« Former pro-wrestler and MMA fighter Tony Halme dead | Home | UFC Fight Night 20 in Virginia (1/11 Patriot Center) »
WEC 1/10 Sacramento (Arco Arena)
By Zach Arnold | January 10, 2010
Dark matches
- Bantamweights (135 pounds): Coty Wheeler vs. Will Campuzano
- Featherweights (145 pounds): Mark Hominick vs. Bryan Caraway
- Bantamweights (135 pounds): Charlie Valencia vs. Akitoshi Tamura
- Lightweights (155 pounds): Dave Jansen vs. Kamal Shalorus
Main card
- Featherweights (145 pounds): Mackens Semerzier vs. Deividas Taurosevicius
- Featherweights (145 pounds): Mike Brown vs. Anthony Morrison
- Featherweights (145 pounds): Urijah Faber vs. Raphael Assuncao
- WEC Lightweight Title match (155 pounds): Jamie Varner vs. Ben Henderson
Media heat-up
The public relations blitz for this Sunday’s WEC event started on Thursday in Sacramento. Expect a very enthusiastic crowd at Arco Arena. The Sacramento Bee has the ultimate Urijah Faber babyface article, including details on what rehabilitation was like for the injuries he suffered in the Mike Brown match last year. This article details what Faber’s 2010 schedule looks like, including his desire to fight at both Bantamweight (135 pounds) and Lightweight (155 pounds).
All of the local press for the show has been about Faber. Reed Harris did a local interview with News10 in Sacramento stating that Faber will get a Featherweight title shot against Jose Aldo if he is able to beat Raphael Assuncao on Sunday.
The Arizona Republic has a short article previewing Jamie Varner vs. Ben Henderson. MMA Junkie has a report stating that WEC will run in Calgary this Summer. The Miami Herald has an article about Mike Brown on the comeback trail.
Topics: Media, MMA, WEC, Zach Arnold | 50 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Best card of January. Looking forward to both the “title” fight especially.
Top two fights are good. Mike Brown beating up a tomato can is beyond skippable. Rest of the card belongs on Ring of Combat/DEEP/Bellator. On the plus side, its free for that increasingly few who have Versus.
Kamal Shalorus vs. Dave Jansen is very interesting.
Ehhh….Jansen will probably take him down and beat him up a bit. Ends after whatever amount of time with people saying he’s “boring” and doesn’t deserve a title shot until he’s willing to stand and bang. Its all just a waste of time until he gets to the UFC anyhow. You might be right that its more important than Varner/Henderson. I feel like I’ve seen their ceilings, and its not very high. Jansen could be something.
Mike Brown goes from being the champ and in the P4P conversation to fighting someone who is 15-7?
“Jansen will probably take him down and beat him up a bit.”
Maybe, but…
Shalrous was an Olympic wrestler. He’s a pretty darned good grappler. He beat Joachim Hansen in Abu Dhabi qualifying once.
I think the winner of this fight gets some pretty good promotional momentum.
I don’t put much stock into ADCC success these days, but I’ll be honest in saying I’ve never seen the guy before. Hey, I wish him well. I’ve seen Jansen a lot though; I think he’s a legitimate prospect. Could eventually be a top ten sorta guy.
I’ll be there live for this one, and I’m really looking forward to it. It’ll be my first live WEC show, and they always put on great shows.
I agree with you on Jensen, Alan.
I’ve seen this Kamal fellow a couple of times and he has a real brutal streak in him. I just think this is an interesting matchup and I think the winner is going places. Jensen most likely wins, but it’s a potentially tough fight.
I like more than the top two fights.
I am interested to see if Semerzier’s win over Fabiano was a fluke or if he is the real deal. Taurosevicius is a great test for him. Both guys are undefeated at FW.
Valencia-Tamura interests me because, well, it’s Valencia and Tamura. Both of them are grizzled veterans who have in been in and out of the top 10 for the nearly a decade. It’s about time damn time we get to see them fight.
