MMA Roundtable: TUF 14 Finale, Strikeforce’s Future, and More

Filed under: UFC, Strikeforce, BellatorWith season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter drawing to a close and the big finale fight between the coaches drawing near, now seemed like as good a time as any to go head-to-head with my buddy and colleague Michael Dav…

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With season 14 of The Ultimate Fighter drawing to a close and the big finale fight between the coaches drawing near, now seemed like as good a time as any to go head-to-head with my buddy and colleague Michael David Smith over a few of the more pertinent questions of our day.

Questions like, what’s up with Strikeforce? Also, what’s up with Bellator? And, if you’re not into this TUF Finale business, just what are you into, smart guy? All that — only, you know, slightly more artfully rendered — awaits you below. MDS, why don’t you start us off.

1. A big part of TUF is supposed to be hyping the fight between the coaches. Has anything on The Ultimate Fighter this year made you any more interested in Michael Bisping vs. Mayhem Miller than you were three months ago?

MDS: I’m kind of surprised by how little the Bisping-Mayhem feud has moved the needle because Bisping and Mayhem are both engaging characters who know how to sell a fight. I assume part of the issue is that there’s been less promotion for the fight because it’s on Spike, and Spike and the UFC have ended their relationship. If this fight were going to be on pay-per-view, as most coach vs. coach fights have been, I’m sure the UFC would be doing a lot more to promote it.

But the larger issue seems to be that Bisping vs. Mayhem doesn’t seem to do a lot for fans in terms of its relevance to the UFC’s middleweight division. Both guys are solid fighters, but the winner of this fight will still be behind Chael Sonnen and Mark Munoz in line for a title shot, and if either Bisping or Mayhem did get a title shot, it’s not like anyone would pick either one of them to beat Anderson Silva. So it doesn’t have the feel of a really important fight.

Fowlkes:
While I don’t disagree that this fight lacks the promise of an immediate impact on its division, I have a hard time accepting that that’s why there’s not more heat behind it. Yes, the UFC seemed to choose these two as coaches based on force of personality alone, but didn’t that work as well as anyone could have hoped? They laughed, they yelled, they pranked, and they even coached. They had their obligatory tense and borderline violent moments, but they also had some fun. That’s got to be better than “Rampage” Jackson sleeping on the mat, right?

The TUF franchise did its job on this one, at least according to its own abilities, and its stagnant formula. It’s the UFC that decided not to go hard in the paint when it came time to push it on fans. Maybe that’s a consequence of the brewing feud between White and his soon to be ex-TV partners. Maybe it’s collateral damage from a crazy couple of months worth of events. Maybe it’s a little of both.

I just know that this is, on paper, a pretty good fight. I was interested when I first heard about the pairing, and I’m interested now. I can’t say that watching them trade expletives or kick through a couple flimsy cardboard doors on the TUF set did a whole lot to get my heart rate up (after fourteen seasons, I’ve seen all the meaningless property damage and half-bleeped arguments I can take), but so what? It’s still an interesting fight, and I still genuinely want to see it.

2. Bellator’s season has come to an end. Do you think MMA fans cared? What do you think needs to happen to make fans pay attention in 2012?

Fowlkes: Here’s an instance where we must resist the temptation to think of MMA fans as one monolithic slab. Did fans care? Sure. Some of them, anyway. Bellator gets a small, though consistent slice of the MMA pie with every event, and that slice is big enough to spread the word when there’s an awesome finish or a great fight. And yet, there’s another side to that coin. I suspect there’s a healthy segment of the MMA fan population that is aware of and maybe even mildly interested in Bellator, but nonetheless doesn’t feel the need to watch every weekend because, hey, if something worthwhile happens, it’ll be on YouTube in the morning.

Part of the problem is the Bellator schedule. It’s cool to have a fight every weekend as the season plows forward, but it also makes it difficult to convince fans that one fight night is bigger or more important than any other. Oh, there’s a Bellator event on Saturday? Well, there’ll be another one next Saturday, and the Saturday after that, so no big deal.

The schedule also makes it difficult for Bellator, as an organization, to focus on building a select few stars. As soon as one show ends, the Bellator crew has to turn its attention to the next one. Meanwhile, the champ in each weight class can either sit around and wait for the next tournament winner, or he can engage in a completely non-sensical non-title bout. Neither is a particularly attractive option for the champ or the organization.

These are all problems that arise as a result of Bellator’s main selling point, which makes them especially difficult problems to resolve. How do you keep the tournament structure without taking the spotlight off your champs for too long? How do you keep a season rolling forward without it feeling routine? I’m not sure I know, but Bellator is going to have to figure it out eventually.

MDS: I agree with you that there’s a problem with the Bellator schedule, but I don’t think the problem is that they run every week during their two “seasons.” I actually like the weekly format of knowing you’re going to have a certain night of the week when Bellator is going to be on, just as I like knowing that The Walking Dead comes on every Sunday while it’s in season and Modern Family comes on every Wednesday while it’s in season.

