Author: Chad Dundas

Daniel Cormier vs. Patrick Cummins Is UFC Damage Control at Its Best (and Worst)

One of the great strengths of the UFC has always been its ability to make sharp turns.
Because it operates largely without concern for modern burdens like corporate policy, decorum or—really—any internal rules, the world’s largest MMA…

One of the great strengths of the UFC has always been its ability to make sharp turns.

Because it operates largely without concern for modern burdens like corporate policy, decorum or—really—any internal rules, the world’s largest MMA organization is a sleek and supple machine. Even as it trundles out of adolescence and into its early 20s, the UFC power structure remains agile, mobile and occasionally hostile.

Sometimes that’s a good thing, because when—as UFC president Dana White so often puts it—“bad (stuff) happens” the company is able to react quickly to fix the problem, keep its fans happy and keep the train on its tracks.

When you do 46 (or is it 46,000?) shows per year, that flexibility is a priceless luxury.

Of course, the fact that a multimillion-dollar company like the UFC seems to manage many of its affairs from whim to whim must also be considered one of its gravest flaws.

Take, for example, the co-main event of Saturday’s UFC 170, where undefeated once and future No. 1 contender Daniel Cormier will fight undefeated random dude Patrick Cummins.

Certainly, this is a pairing that highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s emergency matchmaking strategies.

On one hand, it’s sort of fabulous that the UFC was able to respond at lightning speed to replace Rashad Evans when he pulled out just six days ago from his scheduled bout against Cormier. In any other sport, with any other organization, that probably wouldn’t have happened.

Cormier would have been left on the sideline, without an opponent and without a payday—and we know that’s not what he wanted.

Instead, after a brief social media push, the company found Cummins and offered him a chance to make his dreams come true.

A chance, frankly, that he might never have gotten otherwise.

There was no way he was going to turn it down.

The anecdote of Cummins allegedly getting fired from his job at a coffee shop for taking the fateful call from White while he was supposed to be working the drive-through was an instant classic.

A day later, when he came out with his own allegations that he once made Cormier cry during training it may have been hokey, but at least it showed he wasn’t cowed by the sheer size of the opportunity he’d been handed.

Right now, Cummins is every underdog you’ve ever read about, or watched in a 30 for 30 documentary or cheered on at a high school wrestling tournament. If you’re not moved at least a little bit by his story, you’ve likely never enjoyed a sports movie.

Or for that matter, actual sports.

The dark side of it all, obviously, is that there’s no real cogent argument that Cummins deserves to be here. He seems like a reasonably nice, reasonably intelligent guy, but he’s also a light heavyweight prospect with a meager 4-0 record who has been idle for the last nine months.

The combined win-loss total of his four opponents is 10-20-1. Meanwhile, four of Cormier’s last five opponents were Roy Nelson, Frank Mir, Josh Barnett and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva.

Cummins will come into this fight as around an eight-to-one long shot, via Best Fight Odds, while Cormier is as much as a -1200 favorite. In other words, this shapes up as a mismatch of such epic proportions it’s a wonder the UFC was able to get it sanctioned in Las Vegas.

If Cummins manages to put up a better-than-anticipated fight, then maybe we can all shake hands at the end of the night and go to bed with clear consciences.

And if not? If he gets brutalized by Cormier—who seemed legitimately irked by the whole “I made you cry” angle—then Sunday morning we probably all wake up feeling a lot less enthused about Cummins’ Cinderella story.

Eight times out of 10, the UFC deserves to be congratulated for its ability to wade through crisis without getting too badly burned.

This time, if things go poorly, the fight company may have skated away from one mishap only to wander straight into a different kind of controversy.

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UFC Fight Night 36: Lyoto Machida Makes Himself at Home at Middleweight

Middleweight seems to suit Lyoto Machida.
The former light heavyweight champion’s style will probably never be for everyone, but in the wake of his victory over Gegard Mousasi on Saturday, at least we can conclusively classify his move to 185 pou…

Middleweight seems to suit Lyoto Machida.

