Best part of it being my last day contributing to this website? Being able to blatantly violate a CagePotato ban without fearing any reprisals from the powers that be. Boom, you guys. Makes me feel a little bit like Tito Ortiz, to tell you the truth. Worst part of it being my last day contributing to this website? That’s probably the last time I’ll ever get to use the word bitch in a headline. My new employer has already laid down the law in terms of the swears, even the minor league ones. That’s the bad news. The good news, at least for you, is this: My understanding is that (drum roll, please) our friend ReX13 has agreed to step in to replace me as a daily contributor to this site. I know he’ll do a great job.
I have to say I’m going to miss you dudes. Even you, trolls and Russian computer spam commenters. But before we get all weepy and start slapping each other on the back while exchanging awkward bro grabs, keep in mind that I still should be pretty easy to find. You know, if you feel like it. Professionally and personally, I’m going to miss the spirited back-and-forth that goes on both out front and behind the scenes at this website. I’m going to miss the guys I work with who – regardless of what some of you think – are all really cool dudes. I’m even going to miss getting my ass handed to me in the comments section now and then. Nah, jokes. I’m actually not going to miss that at all.
Best part of it being my last day contributing to this website? Being able to blatantly violate a CagePotato ban without fearing any reprisals from the powers that be. Boom, you guys. Makes me feel a little bit like Tito Ortiz, to tell you the truth. Worst part of it being my last day contributing to this website? That’s probably the last time I’ll ever get to use the word bitch in a headline. My new employer has already laid down the law in terms of the swears, even the minor league ones. That’s the bad news. The good news, at least for you, is this: My understanding is that (drum roll, please) our friend ReX13 has agreed to step in to replace me as a daily contributor to this site. I know he’ll do a great job.
I have to say I’m going to miss you dudes. Even you, trolls and Russian computer spam commenters. But before we get all weepy and start slapping each other on the back while exchanging awkward bro grabs, keep in mind that I still should be pretty easy to find. You know, if you feel like it. Professionally and personally, I’m going to miss the spirited back-and-forth that goes on both out front and behind the scenes at this website. I’m going to miss the guys I work with who – regardless of what some of you think – are all really cool dudes. I’m even going to miss getting my ass handed to me in the comments section now and then. Nah, jokes. I’m actually not going to miss that at all.
Above all else, the things I think I’m going to miss most are pissing you off with my politics, really pissing you off with my meaningless pound-for-pound rankings and really, really pissing you off by not being Ben Fowlkes. That stuff was fun and I’ll think on it often. It’s been just a little more than a year since I started working at the Potato, but our lasting friendships and the damage I’ve done to my personal credibility make it seem much, much longer than that.
My advice moving forward? Be kind to ReXy. And Mike. And Chris and Seth and Jason. And even BG. This shit ain’t as easy as it looks and all those guys work harder than you know trying to keep you entertained, even though many of you appear not to want to be entertained at all. At its best, I think this website fills a valuable niche in our dark little corner of the web. Somebody’s got to point out when the people in this industry say ridiculous shit, wear ridiculous T-shirts and marry ridiculous porn stars. That somebody, as far as I’m concerned is CagePotato and I hope it continues to fill that need long after we’ve all grown up and taken part time jobs at major corporations.
Anyway, thanks for being so good to me, y’all. I’m gone.
(Guess if they’re gonna let *somebody* fight Bisping, it might as well be somebody we like.)
When last we heard from Tim Kennedy, he’d just completed the MMA equivalent of sinking a two-foot putt by choking out Melvin Manhoef in Strikeforce, then went public with his lament that he hadn’t been the one to administer an in-home eye exam to Osama bin Laden. Y’all know we’ve always liked Kennedy. Seems like a super cool dude and admittedly there’s something fascinating about a guy whose typical day might just as easily include either choking out a Dutch-Surinamese kickboxer or smoking the world’s top terrorist. Give or take.