My suggestion to Bellator is they should choose a night other than Saturday. I just don’t think it makes sense for a No. 2 MMA promotion to go on Saturday nights, the territory that the UFC has already staked out. To me, that makes about as much sense as a startup football league scheduling its games for Sunday afternoons in the fall.

I love the tournament format and want Bellator to keep it, but it does create major problems with the champions: What are they supposed to do while they wait around for the next No. 1 contender to emerge from the next tournament? The “superfights” haven’t really worked out very well, as Bjorn Rebney himself has acknowledged.

I think the answer is that the champions should be in the tournaments. You win the Season 5 tournament? Congratulations. You’re the Season 5 tournament champion. Now Season 5 is over, so it’s time for you to enter the Season 6 tournament. That’s what every sport that uses a seasonal format does — the defending champion goes right back into the mix. And that’s what Bellator should do, too.

3. Strikeforce is back this month with its first non-Challengers show since the Heavyweight Grand Prix semifinals more than three months ago. Do MMA fans still care about Strikeforce? Should they?

MDS: I don’t get the sense that fans care much about Strikeforce. If anything, fans wish the UFC would hurry up and absorb all the best fighters so guys like Gilbert Melendez (who fought only once in 2010 and only once so far in 2011) could fight elite opposition more often. Melendez is defending his title against Jorge Masvidal in the main event, and the overwhelming reaction I’ve heard has been disappointment that Melendez isn’t in the UFC fighting a better opponent than Masvidal.

The reason I still care about Strikeforce is, more than anything, my affinity for women’s MMA. Cris Cyborg vs. Hiroko Yamanaka is going to be a very good women’s fight, and if Strikeforce disappears there’s going to be an uncertain future for women’s MMA.

But the bottom line is that the UFC is currently stripping Strikeforce for spare parts and will eventually do away with it. Given that, it’s hard to fault fans for losing interest in the promotion.

Fowlkes:
Well MDS, you just confirmed my suspicion that it’s impossible for a dude to type the phrase “my affinity for women’s MMA” without it feeling just a little bit creepy for some reason. But okay, I have to agree with the sentiment even if the phrasing conjures images of an evil villain making women fight for his amusement on a secret island somewhere. I would also like to see women’s MMA survive, and Strikeforce is the best bet for that right now. Pulling the plug immediately would probably put a lot of very dangerous women out of work, and that’s not good for anybody.

But as for whether fans do and/or should care about Strikeforce in general, I have to say ‘not really’ and ‘probably not.’ Sorry, but that’s what happens when the UFC pillages your roster, taking almost every significant draw and leaving you with a couple champions who are all but begging to be the next ones sucked up by the UFC tractor beam. The heavyweight GP still has a legitimately compelling final between Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett, and a middleweight title fight between Luke Rockhold and Tim Kennedy is one I wouldn’t sneeze at, but after that it starts to look pretty thin.

The Strikeforce fighters — the ones who have options, anyway — don’t really want to be there, and few can even be bothered to maintain the illusion anymore. Everyone knows this thing is running out of road, and nobody particularly wants to be there to ride it all the way to its sad end in a nearly empty arena, with a home audience that’s just waiting for Dexter re-runs to come on. Who can blame them? Not me, brother.

4. December features the TUF Finale, a Strikeforce card and two UFC pay-per-views. What’s the best fight of the bunch?

Fowlkes: Without a doubt, the biggest fight in December is the UFC 141 main event between Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem. And I don’t just mean big in terms of total combined weight, though there’s that too. It’s just, from a media buzz/pay-per-view sales perspective, nothing in the coming month can top the combination of Lesnar’s name and Overeem’s experience. It’s smart of the UFC to have that on the night before New Year’s Eve, when people will be more likely to stay home and rest their livers anyway, and you have to think the end result will be plenty of eyeballs on that one fight.

But then, biggest doesn’t necessarily equal best. That distinction I save for another fight on the UFC 141 card: Donald Cerrone vs. Nate Diaz. Cerrone’s been on a one-man paper-stacking mission this year, racking up win purses and post-fight bonuses like a man in hock to the IRS. Diaz struggled at welterweight, but looked downright scary when he took Takanori Gomi apart as a lightweight at UFC 135. Both these guys have the sort of tough-first mentality that involves taking no crap off of nobody, and when they get in the cage together I expect a technical, though ruthless fight.

It’ll be sort of like a demolition derby featuring half-drunk Nascar drivers: a whole lot of engine-revving and middle finger-waving, no small amount of profanity before, during, and after, and absolutely no regard for safety or long-term repercussions. How can you not like that?