The former light heavyweight champion’s style will probably never be for everyone, but in the wake of his victory over Gegard Mousasi on Saturday, at least we can conclusively classify his move to 185 pounds as a smashing success.

We suspected as much last October, but Machida’s three-minute, 10-second knockout of Mark Munoz in his middleweight debut was too brief to encourage sweeping pronouncements.

Now we know for sure—he should’ve been here all along.

Just ask Mousasi, who failed somewhat miserably to unravel one of MMA’s most vexing puzzles at UFC Fight Night 36, conceding a one-sided unanimous decision: 49-46, 50-45, 50-45.

Like many before him, he just couldn’t get to Machida with anything more than a few crisp punching combinations and a light helping of leg kicks. In a bout between two strikers both known to err on the side of caution, Machida showed by far the most initiative.

He sashayed easily out of the way of most of Mousasi’s attacks, countering when he needed to while showing off his full arsenal of punches, kicks, knees and elbows.

He hurt Mousasi—himself still ranked in the 205-pound top 10—with a stinging high kick in the second round and even slammed him hard to the mat with a trip takedown in the fourth.

When it was over, Mousasi came away with the same frustrated, empty-handed look we saw for so many years on the faces of The Dragon’s light heavyweight foes.

In other words, this was vintage Machida.

Only better.

His unorthodox, hunt-and-peck striking style still makes him problematic for nearly any adversary. It’s just that through back-to-back wins at middleweight, the hunt has looked more purposeful and the peck more damaging.

The sample size is still admittedly small, but at 185 pounds, we’ve yet to see the kind of lackluster performances Machida sometimes turned in at light heavyweight, where his boundless patience and unshakable discipline occasionally came off as listless.

Middleweight Machida appears to possess a renewed sense of urgency—witness the high kicks, the takedown and submission attempts, even a flying fist to his downed opponent near the end of the fight.

Coupled with the noticeable speed and power advantages he’s enjoyed against Mousasi and Munoz, that spark (if it sticks around) will likely take him far.

It remains to be seen if this pair of wins is sufficient to let him coast into the next available title shot. UFC brass said on Saturday night they’ll wait to see how a scheduled UFC 173 meeting between champion Chris Weidman and current No. 1 contender Vitor Belfort plays out before making any decisions.

Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza also looked pretty good in a unanimous-decision win over Francis Carmont at Fight Night 36, and he’ll be in the mix, too.

The rest of the middleweight top 10 isn’t exactly beating down the door, however, and if it comes to a pick ’em between Machida and Jacare, Machida has seniority in the UFC (if not the weight class) and a higher profile among the pay-per-view buying public.

That could make the choice pretty easy for matchmakers.

It would be inaccurate to say the move to 185 pounds has cured what ailed Machida at light heavyweight, where he lost the title and went 1-3 during 2010-11 before righting the ship.

He’s still the same guy, with the same methodology. At middleweight, though, the formula is producing more encouraging (not to mention more crowd-pleasing) results.

Already 35 years old, the only shame might be that he didn’t get there sooner.

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UFC Fight Night 36: Can Jacare Souza Leapfrog Lyoto Machida in MW Arms Race?

It would certainly be no surprise if Lyoto Machida emerged from UFC Fight Night 36 with the next available middleweight title shot sewn up.
In fact, if you’re the kind of person who only reads the headlines, you might think it’s already sor…

It would certainly be no surprise if Lyoto Machida emerged from UFC Fight Night 36 with the next available middleweight title shot sewn up.

In fact, if you’re the kind of person who only reads the headlines, you might think it’s already sort of a done deal.

So long as Machida defeats Gegard Mousasi in Saturday night’s main event, he’ll likely get the nod over the winner of the evening’s dueling 185-pound contender battle between Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Francis Carmont.

Right?

Well, maybe.

That was certainly the predominant takeaway from Dana White’s appearance on Fox Sports 1 earlier this week, when the UFC president mentioned Machida as the likely candidate during a wide-ranging eight-minute interview with host Charissa Thompson.

“Yes,” White said at one point, “if Machida wins, he could possibly be next in line for a title shot.”

