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Thursday news and links
By Zach Arnold | February 14, 2007
I hope your Valentine’s Day went better than it did for this guy. I shouldn’t say this guy, because the guy happens to be the head of a very strong yakuza group in Japan. Not a fun time for any of the fight groups in Japan right now.
Joe Rogan goes to war with comedian Carlos Mencia.
Rex Richards (who we had on the FO Radio Christmas special) has made the decision to give up his Arena League football career to focus full-time on fighting. He is looking for sponsors for his next fight (which is on the StrikeForce 4/21 card that will be on Showtime PPV). If you want to sponsor him, leave a MySpace message with West Texas MMA or e-mail me and I’ll forward inquiries along to his camp.
Onto today’s headlines.
- The Ellsworth American: Tim Sylvia to return home to Maine for first time in several years
- The Republican (MA): Gabriel “Napao” Gonzaga training for biggest fight of his life (he’s fighting against Mirko Cro Cop in the main event of the 4/21 England show)
- Radio: Komikazee’s MMA Smackdown #10
- MMA on Tap: Q & A w/ Elvis Sinosic
- China Combat: Interview w/ Andy Pi – Part 2
- Media Newswire: UFC confirms 4/21 Manchester, UK date
- Bodog Beat: Calvin Ayre arrives for BodogFight filming
- MMA HQ: IFL announces rosters for Atlanta event
- UFC Junkie: Chris Leben vs. Kalib Starnes in May
- MMA Weekly: Thiago Tavares signed to fight in UFC
- The Fight Network: Kurt Angles an MMA debut again
- IFL (via Fox Sports): Pit Bulls prep for Red Bears, talk Shamrock (Renzo’s team is not happy with Frank)
- MMA Weekly: Cole Escovedo suffers paralysis from staph infection
- Press Release: Josh Barnett, Phil Baroni, and Erik Paulson doing commentary for BodogFight
- Royal Burnell: Kurt Angle – Built to Spill
Topics: All Topics, BoDog, Japan, Media, MMA, UFC, Yakuza, Zach Arnold | 22 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Wow – youtube’s really clamping down, they pulled that clip already!
And from what I hear they’re really not to shy about sharing privacy information of their users with the authorities. Somehow I think paying $1.65B is going to look like a terrible idea – the sharks are just gonna be circling with the type of money Google has in its coffers.
i like joe rogan and all and ive seen this controversy but what does this have to do with mma, unless you want to throw in the fact that he commentates and does inside the ufc…are you trying to get carlos mencia in the octagon with joe rogan?
YouTube has a pretty ‘selective’ process in regards to what is kept and what is not.
On what grounds could the Rogan video be removed? He taped it. It’s his copyright.
Would Angle fight at 205? Or HW? All undercard non-title fights I’m guessing?
Youtube just takes down anything whenever it’s sent anything in legalese. Considering the amount of copyrighted material that gets uploaded, I doubt they have the manpower to figure the validity of each cease and desist note. At least they wrote down who the douche was who threatened them.
college humor still has the video here: http://collegehumor.com/video:1742125
And to bring the discussion back on topic, if you watched UFC 67 carefully, there’s a brief moment where you can read on Rogan’s face, “Yeah, I just said Cro Cop was the 2006 PRIDE Openweight Grand Prix champion, what do you want me to do about it?” Gotta love Rogan…
Joerogan.net has the video & a blog about it.
Seriosuly, I think Angle would die if soembody in the UFCor any other MMA promotion gets a guillotine on him
Also,I dont know if you psoted this already but here its the Pride Weight-in,Press conference and Training appereances schedule for their second show in the u.s
http://www.pridefc.com/pride2005/index.php?mainpage=news&news_id=1002
Cro Cop and Gonzaga is a fairly intruiging matchup, I think.
It’s a shame that Joe got banned from the Comedy Store. “Mencia” has been a known hack for a while now.
