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Gus Johnson is ready to run wild, brother
By Zach Arnold | May 20, 2008
Intriguingly, Gus Johnson of CBS Sports will be the play-by-play man for the Elite XC debut show on CBS. I have ribbed Mauro Ranallo about this in the past, but make no mistake about it – Johnson (in an interview with Bill Simmons on ESPN) was very serious about getting into MMA. You can’t go wrong with both Mauro and Gus doing the PBP. With that stated, a lot of casual sports fans associate Johnson with NFL, March Madness, and Knicks on MSG telecasts. I am surprised that more people have not picked up on this story, since Johnson is a real darling of the various big sports blogs in the States. Here is an Associated Press article on Frank Shamrock joining Gus & Mauro on the broadcast team.
Mark & Matt Hughes made quite an impression at the NRA show.
North Dakota must be proud of this quality journalism.
Onto today’s headlines.
- Fox Sports: Kenny Florian-Roger Huerta sign up to fight at UFC 87
- Jake Rossen: A Beached Bad Boy
- Jake Rossen: Randy Couture nabs victory in court
- The Dayton Daily News (OH): Disgraced Sherk finally gets shot at redemption
- Bleacher Report: Why Tito Ortiz is bad for MMA
- MMA Junkie: Phil Baroni anticipates ‘friendly environment’ for CBS debut
- Sherdog: Goran Reljic talks UFC debut
- UFC HP: Unbeaten Goran Reljic promises excitement for UFC debut Saturday
- KEPR CBS 19 (WA): Special report – backyard brawls and bloody beat downs (you’ll be shocked — shocked — at the attempted MMA tie-in)
- The Canadian Press: “War Machine” Jon Koppenhaver well-oiled
- AZ Central: 5 minutes with Cain Velasquez
- The Globe and Mail (Canada): Judo – MMA increasing popularity of ‘the gentle way’
- Seattle PI: Interview with Jens Pulver
- Fightlinker: Steroids rock!
- Dave Meltzer: Ryoto Machida could make a big name for himself
Topics: Media, MMA, Pro Elite, UFC, Zach Arnold | 10 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I don’t see what’s wrong with that North Dakota article personally. He’s allowed to be offended by stripping and MMA if he wants. It’s not like he’s saying they’re the same thing, just that they’re both offensive to him.
Regarding journalism, what standards are there for editorials vs. factual news pieces? I always under impression that editorials don’t need to conform to the same objective standards. That North Dakota is clearly an editorial.
Regarding the “shocking” piece on “backyard brawls”, I thought it was fine. They even quoted an MMA gym owner and stated that MMA is regulated and safer than unregulated street fights, which seemed to me to be the entire point of the article. Don’t know what was so shocking about it.
Zach,
This is the second time you spell Machida’s name as “Ryoto.”
I think you’re the last blogger to still use the mispelling of “Ryoto” Machida. Machida himself has stated that it’s spelled “Lyoto.”
I agree with Meltzer regarding the Machida VS Ortiz fight. Personally, I feel this is the main event of UFC 84. I have a lot of questions regarding Machida, whether he is as good as I think he is, or that he may have got lucky based on his style match up.
Ortiz should be a stylistic nightmare for Machida. This fight will answer a lot of questions regarding the pecking order of LHW, Machida’s abilities, and how far Ortiz has fallen.
The second important fight is Jardine VS Silva. This should tell us which Jardine is the real one, the one who beat Forrest Griffin or the one that dropped one to no-name Houston Alexander. I feel that Silva will lose this fight by decision and also drop down to middle weight in the process. Unfortunately for him, size does matter, and Jardine is just too big.
As far as Penn and Sherk is concerned, I expect an anti-climatic one sided beat down by Penn to prove that he should be the #1 ranked lightweight. Anything else would be a real surprise.
Wow, I am definitely dumber after reading that Bleacher Report story.
cyph, to be fair, “Ryoto” vs “Lyoto” is just a romanization issue. From what I understand, the English letters “r” and “l” don’t have separate equivalents and map to the same Japanese phoneme.
It’s the same as writing “Vanderlei” or “Fyodor Yemelyanenko”.
Traditionally, editorial pieces are supposed to be opinion pieces where you made a solid argument for or against something whereas factual pieces simply list a set of facts and let the reader reach their own conclusions. Even though an editorial is an opinion piece, though, if you make a false claim, you should/will get called out on it given that your logical process will be interupted by the incorrect fact(s) so either you’d have to redirect your argument or concede the point.
In both cases, misleading/false facts are (generally) looked down upon given that even op-eds are (usually) basing their opinions on a series of favorable facts (even to the exclusion of opposing facts at times).
And to add to what Grape said, Lyoto Machida has gone by the name of Ryota Machida (with the letter “a” at the end of the first name). And ever notice a fighter that Zach Arnold has called Kaoru Uno? Same guy as Caol Uno, just a different spelling. And how many different English letter spelling for Jujutsu/Jui Jitsu/Jui Juitsu? Oddly enough, the Japanese also mistake G’s and Z’s. Hence why the anime “Zatch Bell” is also sometimes called “Gatch Bell”. Oh, and play a King Of Fighters videogame. The announcer doesn’t say “Round”. He/she (depending of the game, usually a woman) will say “Lound”. Funny is it not?
It’s the same as writing “Vanderlei” or “Fyodor Yemelyanenko”.
Sure. But if Fedor prefers his name to be spelled Fedor instead of Fyodor, wouldn’t you be inclined to oblige?
Of course, the classic counter example is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has been almost ridiculously out of touch with the news and facts AS REPORTED IN THEIR OWN PAPER, even before they were bought out by Rupert Murdoch.