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Daniel Cormier: The UFC Guys Don’t Tell Us, "You Guys Are Terrible!"

Daniel Cormier is—and I know this is the greatest cliché—human. Some fans’ unwarranted critical opinions on a fighter’s worth, his and others, must get to him. After all, with or without his sterling international wrestli…

Daniel Cormier is—and I know this is the greatest cliché—human.

Some fans’ unwarranted critical opinions on a fighter’s worth, his and others, must get to him. After all, with or without his sterling international wrestling and MMA accomplishments, he is only…human.

Just like you and me. (Sniff-sniff.)

Nevertheless, the human being and undefeated heavyweight fighter has his feet and perspective on the ground, with regard to the criticisms and vitriol spewed by the MMA malcontents among us.

The elite wrestler casually shoots his feelings toward the hard-to-please cognoscenti of the MMA fandom. He smoothly assumes a laid-back approach when it comes to romancing the stones of the species.

Listen to Cormier in the embedded The Ultimate Show video interview, along with his opponent Josh Barnett for the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix Championship finals on May 19, 2012. With lighthearted humor and a perceptible tinge of frustration, he says,

The UFC guys, they wouldn’t say stuff like, ‘You guys are terrible!’ […]

It’s the fans, always like, ‘You’re not fighting the best guys in the world.’ It’s not anybody from the UFC saying we’re not fighting the best in the world. […]

Ok, I just beat that dude, and 10 fans [go] like, ‘He’s a can.’ (Laughter breaks out.) And I’m like, ‘Damn, is that dude really bad?!’…They start to convince me that I’m fighting terrible people. (More laughter.)

It’s always refreshing to see two fighters who will be facing each other in the ring engage verbally with class and sportsmanship. Must be the calm before the storm that will rage inside the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California on the 19th of May.

Well, fans of any sport have always been a heterogeneous lot. You just have to take the good along with the bad.

Ever since the first Neanderthal bad boys wrestled away the mates and scant belongings of their weaker counterparts, before fighting was even a sport, there have always been snooty spectators on stone bleachers with stronger and contrary opinions.

Though, they were slightly less articulate than their modern counterparts.

And they’re not even human.

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UFC on FOX 3 Results: Rousimar Palhares Should Train with Masakazu Imanari

Rousimar “Toquinho” Palhares (14-4) and Masakazu “10th Dan of Leglocks” Imanari (25-10-2) can mutually further sharpen their already razor-sharp skills in applying submission holds on their opponents’ lower limbs. After getting …

After getting ground-and-pounded to a TKO loss by Alan Belcher in UFC on FOX: Diaz vs. Miller in the first round when he failed to lock in a favorite leg lock, Palhares should consider training with his kindred warrior spirit in Imanari.

The Brazilian middleweight Palhares, with seven wins via leg locks, and Japanese bantamweight Imanari, himself boasting of 10 wins also coming from the same holds, are truly cut from the same mold.

The following is an account of Imanari’s last fight, from my past article ONE FC: Belingon Needs to Work on Submission Defense, Folayang on Wrestling:

Belingon tries to pound but in vain, as the hold already got him losing his leverage and effective striking distance to rain blows with his upper limbs. His lower limbs are already neutralized, with one foot trying to escape the heel hook hold and the other trying to push the other out of it. The Japanese fighter coolly and tenaciously latches on the foot, eventually transitioning to a toe hold and ultimately a reverse heel hook.

Soon, the reverse heel hook submission forces Belingon to tap at 1:18 of the first round…

It wouldn’t hurt for them to learn together and refine some more their specialty and superiority in leg locks.

Besides, the grappling and MMA connections between Brazil and Japan have long been established.

As a short historical note, Japanese Judoka’s Mitsuyo Maeda taught grappling to Carlos Gracie of Brazil in 1917, then Gracie’s famous fighting descendants proved the efficiency of Brazilian jiu-jitsu in Japan’s MMA circuits from the mid-1990s to the early years of the 21st century.

And in case Palhares and Imanari will give it a go, they could also bring in Russian Sambo master Igor Yakimov and start their “First Class International Leg Locks Academy.”

I’d be the first enrollee.

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Miesha Tate Details Arm Damage Following Ronda Rousey Fight

Miesha Tate finally detailed the extent of her arm damage by that fight-stopping Ronda Rousey armbar—two months after her unsuccessful defense of her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title. The following is an excerpt from Mauro Ranallo&rsq…

Miesha Tate finally detailed the extent of her arm damage by that fight-stopping Ronda Rousey armbar—two months after her unsuccessful defense of her Strikeforce women’s bantamweight title.

The following is an excerpt from Mauro Ranallo’s interview with Tate during the Invicta Fighting Championships on April 28, 2012:

Ranallo: What was the extent of the injury because I know you tweeted a picture of the arm and it wasn’t broken or anything? What happened to the arm in that fight?

Tate: I basically tore everything. I tore the inner and outer sides of my ligaments attached to the muscles and bone. They actually pulled the bone off with the ligament and then I tore all the muscles around that. So…it was pretty bad, but you know for me it wasn’t really that bad. I think that…I have the motto that as long as you get up one more time than you fall down then…you know what I mean, you are doing something right? So I’ll be back stronger than ever.

