Author: kmowatt

If you watched last night’s episode of “The Ultimate Fighter”, then you know that the show ended with the least surprising ‘shocking conclusion’ in history, as Rich Franklin was revealed as Tito Ortiz’s replacement. Due to the fact that cat scurried out of the bag several weeks ago, as the world over knows that Franklin will face Chuck Liddell June 12^th at UFC 115, the TUF camera crew’s ‘who’s this guy walking up’ shoe shot didn’t exactly hit a homerun.

At any rate, in 9 days, two of the promotion’s most popular ex-champs in “Ace” and “The Iceman” will throw down, and really, a one-sided loss for either dude could be catastrophic career wise (more so for Chuck yes). It’s probably safe to say that this one will go down as a striking affair, and while speaking to The Mirror recently, Franklin shared a few keys to the bout.

“We have to make sure I’m razor-sharp in what I’m doing and that there is not any moment of timidness in my motion so that I just move in fluid and land the punches or the kicks I need to land.”…”As time progresses I tend to accelerate as a fighter and Chuck tends to slow down and things are going to start to play in my favour.”

Power advantage to Liddell; speed and conditioning to Franklin? Sounds reasonable. To bet on the upcoming bout head here.

After watching Paul Daley’s sucker punch on Josh Koscheck last month (which also didn’t land flush like 90% of his strikes during the UD loss),  and seeing UFC boss man Dana White promptly announce the British fighter will never step foot in the Octagon again, how long did you think it would take for Daley to line up another fight? Did you think ‘no one’s going to hire that dude for a while that’s for damn sure,’ or did you say ‘ummm, I think there’s some money to be made here, I’m guessing sometime in mid-July.’ Well if it was the latter, welcome to the lucrative world of prophecy.

According to the Aussie promotion, Impact Fighting Championship, it has signed Daley to take on Pride vet Daniel Acacio, at the organization’s upcoming July 18^th show in Sydney. If you’ve been on a steady UFC diet then you’re aware of the fact that Daley bombed out Martin Kampmann and Dustin Hazelett before facing Koscheck. You might be unaware of the fact, however, that Acacio is 4-1 in his last five fights and has a record of 21-9.

Aside from the Daley / Acacio bout, which you may or may not give 2 sh-ts about, the July 18^th Impact FC will also include Paulo Filho vs. Denis Kang, Ricco Rodriguez vs. Jeff Monson and Murilo Bustamante vs. Jesse Taylor. We’ll let you decide whether the main event, Pedro Rizzo vs. Ken Shamrock, is in fact the least compelling of these match-ups.

Unless something dramatically changes, it’s probably safe to say that “Shogun” Rua and Rashad Evans will not be engaging in the kind of pre-fight smack talk, which fuelled interest in this past weekend’s UFC 114 clash between Evans and “Rampage” Jackson. Now granted, Shogun could end up pointing to the fact that he punted Jackson into oblivion rather than winning by decision, or Rashad could fire things up by stating he bombed out Forrest Griffin instead of tapping out to him, but, don’t count on it. This fight, when it’s made official, should be damn good, but not because the two have engaged in countless chest bumping, talking over each other for two minutes, threat fests.

Case in point, when Fix caught up with Evans post-fight this past weekend, he outright stated he was a fan of Shogun (his aforementioned 2005 brutalization of Jackson may play a factor in this…), and when asked by Tatame.com about Evan’s win over Rampage, Rua said this:

“I watched the fight between Rampage and Rashad and I think I was a great spectacle. Rashad made a good and efficient strategy, kept Jackson  always in a short distance, kept himself close to him and did good takedowns.”

Yes. It was a good and efficient strategy wasn’t it? Maybe not super duper thrilling, but hey, a huge win regardless. It will be interesting to see if the light-heavyweight champ can negate Evan’s wrestling, if and when they fight later this year.

