SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The fighters took to the scale inside the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Friday to make it official before Saturday night’s debut event on the FOX network. All fighters made weight in front of the enthusiastic afternoon crowd of just over 2,000 people, but the weigh-in was mostly a ceremonial matter for the two main event fighters, both of whom clocked in well below the heavyweight limit.
While UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez drew cheers by thanking “La Raza” for their support, Brazilian challenger Junior dos Santos kept his remarks short and direct.
“Just one thing,” said dos Santos. “Get ready for a war!”
Full weigh-in results are below.
Live on FOX(9 p.m. ET)
Cain Velasquez (249) vs. Junior dos Santos (239)
Live on Facebook and FoxSports.com(4:45 p.m. ET)
Clay Guida (156) vs. Ben Henderson (156)
Pablo Garza (145) vs. Dustin Poirier (146)
Cub Swanson (145) vs. Ricardo Lamas (145)
DaMarques Johnson (171) vs. Clay Harvison (169)
Norifumi Yamamoto (135) vs. Darren Uyenoyama (135)
Mackens Semerzier (146) vs. Robert Peralta (145)
Alex Caceras (136) vs. Cole Escovedo (134)
Mike Pierce (171) vs. Paul Bradley (171)
Aaron Rosa (204) vs. Matt Lucas (203)
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The fighters took to the scale inside the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Friday to make it official before Saturday night’s debut event on the FOX network. All fighters made weight in front of the enthusiastic afternoon crowd of just over 2,000 people, but the weigh-in was mostly a ceremonial matter for the two main event fighters, both of whom clocked in well below the heavyweight limit.
While UFC heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez drew cheers by thanking “La Raza” for their support, Brazilian challenger Junior dos Santos kept his remarks short and direct.
“Just one thing,” said dos Santos. “Get ready for a war!”
Full weigh-in results are below.
Live on FOX(9 p.m. ET)
Cain Velasquez (249) vs. Junior dos Santos (239)
Live on Facebook and FoxSports.com(4:45 p.m. ET)
Clay Guida (156) vs. Ben Henderson (156)
Pablo Garza (145) vs. Dustin Poirier (146)
Cub Swanson (145) vs. Ricardo Lamas (145)
DaMarques Johnson (171) vs. Clay Harvison (169)
Norifumi Yamamoto (135) vs. Darren Uyenoyama (135)
Mackens Semerzier (146) vs. Robert Peralta (145)
Alex Caceras (136) vs. Cole Escovedo (134)
Mike Pierce (171) vs. Paul Bradley (171)
Aaron Rosa (204) vs. Matt Lucas (203)
Filed under: UFC, UFC on FOXAsk the people who know what it’s like to have Cain Velasquez in their faces on a regular basis, and they’ll tell you that there’s a big difference between thinking you can handle the UFC heavyweight champion’s non-stop pres…
Ask the people who know what it’s like to have Cain Velasquez in their faces on a regular basis, and they’ll tell you that there’s a big difference between thinking you can handle the UFC heavyweight champion’s non-stop pressure and actually experiencing it.
“There’s no doing it until you actually do it,” said sparring partner and former Olympic wrestling team captain Daniel Cormier. “It’s just no room to breathe. You could be winning, but he’s just in your face constantly and it wears on you, man.”
To hear Velasquez’s teammates at the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose tell it, simply surviving sparring sessions with the high-energy heavyweight is tough enough. That’s why those who are familiar with Velasquez’s pace say it could be the difference-maker in the UFC on FOX bout with Junior dos Santos — especially if the fight makes it to the later rounds.
Regardless of what effect it might have on the fight, at least dos Santos knows what an important variable it could be. He said on Thursday that, in his opinion, “the best of Cain Velasquez for sure is cardio.”
“He’s got amazing stamina for this division, and for sure he’s like those unstoppable guys,” said dos Santos. “That’s going to be my challenge, is to stop him.”
But then, dos Santos hasn’t exactly had a ton of experience against fighters like Velasquez. He’s only gone the distance twice in his career, and both those opponents — first Roy Nelson and then Shane Carwin — slowed down considerably after dos Santos battered them with strikes early on.
“When you can step back and shake your arms out, it helps in terms of your cardio,” said Cormier. “When Junior was fighting Shane, he could dictate the pace and if he felt tired he could take a little break, but Cain won’t ever let him do it. If he steps back, Cain will come forward.”
