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Friday fight notes: IFL’s ambitious schedule
By Zach Arnold | January 4, 2008
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Fightlinker supposedly has dirt on Matt Hamill.
Look at the amount of big IFL shows on the East Coast in 2008. The Izod Center in East Rutherford (Continental Airlines Arena in the Meadowlands) is a huge building. To run that building three times in one year? Plus three dates in Las Vegas? Ambitious.
An update on Houston Alexander.
Yoshihiro Akiyama is protesting the soccer kick that Kazuo Misaki used to finish him off in their 12/31 Saitama fight.
A report on Tito Ortiz’s first appearance on Celebrity Apprentice.
Xtreme Couture will open up a new gym in Toronto in Spring of 2008.
Sam Caplan has a new column at CBS Sports talking about eight break-out fighters he sees in MMA in 2008. Gery Herman asks if we will see a re-match between Wanderlei Silva and Chuck Liddell.
The Grand Rapids Press newspaper in Michigan has printed multiple negative MMA stories, so this story raised my eyebrow when I saw that an MMA event is coming to the city using a format of three rounds at three minutes a piece (obviously not the Unified rules that the state just passed into legislation). Mistake by the newspaper or something fishy at work? The promotion’s last event featured 22 fights on a single card. A quick check about UCF Cage Combat shows that the promoter is Greg Ahrens, who the state of Michigan sent a cease and desist order to last year for allegedly promoting illegal fights. Royal Burnell has more thoughts.
Topics: Canada, IFL, Japan, Media, MMA, PRIDE, UFC, Zach Arnold | 6 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
The timing of Misaki’s kick was questionable. When he threw it, Akiyama was still on the floor with his hands on the mat which would make it an illegal kick. By the time the kick landed he was on both feet and his hand was just about off the mat. Frank Trigg made a big deal of it but then let it go.
Matt Hamill’s age in the swinger ad is wrong. Either it was a prank or he’s worried 32 is “too old”
See Kid’s fight in K-1. Misaki would still win regardless if the kick was illegal or not.
* I enjoy Fightlinker but I’m not into the Hamill comments.
* The Misaki-Akiyama episode is similar to the Yahya-Yamamoto incident. Were those soccer kicks legal?
* Liddell vs Silva II can wait. I’d like to see Liddell vs Machida and Silva vs Ortiz II.
1. Tito Ortiz was portrayed well on The Apprentice. He was on equal footing with Lennox Lewis who was a boxing HW Champion. That is nothing but good exposure for Ortiz and the UFC.
2. Sherdog is reporting that Serra/GSP II will be in Montreal. That is awesome.
3. New Sherdog rankings are out. They are actually pretty good.
Tito Ortiz wasn’t even a highlight, and neither was Lennox. In fact, they weren’t even concentrated on at all in the promos either which leads me to believe they didn’t do much during the show.
Misaki’s kick was legal. Akiyama was up by the time the kick landed. Either way, Misaki was going to kick Akiyama in the face regardless. Luckily, Akiyama got up.