It’s exactly that admiration that led us to be a bit disappointed this week when we heard about Kennedy offering to fight Michael Bisping over at MMA Weekly. Calling out Bisping is one of the more played-out moves a well-known middleweight can make, after all. When we saw Kennedy saying it, we assumed it was just another case of a guy trying to make his bones off Bisping’s inflated reputation and general overratedness. Truthfully, there probably is some of that at work here. But then we started digging into Kennedy’s quotes and realized that A) He’s offering to fight “The Count” basically for free (PR bump notwithstanding) and B) He seems driven to do it out of moral obligation, more than anything else. As far as we’re concerned that – as long as he’s not just bullshitting us – is pretty cool.
(Guess if they’re gonna let *somebody* fight Bisping, it might as well be somebody we like.)
When last we heard from Tim Kennedy, he’d just completed the MMA equivalent of sinking a two-foot putt by choking out Melvin Manhoef in Strikeforce, then went public with his lament that he hadn’t been the one to administer an in-home eye exam to Osama bin Laden. Y’all know we’ve always liked Kennedy. Seems like a super cool dude and admittedly there’s something fascinating about a guy whose typical day might just as easily include either choking out a Dutch-Surinamese kickboxer or smoking the world’s top terrorist. Give or take.
It’s exactly that admiration that led us to be a bit disappointed this week when we heard about Kennedy offering to fight Michael Bisping over at MMA Weekly. Calling out Bisping is one of the more played-out moves a well-known middleweight can make, after all. When we saw Kennedy saying it, we assumed it was just another case of a guy trying to make his bones off Bisping’s inflated reputation and general overratedness. Truthfully, there probably is some of that at work here. But then we started digging into Kennedy’s quotes and realized that A) He’s offering to fight “The Count” basically for free (PR bump notwithstanding) and B) He seems driven to do it out of moral obligation, more than anything else. As far as we’re concerned that – as long as he’s not just bullshitting us – is pretty cool.
Kennedy, it turns out, is still kind of pissed about Bisping’s tainted win over friend and Ranger-Up stablemate Jorge Rivera back at UFC 127. He and the Brit have already had words about it on Twitter – yawn – and now that Chael Sonnen has been remanded to purgatory for his all-around untrustworthiness, Kennedy is offering to take his place in any sort of athletic endeavor against Bisping. Preferably one that involves punching him in the face.
“I haven’t lost sight of where I am and who I’m looking at realistically in Strikeforce,” Kenneday says. “I knew that Chael (Sonnen) was going to be in a bad position, and if Chael and Bisping are kind of the No. 1 and 2 guys, and Chael is out, I’ll fight the No. 2 guy in a heartbeat. I know they don’t have anybody lined up for him, so I’ll step up to the plate.”
Now, all that seems like standard boilerplate call-out material, but then Kennedy launches into a stirring indictment of the illegal knee Bisping landed en route to his victory over Rivera and essentially makes the case that he’ll fight the former “TUF” winner to strike a blow for the powers of good and decency against cheaters, liars, swindlers, hustlers, backbiters and evil-doers everywhere.
“I don’t like trash talking, but I hate people that don’t fight fair,” he says. “I hate cheaters. I hate people that use steroids. I hate people that hide their urine samples. I hate people that grease their bodies. I hate people that manipulate judges. I hate it all. Just go out there and fight. It disrespects everything this sport is about …
“He walks away with a win, a TKO, from blasting the dude in the face, illegally. Just drives me insane, like it’s the worse (sic) thing that can happen in the sport. As a fellow athlete, I think somebody has to hold him responsible for that … If the promotion won’t do it, let’s let the other athletes do it.”
In our minds eye, we imagine Kennedy delivering these words from the back of a truck on a makeshift airfield, surrounded by a ragtag band of misfits, as smoke swirls around him and some emotive music plays in the background. You know, like Bill Pullman in Independence Day. Unfortunately, it probably didn’t go down that way, but that doesn’t stop Kennedy from saying if he got to fight Bisping, he’d donate his entire purse to charity.
“Without a moment’s hesitation,” he says. “I love fighting, I love this sport, I love the competition of fighting, and I’m still a military guy through and through. I don’t fight for the money. So my fight purse I would give to a military-based non-profit. I have some in mind. I’m waiting for this fight to happen before I said who it was, but they already know who it would be.”
So, in summation, does calling out Michael Bisping make you look like a guy who’s looking for a winnable fight that will further your career? Yeah, it does. But if you’re absolutely 100 percent committed to calling out Michael Bisping, we guess, this is the way to do it.
