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Tuesday headlines: Referees gone wild
By Zach Arnold | September 17, 2007
Our good friend Tetsuya Sano participated in an amateur shootboxing event in Tokyo this past weekend. Check out his matches here, here, and here. The event was covered by Sports Navigator.
The Deseret News in Utah is reporting that Brigham Young University (BYU) has banned The Versus Network on campus because the channel airs MMA (WEC).
Marvin Eastman is out of the UFC 77 event due to eye surgery. Ricardo Arona, however, may be coming into the UFC fold.
There are a lot of MMA referees who are good, but there are some who are either controversial or just plain bad. Yuji Shimada falls in the latter category. Mario Yamasaki… Fightlinker further elaborates.
Here is the card line-up for the Art of War 4 show on 10/27 in Tunica, MS. We have a Rex Richards sighting, which is a good thing.
Forrest Griffin needs soap in his mouth.
Legend Credit is buying an amateur MMA company from the Midwest. Who is it?
An update on the incident that took place last Saturday night in Minneapolis at the Target Center.
Dr. J has a preview for the upcoming Fight Night show on Wednesday.
More bad luck for the IFL. They have a show this Thursday night in Hollywood, Florida. Enter Ricco Rodriguez.
“I think Kelly Pavlik has the opportunity – if he beats Jermain Taylor convincingly – to be the biggest guy in boxing. In other words, I think that he is the type of fighter that can bring back all of the young people that we’re lost to the UFC,” says Bob Arum, who admits he’s speaking of young, white males who have recently flocked to MMA.
Evan Tanner – not training.
Onto today’s headlines.
- Steve Cofield: I’m never watching Elite XC again
- Bloody Elbow: Inside MMA – A small review
- Irish Whip Fighting: Interview with UFC ring girl Ali Sonoma
- The Metro (UK): Cage fighting preacher a holy terror
- The Bleacher Report: Disrespecting the champ
- The Fightworks Podcast: Rodrigo “Comprido” Medeiros interview
- The Baltimore Sun: Split decisions = splitting headaches
- 411 Mania: Interview with Ben Rothwell
- UFC HP: Din Thomas – the 30-year old veteran approaches his first decade in MMA
- The Houston Chronicle: Jon Fitch gets his shot at UFC’s main stage
- The Dayton Daily News (OH): Can Elite XC put the pieces together?
- MMA Junkie: Interview with Shad Lierley
- MMA Madness: Interview with Chuck Liddell
- Fox Sports: Fighting words – Dark days coming to an end for boxing fans
- 411 Mania (Adam Morgan): Matt Hamill and his torn ACL
- MMA Analyst: Is Elite XC on the right track?
- The Canadian Press: Another group endures six weeks hard labor in The Ultimate Fighter
- Blogging Vegas: UFC FN 11 and TUF 6 premiere Wednesday night
- Press release: New fight club opens in central Spokane
- The Chicago Tribune: Keeping up with Chase Beebe
- The Red Bluff Daily News (CA): The fight is on – making a debut in the cage
- Yahoo Sports: Chuck Liddell not likely to make changes
- The Daily Star (UK): Dancing Iceman’s hot move
Topics: Boxing, IFL, Japan, Media, MMA, Pro Elite, UFC, UK, WEC, Zach Arnold | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Bad luck for the IFL, but good luck for me; I’m just happy I’ll get to see Ricco fight live, he’s said to be clean and in much better shape. On another note, that Matt Hamill tore his ACL well before his fight just adds to how well he took that loss; If I lost a bad decision to a guy in his hometown, with a torn ACL and a Handicap, and he was trashing me constantly, I don’t think I’d take it a tenth as well as Hamill did. Kudos.
God help Evan Tanner.
I didn’t see anything wrong with either stoppage.
You must need glasses, contacts, or corrective eye surgery then. Yamasaki blew it on Saturday night. Even Matt Hughes jumped into the cage and berated Yamasaki for letting the fight go on too long.
Kelly Pavlik can never be a crossover star to the 18-34 demographic. Even though he’s got the prototype in-ring style, to say he comes off as meek and mild outside the ring would be an understatement. He doesn’t have the posterboy appeal Oscar does. He doesn’t have the anti-hero arrogance Floyd does. He doesn’t have the drink a pint and play darts with you at the local pub appeal that Hatton does. He’s just a quiet, soft spoken dude, and unlike a Chuck Liddell figure, he doesn’t have a bad ass look to him. He’s just a lanky white guy who mashes faces.
