various vulgarities and more. I loved when the green shirt brigade started chanting “Eddie” over and over during the LaRosa fight and Tara’s fans came back with “Tara” chants and shut them up.
It wasn’t all bad. The crowd was better behaved than many UFC crowds. They applauded the sweeps and reversals, didn’t boo the ground game en masse, except when a stand up WAS really warranted and generally were appreciative of the fighter’s efforts. It wasn’t everyone who made fools of themselves.
As for the promotion of the event, it was terrible. I’d say about 1500-2500 people showed up. Sam got much of it right:
1. Trenton. Why? there is no public transportation to the Arena. For you people in LA, you might not get it, but we use public trans here a good deal. And besides…TRENTON! Doing a half house at the Meadowlands Arena or the Casinos in AC would have attracted a few thousand more people who were turned off/scared to go to Trenton.
2. Local fighters are a must. It was obvious that not only Alvarez, but Tugman and Tara brought large numbers with them. Fill the undercard with 6-8 fighters from the big name teams and gyms in NY, NJ, and Philly and you would have doubled the crowd. Local fighters generate publicity too, in the form of local radio interviews, local newpapers, etc. They cost less and bring in more money for the promoter.
3. Unless Bodog has some competent marketing people in the area, and they didn’t, they should probably stick to doing the live shows in Vancouver, where they seemed to draw well last time. Strikeforce has a solid base in San Jose and that is what Bodog needs to establish. Either that or just paper the shows entirely as an investment in future crowds. The marketing was painfully ineffective and it didn’t take a genius to see that in the weeks leading up to the event.
4. 6 hours. Pride got 11 fights in in 4 hours I think. It wasn;’t even 6 hours of continuous fights, but a series of long stops and starts. I have incredible patience and I was getting tired of it all.
5. No big screens to watch the replays or see the action when you are blocked. The screens on the scoreboard were blocked out by the lighting. Bad move and lessened my enjoyment for sure.
I actually retired as a fan of MMA the evening before UFC 71 as I was getting sick of all the mainstream hype, craziness and UFC domination. I followed the sport since long before UFC I. Bodog was my favorite smaller promotion and I wanted to see the show as my swan song to my MMA life and to see if Bodog would show signs of being a big league player. Probably not is the answer. They have a great talent roster for a small organization and put on great fights, but they are just pathetic in the other areas. Bodog management is clueless.
I got the same type of impression after going to an IFL event. I just knew it wasn’t the answer to competition of the UFC.
Bodog is really a wreck. Their TV is bad. Their PPV has no buys. I don’t think they ever took MMA Serious enough.
I too bit the dust on the MMAPredictions end of thing with regard to this card. 40% was it for me…and Zach, I think you and I picked the same folks to win and lose. And for the record, stupid, racist, idiot MMA fans SUCK!
Sam brought up a frighteningly good point:
Why has nobody written about the conflict of interest of having Bodog taking bets on it’s own product?
Never thought about that. And I agree that there is a conflict of interest. No different then Frank Shamrock owning 5% of Pro Elite and him fighting for the company as well. The fight game is a shady place.
How is Shamrock’s minority interest a COI?? Judging favoritism?
I guess I could see it as a somewhat valid point but it’s somewhat of a stretch.
Is it that much more of a COI than say UFC having guys who are perceived as their flagbearers/marquee fighters and there being the possibility that they’d make sure everything was done to make sure it stayed that way??
Both are pretty equally implausible - especially seeing as Shamrock has been DQ’d and penalized with point deductions in his last two fights.
The upset bug bit Shooto as well.
Yuki Shoujou choked out number one ranked 123-pounder Masatoshi Abe, nixing the prospect of an Abe-BJ title fight later this year/early next year, and Siyar Bahadurzada defeated Shikou Yamashita to become the first Afghanistani-born, or Dutch-bred Shooto world champ.
The KOTC Canada card was solid, but drew a fairly disappointing crowd in comparison to Peter Martell’s ECC cards in the same venue. The main event was unfortunate, but the other bouts were generally entertaining. It’s no surprise local media ran with the Pour Nick fight; that shit was grotesque.
Frank Shamrock’s Conflict of Interest comes in the way of booking his fights.
It is no different then the UFC or Pride having fighters on the payroll beyond the typical fight purses. To me, that is just as much a conflict of interest for the sport. It will be nice when we see fighters being paid like tennis players, golfers, baseball players, football players, and every other legit sport in America. And I’m not talking about dollar amount. I’m talking about with fully disclosed pay.
There is no legal “conflict of interest” for a fighter to self promote. If there was, Oscar De La Hoya would already be in jail.
I really want to know what TK wrote on his blog about racist American fans… please Zach, or anyone else, help me understand. Thanks!
He was referring to the USA chants and the nature of the crowd in Jersey. TK has spent time in Seattle, so he’s not a stranger to the States. But I’m sure the Jersey crowd was quite unique in nature.
I wouldn’t blame any of the foreign fighters if they decided never to fight on US soil again based on the filthy racism exhibited. I’m just wondering why the people running the show did not do anything to address the matter.
Zach, I understand what he was referring to but I was questioning what he specifically said. Thanks.
“I wouldn’t blame any of the foreign fighters if they decided never to fight on US soil again based on the filthy racism exhibited. I’m just wondering why the people running the show did not do anything to address the matter.”
Because there were NO mass racist chants from the crowd. There were random individuals who screamed a few things of that nature. The mass obnoxious chants were more along the nature of “Eddie!”, “E-A-G-L-E-S” or “We Want Eddie!” or other Alvarez related material, shouted at very innappropriate times. There were hundreds of people here who just wanted to see Alvarez, didn’t know MMA, and didn’t really care.
I would in fact blame a foreign fighter who wouldn’t fight again on US soil as a result of a few people in a crowd. Sam Caplan can have his opinions, but I think he completely exaggerated the scope of the racial comments. I don’t know what Caplan’s agenda was, but it was not, imo, an accurate picture he painted.
I’ll say again, the crowd was better overall than many I have been in. Better than Sacramento (on TV), and better behaved than many foreign crowds.
Anyone see Herb Dean fight? Anyone have a link to the clip?