In what should come as a surprise to absolutely noone, Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz were not able to keep things civil at yesterday’s UFC 196 press conference. In the evening’s staredown, Diaz put his fist a little too close to Conor’s face for the Notorious one’s liking, and McGregor responded by punching — not slapping, punching — Diaz’s hand out of his face.
What resulted was a bench-clearing skirmish that — had we been in Nashville — would have almost certainly resulted in the featherweight champion getting curb stomped.
After the jump: A full video of the skirmish with actual sound, plus McGregor and Diaz’s profanity laced interview on Fox Sports Live that followed.
In what should come as a surprise to absolutely noone, Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz were not able to keep things civil at yesterday’s UFC 196 press conference. In the evening’s staredown, Diaz put his fist a little too close to Conor’s face for the Notorious one’s liking, and McGregor responded by punching — not slapping, punching — Diaz’s hand out of his face.
What resulted was a bench-clearing skirmish that — had we been in Nashville — would have almost certainly resulted in the featherweight champion getting curb stomped.
After the jump: A full video of the skirmish with actual sound, plus McGregor and Diaz’s profanity laced interview on Fox Sports Live that followed.
Seriously, have you seen how deep Diaz’s crew rolls? I don’t care how many pool noodles Ido Portal brings to the equation, McGregor and poor Artem were lucky that there were about a dozen armed police officers and Dana White’s bodyguard on hand.
After their scuffle, the UFC 196 headliners appeared on Fox Sports Live for a dual interview and if you think it was anything less than gold than you have clearly been in a coma for the past week or so.
The professional MMA landscape in Ontario is pretty barren due to a lack of shows, so what do talented fighters do in order to progress their careers? In the case of my Toronto BJJ teammates who fight MMA, just like previous generations of Ontario-based fighters, they end up having to travel in order to get fights.
One such individual is Gabe “Samurai” Sagman (1-1) who is heading 2700 kilometers (that’s 1468 miles for you yanks) to Calgary, Alberta to face Keegan Oliver (3-4) this Friday at King of the Cage: Wrecking Ball. Gabe last fought in November 2014, so he’s primed and ready to get his momentum back.
“For the past month and a half, I’ve been training really hard,” says Gabe.
The professional MMA landscape in Ontario is pretty barren due to a lack of shows, so what do talented fighters do in order to progress their careers? In the case of my Toronto BJJ teammates who fight MMA, just like previous generations of Ontario-based fighters, they end up having to travel in order to get fights.
One such individual is Gabe “Samurai” Sagman (1-1) who is heading 2700 kilometers (that’s 1468 miles for you yanks) to Calgary, Alberta to face Keegan Oliver (3-4) this Friday at King of the Cage: Wrecking Ball. Gabe last fought in November 2014, so he’s primed and ready to get his momentum back.
“For the past month and a half, I’ve been training really hard,” says Gabe.
Check out Brian’s full interview after the jump.
I have had a unique perspective, because I trained alongside Gabe at Toronto BJJ under MMA coach, former UFC veteran Claude Patrick.
One thing that makes Gabe special is that he’s a consummate professional at his trade, a man who coaches and teammates know they can expect to see show up time and time again. There’s no excuses, or story or evasion of the job at hand—just a record of nearly-perfect attendance.
Skilled in all areas of MMA, Gabe has a plan to dispatch Keegan Oliver.
“I want to get in there—ideally, use my movement, out-strike the guy. If there’s an opening for me to take him down, I’ll take it. Obviously my strength is on the ground,” says the Ribeiro BJJ brown belt.
As MMA fighters have morphed into athletes, the conditioning routine Gabe follows outside of his Muay Thai, wrestling or jiu-jitsu training is also worth noting. Working out with his brother, Reuben, Gabe does an impressive array of exercises designed to give him a mix of strength and explosiveness.
What I learned from Gabe is that a person has to do the maximum preparation. It’s impossible to predict the future, but the harder you work, the luckier you get. He’s got the tools to win and that’s backed by his heart.
Says Gabe, “I’m putting on a great show, I’m coming to fight.”
(You see, Dana? All you had to do was occassionally buy the man a cake and EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE BETWEEN YOU TO.)
