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Sunday media sandwich: Matt Serra shakes up gamblers
By Zach Arnold | April 8, 2007
This has been quite the red-meat weekend. So here’s some more red meat.
A Japanese blogger looked at a pamphlet at the PRIDE 34 show that was promoting the upcoming 5/20 Saitama Super Arena Lightweight GP tournament. The photographs of 12 fighters were apparently on the pamphlet. The fighters supposedly listed were…
Matt Hughes, Diego Sanchez, Luiz Buscape, Marcus Aurelio, Luiz Azevedo, Gilbert Melendez, Joachim Hansen, Tatsuya Kawajiri, Mitsuhiro Ishida, Shin’ya Aoki, Hayato “Mach” Sakurai, and Takanori Gomi.
Onto today’s media headlines (which includes a resurfacing of the Zuffa Myth).
- Fight Report: IFL 4/7 Moline, Illinois event results
- The Fightworks Podcast: Kenny Florian UFC post-fight interview
- The Orlando Sentinel: Once perceived as a niche sports with a narrow audience, MMA has proven that it’s popular and… (it’s the return of the original Zuffa Myth)
- AOL Sports Blog: Is Jenna Jameson anorexic or is Tito Ortiz just huge?
- The Detroit Free Press: Ex-MSU wrestler Gray Maynard aims to be Ultimate Fighter
- The Washington Post: Matt Serra shocks the world, but not himself in UFC title bout
- The Houston Chronicle: Matt Serra shocks St. Pierre for UFC welterweight title
- The Daily Breeze: Matt Serra stuns Georges St. Pierre with 1st-round KO
- The Canadian Press: Bruce Buffer whips up crowds, fighters in the Octagon
- The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer: ‘Ultimate’ hairdresser Bob Schwantz
- The Orange County Register: TUF 5 diary from Rob Emerson
- Mad Squabbles: Interview with Mike Brown: Victory, injury, and $50,000
- MMA HQ: UFC 69 – Shootout recap
- UFC HP: “Minotauro” arrives in the UFC
- AOL Sports Blog: SportsCenter covers UFC
- MMA Weekly: UFC Fight Night 9 fighter salaries
- Gambling 911: Matt Serra shock UFC 69 win pays out $800 for every $100 bet
Topics: All Topics, BoDog, IFL, Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, UFC, Zach Arnold | 18 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
The sport has been shaken up so much in the last few months. From the Pride/UFC merger…. to the crazy number of upsets.
Just look at the Light Heavyweight Division to see how the mighty have fallen. Ricardo Arona, Tito Ortiz, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Renato Babalu, & Wanderlei Silva.
GSP Serra was an obvious work.
I dont know why you keep deleting my comment. some people got very rich from this and this is the best possible outcome for zuffa:
– it makes season 4 of ultimate fighter a legitimate outcome right as the new season starts
– people in the know made out HUGE $$
– gsp is very much the pro wrestling company man for zuffa, I point to his calling out of Hughes in the ring a few events ago as evidence. Thats was a totally staged by UFC pro wrestling move.
– UFC LOVES their rematches.
– UFC gains a seemingly legitimate main card and the future and this frees Matt Hughes to work in pride
Looks like it is going to be Matt Serra vs. Matt Hughes for the Welterweight Title next. I like this fight and think it is a much more compelling contest then it first appears to be.
Matt Hughes struggles against submission guys. Verissimo, Hallman, & Penn have all given him fits in the octagon. Serra is a good enough strike to keep it even on the feet. And on the ground, Hughes could get caught.
If this fight does happen, it makes me wonder how the UFC will handle the rest of the division. Koscheck, Sanchez, Fitch, Parisyan, GSP, and a few others. There are so many different ways they could match make at this point.
9ijd1Awi1sVlqvi8tAuCkuYgD_b1CBinemh24m58Kwo might have a point, seeing how IMO, ESPN played up the Zuffa myth in a way and half assed called the highlights and made Serra look like a young and up and coming “reality star”, looking for his first title.
But that’s stretching it a bit too far IMO.
Haha, with a name like that, I wonder why the spam filter would possibly delete his posts?? What could it be??
Zach, let that guy’s comment stay, just so he can show off his ignorance to the entire world.
Let’s spell this out nice and easy for him: Dana White just lost his biggest non-Liddell, non-Ortiz marquee fight. GSP-Hughes III would have been one of their biggest money fights ever. And Dana’s going to rig things so that he pisses away that fight? Yeah, right.
ok miike you are right about everything and I thank you for taking the time spelling things out for me as you type words on this page but allow me to digress for a moment;
– that fight can still happen and why would there be a rush for that matchup especially is hughes fights in pride? nothing has been ‘pissed away’ here.
