Author: DJ Summers

Ronda Rousey vs. Cris Cyborg: Fight Each Other or End the Conversation

Ronda Rousey versus Cris Cyborg sounds as exciting as Godzilla versus King Kong and has roughly the same odds of happening anytime soon. The longer they drag the conversation out, the worse it looks. 
Nothing in the fight world captures as much at…

Ronda Rousey versus Cris Cyborg sounds as exciting as Godzilla versus King Kong and has roughly the same odds of happening anytime soon. The longer they drag the conversation out, the worse it looks. 

Nothing in the fight world captures as much attention as good match propositions. With the media bloated on Rousey’s bottomless storeroom of attention-mongering, it’s no surprise the speculation revolves around her.

It’s no surprise either that the talk keeps looping back to Cyborg, the only woman in MMA more terrifying than Ronda, with power and striking ability to balance Rousey’s grappling. The babble comes in an endless circle of steroid accusations, Dana White‘s hatred for all things not UFC, name-calling and old-fashioned head bounties. Along with Floyd Mayweather Jr., Bethe Correia, Holly Holm and Gina Carano, Cyborg occupies the Rousey Zone, where fighters turn into marquees for the UFC’s golden goose.

Nothing in interviews gives the impression that the fight will happen. With the UFC’s new-found righteousness in the steroid war, they might not want the hassle of Cyborg’s alleged usage. Furthermore, Dana White seems like he simply can’t bear dealing with Justino professionally.

Beneath the surface, however, it could get into problematic territory. Fighters get accused of ducking when they aren’t challenging the killers coming up the ladder. 

Whether or not Rousey and the UFC are ducking a dangerous fighter is beside the point. It’s perception that counts. The more they talk about it and refuse to let it happen, the more we’ll start to question why.

Dana White and the UFC have enough pull and influence to sign whoever they need to sign. The steroid issue has been buried with too many fighters for that to be an effective explanation. He signs fighters he hates or keeps them long after the relationship goes sour. 

We know that Rousey’s career is carefully orchestrated by her handlers; all great fighters’ careers are, especially the ones with Rousey’s bankability. If Rousey and the UFC want to avoid the inevitable accusations of evasion, they need to ride the line between hype-building and legitimate matchmaking.

In the meantime, Rousey’s fantasy fights get more attention than the one she’s actually slated for against Alexis Davis. 

Davis exists and will fight Rousey, and we look straight past as though Rousey’s victory is already come, past and forgotten. It’s revealing that Rousey’s real-life foe generates so little buzz, almost like they’ve chosen the safe one for the actual fight and drummed up the press with the exciting ones to keep the Benjamins rolling in. If it isn’t an evasion, it certainly feels like a frustrating tease.

They build fighters on talk as much as performance, but that knife cuts two ways. Dodge, contract problem or reputation issues, it’s inconsiderate to dangle fights in front of the fans day after day with no blood to show for it.

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Anderson Silva: Is the Spider Coming Back to the UFC Too Soon?

Anderson Silva fears old age so much that he’s willing to risk more injury or a bum rep for the siren song the UFC is singing.
The 39-year-old Brazilian’s snapped shinbones healed quickly after their run-in with Chris Weidman at UFC 168. According to D…

Anderson Silva fears old age so much that he’s willing to risk more injury or a bum rep for the siren song the UFC is singing.

The 39-year-old Brazilian’s snapped shinbones healed quickly after their run-in with Chris Weidman at UFC 168. According to Dana White, Silva’s ready for a much-anticipated comeback.

With all the heavy breathing over his return, short-sightedness is easy to fall into. In reality, few options could be worse than risking the memory of a decade of dominance. A Silva comeback is exciting, but only if he comes back at the same level that he left at. That requires caution and more time than 14 months, if necessary.

Let’s say the Spider spins back into the octagon and smashes the competition. For the next year or two, he’ll monopolize the media and rewire the middleweight class. We’d be back to square one—Silva reigning as champion again with fans slobbering over a superfight possibility with Jon Jones or Georges St. Pierre (whose return is also in question).