(Yes, at this point they are in fact just fucking with us.)
Man, it’s like the Shaw family doesn’t even check with each other anymore before they go to the media and just start saying stuff. Remember it was less than two weeks ago that Gary Shaw told us that his longtime crush object Kimbo Slice would probably not be entering the world of boxing after finding out “how hard it is to be a boxer.” Well, on Tuesday, not 15 days later, Jared Shaw – Shaw Trek the Next Generation, if you will – made an appearance on MMA Weekly radio and immediately started issuing “open challenges” on behalf of one Kevin Ferguson, professional boxer.
Specifically, Shaw invited NFL player Ray Edwards to meet Slice in a boxing match. Edwards, a defensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, will make his own professional boxing debut this Friday at a casino in the Gopher State, against an as-yet unnamed opponent. So that sounds just super. Shaw’s comments and some of Edwards’ own ridiculousness are after the jump …
(Yes, at this point they are in fact just fucking with us.)
Man, it’s like the Shaw family doesn’t even check with each other anymore before they go to the media and just start saying stuff. Remember it was less than two weeks ago that Gary Shaw told us that his longtime crush object Kimbo Slice would probably not be entering the world of boxing after finding out “how hard it is to be a boxer.” Well, on Tuesday, not 15 days later, Jared Shaw – Shaw Trek the Next Generation, if you will – made an appearance on MMA Weekly radio and immediately started issuing “open challenges” on behalf of one Kevin Ferguson, professional boxer.
Specifically, Shaw invited NFL player Ray Edwards to meet Slice in a boxing match. Edwards, a defensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, will make his own professional boxing debut this Friday at a casino in the Gopher State, against an as-yet unnamed opponent. So that sounds just super. Shaw’s comments and some of Edwards’ own ridiculousness are after the jump …
“That fight I will deliver,” Shaw declared. “If Ray Edwards wants to step up and fight Kimbo Slice I will deliver that to the public. There’s two guys that come from athletic backgrounds, that haven’t been in the ring that many times, so let’s see two big boys bang it out. If Ray Edwards thinks he’s a great boxer, then maybe he thinks he can go through Kevin Ferguson very quickly.”
You’ll remember that even before Gary Shaw pronounced Slice’s pugilistic career DOA earlier this month, we quoted the dude as far back as last Thanksgiving essentially sounding pretty disgusted with Kimbo’s work habits. At the time, the street brawler-turned-MMA-failure-turned … something-or-other had ditched training camp to head back to Miami for the holidays, and Shaw didn’t seem particularly hopeful that he’d return. As of a couple of weeks ago, it sounded like his fears had been confirmed.
Not so, says Jared Shaw, who told MMA Weekly that Slice just wanted to take some time off to film a movie, that he’s been staying in shape and that he still wants to fight. At least, J-Shaw thinks he still wants to fight.
“I’m always in contact with Kimbo and his camp, and they’re great,” Jared Shaw said. “Kimbo’s enjoying his life post a lot of training years. The first time out in boxing it just wasn’t the right timing, he had some aches, he wanted to go shoot a film, ‘The Scorpion King,’ and we just left it open ended. I have good feelings that Kimbo Slice still wants to make an impact in the fight game. However, he can define his own impact.”
That brings us to Edwards, who declared early on in the NFL lockout that he wasn’t going to “wait around” for the owners and the players’ union to figure out how to divvy up the billions. Instead, he decided to launch a fly-by-night fighting career. Because, you know, why wouldn’t you risk a potential seven-figure football contract by taking two-bit boxing matches in Podunk casinos in places like Hinckley, Minn?
That’s where Edwards will fight this weekend: The Grand Casino in Hinckley. Not exactly the MGM Grand, eh? Anyway, a couple of months ago Edwards went on ESPN TV and made a bunch of statements so crazy you might’ve thought he was trying to be an honorary member of the Shaw family, including but not limited to alleging his boxing trainers think he has the potential be the best heavyweight ever. Not just the best right now, mind you, not just the best in the comparatively shitty and shallow 2011 heavyweight division, but the best ever.
More recently, he told the Star Tribune newspaper that he’s inked a two-fight deal with the above mentioned casino and that he could fight again in June if the NFL’s labor dispute is still raging. That fight – if Jared Shaw has his way – could conceivably be against Slice.
