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Today’s chalkboard (6/16/08)
By Zach Arnold | June 16, 2008
The MMA California site has a new message board, which can be accessed right here. Check it out.
New York Magazine has an article on UFC’s attempts to get MMA legalized in the state of New York. Count the number of items in the article that make you laugh or cringe.
Sam Caplan has a new article, detailing his wife’s recent adventures into amateur MMA.
Onto today’s reading material.
- Phil Adams: Inside MMA TV report with Royce Gracie, Shonie Carter, and Monte Cox
- Sherdog: Travis Lutter balks at retirement talks
- Bad Left Hook: More boring ‘boxing is in trouble’ talk
- Fight Hype: Freddie Roach set to work first MMA event on 7/19 for Andrei Arlovski
- AOL Fanhouse: Shin’ya Aoki – best submission artist in MMA
- The Dayton Daily News: Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith II leads summer re-matches
- The Knoxville News Sentinel (TN): MMA targets state of Tennessee next (a good article to read)
- UFC HP: Professor Jeremy Horn keeps the fight game pure
- Jared Barnes (Houston Chronicle): Exclusive Urijah Faber interview (w/ video)
- The Fightworks Podcast: Interview with 2008 BJJ Absolute champion Xande Ribeiro
- Kevin Iole (Yahoo Sports): Affliction hoping for big burst on MMA scene
- Dave Walsh (Total MMA): Can Affliction and Donald Trump re-brand MMA?
- NBC Sports: Recent criticism of referees is going too far
Topics: Affliction, Boxing, DREAM, Japan, Media, MMA, Pro Elite, UFC, WEC, Zach Arnold | 4 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Why do you insist in spell Shinya Aoki`s name Shin`ya? For someone who call himself a Japanese expert is mind blowing to see how you fail to understand Japanese names doesn`t use apostrophes at all.
Michael David Smith
“I think Aoki is the favorite to win the Dream Lightweight Grand Prix, and after that I’d love to see him come to America. B.J. Penn might be the best lightweight in the world, but we won’t know for sure until we see Aoki in UFC.”
Oh, we know for sure.
Certainly, Aoki won’t be the one to dethrone BJ.
Aoki is beating guys because he has a BJJ advantage over all of them,
And for most, it is a HUGE advantage.
But if he ever faces Penn, his advantage will be nil.
What’s Aoki going to do? Pull guard the whole fight?
His punches are too weak, his striking is sloppy, his wrestling is sloppy.
Penn would pick him apart on the feet.
The most interesting part of this match would be Aoki’s guard vs. BJ’s top game.
Aoki is most comfortable on his back, and BJ is most comfortable on top.
If it hits the ground, this would be the most likeliest scenario.
But in any case, I don’t see BJ Penn getting caught in any submissions Aoki tries…and standing, it’s not even close.
The series of events with the “huge announcement” (with the latest interview trying to downplay it and pretend that the UFC was never going to announce anything to the public) is getting more comical with each passing day, and more similar to Eric Bischoff with each passing day.
If it’s just the announcement of the “Matt Hughes at home” reality series, that’s not a huge announcement, either. If it’s a deal with ABC, Fox, Mayweather, or the New York commission, that makes them liars for saying that it wasn’t any of those things.
The only remaining possibilities would be: A) All of the negotiations to sell the company have finally resulted in a deal, or B) There’s an announcement of some kind but not a huge announcement.
Hopefully, this “huge announcement” won’t end like Eric Bischoff’s similarly desperate “huge announcement,” which as you’ll recall if you were unfortunate enough to witness it, was just Bill Goldberg turning heel (and later basically continuing to play a babyface character and going back to being a babyface with no explanation).
I agree Mickdawg. JZ was threatened in his fight against Aoki, but he was never in danger of submitting. BJ has much better BJJ than JZ, so I don’t see Aoki doing much of anything on the ground, and BJ would demolish Aoki standing.
BJ is the worst possible match-up, skill wise, for Aoki.
Technically, I guess you could say the same thing for any other 155lb fighter.