The past few years have been a roller coaster of emotions for Wanderlei Silva, to put it simply. In his last octagon appearance, the former PRIDE middleweight champion engaged in an all out barnburner with Brian Stann at UFC on FUEL 8, dusting the Marine with a hellacious combination in the third round of their “Fight of the Year” contender. Then…he got booked opposite Chael Sonnen as a coach on the third season of TUF Brazil and everythingwenttosh*t.
Things began to pick up for Silva back in May, more or less, when a Nevada District Judge reversed the lifetime ban the NSAC had slapped him with for skipping out on his UFC 175 drug test. Last month, Wanderlei (or at least, his lawyer) was given a second hearing with the Nevada State Athletic Commission, resulting in the ban being reduced to three years retroactive to the time of his infraction.
Now a (relatively) free man who also happened to be released from his UFC contract contract in January, there was really only one career option left for “The Axe Murderer” to make up for lost time: Immediately un-retiring and signing with Bellator.
(You see, Dana? All you had to do was occassionally buy the man a cake and EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE BETWEEN YOU TO.)
The past few years have been a roller coaster of emotions for Wanderlei Silva, to put it simply. In his last octagon appearance, the former PRIDE middleweight champion engaged in an all out barnburner with Brian Stann at UFC on FUEL 8, dusting the Marine with a hellacious combination in the third round of their ”Fight of the Year” contender. Then…he got booked opposite Chael Sonnen as a coach on the third season of TUF Brazil and everythingwenttosh*t.
Things began to pick up for Silva back in May, more or less, when a Nevada District Judge reversed the lifetime ban the NSAC had slapped him with for skipping out on his UFC 175 drug test. Last month, Wanderlei (or at least, his lawyer) was given a second hearing with the Nevada State Athletic Commission, resulting in the ban being reduced to three years retroactive to the time of his infraction.
Now a (relatively) free man who also happened to be released from his UFC contract contract in January, there was really only one career option left for “The Axe Murderer” to make up for lost time: Immediately un-retiring and signing with Bellator. And according to a press release sent out by Bellator this morning (via MMAJunkie), that’s precisely what Silva did:
The 39-year-old Silva (35-12-1 MMA, 5-7 UFC), the promotion today announced, has signed an exclusive multi-fight, multi-year deal. The signing appeared to be an inevitability after Bellator President Scott Coker said recently that the promotion was having serious talks with the former UFC standout and PRIDE champion about coming out of retirement.
It is not yet known what weight class Silva will be competing at, but if we were to hazard a guess based on this image, we’d have to say “DadBodweight” (or maybe Franklinweight). He’ll fit right in at Bellator, that’s for sure.
Now, an interesting caveat in Wanderlei’s ban, according to the ever-trustworthy folks at Wikipedia, is that it won’t prevent him from ”competing at Indian Casinos or in Japan,” so even though he isn’t technically allowed to compete until May 25th, 2017, we could very well see him step into the cage before that date. He is nearing 40, after all, and upstart Japanese promotion Rizin has expressed interest in potentially booking him against Fedor Emelianenko in the near future, which falls into definitive “would watch” category of fights for the vast majority of MMA fans.
In any case, “The Axe Murderer” is back. Someone tell Lenne Hardt to start warming up those legendary pipes.
Something was wrong. There was something missing. It wasn’t so much about what happened, as much as it was about what didn’t happen. The MMA field of psychic energy lacked a directed focus. It was split in several directions. There was one thing we should have all been talking about, yet it seemed we were all looking past it. We saw the potential, but ignored its likelihood. What I mean to say is, I certainly didn’t feel like we were collectively counting down to potential MMA history…and yet…the greatest page of MMA History could have been written this March 5th.
Let me back up for a moment. Let’s talk for a second about how we got there.
Something was wrong. There was something missing. It wasn’t so much about what happened, as much as it was about what didn’t happen. The MMA field of psychic energy lacked a directed focus. It was split in several directions. There was one thing we should have all been talking about, yet it seemed we were all looking past it. We saw the potential, but ignored its likelihood. What I mean to say is, I certainly didn’t feel like we were collectively counting down to potential MMA history…and yet…the greatest page of MMA History could have been written this March 5th.
