Dana White liked everything he saw at UFC 164, except the eyesore of a fight between heavyweights Soa Palelei and Nikita Krylov in preliminary action. The fighters gassed themselves out in a furious first round in which Palelei work…
Dana White liked everything he saw at UFC 164, except the eyesore of a fight between heavyweights Soa Palelei and Nikita Krylov in preliminary action. The fighters gassed themselves out in a furious first round in which Palelei worked ground and pound while Krylov attempted numerous submissions from the bottom.
Because of the early exertion, both men fought exhausted from that point on until Palelei finished Krylov at the 1:34 mark of the third round.
“Mercifully” finished, to hear Dana White say it.
“You don’t want to hear my thoughts on that fight,” he said in the post-fight scrum. “That was fight was embarrassing. That looked like a Toughman fight.”
When asked later about the night as a whole, White then proceeded to give his thoughts on that fight particularly.
“It was a great night, and all the fights were great except, well, you know the one I’m talking about,” he said. “The thing about that fight is it was sloppy. They both looked sloppy. They’re exhausted, and they’re laying on each other and stuff. You shouldn’t see that s— in the UFC. You shouldn’t see that. Guys should be in shape.
“But again, it was an entertaining fight, and it ended in a knockout, the guy took big shots. But it was just an embarrassing fight. You shouldn’t fight like that in the UFC.”
For Palelei it was a successful homecoming to the UFC on the same night that fellow heavyweight Josh Barnett returned to the Octagon after a decade away. The last time Palelei fought under the Zuffa banner was back at UFC 79 when he lost to Eddie Sanchez (TKO, punches). Since then he has gone 11-1, with his only loss coming to contender Daniel Cormier in Strikeforce.
The danger of becoming a product of reckless excitement is that people then expect reckless excitement. Clay Guida has had many incarnations in the UFC. He has been a wrestle-first toiler who nickel and dimes his way to victory. He …
The danger of becoming a product of reckless excitement is that people then expect reckless excitement.
Clay Guida has had many incarnations in the UFC. He has been a wrestle-first toiler who nickel and dimes his way to victory. He has pinned his ears back and thrown his hands against a Dash-8 propeller, like he did against Diego Sanchez. He has proven his chin does well in turbulent situations. In 43 professional fights, he’s been socked a thousand times and yet never been knocked out.
There are times he’s dominant. And there are times that, without the wherewithal to make in-bout adjustments earlier in his career, his fights have ended up as coin-flip affairs. Under the Zuffa banner, Guida has had six fights end in split decisions. He is – naturally – 3-3 in such bouts of utter indistiguishability.
If he’s consistent in anything, it’s in being a party to non-emphatic fights.
Here’s what’s bothering people, though – of late, Clay Guida has had the audacity to implement a game plan. There for a minute we had him pegged as a more dervishy Chris Leben, all Tasmanian devil and sheepdog bangs, yet suddenly he’s grown a conscience. And that’s not sitting well with everyone.
“You get the negative feedback for having a strategy,” Guida tells MMA Fighting. “I don’t know what professional sports are all about I guess.”
As a man of peculiar branding, “game plan” is synonymous with things like “running scared,” and “playing safe,” and “Greg Jackson” – shadowy words with shadowy implications. We saw it in his headlining fight with Gray Maynard in Atlantic City, when his stick-and-move philosophy felt like a vapor trail to many fans.
In the follow-up bout, the stalwart wrestler in him – which Guida fondly calls his “roots” – resurfaced against Hatsu Hioki. That was this past January when he was debuting as a featherweight, a fight he won.
Was it an incautious, fan-friendly brawl? No. More like a thoughtful tactician with a newfound interest in longevity. And that trade-out has some critics seeing Guida, now 31, as so much milquetoast.
“There’s critics in everything, and I don’t pay too much attention,” he says. “That stuff doesn’t shake me for a second. I’m out there to have fun, and do what I do, and adjust to each fight – adjust accordingly. I don’t care what critics say, I’m going to go out there and fight my fight, and when I win that strap, there are still going to be critics.
“Look at Georges St-Pierre. He’s one of the greatest fighters of all time, and people give him a hard time because how many of his fights have gone all five rounds? But look at what he does – he decimates his opponents. Even Anderson Silva. The guy can’t do enough, even when he destroyed Demian Maia and Thales Leites – people who cower away from him – he still got criticized.”
