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« | Home | »

Sunday hangover: Day after UFC 77

By Zach Arnold | October 21, 2007

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Video of Dana White’s comments from the UFC 77 post-fight press conference.

Over at The Fightworks Podcast, they have a new audio interview with Ricardo Almeida.

Don Frye is not a man you want to fight on the street or in a bar. Someone tried to do this, inexplicably.

Over at MMA Predictions, not a single person out of a crowd of 431 people was able to correctly predict 100% of the winners on the 9-match fight card.

On the M-1 site, the promotion made an official announcement regarding their upcoming NYC press conference this Monday. A few interesting details in that release… MMA Analyst has more thoughts on the story.

Here is an article about the IFL tryouts at LA Boxing yesterday. If you recognize the author’s name, this will refresh your memory. Sam Caplan was also at the tryouts.

Roger Hollett was awfully confident going into his fight against Lew Polley in Halifax on Saturday night. Now Hollett is eating crow.

Joachim Hansen is reportedly returning to Shooto.

Shu Hirata has some thoughts and questions about the new World Victory Road Inc. organization.

Kevin Iole compares Anderson Silva to Mike Tyson:

In order to get a truly big fight, there has to be a match in which the outcome is in doubt. But is there any doubt what Silva would do to Yushin Okami, who posted a non-descript victory earlier Saturday over Jason MacDonald?

Does anyone seriously think that, say, Dennis Kang, who recently signed with K-1 Heroes, could challenge Silva at this stage?

Doubtful.

Very doubtful.

A Joe Lauzon sighting.

Jeremy Goodwin has a new way of looking at Zuffa’s finances.

Topics: Canada, IFL, Japan, M-1, Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 25 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

25 Responses to “Sunday hangover: Day after UFC 77”

  1. schz says:

    dana white picks kevin iole first and calls him “kev” ? can they make the manlove any more obvious.

  2. Ben says:

    One thing I haven’t seen anyone mention is the way that the broadcast team handled the Couture situation. Though Randy was in the preview before the PPV broadcast, his absence was notable on a night when Vera and Sylvia fought. You could hear the awkwardness when they showed Big Nog and Goldberg found himself stumbling around the idea that the winner of Vera/Sylvia would get to fight Nog for the belt. That was the closest they came to mentioning Couture’s departure from the org, as far as I could hear.

  3. 45 Huddle says:

    I might be a complete UFC Nuthugger, but I just placed 82nd out of 14,653 people on the UFC Fantasy Game for UFC 77. Kind of shocked myself because I’m typically not even the best at picking fights.

  4. MoreThanUFC says:

    “dana white picks kevin iole first and calls him “kev” ? can they make the manlove any more obvious.”

    Laughed my ass off at that.

  5. karat3 says:

    Whats with the people on UFC’s payroll constantly trying to compare fighters that are on a roll to Mike Tyson. We all remember Dana’s “Chuck liddell is like a Mike tyson before he lost”.

    Tyson had the aura of a unbeatable fighter, neither chuck(pre rampage II) nor anderson has that IMO, we have seen both guys get schooled before so we know they can be beat. This was not the case with Tyson.

    The comparison isnt valid IMO.

    And yes I consider Kevin Iole on ufc’s payroll incase you wonder (my opinion).

  6. Yes, I think DENIS Kang can take on Silva.

    Brands don’t make fighters Kevin.

  7. 45 Huddle says:

    The bigger question is if Kang will actually pass the piss test afterwards.

    There is now a solid number of UFC fighters who are in the wrong weight class. I think the UFC would actually benefit from many of these fighters moving down. And especially the weak UFC Middleweight Division. If Henderson, Bisping, & Rua moved down in weight, it would all of a sudden be a dynamic division. And Light Heavyweight is strong enough already that it still wouldn’t suffer to much (especially if Vera moved down in weight). Imagine this UFC Middleweight Top 10:

    1. Anderson Silva
    2. Dan Henderson
    3. Mauricio Rua
    4. Rich Franklin
    5. Yushin Okami
    6. Ricardo Almeida
    7. Michael Bisping
    8. Nathan Marquardt
    9. Martin Kampmann
    10. Jason MacDonald

  8. AEG.

    Makes perfect sense. Anschutz has been puring money into sports for 15 years now, he’s been building and operating venues in many cities for years, and he’s got a shitload of money (The guy’s a parley expert, he had an oil rig fire in Texas at one point, and immediately sold the movie making rights to shoot scenes for “The Hellfighters.”