Let me back up for a moment. Let’s talk for a second about how we got there.
Before a “bruised foot and sore vagina” derailed the fight, Featherweight Champion Conor McGregor was putting his undefeated UFC record on the line in what was an attempt to move up a weight division and snatch the Lightweight Championship belt from Rafael Dos Anjos’ tight grasp. Why would this have been history? Well for one, no one had ever held two belts at the same time. (Randy Couture and B.J. Penn won belts in two different weight-classes, but never concurrently). As huge and unprecedented as that would have been, it was more than just that.
It was about Mystic Mac fulfilling another one of his improbable prophesies, briefly recapped below.
2008: A twenty year old Conor McGregor not only predicts he will be in the UFC someday, he predicts he will be UFC champion.
2013: After his first UFC fight, he predicts he’ll drag the UFC back to Ireland after a six year hiatus.
2014: Before headlining UFC Fight Night 46 in Ireland, Conor predicts a first round KO of Diego Brandao
2014: Months later, before UFC 178 Conor predicts he will KO Dustin Poirier in the first round.
2014: Conor predicts Jose Aldo will pull out of their fight.
2014: Conor predicts he will break PPV and gate figures
2015: Prior to UFC 189, Conor offers to bet Dana White 3 million dollars that he will KO Chad Mendes in the second round.
2015: On the set of the Ultimate Fighter, Conor warns Urijah Faber that his stablemate TJ Dillashaw will backstab him in the near future to go with Faber’s nemesis, and former Alpha Male Striking Coach, Duane Ludwig.
2015: Then, prior to UFC 194, for his most eerie prediction yet, he has this exchange with Robin Black:
“I felt when we stared down, his right hand was twitching a little bit, which was a subtle tell for me, he is ready to unload that right hand, but I feel that could be a downfall for him. If he lets that right hand go…I will create traps, and dead space inside that octagon all over the place, and I will walk him into it…that is what I will do with Jose [Aldo], I will lead him into a place where he feels safe, but all of a sudden, it’s a trap and he is in big danger.”
Before each one of those predictions, most of the MMA intelligentsia would shake their head and say ‘You may have made short work of previous opponents, but this next guy is on a whole different level.’ Rashad Evans smirked at Conor when he told Rashad he would KO Poirier in the first round. MMAFighting’s senior editor, Luke Thomas, thought there was no way the UFC would sacrifice their golden boy striker against the skilled wrestler, Chad Mendes after Jose Aldo pulled out this summer. Both Chad and Frankie Edgar said ‘Conor’s good, but Aldo’s a different animal.’
Of course, you don’t need me to tell you who was right and who was wrong, each and every time…so far. Even those who believed Conor would beat Aldo, thought he would do so in a back and forth war. Only Conor was able to see through time and continue his jaw-dropping predictions by continuing to crack the jaws of his opponent. No one thought it was possible that his best performance in the UFC would come against the best competition he’d ever faced in his career, the first, and former, UFC featherweight champion.
When asked at the press-conference, if he had ever envisioned starching Aldo in only 13 seconds, he responded with “of course, if you look at my record, I have a 4 second KO.” So in Conor’s mind, the only part of his prediction that was off, was that he took 9 seconds too long. Mystic Mac was about to go full-blown super saiyan. He was this close to reaching a mythical level of greatness and stardom the UFC had never seen before. And yet…
You’d figure the UFC would have been promoting this to the brink of over-promotion. The UFC promotes the hell out of anything they’re selling, even if it’s their schlockiest card ever due to injuries (think Dillashaw vs. Soto). So what happened? Was the UFC just sitting back and hoping Conor’s promotional magic did all the heavy lifting? After all, Conor’s UFC fights break records with regularity at this point.
So Conor attempting to make UFC history, should have been another surefire record-breaker right? Ok fine. But why didn’t they give it that extra push, like when McGregor finally faced Aldo. For that fight, they practically rolled out a 72-hour long undercard to give a fight of that magnitude the proper promotional underpinning.