As Velasquez told reporters, he’s looking for “a long, grueling fight.” If it’s long and action-packed, the UFC probably wouldn’t mind it either. The longer the fight goes, the more chance there is for fans to pass the word along via Twitter or other social networking outlets, lifting ratings as the bout wears on.
But for Velasquez, who credited his opponent with having “good cardio, especially for a heavyweight,” it’s more about turning the fight into the kind of grind that has historically favored the wrestler’s skill set over the boxer’s.
“I think with anybody else I’ve competed against, I don’t think anybody’s been able to match my cardio,” Velasquez said.
He won’t get any argument from Cormier, who’s gone against some of the best in the world in one of the most demanding cardiovascular sports out there.
“I’m in good shape, I fight at a high pace myself, and nobody wears me out,” he said. “But when we train, I get tired. I’m like, what the hell? I know I’m in shape. But it’s something about the intensity of having him always in your face.”
In a fight that’s scheduled for five rounds, even though very few people expect it to last that long, it’s that lasting intensity that could make all the difference. If, that is, both of them are still conscious to hear the words, ‘Round two.’
Dana White loves boxing. Sure he does. He loves it the way you love an ex who is and was absolutely no good for you, who you’ll still meet for a drink when they’re in town (just one, though, then I’ve really got to run), and who you’re pretty sure is g…
Dana White loves boxing. Sure he does. He loves it the way you love an ex who is and was absolutely no good for you, who you’ll still meet for a drink when they’re in town (just one, though, then I’ve really got to run), and who you’re pretty sure is going to self-destruct one day, with or without your help.
In a way, that’s what makes it possible to continue loving them. If they were doing too well, you might be bitter. But this way you can just shake your head, remembering the good times but feeling genuinely relieved that your futures are no longer tied together.
Without White’s rocky relationship with the sport of boxing, maybe this FOX deal doesn’t happen. Without boxing, maybe it’s not so important to White to make it happen, or to make sure it goes off so smoothly that it ushers in a new golden era of combat sports on network TV. It’s as if he’s doing this not just because it’s a savvy business move, but because this is what boxing used to do, back when they were both young and innocent and so in love.
This came up again and again when I spoke to White earlier this week for a Sports Illustrated article (yes, I’m plugging my own article, what of it?). Even when I asked him questions that, to me, seemed to have nothing to do with boxing, somehow we ended up back on the subject again. Take this exchange, for instance:
SI.com: Tell me a little about how you guys made the final decision to only do one fight, no matter what. At first it seemed like you were considering the possibility of running another fight or some highlights if you had time. How did you decide to just focus on this one fight?
White: It was [Fox Sports Media Group Chairman] David Hill. I went in and said, listen, USA’s Tuesday Night Fights and ABC’s Wide World of Sports, we all used to watch those, all of us who were big boxing fans. I didn’t miss Tuesday Night Fights ever. Every Tuesday night I was on the couch. But when I was younger, I remember my uncles all getting around the TV and watching Wide World of Sports. When we told them the fight was going to be the heavyweight championship, they said, ‘Do that, just do the one fight, the heavyweight championship.’ It makes sense. That’s really the way it went down. It was David Hill’s call.
To recap, the question was: why only one fight? And, in a simplified form, the answer was: David Hill wanted it that way. So why did we take the little detour to talk about his addiction to Tuesday Night Fights?
Because deep down, White’s still a boxing junkie. Yeah, it probably makes him sad to see what that industry has become and where that sport is headed, and he doesn’t want to think he or his company has anything to do with it. As he reiterated in an open letter “to fight fans” that the UFC emailed out yesterday:
“There’s always been a lot of talk about the UFC killing boxing. I’ve always said that boxing is hurting boxing, not the UFC. I honestly believe that many people are fans of both. And I can prove it: on September 17, the UFC drew 2million viewers to a live fight on cable TV… a couple hours later over 1.3million fans bought the Floyd Mayweather PPV. Fight fans stayed in and watched both!”
First of all, just because the UFC and boxing both drew similar numbers on the same night, that doesn’t necessarily mean they drew the same people, no matter how many times White repeats that claim. Second of all, since when does White go out of his way to assert that he and his competitors are helping each other?