    He owned railroads, and sold the railroads with the exception of fiber optic access rights. He buried fiber optic cable and grew Qwest into a multi-billion dollar telecom company (Qwest then got into trouble for an interesting accounting fraud related to capacity swaps…basically, you had several telecommunications companies that all had excess data bandwidth capacity on their lines. You were able to market price that excess capacity thanks to futures trading boards created by Enron. The companies would make a deal to sell each other their excess capacity, in exchange for their own excess capacity, they would then book an asset related to the right to use someone else’s excess capacity, and against that they would book revenue for sale of their own capacity. This is strictly against the rules, by the way because you’re not supposed to show a gain or loss on exchanges of like assets. ANYWAY, they got a nice SEC investigation for their trouble. No one else that was doing the same thing had any problems. There’s some speculation that this is because, unlike all the other telecommunication companies who illegally handed over your telephone records to the federal government without asking for a warrant, Qwest told the Bush administration to come back with a proper legal document.).

    So, he’s got a history of taking small investments in one thing and turning them into huge gains by flipping them into another industry.

    Another good example would be the Home Depot Center (soccer and tennis stadiums in Los Angeles). He uses the facility for his own team (LA Galaxy), then leases it to a second team (CD Chivas USA), and uses it for non-sports events promoted by another company that he owns, Concerts West. He’s a very rich, very smart man, who has some very smart guys working for him who make him a lot of money.

    I’m not sure that M-1 is that good an investment for him though, because M-1’s Russian guys are shady at best. It’ll be interesting to watch this shake out.

  9. LR says:

    Yes, the article I wrote regarding AEG and doing the research for it really made me believe it was their new baby as far as the sports industry goes. They look to be a SERIOUS buyer.

    AEG isn’t exactly great a good investments. David Beckham was not a great one, but they will eventually turn a profit on it in other capacities like merchandising.

  10. Sergio says:

    45, I finished 117 which was shocking to me as well.

    Really, it was my picks for the Sylvia/Vera (UD for Tim) and Silva/Franklin (Silva R2 TKO) that shot me up there.

  11. LR,

    Are you a soccer guy as well (I have been a huge soccer person for a while, but I’m voluntarily out of the loop these days)?

    The Beckham contract is significantly different from what was originally announced publicly. There’s a lot of money there, but looking back, there is a very real possibility that it’s a break-even proposition for AEG as a whole.

    I’m of two minds about Beckham. I find the media circus that follows him around to be entirely ludicrous, and he’s not a GREAT player of the calibre to change a team’s fortunes by his mere presence.

    HOWEVER, is strength is that he’s a complete idiot. He’s so stupid that no matter what the scenario is, he will do his best and compete to the peak of his capabilities. That is setting aside his months of injuries etc that were what was preventing him from getting a decent new contract in Europe. He’s a good player who would be a good addition to all but about 10 teams on this planet. I guess that in the next few week’s we’ll find out if it was “enough” more for LA. They’re not a great team, even now, but you don’t have to be great to make the playoffs or to win in the playoffs (as the Revs have shown for years).

    Fact is, he took a very real pay cut in terms of his guaranteed income to come over here, but the upside in terms of the portion of his contract that’s based on merchandising may have made him even more money than he gave up.

    AEG is a serious contender and long term-er for any venture that they’re interested in. M-1 just confuses me as a target for investment. It seems a lot like the next Pride to me in terms of being an MMA organization with an utterly autocratic leader (hm, well, maybe that’s MMA in a nutshell actually), combined with a very likely criminal element (it’s Russia, there’s money, you HAVE to assume that there’s a mob connection).

