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Tuesday headlines: Rickson Gracie is returning
By Zach Arnold | August 28, 2007
There is a brand new SEC filing by Pro Elite. Any new information in the filing? I did notice this gem on page 15:
The material weaknesses noted were: (1) the Company inadequately maintained accounting records, (2) accounting policies and procedures were not formally documented, and (3) the accounting department did not have sufficient technical accounting knowledge. The significant deficiency noted was that an affiliate did not provide adequate accounting for funds advanced by the Company.
The Company has begun taking remediation steps to enhance its internal control over financial reporting and reduce control deficiencies. We are actively working to eliminate the internal control weaknesses and deficiency noted by: bringing all accounting and record maintenance in-house, implementing Microsoft Dynamics/Great Plains accounting software; formally documenting accounting policies and procedures; creating centralized, on-site document repositories and maintenance; and hiring personnel in the accounting and legal departments.
On page 25 of the filing, it states that future reality show contestants for the Mark Burnett-produced show-to-be will sign dual contracts (one with Pro Elite or PE affiliates and one with Burnett’s production company). Furthermore, Burnett will have the full rights to the reality TV show footage (if produced). The last lines of the paragraph states:
Subject to specified exceptions, JMBP and Mark Burnett have agreed to exclusivity with respect to mixed martial arts programming. The term of the agreement extends until the earlier of the end of the term of the license agreement with the broadcast of the series or the failure of JMBP to enter into such a license agreement by June 15, 2008.
Additionally, on page 27, the filing states that Pro Elite currently has 37 full-time employees. On page 31, the filing claims that Gary Shaw receives a $10,000 USD per-month housing allowance in the Los Angeles area.
Jeff Comstock points out that Entremetrix Corp. has bought out Gladiator Challenge. Pro Elite had previously shown interesting in buying out the independent MMA organization. You can track Entremetrix’s stock price right here and view their SEC filings right here.
Rickson Gracie is going to fight on New Year’s Eve. Only one promotion runs on NYE now – K-1.
K-1 announced Choi Hong-Man vs. Mighty Mo for their 9/29 Seoul, South Korea World GP event.
Hiro Yokoi is retiring.
There’s a report claiming that famous Japanese pro-wrestling writer Fumi Saito has stomach cancer.
You remember Dana White’s comments a couple of days ago when he said that the Japan fans don’t want another MMA organization? I’m sure you do. To punctuate the hilarity of that statement, Tetsuya Sano at Swimming Eye posted a review of a Samurai TV program from a couple of days ago in Japan. The theme of the program? The future of PRIDE. It included a panel of Japanese MMA writers and man-on-the-street interviews with hardcore MMA fans talking about how much they missed PRIDE in Japan. More details in Japanese at NHB News.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that 11,000 tickets have been sold for UFC 77 in October.
There were a couple of interesting items in Dan Henderson’s UFCJunkie.com chat on Monday night. First, Henderson admitted that he had no idea that PRIDE was ever in financial trouble. Second, he (like Rampage Jackson) says he likes the PRIDE rules better than the Unified rules. I guess Dana White can’t change the leopard’s spots on the PRIDE fighters.
Sanity has prevailed in K-1, as the promotion announced Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Katsuyori Shibata for their 9/17 Yokohama Arena event. Not only is this a safer fight for Sakuraba (as opposed to facing Denis Kang), it’s also a fight that will draw more money in Japan.
Luke Thomas says everything I would say about the Renato Babalu/David Heath choke situation, only in more eloquent terms. Of course, Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports (who called critics of his column about GSP last week “keyboard warriors”) is now calling Renato Babalu “Babaloser.” I’m sure the late Giant Baba is thrilled with the spelling of that nickname. Furthermore, Kevin is usually a good columnist but that latest Yahoo Sports article is… it is what it is. Mike Freeman of CBS Sportsline might be jealous of that new column, actually…
I still don’t understand why hardcore MMA fans and online writers continue to demand that Fedor sign with UFC. The rhetoric that ‘he needs UFC, UFC doesn’t need him’ is silly. Fighting is a business and Fedor has made plenty of money being the best heavyweight in the world. He has nothing left to prove to anyone. Besides, if I’m his agent, I’d much prefer to get him signed to a deal with K-1 in Japan or work out a series of fights in Russia. That is where Fedor’s marketability lies and where he has the best shot of making money. You don’t see ad agencies like Dentsu clamoring to sign up UFC fighters, do you? The only fighter left that could provide a challenge to Fedor is Josh Barnett, and I have my doubts that we’ll ever see that fight in America. The only location that fight can happen at is in Japan.
