Author: Ben Fowlkes

UFC on FOX Roundtable: Big Questions Before the Big Fight

Filed under: UFC, UFC on FOXWe’re just a few days away from the first UFC on FOX event, and still so many questions remain. What will the show look like? Will Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos manage to deliver in the UFC’s hour of need? And what ev…

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Cain VelasquezWe’re just a few days away from the first UFC on FOX event, and still so many questions remain. What will the show look like? Will Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos manage to deliver in the UFC’s hour of need? And what ever shall I wear?!

To answer at least a couple of these queries, I enlisted the help of my MMA Fighting colleague Mike Chiappetta for a good old-fashioned writers’ roundtable. Let’s do this.

1. What do you make of the decision to air just one fight on FOX? If you were calling the shots, how would you spend that extra time?

Fowlkes: I’m going to file this under ‘Decisions I Understand, But Do Not Like.’ It’s a big file, one that begins with my parents’ refusal to take me to a Guns N’ Roses concert in 1991, and one that gets a little fatter every time the city denies my request to re-zone my garage as a tanning salon.

The UFC made a bold and perhaps brilliant move by throwing a heavyweight title fight on network TV. Everyone, regardless of their combat sports IQ, can appreciate the significance of the heavyweight title. Two big guys are going to try and knock each other out on a channel you could get with your grandmother’s TV? Of course you want to see that.

When deciding how best to use the hour-long introduction on FOX, I can understand the need to both a) take some time and educate new viewers on what all this MMA nonsense is really about, while also b) preparing for the unlikely possibility that Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos will go the full five.

That said, would it kill them to keep one of the evening’s better fights in the can, just in case? If there’s an amazing fight somewhere on the undercard, wouldn’t you want the flexibility to throw it onto the broadcast, time permitting? I know you need to take a minute and explain to some viewers that, contrary to what they’ve heard, biting and eye-gouging are not allowed in this crazy Thunderdome-esque sport, but too much of that and you risk condescending to your audience. I realize I’m biased, but I’d rather see a hand-picked fight from the prelims than a primer on joint locks.


Chiappetta: Reality check … Let’s not forget that this fight isn’t even part of the actual UFC-FOX contract. It is essentially a one-hour infomercial preview to advertise the coming of the UFC on FOX in 2012. And what do they give us? It’s not Ron Popeil talking about a new product that is going to change your life. They’re giving us a UFC heavyweight championship fight. For free. Yet people complain this isn’t enough? So you’re telling me you would rather have paid $54.95 to watch five fights just before the holiday season hits? I’m not buying it. This is a lot of belly-aching over something MMA observers should be thrilled about. I think MMA fans are conditioned to believe they’re getting the short end of the stick no matter what. Having the spotlight on just one significant fight will make it easy to understand for those who are tuning into MMA for the first time, and this may hurt to hear, but this fight is more about them than you.

I like the fact that FOX will have brief pre-fight interviews with Velasquez and dos Santos, which will probably make the start time of the fight around 9:15 pm ET. If the fight ends in a flash, I would of course show replays and allow time for analysis of what just happened. And in the true spirit of the infomercial sell, I’d have Brock Lesnar and Alistair Overeem on site to hype their fight and promote the winner as the next contender for the championship. One hour will go by in a flash.

2. A lot seems to depend on whether this fight goes 25 minutes or 25 seconds. Call it: who wins, how, and when?

Chiappetta: If Cain Velasquez never suffered through his shoulder injury, this would be easier to predict, but a torn rotator cuff is a serious injury for any athlete, let alone someone whose livelihood depends on punching, pushing and pummeling for position. Because of that, a question mark hangs over this fight that otherwise wouldn’t be there.

That said, I have to assume that Velasquez is close enough to 100 percent that he’ll be able to do most of the things that have led to his unbeaten record and the title. He’ll mix up his striking with punches, kicks and elbows, sprinkle in a few takedowns and even grind dos Santos against the cage in hopes of sapping his explosiveness and power. dos Santos’ hands are so gifted that there’s simply no reason to engage him where he’s best, and Velasquez doesn’t have to. It is Velasquez’s motor that will ultimately win it, though. He can fight at a blistering pace longer than anyone at heavyweight. After the grind of a couple of rounds, that will get to dos Santos.