But just a few weeks ago… they didn’t even put Conor’s featherweight belt in front of him during the UFC 196 (then UFC 197) press conference. Hell, it didn’t even find its way onto the fight poster until Conor threw a well-deserved hissy fit.
Why was the UFC strangely demoting UFC 196’s previous headliner McGregor/Dos Anjos in importance, rather than doing their usual jobs of enhancing it? Some of the MMA media mused that it was because they were upset with Conor McGregor’s pompous antics and hardline financial negotiating, particularly with the idea of “McGregor Promotions”.
Let me propose an alternative suggestion. I believe the reason the UFC slightly took their foot off the promotional pedal, was because they “didn’t see how (Conor) wins this fight.” Their rationale for not putting Conor’s featherweight belt in the fight poster was “because Conor’s belt was not on the line.”
Think about that for a moment. If Conor would have won, he would have become a two-division champion. So, while the featherweight belt was not on the line, it was still relevant and significant, but only in victory. If he would have lost, then, they were saying, Rafael would not have become the featherweight champ. In other words, the featherweight belt was only significant if Conor would have won, which they had already admitted they didn’t believe was going to happen. In short, they were, to borrow one of Chael’s phrases, ‘nesting for his fall’.
They wanted to remind everyone, even if Conor lost, he would have still been the featherweight king. He would still be the moneymaking machine that owned 2015 with record breaking PPV’s and gate sales. Essentially, they were implying, this fight doesn’t count, unless Conor wins. It was almost like they didn’t want the whole world watching, just in case, Conor got bludgeoned by the “animal” Dos Anjos (let’s not forget this is same guy who crumbled the last man who tried to take his belt in 66 seconds, with a tornado of muay thai violence). If they wholeheartedly believed Conor was going to win, why wouldn’t they have saved this fight from the get-go to headline the massively epic UFC 200?
Now don’t get me wrong. The UFC is a business in pursuit of a profit, and they were certainly promoting this fight. But, a fight of this magnitude required scaling the tallest mountain and shouting into a megaphone, commanding the whole world to watch. Instead, they were tapping people’s shoulders and whispering into their ears. Promotionally speaking, it completely flied in the face of how they usually did things.
But what if Conor would have won? If he did pull off the victory, they would have gotten to mega-promote Conor and UFC 200 with the money they saved by under-promoting UFC 196. They would have undoubtedly billed him as the #1 pound for pound fighter in the world. Scratch that…they would have billed him as the G.O.A.T.
At least, that’s how the UFC that I’m used to would have done it.
If he would have lost, they would have said, ‘well, we told you this would happen.’ And ‘it doesn’t mean he’s no longer the featherweight champion.’
Basically they were betting on this:
Heads, History is made. Tails, this didn’t happen.
Heads, Mystic Mac lives on. Tails, Conor McGregor remains the featherweight champion.
But now, with an entirely different (and oddly, less significant) fight on the table, it seems the UFC has once again kicked the promotional machine into overdrive. We’ve all seen the press conference, the promos, and so forth. Is it that a matchup between McGregor and Nate Diaz is simply much more marketable than his previously-scheduled battle with Dos Anjos, or is the UFC a little more assured that their golden boy (and I say that with no negative connotations whatsoever) can actually win this fight, and have decided to step up their marketing game as a result?
(We promise, this photo is only misleading if you haven’t seen the fight yet. Or if you happen to be Anderson Silva. via Getty.)
It’s crazy to think that a showdown between two of the UFC’s longest-standing and most well known middleweights went almost completely uncovered in the wake of UFC 196’s main event switcheroo, but that’s exactly what happened with Fight Night 84. The power of Mystic Mac truly knows no bounds.
Fortunately for those of us who turned in, Anderson Silva vs. Michael Bisping turned out to be one of the more bizarre main eventers in promotional history — right up there with “Silva vs. Diaz” or “Silva vs. Leites” or… well, you get the point. It was a fight that showed both Bisping’s unexpected, late-career resurgence, a former champion’s steady decline, and depending on who you ask, the continued incompetence of MMA judges and the scoring system in general, so head below for all the details and highlights.
(We promise, this photo is only misleading if you haven’t seen the fight yet. Or if you happen to be Anderson Silva. via Getty.)