MDS: Lesnar-Overeem is without a doubt the biggest draw, and I don’t know if there’s any other fight in December that will give me butterflies in my stomach when the cage door closes like Lesnar-Overeem will. That fight is going to be awesome.

But for pure entertainment value, I don’t think there’s a better fight on the docket than Mark Hominick vs. Chan Sung Jung at UFC 140. Remember how often we used to say after WEC cards that there was no promotion putting on great fights as consistently as the WEC? Hominick vs. Jung is exactly the kind of fight that made us love the WEC, with two featherweights who will relentlessly batter each other for 15 minutes or go down swinging if they can’t.

If Hominick vs. Jung is the best fight in December, I won’t be the least bit surprised. If it’s not, that probably means we’re in for an amazing month.

 

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After Death of Coach Shawn Tompkins, Mark Hominick Leans on Teammates

Filed under: UFCIt’s been about seven months since Mark Hominick last stepped in the cage, and since then his life has changed in a couple dramatic ways. Two weeks after his decision loss to Jose Aldo at UFC 129, his wife gave birth to the couple’s fir…

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It’s been about seven months since Mark Hominick last stepped in the cage, and since then his life has changed in a couple dramatic ways. Two weeks after his decision loss to Jose Aldo at UFC 129, his wife gave birth to the couple’s first child — a girl. Exactly three months later, Hominick’s longtime coach and trainer, Shawn Tompkins, died of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 37.

That’s a lot for anyone to deal with, especially if they still have another fight in front of their hometown fans to prepare for.

But while Tompkins’ death shocked the MMA community and left a void in the Team Tompkins squad, as Hominick told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour, the loss has also forced them all together in some ways.

“We’re always going to be the Team Tompkins family,” said the 29 year-old Hominick, who faces Chan Sung Jung at UFC 140 in Toronto. “I think this fight, it says a lot about where we are and where we’re going.”

As a symbolic effort to demonstrate that, Hominick said he’ll have his longtime training partners Chris Horodecki and Sam Stout in his corner on December 10, but he’ll also have Tompkins’ brother by his side “to make a statement that we’re not going anywhere and we’re going to continue to carry on as a team and continue on winning.”

Like Horodecki and Stout, Hominick began training with Tompkins when he was still a teenager. Though the team spread out in recent years, they still relied on one another to prepare for fights, and Hominick admitted that he’s still not sure how it will feel to go into a fight week without his mentor.

“Those are going to be the toughest moments. I really don’t think his passing has really hit me, to tell you the truth, because we’d come to live our own separate lives these last four or five years. Where he was based out of Vegas, I was based out of London, Ontario, and then we’d meet up for training camp and at the end of training camp we’d spend fight week together, and that’s where we had our special bond. I think that’s where I’m really going to miss him.”

The silver lining, according to Hominick, may be that Tompkins’ sudden death was a blow that “actually brought the team a little tighter, because everyone’s had to step up in their own little way to fill some of Shawn’s leadership role.”

“Shawn was just the leader, the guy who kind of spearheaded us moving forward. …We’re all so motivated to carry on his legacy. The way we do that is we go out there and perform, we win, and we continue to carry his name forward.”

Hominick has no easy task in front of him against Jung. The South Korean’s last outing saw him log the first submission victory via twister in UFC history when he tapped Leonard Garcia with the unconventional finish at UFC Fight Night 24 in March.

A fight like that would be tough enough without the loss of such an influential coach, not to mention the birth of a baby daughter who has taught Hominick that, as a father, “your time isn’t yours anymore.”

That’s why it helps to have fellow Team Tompkins fighters by his side who know exactly what he’s going through, he said.

“We’re here for each other. We’re family. A lot of teams say that, but we truly are. We’ve been together for almost 15 years and we’re not going anywhere.”

 

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Miesha Tate, Ronda Rousey, and the Argument Women’s MMA Can’t Stop Having

Filed under: StrikeforceStrikeforce 135-pound women’s champ Miesha Tate doesn’t think it’s fair for Ronda Rousey to leverage her looks into a title shot, and she’s got a point.

Rousey thinks that, when it comes to selling a fight and getting MMA fans …

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Strikeforce 135-pound women’s champ Miesha Tate doesn’t think it’s fair for Ronda Rousey to leverage her looks into a title shot, and she’s got a point.

Rousey thinks that, when it comes to selling a fight and getting MMA fans interested in what’s happening with the women’s division, fair doesn’t enter into it. She’s also got a point.

It’s an argument that — especially among female MMA fighters — isn’t new and isn’t unique. The fact is, when you’re trying to scratch out a living in the women’s division of a sport marketed primarily to young men, it helps to be pretty. It might not be fair, and it might not be right, but we need only look at who’s getting paid and who’s getting ignored to know that, at least for now, it’s the way things are.