Velasquez wins by TKO from ground strikes late in the third round.

Fowlkes: The big question for me is, how conservative will Velasquez decide to play it? Are we looking at a replay of his fight with Cheick Kongo, which was a real nail-biter for every second it stayed standing and a total blowout every time it hit the mat? Or will the pressure to go all Forrest Griffin-Stefan Bonnar for the FOX debut get to the champ and make him do some things that might not be in his best interest?

I might be more worried about that with a different fighter, perhaps one known to let the spirit of the moment take him out of his game, but that’s not Velasquez. The poise he showed in his bout with Brock Lesnar will serve him well here, and having a smart camp full of veteran coaches won’t hurt either. I think he trades punches just long enough to open dos Santos up for the takedown, then he wears him out on the mat. I agree that it will be more of a grind than an explosion, and I also agree that dos Santos will succumb to the pace and the pressure more than the sheer power.

But because I agree with you, I must attempt to upstage you by getting even more specific with my prediction. Thus: Velasquez wins by TKO (corner stoppage), at the end of the fourth round, following 20 solid minutes of straight-up beatdown that JDS’ trainers simply cannot stand to watch any longer. As Velasquez celebrates across the cage, JDS remains on his stool, blinded by swelling, insisting that he can continue even as his coach fans him with a towel and tells him that he doesn’t have anything left to prove. “Not to me,” he’ll add, choking back tears. “Not to anyone.”

Thank you and goodnight!

3. The undercard fighters are, in a way, a part of history here, but is this a raw deal for guys like Clay Guida and Ben Henderson?

Fowlkes: Short answer: yes. How could it not be a raw deal? Usually, even if you’re the curtain-jerker for a UFC pay-per-view, there is at least a chance that you could end up on TV. If you have a great fight or a quick finish you might just make the broadcast and please your sponsors, not to mention your family and friends. Granted, it’s far from guaranteed, but at least you have that lottery ticket in your back pocket.

With this event, however, there’s not even a chance. Even Guida and Henderson will have to be content with a Facebook stream and an appearance on Fox Deportes. No offense to The D (that’s a hip new nickname I’m trying to start for Fox Deportes — just play along), but I’m not sure Guida grew up dreaming of the day he’d be fighting on a Spanish-language cable TV broadcast. Years from now these other guys on the FOX card might be the answers to a trivia question, but Cain and JDS are what people will remember. Kind of a bummer, when you consider what’s at stake in some of these fights that will be afterthoughts for the vast majority of viewers.

Chiappetta: I don’t know Fowlkes, have you ever seen a Spanish telenovela? If the hero gets the girl, I don’t think Guida would be so opposed.

But yes, it is a raw deal for Guida and Henderson, who will be competing in the biggest fight of their lives before an internet audience of … thousands? That said, I would expect a raucous crowd at the venue in Anaheim, and there is a huge potential reward in it for both men, so it’s not exactly going to be meaningless. In some ways, this might be a bigger letdown for Guida, who has fought for the UFC for five years and probably saw this bout as his coming-out party. Henderson is at a much earlier stage in his career, and after recently coming over from the WEC, he might not take the bright lights and big audiences for granted.

An internet stream is not the optimal outlet for a fight of this importance, but at least the winner can soothe himself with the probable top contender status that is likely to come his way.

 

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Alistair Overeem Talks Brock Lesnar: ‘I’m Going to Kick That Guy’s [Expletive]’

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Alistair OvereemWhile the UFC has been busy promoting the size of the two heavyweights in its UFC 141 main event, one of those two big men says there are some big stakes to go along with the December 30 bout.

According to what former Strikeforce heavyweight champ Alistair Overeem told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the winner at UFC 141 will get the next crack at the UFC heavyweight title.

“The winner of the fight between me and Brock [Lesnar] will fight the winner of Cain [Velasquez] and [Junior] dos Santos,” Overeem said. And though he declined to pick a winner in this Saturday night’s heavyweight tilt, he was not so shy about making a prediction for his own bout.