Jansen-Shalorus also looks interesting if for no other reason than both guys are undefeated. As for Jansen taking down Shalorus and laying on him, I don’t see that happening. Kamal was on the Iranian junior national team prior to leaving his home country and then wrestled in the 2004 Olympic games for Great Britain.
Steve beat me to it…looking forward to seeing if Semerzier is the real deal, becuase that sub of Fabiano was damn impressive! Assuncao should give Faber a good fight…Faber needs this win bad to get back on track. And as impressive as Ben Henderson is and as much as I like him as a fighter, I kinda want to see someone beat him.
I think Valencia/Tamura is nice, but odds are we won’t see it for months, if ever, so its tough to get hyped. Being an Olympic qualifier from Great Britain hardly sells me on him either as necessarily being prepared to beat a guy with 3 times as much MMA experience in Jansen. But hell, we had the argument about Dos Santos/Yvel: You’re gonna hype yourself up for what you want to hype yourself up for.
*hulks up*
Anybody read Jamie Varner’s frustrations over, in his mind, the WEC promoting Urijah Faber over him. I did find it comical. While I do agree that Faber is their golden boy, Varner should have very little to complain about:
1) He is main eventing over Faber’s fight.
2) Despite being out of action for almost a year, he was constantly mentioned on WEC shows, including interviews and having his name brought up during basically most Lightweight fights.
3) If he was in the UFC, he would just be 1 of 20 with no name value. We all know he is probably not even Top 10, yet gets his name in the press more because he headlines cards (which shouldn’t be happening, but that’s for a different conversation).
If anything, the WEC has done about as good of a job as they can do keeping his name out there while he was out of action for so long….
Jansen doesn’t think Kamal’s “Olympic” pedigree means much at all.
http://blogs.chron.com/fighting/2010/01/brawl_sports_conversations_dav.html#more
I still find it ridiculous that Faber is getting “title shot” opportunity before former champ Brown. Faber is good but I hate the extreme favoritism he gets in the WEC. I hope Assuncao defeats him.
It was nice to see another L on Jamie’s record
Faber getting a title shot isn’t favoritism in my mind. When you have a few top guys like that, it’s better to have them rotate title shots. #2 Brown just fought and lost in a title fight to #1 Aldo, so #3 Faber, who Aldo hasn’t fought yet, is next. In my opinion, that’s exactly how title shots are supposed to go.
As far as why Faber is getting a lot of advertisement, it’s because he’s already popular and mentioning him puts asses in seats. Once his fight was over, about 10% of the crowd didn’t even bother sticking around for the main event. Think about that for a second.
I notice some websites and forums talking about Brown getting booed during the post-fight interview. The crowd was actually pretty good, Brown was getting cheers during his walk-out and the fight.
What happened is the mic wasn’t working for the stadium, so when the interview started, we could all see Mike moving his lips, but couldn’t hear anything, so the crowd started booing. Once they fixed the problem and the sound came on, the boos stopped immediately. He wasn’t the one getting booed, it was the production.
I think Alan got a lesson in the difference between anybody that wrestled internationally and collegiate wrestlers. You could have just asked King Mo and he would have told you.
and from reading Snowden’s interview its pretty obvious that Jansen is pretty stupid and doesn’t even know much about his sport. “He went to Britain to make the team because it would be easier…” It would be easier to make the team in any country in the world than it is in Iran where wrestling is pretty much the national sport. The guys that didn’t make the Iranian wrestling team could be 4 time college champs here. What a dunce.
Whether or not Shalorus won, its true that A) he admits to having moved to the UK to make their wrestling team and B) he didn’t even make the Olympics. I’ll give him credit; he did defend the takedown well. I don’t see him as a “prospect” though. Way too old, standup is lousy. Jansen can rebound; look at Gilbert Melendez and him being stopped by takedowns twice.
32 is too old? Damn, you’re bitter that Jansen lost.