But watching Tate and Rousey present their respective sides of the issue while my colleague Ariel Helwani struggled to get a word in, I couldn’t help but wonder if it’s always going to be this way, and whether we’ll ever stop arguing over it. And if we don’t, is that necessarily such a bad thing?

To be fair, this particular iteration of the argument isn’t as simple as beauty versus the beast. You might look at Rousey and see Judo Barbie, but there’s more to her than just eye candy. For starters, she’s an Olympic bronze medalist. If you want to hear about that, just ask her. If you don’t want to hear about it, fine, but she’ll probably tell you anyway, and who can blame her?

Sure, she’s only had four pro fights in MMA, but none of them have been even the least bit competitive. You could call her career one long armbar clinic, except that a) it hasn’t even been that long, and b) any clinic that injures that many people isn’t going to get a whole lot of repeat customers.

Still, Rousey knows what she’s doing. She’s attractive, she’s got an attitude, and she’s using both to get herself noticed. When Tate told her, “If you weren’t pretty, it wouldn’t matter what you said or didn’t say,” she’s probably right. But then, is that so wrong?

If Tate thinks so, she must have come around to that conclusion pretty recently. Seems like she’s had no problem playing up her own good looks when it served her purposes (exhibit A: the background of her Twitter page). Then again, as Tate pointed out, she also won a bunch of fights. Being good-looking is, as she tells it, “just a bonus” for a female fighter, since at the end of the day each woman still has to acquit herself in the cage, where a pretty face won’t help you.

But then, the problem for women’s MMA hasn’t been a lack of skill from the fighters — it’s a lack of interest from the fans. For whatever reason, a lot of the same people who love to see two men beat each other up just aren’t into watching two women do the same thing. I don’t know why that is, honestly, and I’m not sure it matters. You can tell people that they should like and support women’s MMA. You can tell them they’re a bunch of jerks if they only want to see pretty girls fighting. That might make a few people feel bad about themselves, but it won’t create many new fans.

You know what will, though? Stuff like this Tate-Rousey rivalry. Already it’s produced what might be the best segment in MMA Hour history (no offense to “The Mitrione Minute”). For the first time in a long time, the MMA world is buzzing about women’s MMA. And, contrary to how it might seem on the surface, it’s not their looks that’s driving the interest (though, okay, it doesn’t hurt). Really, it’s the argument over their looks and over how much it matters, and it’s the same argument women’s MMA has been having with itself for years.

It shouldn’t be enough to be pretty. I don’t just mean in MMA, either. Whether you’re a man or a woman, good looks might be a minor win in the genetic lottery, but they don’t make you a good or talented or even worthwhile person. We know this, even if we don’t always act like it. To give a good-looking person special considerations just because we like looking at their face is embarrassingly dumb, not to mention unfair. That’s why it makes for such a fascinating internal conflict for a women’s division that’s still struggling with its own identity.

No one wants to see women’s MMA become a sideshow where untalented, untrained pretty girls fight it out in sports bras for the sexual satisfaction of a caveman crowd. At least, I hope no one wants that, and if they do there are websites specifically for them (I’ve heard there are, anyway). At the same time, just as in the men’s division, promote-ability matters. Brock Lesnar got a title shot after three fights — which, in retrospect, still seems insane — because he sold tickets and pay-per-views.

Some fans and fighters might want to see MMA become an egalitarian utopia where none of that matters, but in the meantime promoters still have to market their product to the world that is rather than the world that could or should be.

The good news is, MMA has a built-in lie detector to keep anyone from skating by on looks or attitude or popularity for too long, and that’s the same for the women as it is for the men. If you can’t fight, we’ll find out soon enough. Eventually some ugly, boring person will punch you in the face until you can’t stand up, and that will be that. Facial symmetry might be a useful gift, but it doesn’t hold up too well in a sport that allows elbow strikes on the ground.

By forcing this discussion, both Tate and Rousey have done women’s MMA a favor, whether either of them realize it or not. As much as female fighters love to frame their sport as a battle for attention and respect that they’re all waging together, they don’t always act in their own self-interest. It doesn’t help them at all to be nice or to be friends or even to be fair to one another. What helps them is selling fights. What helps them — just as it helps the men — is getting fans interested in what’s about to happen a few Saturday nights from now.

That’s the business of fighting. As Josh Barnett likes to say, the business of fighting has very little to do with actual fighting, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. This conflict — trying to give fans what they want but without losing your identity or self-respect in the process — might turn out to be an ongoing and inescapable struggle for women’s MMA. And maybe that’s okay. In a sport that’s all about conflict in its various forms, you could do a lot worse than have public arguments that lead to publicized fights.

