Author: kmowatt

Only days removed from Frankie Edgar’s shocking upset over former lightweight champion BJ Penn the MMA world continues to debate the judge’s scoring of the bout, and judging by our own extremely unscientific research, it appears as though the majority of pundits are weighing in on the side of Penn (the 50-45 scoring for Edgar was more baffling than why anyone would choose to wear 90% of the MMA t-shirts that are on the market). This is not to say that Edgar doesn’t deserve a ton of respect. It was yet another amazing performance by the New Jersey fighter.

Perhaps it’s because of all the debate, surrounding the bout’s scoring, that news is surfacing today that could mean the UFC is looking at setting up an immediate rematch between Penn and Edgar. Now, albeit, the source is Penn, so, we understand if one wants to take this with a grain of salt, but speaking on his official site, the former champ claims the UFC has contacted him about possibly doing Edgar vs. Penn II.

“The UFC just called yesterday, and there’s probably a rematch in the works with Frankie Edgar. Still tentative right now, but it looks like they want to do the fight again, so, we’ll see what’s going on. Just giving you guys the heads up.”

Really, “Shogun” Rua and Lyoto Machida’s first bout was also pretty damn close, and although most had the challenger winning in that case, no one seemed to complain when the UFC rolled out with that rematch. It will be interesting to see if this is indeed what the promotion decides to do here.

Although most people appear to be giving Frankie Edgar more of a chance against lightweight champ BJ Penn, than that which was afforded Dan Hardy before he faced GSP (betting on the sun rising almost had the same odds), clearly the talented wrestler is a huge underdog heading into Saturday’s bout. After all, Penn has cruised through Sean Sherk, Kenny Florian and most recently Diego Sanchez in his current run as lightweight champ. Not bad.

For years now Penn has had heavy hands and ridiculously good ground game, but what’s been most impressive about his recent performances is his conditioning, something which used to be his biggest question mark (this continues to be an issue for many here at Fix, particularly due to an office tradition of eating donuts between breakfast and brunch). Speaking to MMA Junkie about Saturday’s title fight, Edgar commented on Penn’s abilities, and specifically the champion’s improved conditioning.

“I think [Penn] would say in the past that it was his conditioning was his biggest hole but the last couple of fights, he’s seemed to address that,” Edgar said. “So I don’t know if he has any big holes.”

We agree. So does this mean Penn is a lock to win? Not necessarily. Penn’s the favorite, and rightfully a heavy one in most people’s minds, but Edgar is a guy that has damn fast hands, amazing wrestling and conditioning; a dangerous combo for anyone to deal with no? Tomorrow’s going to be sweet.

To bet on the bout head here.

Alrighty, checking the above headline you may already be wondering where this post is going to lead, but due to the fact we’ve also spent far too much time contemplating the future of Fedor Emelianenko, we won’t be rolling out any contrived jokes on this one (or will we? For example- is it creepy if your closet is full of the ‘Fedor sweater?’)

Of course for some time now, Dana White has gone on record stating that he’d love to sign Fedor to a contract, even though the UFC boss man has consistently maintained that “The Last Emperor” is overrated (kind of like how we feel about Avatar…it’s good but…). Now, naturally, Fedor being in the UFC would be huge, effin huge, so even though Fedor is currently fighting for Strikeforce, White continues to insist that he will make another run at signing the renowned Russian.

Speaking at a pre-fight presser for UFC 112 yesterday, White had this to say about getting Emelianenko in the Octagon (thanks to MMA Fighting).

“He has become my obsession man, you know? He has become my obsession. I want it worse than the fans want it now. Believe me.”

Wow. There are a lot of passionate fans out there, so, that’s saying something. The discussion soon led down the ‘does Fedor really have a contract with Strikeforce?’ path due to some masterful wink wink, smirk, smirk, moves from White. It’s actually pretty impressive as far as craftiness goes (which is one of our favorite past times) Check it out here.

