New York, you’re one step closer to the promised land.Earlier today, the New York Senate passed a unanimous vote of 42-18 in favor of a bill that would legalize MMA in the Empire State.The bill faced serious opposition in the past, and today proved no …
New York, you’re one step closer to the promised land.
Earlier today, the New York Senate passed a unanimous vote of 42-18 in favor of a bill that would legalize MMA in the Empire State.
The bill faced serious opposition in the past, and today proved no different on all ends of the spectrum, but the support of 42 senators outweighed the 18 detractors, leading to the bill passing through Senate.
While MMA has not been officially made legal in New York yet, the passing of the bill through the New York Senate was a necessary step—one that was taken as a complete victory by Dana White and others on Twitter and even Facebook.
The next necessary step is to get the bill passed through the Assembly, where Bob Reilly and other New York State Officials hold a seat, and in the past, that has also been an area of concern.
However, with how unanimously it passed through the Senate, there’s little doubt that it does stand a chance to make it through the assembly.
Will this be an easy feat?
Absolutely not.
it will involve the presentation of many strong, iron-willed facts to support the passing of the legislation as well as many more strong, iron-willed arguments to retort against the opposition’s case as to why the state should not legalize this sport, and history has shown that once this type of opposition is faced, it rarely ever loses.
It will not be an easy task to pass this legislation out of the State Assembly at all.
Then again, silencing the cries for an MMA event emanating from The Big Apple will not be an easy feat either.
“This is it…the moment we’ve all been waiting for.”We in the MMA World have many moments that we have been waiting for, but few moments can top the aura that will overcome the multitudes in my home turf of Dallas, Texas on Saturday night, June 18th&m…
“This is it…the moment we’ve all been waiting for.”
We in the MMA World have many moments that we have been waiting for, but few moments can top the aura that will overcome the multitudes in my home turf of Dallas, Texas on Saturday night, June 18th—the night when Alistair Overeem, Fabricio “The Emelianenko Hunter” Werdum, Josh Barnett and Brett Rogers all appear on the same card.
Joining these three Grand Prix quarterfinalists and the reigning heavyweight champ are the returning Gina Carano, Chad Griggs, Jeff Monson and Daniel Cormier.
With these names comes a guarantee of excitement, but it also raises up a few questions.
I now present to you five of those questions that some of us have heading into this star-studded fight card in Dallas!
The term “expected” is seldom thrown around much in MMA circles unless you ask someone that goes off of name recognition to make their picks, but when it is said that we as a sports community should have seen something coming, the first question relate…
The term “expected” is seldom thrown around much in MMA circles unless you ask someone that goes off of name recognition to make their picks, but when it is said that we as a sports community should have seen something coming, the first question relates to how we should have seen it coming.
Fedor losing two fights in a row, Randy Couture losing a fight against a top-five light heavyweight after defending the sport’s honor, Jose “Scarface” Aldo looking vulnerable, Urijah Faber being booked for a fight against a guy that he genuinely did not like—these are all the things we should have seen coming when they went down, but the fan in all of us prevented us from seeing the events of the past year coming.
Maybe we just wanted those dream fights to happen, but for whatever reason we chose and are sticking by, the fact is we chose to not see those upsets coming.
Maybe it’s me, but we may have to add the brand new UFC 131 headliner—the long-debated Junior dos Santos vs. Shane Carwin bout, still existent as a UFC heavyweight title eliminator until otherwise confirmed—to the list of MMA events in time that we should have expected.
From the moment it was announced that Lesnar and dos Santos were announced as coaches for The Ultimate Fighter 13 and UFC 131 headliners, there’s one question we all had before and during TUF 13 before we found out about Lesnar’s recurring diverticulitis:
Why is there not the same hype for this fight as the Velasquez bout got?
Was one of the men involved not named Brock Lesnar?
Maybe it was because the belt was on the line in the Velasquez fight, but Brock Lesnar is arguably the most polarizing name in the sport right now, so the belt should not have been preventing Dana White from hyping the bejeezus out of this sucker.
We also could have pointed to Junior dos Santos, who only had the hype of being unbeaten in the UFC and being one of the three arguable most technical strikers, pound-for-pound, in the UFC heavyweight division to his credit.