Hey, a Gabe Ruediger sighting.
Onto today’s headlines.
- UFC HP: Shogun’s quest – conquer the UFC Light Heavyweight division
- MMA HQ: Roger Huerta’s next fight
- MMA Madness: Measuring fighter performance
- China Combat: Can you guess the next MMA hot spot?
- The Fightworks Podcast: The 2007 BJJ World Mundials – seven interviews
- Eddie Goldman: Radio interview with Pedro Rizzo
- The UNLV Rebel Yell: The tarnished image of MMA
- Javno: Blood sport (meaning money)
- SLAM! Sports: GSP wants winner of Serra/Hughes
- The Chicago Sun-Times (Rick Telander): The ultimate truth – twice
- The Toronto Star: Mixing up martial arts
- RJ Broadhead: Bad, bad Babalu
- The Daily Star (UK): Babalu’s blood money storm
- The Canadian Press: Canadian referee Yves Lavigne climbs the MMA ladder in North America
- The Cincinnati Enquirer: Brazilian Anderson Silva confident heading into rematch
- The Stockton Record (CA): When life struck, S.J. man struck right back
- The Orlando Sentinel: Djimon Hounsou is a star leader, motivator
- Javno: Mirko Cro Cop can conquer UFC
Topics: Canada, HERO's, Japan, K-1, Media, MMA, PRIDE, Pro Elite, UFC, Zach Arnold | 56 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Found a animated .gif of the Babalu/Heath choke:
http://i16.tinypic.com/6ast348.gif
I counted 4-4.8 seconds after the first tap.
Also, like others said BJ Penn did the same thing. But held it in for less. And the difference is that Babalu admitted to it, BJ kept his mouth shut.
Kevin Iole needs his own special on Comedy Central.
The funniest part about all of this, is for all the crying and bitching, more people are going to want to watch Sobral fight whenever he gets in the Octagon next. And that includes Iole.
And, Zach, come on. Fedor isn’t a denim model, he’s a fighter. Does it really shock you that people want to see the best heavyweight MMA has been blessed with thus far waste away the prime of his career against random jackbags in Moscow? Yeah, Fedor is a sportsman and just wants to make that paper, but it’s insane to think that fans who thirst for the kind of action and answers that can only come from top flight fights should champion the idea of Fedor fucking off to fight ham and eggers.
Also, lulz at FEG signing Kevin Casey to fight Minowa. Casey is a decent grappler, that’s fine. But he’s not world class, he’s got no MMA experience and he’s only really achieved any level of fame because he spit in Marc Laimon face and threatened to pull a heater on him. All class. I hope his prefight promo package has him packing a gat.
Wow, someone sounds like they’ve communicated with the spirits of Eddie Graham and Hiro Matsuda. A heel that people hate and will want to pay to see get beat up… shocking. 🙂
Not so bad for a guy who looked like a total joey in getting hammered by Liddell and Lambert.
Also, on the actual video copy, the hold on the choke is roughly three seconds.
Also, Macau is always talked about as some potential hotspot, but it never happens. Manny Pacquiao was supposed to fight there when he fought Larios, and it just didn’t materialize. If a show DOES happen there, and it somehow IS a big deal, I’ll be shocked.
Luis Cruz has a new interview with Brandon Vera up at HACnews here: http://www.hacnews.com/brandonverainterview.html
where Vera says he want’s a shot at Randy’s belt and that Fedor needs the UFC if he wants to keep fighting the best.
“Kevin Iole needs his own special on Comedy Central.”
I’m sure Kevin’s a nice guy, but his technical understanding of MMA is the funniest part about him. I wouldn’t get a laugh out of his Comedy Central special, but I bet I would out of “The Kevin Iole DVD Instructional Manual to Fighting MMA: Where Kimuras Are Armbars and Oma Platas Are Gogoplatas.”
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Kevin Iole is a swell guy, but, as you pointed out, that’s not exactly what’s at stake.
EntreMetrix, Inc. announced the Company’s acquisition of mixed martial arts promotion Gladiator Challenge.
I guess that means they will not be acquired by Pro Elite.
You know, let’s take a step back here and look at ourselves. We hardcores, if that’s a suitable generalization, who are part of the web-based MMA media and consider ourselves the true insiders into the sport are awful hard on the mainstream press.
