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Today’s chalkboard (4/12/08)
By Zach Arnold | April 12, 2008
Main matches from today’s IGF event at Osaka Prefectural Gym: Naoya Ogawa defeated Travis Tomko in 11’43 with a choke sleeper and Josh Barnett defeated The Predator in 11’01 with a cross heel-hold (photo here). Jan “The Giant” Nortje defeated Montanha Silva in 4’44 by disqualification.
- The Peterborough Examiner: UFC jitters take toll on first-time fighters
- The Winnipeg Sun: Q & A with GSP
- The Sault Star (Canada): Sport or barbarism? The debate rages on as to whether cage fighting is uncivilized or simply sport
- Dave Meltzer: BET’s ‘Iron Ring’ a surprise hit
- Sam Caplan: Playing MMA musical chairs
- Gary Herman: Q & A with Randy Couture
- The Chronicle Herald (Canada): A NHB life — dreams of stardom make pain worthwhile
- The Des Moines Register (Iowa): Organized youth fighting sends wrong message (more fallout from the now infamous AP article)
- AOL Fanhouse: Randy Couture on Kimbo Slice – ‘He has the potential to be a very good fighter’
- Sherdog: YAMMA – if the cage design was intended to make MMA more entertaining, it did not work Friday
- Fightlinker: Evan Tanner lives a sparse life
- Charles Jay: Bill O – another attack on MMA
Topics: Canada, Japan, Media, MMA, Pro Elite, Pro-Wrestling, UFC, YAMMA, Zach Arnold | 16 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
YAMMA Pit Fighting
Mark Kerr vs. Oleg Taktarov
http://www.mmatko.com/oleg-taktarov-vs-mark-kerr-fight-video-yamma-pit-fighting/
Its funny how little you can find about YAMMA today. Man, that was really an awful, awful show.
Surely everyone will to erase it from their memories forever.
I watched the Kerr/Taktarov fight and a few things came to mind.
1. I knew the sport changed leaps and bounds over the last 10 years, but watching those two guys compete really slams home that concept.
2. Back in the day, I was a big fan of Blatnick, Perreti, & Beck as announcers. Yet listening to them today, it just isn’t the same. It made me miss Rogan.
John Peretti is a truly. horrible color commentator. “I don’t like the jumping punches!” would be just one of many examples.
Scott Ferrall has a voice made for a career in silent films.
Having a single five-minute round only encourages fighters to wait out the round and not do much in the meantime.
Other than Oleg Taktarov looking good, there wasn’t much to enjoy on this show.
Ferrall was seriously the only part of the show that wasn’t dead awful — and that was just ironic as he was unintentionally hilarious.
Based on the backlash, it sounds like Yamma was one of the worst MMA events that people have ever seen. I must be crazy, because I want to watch it now to see if it was really that bad.
So…if you had to choose from Dynamite!! USA and YAMMA. Which one would you choose?
^ laying under a bus?
Zach,
Does this YAMMA draw parallels to the infamous “Heroes of Wrestling” PPV?
Yamma had no good fights. Dynamite USA!! atleast had manhoef-dong sik yoon wich was a good fight.
The best part of yamma was the announcer, and that was simply because he was so terrible it became funny ;/
Speaking of Heroes of Wrestling…. One of my friends ordered the PPV. It was beyond horrible. Even the younger wrestlers on the card stunk it up that night.
LOL I do remember Heroes of Wrestling, and yes, it was as awful as all of you (I presume) have heard and read it was.
Jesus what happened to Kerr? He used to be jacked to the gills, but now? Man he really let himself go. Taktarov looked all right. That leg lock he used to be Kerr was very nicely done. I liked how he went for the l;eft leg, but instead switched over to the right leg and submitted Kerr.
^ I think cyph can cover that one for you. 🙂
Re: Kerr.
If you’ve ever seen “The Smashing Machine” documentary you’ll see that Kerr has/had a really bad addiction to painkillers (morphine/opiates) that just catches up to him along with a litany of personal demons.
I think I recall there was a scene where he was openly going around backstage at an early PRIDE show asking med. staff for it. But, I believe (surprise of surprises) that the med. staff not only didn’t have any but told him they were not allowed!
I have seen Smashing Machine, but I missed the first 20 or so minutes of it. Spike TV played it years ago. I remember very little of it, but it was good. Another great MMA documentary was “Rites Of Passage”. The segment alone on Enson and Egan Inoue is worth the price of admission.