Aside from that and the fact that he’s learning English and able to conduct an interview without subtitles, there’s not much you can do with JDS because he’s so damn nice.
You’ve seen him on the show…you guys know what I’m talking about.
The dude couldn’t be a jerk if it meant saving his career.
Anyway, it seemed like we had all the answers, but then diverticulitis forced itself into a rematch with Lesnar as of yesterday, so Carwin had to step in for the man who took his “0”.
Then during a discussion someone sparked up earlier today, the thought came up about why a Brock Lesnar fight, of all fights, would not be as heavily promoted up to this point, and that’s when I started questioning it myself.
Should we have expected this dream-fight to become a reality from the minute we first heard that Lesnar and Dos Santos would first coach TUF, and then meet up in Vancouver?
I mean, Velasquez and Lesnar didn’t trade too much trash talk either.
The most offensive thing I can think of was Lesnar saying he’d eat a burrito and drink a Corona after beating Velasquez, but he didn’t say too many outlandish words to Velasquez either.
Maybe the fight was never meant to happen, or maybe Dana White just wanted us to have this fight since we’ve been talking about it for so long.
Whatever the reason was, whether we should’ve seen this coming or not, let’s answer one question honestly:
Whether we should’ve seen this one coming or not, can we really say the end result is disappointing?
Au contraire, I don’t think the end result could make me any happier than I am right now.
If you follow mixed martial arts, you know about the entire Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans beef.You know how they once said in interviews that they would never fight each other, but that started to change once Jones beat Ryan Bader at UFC 126 this past Feb…
If you follow mixed martial arts, you know about the entire Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans beef.
You know how they once said in interviews that they would never fight each other, but that started to change once Jones beat Ryan Bader at UFC 126 this past February, and now that they’ve both said they’re on board, now they hate each other’s guts.
It’s understandable that you’d want to fight the other guy and settle the beef once and for all, but answer me this:
When is it okay to postpone an injury just to get that fight to happen?
You see, Mr. Jones, there’s a bit of a problem here with you and Malki Kawa going to the doctor and choosing to postpone the injury when given the option rather than taking the surgery.
Where may I begin?
Well, there’s the issue that raises up now that you’ve postponed the surgery—Phil Davis is supposed to face Evans at UFC 133, a fight that was made after you bowed out due to that hand injury you’ve had since before Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.
It would have been fine with me if you had taken the surgery and, much like Shogun when he fought you, ended up losing the belt in your first fight back from healing—although that was really part of why Shogun was out for so long.
I would have been fine with the same tired arguments that “Jones had just come off of a layoff,” because layoffs can be a tricky subject in MMA.
Bowing out of UFC 133 due to an injury and then choosing to not go through with the surgery might open the doors for the match to finally happen, but it’s bad enough that people actually saw Tito Ortiz as a nicer guy than you in the weeks between UFC 126 and UFC 128.
Now, everyone but myself is convinced that there was never an injury—that you basically did duck out of the Evans fight intentionally, even though we’re all pretty convinced that there are no real alternatives for the time being.
Couple that ducking question with the one of your now-deemed-alleged injury, and that also brings up the question of if you lose the fight with the hand being as it is right now without surgery.
You’ve gone for this long without much trouble, but even if postponing the shot meant facing Evans and possibly facing Davis down the line, you denied yourself the chance to get rid of that nagging injury once and for all.
Even if it’s not that serious of an injury now, it will as you continue to train for your first defense, and if it gets bad by the time you have to actually defend the belt, a loss means that you lost due to taking the fight with an injury as well as the manner in which the world saw you lose the fight.
If you have to go through a layoff and you wind up not fighting until December or January at the earliest, at least a loss means that you were beaten by a better fighter and not because of some injury that you didn’t take care of.
At the end of the day, it’s like Alice In Chains said: It’s your decision.
All I’m saying is that you should at least consider getting the surgery done just to be safe.
Rashad Evans or no Rashad Evans, it’s better to keep us waiting until you’re ready to fight at 100 percent rather than give us a forum to make excuses for why you lost and ultimately help us forget that this all happened during the fight.
Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time Rashad’s had to wait his turn.