Makes sense. Machida certainly has the highest profile among the current crop of middleweight contenders, all of whom have had a hard time getting a word in edgewise as Chris Weidman, Anderson Silva and Vitor Belfort have dominated the discussion during the last six months.

Despite the fact he’s got just a single win in the Octagon at 185 pounds, Machida is a former light heavyweight champion, a popular figure in the UFC landscape and a known commodity for matchmakers.

Guy once had an entire era named after him, for Pete’s sake.

Except.

Except.

If you actually listen to what White said during that much-publicized television appearance, it makes the division sound a lot more wide open than all that.

Focus a bit more on the “ifs” and “possiblys” during his 50-second answer to Thompson’s question on the subject and you come away feeling like Jacare Souza has just as good a chance to end up as the next opponent for the Belfort-Weidman winner.

Certainly, the lion’s share of the story will be told this weekend, when both Machida and Souza enter their bouts as significant favorites, via Best Fight Odds.

If Machida falters against Mousasi, or even wins via the kind of tepid, unsatisfying decision that was often his calling card at 205 pounds, the No. 1 contender spot could be there for the taking.

And Jacare could be just the man to grab it.

You can’t argue with much about Souza’s resume. The five-time Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion flashed moments of greatness throughout his eight-fight run through Strikeforce, but really seemed to hit his stride as a mixed martial artist after coming to the UFC last May.

He’s looked good—borderline great—in crafting back-to-back victories over Chris Camozzi and Yushin Okami. We’ve always known Souza was among the most decorated submission grapplers in the sport, but it was the Okami victory five months ago that served as his proper coming out party in the Octagon.

In that bout, Souza overwhelmed the perennial contender on the feet—kicks, winging punches, even a standing elbow—before dropping him with an overhand right and swarming until the referee stepped in.

If you didn’t know before, it was the sort of showing that proved Souza could be a problem for anyone in his weight class. Even at 34 years old, his athleticism allows him to look leaps and bounds better each time we see him, transforming himself bit by bit from a pure grappler into a competent, even dangerous striker as well.

Moreover, he’s been something Machida can’t always boast—exciting.

We all know that carries more weight in this sport than it probably should.

Against Carmont, Souza will get a stiff test of most of his faculties, including his ability to entertain the masses. Through six consecutive wins in the UFC (11 straight overall) Carmont has established a reputation as a man who wins through inactivity more than anything else.

He’s got stoppage wins over Karlos Vemola and Magnus Cedenblad, but has otherwise wrestled his way to the bulk of his UFC wins.

It’s the style more than the substance of Carmont’s attack that means nobody is mentioning him alongside Machida and Souza as a potential immediate title contender. That’s probably not fair, but it’s how our system currently works.

Because of that style—and because this fight is in Brazil—Souza will have considerable support, both from the live crowd and the UFC faithful watching at home.

If he can do something impressive against the decision-prone Carmont—a highlight submission or bonus-worthy knockout—then we shouldn’t take for granted that it’ll be Machida fighting for the title later this year.

Instead, it could be Souza grabbing all the headlines.

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Jessica Eye’s Biggest Mistake Wasn’t Marijuana, It Was Not Coming Clean

In retrospect, perhaps we should’ve known things weren’t going to end well for Jessica Eye when she deleted her Twitter account.
Eye abandoned the social media service on Monday after vehemently denying reports that she’d tested posit…

In retrospect, perhaps we should’ve known things weren’t going to end well for Jessica Eye when she deleted her Twitter account.

Eye abandoned the social media service on Monday after vehemently denying reports that she’d tested positive for marijuana at last October’s UFC 166 and amid heated exchanges with fans and the reporter who broke the news.

“Hope we get to meet one day soon so I can personally tell you how I feel,” the UFC women’s bantamweight fighter wrote to Bloody Elbow’s Brent Brookhouse by way of saying goodbye.

At the time it seemed plausible that Eye simply didn’t want to deal with the public criticism as she prepares to fight Alexis Davis at UFC 170 on Feb. 22.

Now that we know the truth, her withdrawal strikes a different tone.

Maybe it wasn’t just the tactless retreat of a fighter trying to get her game face on but, rather, a speedy getaway.