It’s crazy to think that a showdown between two of the UFC’s longest-standing and most well known middleweights went almost completely uncovered in the wake of UFC 196′s main event switcheroo, but that’s exactly what happened with Fight Night 84. The power of Mystic Mac truly knows no bounds.
Fortunately for those of us who turned in, Anderson Silva vs. Michael Bisping turned out to be one of the more bizarre main eventers in promotional history — right up there with “Silva vs. Diaz” or “Silva vs. Leites” or… well, you get the point. It was a fight that showed both Bisping’s unexpected, late-career resurgence, a former champion’s steady decline, and depending on who you ask, the continued incompetence of MMA judges and the scoring system in general, so head below for all the details and highlights.
Where to begin with this fight. I know, how about the fact that for the first two and a half rounds, Anderson Silva seemed more content to do the hand jive than throw any strikes of significance?
It would be an obvious observation to say that Silva’s bizarre performance showed shades of his fights with Leites and Demian Maia, but on a more fundamental level, his strategy was also eerily reminiscent of Strikeforce-era Fedor Emelianenko. Rather than relying on smooth, multi-punch combinations to set up the fight-ending shot like he had in his time as champion, Silva opted to headhunt, becoming so over-reliant on his power (not to mention, completely unconcerned with Bisping’s) that it became a crutch.
It’s entirely possible that this was Silva’s way of making up for the speed he has lost over the past couple of years, but the problem was, Bisping was markedly quicker to the punch than Silva and the results — early on, at least — were several exchanges like the one above.
Unfortunately for Silva, a declining reaction time coupled with a complete lack of respect for his opponent’s punching power nearly came back to bite him in the ass (again). Near the end of the second round, Silva was forced to stop clowning around and actually start treating his fight like, you know, a fight, compliments of a Bisping left hand that floored him.
They say that speed is the first thing to go in the life of a combat sports athlete and your chin second, an assertion which appears to be the case for “The Spider.” Never in my wildest dreams did I picture myself writing about how Pillowhands Bisping nearly KO’d the same guy who let Ryan Bader tee off on him in the TUF gym just a few years ago, but there you have it.
This takes us to the truly weirdest moment in the fight, wherein a mouthpiece-less Bisping attempted to call a time-out, only to have Silva knock him dead with a flying knee in the confusion. What followed was a momentary lapse in judgement that saw Silva go full Cyborg and celebrate prematurely while a battered Bisping stumble his way to his stool. I really can’t say whether or not the fight should have been called off and declared a victory for Silva right then and there, but the fact that Bisping was able to answer the fourth round bell seems to indicate that Herb Dean made the right no-call.
It was around the midway point of the fourth round that Silva decided to actually start taking things seriously, and believe it or not, it worked! Who woulda thunkit? Silva’s combination work in the fourth round was on point; he brutalized Bisping with knees to the body, mixed up his punches, and even rocked Bisping with a front kick reminiscent of the one he used to knock out Vitor Belfort. Has he utilized such a strategy in the first 15 minutes of the fight, I’m sure that he would have put Busping away with the highlight reel finish we were expecting of him, but lo, such is the mystery of Anderson Silva.
Ultimately, the flashes of his old self that Silva was able to display were simply too few and far between, which is why the judges ultimately awarded Bisping the much-deserved win across the board. What followed was a tremendous display of respect between the two middleweights.
As you might expect, however, Silva was none-to-happy with the verdict and made it known in his post-fight interview.
“Brazil, here’s the deal. If you can’t win one way, they try to take it away from you another,” said Silva in his native tongue. “That’s it. You saw how it went down, right? So I have nothing to say. I fought for you and that’s it. Thank you for the support. My family, I’m coming back home. I’m all right. That’s it. Mission accomplished, but sometimes things are just like in Brazil — Totally corrupted.”
And indeed, there are legions of fans who took to Twitter following the decision to lament how badly Silva had been screwed over, citing Bisping’s busted up face and near-KO suffered in the final second of the third round as evidence. Those people are what we call “wrong.” While we can lament the ineffectiveness of the 10-point must system until the cows come home, the fact remains that, by current judging standards, Bisping still dominated the first two rounds entirely and 4:59 of the third, making him the winner of the fight according to anyone with even a cursory understanding of how MMA scoring works.