I’ll come right out and admit part of that is some envy. Of course I’d like to write for Yahoo! Sports or CBS Sportsline or the like. I don’t think I’m doing poorly necessarily, it’s just that having the fulltime cemented gig in MMA coverage would be nice.
On the other hand, I also feel the need to make sure those in the MMA media with the widest reach are minding their p’s and q’s. With so many misconceptions about the sport and such poor understanding about it’s technicalities – from fighting itself to understanding the Japanese MMA scene – we who read sites like Fight Opinion and Sherdog continually find the need to police the ranks of mainstream journalists by acting as fact checkers and managing editors. For my part, I take it a bit too far sometimes.
It seemed kinda clear [to me] that White’s statements about “the Japanese” not wanting another MMA organization didn’t mean the fans, but the suits, the execs, and the super special secret “behind the scenes folks” in Japan [who “tainted” the original Pride to begin with] who had no interest in any gaijin, or anybody not indebted to them, bringing a new MMA org to Japan.
Kinda a disingenuous extrapolation there, imho, just to keep beating the “let’s rip on Dana” drum. There’s more than enough actual stuff to take issue with to be reaching.
Yeah, it was ludicrous in its naivete to think they’d be able to kick off a new Pride in Japan, but to be honest, the reason they can’t get it done is exactly because the Yakuza is so intertwined with puroresu and MMA in Japan. In a strange way, it’s almost as if White/UFC, thought that new owners would be enough to “clear” the Pride name. Spitting in the face of reality/history, that, but basically, is what we’re saying “there was no saving Pride so you were dumb to even try.”
They took a shot. Can’t say they didn’t try. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest try, but hey.
Rickson vs. Funaki is ON for NYE! Mark my words!
The bit about the future of pride and dana’s comments amuses me greatly.
He may be right about Pride being tainted, but the stuff about “Aww, they don’t wanna see it come back anyway” is pure sour grapes.
“…hardcore MMA fans and online writers” want to see Fedor in UFC because it results in the best possible match ups at this point in time. That is all. Make the argument all you like for potential fights with Barnett and others but quite simply UFC has the best line up of challengers waiting.
There are as many politics involved in the US MMA writing beat scene as there are in Japan. The difference is that the Japanese writers get paid by the promoters and there are a lot of men in black who lay down their own rules.
Unless you have leverage or perception on your side, you won’t get a job with a big media outlet. I’ve learned this the hard way. That, and telling the truth about certain topics, gets you isolated quickly. (Although this statement doesn’t apply to CBS Sportsline as opposed to other various media outlets.)
I don’t think so at all. Where else can you find a sport where most hardcore fans are more knowledgable than most of those who cover it for a living? It’s a serious issue and anyone who has a blog with some kind of readership should be whippin’ ass and droppin’ science on mainstream bullshitting. It is unacceptable. If you can’t tell me the story about Pentagon Combat in Rio, or the significance of Vale Tudo Japan 96, or what Battleship was, you should damn well have to figure it out before you’re able to make a living writing about MMA.
Note how 10 + 5 (+5) is now the norm at 185 and above in HERO’s, not just something used for Saku/Tamura fights. Screw the ring, knees, judging and stomps, the ten minute first round is the thing I miss most about the PRIDE-rules, and it’s nice to see HERO’s implementing it in their heavier weight classes.
“I don’t think so at all. Where else can you find a sport where most hardcore fans are more knowledgable than most of those who cover it for a living? It’s a serious issue and anyone who has a blog with some kind of readership should be whippin’ ass and droppin’ science on mainstream bullshitting. It is unacceptable.”
Yeah, maybe. I sometimes feel like an enforcer and that’s not something I’m particularly interested in being.
Also the task of bringing them up to speed becomes tiresome. Quickly.
Re: Web writers policing the mainstream press,
MMA media is in a very strange place, one that is the diametric opposite of the way most media operate. In regular press coverage, you have mainstream outlets, like your major dailies and prominent news magazines, reporting objectively, unafraid of breaking a story that hurts their relationship with the story’s subject (CNN’s relationship with the Saddam Hussein government notwithstanding). For example, Woodward and Bernstein reported on Watergate despite what it would do to the presidency, the country, or the Washington Post’s access.
On the flip side is trade press. These are the outlets that mainly act as sounding boards for the industry they cover. To them, access is everything; without it, they have no publication. I spent several years working in trade media and you learn quite well when to ask the hard questions and when to keep quiet so as not to spoil the party.