Even on the eve of the landmark UFC on FOX show, the specter of boxing — specifically, Manny Pacquiao — looms over everything. When White so much as mentioned Pacquiao’s name at Wednesday’s press conference even the pro-UFC crowd broke out into cheers. You could argue that White is trying to make the case that his FOX show is working with rather than against Saturday’s boxing pay-per-view simply because he’s hoping to get a little of the Pacquiao fight night magic to rub off on him, but it’s more than that.
As White insisted when I talked to him about it, the money-losing venture on FOX is an attempt to do “what boxing stopped doing,” and that’s “investing in the future of the sport and of this brand.”
Said White: “By putting this on, there’s going to be a whole generation of people who grow up with the UFC on television, just like I did with boxing when I was a young kid, and just like many people did with football. It becomes nostalgic in your life and it becomes something you remember from growing up. That’s what we’re doing by putting this on television.”
In other words, it’s about indoctrinating the next generation of fight fans. It’s about wedging the UFC into mainstream America’s collective sports consciousness in order to insure a brighter future. But it’s also, at least a little bit, about making the UFC and MMA into a new version of the boxing that White remembers, a boxing that doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not in that form.
Maybe that’s why it’s fitting that the UFC’s big FOX debut should take place on the same night as one of the biggest boxing pay-per-views of the year. Without that sport, once so available and accessible that you always knew where to find a young Dana White on Tuesday night, maybe we wouldn’t be right here, right now, on the verge of an event that seems likely to propel this sport toward something, even if none of us know what.
Dana White loves boxing. Sure he does. He loves it the way you love an ex who is and was absolutely no good for you, who you’ll still meet for a drink when they’re in town (just one, though, then I’ve really got to run), and who you’re pretty sure is g…
Dana White loves boxing. Sure he does. He loves it the way you love an ex who is and was absolutely no good for you, who you’ll still meet for a drink when they’re in town (just one, though, then I’ve really got to run), and who you’re pretty sure is going to self-destruct one day, with or without your help.
In a way, that’s what makes it possible to continue loving them. If they were doing too well, you might be bitter. But this way you can just shake your head, remembering the good times but feeling genuinely relieved that your futures are no longer tied together.
Without White’s rocky relationship with the sport of boxing, maybe this FOX deal doesn’t happen. Without boxing, maybe it’s not so important to White to make it happen, or to make sure it goes off so smoothly that it ushers in a new golden era of combat sports on network TV. It’s as if he’s doing this not just because it’s a savvy business move, but because this is what boxing used to do, back when they were both young and innocent and so in love.
This came up again and again when I spoke to White earlier this week for a Sports Illustrated article (yes, I’m plugging my own article, what of it?). Even when I asked him questions that, to me, seemed to have nothing to do with boxing, somehow we ended up back on the subject again. Take this exchange, for instance:
SI.com: Tell me a little about how you guys made the final decision to only do one fight, no matter what. At first it seemed like you were considering the possibility of running another fight or some highlights if you had time. How did you decide to just focus on this one fight?
White: It was [Fox Sports Media Group Chairman] David Hill. I went in and said, listen, USA’s Tuesday Night Fights and ABC’s Wide World of Sports, we all used to watch those, all of us who were big boxing fans. I didn’t miss Tuesday Night Fights ever. Every Tuesday night I was on the couch. But when I was younger, I remember my uncles all getting around the TV and watching Wide World of Sports. When we told them the fight was going to be the heavyweight championship, they said, ‘Do that, just do the one fight, the heavyweight championship.’ It makes sense. That’s really the way it went down. It was David Hill’s call.
To recap, the question was: why only one fight? And, in a simplified form, the answer was: David Hill wanted it that way. So why did we take the little detour to talk about his addiction to Tuesday Night Fights?
Because deep down, White’s still a boxing junkie. Yeah, it probably makes him sad to see what that industry has become and where that sport is headed, and he doesn’t want to think he or his company has anything to do with it. As he reiterated in an open letter “to fight fans” that the UFC emailed out yesterday:
“There’s always been a lot of talk about the UFC killing boxing. I’ve always said that boxing is hurting boxing, not the UFC. I honestly believe that many people are fans of both. And I can prove it: on September 17, the UFC drew two million viewers to a live fight on cable TV … a couple hours later over 1.3 million fans bought the Floyd Mayweather PPV. Fight fans stayed in and watched both!”
First of all, just because the UFC and boxing both drew similar numbers on the same night, that doesn’t necessarily mean they drew the same people, no matter how many times White repeats that claim. Second of all, since when does White go out of his way to assert that he and his competitors are helping each other?