The strategic side of Guida will have to be in evidence on Saturday night when he faces Chad Mendes in Milwaukee, too. Mendes is a clashing dictator of a wills who sits near the top of the 145-pound division for his ability to control the action.
“You know what, I’ve had to fight two entirely different opponents [at 145],” Guida says. “I had to fight ‘Stretch Armstrong [Hioki]’ the last time, and it was tough to find my range. So I went back to what got us here, and that’s wrestling, some ground and pound and avoiding submissions.
“[With Mendes] you’re looking to see some of the same – a lot of takedowns and a lot of wrestling in this fight, but I’m fighting a guy that I actually have a reach advantage for once. I don’t remember the last time it’s been – it’s probably been four years since the last time a slight reach advantage, and we’re going to use that opportunity in this fight and move forward.”
As a fighter who went in for excitement, Guida excelled. Who can forget his brawl with Roger Huerta, when Huerta – losing on the scorecards – answered the third round bell visibly conjuring the spirit of determination? Or Guida’s fight with Sanchez, where they traded leather so haphazardly in that first round that mouths were dropping cageside?
Those fights not only took home “fight of the night” honors, they were each given “fight of the year” distinction. The reality is that Guida lost them both. What was fun for fans wasn’t as fun for the Illinois native, who gets to fight in the Midwest for the second time in a row. He got within a fight of a title shot at 155 pounds when he did away with the stand-and-bang mentality and “rediscovered his wrestling.”
There’s no good formula for winning consistently while making everyone happy with exciting fights. Leaving your chin open for business is of course – in the long run – very bad business. If anything, what we’re seeing in 2013’s version of Clay Guida isn’t just an attempt at a happy medium but a reshuffling of priorities. And now in his new weight class, he has an opportunity to position swap with Mendes to the top of the featherweight heap.
“Within the top two or three,” he says. “We go out there and make a big statement and finish Chad, that puts us up there one, two or three. A good friend of mine and my teammate Cub Swanson has been on a tear lately. Same with Ricardo Lamas, who’s a buddy of mine, too. These guys are on very impressive streaks.
“But if we go out there and fight our fight, and wow the crowd, that’ll put us right there in the driver’s seat.”
At first, when the UFC rolled out its official rankings system, it was this fresh new democracy that media members felt gave them a say in the structure of “the picture.” Turns out the media was right. This past weekend in Boston Da…
At first, when the UFC rolled out its official rankings system, it was this fresh new democracy that media members felt gave them a say in the structure of “the picture.” Turns out the media was right.
This past weekend in Boston Dana White gently yet pointedly laid into the voting press for placing Chael Sonnen as the No. 8 best middleweight (he was actually No. 9). This was patently absurd, he said. What baffled him was that such fighters as Yushin Okami and Michael Bisping were ahead of Sonnen, even though Sonnen had beat Okami soundly and Bisping with a proverbial grain of salt. How was it that Sonnen had fallen so far, when his only losses in recent memory were to Anderson Silva (twice) and Jon Jones?
Nobody could say. But the updated rankings, after White’s rant and Sonnen beat Mauricio Rua at 205 pounds in one of his most impressive showings, saw Sonnen remain at No. 9 as a middleweight. So much for taking White’s directive. Sonnen did manage to creep into the top 10 as a light heavyweight, just behind Shogun, whom he just beat. Sonnen himself, along with co-host Kenny Florian, pointed out this head-scratcher during Tuesday night’s taping of UFC Tonight. The suspected problem: Sonnen’s poly-divisional, which is hard to sort out for voting media.
Does any of this make sense?
Not really. But, if this thing is going to work, we’d better start making some sense of it.
Apparently the ranking system actually goes into matchmaking possibilities. Or, at least the UFC matchmakers would like to use the rankings as a reference point in which to back-up their matchmaking decisions. This is where things get a little haywire when media sends Sonnen on a southward trajectory for no good reason, while the UFC is trying to usher him up the rungs towards something more spectacular.
Not that the UFC’s intentions should factor in, either. They shouldn’t. It’s meant to be a meritocracy—more meritocracy than pin the tail on the donkey, anyway. It’s meant to lean more towards objective than subjective.
And in this instance, White has good reason to be miffed. If we are asked to vote Sonnen into the 185-pound top ten—which we were, even if he’s been fighting at 205 pounds—he should not be No. 9. He did beat Okami (No. 3) and Bisping (No. 4), but how can Ronaldo Souza, Mark Munoz, Costa Philippou and Luke Rockhold all be above him as well? Being tired of Sonnen’s shtick shouldn’t translate into his placement in the rankings.
