Author: kmowatt

Over the last couple of days there were a few reports regarding the fact that Dana White had agreed to meet with Ricardo Arona, and if you’re saying, ‘ya so effin what?’, you haven’t been watching enough “Best of Pride.” For several years Arona was a beast while fighting in Japan, earning wins over Kazushi Sakuraba (which completely re-defined the meaning of ‘this is getting ugly’), Wanderlei Silva, Dan Henderson and Alistair Overeem. Yeah, just a couple of noteworthy dudes in there…

Now granted, if you’re an old school fan and don’t care about Arona possibly heading to the UFC, due to the fact his ground-and-pound style hasn’t always produced mind blowing action, fair enough. But you have to admit, depending on what Arona returns to MMA (he’s fought just once since 2007), he could punish a few notable fighters in the Octagon. According to the Brazilian publication Tatame, not only has Arona met with the UFC boss man, the meeting went really well.

“It was better than I expected, because he is a very busy guy, we’ve been seeing this great event, a great show he is promoting. It was a while since we last spoke and there were some rumors in the internet, some interviews… What really happened was that he said he was really glad to see me here, asked about my last fight, where it was, how it was and I told him and also said I wanted an opportunity to rejoin the event on the end of the year, a chance to be here and he said he wanted me on his event…”

Arona also discussed his knee injury, a possible rematch with Rampage Jackson and more; check out it here.

Following his UD loss to Rashad Evans Saturday, “Rampage” Jackson conceded that ring rust may have played a factor, in his inability to counter the agility and wrestling of his arch nemesis (and yes, we were damn surprised that the two didn’t embrace and ‘make-up’ afterwards, like 90% of the supposed feuds that are Octagon related). Really, love or hate em, it was a job well done by Rashad, as we all saw in the third round what can happen to one’s equilibrium when Rampage’s fist lashes out.

Well, according to a report from MMA Weekly today, it sounds like Rampage may soon face yet another dude who isn’t exactly easy to tee off on, namely Lyoto Machida. Remember him? The guy that until meeting up with “Shogun” Rua had cruised through 7 UFC bouts like a hot knife through butter? Today’s report from MMA Weekly included this quote:

“I’m going to get together with Machida in the next couple of days, maybe Rampage,” said White on Saturday night following UFC 114.

Now, lots has happened since last year, and plenty of brain cells have been swished into inactivity through a steady diet of beer, but Rampage has always said that he was originally promised a bout with Machida in 2009 no? Now it will be interesting to see if Rampage wants to shake off more of that ring rust against one of the baddest dudes on the planet…Keep your fingers crossed. That’s a bout that should move some tickets.

So reportedly the winner of the upcoming May 29^th bout between “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans will have first dibs at newly crowned light-heavyweight champ, “Shogun” Rua. Now by now, even casual UFC fans are likely catching on to the fact that Shogun beat the stuffing out of Rampage at a Pride event in 2005. Yes, we are speaking figuratively here, but really, if you’ve seen the bout then you know that it was packed full with wincing moments (soccer kicks to the face seem to have a knack for doing this…)

Really, regardless of who wins at UFC 114, Rua’s first title defense should be a doozy. Although, if it in fact ends up being Rampage, will he be able to put his previous loss to Shogun behind him? (Obviously his left hook was able to do so against Wanderlei Silva) Well, speaking to MMA Weekly recently, the Mr.T impersonator had this to say about the current UFC champ.

“I feel like the universe is opened up for me right now. It seems like it’s my time,” said Rampage. “Cause that Shogun fight actually does haunt me ever since then. I never even should have took the fight. Going into the fight I was already injured. It was one of those things it taught me a mean lesson.”

Jackson went on to say (and we’re summarizing here) that essentially a thirst for cash and arrogance lead him to taking the bout with Shogun, despite being injured. Yes, money has a funny way of putting on the ‘ah f—k it’ blinders…First things first though, Rampage vs. Rashad; to bet on the bout head here.