That shattered leg allowed Silva to implement the best tactic in showbiz: leave on a high note. He’ll be older and lacking one year’s worth of fights on a shattered leg. Like all greats, he’ll start to lose to younger, tougher men. We’ll see the slow decline, accompanied by the inevitable, “Oh, if only Silva had just stayed out of the Octagon longer after he broke his leg!”

The subconscious is a cruel thing after knockouts and broken bones. Injuries change fighters. Nobody could blame Silva for, say, fearing hard leg kicks. Maybe he’ll want to wrestle more—or less—or keep his hands up for a more traditional, less exciting stand-up style. We want to see the same old Silva, naturally, but he needs to give the new Silva more time to get used to fighting in the old Silva way.

Caution is important for both Silva and the UFC. If they feed him tuneups, we’ll cry about it. If they give him a Weidman rematch too soon and he loses, we’ll cry about that too. If he hustles his red carpet roll-out back into the fight game, he could end up injured again and with his reputation tarnished by the inevitable losses or the justifiable change in fighting style.

Seeing Silva back will be a fun storyline. We just need to make sure we get the man back entirely, not some shadow twisted by an injury.

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UFC Fight Night 38: Fighters with the Most to Gain

This Sunday’s UFC Fight Night 38 in Natal, Brazil, won’t have a belt on the line, but there’s plenty of reputation and promise up for grabs from the old guard and the newcomers. 
Mauricio “Shogun” Rua could stitch a win streak together f…

This Sunday’s UFC Fight Night 38 in Natal, Brazil, won’t have a belt on the line, but there’s plenty of reputation and promise up for grabs from the old guard and the newcomers. 

Mauricio “Shogun” Rua could stitch a win streak together for the first time since 2009, re-establishing the bone-breaker reputation he had in the late 2000s. He surely needs the juice. After losing the light heavyweight belt to an indestructible Jon Jones in UFC 128, he lost some of the momentum that’s won him five Fights or Knockouts of the Night.

The rebound is coming, however. Shogun’s KO of the Night against James Te-Huna signaled a new Rua with new coaching, and the five-round battle against Dan Henderson saw both fighters at their best.

Their rematch has a different feel years later. Dan Henderson, beloved veteran though he is, simply can’t feel viable for much more time. 

Win or lose, Henderson comes off three consecutive losses as the oldest fighter in the UFC at age 43, old enough to receive one final testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) exemption from the UFC after its Nevada criminalization. His sun is setting, and Rua is in a position to take advantage of both Henderson’s age and his own return to form to rise through an opening light heavyweight division. 

CB Dollaway needs a win against Cezar Ferreira to jump to the next rung on the middleweight ladder, currently stuck between the freshman The Ultimate Fighter crowd and the edges of the senior middleweight contender group. He’s fought five TUF contestants since his arrival into in the promotion, more than any other fighter, and loses against the bigger names in the division such as Tim Boetsch and Mark Munoz.

A win will go a long way in banishing “stepping stone” from the mind.

Similarly, lightweight Leonardo Santos needs the use UFC Fight Night 38 to prove to the crowd he belongs in the game. Lightweight Santos is fresh off his The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil 2 win. The TUF fighters often get the first-time Octagon jitters and put on a bad show, or they can fail to live up to their hype entirely. The 34-year-old Santos has plenty of proving to do in a stacked division full of younger men.

Cezar Ferreira, though not quite to the inner circle guardians of the middleweight crown, could extend his 3-0 middleweight winning streak against Dollaway in a division that needs the hype. There are vacant spots to inject new talent into for the 185-pounders, and Ferreira‘s nationality, fast UFC 163 submission over Thiago Santos and 3-0 inaugural UFC record poise him to take a considerable chunk of that shifting limelight. 

Follow DJ Summers on Twitter @djsummersmma

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3 Reasons It’s Time to Give Fight Pass a Break

UFC Fight Pass is like a young racehorse. It’s a little gangly now, but it’ll grow quickly into something useful, with the right attention. 
The UFC streaming service got off to a rocky start with security and navigation issues, but it adjusted it…

UFC Fight Pass is like a young racehorse. It’s a little gangly now, but it’ll grow quickly into something useful, with the right attention. 