On Monday afternoon, Damon Martin of Fox Sports confirmed Brookhouse’s story that Eye’s positive test had indeed been for marijuana and that she was notified of it by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation in late November.

Further, Martin reported that on Jan. 15 Eye signed and returned a document acknowledging her year-long probationary suspension and agreeing to pay a $1,875 fine—and that she’d already made the first of eight monthly installments.

In other words (and despite earlier reports from Bleacher Report’s Jeremy Botter that she had tested positive for blood thinners) there’s really no way Eye could’ve been confused about her own situation when she went after Brookhouse on Twitter. She couldn’t have been uninformed last week when she told Fox Sports she planned to appeal the TDLR’s decision to strip her of her four-month-old win over Sarah Kaufman.

Worse yet, she must’ve known exactly what she was doing on Monday when she went on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour and tried to make the whole thing sound like a clerical error.

“I don’t want to say anything for anyone to use against me, but there were some mistakes that I made on my behalf that I didn‘t give enough knowledge (to the commission) ahead of time…,” Eye said. “I’m going to continue to push forward and just not let anything like this ever happen again, or ever leave any kind of allegations out there to be kind of put out there about me.”

We don’t know why Eye said these things—so many words, such little substance—instead of just giving it to us straight: She smoked weed, she got caught, end of story.

Or at least, that’s what we assume now is the real story and if the truth is any different, well, she should’ve told us that, too.

Maybe she was embarrassed, or got some bad advice from her friends or training partners, or just didn’t think the much-maligned “MMA media” was going to find out the truth.

Whatever her reasons, rather than admit what’d she’d done, Eye committed the cardinal sin of public relations. She engaged in a cover-up that was far worse than the actual crime.

Had she just come clean and admitted that she’d tested positive for marijuana when the news broke last week, we probably wouldn’t still be talking about it today.

Instead, Eye put on a clinic in how to make a bad situation even more damaging.

When we think of her now, the first thing we’ll all remember about her is that time she lied to us, and that’s something no public figure wants.

It’s simultaneously bizarre and perfectly fitting that in 2014—nearly 10 years after we all trumpeted the sport’s entry into the mainstream—MMA fighters aren’t getting better public relations advice.

We can only assume that Eye didn’t have a professional to advise her in this situation. Surely, all of this could’ve been prevented had there only been a publicist around to tell Eye not to fudge it.

Or to tell her not to publicly threaten the reporter who broke the story.

Or not to swear up a blue streak on her Twitter before dramatically announcing her departure.

Should Eye have had the common sense not to lead a campaign of double-speak and misinformation through the press during the past few days? Sure, probably, but to the extent media sensitivity is part of her job description, it’s certainly ancillary to striking, grappling and Octagon control. She should have people for that.

We must assume she couldn‘t afford proper representation—a sad commentary on our sport at large, and a larger discussion best left for another day—and that she was on her own. 

Left to her own devices, she couldn’t have known how badly it would look for her after Fox Sports published scans of the actual TDLR documents, complete with her signature. She couldn‘t have had the foresight to know that by lying she was just going to make things worse for herself when she shows up in Las Vegas next week to fight Davis.

Assuming she’ll be licensed and cleared to compete.

Now, there will only be more questions. It will take far longer for her to battle her way out from under this cloud—pun fully intended.

Now, she’ll always be lumped in with Nick Diaz as the two fighters who introduced the word “cannabinoids” to our daily lexicon.

Now, she’ll have to dodge far more jokes and uncomfortable encounters than if she’d just stayed on Twitter and told us the truth.

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UFC’s Superfight Craze Doesn’t Stay ‘Dead’ for Long

To understand the depth of MMA’s current obsession with interdivisional superfights, it’s important to remember that Johny Hendricks isn’t even UFC welterweight champion yet.
Hendricks still has to fight Robbie Lawler at UFC 171 in mi…

To understand the depth of MMA’s current obsession with interdivisional superfights, it’s important to remember that Johny Hendricks isn’t even UFC welterweight champion yet.

Hendricks still has to fight Robbie Lawler at UFC 171 in mid-March before we find out who will fill Georges St-Pierre’s shoes as the company’s 170-pound champion.