First though, maybe Edwards should just find out who he’s fighting on Friday.
(“The fact you would even bring Barthelme into this discussion tells me everything I need to know about your view of so-called postmodern literature, Mir. Seriously, grad school is over, man.”)
We’re still 10 days out from the scheduled release of Brock Lesnar’s autobiography and – if you’re like us – it’s getting hard to wait, since you already expunged your spring reading list by powering through “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and “The Emperor of All Maladies” over the weekend. What can you say? You are a fucking voracious reader. Luckily for you, the fine folks at literary giant Harper Collins have served up a fairly lengthy excerpt from the former UFC heavyweight champion’s upcoming opus “Death Clutch” to keep you sated until the actual publication date.
Some of the middle-aged ladies who work at HC have even been tweeting links to the outtakes from Lesnar’s book – something we bet they never thought they’d be doing when they got into publishing – and so we checked it out. Oddly, we were sort of delighted with what we found. Firstly, it turns out that Lesnar finds a way to dis Frank Mir in the book’s very first paragraph. We read that and started thinking, ‘OK Brock, you have our attention.’ Look for Mir to fire back in his upcoming memoir “Confessions of a Strip Club Bouncer.” After the jump however, Lesnar gets the first word …
(“The fact you would even bring Barthelme into this discussion tells me everything I need to know about your view of so-called postmodern literature, Mir. Seriously, grad school is over, man.”)
We’re still 10 days out from the scheduled release of Brock Lesnar’s autobiography and – if you’re like us – it’s getting hard to wait, since you already expunged your spring reading list by powering through “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and “The Emperor of All Maladies” over the weekend. What can you say? You are a fucking voracious reader. Luckily for you, the fine folks at literary giant Harper Collins have served up a fairly lengthy excerpt from the former UFC heavyweight champion’s upcoming opus “Death Clutch” to keep you sated until the actual publication date.
Some of the middle-aged ladies who work at HC have even been tweeting links to the outtakes from Lesnar’s book – something we bet they never thought they’d be doing when they got into publishing – and so we checked it out. Oddly, we were sort of delighted with what we found. Firstly, it turns out that Lesnar finds a way to dis Frank Mir in the book’s very first paragraph. We read that and started thinking, ‘OK Brock, you have our attention.’ Look for Mir to fire back in his upcoming memoir “Confessions of a Strip Club Bouncer.” After the jump however, Lesnar gets the first word …
“I’m supposed to be better than that,” Lesnar writes (through ghostwriter Paul Heyman) on the topic of his loss to Mir at UFC 81. “I handed this guy, who will never be half the man I am, a victory he didn’t deserve.”
Now see, that’s the kind of stuff that we can imagine coming out of Lesnar’s mouth pretty much word-for-word during whatever assumedly extensive interviews he conducted with Heyman to enable the former professional wrestling promoter to write this book. It also seems like Paul E. is pretty much following the celebrity autobiography script of starting with a dramatic dark moment that will hook the audience from the first line. That way you can build them back up for the triumph at the end, which we assume involves Lesnar battling back from diverticulitis to defeat Shane Carwin at UFC 116. Not to spoil it for you.
On the topic of his stomach ailment, the book provides a description we’re just as certain Lesnar did not come up with himself. It does sound pretty bad though, and is made all the more poignant since we know the big fella is going through it all over again right now. No wonder the dude couldn’t properly train for Junior dos Santos. Check out this description of the pain:
“It felt like I had taken a shotgun blast to the stomach,” Lesnar writes, “and then someone poured in some salt and Tabasco and stirred it all up with a nasty pitchfork.”
Yuck.
The excerpt further delves into Lesnar’s ill-fated trip to Canada, where it says he fell sick during a family vacation and things got so bad he had to be carried to the car by his brother. Dear God. Lesnar has a brother? And he can carry Brock? Well, shit, now we gotta read this.