Heading into this weekend’s UFC in Abu Dhabi much of the focus has centered on the card’s two title fights, Anderson Silva vs. Demian Maia and BJ Penn vs. Frankie Edgar. Makes sense, especially when you consider that both Silva and Penn reside near the top of the world’s P4P rankings (and certainly no one would look weird at you if you brought these guys up while talking GOAT at middleweight and lightweight, unless they didn’t understand that it’s short for Greatest Of All Time…).

Another of the more interesting bouts scheduled for UFC 112 is of course the welterweight tilt between former champ Matt Hughes (who is in the GOAT mix at 170lbs…again, see above) and jiu-jitsu guru Renzo Gracie. It’s an interesting match-up, not just because Hughes beat down Renzo’s cousin Royce, he’s also coming off a UD win over Matt Serra, one of Renzo’s top students. You may also recall that Serra and Hughes weren’t exactly chummy out of the cage either.

Despite this history neither Gracie nor Hughes have had too much to say in the way of smack talk heading into their tilt, case in point, this high praise from Matt towards Renzo courtesy UFC.com.

“I’ve always said that from the beginning – if you want to fight the best Gracie, you need to fight Renzo, and I still say that. He’s the best one carrying the name in my opinion.”

Wow. That’s quite the compliment; guess we shouldn’t be worried about any pre-fight fisticuffs at the weigh-ins Friday. To bet on the bout head here.

Dana White recently decreed that the days of teammates refusing to fight each other are “over,” comments that came after another tit for tat with Jon Fitch, who continues to annoy the UFC boss man by refusing to fight AKA training partner Josh Koscheck. This is a doozy of an issue; no question. Some fighters aren’t able to distance themselves emotionally from inflicting bodily harm on their buddy, while from a fan’s perspective (which at the end of the day puts dolla, dolla bills in the virtual wallets of Zuffa and the fighters) if teammates never fight, some pretty sweet bouts will never happen.

One of the latest fighters to weigh in on this issue is Jon “Bones” Jones, who while speaking on MMA Scraps Radio (thanks to MMA Bay for the quote), had this to say about possibly fighting his teammate, Rashad Evans.

“I guess I would for a million dollars. We spar together every day so I mean for a million dollars I guess we could put the 4-ounces on. Friendship is way more valuable than the money… These guys have opened my eyes up how to train as a pro-athlete and so it would just be wrong to use all that against them.”

Interesting way of looking at it. Friendship is more important than money, but, not if it’s a million dollars or…? No we get it; there’s a valid point here, if you are going to endanger your friend’s health, it better be a situation where you can at least buy him a brand new ride after.

Regular readers of Fix know that anytime a highly regarded competitor from abroad comes overseas to throw down, we immediately kick into nauseating MMA snob mode; see recent posts about Takanori Gomi and over the last couple of days, Shinya Aoki. In other words, we’re extremely excited about the upcoming April 17^th bout between Strikeforce Lightweight Champion Gilbert Melendez and the Dream champ Aoki (and yes, here’s hoping Aoki’s Strikeforce debut isn’t sort of anticlimactic like Gomi’s first UFC bout against Kenny Florian).

One of the best moves Strikeforce has done to date is forge an alliance with the Japanese promotion Dream. It’s no secret that neither organization has the kind of depth that the UFC roster contains, so doing the cross-promotional thing with certain fighters, is clearly a smart move (one that Dana White has yet to criticize with an expletive laced tirade as far as we know). In a recent interview with MMA Weekly, Melendez revealed that it’s looking like this deal could work both ways, in other words, just as Aoki is coming to the U.S., the Strikeforce champ could be heading back to Japan in the near future.

“It sounds like that’s what’s going down, and you know what I’m not mad about it,” said Melendez about a rematch with Aoki in Japan. “The fact that I get to fight the Dream champion, (he’s) coming over here to fight me, and if I beat him and they want to do it, I’m definitely open to it.”

Nothing wrong with that. The more champ vs. champ bouts the better.