Finally, we have closure. Straight from the fifth straight Ronda Rousey armbar victim herself.

There was no Miracle at Columbus after all. Now, why did it take Tate all of eight weeks to finally clear the cobwebs covering the true medical condition of her arm? Why didn’t she spare us the wild guessing game as soon as possible?

Was it perhaps “machismo”? To show how tough she really is?

After all, she refused to tap out to Rousey’s first pretty tight submission attempt. She was even rather slow in tapping out to the second and final armbar hold, which could have largely contributed to that horrible hyperextension.

Maybe she didn’t want Rousey, who took away her belt, to have her cake and eat it, too. She must have thought, “OK, you made me tap out and stripped me off my belt. But, I’m still all in one piece (ouch).”

Or maybe she was doing our sport a “noble” service, a la Yuki Nakai of Japan.

In 1995, then-Shooto welterweight champion Nakai fought in the tournament Vale Tudo Japan. His first opponent was UFC 1 veteran and Dutch savate fighter Gerard Gordeau. Gordeau illegally eye-gouged Nakai, but the Japanese still eventually prevailed via heel hook.

For his second fight, Nakai successfully armbarred American wrestler and WCW performer Craig Pittman, who enjoyed a 100-lb. weight advantage.

For his third and ultimate bout, he finally succumbed and lost to the legendary Rickson Gracie, by rear naked choke in the first round.

After his courageous showing, Nakai kept a terrible consequence of that night of fights a secret from the public. He claimed that it wasn’t good for MMA, then still in its infancy, to have its fans know what actually befell a certain part of him.

For years, the brave fighter kept secret the damage inflicted upon him by Gordeau: permanent blindness in his right eye.

He felt revealing the full extent of his injury right away would’ve been bad press for MMA. He didn’t want the then-fledgling sport to suffer a black eye.

Now back to the beautiful Miesha Tate. Was she trying to send this message to the rest of the world?

“Hey, guys! Here in MMA, our limbs may end up appearing broken when they‘‘re actually not!”

Just what could be the real reason for her late confession about her really broken arm?

Your guess is as good as mine.

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Manny Pacquiao Lookalike Suffers a James Toney in MMA Fight

Ever wonder how boxing great Manny Pacquiao would perform in an MMA fight, assuming he enters an MMA ring as a pure boxer? Well, an undercard involving featherweights of the Universal Reality Combat Championship—the leading MMA promotion in the P…

Ever wonder how boxing great Manny Pacquiao would perform in an MMA fight, assuming he enters an MMA ring as a pure boxer?

Well, an undercard involving featherweights of the Universal Reality Combat Championship—the leading MMA promotion in the Philippines—served as a simulation to answer that question.

Here’s the video of the fourth match at URCC 21 Warpath, held at the SMX Convention Center in Metro Manila in the Philippines last month.

Watch former boxer and now National Kickboxing (Nat Kick) representative Mario Sismundo, a dead ringer of boxing’s living legend, walk into the blue corner.

Into the red corner runs Miguel Alo, a recently retired member of the Philippines’ national wrestling team, representing Team S.P.R.A.W.L.

If you think this featherweight match turned out to be a smaller and obviously less significant version of the classic James Toney vs. Randy Couture fight at UFC 118, you are right. The other major difference being that this fight between the Filipino fighters took much longer, with the armbar submission (instead of an arm triangle choke) coming late in the second round.

(URCC does not observe the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, and instead features two 10-minute rounds per match a la Pride Fighting Championship of yesteryear.)

The following excerpts are from previous article URCC 21 Results: Nicholas Mann Beats Froilan Sarenas for Superfight Belt:

…The crowd was chanting “Manny! Manny!” during the bout as Sismundo looked like a dead ringer of boxing great Manny Pacquiao.

However, the former Philippine wrestling team mainstay took down the kickboxer at will throughout the fight and unleashed vicious punches and elbows in his ground-and-pound.

When the fight was stopped with the tapout, Sismundo’s bloodied face looked less like Pacquiao’s and more like Antonio Margarito’s—post Pacquiao.

In fairness to Sismundo, he did show some guard, mount, rear-naked choke attempts and takedown defense, albeit mostly inefficient.

What if the real Manny Pacquiao cross-trains in wrestling and ground grappling for a year before, hypothetically, making his MMA debut fight?

That could very well turn out to be a different story.

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URCC 21 Results: Nicholas Mann Beats Froilan Sarenas for Superfight Belt

Universal Reality Combat Championship light-heavyweight champion Nicholas Mann gained another accolade, this time as URCC Superfight titlist at the expense of current middleweight champion Froilan Sarenas. Held last Saturday night as the “URCC 21…

Held last Saturday night as the “URCC 21: Warpath” main event at the SMX Convention Center in Metro Manila, Philippines, the Australian frustrated his Pinoy opponent throughout their 20-minute tiff (two rounds of 10 minutes each) with superior standup striking and impregnable wrestling defense.

More impressively, the Aussie representing Team Hybrid Yawyan landed powerful leg kicks on the Submission Sport fighter during the few times the latter went supine on the ground in futile attempts to lure the former into his guard.