The good thing about the rankings is that they aren’t real. Just a snapshot in time and all that. But if they are meant to put a structure in place for matchmaking and relevancy—which affects paydays and perceptions—better not to treat it as a blindfold/dart board transaction. Better to give it some careful thought, for whatever that’s worth.
The UFC’s Fight for the Troops 3 will pit some momentous winning streaks against each other. On Friday the UFC announced a couple of more bouts that will take place at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, including an intriguing featherwe…
The UFC’s Fight for the Troops 3 will pit some momentous winning streaks against each other. On Friday the UFC announced a couple of more bouts that will take place at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, including an intriguing featherweight battle between Nik Lentz and Long Island’s Dennis Bermudez.
A bantamweight clash between George Roop and Francisco Rivera will also take place on the card. Roop is riding a two-fight winning streak, and is fresh off his upset victory over Brian Bowles at UFC 160. Orange County’s Rivera would be on a five-fight win streak of his own if his knockout of Roland Delorme wasn’t overturned to a no contest after testing positive for a banned substance. He put away Edwin Figueroa his last time out at UFC 156 via TKO.
Lentz is a cusp top ten featherweight who has gone 3-0 in the division since dropping down from lightweight. Meanwhile Bermudez has won four in a row, after taking home a split decision versus Max Holloway back at UFC 160. He was also in what is considered by many to be the “fight of the year” against Matt Grice back at UFC 157.
Fight for the Troops 3 takes place on Nov. 6, and will mark Lyoto Machida’s debut as a middleweight as he takes on Tim Kennedy in the main event.
The November 6 “Fight for the Troops” card is starting to fill in behind the recently announced headliners Lyoto Machida and Tim Kennedy. On Friday, the UFC announced that one-time Cuban Olympian Yoel Romero will meet Brazilian Rony…
The November 6 “Fight for the Troops” card is starting to fill in behind the recently announced headliners Lyoto Machida and Tim Kennedy.
On Friday, the UFC announced that one-time Cuban Olympian Yoel Romero will meet Brazilian Rony Markes in a middleweight bout that same night at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The promotion also set up a battle between former All Army Combatives champ Neil Magny and Seth Baczynski on the card, which airs live on Fox Sports 1. That fight will take place at 170 pounds.
Meanwhile UFC Fight Night 30, which takes place in Manchester, England on Oct. 26, is starting to take shape as well. UFC officials announced that Texan middleweight Andrew Craig, fresh off his split decision victory over Chris Leben at UFC 162, will take on “Ultimate Fighter 17” quarterfinalist Luke Barnatt, and England’s own Brad Scott will fight Dutchman Michael Kuiper.
One other fight of note that’s now taking place at UFC 165: Newcomer Jesse Ronson will be standing in for the injured Mark Bocek on Sept. 21 to face Michel Prazeres in a lightweight bout.
Ronson (13-2) is an Ontario-based fighter who’ll be fighting in front of his hometown fans at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. UFC 165 will be headlined by light heavyweight champion Jon Jones who defends his belt against Alexander Gustafsson. It will mark the third time that Jones has defending his belt in Toronto.
Steve Mazzagatti is a hero by popular definition. For 17 years he’s worked for the Las Vegas County Fire, risking life and limb charging into burning buildings to douse infernos and save lives. He responds to trauma situations…
Steve Mazzagatti is a hero by popular definition. For 17 years he’s worked for the Las Vegas County Fire, risking life and limb charging into burning buildings to douse infernos and save lives. He responds to trauma situations, when people have been shot, or mangled in a car accident, or who just got beaten down along the boozy Las Vegas Strip. He never winces at the sight of blood. He is a stoic – a calm voice in the ear of disaster. For that, we love Mazzagatti unconsciously.
He is an American hero.
Except in his moonlighting gig as a fight game referee, where – as far as popular opinion goes – he’s a classless villain who is singlehandedly destroying mixed martial arts.
Mazzagatti the referee has become the man we love to hate. Whenever he stands in the cage as an arbiter between two big principals – the bigger the fight, the more total the outrage – Twitter revs up with commentary ranging from dark humor to absolute disgust. People talk as if he’s personally and deliberately trying to mess with their lives. And in some cases, that might be true.
