Author: Dave Doyle

NEW YORK — Former UFC, PRIDE and Pancrase fighter Ricardo Almeida will make his major-event debut as a judge at Saturday night’s UFC on FOX 3 card at the Izod Center in E. Rutherford, N.J.

And UFC president Dana White hopes Almeida will start a trend.

Speaking to reporters Thursday at the Beacon Theatre on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the UFC boss said that having those who have experienced what it’s like to be in a fight would be ideally suited to take MMA officiating to the next level.

“I would like to see the fighters ref and judge,” said White. “It makes all the sense in the world.”

He used the man he considers the best referee in the business, Herb Dean, as an example. Dean has several pro MMA fights to his credit.

“The guy trains, he knows the sport,” White said. “You see guys out there like [Steve] Mazzagatti, he’s sitting there, he’s thinking, ‘I gotta get some milk and eggs after the fight.’ I don’t know what the [expletive] this guy’s looking at, what he’s thinking. Meanwhile this fighter’s getting elbows dropped on his [expletive] head for 2 1/2 minutes, the fight should have been stopped 2 1/2 minutes ago. Herb Dean knows what its like to have an elbow dropped on your head.”

There would, of course, be potential conflict-of-interest issues to deal with when former fighters become officials. Almeida, who is slated to judge the Josh Koscheck-Johny Hendricks co-feature bout Saturday, won’t be judging any fighters with whom he trains, for example. But as far as White is concerned, the positives of involving former fighters outweigh such potential negatives.

“This isn’t like other sports,” said White. “You have a bad call in a baseball game and they have 100 more games left. You make a bad call in this sport and it affects his entire career.”

NEW YORK — You’d think a fresh start would mean a new sense of perspective for Josh Koscheck.

After all, the veteran welterweight, who meets Johny Hendricks in the co-feature bout of Saturday night’s UFC on FOX 3 event, has a new camp and a new sense of purpose.

But at a career point in which many gracefully age into beloved stars, Koscheck has doubled down on his “me against the world” attitude. The fighter fans have loved to hate since “The Ultimate Fighter 1” was in rare form Wednesday at the UFC’s open workouts at the famed Church Street Boxing Gym in Lower Manhattan.

“They say I’m old, I’m washed up, I’m this and that,” said the 34-year-old Koscheck (17-5). “I don’t believe that [expletive].”

In a way, it’s easy to see where Koscheck is coming from. He’s been through a bitter split with his former coach, Javier Mendez of the American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose, Calif, which adds to his sense that all eyes are on him.

“I think a lot of people are counting me out,” Koschck said. “A lot of people want to see me fail. A lot of those people are in San Jose. I’ve got a lot to prove, that I made the right decision to leave there.”

And make no mistake, there’s a lot riding on Saturday night’s bout at the Izod Center in E. Rutherford, N.J. In his first fight since his departure became public knowledge, the UFC will showcase Koscheck on live network television against a rising star eager to make his name. And Koscheck knows it.

“Everyone’s like ‘Why is he fighting Johny Hendricks, why did he take that fight?'” Koscheck said. “To me, I want to fight the best guys. The only way to get to the top is by beating whoever they put in front of me.

“I have a lot more to lose. I’m 34. Look at Randy Couture, he fought ‘til he was like 50. Dan Henderson is 40 years old. I still have a lot of fight left in me.”

On paper, the 28-year-old Hendricks presents an interesting conundrum: He possesses knockout power, but he’s also an elite wrestler, winning two NCAA titles at Oklahoma State.

For his part, Hendricks pointed at Koscheck’s last fight, a lackluster split-decision win over Mike Pierce at UFC 143, as his proof he can win the fight.

“If you watched the Pierce fight, whenever [Pierce] started getting off, Koscheck went to his wrestling and stole the round that way,” Hendricks (12-1) said. “That’s not going to happen with me. If he wants to wrestle, I’ll wrestle.”