Shalorous was listed as 37 by the WEC.
Alan, you got schooled on your prediction. Just admit it. Also wrestlng in the US and intenational wrestling are not apples to apples. It is two different sports. All HS and college wrestlers here wrestle folkstyle. We are the only country in he world that does that. It is becailuse of insurance. Freestyle wrestling is a lot rougher and translates better to MMA.
On a side note, WEC is on drugs if it thinks it will make money on PPV. Who is gong to pay for one of these cards? Aldo v Faber isn’t worth $20 bucks to me. What else is gong to be on the card?
Yeah the WEC needs to get some decent ratings again before it considers charging for it. I know not having Direct TV took a chunk of the audience, but you have to significantly chop down your free TV numbers into who is going to buy a PPV. So with 400,000 viewers will get you, what, 40,000 buyers as a mega-success and 15,000 realistically?
I did get it wrong. Still doesn’t mean he’s really an elite wrestler. Hell, he’s not even really an Olympian. I feel like I learned more about Jensen than I did Shalorus. I still don’t think the WEC has a lightweight who could beat Pelligrino.
I’m not sure Roadblock is right about which style of wrestling translates better. Doesn’t the emphasis on mat wrestling in folkstyle compare more favorably to what happens in an MMA fight than the wham-bam rolls in freestyle?
Fair enough that he didn’t make the Olympics. He basically has the same resume as Randy Couture and people rave about Randy’s credentials. I don’t have a bone to pick beyond that. I just like pointing out double standards.
For example Dave Jansen is an industry standard guy who doesn’t do anything particularly well and is content to wrestle to a decision. Same thing people complain about Gray Maynard doing.
As for the Iranian dude he needs a lot of work on his hands. Including how to evade and/or block punches with something other than his face.
Folkstyle translates much better to MMA then Freestyle. Olympic style wrestling (freestyle and Greco) basically emphasise getting your opponents back exposed to the mat as much as possible. Folkstyle is about getting the pin, but it is also about riding time and true control over your opponent. That helps much more I believe when they transition over to submissions and sub defense.
Has there ever been a great champion in MMA that was primarily a freestyle guy? Perhaps Kid Yamamoto is the best example, but he was always in K-1 that had inferior talent pool to Pride at the time.
That’s the “industry standard” because its successful. Reaching the level of Gray Maynard or even Gilbert Melendez and Kawajiri (who do the same thing) isn’t some huge negative. What made Jansen an interesting prospect is that he could wrestle and showed propensity to pull off subs and even strike. Against Shalorus, he proved that when stepping up against someone he couldn’t take down at will, his composure as a striker disappeared and he turned into a sloppy, headhunting boxer that makes Sean Sherk look like Erik Morales. Shalorus, meanwhile, showed us nothing we didn’t already know about him. That’s why I say we learned more about Jansen than Shalorus. Hard to see it otherwise.
Has there ever been a great champion in MMA that was primarily a freestyle guy? Perhaps Kid Yamamoto is the best example, but he was always in K-1 that had inferior talent pool to Pride at the time.
Mark Coleman is the most successful MMA fighter with a freestyle background. After him, Tom Erikson is there and then Fujita. Kevin Jackson, Karam Ibrahim, and Kazuyuki Miyata are the most decorated freestyle wrestlers I can think of in MMA, and none did that well.
Isn’t Karam Ibrahim a greco guy?
You’re right: He is a greco guy. I can’t think of any other wrestlers with that sort of experience who were Freestyle; there ought to be a couple russians though who were in Japan Vale Tudo or something.
Any American freestyle wrestler was also a decorated folkstyle, likely an NCAA champion or an All American at worst. I think 45 is right: folkstyle prepares you more for grappling on the mat.
Shalorus seems like a great guy. But his career is not similar to Couture’s.
Couture lost to guys who were medal contenders. Shalorus failed at the qualifying level. Couture would have wiped the mat with anyone on the British team all the years he was an alternate.