Even on the eve of the landmark UFC on FOX show, the specter of boxing — specifically, Manny Pacquiao — looms over everything. When White so much as mentioned Pacquiao’s name at Wednesday’s press conference even the pro-UFC crowd broke out into cheers. You could argue that White is trying to make the case that his FOX show is working with rather than against Saturday’s boxing pay-per-view simply because he’s hoping to get a little of the Pacquiao fight night magic to rub off on him, but it’s more than that.
As White insisted when I talked to him about it, the money-losing venture on FOX is an attempt to do “what boxing stopped doing,” and that’s “investing in the future of the sport and of this brand.”
Said White: “By putting this on, there’s going to be a whole generation of people who grow up with the UFC on television, just like I did with boxing when I was a young kid, and just like many people did with football. It becomes nostalgic in your life and it becomes something you remember from growing up. That’s what we’re doing by putting this on television.”
In other words, it’s about indoctrinating the next generation of fight fans. It’s about wedging the UFC into mainstream America’s collective sports consciousness in order to insure a brighter future. But it’s also, at least a little bit, about making the UFC and MMA into a new version of the boxing that White remembers, a boxing that doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not in that form.
Maybe that’s why it’s fitting that the UFC’s big FOX debut should take place on the same night as one of the biggest boxing pay-per-views of the year. Without that sport, once so available and accessible that you always knew where to find a young Dana White on Tuesday night, maybe we wouldn’t be right here, right now, on the verge of an event that seems likely to propel this sport toward something, even if none of us know what.
Filed under: UFC, UFC on FOXROSEMEAD, Calif. — If it feels like we’ve been here before, that’s because we have. Just a little over a year ago, in fact, and in this same exact place. That was a very different fight week — big for different reasons. It…
ROSEMEAD, Calif. — If it feels like we’ve been here before, that’s because we have. Just a little over a year ago, in fact, and in this same exact place. That was a very different fight week — big for different reasons. It was the Brock Lesnar show, and that show went where it pleased and performed on its own terms.
Back then, when it was time for the main card fighters at UFC 121 to go through the plodding PR paces of the open workout, Lesnar was nowhere to be found. But Cain Velasquez, then the challenger for the heavyweight title, still had to show up at the UFC gym in Rosemead and be a good soldier, which is exactly what he did.
Nearly 13 months later, Velasquez is back here against a very different opponent in a very different fight, but some things haven’t changed.
At around noon on Thursday afternoon the UFC heavyweight champ strolls into the same exact gym with the same unassuming air that he had last year. And, just like last year, he had his fans there waiting for him, waving Mexican flags and cheering him on as he stepped in the cage to throw a few perfunctory punches and kicks at the air for the sake of the cameras.
But this time it’s not about the celebrity of one of the participants. Bizarrely, it’s not even really about the heavyweight title. Sure, it’s there. It’s a part of the package, but it feels more like an accessory than the real prize. How can you tell? Just listen to the questions he’s peppered with as he moves down the seemingly endless media assembly line.
Are you nervous about representing the UFC and the sport of MMA itself on network TV? Are you feeling the pressure from your boss, from the fans? In other words, are you freaking out yet, or are you going to wait until later?
And for whatever reason — maybe because it’s true, or maybe just because his fighter’s instinct is to resist pressure rather than succumb to it — the champ refuses to play along. He’s not especially nervous, he says. It’s just another fight. He doesn’t think about the stakes involved or the millions who’ll be watching. He won’t even admit to feeling the pressure of the champion or the betting favorite.
“I feel like every time I go out to fight, I’m always the underdog,” he insists.
His trainer, Javier Mendez, stands nearby chatting with reporters and looking up with genuine surprise when nearby fans want their pictures taken with them.
“This is all your guys’ fault,” he grumbles to the reporters before going over to fulfill his obligations as a newfound semi-celebrity. This didn’t happen back before he was known as the champ’s trainer, but such is the brave new world he finds himself in, for better or worse.
Velasquez’s opponent, Junior dos Santos, who shows up for his workout more than an hour later, also won’t admit to feeling the heat. If anything, he does an even better job of selling his media tormenters on how relaxed he is, smiling through the multitude of interviews as if he’s actually having an okay time.