“You know what? I’m going to be bold,” said Overeem. “I’m going to kick that guy’s ass.”

But the supposed number one contender fight with Lesnar isn’t the only topic of conversation for the Dutch heavyweight these days. There’s also the issue of his split from longtime management team Golden Glory, which Overeem addressed in today’s episode of his web series, “The Reem.”

According to Overeem, he left Golden Glory because of a “major breach of trust,” and has now settled at the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas as his new training home. As Overeem told Helwani, “I left the trainers [at Golden Glory] on very good terms, but the management not. The management, we left on bad terms.”

Overeem went into slightly more detail in the new episode of “The Reem,” explaining that the split was the result of many small communications leading up to one big one.

“Something happened that I found out by myself, which was not told [to] me, that was kept secret from me,” Overeem said in the video, before explaining that Golden Glory manager Bas Boon was not present for his final contract negotiations with the UFC.

“Because Bas wasn’t there, I hired a lawyer to go through the contract with me, step-by-step. What me and the lawyer found out was there were details in the contract which were to my disadvantage and to the advantage of Golden Glory, and which also were not explained to me by Golden Glory and particularly by Bas.”

Though Overeem did not specify exactly what that contractual “disadvantage” pertained to, he told Helwani it was “very serious and very sad,” and explained in his video exactly why he felt he needed to part ways with Golden Glory over it.

“This UFC contract is the biggest contract in my life. It’s the biggest moment in my life. The biggest fights are coming now, in the UFC. It’s going to be a very exciting couple of years coming ahead, and there cannot be miscommunications. It’s got to be clear. …Despite that they are good management to other fighters, maybe, I can’t judge about that. But for me they are not good management. They are bad management. They are harmful management.”

On the surface, it seems like a tricky time to change management and training camps. The fight with Lesnar at UFC 141 could very well be the most important fight of Overeem’s career, and he’ll be forced to prepare for it with new sparring partners in a foreign land.

As Overeem explained to Helwani, not only has Xtreme Couture welcomed him “with open arms,” but he’s not quite as reliant on an outside management team as some people might think.

“It’s not been a real burden, because basically I already did all the stuff myself. I formed my own team around me that basically took care of all my little headaches, my needs. I was already fixing up my own sparring partners, my website’s been done by my own team, I have my own guy getting me sponsors, ‘The Reem’ online is something done by my own team. Basically, I was already doing all my own stuff. People think that it is going to be a big deal for me to leave Golden Glory. Golden Glory did have a hand, of course, because they had some sparring partners and they were doing fight contract negotiations, but basically my own team already took care of it, so it’s not going to be a real big deal.”

As for Lesnar, Overeem insisted he was confident that the two would meet in the cage as promised, regardless of Lesnar’s recent struggles with illness. And while some fans might be obsessing over a video that showed a notably smaller version of the former UFC heavyweight champ, Overeem is expecting the same ferocity and power we’ve always seen from Lesnar.

“Brock is an amazing athlete. He’s a very strong guy, a very strong dude. He’s going to be at UFC 141 125 percent. That’s what I’m expecting. He’s going to be there full force, so some clip shot who knows when, where, whatever — I’ve not even seen it. I’ve got to imagine that if you’re going to accept the fight against me, you will be there 100 percent. In his case I expect 125 percent. He’s going to be motivated.”

 

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Alistair OvereemWhile the UFC has been busy promoting the size of the two heavyweights in its UFC 141 main event, one of those two big men says there are some big stakes to go along with the December 30 bout.

According to what former Strikeforce heavyweight champ Alistair Overeem told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, the winner at UFC 141 will get the next crack at the UFC heavyweight title.

“The winner of the fight between me and Brock [Lesnar] will fight the winner of Cain [Velasquez] and [Junior] dos Santos,” Overeem said. And though he declined to pick a winner in this Saturday night’s heavyweight tilt, he was not so shy about making a prediction for his own bout.

“You know what? I’m going to be bold,” said Overeem. “I’m going to kick that guy’s ass.”