 

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Chris Leben Suspended for One Year After Failed Drug Test at UFC 138

Filed under: UFCMiddleweight Chris Leben has been suspended by the UFC for one year after testing positive for prescription painkillers oxycodone and oxymorphone following his loss at UFC 138 in Birmingham, England, the organization announced via its w…

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Chris LebenMiddleweight Chris Leben has been suspended by the UFC for one year after testing positive for prescription painkillers oxycodone and oxymorphone following his loss at UFC 138 in Birmingham, England, the organization announced via its website on Monday.

“I like Chris and I want him to do well, but based on his actions, he’s been suspended for one year,” UFC President Dana White said in a statement on UFC.com. “If he needs professional help, we are going to be there for him. We want to see him succeed not only in the Octagon, but in his personal life.”

This marks the second time that Leben, who lost by corner stoppage after fellow middleweight Mark Munoz opened a large cut over his left eye in their November 5 bout, has tested positive for banned substances via the UFC’s independent drug-testing efforts.

Leben previously tested positive for the steroid Stanozolol following his UFC 89 bout against Michael Bisping, which was also in Birmingham, England. For that offense, Leben was suspended nine months by the UFC and fined one-third of his fight purse.

Since UFC events are not subject to any athletic commission-sanctioned testing in England, the UFC conducts its own tests for fights on British soil and hands out punishments for positive tests at its own discretion.

In the official statement released by the UFC, Leben is quoted as saying: “I would like to make it known that I fully accept this suspension and apologize for embarrassing the UFC, my friends and family, and sport of mixed martial arts. I’m learning that I’m my own worst enemy sometimes. I can’t succeed in the Octagon or in life behaving this way. I’ve got to make some real changes over the next year and I’m going to focus on getting my life and career back on track. Again, I’m sorry to the UFC and fans that’ve supported me since my days on The Ultimate Fighter.”

According to the UFC, the 19 other fighters on the UFC 138 card passed their post-fight drug tests.

 

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My First Fight: Miguel Torres

Filed under: UFCNo fight fan is in any danger of confusing Miguel Torres for Muhammad Ali. One’s a skinny bantamweight MMA fighter with a mullet, and the other is Muhammad Ali. But even though they might be separated by a few decades and many, many pou…

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Miguel TorresNo fight fan is in any danger of confusing Miguel Torres for Muhammad Ali. One’s a skinny bantamweight MMA fighter with a mullet, and the other is Muhammad Ali. But even though they might be separated by a few decades and many, many pounds, both owe the genesis of their fight careers to a specific type of childhood anguish: the stolen bike.

Torres’ bike had been a gift from his uncle. It wasn’t exactly top of the line, but it had the word ‘Ambush’ written across the side, which was undeniably cool for reasons Torres couldn’t quite explain. He’d made it even cooler by covering much of the bike in duct tape.

“You know, so it was camouflaged,” he says.

One Friday afternoon he rode his bike down to a local shrimp joint to get a basket of french fries to split with his friends, but the proprietor wouldn’t let him bring his bike inside. Torres didn’t have a lock, so he left it just outside, where he could see the front tire through the window.

“But this was when [arcade game] Mortal Kombat first came out,” he says with a sigh. “I came in for the food, but all I heard was ‘Finish him!'”

You know where this is going. Torres had some change in his pocket, and what kid in the early 90s could resist the magnetic pull of a good video game — especially Mortal Kombat? Torres tried to keep an eye on that bike tire through the window, but he got absorbed in the game, taking on one challenger after another. When he glanced over his shoulder at the end of it all, no more bike.

“It was the first time I’d ever had anything stolen from me,” he says. “I was crushed. I ran around the whole block screaming, ‘Where’s my bike!?'”

When that didn’t yield the result he was hoping for, Torres went home to “lift weights.” And by weights, he means bricks. It was the closest thing he could find to a weight set in his neighborhood, and all he knew was that he needed to get stronger if he was going to be ready when he finally came face to face with the bike thief. He also convinced his parents to let him take some Taekwondo lessons, “until I found out it was all bulls–t.”

He’d go to school and his friends on the wrestling team would taunt him, calling him ‘karate boy’ and challenging him to show them his stuff.

“Then they’d take me down and get me in just the worst holds you can imagine. It sucked.”

But little by little, Torres was learning different art forms from whatever sources he could find. A little taekwondo here, some wrestling there, even a trip to a local boxing gym where they sparred on bare feet on a concrete floor. During one such session Torres so angered an older sparring partner with his frantic Jeff Speakman routine that the man threw off his gloves and double-legged him onto the concrete floor before choking the teenage Torres with his own t-shirt.

Afterward, “the guy told me, ‘That’s jiu-jitsu.’ I was like, I have to learn that.”

Somewhere along the way Torres became a martial arts junkie. He read all the books, held himself to a rigid diet he didn’t fully understand, took challenge matches wherever he could find them. All that was left was to find a real fight, a pro fight, something that would test him. This is where Finke’s came in.