“I hope he believes he’s that good,” said Koscheck, himself a former NCAA wrestling champ. “If he does, it’s going to be an easy fight for me on Saturday night. He kind of does believe he’s a good standup fighter and that he’s better than what he is. For me, that’s going to play to my advantage and I’ll show you guys on Saturday. If he wants to wrestle, that’s fine, because when he tries for takedowns he shoots from far away. That plays to my benefit as well.”

Koscheck said he realized moving on from AKA was the right decision after his unmotivated showing against Pierce.

“I thought my last performance sucked, he said. “I just was flat, didn’t really warm up in the back, was just kind of ‘whatever, just another fight.’ [Fighting] Mike Pierce, what is there for me to gain off that? Nothing. Just a paycheck. I like the money, but I want to get in position to win a championship. Fighting Mike Pierce isn’t going to get me there. Fighting Johny Hendricks? He just beat the No. 2 guy [Jon Fitch] in 12 seconds.”

While his new camp is based out of his gym in his adopted hometown of Fresno, Koscheck is still surrounded with familiar faces, trainers such as Bob Cook and Dave Camarillo. Koscheck said the sense of familiarity has allowed him to regain his swagger.

“When you’re in a place and you’re feeling unhappy, you don’t feel you’re reaching your potential,” Koscheck said. “Now I’m in a place I enjoy being in, enjoy going to the gym. Part of my problem was getting out of [AKA}, putting a new chapter in my life. I feel like I re-energized my career.”

But Koscheck still doesn’t need to look far find a reason to place a chip on his shoulder, taking assembled reporters to task for allegedly calling him too old to compete anymore.

“Let’s be real. Randy Couture, is that a rare case? Dan Henderson’s 40, right? Is that a rare case? Chuck Liddell was what, 37, 38. You guys are retards if you count me out. Pisses me off. You guys are crazy. I can’t wait to prove all you guys wrong. Keep counting me out. … Every time you write about me, tell me I’m too old, too washed up, too many fights. Too many miles. I like that.”

A pair of injuries have forced changes to the much-anticipated UFC 146 on May 26, leading to a new opponent for a popular heavyweight and the return of a former champion.

An undisclosed injury forced Gabriel Gonzaga to drop out of his main-card heavyweight showdown with popular Roy Nelson. In his place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena will step Dave Herman.

Nelson is coming off a loss to Fabricio Werdum at UFC 143, in which he took a hellacious beating but survived to a decision. The fighter nicknamed “Big Country” has dropped three of his past four bouts, all via decision. Herman (21-3) has won three of his past four fights, but is coming off a second-round TKO loss at the hands of Stefan Struve on Feb. 15.

An injury has also taken lightweight Evan Dunham out of his undercard match against Edson Barboza. Substituting for Barboza is former WEC lightweight champ Jamie Varner. Varner won the WEC title in Feb. 2008 and held it nearly two years. But his title loss to Ben Henderson kicked off an 0-3-1 run that led to his Zuffa departure.

Varner (19-6-1) went 3-1 after leaving Zuffa, with all three of his wins via first-round finish. He’ll have his work cut out for him in his return bout, as he faces a foe in Barboza (10-0) who’s not only unbeaten, but has won Fight of the Night honors in his past three matches. His most recent win was a sensational spinning wheel kick KO of Terry Etim at UFC 142.

The new fights were announced by the company on Tuesday night.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Many words have been used to describe Quinton “Rampage” Jackson over the years: Controversial, outspoken, hard hitting, and perhaps a few that aren’t fit to print.

But when UFC president Dana White looks back on the career of the former light heavyweight champion, two words come to his mind: Wasted potential.

“I think he could have been so much better if he applied himself,” White said Tuesday. “He had all the tools. Incredible chin, knockout power in both hands, incredible charisma and personality.

“Tell me Rampage Jackson wasn’t born to fight. Not only in his power, but his attributes, his wrestling, his chin, the list goes on and on.”

So why wasn’t Jackson’s career, which included unifying the UFC and PRIDE 205-pound titles, all it could be? White wouldn’t call Rampage’s Hollywood dalliances a distraction and even complemented him on his acting career.