  12. LR says:

    I agree, I think AEG will definitely break even on that deal. Fact is, they have merchandising franchises within their company as well according to their website.

    I also agree with your statement regarding his skill. I think the whole Hollywood image he has definitely adds to his popularity as it did in Britain. He has some great kicks, but now it seems he’s becoming injury prone.

    I love watching EPL as well as Serie A. I watch some MLS, but not so much these days.

  13. The Gaijin says:

    “AEG isn’t exactly great a good investments. David Beckham was not a great one, but they will eventually turn a profit on it in other capacities like merchandising.”

    The entire Beckham investment was based mostly on his “abilities” not related to performance on the soccer field. I think it will turn out to be quite a profitable investment in the grand scheme of things.

  14. David says:

    I really like Jeremy’s comments.

  15. el feo says:

    I finished 34th in the ufc game, 8 out of 9 winners and 6 out of 9 finishes…of course Sylvia had to ruin it.

  16. LR says:

    Gaijin,

    In retrospect, I agree. His merchandising prospects alone will turn a big profit.

  17. SamScaff says:

    What is this nonsense about Kang not being able to ‘pass a piss test’??

    Is that just a troll comment or is there actually any evidence?

  18. Tanner says:

    The link to the post fight presser is broken. Anyone know where we can find it?

  19. Dedwyre says:

    For being a guy you don’t want to get in a fight with, it sounds like Don Frye got messed up by this bodyguard guy. Then again, it doesn’t specifically say how he fared. Perhaps he’s not a bodyguard with one eye and no testicles?

    In all seriousness, I think Okami vs. Silva could be spun to make a good story, since UFC loves their rematches. I’d like to see Kang vs. Silva, even though it obviously won’t happen for a while.

  20. Preach says:

    Ded, they left out some parts, here’s what ProWrestlingInsider’s Mike Johnson reported on the Frye/Bodyguard-incident:

    “The series of events that led to the fight between MMA legend Don Frye and the bodyguard for Leland Chapman were as follows. Once the MMA show was canceled, there was a meeting at the hotel where the promoter Phil Flathers explained their wouldn’t be payoffs since there wasn’t a show. Frye was attempting to mediate and keep the peace when Leland Chapman, who at one point was scheduled to fight, began mouthing off. After trying to defuse the situation, Frye finally chewed him out and offered to step outside. When they did, “Frye was sucker punched” by Chapman’s bodyguard as he exited the hotel lobby. Frye grabbed the bodyguard and took him down with a single leg takedown and began beating with him punches before being pulled off. There was then a second incident in the hotel parking lot where Frye was again “sucker punched” which led to Scott Norton coming to his aid.”

    I wonder why a guy who’s competing as a professional fighter needs a bodyguard… and especially a guy who in his dayjob works as a bounty hunter…

    ZST, set up a MMA Tag Team match between Frye/Norton and Chapman/The Unknown Bodyguard, this needs to be settled, once and for all! 😉

  21. Dedwyre says:

    Ah, thank you for clarifying.

  22. klown says:

    japanese shaving cream commercial starring mark coleman and wanderlei silva

    http://www.mmatko.com/mark-coleman-vs-wanderlei-silva-funny-mma-fighter-video-commercial/

  23. Has anyone heard this odd rumor regarding Mitch Maxwell and Sibling Entertainment Group buying M-1?

    Somebody posted that on the UG and I was looking at the company. It seems so far out of left field, but then again, why wouldn someone say that name?

  24. Betty Wood says:

    Sonny is NOT Leland’s Bodyguard–He is his trainer. Frye was not “mediating” He was drunk. He called them outside–Therefore-it was not a “suckerPunch” when you do the “calling”. I would be upset too-if my name and my dad’s name was used to do the promoting-I flew down on my own money-and then I was told I would not collect any money.
    Quit trying to make Leland out to be the BAD guy–put the blame where it belongs–on the men who cheated these people out of their money and the Drunken Frye.

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