If you look at Torres’ record, it’ll tell you that his first fight was against Larry Pulliam at Finke’s Full Contact Challenge in March of 2000. That sounds pretty official, at least until you realize that Finke’s was the name of a local bar in Highland, Indiana, and the “Full Contact Challenge” was more or less a gimmick to try and drum up a crowd for those slow Monday nights.

“I had this idea about how it would be, but I walked in that bar and it was almost empty. It was just these shady characters — bikers, gang-bangers. They gave me this form to fill out, and it was basically a cheap contract saying I wouldn’t sue if I got hurt or killed. After that, it was: real name, stage name, height, weight, and age. That was it. There was no scale to check your weight. No athletic commission. You could wrap your hands if you wanted or you could not wrap your hands. All they checked was mouthpiece and cup.”

Even that requirement proved difficult for some of the fighters. Some of them had brought boil-and-bite mouthpieces — the cheap ones that you can form to your teeth after a quick dunk in hot water — but they hadn’t even bothered to take them out of the package before fight night. Maybe it was just as well, because they ended up passing the mouthpieces back and forth, among other things.

“There were guys literally saying, ‘Hey, if you let me use your mouthpiece, I’ll let you use my cup,'” Torres says. “And they’d be there after the fights swapping mouthpieces and cups. Guys who weren’t even wearing jockstraps were just shoving someone else’s cup in their shorts.”

As Torres was warming up backstage, one of his coaches stretched him out while attempting to impart various Eastern philosophies. Ebb and flow. Yin and yang. That sort of stuff. His boxing coach had different advice, and it involved “[expletive]ing this guy up” and then befriending the strippers who’d been hired to serve as ring girls. Only maybe it wasn’t quite so delicately put.

“That was the last thing I heard before I went in there. And in my mind I had this idea of what a fight should be, just this war. I had images of me hitting him and him hurting me and me getting cut and bleeding, but coming back and winning the fight. Like a Rocky movie or a kung fu movie. I thought the whole 15-minute fight would be like that. I was thinking of all the Bruce Lee books I’d read, The Art of War. All that.”

Instead what happened was that Pulliam came forward, was backed off by a Torres head kick attempt — “the worst kick you can imagine,” he says — and then came forward again, straight into a Torres left hook. That was all it took. Pulliam went down, attempted to get back to his feet, then collapsed again. The ref had no choice but to stop it.

“I looked at my corner like, that’s it?” Torres says. “I didn’t want to get out of the ring. I was so upset. I wanted to fight again.”

The crowd loved it. So did his coaches. But Torres left the ring with a disappointed feeling in the pit of his stomach. That disappointment continued when Finke’s employees explained that, while he was old enough to fight in their establishment, he wasn’t old enough to drink there.

“I thought at least I’d get to hang out in the bar. But no, they kicked me out because I was underage. They were all hanging out, drinking with the strippers, but I was outside in the car eating McDonald’s.”

Torres stayed there waiting for his coaches to return for, by his estimation, “about four hours.” Not exactly the victory party you imagine for yourself after your first professional win, but Torres was already hooked. Even though ‘MMA fighter’ wasn’t much of an actual job description in the spring of 2000, Torres “knew right away that this was what I wanted to do.”

He’d go on to fight many more bouts at Finke’s while trying to keep it a secret from his family, but word spread about the skinny Mexican kid who never lost a bout. Not long after, Torres’ father was injured by a crane at a construction site where he was working. When Torres went to see him in the hospital one day he found that his father had had a visit from a work friend who told him all about seeing his son fight down at the sports bar. The secret was out.

“So I told him all about it,” Torres says. “He said, ‘How much are they paying you?’ I was like, I don’t fight for money. I fight for the art, for respect. I was an idealist. And my dad, from his hospital bed, he reached out and smacked me on the back of the neck.”

Torres’ father’s friend had told him all about how the guys from the construction crew loved these fight nights, how they paid $25 a head to get in, how the young Torres was quickly becoming a major draw.

“My dad said, ‘You’ve got to get paid. This guy’s making money off you, and you’re the one getting hurt.’ So I went back and talked to the promoter and told him I wanted to start getting paid.”

And he did. For his next fight, Torres made the princely sum of $100. It was enough to fill his Camaro up with gas and still have enough to take a girl out on a date. Plus, it was money he’d earned with his art, his skills. It was perfect. It was everything he thought he needed at the time, and it was just the beginning.

Check out past installments of My First Fight, featuring “Mayhem” Miller, Rashad Evans, and more.

 

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Twitter Mailbag: Talking Title Shots, Rematches, and Black Friday Deals

Before we jump right into the Twitter Mailbag here, let me pause to remind you of two things: 1) You love this freaking website, which brings you everything from breaking news to video interviews to in-depth stories to entertaining features, and 2) We’…

Before we jump right into the Twitter Mailbag here, let me pause to remind you of two things: 1) You love this freaking website, which brings you everything from breaking news to video interviews to in-depth stories to entertaining features, and 2) We’re nominated for Media Source of the Year at this year’s MMA awards, and the voting window is closing rapidly.

