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« | Home | »

UFC 4/1 Nashville card line-up

By Zach Arnold | March 30, 2009

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TV: Spike TV, 8 PM EST
Venue: Sommet Center, Nashville (Tennessee)
Lead-in for new season of The Ultimate Fighter (US vs. UK)

As it currently stands:

Dark matches

Main card

Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

20 Responses to “UFC 4/1 Nashville card line-up”

  1. ajz123 says:

    I always like watching Tyson Griffin fight, and I really like this main event, but the presence of Junie Browning on yet another main card is extremely frustrating. Browning does not in any way deserve to be highlighted. I don’t care that he is a lighning rod for attention. I don’t think he has earned main card status. I think Almeida vs. Horwich should be televised instead since I think it will be a much better fight, and those guys are each much more talented than Browning.

  2. 45 Huddle says:

    I understand the complaints about Browning, but I’ve never got behind the hatewagon. I figure if he is good enough to continue to win, he will get a push. If he loses, he won’t. Is he getting better treatment due to his actions? Yes! He still has to win his fights. Which so far he is 1-0 i the UFC, and looked very good in doing so.

  3. jmechanic says:

    Typical 45 UFC deepthroating.

    Browning looked good?? Against Dave f#cking Kaplan!!! Get the nuts out your mouth.

  4. big boi says:

    I’m hoping for a couple quick fights on the main card because I’d really like to see Gleison Tibau vs. Jeremy Stephens and Horwich vs. Almeida.

  5. Ivan Trembow says:

    It’s pretty pathetic that Junie Browning is on the main card while fighters like Brock Larson and Ricardo Almeida are in prelim fights.

  6. klown says:

    Add me to the hate-wagon. I hope he loses soon.

    If he wins semi-consistently, we’ll have no choice but to eat our words.

  7. Ivan Trembow says:

    It depends on who his opponents are, but even if he does win his fights, I don’t think his critics will have any words to eat, because Browning still would have gotten a huge opportunity that he should have lost by committing four different major rules violations during TUF 8. Anyone else committing those same rules violations who was not a stereotypical unstable drunkard that they deemed as good Trash TV would have been kicked off the show, and people have been kicked off the show for far less (jumping the fence to talk to a female lifeguard, for example). He also did nothing to earn his main card placement on the TUF 8 live finale or on this show other than being the aforementioned unstable drunkard character.

  8. 45 Huddle says:

    Ivan,

    Always complaining about the UF’s actions. What about Strikeforce? Putting Diaz/Shamrock as the main event over Thomson/Melendez? One is a Lightweight Title fight with two Top 20 Lightweights. Shamrock isn’t in any credible Top 25. And Diaz shouldn’t be in any credible Top 25 for Welterweight as he hasn’t really competed against good talent for a while in that weight class.

    Isn’t Strikeforce just pushing trash over a legit Strikeforce Title Fight to get ratings and fans to the arena?

    Why no complaining about that?

  9. jmechanic says:

    There is no complaining about that because Nick Diaz and Shamrock are both quality, proven, well-known, main-event fighters.

    Furthermore, Diaz and Shamrock have never committed a felony attempted assault on video like Browning has (multiple times).

    That is an absolutely ridiculous comparison. You should be ashamed of yourself for being dense.

  10. Oops! says:

    I like Nick Catone vs Tim Credeur match at 185 alot. So why don’t you list the fight Zach????? oh well dosen’t matter anyway.

    Still Nick Catone impressed the hell out of me with his fight with Derek Dolloway. Very curious to see if Almeida/Horwich fight is a loser leaves style fight.

    By the way more intrested in Gilbert Melendez/Josh Thomson and Cristina Cyborg fight than the main event. Frank Shamrock fights like a Kickboxer these day’s. sad

  11. Ultimo Santa says:

    Shamrock vs. Diaz should definitely be the main event. There is no question about it.

    And Junie Browning should not be buried in the undercard.

    The fake outrage over their booking needs to stop because Strikeforce, UFC, Dream, K-1, EVERYONE does it.

    The UFC set the standard that you can:

    1) have an inexperienced WWE wrestler in a main event

    2) give that same wrestler a Heavyweight Title match after winning a single decision

    3) have a Light Heavyweight Champion drop his title, get killed in a rematch, and then automatically get granted a Heavyweight Title fight over a year later

    4) deny Brazilian top contenders a title fight because of their English speaking skills

    The list goes on and on. I’m not pointing this out to be anti-UFC, but this are just the same tactics that everyone uses. You can cherry pick certain decisions to make a point, but no one is innocent when it comes to booking ‘fairly’ (if there is such a thing in combat sports)

    And finally, I know that 45 has to carefully assess, rank and label the fighters to predetermine whether the fight is worth seeing, but sometimes it’s OK to just enjoy a fight based on the in-ring/cage action.