To top it all, in the second round, it was Mann who took down Sarenas from the clinch. Landing inside the guard, Mann was only fleetingly threatened by a submission hold: a triangle-choke attempt from which he quickly slipped out in a split-second.

With Mann peppering him with strikes mostly in the standup, coupled with his inability to wrestle his opponent to the ground, Sarenas, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu purple belt, was clearly beaten and neutralized by his bigger foe.

Mann also looked like the better physically-conditioned fighter, as he has never been more ripped in any URCC fight, and his dominant performance made him truly deserve the unanimous decision victory.

In one of the more thrilling undercards, Miguel Alo of S.P.R.A.W.L.—PHL battered and submitted Mario Sismundo of Nat Kick, PHL, by armbar in the second round. The crowd was chanting “Manny! Manny!” during the bout as Sismundo looked like a dead ringer of boxing great Manny Pacquiao.

However, the former Philippine wrestling team mainstay took down the kickboxer at will throughout the fight and unleashed vicious punches and elbows in his ground-and-pound.

When the fight was stopped with the tapout, Sismundo’s bloodied face looked less like Pacquiao’s and more like Antonio Margarito’s—post Pacquiao.

The following are the complete results courtesy of Wesley De Souza’s article in PROMMANOW (all winners on the left):

Nicholas Mann wins vs. Froilan Sarenas via unanimous decision (superfight)

Roy Doliguez wins vs. Alvin Ramirez via unanimous decision (superfight)

Jerson Estoro wins vs. Reysaldo Transmonte via unanimous decision (bantamweight fight)

Will Chope wins vs. Angelito Manguray via rear-naked choke in the first round (lightweight fight)

Mark Striegl wins vs. Alcer Lozada via rear-naked choke in the first round ( featherweight fight)

Jonathan Sumogat wins vs. Mark Joseph Abrillo via rear-naked choke in the first round (flyweight fight)

Miguel Alo wins vs. Mario Sismundo via armbar in the second round (featherweight fight)

Rasel Iniong wins vs. Mark Dialogo via armbar in the second round (pinweight)

Isaac Tuling wins vs. Charles de Tomas via tapout due to fatigue (bantamweight fight)

Adam Cacay wins vs. Fred Lim via armbar in the second round (pinweight fight)

URCC is the longest-running international professional MMA promotion in the Philippines.

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UFC 145 Results: Is Che Mills Really a Can After Loss to Rory MacDonald?

Che Mills (14-5 and 1 no contest) may have bled and lost via TKO to hot welterweight prospect Rory MacDonald (13-1), but he is definitely not on a losing skid. That fifth career loss was only the first after an impressive streak of five consecutive win…

Che Mills (14-5 and 1 no contest) may have bled and lost via TKO to hot welterweight prospect Rory MacDonald (13-1), but he is definitely not on a losing skid.

That fifth career loss was only the first after an impressive streak of five consecutive wins. And the last win recorded just a few months ago was an impressive devastation of Chris Cope, winning him the Knockout of the Night award.

Mills, it should be noted, is a former Cage Rage British welterweight champ and has finished twice, via strikes, DREAM Welterweight Champion and Strikeforce veteran Marius Zaromskis. Not many fighters can boast of having the same finishing rate, with 11 (7 by KO, 4 by submission) of his 14 victories via the short route.

It should also be noted that Mills has only been in his second UFC fight, and now sports a still respectable 1-1 record fighting inside The Octagon. Win some, lose some; win one, lose one.

As far as winning percentage is concerned, he is 50-50 in the UFC and around 73-27 in total MMA career record. Not bad, really.

He is still better off than some other active fighters in the UFC stable.

The Muay Thai specialist and former British MMA titlist is in a far better position than his compatriot Dan Hardy. The Outlaw seems to be overstaying with a glaring losing slide, with four straight defeats running. (Well, personality goes a long way in ensuring staying power…)

Likewise, Mills is also in a much safer position than Japanese superstar Yoshihiro Akiyama. Sexyama’s sex appeal has eroded a “bit” with his own string of four consecutive losses.

Mills can learn from his other countryman, Michael Bisping, and improve his wrestling. Bisping gave a very commendable performance, albeit resulting to a decision loss, against Chael Sonnen.

Those who thought that The Count would be tossed around like a ragdoll by The Mouth were gravely mistaken. Sure, he got taken down by the elite wrestler, but he gave his opponent a much harder time than was generally expected.

In fact, the Brit even took down Sonnen in the remaining seconds of the third and final round!

The question is, just when will Mills show a significant improvement in the wrestling department?

How close will he ever get to the Chuck Liddell mode of fighting: Keeping oneself standing with great wrestling defense in order to inflict more lethal strikes on the feet?

At only 29 years of age and still relatively a newbie in the UFC, Mills undoubtedly has more time than other fighters in improving any area of his game.

MacDonald could win the welterweight title some day? Who says that Mills can’t do the same?

Now going back to our original question: Is the fighter, who shares the same first name with the iconic Argentinian revolutionary and martyr, a can?

The answer is a resounding “No!”

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