I’m not telling you to go this website right now and vote for us. Nope. Not doing that at all. What I am telling you is that, if I were you, and I enjoyed the work of a particular website that was nominated for an award like that, I wouldn’t consider it an unreasonable demand on my time to register and vote for my internet pals. But hey, that’s me. And I’m not a total jerk.

Now then, who’s got the first question?

@Orderx7 Why does @UrijahFaber keep getting title shots? There are other guys in the div. that can sell a fight.

In theory, I agree. But in practice, who else could you possibly give a title shot to right now at 135 pounds? Demetrious Johnson just had his chance. Miguel Torres is still trying to string a couple wins together. Brian Bowles just got utterly smashed by Faber. So who’s left?

It’s not just that Faber is still the most popular fighter in the division (though, let’s be real, he’s that too), but he’s also earned the shot. Bowles was a former WEC bantamweight champ whose only prior loss was an injury TKO to Cruz, and Faber ran right through him. He’s pretty clearly the second-best fighter in the division, and isn’t pitting #1 against #2 what a title fight is supposed be all about?

@DaveDomination what are your quick predictions for UFC on Fox 2?

I predict that no matter what the full lineup looks like when it finally hits TV, MMA fans will find a way to complain about it.

@JDRCheckIt how likely is it to see Fedor in a big league again?

Short answer: not very. That’s assuming that by ‘big league,’ you mean the UFC, Strikeforce, or Bellator. If you mean M-1 Global (or an M-1 Global co-promotion), then it’s a different story.

Regardless of how we feel about it, seems like Fedor is going to bravely soldier on through one mediocre fight after another. He beat Jeff Monson, which still counts for something, I suppose, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he eventually ends up rematching Tim Sylvia or Andrei Arlovski on another 4 a.m. pay-per-view with high school AV club-quality production values. But as for fighting the big boys on the big shows, I’m afraid those days are over for the Last Emperor.

@Dchavez who has the best Black Friday deals and when should I get there?

The answer to those questions are, in order: Best Buy, and six hours ago.

@KevinMarshall mailbag: Hell of a bout between Chandler & Alvarez. Is it me or is there not as big a disparity between UFC & Bellator’s LWs?

If I’m reading your question right, what you’re asking is, why do the Bellator lightweights seem UFC-caliber, while some of the higher weight classes in Bellator seem populated with fighters who aren’t quite ready for primetime? I don’t necessarily disagree with that premise, but I think it has less to do with either the UFC or Bellator and more to do with the nature of talent distribution in this sport.

It makes sense that MMA has, on the whole, more talent in the lighter weight classes than the bigger ones. If you’re a talented athlete who’s 6’3″ and 250 pounds, you probably have options when it comes to making a living in pro sports. If you’re 5’6″ and 165 pounds, it’s a different story. Because MMA is one of the few popular pro sports that promises its competitors a chance to go up against someone their own size, it’s more likely to draw the little guys who got run off the football field or laughed off the basketball court.

Basically, there are more good lightweights to go around, so it makes sense that Bellator has a few. It also makes sense that heavyweights are at such a premium that it’s an issue even in MMA gyms across the country. You hear it from trainers all the time: the toughest thing about developing a good heavyweight is finding good heavyweight sparring partners. What’s happening lately is that heavyweights are starting to consolidate in a few select gyms just so they can train with other guys their size, which brings us back to the old teammate-versus-teammate question that’s been ridden into the ground. Which reminds me, thanks for not asking that question. I’m just so sick of it.

@noelluperon Have you press row guys ever been sprayed in blood, spit, sweat or any of the less noble fluids flying from the Octagon?

Press row is a good eight to ten feet from the fence, so we’re usually safe. Those poor photographers, like our own Esther Lin, are not always so lucky.

@TimKennedyMMA mailbag question. What’s the deal with Strikeforce? When is Tim Kennedy going to fight UFC guys?

I keep asking the same thing, Tim. I keep hearing others ask it too. I just haven’t heard any satisfying answers yet. Perhaps there’s something you’d like to tell us?

@DJNonfiction Hendo vs. Shogun II…Do it all over again (in japan), or leave this one alone to the history books?

Ah, the siren’s song of the rematch. If the first fight was great, why not do it all again, beginning with round 6, right? Sadly, it very rarely works out that way. Remember Griffin-Bonnar II? Yeah, neither do I.

Trying to recreate a great fight is like showing up at your high school girlfriend’s house with a bouquet of supermarket flowers and a six-pack of wine coolers. Just because it resulted in a magical night once, that doesn’t mean it’s a formula for success every time. The part of me that scored this fight a draw thinks that a rematch makes sense, but the part of me that thinks it was the greatest fight in MMA history doesn’t want to see it defiled by a sad attempt to recreate its glory.