Yet, a Google search for Hendricks’ name late last week—nearly 40 days before that bout is scheduled to happen—elicited as its top news story a headline from Yahoo Sports asking: (Is) UFC’s Johny Hendricks Targeting Chris Weidman?

Answer: Yes…sort of.

Hendricks is targeting Weidman in the same way many of us “target” going back to school to finish up that degree, quitting smoking or dropping those pesky 20 extra pounds.

“That would be great, wouldn’t it?” says Hendricks, once you follow the daisy chain back to his original comments on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour (h/t MMA Fighting). “I want to win (the title), defend it, do whatever the UFC wants me to do…and say, hey, can I move up to 185?”

So it has come to this: A guy who is not yet the champion of his own weight class is daydreaming about a future superfight against a man who last week celebrated his own seven-month anniversary as UFC middleweight titlist.

How did we ever get here?

Bit by bit, it seems.

You’ll recall that 2013 was supposed to be the year of the superfight in the UFC. It fizzled in large part due to the handiwork of Hendricks and Weidman, as well as a rash of injuries among the company’s reigning champions.

It might have been tempting to think all this pie-in-the-sky talk of weight-mixing megafights was over and done last November, when UFC president Dana White officially declared longstanding rumors of a meeting between St-Pierre and Anderson Silva “dead,” via MMA Fighting.

Alas, just three months later, superfights are back in vogue.

Or maybe they never really went out of fashion.

Our dreams of St-Pierre vs. Silva begot dreams of Silva vs. Jon Jones and, eventually, the idea of Jones at heavyweight. Plans to have Anthony Pettis drop to featherweight last December were scrapped and replaced by more recent notions of Jose Aldo moving up to lightweight.

It’s been a whirlwind, one that even swept level-headed guys like Hendricks and Weidman into answering questions about their long-term futures before they’ve even locked down the here and now.

For his part, Weidman has said he wouldn’t mind moving up to fight Jones at 205 pounds, per Steph Daniels of Bloody Elbow. Over the weekend, Jones responded on AXS TV’s Inside MMA (h/t MMA Fighting), saying the new middleweight champ should slow his roll and concentrate on beating the top competition in his own division first.

Besides, Jones says he’s eyeing a bout with heavyweight champ Cain Velasquez.

Starting to get the picture? These days it seems like everybody wants a superfight.

Or at least they want to talk about it.

I have to admit that all this clear-eyed, full-hearted dreaming feels pretty out of character for this sport.

Despite a generalized reputation for cynicism, MMA fans are apparently willing to indulge nearly endless superfight chatter. It’s a fun topic that is perfect for empty, consequence-free speculation. With nearly every MMA website meticulously curating its own pound-for-pound list—and UFC brass always up for adding their two cents—it’s natural to try to conjure some practical applications.

For journalists, it’s an easy question to have at the ready, and for fighters, it’s an even easier one to answer. Sure, why not say your goal is to be regarded as the best in the world? Why not say you’re out to build a resume so flawless that onlookers have no choice but to clamor for you to fight the rest of MMA’s pound-for-pound greats?

Why not imply that—cough, while you’re definitely not overlooking your next opponent, cough—in a year or three, you’d definitely be interested in fighting the champ from the next weight class up?

It’s not like anybody’s actually going to hold you to it.

Besides, if all that’s not part of the plan, you’re probably in the wrong line of work.

If the last year has taught us anything, however, it’s that superfights are a lot easier to plan than they are to finish. Despite the tireless talk and the best intentions of fantasy matchmakers everywhere, we still have yet to see an honest-to-goodness superfight come to fruition inside the Octagon.

The latest incarnation of Aldo vs. Pettis is the closest we’ve come, and even it remains fraught with uncertainty.

Assuming it happens, then perhaps 2014 will succeed where 2013 failed. Perhaps the UFC was merely off by a year with its marketing strategy.

Perhaps this year will serve up a little less talk about superfights and a few more actual superfights.

Who knows—maybe Hendricks will even get his chance to move up to 185 pounds to fight Weidman.