“When you are nice, nice things happen to you,” he explains, as if it’s the simplest, most obvious philosophy in the world. Like, haven’t you guys figured that out by now?
When asked how he managed to go from MMA neophyte to heavyweight title challenger on live network TV in just six years, he answers quickly: “Work. And be nice.”
You want outsized egos and superstar personalities? You want guys at each others’ throats? Too bad. Regardless of what you want, this is what you’re getting. It’ll have to be good enough, at least for now.
Filed under: UFC, UFC on FOXROSEMEAD, Calif. — If it feels like we’ve been here before, that’s because we have. Just a little over a year ago, in fact, and in this same exact place. That was a very different fight week — big for different reasons. It…
ROSEMEAD, Calif. — If it feels like we’ve been here before, that’s because we have. Just a little over a year ago, in fact, and in this same exact place. That was a very different fight week — big for different reasons. It was the Brock Lesnar show, and that show went where it pleased and performed on its own terms.
Back then, when it was time for the main card fighters at UFC 121 to go through the plodding PR paces of the open workout, Lesnar was nowhere to be found. But Cain Velasquez, then the challenger for the heavyweight title, still had to show up at the UFC gym in Rosemead and be a good soldier, which is exactly what he did.
Nearly 13 months later, Velasquez is back here against a very different opponent in a very different fight, but some things haven’t changed.
At around noon on Thursday afternoon the UFC heavyweight champ strolls into the same exact gym with the same unassuming air that he had last year. And, just like last year, he had his fans there waiting for him, waving Mexican flags and cheering him on as he stepped in the cage to throw a few perfunctory punches and kicks at the air for the sake of the cameras.
But this time it’s not about the celebrity of one of the participants. Bizarrely, it’s not even really about the heavyweight title. Sure, it’s there. It’s a part of the package, but it feels more like an accessory than the real prize. How can you tell? Just listen to the questions he’s peppered with as he moves down the seemingly endless media assembly line.
Are you nervous about representing the UFC and the sport of MMA itself on network TV? Are you feeling the pressure from your boss, from the fans? In other words, are you freaking out yet, or are you going to wait until later?
And for whatever reason — maybe because it’s true, or maybe just because his fighter’s instinct is to resist pressure rather than succumb to it — the champ refuses to play along. He’s not especially nervous, he says. It’s just another fight. He doesn’t think about the stakes involved or the millions who’ll be watching. He won’t even admit to feeling the pressure of the champion or the betting favorite.
“I feel like every time I go out to fight, I’m always the underdog,” he insists.
His trainer, Javier Mendez, stands nearby chatting with reporters and looking up with genuine surprise when nearby fans want their pictures taken with them.
“This is all your guys’ fault,” he grumbles to the reporters before going over to fulfill his obligations as a newfound semi-celebrity. This didn’t happen back before he was known as the champ’s trainer, but such is the brave new world he finds himself in, for better or worse.
Velasquez’s opponent, Junior dos Santos, who shows up for his workout more than an hour later, also won’t admit to feeling the heat. If anything, he does an even better job of selling his media tormenters on how relaxed he is, smiling through the multitude of interviews as if he’s actually having an okay time.
“When you are nice, nice things happen to you,” he explains, as if it’s the simplest, most obvious philosophy in the world. Like, haven’t you guys figured that out by now?
When asked how he managed to go from MMA neophyte to heavyweight title challenger on live network TV in just six years, he answers quickly: “Work. And be nice.”
You want outsized egos and superstar personalities? You want guys at each others’ throats? Too bad. Regardless of what you want, this is what you’re getting. It’ll have to be good enough, at least for now.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The fighters took to the scale inside the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Friday to make it official before Saturday night’s debut event on the FOX network. All fighters made weight in front of the enthusiastic afternoon crowd of just over 2,000 people, but the weigh-in was mostly a ceremonial matter for the two main event fighters, both of whom clocked in well below the heavyweight limit.
Ask the people who know what it’s like to have 
Dana White loves boxing. Sure he does. He loves it the way you love an ex who is and was absolutely no good for you, who you’ll still meet for a drink when they’re in town (just one, though, then I’ve really got to run), and who you’re pretty sure is going to self-destruct one day, with or without your help.
ROSEMEAD, Calif. — If it feels like we’ve been here before, that’s because we have. Just a little over a year ago, in fact, and in this same exact place. That was a very different fight week — big for different reasons. It was the