The UFC’s president Dana White shifts in his seat and mumbles under his breath whenever “Mazz” gets the call. He has ranted epically on numerous occasions about Mazzagatti’s incompetence in the cage. One time, after Josh Burkman voluntarily walked away from Jon Fitch’s limp body without any prompting from Mazzagatti in a World Series of Fighting match, White ranted for nine straight minutes. “Mazzagatti is a clueless idiot who will hurt someone and continue to ruin guy’s legacies,” he tweeted that night. That was just the tip of the iceberg as far as White’s discontentment goes with “Mazz.” He has many variations of this same sentiment.
And White’s word, of course, echoes down the corridors.
As a collective, we have united as Mazzagatti haters. The perception of him goes something like this: What an oblivious, uncaring, clueless, particularly blind and lackadaisical excuse for a referee the Nevada State Athletic Commission insists on keeping around. It’s all one big act of defiance. That’s why a common acronym ascribed to Mazzagatti is: WTF?
“Yeah, it bums me out,” Mazzagatti says while taking a break from blowing the fiberglass off his dune buggy at his home in Vegas. “I’m not out to make [Dana White] happy or anything, but I truly care about the sport. I’ve been in the fight game my whole life, and I truly care about the sport. I’ve always prided myself on enforcing these rules, and I have enforced the rules on big fights.”
Mazzagatti has a thick skin, as anybody in a thankless profession must. He answers to Keith Kizer of the NSAC, whom he says, “is the last person to hold back any feelings – he’s just like Dana. If something’s on his mind he will come to you, and get right in your face and say what the hell happened right there.”
The first thing you notice when talking to him is that he’s not fishing for sentimental understanding – even as criticism stacks up in leaning towers around him. He’s actually very rational about it all. He quietly believes he is right in most cases, and he calmly explains himself when pressed on any particular “transgression.” He is an island of righteousness – which should be expected from any good gatekeeper for integrity.
“You got to understand that a promoter has one thing in mind, and that’s to promote the fighters to the next level. And if a referee gets in the way of that, I can understand [White] being pissed – I’m pissed when I have to take a point in a big huge fight like that. But rules are rules, and if we’re not going to have rules, then what are we there for?
“I mean, if you’re going to let somebody pound somebody else in the back of the head and call it good because you want that guy to win because there’s a big promotion for him next – you can see the huge amounts of money involved. And I’ve had to enforce the rules on some huge fights. I’ve taken, for back of the head strikes for instance, over my career, 10-12 instances in huge fights. Times where I’ve had to stop the fight, take a point for back of the head strikes.”
The classic example of a controversial Mazzagatti point deduction for back of the head strikes was in the first Brock Lesnar/Frank Mir fight, when Mazzagatti stopped Lesnar’s early onslaught (and complete momentum) to dock him a point. We all remember the fallout. Mir got Lesnar in an ankle lock shortly thereafter and that was that.
“I’ve asked our neurosurgeon, what to the back of the head are we looking for – what’s the danger spot?” Mazzagatti says. “And it literally is that cell phone area right where your spine connects to your skull. If you get hit there dude – even just reaching around and tapping that area – you get a little bit dizzy. And it’s unfair for any fighter to take a blow there.
“I tell the fighters in the back [before coming out to fight], if he shoots a double leg on you and you’re in the middle of a punch and you hit him there because he turned his head into it, that’s his fault. But if you’re looking at it, and you hit it again and again, that’s your fault. You’ve got to find a different target.”
What is it about Mazzagatti and controversy? At one time he wore a mustache, which was somehow apropos of this perceived dubiousness. At all times he’s wearing his black gloves a little tighter than, say, Yves Lavigne, to lend him added prowler essence. His fight-starter is so familiar by now that you barely notice—”You ready? You ready? Alright, now bring it on.” Nothing wrong with that.
Yet he is accused of daydreaming while mortar shells are exploding and rockets are whizzing by overhead. He is accused of being a day late to stoppages (like with Fitch/Burkman), or ridiculously early (Ronda Rousey/Sarah D’Alelio). Then there was bit of unpleasantness when Kevin Burns poked Anthony Johnson in the eye. That particular time, Mazzagatti admits he got it wrong.
“What the hell am I going to do?” he says. “I had no idea the [Burns]’ hand had been injured, although his fingers were causing a huge problem, and I’d warned him about his fingers. And then Anthony got poked in the eye, after I – I saw a combination, I saw an uppercut, and all of a sudden Anthony turns around flies on the ground and starts tapping. Well, he was in pain, and he was like, I’m done. He wasn’t necessarily tapping because he’s done, he was poked in the eye.