    🙂

  12. spacedog says:

    +1 on Santa. Diaz v. Shamrock is just a good FIGHT. Period. Who cares about f’ing rankings, fighting does not always have to be about rankings.

  13. 45 Huddle says:

    Ultimo Santa,

    I’m okay with Browning being on the main card. Read my post above. I was questioning Ivan for his constant complaining about everything Zuffa, when he stays nearly silent on other organizations doing the same thing.

    And I literally lol at you talking about the UFC setting the standard. PrideFC, the same organization that you said you lost a part of your soul when they went out of business…. Were the worst when it came to garbage. Between non-title fights, bogus decisions, and insane matchmaking…. They wrote the book, published the book, published at least 6 editions, and became a NY Times Best Seller… All before Zuffa did any of the stuff you mention.

    No organization is perfect, but Zuffa puts on 20 fight cards a year now, with almost all the fights trying to build up fighters towards title shots. It’s funny how the same examples continue to be used in one division… For every one example being cherry picked, there are 20 examples of fighters working their way up properly through each division. Very different then a Strikeforce, EliteXC, or Pride/DREAM… When the ratio’s become much closer to 3:1, 2:1, or 1:1.

    spacedog,

    EliteXC didn’t care about rankings. Heck, they didn’t care about talent. That went well.

  14. Ivan Trembow says:

    From Meltzer’s article about The Ultimate Drunkard:

    “On the December 13 Ultimate Fighter finals, between the first run of the show and the repeat, it was Browning’s win over Dave Kaplan, the opening bout on the show, that drew the most viewers, even beating the championship matches.”

    That is so deceptive, it’s not even funny. On the immediate replays of live UFC events (which start airing at midnight or later), the ratings always fall drastically as the show goes on because it’s after midnight. So of course Browning’s fight (the opening fight on the broadcast) was the most-watched by far on the replay, and of course this resulted in Browning’s fight having the highest numbers if you combine the live airing with the replay… but since when are those two stats ever combined? Are the fighters in the opening fight on every other live UFC broadcast also called “Mr. Ratings”?

  15. Zack says:

    Zach…I really like that you link to the guys record on these threads. Cool stuff.

  16. Ultimo Santa says:

    I didn’t love PRIDE because it was the most ‘fair’ in it’s booking. I loved it because for me, it was damn entertaining. They had the best hvy and light hvy divisions in the world, and put on some legendary fights (with stomps!)

    And for all their crazy antics (and there were some, no doubt) they definitely had the “best against the best” which you profess as a requirement to even begin to enjoy a fight.

    Fedor vs. CroCop, Fedor vs. Nogueira, Shogun vs. Rampage, Rampage vs. Wanderlei…they often put top fighters at risk against the best of their division, as well as tournaments featuring the top guys in their weight classes.

    UFC has had their antics as well (and they’re well documented) but they also gave us Fitch vs. GSP, Penn vs. GSP, Liddell vs. Rampage (knowing that it could backfire for Liddell), and they’re doing their best with an anemic heavyweight division.

    The point is that no one is innocent. Promoters book with ONE THING in mind: putting asses in seats.

    If Dana White looked into a crystal ball, and discovered he could get 3 million PPV buys with Brock Lesnar vs. a backyard street fighter, he;d have Kimbo Slice on a conference call before you could blink.

  17. spacedog says:

    45, the difference between what Elite XC did and what Strikeforce is doing is that elite hung their hat on a freak show. Diaz and Shamrock are both good, well respected fighters(talent wise) with a storied past. Having them fight is not a joke. It might be as far as ratings are concerned but its is not a freak show.
    I’ll give you another example. If Sakuraba and Rickson fought it would not be a joke nor a freakshow. It would, however, be a meaningless fight as far as rankings are concerned. I agree that a company, to be taken seriously, has to have an eye on the long term and the ranksing and not go for the cheap buck. But at times I just don’t give a shit. I want to see this fight and think I might just have to get tickets. Anybody want to join me?

  18. klown says:

    Pride, UFC and most other promotions try to balance ratings-based shows with true athletic competition. You gain profits from one and legitimacy from the second. All promotions have their oft-cited examples. One that stands out for me personally is Ortiz-Shamrock which was a goddamn TRILOGY!

    But here, I have to say the UFC draws a line somewhere, which PRIDE (and others, notably Elite XC) did not. The UFC does not have freakshow mismatches at anything near the scale of Pride. Shamrock-Diaz, while irrelevant to rankings, is not in the same league as some of Pride’s extreme match-ups.

    And to use Ultimo Santa’s example: Dana White could get probably get record PPV buys by doing Brock vs Kimbo, but I just don’t think he do it.

  19. Oops! says:

    Zulu vs Fedor !!!!!!!!!!

  20. […] fight between Carlos Condit and Martin Kampmann. Josh Stein has a full show preview here. Here is the card line-up. There will be plenty of attention on the fact that Carlos Condit now trains in Arizona instead of […]

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