Alan, Ibrahim was a greco stylist and many of the other fighters you mentioned had extensive folkstyle wrestling experience as well.
I would expect them to! Any American wrestler of note typically has 8 or more years of folkstyle under his belt before transitioning to international Freestyle wrestling competition.
It looks to me like you’ve simply compiled a list of MMA wrestlers who don’t meet your arbitrary standard of in-ring success and then labeled them “freestyle” for failing to meet it. Great job, bro.
45’s question:
“Has there ever been a great champion in MMA that was primarily a freestyle guy?”
None of those top notch international level freestyle wrestlers outside Coleman was a champion in any major promotion, much less a HOF level fighter. What do you want me to do about it? I can’t go back to 1997 and make Vovchanchin fight Erikson. You give that a shot.
BTW, I think Coleman, Fujita and Erikson have all had better MMA careers than most of other fighters on the circuit. Miyata has shown some potential too despite being thrown in at the deep end in a way few others are. I guess you don’t think a fighter has “done well” unless they win multiple titles and manage to fight at the top level of the sport for an unusually long period of time?
Miyata is a forgettable journeyman with no real future as an elite competitor. Erikson didn’t get big chances but choked when they came along in PRIDE. Fujita’s historical placement is worthy of tons of nerdery and an internet explosion. We’re likely to see fewer and fewer guys make the crossover because you’ll see elite wrestling talent jump to MMA immediately after college.
The internet also says Kerr was a USA Junior National Freestyle champion. So there’s another big name for you.
“You’re right: He is a greco guy.”
He expressly admitted the Ibrahim mistake…lighten up.
so anyone who competes at an international level at all for any length of time automatically switches to being a “freestyle” wrestler despite the fact that their folkstyle experience may be much greater?
45 asked a question that was, for once, reasonable asking what guys with freestyle background won championships in MMA. I responded. You are up in arms that I pointed out guys who wrestled at an international level in the sport of Freestyle wrestling and labelled them as such. Why? No idea, as that was the purpose of his question.
No acknowledgment of your mislabeling of Ibrahim? You could at least have admitted the error.
I admitted it before you posted.
BTW Trigg is one of the most experienced freestyle guys in MMA but since he didn’t win multiple titles you may not consider him successful. Face it brotha, most of the wrestlers to compete on the freestyle circuit in MMA have as much or more of a folkstyle background.
A constructive reply would be to say “Trigg is probably one of the most successful MMA fighters with an international/domestic freestyle background.” That would be accurate and informative. Bitching that I included guys like Kevin Jackson as being someone who excelled in international freestyle comp in a list of MMA fighters with international freestyle competition is…bizarre.
Trigg is a great example of a primarily Freestyle guy, and he was completely outclassed by Hughes and GSP in the grappling game.
Look at Cael Sanderson in the Olympics. His freestyle knowledge was really really basic. He was making rookie mistakes in matches because he really didn’t have much experience at that style. And yet with really a barely tweaked Folkstyle game, he won a Gold Medal.
I’ve done both styles. Tried Greco and was horrible at it. Folk better emulates what it’s like to be on the ground in a guard. At least the same principles apply. With Free, it’s mostly takedowns and throws from the feet. And on the ground, it’s 100% about turning a guy. It’s technical but it’s not.
Learning the art of breaking a wrestlers base, using riding time, and having a large number of moves to really control your opponent is wonderful.
From my own experience, and others might disagree, the rule in Folk that you can’t touch your hands unless there is an arm or leg involved actually is the biggest of all factors. Something about that restriction really develops a grapplers body movements and self awareness better then any other grappling style in the world. Including BJJ. I might be biased, but that is my opinion.
I guess by “up in arms” you mean “posting on the internet” or something.