Nathan Marquardt is getting a title shot in June (according the UFCJunkie). Should be a great fight. I am looking forward to it.
Marquardt will be you next champion!!
I am not sure how many of you have heard about what has happened to Cole. If not:Cole Escovedo, a longtime veteran of the World Extreme Cagefighting promotion (Cole started fighting on the WEC’s second event ever), is currently suffering paralysis from the waist down. According to a post by Laura Escovedo on MMA.tv and confirmed by Reed Harris of the WEC, Cole contracted a staph infection back in December that went unchecked because he just thought it was a spider bite or something of that sort. By the time he was diagnosed in January with staph, the infection made its way into his spine and paralyzed him from the waist down.Cole was hospitalized and underwent an operation to alleviate some of the fluid that had built up on his spine due to the infection. He has since been released from the hospital and is now at home with a walker and is set to begin therapy.At the time of publication, it was unknown whether Cole’s paralysis is a permanent or, hopefully, a temporary condition.One of the top 145-pound fighters in the world, Cole has fought most of his career in the WEC and has amassed a professional record of 11-4. Known as the “Apache Kid,†he has won seven of his fights by triangle choke, his signature finishing move.As Cole is considered a part of the WEC family, Harris and everyone at the WEC, as well as those of us at MMAWeekly.com, would like to wish Cole a speedy recovery and our hopes and prayers go out to him and his family.I just want to add my thoughts and prayers and wish him a speedy recovery.
Prayers to the Apache kid…good luck Escovedo.
It’ll be interesting to see if Napao actually goes out there and stands against Mirko.
My thoughts and prayers to Cole, aswell.
Melvin Manhoaf has signed a big money two-year deal with K-1, sayeth http://www.cagerage.tv/. Could be directly related to them all but officially firing Akiyama(he will never fight for them again).
NSAC has confirmed UFC are running MGM Grand Garden Arena for their sheduled May 26th PPV.
Wonder if they will set up a Manhoef/Smirnov fight for the now vacabnt LHW title (or just toss it up for grabs in another mini tourny). I just pray to god they let Sakurrba rest and just toss him small japaense judo cans.
“NSAC has confirmed UFC are running MGM Grand Garden Arena for their sheduled May 26th PPV.”
Which means the rumors are probably correct that it is Liddell vs. Rampage. That arena, if I am not mistaken, is one of the bigger in Vegas.
MGM Grand Garden Arena is the most storied and historically important of the arenas in Vegas. Is May 26th Memorial Day weekend? I could definitely see that being Chuck/Quinton.
Yup its Memorial Day Weekend.
MGM is bigger than Mandelay by a couple thousand, but neither arena are huge compared to basketball arenas. I’ve only sat in the nosebleeds at both, and never had a bad time. Mandelay theres truely not a bad seat, though, where MGM if you’re on the ends or up in the corner…you can be pretty far away.
Pride’s best KO’s on Maxim’s webpage:
http://www.maximonline.com/index.aspx
Nice pic of Randleman KO’ing Mirko as the thumbnail…Dana must be stoked.
This is a bit of an off topic comment, and i don’t want to disparage the work being done, but over the past few weeks i’ve noticed that Fightopinion.com is looking less like it did months ago and more like a collection of random mma links. Irony of my complaining aside, I come here for the articles and the interesting views … Zach has always done a good job of taking stories x and y and pointing out how it adds up to create z. Even though the commentary section of the media roundup is usually interesting, it doesn’t make up for the interesting reading you’ll find going through the archive. Also i realize there’s still articles, but barely as many and mostly by others. Please Zach – spend less time digging up general mma links and more time giving us your analysis of the fight scene.
I would like to write more often. I will try my best to do so. I also don’t want to write voluminously for the sake of doing it, either. In addition, I have two sites I maintain plus radio tapings and everything else that comes with site-related duties. I wish that more of the site writers would do op-eds, but I’m not going to force anyone to write material that is rushed for the sake of writing.