For more Lesnar-fied goodness, we suggest you do yourself a favor and follow that link to the entire excerpt. Plus we like to think some eyebrows will be raised over at the Harper Collins IT department when they see a spike in their referrals from a site called CagePotato.com. Who knows, maybe they’ll even reach out to us and we can finally pitch that novel we’ve been working on for years: It’s a picaresque set in Argentina during the turbulent 1960s. A rebellious giant falls in love with a clubfooted woman and together they forge an unlikely … ah, forget it … you think it’s stupid. No, really, forget we said anything. We were just joking. Seriously guys, you couldn’t tell we were just joking? A novel? Come on, you know us better than that …
Any time two heavyweights with a history of testing positive get into a bi-lingual war of words, you can book us for a ringside seat. Such was the case this week when Josh Barnett and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva launched into the now nearly obligatory online fighter beef session. Silva got the ball rolling during an interview with Sherdog, wherein (apparently apropos of nothing) he lashed out at Barnett for – among other things – ignoring Brazilian fighters on elevators. So … that was weird.
If we had to guess, we’d say Bigfoot is feeling a little lonely and cranky after being kind of overlooked in all the hype, speculation and gratuitous match-up fantasizing that’s gone on since the UFC-Strikeforce merger. After all, Bigfoot became the latest dude to slay the unslayable Fedor Emelianenko back in February. You’d think that was worth something, right? And then pictures of Barnett exchanging bro-grabs with Dana White show up on the Internet? Why, that’d be enough to set any giant’s blood to a boilin’. His attacks, along with Barnett’s response are after the jump.
(Hell in the ring, silent on elevators.)
Any time two heavyweights with a history of testing positive get into a bi-lingual war of words, you can book us for a ringside seat. Such was the case this week when Josh Barnett and Antonio “Bigfoot” Silva launched into the now nearly obligatory online fighter beef session. Silva got the ball rolling during an interview with Sherdog, wherein (apparently apropos of nothing) he lashed out at Barnett for – among other things – ignoring Brazilian fighters on elevators. So … that was weird.
If we had to guess, we’d say Bigfoot is feeling a little lonely and cranky after being kind of overlooked in all the hype, speculation and gratuitous match-up fantasizing that’s gone on since the UFC-Strikeforce merger. After all, Bigfoot became the latest dude to slay the unslayable Fedor Emelianenko back in February. You’d think that was worth something, right? And then pictures of Barnett exchanging bro-grabs with Dana White show up on the Internet? Why, that’d be enough to set any giant’s blood to a boilin’. His attacks, along with Barnett’s response are after the jump.
“I’ve been fighting since 2004 and have never had any issues with another athlete, even the most stuck-up,” Silva told the Dog. “Friendship, for me, is everything, but Josh is a weird guy, a guy who doesn’t greet you when you enter the elevator, doesn’t even say ‘good morning.’ It’s how he treats Brazilian fighters especially. It’s the same thing with (Barnett and) Werdum …
“But when (Barnett) sees Fedor, Dana White or (Lorenzo) Fertitta, he runs to them and stays by their side all the time. He makes me sick. He’s the classic kiss-ass, a rude man … I really want to face Barnett and I’ve already said I consider him a filthy person, even though he is a great fighter, and that I’ll beat him up and close both of his eyes.”
Let’s just say for the record, if Barnett has been trying to be a kiss-ass, he’s been doing a pretty shitty job of it for the last, oh, nine years or so. More than a brownnoser, we’d describe Barnett as straight-up apathetic about his MMA career more often than not. Still, the silver-tongued Americano isn’t going to take this lying down. He quickly issued a retort via Twitter, simultaneously looking to defend himself and shore up his street cred on the Brazilian tip:
“Bigfoot sure has a lot of shit to talk it would seem,” he tweeted, “(He) thinks I got beef w/ Brazil. Go ask Babalu, Rizzo, Vitor, Feijao, Romulo, JZ (about that) …”
Yeah, not sure what Silva was looking to accomplish here, except to bait Barnett into a semi-high-profile grudge match. Unfortunately, both guys are on opposite sides of the mythical Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix (they’re still doing that, right?). So, assuming that tournament is not scrapped somewhere down the road by Our Octagon Overlords, the only way said grudge match would happen would be in the final.