– in the meantime they have just expandeda whole bunch of new matchmaking possibilities with adding serra into the main card headliner mix (on the cheap too i bet and im sure they will play up the ‘rocky’ angle)
– mikes incredibly astute analysis doesnt take into account ucf pride purchase and the new possibilities for matchmaking.
to even further rebuke mike’s theory I would pose this question;
– why is not having gsp hughes 3 right away a big deal for ufc when they can use gsp and hughes seperately to build up new fighters and introduce pride fighters to the american fans by matching them with each them in the short term?
gsp hughes 3 isnt going away and I think the fight was a work pro wrestling style.
LOL @ a work.
Hughes Vs Serra is already booked, so Hughes wont be going to Japan right now.
yeah, Dana White just got UFC to Texas after years of cutting red tape politically, and he’s going to rig the main event of his first show there. You really need to get a life dude.
Not much action on Serra at all would be my bet. We certainly didnt have much action on him and that’s when people aren’t even risking real money, so I doubt many had the balls to throw anything significant on it.
I would imagine it was Kos that did the most damage to the bookies by far.
Can’t respond with facts, huh, 9ijd1Awi1sVlqvi8tAuCkuYgD_b1CBinemh24m58Kwo?
I’m going to give your little crackpot theory one more look. Yeah, OK, I’m sure Dana White woke up one day and said “I’m going to fix a fight. Which one should I fix? Hey, I know! I’ll take one of my hottest new drawing cards, GSP, the guy who has the huge money rematch with Hughes coming up, and I’ll have him lose! Wait! Even better! I’ll have him lose to a guy who has lost to Shonie Carter and Din Thomas! That’ll build my business bigger than ever! God, I’m brilliant!”
Oh wait, you said this was a grand design by Dana to push the guy from TUF. How odd of Dana, then, to let Diego Sanchez, the TUF1 winner, have his first loss, and for Mike Swick to lose in his hometown, on the very same shown he’s fixing things for Serra.
Seriously, dumbass … if you’re going to insult the intelligence of the readers of this board with conspiracy theories, at least make them somewhat plausible.
Yeah, considering that White wants to break into the Canadian market, he’d definitely rig an event for his only major Canadian star to lose in a high-profile fashion to a guy from Long Island with a so-so record.
That’s genius. Go back to Sherdog, please.
Fight fixing is a felony and not worth the net gains to even attempt, why would Zuffa (or anyone for that matter) risk and solid long term investment (not to mention gaming license) for a relatively small amount of money?
Pleeease … stop with the ‘media mayhem’, ‘red meat’, ‘media sandwich’, ‘wacky wednesday’, ‘manic monday’ etc etc etc. I already have to suffer through terrible puns in movie reviews and hockey game summaries, please don’t make me have to do the same with MMA.
It’s funny that there’s not more people talking about the Pride LW tournament with the names attached. I think it points to the fact that PRIDE has so little credibility when announcing names and participating fighters that at this point no one even cares that they’re the biggest liars in the world :-p Okay, that’s a bit overboard. But you get the point.
Serra will get a chance to prove his win wasn’t a fluke against Matt Hughes. This fight will set up a rematch with GSP (provided GSP wins his next match … hopefully what David L’Ouiseau had wasn’t contagious). The only question is who GSP will fight in the meantime. In a way this is kinda good because the welterweight division’s ladder was in a bit of a mess and this straightens things out a bit. Sanchez losing puts him out of title contention till the fall and sets up a rematch against Parysian for #1 contender past GSP. Yeah i know, i’m predicting a lot, but at this point I’ve drank so many energy drinks i feel like i can see through time.
“gsp is very much the pro wrestling company man for zuffa, I point to his calling out of Hughes in the ring a few events ago as evidence. Thats was a totally staged by UFC pro wrestling move.”
HAHAHAHAHA
Asking for a fight in an interview = concrete evidence that every fight you participate in is 100% worked.
How can you argue with that logic?
Anyhoo…I’d actually like to discuss something that matters.
If the poster is correct and all these guys are fighting in the PRIDE LW Tournament, then that’s evidence enough that Zuffa is serious about keeping the brand alive in Japan.
Hey zach, where’s talk of terrible matchmaking and losing a champ talk? If this happened in Pride you would be all over it!
Anyways this proves my theory. Whenever I do not watch my favorite fighters live they get upsetted big time! I hadn’t missed a Gomi fight in AGES. I say bah, aurelio sucks, screw this ppv. BOOM UPSET. Same thing with Diaz(although i didn’t say that diaz sucked but figured he was an underdog). this is the FIRST GSP fight I have ever missed since getting back into MMA and there you go. I am responsible for the losses of my 2 favorite fighters (after sakuraba).