In MMA, the mainstream media sound a lot like trade press. Media outlets devote so little coverage to the sport that one article has to suffice for any given event or topic. To maintain access, writers will parrot the official UFC talking points, and say nary a bad word about a fighter or organization. It’s not that these journalists are incapable of good coverage, they just don’t want to spoil the party.
That leaves the hard-hitting stuff to the trade press – I count most MMA websites in that category – the “hardcore fans” that have a modicum of access and an outlet to speak their minds. You can call that “keeping the mainstream press honest” but it’s really nothing more than doing their job for them.
Hopefully, things will change in due time. If the sport becomes more popular, these roles will switch organically. Fully invested fans won’t stand for coverage that simply toes the company line. Then we’ll see media reorganize in their natural order: Mainstream media producing the good stuff while the trade media spouts the nonsense.
This idea that every one who sets pen to paper should have spent the last 15 years watching UFCs and training BJJ is, quite frankly, complete crap. If your technical understanding of MMA is limited, then, granted, that should inform your choice of topic. But MMA ain’t exactly physics, you guys. And I should know, b/c I studied physics.
Writers working in the news industry don’t get assignments based on their knowledge. They get assignments based on the organization’s need. It generally takes years of work b/f a writer has the clout to say, “I only write about x.” This idea that people only write about things in which they have specific, in-depth knowledge is beyond ridiculous.
And as for thinking that MMA writers should be culled from some ‘insider’ core of so-called hardcore fans – that’s pretty much just flattering yourselves.
I don’t know how many people realize that the biggest part of a writer’s job is RESEARCH. They are not expected to enter their careers with the full knowledge of a particular field. Writers just have to know how to find the information they need and present it well. Usually, it’s in covering a particular topic that they become walking encyclopedias.
Information in a published article should be as accurate and complete as possible, in any field. But that’s just not what happens, and everyone just learns to deal. People who want information know, or learn, how to find it. Everyone else just shrugs.
You people really need to get over yourselves. Dana White has been ripped everywhere from Fox to the Houston Chronicle to Yahoo for his handling of the steroids mess. That’s hardly parroting the UFC talking points. With Babalu, if you don’t get that what Babalu did will reflect horribly on MMA in the mainstream, then you just don’t get it. And the idea that bloggers are the true insiders … LOL. All you guys do is parrot what you read in the Wrestling Observer, you’ve never reported stories through real sources in your lives.
LOL @ Battleship
I wonder how much worse the Babalu shitstorm would be if that fight would’ve actually aired on the PPV.
I think the shitstorm would have been less. By the time anyone actually saw what the big deal was about, the whole thing had already been blown way out of proportion. BJ Penn did the exact same thing to Jens Pulver, and no one said “pineapple” about it.
PizzaChef Says:
August 28th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Found a animated .gif of the Babalu/Heath choke:
http://i16.tinypic.com/6ast348.gif
I counted 4-4.8 seconds after the first tap.
Also, like others said BJ Penn did the same thing. But held it in for less. And the difference is that Babalu admitted to it, BJ kept his mouth shut.”
Bullshit…from the first tap, it was barely 3.2-3.4 seconds.
But nobody counts the first tap anyways.
The ref intervened at the 3rd tap…and from there I timed it at 2.6-2.8
I’m using this stopwatch from this website:
http://tools.arantius.com/stopwatch
Have it side by side and do the timing, and stop exaggerating.
It doesn’t even look that bad in real time.
Babalu just made the mistake of admitting to it.
“Remember, Babalu is Brazilian and got his start in the vale tudo days of fighting. He was one of Marcos “King of the Streets” Ruas’s finest students. Where he comes from, choking a man unconscious, even in professional competition, isn’t frowned upon when said man had it coming. Heath antagonized Sobral, and Sobral made him pay. Under certain guidelines, that’s behavior par for the course.
Again, make no mistake: I am not defending his actions.”
I am not mistaking anything. You are defending his actions or you wouldn’t have written that first paragraph.
“I don’t think so at all. Where else can you find a sport where most hardcore fans are more knowledgable than most of those who cover it for a living?”
Baseball, Football, Basketball. It may be less of a problem for the big three but it’s still there.
“I am not mistaking anything. You are defending his actions or you wouldn’t have written that first paragraph.”
No, I’m not. Not now and not ever. Re-read it.
“They took a shot. Can’t say they didn’t try. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest try, but hey.”
That is, of course, working under the assumption that they actually intended to keep Pride up and running, as opposed to buying out their biggest competitor and getting first dibs on many of the top fighters’ contracts.
