Author: chaddundas

‘Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Cyborg’ Aftermath: Oh, Nick Diaz, You So Crazy

(It’s a Nor-Cal thing. Or something. VidProps: MMA Fighting)
In successfully defending his welterweight title on Saturday night, Nick Diaz underscored exactly why he is Strikeforce’s most compelling and valuable property. Diaz possesses the tot…

(It’s a Nor-Cal thing. Or something. VidProps: MMA Fighting)

In successfully defending his welterweight title on Saturday night, Nick Diaz underscored exactly why he is Strikeforce’s most compelling and valuable property. Diaz possesses the total promotional package — the stand-up, the grappling, the trash talk, the antisocial personality disorder – and at this point it’s clear that Scott Coker needs his blend of credibility, charisma and troubled-foster-kid charm more than almost anyone else on the SF roster. We give him a lot of shit on this website (almost all of which he richly deserves) but after his command performance against Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos in this weekend’s main event, it was impossible not to come away with a greater appreciation for the wonderful train wreck that is Diaz.

From his recent conference call outburst to his shellacking of a game Cyborg to the fact that when the fight was over Diaz couldn’t wait to walk to the side of the cage, flip off some random hecklers in the crowd and call them “fucking bitches,” it was a pleasure to watch him work. There’s just something about this guy: We can’t take our eyes off him and yet as the video at top proves, it would be totally insufferable to actually be around him for longer than five minutes. In that way he’s kind of like a bizarre, badass Milla Jovovich.

read more

Coker Keeps Talking Diaz-Mayhem, But Still May Not Fully Grasp his Role as Strikeforce CEO

("Diaz vs. Miller? I’d love to, but I think I’m busy that weekend." PicProps: MMA Convert)
Even after last week’s revelation that it would take “a couple fucking million dollars” to get Nick Diaz to meet Jason “Mayhem&…


("Diaz vs. Miller? I’d love to, but I think I’m busy that weekend." PicProps: MMA Convert)

Even after last week’s revelation that it would take “a couple fucking million dollars” to get Nick Diaz to meet Jason “Mayhem” Miller at a catchweight, Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker says he’s still interested in making that fight … just not so interested that he’d actually take an active role in trying to book it. According to a story out on MMA Weekly this weekend, Coker says he didn’t even call Diaz manager Cesar Gracie during the recent period of negotiation when the fight almost happened, then didn’t.

“Sometimes I’ll call Cesar, but on that occasion I didn’t call Cesar and I let my guys handle it, and it was really close,” Coker said. “I thought it was going to happen, but at the last minute it fell apart. I know weight was definitely one of the issues. The weight they say, ‘Oh it’s only two pounds, three pounds,’ but you know what? When you’re two or three percent body fat, five percent body fat, there’s just not a lot to lose and we just couldn’t bridge the gap. In the future, I’d still like to put that fight together because I think they have some unfinished business with that match-up.”

read more

Abe Wagner Kicks Tim Sylvia’s Fat Ass

(VidProps: YouTube/ZPsBackUp)
Tim Sylvia showed up at Titan Fighting Championships on Friday night looking very much like a 311-pound man who knew he had to get this over with in a hurry. Unfortunately for the rotund former UFC champ, Abe Wagner had…


(VidProps: YouTube/ZPsBackUp)

Tim Sylvia showed up at Titan Fighting Championships on Friday night looking very much like a 311-pound man who knew he had to get this over with in a hurry. Unfortunately for the rotund former UFC champ, Abe Wagner had the same idea. Both guys came out of their corners throwing heavy leather and it was Wagner – a +355 underdog despite appearing to have trained at least one day for this bout – who got to Sylvia first. He clipped the “Maine-iac” with a right hand above the eye in the early going and drove him across the cage flurrying punches (that mostly missed) before Sylvia ran out of real estate on the other side. There he was felled like a giant, flabby redwood by a left to the jaw and another right. When referee Jason Herzog jumped in to call a stop to the action, then hesitated, Wagner responded exactly as a fighter should in that circumstance: He walked away and started celebrating, creating such an awkward situation that Herzog had no choice but to wave things off.

Sylvia tried to protest the stoppage, but you could tell he was on wobbly legs. And not just because they were covered in cellulite, either.  The end came in just 32 seconds which – to answer Michael Schiavello and Frank Trigg’s question – is four seconds fewer than it took Fedor to topple Sylvia. The current part-time cop said prior to this bout that he believes police work will “help fill the void” when the time comes for him to retire from MMA. That time may be now. Fill the void, Tim. Fill it with something besides ice cream sandwiches.