“If you look at the only movie he ever acted in, “The A-Team,” he did a great job in that movie,” White said. “If you look at all the guys who have tried to cross over into acting, Rampage is the only one who has ever done a good job at it. He’s actually a really good actor.”

Rather, it’s been the periods in which Jackson has gone off the rails which, well, caused him to go off the rails: The infamous Orange County car chase; the various times he’s quit; and his recent series of Twitter outbursts after his UFC 144 loss to Ryan Bader.

“He’s crazy,” said White. “Rampage takes losses really hard, and, I don’t know, we’ll just see what happens, see how this thing plays out.”

“His potential could have been so much more. This is a crazy business, you always have these guys who think they’re getting screwed and this and that and everything else that’s happening. ‘Rampage’ wants to fight one more fight on his contract, and his last fight, and he’ll never make that money ever again for the rest of his life. A lot of those guys in the UFC don’t realize that until its too late.”

*****

If you thought concerns for Chael Sonnen’s safety getting in and out of Brazil were overblown, think again.

Sonnen and White were in Rio de Janeiro for Tuesday’s announcement that Sonnen’s rematch with Anderson Silva was being moved from the champion’s home country to the loaded UFC 148 card in Las Vegas on July 7. White detailed the level of security that was needed to get the controversial challenger out in one piece.

“With the stuff he said and everything else, we made sure we had proper security,” White said. “We had seven guys with us who do this for a living. We mapped out the whole route. We literally landed at the airport in Rio, went through customs, then jumped on helicopters that took us right through to the hotel. I came in the front door and we put him through the side door, had him in a holding room.”

Sonnen, of course, has a history of making outrageous comments about Brazil in general and Brazilian fighters in specific. Even though he was in hostile territory, Sonnen didn’t do much to defuse the situation.

“You know those disguises with the mustaches and the glasses you get at a joke shop?” White asked. “He had one of those on and he said ‘you wonder how I got into this country, this was my disguise.’ He says, ‘everyone was asking me if I was one of the Nogueira brothers, and the people were asking, which Nogueira brother was I, the fat one or the bald one? The one that was good or the one that was never good?’”

When a post-press conference media scrum with Sonnen starting going south, said White, they knew it was time to get the mouthy middleweight from Oregon out the door.

“We did a scrum with him, the reporters were getting really aggressive. Someone got him with a shock pen, all kinds of stuff like that. He went out the side door, I went out the front door, we got back in the helicopters, got him back through customs, got him on a plane, and got him out of there.”

*****

White is among the many who are vocal about problems with MMA’s current 10-point must scoring system. But don’t expect him to advocate for a system which will allow the option of half-point scoring any time soon.

The UFC boss was raving over the draw between Ian McCall and Demetrious Johnson at UFC 144 in the the flyweight tournament semifinals when he launched into a tangent about half-point scoring.

The bout was announced in the cage as a split decision in favor of Johnson. Later, it was discovered the bout was actually a draw, which should have meant a fourth round to break the tie and determine who would go on to the finals. But since the this was discovered well after the fact, the UFC had to make a rematch, which will be held on June 8.

“That fight should have gone another round,” White said. “How sick would that have been? Oh my god that drives me nuts. And, what’s even crazier, that’s the way the judges had it, but the guys added it wrong. Sick fight, incredible fight. Ends up its a draw, but the guy added the scores wrong.

“So then people ask me after that, ‘What do you think about the half-point system?’ They can’t add the [expletive] whole numbers right! You want to put half a point in there? [Expletive] every show would be [expletive] up! You want to throw fractions at them now? Three [expletive] rounds with whole numbers and you want to throw [expletive] fractions in there. Unbelievable.”

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The UFC hasn’t set a time or date for its next set of inductions into the company’s Hall of Fame. But when they get around to it, said company president Dana White, two former champions will likely get a call.

During a lunch gathering at The Palm restaurant, White said two fighters coming close to the end of the line, former UFC light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and multi-weight class champ B.J. Penn, belong in the Hall of Fame.

“Despite my personal problems with Tito, he belongs in,” said White. “He was the champion when we first bought this thing. The fact that Tito is still here, Tito and I have had our moments, but it doesn’t change what he did for the company.”