“Well, I had already stopped the fight. And I got to stick by that call. I’ve admitted that that loss…that was basically a bad call. That was definitely a bad call. Because of that though…we implemented in the state of Nevada and several other states now, instant replay. At the time, I didn’t have it. I could have went back and looked at the instant replay and said wow, that was an eye poke. Because this s— goes down so fast. Then I could have said, you know what? This is a disqualification.”
Speaking of instant replay, that’s another topic in which Mazzagatti found himself in hot water. It’s also a huge source for White’s consternation – the not-very-veiled meaning in the Tweet when he says Mazzagatti’s continuing to “ruin people’s legacies.” Remember the time that Matt Hamill won via disqualification over Jon Jones for those infamous 12-to-6 elbows?
“I hated that crap,” Mazzagatti says. “He hip throws Hamill to the ground, starts unloading with elbows. I wasn’t concerned. Hamill was blocking those, he had a four-wall defense. We’ve seen it before, these guys will unload everything they got because they think they’ve got the other guy hurt, and the guy all of a sudden comes up and beats the crap out of the guy because he’s gassed or he hurt his hands trying to punch him out.
“Then all of a sudden those downward elbows came. I said, oh my god, there’s definitely a rule infringement right there – downward elbows straight through Hamill’s guard, which he’s not used to blocking 12-to-6 elbows. He got hit with three of them straight to the bridge of his nose, and when I went back and looked at the instant replay, in the first round his nose is cut open. So he’s supposed to go out and fight two more rounds with the bridge of his nose cut open, bleeding into both eyes in the first round and be able to compete?
“Unfortunately, what did I have to do? As bad as it sucked….I mean, it sucks.”
Sucks is part of the job. That’s the only loss on Jones’ record to date, and the call made Mazzagatti a perpetual target for derision. White to this day still says there shouldn’t be a loss on Jones’ otherwise flawless record. He looks upon the call as a UFC travesty, and to this day he hasn’t gotten over it.
“But I don’t regret that, no,” Mazzagatti says. “Absolutely, that was the right thing to do. Of course, I had no idea [ at the time] Hamill hurt his shoulder. I don’t know these things. Only thing I know is that 12-to-6 elbows came flying down, and then I went and looked at the instant replay, and that’s how I determined it was a disqualification.”
The only excuse Mazzagatti makes is that he’s doing his job. “It’s easy to sit back in your rocking chair sipping a beer and then watch the replay and then come back and make call, but I think MMA is one of the hardest sports to referee of any sport. We’ve got five different disciplines – different ground games, striking games, submission games, the whole thing.”
And it could be that bizarre circumstances just find Mazzagatti a little more regularly than, say, Herb Dean. “I do always get caught up in the craziest s—!” he says. “There was the Gray Maynard double knockout, too.” That was the fight with Rob Emerson. These things just don’t happen on everybody’s watch.
Maybe that’s why there’s a little bit of comedy in Mazzagatti’s voice when he thinks about his decision to get into refereeing in the first place. At one time, he ran a Muay Thai gym in Vegas – the first of its kind in Clark County. He trained fighters from the earliest UFCs in kickboxing. He also worked at the Golden Gloves Gym with Roger Mayweather, Freddie Roach, Greg Hogan, Jimmy Montoya and many others.
“At the time Vegas was the boxing capital of the world,” he says. “I chose to become an official, and Stitch [Jacob Duran], who worked there too, chose to become a cutman. And god he’s got it made. I mean, he gets to work on the cuts, everybody loves him, he gets to hang out with the fighters, gets to talk to the trainers.”
The loneliest man in MMA is readying his long travel buggy – complete with 14-inch coil-overs in the back – for a fast desert ride. Mazzagatti is one with the desert. He is as isolated as the terrain. He’s at home there. It’s an exile he signed on for.
“As an official, I can’t do that,” he says. “I can’t go shake hands with Dana, or go have a cup of coffee. How would that look if I’m hanging out with some team and the other team sees me buddying up with them? It’s a lonely job.”
It’s a friendless second profession that Mazzagatti’s in. Fair or not, he is the man we love to hate, and nobody looks better dressed in blame. Nobody in the industry starts as many fires. And nobody puts as many out.