On Eve of Second MMA Fight, Herschel Walker Still Making Outlandish Claims About Pretty Much Everything

(Apologies if the vid takes awhile to load. You try squeezing all of Walker’s BS in to a simple embed code. VidProps: Shoot Media)
We’ve been pretty studiously ignoring Herschel Walker since his bout with Scott Carson got postponed b…

(Apologies if the vid takes awhile to load. You try squeezing all of Walker’s BS in to a simple embed code. VidProps: Shoot Media)

We’ve been pretty studiously ignoring Herschel Walker since his bout with Scott Carson got postponed back in November. Somewhere along the way we just got tired of the guy’s running patter. Even last week when the mainstream media grabbed hold of his offhand comment about trying to make a comeback to the NFL when he turns 50 and trumpeted it from the rooftops like it was some kind of actual news, we turned a deaf ear. For our money, 48-year-old dude wants to fight? No big deal. He’s semi-famous, so we gotta put him on the main card? We get it. For real though, the fact that Strikeforce has to go out and sign no-name opponents for the express purpose of getting beat up by Herschel Walker in 220-pound catchweight fights pretty much says it all about the legitimacy of his MMA career.

However, this latest video from the good people at Shoot Media – who in all honesty do pretty great work – sparked our interest. Mostly because it successfully falls in line with the standard Rich-Athlete-Makes-Sacrifices-to-Pursue-his-True-Passion clichés while still giving us a nod and a wink about what an odd, odd man we’re dealing with here. Among other dubious claims made in this vid, Walker says he was just a fat kid with a speech impediment from small town Georgia that no one thought would amount to squat. You know, until it turned out he was one of the greatest natural athletes of all time, rushed for over 3,000 yards in high school, became a national prep scholar-athlete of the year and went on to become maybe the greatest college running back in history. Still, those early years were pretty touch-and-go.

read more

Sergei Kharitonov Continues to Do His Best Ivan Drago Impersonation

(“He is not human. He is like piece of short, balding iron.” PicProps: Tapology)
As we all discovered when a recent Gambling Addiction Enabler questioned our collective manhood about betting on the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix, former…


(“He is not human. He is like piece of short, balding iron.” PicProps: Tapology)

As we all discovered when a recent Gambling Addiction Enabler questioned our collective manhood about betting on the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix, former Pride/Dream/K-1 slugger Sergei Kharitonov is currently paying off at fairly epic +2000 odds to win the whole shebang. Now, if we didn’t believe this tourney was headed for chaotic disaster and/or we thought there was a chance in hell those shady internet bookies would make good on a sizable bet, we’d actually consider Kharitonov something of a steal at those odds. Especially since he’s coming out of the weak-sauce side of the bracket and – as he reminds us in a new interview with Tapology.com this week – he’s already beaten two of the so-called favorites.

“People like to think they are experts on things they think they know,” Kharitonov says. “I beat Alistair (Overeem) and (Fabricio) Werdum and (accomplished) that at a time when my stand-up skills were not 25 percent (of) what (they are) now. You do the math.”

In fact, the Russian-paratrooper-turned-Golden-Glory-kickboxer says a bunch of totally badass stuff to Tapology. Stuff that only becomes more badass when you imagine him saying it in monotone, heavily-accented English like a certain 1980s movie villain we could mention. Case-in-point, Kharitonov’s message for first-round opponent Andrei Arlovski: “I will break you.” That’s right, he said it.

read more

52 Year-Old Dan Severn to Fight for a Heavyweight Title this Weekend

(Those "breaking glass" sound effects don’t program themselves, people. VidProps: YouTube/Elite1 MMA)
Couple things you need to know about this Elite1 MMA promotion that will reportedly give ancient old man Dan Severn a chance to win its hea…


(Those "breaking glass" sound effects don’t program themselves, people. VidProps: YouTube/Elite1 MMA)

Couple things you need to know about this Elite1 MMA promotion that will reportedly give ancient old man Dan Severn a chance to win its heavyweight title this Saturday night at a casino in Moncton, New Brunswick (that’s in Canada): First, current champ Scott Fraser is just 3-1 and two of those wins come over the same guy – an apparent light heavyweight named Dan Fowler, who is 2-3 overall but was a respectable 2-1 the first time he and Fraser fought. The other guy Fraser beat? One Jeff “Viking” Lundburg, who is currently 1-7 and riding a four-fight losing streak. Don’t tell Justin Wren about this, you guys. For the record, that gives Severn (listed at 96-16-7, by Sherdog) an experience edge of 115 fights over Fraser.

The second thing you need to know about Elite1 MMA? A cool $40 (Canadian) will get you in the door, so if you live anywhere in the greater Northumberland Straight-area, you might as well check it out. Severn, who’s been averaging a half-dozen fights per year since 1994, is in the midst of a seven fight win-streak and has won 18-of-his-last-20, all over no-name dudes at smaller shows. His last six bouts were all fought under the King of the Cage banner, so they probably weren’t even fixed. Probably.

Fun fact: According to the Dog’s fight finder, in 119 fights Severn has only been knocked out once. Top that, Couture.