(Does this look like a dude who should be deprived of what he wants? Pic: Sherdog)
As avid readers of our keen, in-depth statistical analysis, we know that you know that we know that Jake Ellenberger is currently riding a four-fight win-streak in the UFC. After going to Toronto and knocking out short-notice opponent Sean Pierson (just like we told you he would) last month Ellenberger remains undefeated since his split decision loss to Carlos Condit in his Octagon debut (a fight he appeared to be on his way to winning before gassing out) way back in September, 2009. Now that he’s home in Nebraska rehabbing the hand he broke on Pierson’s face, Ellenberger is going back to basics, returning to a strategy he adopted some months ago: Trying to trash-talk his way into a fight with Jake Shields.
Except here’s the difference: If not for that original loss to Condit at UFN 19, people might just be talking about a 5-0 (in the UFC) Jake Ellenberger as a potential top candidate to get a welterweight title shot one of these days soon. So now that Ellenberger is soaring and the Shields hype-wagon has been slowed a bit by his do-nothing performance against Georges St. Pierre at UFC 129, maybe this booking wouldn’t seem so crazy. Hmmmm?
(Does this look like a dude who should be deprived of what he wants? Pic: Sherdog)
As avid readers of our keen, in-depth statistical analysis, we know that you know that we know that Jake Ellenberger is currently riding a four-fight win-streak in the UFC. After going to Toronto and knocking out short-notice opponent Sean Pierson (just like we told you he would) last month Ellenberger remains undefeated since his split decision loss to Carlos Condit in his Octagon debut (a fight he appeared to be on his way to winning before gassing out) way back in September, 2009. Now that he’s home in Nebraska rehabbing the hand he broke on Pierson’s face, Ellenberger is going back to basics, returning to a strategy he adopted some months ago: Trying to trash-talk his way into a fight with Jake Shields.
Except here’s the difference: If not for that original loss to Condit at UFN 19, people might just be talking about a 5-0 (in the UFC) Jake Ellenberger as a potential top candidate to get a welterweight title shot one of these days soon. So now that Ellenberger is soaring and the Shields hype-wagon has been slowed a bit by his do-nothing performance against Georges St. Pierre at UFC 129, maybe this booking wouldn’t seem so crazy. Hmmmm?
In fact, Ellenberger strikes us as sort of a perfect opponent for Shields at this point. Shields has long been considered one of the top welterweights (and maybe one of the top middleweights) on the planet, but before coming to the UFC he spent the last couple of years feasting on lesser competition in Strikeforce. Since his arrival in the Octagon, he frankly hasn’t seemed all that spectacular. Meanwhile, Ellenberger has been steadily climbing the ranks. We’re seeing a classic litmus-test situation for both fighters here.
As for Shields’ recent loss to GSP, Ellenberger tells Sherdog.com this week that he hasn’t even watched it yet. He says he will, but it sounds like he’ll do it more out of professional obligation than anything else.
“Will I watch it? Probably,” he said. “But I bet it’s going to go exactly the way that I thought. If they do make that match and me and Jake get to fight, he’s not a hard guy to figure out. I feel like I can beat him right now.”
You may remember that Ellenberger began singling out Shields as far back as November of last year, immediately following the former Strikeforce champ’s underwhelming promotional debut against Martin Kampmann. Ellenberger took his beef with Shields to (we mean, where else) Twitter and bombed away with such gems as: “Jake Shields, you’re as exciting as watching a bowl of mash potatoes get cold …Your days are numbered” and “Jake Shields’ cardio won’t be a factor if he fights me next. I won’t keep him around long enough to get tired.”
It’s too bad the UFC wasn’t offering cash bonuses for creative tweeting last year, are we right? Are we right?
Anyway, instead of giving Ellenberger (then just 2-1 in the UFC) what he wanted, the UFC teased him with a bout against Jon Fitch – only to give Fitch a chance at BJ Penn instead — before ultimately allowing him to whoop up on Carlos Eduardo Rocha and then Pierson (as an injury replacement for Brian Foster). Somewhere in there, Ellenberger reportedly lost his job as an assistant wrestling coach when the University of Nebraska-Omaha announced it would cut that sport while making the jump to Division I. It’s unknown if Ellenberger will be one of the coaches retained as most of the program (including the head coach and many of the athletes) decamps for Maryville University in St. Louis.
Signs point to no, since he’s talking like a guy who’s looking for a big pay day. Either way, it’s pretty clear what he really wants. Now it just remains to be seen if he gets it.