Most MMA observers understand that although Strikeforce doesn’t have as many world class fighters as the UFC, the promotion has done a fine job at inking some bad ass dudes that certainly would be a force in the Octagon (one of them of course being Jake Shields, who will likely soon have an opportunity to demonstrate this for real). Now although Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza doesn’t yet command the kind of hype Strikeforce fighters like Fedor Emelianenko, Dan Henderson and Gilbert Melendez do, give it time.

Yes, lots of people expected Jacare to be a beast in MMA due to his reedonkulously good jiu-jitsu and judo skills, and as aside from his hiccup/upkick/ done loss to Gegard Mousasi in Japan, he’s pretty much cruised in Dream and now Strikeforce. Perhaps this why when speaking to the Brazilian publication Tatame, after Jacare’s UD win over Joey Villasenor this past weekend, he stated:

“Mission accomplished. I’m feeling great. I gave myself over right on the first round and that made me feel a little bit tired later, but, as you could see, I fought all the three rounds”, explains Souza. “I hope I have another fight soon, and that the belt dispute does not take too long to come.”

Fair enough, although Jacare vs. “Mayhem” Miller III seems like a fantastic no-brainer no? Miller is among the best in the sport at hyping fights, and clearly, after illegally treating Jacare’s head like a soccer ball in their rematch last May, the two don’t seem to be very fond of one another…Maybe Strikeforce needs to roll with a middleweight tourney if Shields does in fact move to the UFC?

Now if you’re a mainstream MMA fan who doesn’t care about any fight unless it’s being called by Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg (…right, meaning only the UFC or the WEC– brandless version of course) then you might not give a sh-t about the above headline. If you’re an informed MMA observer then at first you might care, before thinking that it could very well be just a bunch of dudes that fought once in the UFC, got brutalized and then punted from the organization. That would be a completely fair assumption, as your local MMA card could very well be featuring some one of that description this coming weekend (not that there’s anything wrong with that of course).

Well, as it turns out, MMA Fighting is reporting that Australia’s Impact Fighting Championship has actually recruited not just one or two, but several more notable UFC and Pride vets to compete on its upcoming July 10^th and July 18^th events. Nope; that’s not a typo, the promotion is doing a card in Brisbane and then Sydney 8 days later. Cool. More importantly, according to the report, Karo Parisyan, Paulo Filho, Denis Kang, Jeff Monson, Murilo Bustamante, Ricco Rodriguez and Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou have all been signed to fight in July (Ken Shamrock, Josh Barnett, Carlos Newton and Pedro Rizzo were previously announced).

Now granted, the above list doesn’t exactly scream current UFC contenders (and it will be interesting to see if Filho actually gets out of Brazil) but hell, looks like good news for Aussie MMA fans no? Go boomerang tossing another day and check it out.

One of the interesting (and somewhat overlooked) storylines heading into last night’s Strikeforce event was how Roger Gracie would fair in his promotional debut against Kevin Randleman. As we noted a few weeks back, in the jiu-jitsu world Gracie is a pretty, pretty, pretty big deal. Despite being 2-0 in MMA, however, Roger hadn’t fought since May, 2008, so if you had Rolles Gracie’s recent ‘dude he looks awful’ UFC debut on stand-by for comparison, you probably weren’t the only one.

All in all, we thought Roger looked pretty damn good en route to his second round, ‘nighty-night’ choke out win over Randleman. The fact that he dominated Randleman on the ground was no surprise, and although Gracie’s boxing isn’t exactly going to leave Anderson Silva shaking, he’s clearly been working on it. In other words,it  looks like Strikeforce did a nice job picking up the jiu-jitsu god.

But is Gracie really interested in giving this whole MMA thing a go? Well according to post-fight comments from the heavyweight, the answer is yes (thanks to MMA Junkie for the quotes).

“The more you fight, the more people start looking into you,” Gracie said after the event. “I’ve been very active for many years fighting in jiu jitsu and grappling, and now I’m more into MMA.”…”I’m pretty sure I’ll be fighting (again) soon. I don’t really know exactly when but hopefully the second part of the year. I’ll be fighting more often now.”

For more from Gracie and Scott Coker’s assessment of the fight head here.