For MMA bloggers, who may or may not have spent the entire night huddled in the attic with a bucket of KFC and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon (our corporate overlords have directed the staff to include more ‘hipster friendly’ references…in reality it was a 40 of bathtub gin), Chael Sonnen is a godsend. Meaning that as we noted just yesterday, the middleweight consistently provides blog worthy quotes; something that comes in handy when some random, anonymous blogger, can hardly navigate sipping coffee, much less surf the net for hours in search of content…

The latest ‘Sonnen’ which will likely alarm or entertain many die-hard fans across the MMA world, comes courtesy an interview Chael did this past weekend with Fight Magazine, where the bruising wrestler tackled a variety of issues, including humbleness (insert obvious joke here…), Vegas, and of course, his upcoming August 7^th bout with middleweight champ Anderson Silva. After declaring that once he’s the champ he’ll leave the UFC, “call Dana White a bunch of names”, only to eventually return after he realizes “there’s nowhere else to go” (anyone’s ears burning?), Sonnen offered this:

“I would love to go 205. 185 pounds is the toughest division in the business. So if you’re going to go after the belt, go after the tough one. But I’d love to get a night off and beat up some of those… for god sake, 205 had a karate guy that was their champion. I mean that weight class is a joke.”

Wow; Machida and Karate Kid fans, you digging this?

Saying Chael Sonnen is outspoken is like telling someone Roy Nelson is stocky. Both statements are accurate, yes, but at the same time, don’t convey the full reality of the situation. Sonnen has never met a mic he didn’t want to alarm (we’re talking MMA here, not fighter / part time campaigning Republican) while Roy evidently has never met a diet he cared for (and ask Brendan Schaub or Stefan Struve if it matters).

Sonnen’s gift for shocking gab led us to invent our own term for the ‘what did he just say?’ comments he’s infamous for- we call them Sonnens. Now depending on who or what Chael is discussing, some may find Sonnens hilarious, or at other times, infuriating. We’re guessing that if you’re a huge Anderson Silva fan, lately you may be finding the Sonnens less than amusing. Over the last couple of weeks Chael has tweeted a few zingers in Silva’s direction, but more recently, he took aim at the middleweight champ’s manager, Ed Soares.

Ed, pray to whatever Demon effigy you prance and dance in front of with your piglet tribe of savages that I decide not to CRUCIFY you.

WTF? With a Sonnen like that where do you begin? (And we’re assuming he’s referring to Soares, otherwise Edwards across the world better retrace their steps) Soares has always rallied to his fighter’s defense, so, participating in verbal warfare would certainly be nothing new…could this have something to do with this past weekend’s reported meeting between Anderson and Chael? UFC 117 here we come..

Since James Toney decided that he wants to show the UFC what’s up, the decorated boxer has rarely missed an opportunity to send MMA nerds like ourselves into a hissy-re-position our broken glasses-fit, with claims that he’s going to send heads sailing out of the Octagon. It’s a claim that most knowledgeable fight fans understand seems asinine (not just the whole decapitation thing), as it’s been demonstrated time and time again, that striking alone doesn’t go far in MMA. Yes, even if you are one of the finer pugilists to transition into the sport ever.

At least publicly, Toney hasn’t seemed overly concerned with the fact that there’s more to MMA than just throwing combinations, leading some to question just how hard the outspoken heavyweight will prepare for his expected UFC debut against Randy Couture on August 28^th. Further, due to Toney’s ‘trust me I got this’ air of overconfidence, others have wondered if his training will in fact prepare him for all the facets of MMA. Well according to a report today from Fight Hype, a source within Toney’s camp says:

“He’s losing weight very well and he has that fire back in his eyes. I’d be the first to tell you if he was slipping, but even with the ground stuff today, I was impressed man.”

Now granted, this is from an anonymous source within his camp, so we don’t blame you if you’re not selling your belongings to throw money down on the boxer, but still, this is getting more and more interesting no?