Ortiz was the first major drawing card of the Zuffa era. “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” held the light heavyweight title from 2000-03, still the third-longest reign in company history, and his rivalries with Ken Shamrock and Chuck Liddell helped etch the new-era UFC into mainstream consciousness.

Ortiz and White have famously clashed over the years. But White says he can’t deny the former champion his place in history.

“The beef between me and Tito, Chuck and Tito, the fact is, that played a huge role in helping making this thing as big as it is.”

Penn, a Hilo, Hawaii native billed as “The Prodigy,” is one of the most naturally gifted fighters ever to set foot in the Octagon. His willingness to fight anyone — he once gave up 50 pounds in a fight against future UFC light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida and took him to a decision — made him one of the company’s most popular fighters.

Penn is one of just two fighters to win titles in multiple weight classes. In 2004, the natural lightweight went up to welterweight and submitted Matt Hughes to claim the crown, ending Hughes’ 13-fight win streak. In 2008, he defeated Joe Stevenson for the vacant UFC lightweight title and held the belt for two years.

“Definitely,” White said when asked if Penn belongs in the Hall. “The thing about B.J. Penn is that what he brought to the lightweight division, there was a point in time when we first bought this company when people thought guys in the lighter weight divisions couldn’t be stars and couldn’t see pay-per-views and couldn’t cross over. B.J. Penn was definitely that first crossover guy for us.”

Ortiz will fight Forrest Griffin in their trilogy fight on July 7 in what is expected to be Ortiz’s last fight. Penn is hinting at retirement, but White thinks he’s not done yet.

“He’ll be back. It’s tough, when there are 16,000 people in the arena chanting your name, it’s tough to walk away from that. B.J. Penn is a fighter. You hear some of these guys, and Tito was one of these guys, he said he wanted to be famous. B.J. Penn is a fighter.”

Fighters currently in the Hall are Royce Gracie, Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Randy Couture, Mark Coleman, Chuck Liddell and Matt Hughes. Late TapouT co-founder Charles “Mask” Lewis is also inducted.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — If UFC heavyweight Alistair Overeem, who was recently handed a nine-month suspension due to the elevated levels of testosterone, wants to continue with an MMA career, he better get used to drug testing more than ever, according to UFC president Dana White.

“I’ll tell you what, if he didn’t like being tested before, wait until he sees what his life is like now,” White said between bites of a burger at a media luncheon at The Palm restaurant. “He’s going to be tested all the time.”

White was in Brazil on Tuesday during the Nevada Athletic Commission hearing and was mostly out of the loop until he came back to the United States. In that meeting, Overeem claimed he didn’t know what was in an anti-inflammatory given to him by Dr. Hector Oscar Molina. Overeem, who had already been pulled out of his planned title shot at heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos, was suspended nine months.

“I just found this out this morning,” said White. “I landed at four in the morning, I didn’t know what the hell happened. Apparently, he got suspended for nine months and he said he was taking anti-inflammatory shots. Well, you should have gone in and told the commission that before you got drug tested. You don’t say it after you get busted for elevated testosterone levels. Period. Pretty simple. The rules are cut and clear.

“If you are taking anything, at all, you tell the commission. If you are taking too many aspirin a day, tell the commission ‘I’m taking nine aspirin a day because my neck hurts.’ I’m taking anti-inflammatory,’ ‘I’m on TRT,’ whatever.”

Overeem’s suspension runs through Dec. 27. While some Internet conspiracy theorists have noted the UFC regularly runs big events in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve weekend, and technically, Overeem could be in the clear to fight on that card, that’s highly unlikely from a logistical standpoint. Overeem would not be able to re-apply for a license in Nevada until after his suspension is up, and big events require months of advance planning and legwork.

White is willing to wait and see how things play out with the disgraced fighter. But he can’t hide his anger at how things went down.

“He’s gonna have to do a suspension,” White said. “We’ll see what happens. I’m just pissed off that he lied to us.

“I am not an Alistair Overeem fan at all.”