You seem oddly shook by my response to 45’s question. If you want to remove all US freestyle wrestlers from the discussion (since they almost all have far more folkstyle experience), there are precious few guys with any freestyle background who have entered MMA. One would expect that since medalists in sports like Judo and wrestling in countries where there are strong traditions are paid tons of money by their respective governments. The only country where you see significant numbers of top freestyle wrestlers who didn’t do years of folkstyle is Japan.
(BTW, is Trigg really a “freestyle wrestler”? High school to Division I to junior college, competed in the 2000 US team trials and failed. I don’t see much for international competition. What is *your* arbitrary cutoff?)
Guys like Coleman and Fujita have similar records to someone like Randy without the repeated chances to win titles that he had, often without really deserving them IMO.
Coleman and Fujita lacked the chances? Coleman lacked the willingness to evolve and drop weight. He had the 2004 GP and a rematch with Fedor as opportunities. Didn’t do much with either. Didn’t deserve the second Fedor fight too. Fujita doesn’t even belong in the discussion. He’s a minor historical figure.
By your standards you could say “judo and greco guys haven’t done that well” either.
Greco has better names at the top, but in general there’s a lack of great success too. International class guys typically lack well rounded skills to compete.
When did Trigg represent America on the “International Scene.”
I’m not really as invested in this as you are, obviously. Not sure what your emotional investment is, but so be it.
I just don’t want to label any US wrestler with freestyle experience as primarily using that style because many of them have a lot more time spent on folkstyle.
You offer no complementing standard to decipher who is and is not a “true” freestyle wrestler. What is the end game here? Angry words?
Only the very best fighters don’t suck?
That wasn’t even the initial question, yet you keep pursuing this tenaciously. Perhaps with 10-15 more posts, it’ll happen!
I don’t think you can deny that couture has been gifted more opportunities than anyone else in this discussion.
Coleman had chances. He won UFC and PRIDE titles. What chances was he not afforded? I’m not arguing Fujita versus Couture. That is ridiculous.
BTW Trigg spent quite a while on the international circuit but I guess since you can’t see medals on his wikipedia page you wouldn’t have known that, sorry again
How much What tournament wins? How did you decide he’s a “freestyle” wrestler? I mean, that’s great that he was. I didn’t even think of him and he’d be second on the list. He’s not a champion though and never was of any major promotion above Icon Sport.
What happened to that guy’s posts?
It has the comical effect of making me look even dumber than usual.
I am sad! I really wanted to find out that he wasn’t Google and to find out his wrestling background myself. I will simply assume that was Spreewell Rimz and move on.
I’m anti-censorship!
Gomi is a freestyle wrestler. Also – According to the WEC Kamal was at one time top 10 in the world at his weight and according to Kamal he was ranked #5. He won the Iranian Jr. NC while he was in high school. These accomplishments make him about 100,000X better than all but the absolute best collegiate wrestlers.
I’m curious where he was ranked in the top 5 and what accomplishments got him there. I know where the WEC got their information and it wasn’t from any wrestling database. I’d take those claims with a very large grain of salt.
10 ten in the world? Through who? I guess I’ll actually try digging for you, homey.
http://www.kingofkombat.com/docs/fightcard%20highlights4.25.doc
There’s a piece from King of Kombat detailing his impressive performances. See, wrestling results are notoriously tough to find, which is why no one bothers to look them up and see if they’re legit. Take the claim that he was an Olympian that people ran with: He was knocked out at the trials by Hidekazu Yokoyama. He never made it to the games. 1st at the ’02 Commonwealth Games? Nick Ugoalah won gold at 84KG (his weight class) in 2002. I can’t find any record of a “Spain World Championship”, and that year the FILA Freestyle World Championship was held in Bulgaria. There’s nothing at all on the internet about the “Mascot World Championships”, and I can’t find anything about his super impressive peformances at any FILA meet.
All I can find is that he was British champion in 2001 at 85KG/187lbs. TheMat.com has some ratings going back to 2005 but none show him as even top 15. But yeah, you read something on WEC; Well, how can I compete with that?