The UFC streaming service got off to a rocky start with security and navigation issues, but it adjusted itself accordingly after consumer response. Most of the problems seemed to come from a hurried launch rather than a conceptual flaw, and now we should look at Fight Pass for what it was meant to be: a wise, if premature, media decision that gives fight fans more of what they want and poises the promotion to expand its influence. 

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Top 5 Heels in the UFC

Being a world-class bastard is an effective business strategy in the fight world. We like to see fighters viciously shut big mouths as much as we like to see them keep talking, depending on the person. Part of the fun of watching a fight is projecting …

Being a world-class bastard is an effective business strategy in the fight world. We like to see fighters viciously shut big mouths as much as we like to see them keep talking, depending on the person. Part of the fun of watching a fight is projecting ourselves onto the fighters, so heels give us the chance to either live large or beat the daylights out of someone who is. 

Here’s a list of the top five bad guys (and gals) currently fighting in the UFC. Going back in history would be far, far too time consuming.

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UFC 170: Who Stands to Lose the Most

There’s more on the line in UFC 170 than just titles.
One of the most pervasive narratives in the UFC is “athleticism.” Fans and promotion both value Ronda Rousey, Rory MacDonald and Daniel Cormier for their pure athleticism; and…

There’s more on the line in UFC 170 than just titles.

One of the most pervasive narratives in the UFC is “athleticism.” Fans and promotion both value Ronda Rousey, Rory MacDonald and Daniel Cormier for their pure athleticism; and all three could damage the basis of those reputations if they lose at UFC 170.

Ronda is the “it” thing for 2014 without GSP and Anderson Silva—who are still on the edges of the action but not in it. Her fame rests on total control of the class and the license she gets to act out as a result. As the UFC refuses to let us forget, she has Olympic pedigree.

She’s the new shining star; a volatile, immensely talented brand of her own. The UFC invests so much time and energy inflating and praising her status that her first loss could be tougher than necessary. If she loses to fellow Olympian Sara McMann, she’ll be exposed as less of a champ and more of a supreme athlete controlling a thin division.

We all remember Rousey’s barb against Meisha Tate’s high school wrestling. That both confirmed Rousey’s own supremacy and undermined it. Ronda glorifies her own advanced success while admitting its relationship to her advanced training.

Rousey is the queen of a division that hasn’t established itself at the same rate as its male counterpart. While thousands of UFC fighting men came up through the professional ranks over the last 20 years, the women’s division is only now getting the attention it deserves; and the resulting training necessities.

If Rousey loses, she destroys the narrative the UFC has built around her. She loses her right to continue her persona with impunity and she loses her status as a lone elite among lesser athletes.

Similar to Rousey is Rory MacDonald. MacDonald has lots to prove after being hailed the next big thing in mixed martial arts—the inheritor to mentor Georges St-Pierre’s athleticism and ambassadorship.

After MacDonald’s uncharacteristically lackluster loss to Robbie Lawler, the hype died as Lawler got the shot for the vacant welterweight title against Johny Hendricks. If the Canadian loses now, he could deal a deathblow to the credibility he partially damaged losing to Lawler. He needs a win now to reestablish himself as the potential great we thought he was, which is no easy task against Demian Maia’s jiu-jitsu.

Daniel Cormier faces a challenge of not only credibility, but character. Patrick Cummins’ bean-spilling about Cormier’s in-gym tears created an ugly hatred between the two. Cormier’s inaugural light heavyweight match, originally set against now-injured Rashad Evans, took a nosedive.

Plenty of press built up Daniel Cormier as an especially athletic figure in a non-athletic weight class. As the only other heavyweight with the same kind of sportsmanship, he denied a chance to test his mettle. He protected champion Cain Velasquez, refusing to fight his friend and leaving doubts about his ability. If Cormier loses, we can begin to believe the murmurs of him being a fight dodger or, at the very least, a lesser fighter than we’d hoped he was going to be.

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