That is, unless Weidman has already gone to light heavyweight.

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Brock Lesnar Call-out Shows Alistair Overeem Still Not in Tune with UFC Audience

We’ve known for years that Alistair Overeem marches to the beat of his own electronic dance music.
For a dozen fights immediately preceding his arrival in the UFC, he walked a relatively solitary path, absconding with the Strikeforce heavyweight …

We’ve known for years that Alistair Overeem marches to the beat of his own electronic dance music.

For a dozen fights immediately preceding his arrival in the UFC, he walked a relatively solitary path, absconding with the Strikeforce heavyweight title to flit between promotions in Europe and Asia.

At times he appeared aloof—as if he could take or leave his MMA career—mixing in the occasional kickboxing tourney and always being more concerned with the bottom line than his place in the sport.

Even now that he’s an Octagon mainstay, Overeem doesn’t seem to get it.

Case in point: Saturday night’s UFC 169, where he capped an important victory over Frank Mir by calling out a 36-year-old professional wrestler he personally battered into retirement two years ago.

“I heard there’s word that Brock Lesnar is coming back to the UFC,” Overeem told Joe Rogan inside the cage, via Yahoo Sports. “Well, I’ll be here waiting for him.”

So, yeah, that was strange.

Though he tried to explain himself during an appearance on Monday’s episode of The MMA Hour (h/t MMA Fighting), the Lesnar call-out struck a discordant note with onlookers. It was nonsensical, maybe even a bit mean-spirited and weirdly typical from a guy who’s always insisted on plotting his own unorthodox course.

Above all else, it was a reminder that Overeem still isn’t on the same page with the rest of the sport.

It’s telling that, after earning his first win in the Octagon since 2011, his first thought wasn’t to say he was coming for UFC champion Cain Velasquez.

He didn’t think to call out former titlist Junior dos Santos, whom Overeem was scheduled to fight at UFC 160 before a positive drug test put him on ice.

He didn’t even invoke the names Fabricio Werdum or Travis Browne, who have fought him before and will battle each other for No. 1 contender status in April.

No, his first thought was to passively challenge a guy who doesn’t work for the company to a fight that will never happen. A fight that—even if the seas did part for Lesnar’s return—would make them both a few bucks but would do nothing for “The Reem’s” stature in the heavyweight division.

It was the kind of thing that could only stem from a desire to mix an easy victory with an enormous payday, and Dana White squelched it immediately at the post-fight press conference.

“Brock Lesnar is not coming back,” White said, via Fox Sports. “Brock Lesnar is not fighting.”

Call it the latest piece of evidence that Overeem isn’t exactly in tune with the UFC, either.

The organization has bent over backward to fashion him into a legitimate, relevant No. 1 contender, giving him second, third and fourth chances after his positive PEDs test and back-to-back losses.

A fighter with less upside—especially one earning an estimated $285,000 to $400,000 per fight—might have found himself out of work a while ago. Yet the fight company still gives the impression that it would like nothing more than for Overeem to slug his way back into contention.

With each passing performance, however, it appears like the fearsome competitor who won 11 fights in a row from 2007-2011 might not be coming back.

White deemed Saturday’s wipeout of Mir “crappy” in an interview with Fox Sports 1 (via Bloody Elbow), and as Overeem’s Herculean physique has faded in the wake of his bust for elevated levels of testosterone, so too has his killer instinct.

At 33 years old, the picture of Overeem today may be of a once-terrifying heavyweight in decline.

Fans and UFC brass would no doubt like to see him fully engaged in the process, reverting to previous form and inflicting remorseless violence on the competition. Instead he’s slumping his way to victories over fading stars like Mir and calling out guys who haven’t been active MMA fighters since the end of 2011.

His next fight will be a big one and likely designed to get him back in the thick of the title picture—think JDS or Stipe Miocic as an opponent.

Like the Mir bout, it will also be a must-win.

If Overeem means to replant his flag among the heavyweight elite, he’ll need to show the promotion he still has the skills to do impressive things to the top contenders.

To win back the fans, he’ll have to show them that his head is still in the game.

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