But the supposed number one contender fight with Lesnar isn’t the only topic of conversation for the Dutch heavyweight these days. There’s also the issue of his split from longtime management team Golden Glory, which Overeem addressed in today’s episode of his web series, “The Reem.”

According to Overeem, he left Golden Glory because of a “major breach of trust,” and has now settled at the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas as his new training home. As Overeem told Helwani, “I left the trainers [at Golden Glory] on very good terms, but the management not. The management, we left on bad terms.”

Overeem went into slightly more detail in the new episode of “The Reem,” explaining that the split was the result of many small communications leading up to one big one.

“Something happened that I found out by myself, which was not told [to] me, that was kept secret from me,” Overeem said in the video, before explaining that Golden Glory manager Bas Boon was not present for his final contract negotiations with the UFC.

“Because Bas wasn’t there, I hired a lawyer to go through the contract with me, step-by-step. What me and the lawyer found out was there were details in the contract which were to my disadvantage and to the advantage of Golden Glory, and which also were not explained to me by Golden Glory and particularly by Bas.”

Though Overeem did not specify exactly what that contractual “disadvantage” pertained to, he told Helwani it was “very serious and very sad,” and explained in his video exactly why he felt he needed to part ways with Golden Glory over it.

“This UFC contract is the biggest contract in my life. It’s the biggest moment in my life. The biggest fights are coming now, in the UFC. It’s going to be a very exciting couple of years coming ahead, and there cannot be miscommunications. It’s got to be clear. …Despite that they are good management to other fighters, maybe, I can’t judge about that. But for me they are not good management. They are bad management. They are harmful management.”

On the surface, it seems like a tricky time to change management and training camps. The fight with Lesnar at UFC 141 could very well be the most important fight of Overeem’s career, and he’ll be forced to prepare for it with new sparring partners in a foreign land.


As Overeem explained to Helwani, not only has Xtreme Couture welcomed him “with open arms,” but he’s not quite as reliant on an outside management team as some people might think.

“It’s not been a real burden, because basically I already did all the stuff myself. I formed my own team around me that basically took care of all my little headaches, my needs. I was already fixing up my own sparring partners, my website’s been done by my own team, I have my own guy getting me sponsors, ‘The Reem’ online is something done by my own team. Basically, I was already doing all my own stuff. People think that it is going to be a big deal for me to leave Golden Glory. Golden Glory did have a hand, of course, because they had some sparring partners and they were doing fight contract negotiations, but basically my own team already took care of it, so it’s not going to be a real big deal.”

As for Lesnar, Overeem insisted he was confident that the two would meet in the cage as promised, regardless of Lesnar’s recent struggles with illness. And while some fans might be obsessing over a video that showed a notably smaller version of the former UFC heavyweight champ, Overeem is expecting the same ferocity and power we’ve always seen from Lesnar.

“Brock is an amazing athlete. He’s a very strong guy, a very strong dude. He’s going to be at UFC 141 125 percent. That’s what I’m expecting. He’s going to be there full force, so some clip shot who knows when, where, whatever — I’ve not even seen it. I’ve got to imagine that if you’re going to accept the fight against me, you will be there 100 percent. In his case I expect 125 percent. He’s going to be motivated.”

 

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Falling Action: Best and Worst of UFC 138

Filed under: UFCI don’t know if it was the tape-delay or the lack of big names on the card, but UFC 138 hardly felt like a genuine numbered event by the time it hit Spike TV on Saturday night.

It was more like a really good Fight Night event, complet…

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Renan BaraoI don’t know if it was the tape-delay or the lack of big names on the card, but UFC 138 hardly felt like a genuine numbered event by the time it hit Spike TV on Saturday night.

It was more like a really good Fight Night event, complete with the same few video game and credit report ads over and over and over again. At least now if I wake up in the middle of the night and realize I have sleepwalked to Wal-Mart to buy Assassin’s Creed, I’ll know who to blame.

But now that the paychecks and the concussions have been handed out and another one is in the books, let’s sort through the wreckage to find the biggest winners, losers, and everything in between.

