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Friday fight notes: Heat-up for UFC 74, round two
By Zach Arnold | August 24, 2007
I’m opening a separate post because there are a ton of MMA media links today. A busy day for the MMA writers. Luke Thomas was in a car accident and Adam Morgan once again was on the radio beat.
ESPN practically ran a five-minute infomercial, I mean “cooler talk” segment with Joe Rogan on SportsCenter about “ultimate fighting” with Fred Hickman. It was all promotion for UFC 74 and who Joe Rogan’s top UFC fighters are. He pushed Sean Sherk really hard on TV and not once was Sherk’s steroid suspension mentioned.
Seconds Out is reporting that Setanta is offering UFC 75 to subscribers for no extra charge.
Funny item of the day – ‘Ultimate Cage Fighting’ in Idaho will have a show on Saturday at the CSI Eldon Evans Expo Center. The event promoter is ‘Superstar’ Lee Anderson.
Another MMA/dogfighting comparison made. In the same newspaper (The Chicago Sun-Times), sportswriter Rick Telander is in Las Vegas to cover the UFC 74 event. Telander was/is not a fan of MMA (he wasn’t as of October 2006) when he did the boilerplate anti-MMA article for his newspaper.
Onto more of today’s headlines.
- The Toronto Star: Like it or not, MMA here to stay on TV
- AOL Fanhouse: Is Gabriel Gonzaga about to become a star?
- The Philadelphia Daily News: Randy Couture says its only natural that UFC will grow as a sport
- The Press of Atlantic City (NJ): A.C. league gives amateurs MMA experience
- The Opelousas Daily World (LA): Kenward “Boo” Bernice to fight on Saturday in Lafayette (he will be cornered by Spencer Fisher)
- MMA on Tap: Art of War 3 odds
- The Fight Network: Patrick ‘can do’ Cote
- Bloody Elbow: What if this Randy Couture shows up?
- MMA Madness: Interview with Roger Huerta
- Sam Caplan: Lighten up on Brock Lesnar!
- Jeremy Botter: UFC 74 predictions
- MMA Videos: UFC 74 is upon us (several video links included)
- Fightlinker: Kevin Iole sticks to the story
- Fox Sports (Alex Marvez): Staph infections go beyond NFL
- Tim Leidecker: UFC targets Germany
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, UK, Zach Arnold | 11 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
“Then Couture gets on the mat with 175-pound Mike ”The Sandman” Pyle, a fellow UFC star who wriggles and twists and uses his legs like anacondas on the much larger man.”
Awesome. Just awesome. I can imagine this conversation.
“What’s your nickname? Do you have one of those?”
“Yeah. ‘Quicksand.'”
“‘Sandman?'”
“‘Quicksand’.”
“Alright, ‘Sandman’, got it. You fight in the UFC, right?”
“Elite XC.”
“Alright, UFC star Mike ‘Sandman’ Pyle. Awesome.”
http://kharitonov.mmaru.de/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
Looks like Sergei/Sergey K has signed with K-1 Heros.
He is also going to fight in regular K1 fights it says.. Good luck to Sergei. Thanks for nothing Dana.
As a UFC Fanboy, I think it is fabulous that ESPN is covering the UFC. I think it is even better that they don’t put an ounce of effort into it and are spoon fed the information by Zuffa themselves. It is even better when news stations do this about presidential races and important world issues. Way to go ZUFFA!!! End Sarcasm….
In 2004, Sergei appeared to be the next big thing in MMA. Then the year 2006 happened, and he is 1-2 since and has a win over a basic nobody. Such potential…. As for him signing with the UFC… Why would he? If he also wants to compete in regular K-1 bouts, then a UFC deal would not allow him to do so. K-1 then becomes the only option for him.
Leites came in at 188 lbs… 2 pounds over the limit…. Everybody else made weight. Nobody looked abnormally different.
Gabriel Gonzaga was 243 lbs for Mirko Filipovic. He is now 252 lbs for Randy Couture. He didn’t look fat or overly jacked. Just a little bit thicker. He will either gas by round 3, or that extra weight is going to exhaust Couture over a long fight. That 252 lbs is going to feel a lot heavier then Tim Sylvia, especially when they start grappling on the ground.
Randy Couture looked to be a little thicker. David Heath looked to be more ripped, but still has a small case of man boobs.
Dave Meltzer on the goofs swallowing Lesnar’s promo interview raw(I couldn’t agree more btw):
“–I don’t know if Brock Lesnar has signed with UFC or not, but he’s in Las Vegas for Saturday’s fight and what he’s doing is an angle and he and Dana White are on the same page. He’s playing outsider heel, and apparently pretty well since some MMA folks who rip on wrestling fans for being stupid, are buying it. ”
– It’s really amazing that all these MMA pundits haven’t noticed that Brock all of a sudden has switched personality from “I’ll be humble and learn my trade” to “I want the champ YESTERDAY” and how it absolutely reeks of storyline promotion, especially after all these years with Tito and the Shamrocks.
45 Huddle is exceptionally good at analyzing other men’s bodies.
Why else would a grown man watch something where other grown men strip down to their briefs and parade around in front of a crowd of men?
I haven’t listened to the Lesnar interview, mostly because from what I heard of it, nothing really mattered. The guy is 1-0 in MMA. Anything beyond that, who cares….. I will say the guy has potential. He is a genetic freak.
However, I believe Zach Arnold pointed this out, and I had made a similar point on other message boards about Lesnar. As a promoter, I would be afraid to invest a lot of money in the guy. He continues to change professions as soon as he gets bored with his current one.
I think that rather than his career ADD, Lesnar’s blatantly obvious history with steroids is the one big reason to be cautious. The UFC can ride out the current LW scandal with only minor dents in its image, but if any more high-profile positive test results are piled on top right now, it’ll hurt the sport bad. Signing Brock would get enormous media attention, and him testing positive shortly thereafter would be disastrous.
Now I’m not saying he ingests his breakfast via a syringe in the ass. For all I know he may be clean now, but Zuffa would be smart to avoid any pro wrestling connections at this point.
…and yes, I know he tested clean at his first MMA fight.
Good for setanta to show UFC for free and not PPV. UFC fans over here are used to watching it free on Bravo and aint ready to start paying. This is also a smart move to get new subscribers to the channel.
Does Lesnar actually have a “blatant obvious history with steroids”?
If you see pictures of the guy from high school he literally has always been a massive, massive individual. While I would never say 100% that the guy is clean, he’s clearly a genetic freak.
And as for the worries about a high profile positive steroid test – you realize that there’s drug testing in the NCAA, where he never once had a positive test and he was also tested during his NFL tryouts. While this definitely isn’t evidence that he’s completely clean, it tells me he’s at least got a high enough IQ to avoid being caught. So really he’s got a blatant history of never being caught pissing hot – isn’t that a good thing PR wise (in a twisted way)?