For now, I’m fine with Henderson moving on to a title shot in either the middleweight or light heavyweight class. And who knows, maybe he and Rua will meet again somewhere down the line.

@Futch6 MAILBAG– question: who do you think will be JDS’s toughest opponent: Lesnar, Ubereem, Cain, Mir?

I’m not sure about this ‘Ubereem’ fellow you mention, but I think Alistair Overeem could create some serious problems for the current UFC heavyweight champ. That is, if he gets past Brock Lesnar, which is a big if.

Overeem’s ability to take a punch and give one back (along with a couple kicks and a bunch of knees coming right behind it) could test dos Santos’ stand-up game in new and exciting ways. His size alone presents a different sort of challenge, and we know he’s not going to freak out the first time he gets hit in the face.

First, however, Overeem has to get past Lesnar. How he manages that will depend heavily on how much he can improve his takedown defense before December 30. Let’s hope he’s doing more than hitting pads at Xtreme Couture between now and then, because if he ends up on his back with Lesnar on top of him — even once — it could be all she wrote.

@LoganasaurusRex if you’re @danhendo where do you take the title shot? Also has any other fighter ever secured two title shots at once before?

If I’m Henderson, I take the fight at light heavyweight. He hates that cut to middleweight, and I think it shows in the cage. He’ll give up size and reach to Jon Jones (or Lyoto Machida), but he’s got a chance against either, if only because one is still slightly inexperienced and the other is vulnerable to his style of fighting. Plus, that way he gets to eat what he wants, and an eating Hendo is a happy Hendo.

@AdriantheWizard After Ben Henderson, who’s the next contender at LW if Melendez loses in December?

The phrasing of your question seems a little odd, Mr. Wizard. If Melendez loses? That makes it sound like he might walk in the cage and spontaneously lose consciousness. If Melendez loses, it will be because Jorge Masvidal beat him. And if Masvidal beats him, that would make Masvidal the new Strikeforce lightweight champ, so why not have him fight for the UFC lightweight belt? That is, assuming that whole champion-versus-champion thing is really going down as soon as we all think/hope it is.

@dsmelser13 Who do you have in this on going battle between @arielhelwani and @MieshaTate? Who is right? And Who should get the award?

I wouldn’t call it a battle so much as a misunderstanding, but if you’re asking me who I think deserves to win the award for female fighter of the year, I have to side with the champ. I realize she only fought once in 2011, but it was a big one. Tate submitted Marloes Coenen to claim the 135-pound Strikeforce title, which is, for the moment, one of the only women’s titles that matters.

What’s more, female fighters at Tate’s level don’t get as many opportunities from promoters to do their thing, so I can’t fault her for the lack of fights. Ronda Rousey might have had a higher work rate this year, and yes, she did armbar everything on two legs, but she did it against a lesser caliber of opponent, so there were more chances to keep getting in the cage.

That said, I voted for Sarah Kaufman. Because I like Sarah Kaufman. And yes, I realize that’s not how you’re supposed to vote in these things, but I also don’t care.

@stlbites do you ever get discouraged by the lack of thoughtful MMA fans and the seeming girth of meatheads asking for freebies?

Personally, I think there are plenty of thoughtful MMA fans. My Twitter timeline is full of them, even if it also has some idiots sprinkled in there from time to time. I’ve always thought that, from a fan perspective, MMA is a sport for nerds, and I mean that in the best way. MMA fans obsess about and over-analyze every aspect of this sport, and a great many of them actually do so intelligently. It’s just that the idiots yell rather than talk, so they tend to drown everyone else out.

As for the people asking for freebies, Dana White would get a lot less of that if he stopped encouraging it. At the UFC on FOX presser, for example, he specifically told people not to ask him for tickets. Then the first fan who got his mitts on the mic asked for tickets, and DW gave them to him. All I’m saying is, when the children are spoiled, you don’t blame the children.

@shplane What did you think of Breaking Dawn?

I assume that’s a typo and you mean to ask what I thought of Red Dawn, which of course I watch every Thanksgiving. I thought it was awesome. I think that every year, though.

@tpears86 do you think Maynard is smart about going to AKA?

I happened to be in the AKA gym last week and saw Maynard going through Daniel Cormier’s wrestling practice along with the rest of the crew. I have to say that it seems like a good place for him, and one where he’ll really fit in. AKA is more of a team than many other gyms. There’s a real exchange of ideas happening on those mats, whereas some other places are just workout facilities with a rotating cast of coaches and sparring partners. Xtreme Couture — and the Las Vegas MMA scene in general, really — features a lot of coming and going. AKA doesn’t. The difference will only benefit Maynard.

Got a question of your own? Find me on Twitter @BenFowlkesMMA and ask away.

 

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