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Thursday trash talk: The road to UFC 73
By Zach Arnold | July 4, 2007
Dave Doyle is starting to write columns over at Yahoo Sports on MMA. The RSS feed for his columns is here. The RSS feed for Kevin Iole’s columns is here.
Here are the odds over at Bodog for the UFC 73 event. The obvious odd that sticks out is Marquardt at +140. Ortiz comes into his fight as a slight favorite. Mark Bocek at +260 and Mike Nickels at +400 is also interesting.
Mike Sawyer has a column today about the drug culture in professional wrestling and MMA. This is a short, but informative article. I guess the question to ask is who isn’t on drugs as upposed to who is. In regards to using Peroxide and Clorox in the hair, Mike says that it helps strips drug metabolites from a person’s hair. He said the process is very painful. Sawyer also said that at the health food store he works at, he estimates that over 1,000 drug test kits have been sold in the last five years to ‘mask’ for drug tests.
Onto today’s headlines.
- CBS Sportsline: Q & A w/ Sean Sherk
- UFC HP: Nate Marquardt – the challenger
- The Houston Chronicle (Steve Sievert): UFC 73 Stacked, indeed
- Sherdog: Penn’s camp denies report of August fight against Diego Sanchez
- UFC Junkie: Brandon Vera says he plans to fight twice in 2007
- Kevin Iole: Routine matters for Sean Sherk
- MMA Predictions: Inaugural episode of MMA Predictions radio
- Dave Doyle: What to watch at UFC 73
- The Canadian Press: ‘Two cats in a burlap sack’ (Herring vs. Nogueira)
- The Pacific Daily News (Guam): MMA is a professional sport; treat it like one
- The Eagle Tribune (MA): Saturday’s UFC a Stacked card
- Jeff Thaler: No conflicts should mean no conflicts
- The Roanoke Times (VA): Charles Norwood picks up two fights
- Sportsnet (Canada): Sherk work
Benoit article links
Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr has an article in today’s Washington Times titled Wrestling in a chokehold. Barr rips into the media’s coverage of the Chris Benoit murder-suicide and also takes specific aim at Jim Wilson’s call for wrestlers to form a union. Barr argues that if wrestling is regulated, it will kill the industry. I suggest reading my CBS Sportsline article as a supplemental argument or counterbalance to the Times piece.
Mike Mooneyham has the latest updates on the Benoit story, along with Bryan Alvarez doing a radio interview on Between the Ropes yesterday.
Topics: IFL, Media, MMA, Pro-Wrestling, UFC, WWE, Zach Arnold | 19 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Bob Barr=Patriot
Bob Barr makes no argument against unionization except to claim that “decades of unionization in other pro sports have not vastly improved their quality”. That’s hardly compelling.
Though I am hardly a fan of Bob Barr’s politics or personal (lack of) ethics, he does present two points in a clear manner: (1) when bad things happen, legislators rush to “action” to curry favor for doing something, whether or not those actions are positive; (2) many experts in this (and other) case are individuals with an axe to grind.
Not that any legislative oversight or ex-wrestler interviews are neccessarily bad. (In fact, many of them are quite good and beneficial.) But don’t mistake discussion, press releases, or headlines for real progress that will improve the status quo. The correlation is often quite tenuous.
Bocek is a steal at anything +200.
What axe do I have to grind?
Besides real progressive change in the sport.
I’m sorry, but I think the whole lashing out at the media for their reaction to Benoit thing has run its course.
Bottom line: The media did not strangle Nancy and Daniel Benoit. The media is not the industry with a death reate that makes coal mining seem like a desk job. It is pro wrestling’s problems, and the more time spent chastising the media for their coverage, the less time will be spent toward actually making the changes that need to be made in wrestling so that people who should be in the primes of their lives stop dropping dead.
Dave Doyle, has man ever used so many words to say so little?
Why are we still talking about Benoit?
I’m looking forward to watch Alvin Robinson fight.
Yeah, enough about Chris Benoit. No offense, Zach, but this is an MMA site. We all know what happened. He was a roid-head, we know that. Its done.
^^^ It’s his site. Besides, it’s pretty easy to not click a link or to scan past something if you don’t want to read it.
It is obvious that Sam Scaff isn’t too well informed. Steroids were the least of Chris Benoit’s problems. And I agree, if you don’t want to click on the link, then that is fine. But there is enough cross over from the MMA Fans here to warrant the links being posted.
I too wish that we would move on from the Chris Benoit story. Hell, I was r ready to move on ti from the second I heard it. I think that the media attention has finally died down and focused more on other topics.
“I too wish that we would move on from the Chris Benoit story.”
And that’s how Vince has lasted for so long.
“It’s a pro-wrestling story. So what?”
If a fighter died due to steroid or painkiller complications, am I afforded the same rights of dismissal that you have with this story? Because that’s what the media is going to do.
Look at them bully and contradict people who actual know the business into their own storyline. The same story line doctors, detectives and even domestic abuse specialists say does not fit the scene.
This is what you have to look forward to once someone fucks it up for everyone.
Take some notes.
If a fighter died due to steroid or painkiller complications, am I afforded the same rights of dismissal that you have with this story? Because that’s what the media is going to do.
Would discussion of Ken Caminiti’s death be pertinent here? Probably not, and he participates in a real sport, unlike Benoit. But TAKADA.
I don’t see why not, so long as there are viable lessons to be learned from it.
First point: lmao but TAKADA instead of TADA!
Second Point:
“I too wish that we would move on from the Chris Benoit story.”
And that’s how Vince has lasted for so long.
And Finally: I don’t care about the Benoit hype whether its roids or he was molested as a child, enough is enough nobody gives a fuck if Target is carrying his toy, yeah it was an interesting read but so is the fucking gamut of the internet haha, lets move on, and everybody check out my stock blog
http://www.StockDude420.blogspot.com
I don’t see why not, so long as there are viable lessons to be learned from it.
But we’re not. The discussion about deaths in football from concussions or drug use has never been raised. Where was the coverage of Bjarne Riis admitting his blood doping and HGH use? Oh, that’s right, its cycling, not fake fighting, so it doesn’t get round the clock coverage.
And that’s how Vince has lasted for so long.
I think discussion about EVIL VINCE MCMAHON~! would be better served in a forum about professional wrestling rather than one which supposedly covers professional combat sports. I wouldn’t mind reading more about, you know, professional fighting, as the name of the blog and the tagline would seem to describe. I don’t think there’s any lesson whatsoever that’s transferrable to MMA from the Benoit saga other than athletes like to use performance enhancing drugs, which we could just as easily have learned from any other sport on the planet.
Well, considering my specific knowledge about Baseball, Cycling, etc. steroid/drug abuse is rather…small, I don’t think I’ll be bringing up specific examples from those sports anytime soon. But if you have ‘warning’ examples of the excesses and the need for stricter regulation, go right ahead.
Unless you’re talking about the mainstream media, in which case I’m not the guy to ask why Pro Wrestling is getting more attention (besides the horrific circumstances of this particular case) than Cycling, etc.