Basically, Silva can bitch and moan all he wants about the “corruption” of the judging system — an argument not without its merits, given the hometown victory that Brad Pickett received earlier in the night — but perhaps he should have considered that while clearly underestimating his opponent for the first three rounds of a five round fight. It’s simple math, really.
As it stands though, Michael Bisping has strung together the first three fight win streak of his career since 2011 and has probably earned the middleweight title shot that has long eluded him. For Silva fans, it’s just the latest in a string of disappointments that so often mark the decline of a former great. For Bisping fans, it was arguably the greatest moment in British MMA history. For those of us who will never be able to shake the image of Bisping being an unbearable asshole, it’s kind of a win-win, if you think about it…I mean, just look at what Luke Rockhold did to him the first time around.
The full results for Fight Night 84 are below.
Main card
Michael Bisping def. Anderson Silva via unanimous decision
Gegard Mousasi def. Thales Leites via unanimous decision
Tom Breese def. Keita Nakamura via unanimous decision
Brad Pickett def. Francisco Rivera via split decision
Undercard
Makwan Amirkhani def. Mike Wilkinson via unanimous decision
Davey Grant def. Marlon Vera via unanimous decision
Scott Askham def. Chris Dempsey via KO (head kick) at 4:45 of round 1
Arnold Allen def. Yaotzin Meza via unanimous decision
Krzysztof Jotko def. Bradley Scott via unanimous decision
Rustam Khabilov def. Norman Parke via unanimous decision
Daniel Omielanczuk def. Jarjis Danho via majority decision
Teemu Packalen def. Thibault Gouti via submission (rear naked choke) at :24 of round 1
David Teymur def. Martin Svensson via TKO (punches) at 1:26 of round 2
It wouldn’t take a genius to predict that a mic battle between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz would be entertaining from start to finish, but I don’t think that any of us could have predicted how balls-to-the-wall bonkers yesterday’s UFC 196 press conference ended up being. Both Ireland and Stockton were represented in full, and the result was a conference that felt less like a media day and more like a Def Jam comedy special. A few choice pull quotes:
McGregor: “I like Nick’s little bro. He’s like a little cholo gangster from the hood, but at the same time, he coaches kids Jiu Jitsu on Sunday morning and goes on bike rides with the elderly. He makes gang signs with the right hand and animal balloons with the left.”
Diaz: “Fuck you.” (this was the majority of Diaz’s trash talk)
Diaz: “You fight midgets.”
McGregor: “Most people, when they get that red panty night, they ring home to their wife, ‘Baby we did it!’ Nate rings Nick, ‘Baby, we did it!'”
Check out a handful of highlights from the conference above, then head after the jump for the whole affair.
It wouldn’t take a genius to predict that a mic battle between Conor McGregor and Nate Diaz would be entertaining from start to finish, but I don’t think that any of us could have predicted how balls-to-the-wall bonkers yesterday’s UFC 196 press conference ended up being. Both Ireland and Stockton were represented in full, and the result was a conference that felt less like a media day and more like a Def Jam comedy special. A few choice pull quotes:
McGregor: “I like Nick’s little bro. He’s like a little cholo gangster from the hood, but at the same time, he coaches kids Jiu Jitsu on Sunday morning and goes on bike rides with the elderly. He makes gang signs with the right hand and animal balloons with the left.”
Diaz: “Fuck you.” (this was the majority of Diaz’s trash talk)
Diaz: “You fight midgets.”
McGregor: “Most people, when they get that red panty night, they ring home to their wife, ‘Baby we did it!’ Nate rings Nick, ‘Baby, we did it!’”
Check out a handful of highlights from the conference above, then head after the jump for the whole affair.
The belt aside, it would be safe to say that UFC 196 has arguably become more popular since Diaz agreed to face McGregor. This press conference peaked at 361,000 viewers for Christ’s sake; that’s better ratings than 23 previous WSOF broadcasts on NBC SN. For a press conference. On a Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Anderson Silva is fighting this weekend and no one gives a fuck. The power of Mystic Mac, ladies and gentlemen.
