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Sunday news review (3/16/08)
By Zach Arnold | March 16, 2008
- The Honolulu Star-Bulletin: Kala Kolohe Hose sitting on top of the world
- The Columbus Dispatch (OH): Sports editor tries to wriggle away from angry MMA fans
- The South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Grappling tournament has big turnout (this is about the NAGA West Palm Beach event)
- The Winnipeg Sun: Kalib Starnes fights for himself
- The South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Women promoters fight for local audience
- Todd Martin (CBS Sports): Hip-hop meets MMA in BET’s ‘Iron Ring’
- KSBY 6 Action News: Chuck Liddell takes a plunge at the 2nd annual polar bear plunge in Pismo Beach
- UFC HP: UFC 84 card taking shape with three 205-pound fights finalized
- The Fightworks Podcast (audio): Interview with David Mamet
- MMA on Tap: Joe Camacho signs two-year deal with EXC
- MMA Madness: Chael Sonnen left hanging when Paulo Filho quits
- MMA Betting Blog: UFC FN 13 odds released
- Charles Jay: Oscar De La Hoya’s MMA entry is nothing to dismiss
Topics: Media, MMA, Pro Elite, UFC, WEC, Zach Arnold | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Kala Kolohe Hose vs. Phil Baroni was excellent, and easily the Fight of the Year for 2008 so far.
This was the most exciting fight since Huerta vs. Guida back in December.
This fight proved (once again) that:
a. allowing soccer kicks and stomps make an incredibly exciting fight
b. no elbows means far more movement/action by both men on the ground, resulting in a more dynamic fight.
and
c. you don’t need two undefeated fighters, or the “best fighting the best” to make a dramatic, exciting main event – you need a good story, and good match-making
His final UFC fight with Pete Sell aside, Baroni proved again last night that he makes for some damned exciting fights. Unfortunately ,for him, he often loses them.
At 10-9 now, he’s not much above .500 & needs some rebuilding bouts like he got
from Pride a couple of years back. Which Gary Shaw shouldn’t have too much trouble finding opponents for seeing as how many 185 pound fighters EliteXC has under contract.
Though I wish Shaw had more at 205 available so he’d have someone to put in with Jeremy Williams on television soon.
Williams is 6-0 in his MMA career now following his KO victory last night & I’d really like to see him on the televised portion of a Showtime or CBS card. I think he may just have what it takes to be the most successful boxer turned MMA fighter yet.
Or, the moral of the story is that “sometimes even a blind squirrel gets a nut.”
Allowing good fights to be good fights and bad fights to be bad fights would be nice, instead of every event being a chalk mark on the great scorecard in the sky.
Sorry, Jeremy (not that Jeremy) – I’ll stop expressing my opinion about fights, because that’s not what this blog is about.
Oh wait – it totally is.
And when DO we get to mark something on the chalkboard? When is a specific event significant enough that we’re allowed to comment on it, and compare it to other events?
The Baroni/Hose fight was decent. I don’t think including stomps or soccer kicks really changed much at all. The fight came down to Baroni gassing. He was pretty much done first round cardio wise, and by third was just dead. I suppose you could say he gassed from stomping and kneeing, but he would have eventually regardless.
I thought up until the third round, the fight was really good. But by that point, Baroni was just a walking zombie and the fight suffered. It didn’t look good at all for Hose that it took him till round five to finally finish him. Baroni’s tough, but it looked like Hose wasn’t talented enough to end it like he should have been able to.
If it was your opinion about fights instead of a thinly veiled Pride vs UFC argument, it would have been fine. But it wasn’t. And it seems that it never is.
Despite one of those entities no longer existing except in the rose colored memories of a few sad souls.
Baroni vs. Hose was borderline disturbing to watch in the later rounds. How come no doctor was checking Baroni? How come the ref lets the fight go on longer than even Shimada would in a Sakuraba fight? How about wiping off some of that sweat, or upholding rules and restrictions for the cornermen? Thank goodness Hawaii gets sanctioned next year, because stuff like this fight will do no good for MMA’s mainstream acceptance. It DID look like dogfighting.
I watched a few of the undercard fights and was very unimpressed. I stopped watching for a while, and when I went back to the website, it was right before the start of the 5th round. Baroni basically just fell to the ground at the beginning of the round… It looked bad.
The fight should have been stopped by the referee in the third round when Baroni pulled himself out of the ring to get away from Hose. He wanted out but was too proud to give up.
I thought it was a good fight. Though Hose should have finished off Baroni sooner. Baroni was totally out of that fight in the later rounds. Is it safe to say that NYBA is officially washed up? Baroni gasses but he just got beat by a 5-1 local Hawaiian fighter. That’s pretty sad.
I can’t understand why som many people seem to think so highly of the Baroni-Hose fight.
It was incredibly sloppy, from both fighters. Baroni gassed after three minutes and was falling into takedowns that Hose, incredibly, could not defend.