BABALU SHOULD BE ARRESTED. This tragedy was worse than Viet Nam, 9/11 and the Janet Jackson nipple slip combined.
I can’t think of a more disgusting act of lunacy. You would never see anything so vile and disgusting in professional football, soccer, rugby, hockey, or the noblest of all sports, boxing.
MMA blew it.
Forever.
But SERIOUSLY, from the time the ref starts patting Babalu on the arm and asking for the release, it was LESS than 2.5 seconds – closer to 2.
$5,000 fine, no time off for a suspension.
Anything more is robbery.
People counting seconds are totally missing the point. He opted to choke the man out after the fight was over and he was clearly aware that it was – that is the point. Whether it took 1 or 30 seconds is completely irrelevant. The fact that Babalu grinned at the referee during it all and admitted his intent afterwards IS relevant. I pretty much agree with Luke Thomas’ article – except I would add one more point against Babalu for(potentially) giving the sport a bad public image. I saw the fight before hearing anything about it, am a fan of Babalu(not least now that he’s with Barnett), and Heath I outright dislike, but I was completely apalled and disgusted from the moment I saw this unfold. Glad to see him get reprimanded, and I hope we won’t have to see anything like this again, from him or anyone else. A public apology would be nice, but it should be made to the UFC and the fans, not Heath, because the biggest part of the “crime” was against the rules and promotion of MMA.
By contrast Saturday night, the finish to Valenzuela – Bennett showed the perfect way to settle a grudge within the confines of a cage and MMA rules.
Anyway, I’m sure Spike TV are planning the Heath-Babalu rematch as we speak.
Aww. Man. I Loved Hirotaka Yokoi.. True that He Lost The Bigger Fights though But He Was Sick anyway. Nog Vs. Yokoi is A Classic.. War Yokoi!
“That is, of course, working under the assumption that they actually intended to keep Pride up and running, as opposed to buying out their biggest competitor and getting first dibs on many of the top fighters’ contracts.”
Just from a financial standpoint, I have a hard time believing that Zuffa paid $65 million just to kill off PRIDE. They wouldn’t have sent over Zuffa employees and they wouldn’t have tried to get back on Japanese TV.
You don’t pay $65 million for a brand that can sell 40,000 tickets to an MMA event and throw it away out of spite, especially since the barrier to entry in the Japanese MMA scene is clearly so high. I don’t think Zuffa is dissembling in this case. when Dana says they tried and it didn’t work out.
Re: Babalu
I think what Babalu did is much less reprehensible that hockey players intentionally hitting other players in the face with their sticks. Or basketball players who throw vicious elbows to the face in the paint. Or football players who intentionally chop block. Or Baseball pitchers intentionally throwing at a batter.
All these things are much more harmful physically than a blood choke. What he did was wrong and he should be punished, but let’s not shriek like little girls over what is really in the end a small infraction.
EntreMetrix.
Why am I getting IFL flashbacks here? Oh yeah, because a publicly traded company that had no line of business aquired a fledgling MMA promotion. I’ve seen this film before, and it wasn’t worth my nine bucks then.
===
Babalu didn’t need to choke anyone to be the heel. The guy’s got the axe-murderer look. When I was in Chicago, me and my girlfriend used to jokingly refer to one of the local soccer players as having the “wife-beater” look. Seriously, this guy doesn’t need to do anything to be bad in the eyes of the fans.
That fight never should have gotten to the point where Babalu had a choke. The bleeding alone should have been enough for the ref. to end the fight, IMHO. I can’t believe that Heath didn’t tap well before that.
However, I’m not one of the three guys who was in the octagon, so I wasn’t part of that decision.
On the lighter side:
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/864517229_47a7275928_o.jpg
“Just from a financial standpoint, I have a hard time believing that Zuffa paid $65 million just to kill off PRIDE.”
They didn’t pay $65 million; it ended up being a lot less than that. And that didn’t do it out of spite, or purely to kill off Pride, it was so that they would have dibs on the fighter contracts that they wanted.
Grape Knee High has choked unconscious the correct.
Ivan, yeah I suppose that’s true that maybe they just wanted to buy out/first dib contracts. My feeling though [and I guess it’s nothing more than that] is that there’s a real sense of visceral frustration from Dana and the UFC that they couldn’t re-start Pride in Japan. I honestly think they were working from the assumption that by dint of nothing more than their new ownership they’d be out from the shadow of all the previous nonsense and getting back on TV would be a cakewalk. The white knight buyout theory of corporate America… Dana’s frustration in particular seems particularly obvious [to me, of course.] He seems far too dumbfounded as to why it didn’t work out to have been a scheming mastermind.