Biggest Winner: Mark Munoz
It was the cut over Leben’s eye that stopped the fight, but it was Munoz’s pace and power that put it there. Every punch Munoz threw was a home run swing, and it’s hard not to wonder if his relentless pressure didn’t help to convince Leben that maybe it wasn’t a great idea to try and fight on through the mask of blood. If I had plasma obstructing my vision in one eye, I’m not sure I’d want to march back out into that hurricane again either. It’s a great victory for Munoz, but does he really think he’s ready for a title shot? He’s won four straight against an increasingly impressive list of victims, but it would be hard to put him ahead of guys like Chael Sonnen or the winner of the Michael Bisping-“Mayhem” Miller bout. At 33, I realize he doesn’t have years to wait around for his chance, but he needs at least one more high-profile win before he deserves a crack at the gold. If he continues to improve at his current pace, he might really be able to do something with the opportunity by then.

Biggest Loser: Chris Leben
Something about ending on a cut between rounds just doesn’t seem to fit with the Leben mystique. No matter how legitimate or necessary it was, that’s not how “The Crippler” is supposed to go out. He’s supposed to keep plodding forward, keep deflecting blows with his skull, keep tossing back haymakers of his own until someone is down and out. For him to get stopped by a cut and look almost grateful for it to be over, it just feels wrong. There were rumors of a disastrous weight cut for Leben, so maybe he was genuinely glad to get out of there. Whatever the cause, he’s now lost two of his last three, with the lone win coming against the guy who Dana White says should quit. When we talked last week and Leben expressed his belief that this was essentially a number one contender bout, I asked him how he’d feel if he never got a title shot in the UFC. What if he retired as the brawler who people loved to watch, but who never even got a close-up look at a belt? “You know what?” Leben said. “Actually I am fine with that. At this point in my career I want to fight epic fights and have great battles.” Saturday night in Birmingham was probably a battle he’d rather forget.

Just What the Little Guys Needed: Renan Barao and Brad Pickett
We hear plenty of griping about the lack of finishes in the lighter weight classes, but Barao and Pickett both showed up intent on damaging someone’s frontal lobe. When guys get into exchanging power shots like that, you know it will only be a matter of time until someone’s consciousness flickers. The beautiful knee from Barao turned out to be the difference-maker, and he did a great job of capitalizing on Pickett’s woozy state in order to sink in the choke. Before the bout, Pickett said he couldn’t tell just how good Barao was, since he hadn’t faced tough competition yet. That was a fair assessment at the time, but now we know: this kid is good. Pickett knows it too, just like he knows that maybe he should have been a little more worried about Barao’s stand-up game after all.

Most Overly Ambitious Debut: Papy Abedi
The story coming out of Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg during the broadcast was that Abedi had turned down lesser names in order to make his UFC debut against veteran welterweight Thiago Alves. If that’s true, it should serve as one more reminder that hubris comes with a price in this business. Abedi was game enough, and he certainly wasn’t afraid of Alves. At least, not until a couple well-placed hooks had him doing the stanky leg. If you’re going to fight in the UFC, I suppose you’d better think of yourself as someone who’s capable of hanging with the best and the toughest, but does that mean you have to do it right away? Your first time in the Octagon might be difficult enough without a guy like Alves standing across from you. Sooner or later, you’ll have to fight guys like him, but why not wait and do it when you’re getting paid like a veteran rather than a rookie? Abedi showed everyone that he’s got guts. Next time, maybe he should work on showing them that he’s got brains, too.

Most Ado About Nothing: Thiago Alves‘ weight
With his history, it’s understandable for people to freak out when he shows up on the scales a pound heavy. This is the same guy who got within a half-pound of making weight for his rematch with Jon Fitch, but ultimately decided to pay Fitch 20 percent of his purse rather than jump back in the sauna. But Mike Dolce, Alves’ nutritionist, swears they didn’t have any trouble stripping off that last pound while still keeping Alves in prime condition this time. As good as he looked against Abedi, I believe it. He was calm, patient, and violently efficient. Most importantly, he didn’t look like he’d left his best stuff on the scale this time. Alves once told me (while we were sitting down to a great big lunch, appetizers and all) that the thing he hated most about fighting was the diet. He talked about a post-MMA life where he could eat whatever, whenever in the same wistful tones that insurance agents talk about retiring to play golf all day. It’s no wonder that weight has been a struggle for him, but with Dolce he finally seems to have that part of his life under control. Next area of emphasis for “The Pitbull”? Takedown defense.