Baroni took a hell of a beating from round 2 onward, it could have been stopped in any round after that. That the ref stopped it in the fifth seemed almost an arbitrary decision.
Jeremy, some people prefer certain rules over others and will continue talk about it. PRIDE was hardly the only organization to allow soccer kicks and stomps. Your myopic TUF-view of MMA is a little disappointing; it’s something I would have expected more from 45.
(And, no, I don’t especially like soccer kicks and stomps. I’d prefer them to be completely gone from MMA.)
I’d be perfectly happy if they just allowed knees to the head on the ground and in the 4-point stance.
I can see that in North America the soccer kicks and stomps might just come across as too barbaric…but the knees serve a definite purpose and i think would go a long way to making for more exciting fights – and really discourage sloppy shots or inactivity on the ground.
Icon title fights have the best rules in MMA. The less rules the better, IMO.
Kala/Baroni was an awesome fight. The first couple rounds were crazy.
Knees to the head on the ground is a lot less “barbaric” than elbows to the head on the ground. Short elbows to the head on the ground = more cuts = more instances of blood smearing everywhere on the canvas covering company logos and such = fighters getting more scar tissue on their face = fighters being prone to more cut stoppages (which does nothing but piss the fans off) and more excessive blood baths. Fight sports are supposed to be violent but in what other mainstream fight sport in America would you see blood baths to the extent of Gideon Ray vs. Edwin Dewees? Don’t tell me that this is attractive to sponsors and the mainstream media. I don’t understand the argument from purists that banning elbows to the head would make MMA less like MMA. MMA is not a real fight and it never was. Even Vale Tudo has a few rules. There are 30+ different illegal techniques/fouls in MMA. This is sport fighting, not a real street fight so don’t give me the whole purity rhetoric talk. If we’re going to talk about purity then I suppose we shouldn’t stand up fighters who lay n pray either? No pure fighting sport would be commercially viable. I would like to see the commissions trade elbows to the head on the ground for knees.
So as long as you have a competent referee that stops a fight at the right time (unlike Yuji Shamada, who lets fighters take too much of a beating), knees to the head would give those wrestlers who can’t finish otherwise a chance to finish fights. And it’s exciting for the fans to see a guy go to side mount or north-south and pummel his opponent’s head with knees.
The amount of elbows that cause cuts, let alone cut stoppages, is extremely exaggerated by many.
In 2007, the UFC held 171 fights. Two of them were stopped due to cuts, Belcher/Starnes and Lytle/Alves. Only Belcher/Starnes can be linked to an elbow stoppage, and even then it’s not clear what was the actual cut was caused by as Alan was throwing an absolute torrent of knees, kicks, elbows, and punches towards Starnes. In any case, it wasn’t an elbow on the ground that caused the cut.
In 2006, the UFC featured 158 matches. Again, two were stopped for cuts. One was cuts sustained due to knees in the clinch (Kongo/Aldana), while the other (Yves Edwards vs. Joe Stevenson), was, in fact, stopped due to cuts caused by elbows (this would more accurately be described as ‘hundreds of elbows thrown with bad intentions’) on the ground.
So therefore, between 2006 and 2007, there was only one fight out of 329 in the UFC that was stopped due to cuts from elbows on the ground. That is 0.003%. Hardly an issue IMO, and unlikely to ‘piss off the fans’ when it rarely happens.
Very impressive post ilostmydog. I might have to cut and copy it (but change the .003% to .3%). I’m anticipating that this won’t be the last time someone brings up the “elbow myth”.
When I was watching the DREAM fights, I couldn’t help but think that elbows would have added a lot to some of the fights. It’s a lot easier for the guy on the bottom to neutralize his opponent’s GNP when you only have to worry about punches. I mean, punches are nice, but they’re most effective from about an arm’s length away, not up close. So you end up with a bunch of weak arm punches that don’t do much damage.
Keep elbows, add knees, and we’re good to go.
Damn my math. I had a feeling I did something wrong with the percentages, but I didn’t fix it. Nice catch.
Might I add that the prospect of Golden Boy (even if they partner with that god awful Affliction) getting into MMA excites me. Golden Boy knows fight promotion better than anybody and Oscar is seen by boxing fans (at least from what I’ve read online) as being good to his fighters as opposed to Don King and Bob Arum. Oscar deserves props for being Pro-MMA as opposed to Mayweather, who was trashing the sport. If Golden Boy took on Don King and Bob Arum, they can take on Zuffa rather easily with the help of their friends at HBO. Charles Jay’s article is on the money. Zuffa’s challenge in the American market isn’t going to come from the circus that is ProElite. And it probably isn’t going to come from HDNet Fights either (although I had faith, Mark Cuban’s success depends on HDNet taking off and I just don’t see it happening. They have so much MMA on HDNet but how many are watching?) Golden Boy, given his knowledge about the fight business, his connections and the access to HBO, has the tools.