I guess I just assume incompetence rather than deception. 🙂
“I think what Babalu did is much less reprehensible that hockey players intentionally hitting other players in the face with their sticks. Or basketball players who throw vicious elbows to the face in the paint. Or football players who intentionally chop block. Or Baseball pitchers intentionally throwing at a batter.
All these things are much more harmful physically than a blood choke. What he did was wrong and he should be punished, but let’s not shriek like little girls over what is really in the end a small infraction.”
And your point is what? Hockey players who hit players in the face with the stick do get severly punished, and even do prison time, don’t they? Why? I dunno, it isn’t as reprehensible as stabbing someone with a knife, or dousing them in lighter fluid and setting them on fire.
The worst part of what Babalu did was showing no understanding that it was wrong. That is cause for alarm.
Arlovski is discharged from UFC.
It is the information from the Japanese influential person concerned.
http://www.plus-blog.sportsnavi.com/dreamnisijima/article/30
I’m a lawyer (although not a criminal one), and I believe what Babalu did was technically criminal. Fouls *during* sporting events — except for exceptionally egregious ones, such as McSorley-Brashear from a few years ago — are generally considered to be part of what the athlete consents to when he agrees to play, and thus not battery. An intentional foul *after a contest is finished* is battery. Babalu did the latter — and to an utterly defenseless man! We can debate how serious a crime it is, sure, but it is absolutely not the same as in-game foul. And no, I’m not suggesting Babalu get prosecuted or go to prison or anything silly like that. But what he did was reprehensible. If I were Dana White, I would never book Babalu at another UFC event again.
FF
“And your point is what?”
Uh…my point was that he should be punished, but in the end it was a minor infraction. It was a friggin’ blood choke. No permanent damage or harm.
“They didn’t pay $65 million; it ended up being a lot less than that. And that didn’t do it out of spite, or purely to kill off Pride, it was so that they would have dibs on the fighter contracts that they wanted.”
Regarding the amount paid, is this documented anywhere?
Given that most, if not all, of the contracts were not assignable, the UFC technically did not have dibs on any fighter that wasn’t already amenable to assigning their contract to the UFC.
I can only see two cases in which a fighter would choose to assign their contract (as Henderson did; note that Shogun signed a new contract entirely) they were already going to sign with the UFC anyway, or the fighter thinks the terms of the contract would be better than the UFC would offer on the free market. Either way, this value to the UFC is negligible since PRIDE was going out of business anyway. Which brings us back to the notion that the UFC bought PRIDE to actually try something with it.
Fan Futbol is correct – while there are inherent risks involved in playing any contact sports and athletes are deemed to consent to the ordinary risks involved in the sport they participate in (frequent or familiar infractions are deemed – on a fact by fact basis – to be within the realm of consent among athletes).
However, past judgments have shown where there is an egregious offense or malicious illegal physical contact that is above and beyond the types of contact that would be foreseen to occur or be consented to an athlete – the athlete can be charged with assault/battery.
So it is very likely that David Heath could press charges against Babalu and argue that while there was full consent to any types of striking, submission etc. within their athletic contest – there was never consent to be choked out after he had “submitted” and the referee was attempting to pry Babalu off of his unconscious body. [at least following Canadian standards]
So what is the story with the Japanese report of Arlovski being let go? Is the site reliable or just a gossip site?
Rollo, that Dream Nishijima site is also the “Ogawa is back!” and “Brandon Vera signed with PRIDE!” site. It’s a troll blog.
Thanks Jordan.
Sakuraba v Shibata. Looking forward to that!!!!
Grape, I don’t think it’s reliably documented anywhere, but I believe the number I’ve seen thrown around is about $44 million.
To follow up on my earlier comment regarding the EntreMetrix, Inc. (OTCBB:ERMX) announcement of their acquisition of mixed martial arts promotion Gladiator Challenge.
The announcement of the deal was made part of a massive spam campaign announcing the deal before the company had issued an official press release to on the deal.
The illegal spam including thousands of e-mails and hundreds of spam blog posts announcing the aquisition in what can be assumed to be an attempt to boost the company’s stock performance.
EntreMetrix is based in Irvine California and looks to my uneducated eye to perhaps be another reverse merger type deal like we saw with the IFL.