Most Resilient: Anthony Perosh
What’s a 39-year-old Australian with a 12-6 career record doing riding a two-fight win streak in the UFC’s light heavyweight division? Beats me, but Perosh just won’t go away quietly. He still seems uncomfortable on his feet, and it’s incredibly hard to imagine that he and Jon Jones are even in the same weight class, much less fighting for the same organization. Still, Perosh has legitimately dangerous ground game, even if he lacks the wrestling skills to reliably get the fight there. Diabate all but took himself down early in the second, and that was all the opening Perosh needed. He’s every bit as patient and methodical on the mat as he is awkward and tentative on the feet. That was good enough for a win over Diabate, but how far can this middle-aged “Hippo” go with this relatively limited skill set? I have no idea, though he seems intent on finding out.

Quickest Comeback: Terry Etim
After more than a year and a half out of the cage, Etim’s return was over in just 17 seconds. Not only is that not enough time to knock off the ring rust, it’s not even enough time to work up a sweat. It was obvious right away that Etim and Eddie Faaloloto were simply not operating on the same level, so maybe it’s good that it ended so quickly. Any longer and things might have gotten very ugly for Faaloloto, who simply can’t be long for the UFC after that performance. It’s good to have Etim back, but can we please get a translator in there for his post-fight remarks? I listened closely and tried my best to pick out a few familiar words, but it was like trying to read something in a dream. Whatever language he was speaking, it was just familiar enough to be frustrating.

Most Perfunctory Win: Michihiro Omigawa
His decision victory over Jason Young wasn’t the prettiest or the most exciting fight you’ll ever see, but Omigawa needed that one in a bad way. He snapped his two-fight losing streak in the UFC and learned that not all judges are as blind as the ones who handed him a loss against Darren Elkins, so perhaps it was more of a psychological boost than anything else. Now that Omigawa finally has a UFC win under his belt, he needs to prove that he can do more than just barely edge one out. It’s great that he’s halted his slide, but it means the opponents will only get tougher.

 

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UFC 138 and the Trouble With Tape-Delay

Filed under: UFCWell, I tried. I did my best to honor the sanctity of tape delay, to make it an entire day without spoilers so I could sit down to watch UFC 138 on Saturday night as if it was a live event. In my hubris, I thought it would be easy. I th…

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Mark MunozWell, I tried. I did my best to honor the sanctity of tape delay, to make it an entire day without spoilers so I could sit down to watch UFC 138 on Saturday night as if it was a live event. In my hubris, I thought it would be easy. I thought I could, through sheer force of will, make the Spike TV tape delay a non-issue. I thought I’d be able to enjoy UFC 138 like it was any other event. I was so, so wrong.

I didn’t go into this without a plan. I knew the internet would be a minefield, and that if I so much as opened my web browser my homepage (MMAFighting.com, naturally) would spoil it for me.

Twitter was totally out of the question. Facebook? I have way too many British and European fight fans as friends. Since the entire world seemed to be getting the event live, I knew I’d have to avoid entirely the very medium that connected me to the world.

And I did it. I watched the Facebook prelims, and then I resolved to shut my laptop until the Spike broadcast started some five hours later. Thus disconnected, I thought I was home free. Then my phone buzzed with a text message from a friend. I should have thought twice before checking it, but habit got the better of me. That’s about when my day was ruined.

The text was, let’s just say, unnecessarily unkind to Chris Leben. The text also assumed that I’d been following the action live and had seen the cut stoppage already. When I replied that I had not, along with a few choice obscenities for my fight-spoiling friend, the next text was unnecessarily unkind toward me, with even more choice obscenities in response.

So there it was. Now I knew, and I could not un-know. I still had to wait a couple hours for the broadcast on Spike TV, when I would tweet along with the action for the other sad sacks who were seeing it for the first time on tape delay, but I admit that I felt like the one kid in the neighborhood who was still clinging to a hollow belief in Santa Claus.