It’s a bout that we all wanted to see happen for a long time, ever since Shane Carwin earned his crack at Brock Lesnar with his UFC 111 win over Frank Mir, to be exact.But it’s a bout that we all thought would stay a fantasy and never truly surface …
It’s a bout that we all wanted to see happen for a long time, ever since Shane Carwin earned his crack at Brock Lesnar with his UFC 111 win over Frank Mir, to be exact.
But it’s a bout that we all thought would stay a fantasy and never truly surface as a legitimate fight, especially when Lesnar came off of a hard-fought split decision win in a bout with diverticulitis to survive a fatal and unquestionable 8-10 first round and submit Shane Carwin with a second-round “Death-Clutch” Arm Triangle choke at UFC 116.
Unfortunately for fans of the former WWE Champion, 2002 WWE King of The Ring, and former UFC Heavyweight Champion, MMA Junkie reports that diverticulitis has engaged in a rematch with the Minnesotan, and thus Lesnar will not be able to face fellow TUF 13 coach Junior “Cigano” Dos Santos at UFC 131.
Stepping in for Lesnar is one of the only two men that fans legitimately believe can and definitely could knock Dos Santos out, and with UFC Heavyweight Champion Cain Velasquez sidelined until the still-TBA UFC card slated to take place in Houston, that man is none other than Shane Carwin, who will be revamping his game plan to prepare for Dos Santos in lieu of a young and hungry Jon Olav Einemo.
It’s the bout we were close to never actually seeing, and since we now know that it will indeed happen, it’s about time for Yours Truly to run it down from top-to-bottom: this is the head-to-toe breakdown of Junior Dos Santos vs. Shane Carwin!
Earlier today, MMA Junkie reported the overnight release of promising now-former UFC Middleweight prospect Maiquel Jose “Big Rig” Falcao Gonclaves, better known to us all as Maiquel Falcao.The release comes as a shock to the MMA World, who last heard F…
Earlier today, MMA Junkie reported the overnight release of promising now-former UFC Middleweight prospect Maiquel Jose “Big Rig” Falcao Gonclaves, better known to us all as Maiquel Falcao.
The release comes as a shock to the MMA World, who last heard Falcao’s name when talked had risen about a spot on the UFC 134 fight card opposite Tom Lawlor, with the consensus pointing to a 2002 assault charge as the primary motivation behind the release.
Supposedly, the charge—coupled in with fan demand for the fight with “The Filthy Mauler”of The Ultimate Fighter 8 variety—eventually led to the release of the prospect and has now made the once-promising UFC Middleweight a free agent.
Some might agree with it, but for those who do agree with this fully, there is a question to answer, and that question is this:
Why is this the correct move?
If anything, this move is a downright ridiculous move fueled by the resurrection of an issue that should have been laid to rest in 2004 when Falcao debuted.
Falcao admitted that there indeed was an argument at a nightclub with some people, a girl did get injured in the lips as a result, he and his friends were taken to court, and of course, there’s also the charge of aggression—assault, in other terms.
He admitted to that and was given two years of house arrest, and he did admit that eight years later when he moved from his old house, he was advised by his legal counselors that the rest of the remaining sixteen months of house arrest could be finished in the new home.
Nobody can quote Falcao as saying anything to the contrary.
He admitted to his sins, but he did his time—his MMA career didn’t start until April of 2004, which is the year when the charges should have been dropped.
The charges should have never been spoken of again after Falcao began his MMA career, but somehow they magically reappeared after the win over Gerald Harris.
Now if the release really was because of Falcao not accepting the Lawlor fight, then maybe the release is understandable because that might just lead to Dana thinking Falcao doesn’t “want to be a f**king fighter.”
Unfortunately, that is not the case.
There are only two remotely negatively things that Falcao has done since he signed on to face Gerald Harris, lest we forget.
The first one was coasting through round three of the fight with Harris, which caused the bout to be one of the most panned non-title fights in the sport, and the other—depending on whose side you take—was the brief war of verbal body hooks between him and Sakara.
This “2002 assault charge” nonsense, however?
I cannot classify it as anything more than just that without coming across as more overly-vulgar than I normally am, because “nonsense” is exactly what this is.
New York, you’re one step closer to the promised land.