In short, Arum is wrong again.
I made a video detailing the retardation that went on during the HERO’S show. I was gonna have all the stupid ref action, but I can only loop the theme to Benny Hill for so long, so I stuck to the Yamamoto – Fernandes debacle:
http://fightlinker.com/?p=624
lol, awesome work fightlinker
the lawler stoppage was slow i thought. That guy throws bombs.
pavlik does too. I hope he treats taylor like he did miranda.
bob arum is funny. He’s got his head on straight when it comes to politics. MMA, ass backwards.
Not only was the Lawler/Rua stoppage slow but the Shields/Verisso stoppage was RIDICULOUSLY slow. Shields was pummeling Charuto with hard clean shots for what seemed like forever. Yamasaki was reffing that fight as well…
Shields was throwing baby shots at Charuto on the ground. Some of the camera angles made it look as if Charuto was more annoyed by the shots than actually hurt, looked like Yamasaki was giving him a chance to get up, too bad he just gave up.
Also, HERO’s seemed to have a good amount of early stoppages. Fabio took some huge hooks to the face, but looked fairly still alive when he was taking some shots on the ground. Calvancanti vs Ribeiro almost seemed like an early stoppage as well.
I will say this, Melvin Manhoef is always exciting to watch, I always want to see a Manhoef vs. Cyborg II.
Jordan,
I agree with you about Pavlik’s personality. But, being a native Youngstowner, I can say that he has engaged a latent fanbase and built excitement that hasn’t been seen since Mancini. (Anyone who could sell 4,000+ tickets for a Versus card, at boxing prices, in the poorest city in the nation IIRC, has to be resonating.) Heck, I have cared more about Pavlik’s recent fights than anything on PPV lately, including Oscar-Floyd. With a win (or even an impressive loss), Pavlik could legitimately create a fight market that has fallen latent. It might not be the 18-34 demo. But as Mancini proved, there is an untapped market for a soft-spoken, blue-collar, Midwestern action fighter…who is also white. And Arum (and Durkin and Loew) have been really smart and deliberate in building a fighter methodically and intelligently, while not sapping his active style in favor of point-fighting.
Looks like i’m gonna have to make a shields-charuto video so you guys can see how insane that really was.
Make the argument all you want, the shots were fairly weak. You could tell that Shields was looking for a stoppage while on top. Shields said for the most part that Charuto was blocking some, and he said he missed a few as well which was evident in the side angle shot on Showtime during the fight. Charuto was immediately sitting up shaking his head right after the stoppage. If it was so horrendous, he’d be laying on the mat completely out of it.
It’s just getting so old where you had MMA fights with a guy on top throwing weak shots that are being blocked, then the fight is stopped. The sport needs more Matua, Nelmark, and Quarry’s, IMO.
Finally say the KID fight…that was a disgrace.
Even KID looked like he was embarassed at the blatant favoritism of the refs. I half expected him to go to the middle of the ring and lay in guard after that stand-up.
WHAT A FUCKIN’ JOKE.
It looked to me like Shields was landing some pretty hard shots while he had Charuto mounted. While Charuto was deflecting a good amount of the punches, he did get tagged with a few that looked like the hurt him. But even if they didn’t, you can’t just lay there and cover up while somebody is raining down punches.
And Gaijin, I agree with you about the Kid fight. Very upsetting.
Akihiro Gono is fighting for the UFC in November. At least according to MMAJunkie. that is a good pickup for that division.
Kelly Pavlik can never be a crossover star to the 18-34 demographic. Even though he’s got the prototype in-ring style, to say he comes off as meek and mild outside the ring would be an understatement. He doesn’t have the posterboy appeal Oscar does. He doesn’t have the anti-hero arrogance Floyd does. He doesn’t have the drink a pint and play darts with you at the local pub appeal that Hatton does. He’s just a quiet, soft spoken dude, and unlike a Chuck Liddell figure, he doesn’t have a bad ass look to him. He’s just a lanky white guy who mashes faces.
Are we talking about the Kelly Pavlik that’s known for getting into fights at nightclubs and beat up a cop?