The weird part was, only the main event had been spoiled for me. I still didn’t know what happened in the Brad Pickett–Renan Barao fight. I’d even maintained an impressive degree of ignorance with regards to the fate of Thiago Alves. So why couldn’t I enjoy it as if it was live?

Maybe it was just the fact that other people knew. Maybe it was that half the fun of watching fights is the idea that anything can happen, and none of us can know for sure how it will end. Unless, that is, some of us get to watch it live while others get tortured by the same few commercials on Spike TV hours after the fact.

Over the years, I’ve gotten up ridiculously early and stayed up ridiculously late to watch live MMA events on foreign soil. Neither is especially fun, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better to be a zombie for the rest of the day and get your results as they come in rather than be well rested and intentionally ignorant.

And sure, you could argue that no one can complain about seeing the event a little late as long as it’s on free TV, but stay with that reasoning and see where it goes. If Spike TV showed UFC 138 the following day, is it worth complaining about then? How about a week later?

As the difficulty in avoiding real-time results tells us, we live in the age of instant information. The UFC knows it, as does Spike TV. So why go through the sad charade of tape-delayed events? Wouldn’t it be better to broadcast live to an interested audience in the afternoon than to a ghost town in the evening?

Maybe the boxing fans of 80 years ago could wait weeks to see the moving pictures of a fight, but they didn’t have Twitter. They didn’t have “friends” who would text them unsolicited live commentary. Instead they had polio and fireside chats. All things considered, I’d rather live in our age than theirs. I’d also rather watch my MMA live, no matter what time of day it is, than get a warmed-over broadcast in primetime.

 

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Thiago Alves’ Initial Weigh-In Miscue Not What It Seems, Says Nutritionist

Thiago Alves’ nutritionist knows how it must look for his fighter to come in a pound over on his first trip to the scale at the UFC 138 weigh-ins, but he still wishes people would give the UFC welterweight the benefit of the doubt just this once.

As n…

Thiago AlvesThiago Alves‘ nutritionist knows how it must look for his fighter to come in a pound over on his first trip to the scale at the UFC 138 weigh-ins, but he still wishes people would give the UFC welterweight the benefit of the doubt just this once.

As nutritionist Mike Dolce told MMA Fighting from England on Friday afternoon, Alves had no trouble making the 171-pound limit on his second try, and would have made it the first time except for a calibration issue.

“We had four different scales,” Dolce said. “Every scale had him between [1]69 [pounds] and [1]71 [pounds]. We were happy. It was an easy weight cut, he felt fine, high energy, bouncing around. We got to the weigh-ins and he was [1]72.3 [pounds] with his shorts on. He took off his shorts and he was [1]72 [pounds] on the dot. We were shocked, but hey, no problem. We walked off the scale, we went backstage, there was a sauna there, he sat in the sauna for a few minutes, then he took a pee, then we went back out and made 171 [pounds]. It was literally that simple.”

What’s not so simple, according to Dolce, was dealing with the public backlash that he saw on Twitter once news got out that Alves was over. Though Alves made weight “maybe 40 minutes later,” according to Dolce, by then the story of his initial miss was out and MMA fans seemed to have made up their minds about him.

“And that sucks, because I see how hard this kid’s working,” said Dolce. “He understands that he has to work his way back up the ladder, and he’s doing everything correctly in his personal, emotional, professional, and financial life to make sure he makes a statement and makes a run in the welterweight division. Having something silly like this, to see everyone jump on him, you know, I understand why since he’s had trouble in the past, but come on, the kid came back a half-hour later and made weight with a smile.”

Granted, before Alves hired Dolce as a nutritionist, the Brazilian had a bad habit of coming in over the limit. He came in three pounds heavy for his fight with Matt Hughes at UFC 85, and he clocked in at 171.5 for his rematch with Jon Fitch at UFC 117 — a minor miss that cost him 20% of his fight purse.

Now it seems that fans are so used to Alves missing weight that Friday’s miscue only confirmed what they already believed about him, even though, Dolce said, they weren’t the only ones surprised by the numbers on the scale.

“There was five guys who got to the weigh-ins and stepped on the scale and were overweight and were shocked also. They had to jump in the back and start trying to cut weight on their own. …It’s always our responsibility as professionals to be on weight regardless of the circumstance. But when there’s this many guys this far off, something’s wrong. It’s not just us.”

While several foreign fighters have commented publicly on the difficulty of getting their normal dietary needs met while cutting weight in the U.K., Dolce said he brought “a suitcase full of food” for Alves — about $400 worth for just a few days, in his estimation. Customs restrictions make it impossible to bring fruits or vegetables in to the country, he said, but the team was well prepared and Alves had “an awesome weight cut.”

“He looks great, not sucked down, no dark circles under his eyes,” Dolce said. “It wasn’t a matter of, can he make weight? It was that we stepped on four different scales and I would have to say that our scale is wrong, because the UFC is the official.”

 

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Thiago Alves’ Initial Weigh-In Miscue Not What It Seems, Says Nutritionist

Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, NewsThiago Alves’ nutritionist knows how it must look for his fighter to come in a pound over on his first trip to the scale at the UFC 138 weigh-ins, but he still wishes people would give the UFC welterweight …

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Thiago AlvesThiago Alves‘ nutritionist knows how it must look for his fighter to come in a pound over on his first trip to the scale at the UFC 138 weigh-ins, but he still wishes people would give the UFC welterweight the benefit of the doubt just this once.

As nutritionist Mike Dolce told MMA Fighting from England on Friday afternoon, Alves had no trouble making the 171-pound limit on his second try, and would have made it the first time except for a calibration issue.

“We had four different scales,” Dolce said. “Every scale had him between [1]69 [pounds] and [1]71 [pounds]. We were happy. It was an easy weight cut, he felt fine, high energy, bouncing around. We got to the weigh-ins and he was [1]72.3 [pounds] with his shorts on. He took off his shorts and he was [1]72 [pounds] on the dot. We were shocked, but hey, no problem. We walked off the scale, we went backstage, there was a sauna there, he sat in the sauna for a few minutes, then he took a pee, then we went back out and made 171 [pounds]. It was literally that simple.”

What’s not so simple, according to Dolce, was dealing with the public backlash that he saw on Twitter once news got out that Alves was over. Though Alves made weight “maybe 40 minutes later,” according to Dolce, by then the story of his initial miss was out and MMA fans seemed to have made up their minds about him.

“And that sucks, because I see how hard this kid’s working,” said Dolce. “He understands that he has to work his way back up the ladder, and he’s doing everything correctly in his personal, emotional, professional, and financial life to make sure he makes a statement and makes a run in the welterweight division. Having something silly like this, to see everyone jump on him, you know, I understand why since he’s had trouble in the past, but come on, the kid came back a half-hour later and made weight with a smile.”

Granted, before Alves hired Dolce as a nutritionist, the Brazilian had a bad habit of coming in over the limit. He came in three pounds heavy for his fight with Matt Hughes at UFC 85, and he clocked in at 171.5 for his rematch with Jon Fitch at UFC 117 — a minor miss that cost him 20% of his fight purse.

Now it seems that fans are so used to Alves missing weight that Friday’s miscue only confirmed what they already believed about him, even though, Dolce said, they weren’t the only ones surprised by the numbers on the scale.

“There was five guys who got to the weigh-ins and stepped on the scale and were overweight and were shocked also. They had to jump in the back and start trying to cut weight on their own. …It’s always our responsibility as professionals to be on weight regardless of the circumstance. But when there’s this many guys this far off, something’s wrong. It’s not just us.”

While several foreign fighters have commented publicly on the difficulty of getting their normal dietary needs met while cutting weight in the U.K., Dolce said he brought “a suitcase full of food” for Alves — about $400 worth for just a few days, in his estimation. Customs restrictions make it impossible to bring fruits or vegetables in to the country, he said, but the team was well prepared and Alves had “an awesome weight cut.”

“He looks great, not sucked down, no dark circles under his eyes,” Dolce said. “It wasn’t a matter of, can he make weight? It was that we stepped on four different scales and I would have to say that our scale is wrong, because the UFC is the official.”

 

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