Back in early 2001, there were many big names in the world of professional boxing—Oscar de la Hoya, the up-and-coming Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr. and others—but one name kept on coming up, time and again, as the best n…
Back in early 2001, there were many big names in the world of professional boxing—Oscar de la Hoya, the up-and-coming Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr. and others—but one name kept on coming up, time and again, as the best new boxer out there: Zab Judah.
With incredible hand speed, great reflexes, brutal knockout power and underrated defense, Judah was ripping through the competition. He was exciting as hell to watch, and he honestly looked unstoppable.
Then, a heaping helping of hubris and the hard right hand of Kostya Tszyu changed all of that, forever.
All the talent he had couldn’t save him from himself. He had the fight with Tszyu in the bag; it was his for the taking. He was hitting Tszyu nearly at will and having a ball making “The Thunder from Down Under” look like a rank amateur.
But he failed to adhere to the age old admonition of the fight game: “Protect yourself at all times.” In the case of Judah, he needed protection from himself more than anyone.
Now, with a career notched with defeats suffered at the hands of boxers who were never really blessed with as many gifts as he has squandered, Judah is somewhat of a cautionary tale in the boxing world: “Don’t let this happen to you.”
I can only hope Melvin Guillard doesn’t suffer the same fate as Zab Judah, because in many ways, his career as a professional fighter seems to be heading in the same direction.
This is not to say that Guillard hasn’t made improvements in his game, because he has. He continues to grow, and he’s still got the time to turn things around.
But something needs to change. Every time Guillard starts to build up some steam and looks to be cracking the top 10, heading for a title shot, he gets derailed—usually in ways he should have seen coming.
Guillard has many of the same gifts that Judah had: brutal KO power, terribly fast strikes, god-given athleticism and a love for fighting. These are attributes you can develop to a degree through hard training, but they’re better employed when they come naturally, and in Guillard, they flow out like a river.
But he always seems to falter when he’s on the cusp of what could be a shot a true greatness.
Of his 18 fights in the UFC, he’s suffered seven defeats, six of those coming via submission. For a fighter with so much going for him, he clearly isn’t putting in enough time on the mat against the kind of submission experts that will teach him the error of his ways.
At a time when training in large fight clubs with many big-name fighters is thought to be the best way to become great, it seems Guillard may reap more rewards by taking a drastically different approach and deciding to go with a smaller group of trainers who are able to give him the time and focused attention he needs in order to take the next step.
Guillard has all of the physical advantages a fighter could ever want. If champions were decided based upon talent alone, Guillard would be the champion—not Benson Henderson—but that’s not the case.
I have often wondered how Guillard would look if he took a year (or at least six months) off from fighting to train hardcore in nothing but jiu-jitsu and boxing. Time spent as an honest student of both games would demand he develop the necessary skills and motivation needed just to keep up—and those are the exact things he seems to be missing.
It’s hard to imagine Guillard enjoying any time in a gym like the one owned by Freddie Roach unless he was about the business of paying attention and getting better; he’d be too busy climbing up off the floor if he didn’t—and those are the exact things he seems to be missing.
Whatever he decides, the time of Melvin Guillard is now, not tomorrow. He needs to do something different, or else he could wind up as MMA’s equivalent to Zab Judah—and that is a story with a very sad ending indeed.
As time passes and the sport of MMA grows, one can quickly be overwhelmed by the sheer number of cards that come to pass each calendar year. While time marches on, some of the best cards (for one reason or another, yet all reasons relative) seem doomed…
As time passes and the sport of MMA grows, one can quickly be overwhelmed by the sheer number of cards that come to pass each calendar year.
While time marches on, some of the best cards (for one reason or another, yet all reasons relative) seem doomed to be forgotten. It’s getting harder and harder to find shows from the past that retain the kind of quality that makes them watchable, and when you go to the UFC store, the number of past shows you can buy is quickly fading.
One can only hope that Zuffa will begin to re-release their back catalogue onto Blu-ray, for just as VHS was eclipsed by DVD, now DVD is being eclipsed by high definition, notably in the form of Blu-ray.
Thus far, the only whole UFC show to get the Blu-ray treatment was UFC 100, and while that was a wonderful present from Zuffa, there are still many cards that deserve to be preserved for the sake of history, not to mention the viewing pleasure of new fans who’ve never gotten to see Randy Couture’s first ever epic brawl with Pedro Rizzo, in addition to countless other great fights that are every bit as thrilling as those of today.
While it seems that Dana White and Zuffa have no real interest in releasing shows that have Blu-ray counterparts to the standard DVD releases, we can only hope. Blu-ray is here to stay, and eventually, regular DVDs will be a thing of the past.
In the spirit of that hope, here are some shows I believe merit the Blu-ray treatment. While many of us might not have gotten to see these shows live, Blu-ray is the next best thing, and like the sport itself, it’s as real as it gets without being there.
So it’s come to this: The Captain has decided to jump on a lifeboat and let one of his brightest stars go down with the ship named UFC 151. Of course, it’s all Jon Jones and his coach Greg Jackson’s fault. After all, they are but one f…
So it’s come to this: The Captain has decided to jump on a lifeboat and let one of his brightest stars go down with the ship named UFC 151.
Of course, it’s all Jon Jones and his coach Greg Jackson’s fault. After all, they are but one fighter and one trainer, and thus responsible for the fate of the entire card and all the other fighters and their supporters that will now not get paid.
Not all that long ago, Affliction saw the cancellation of their third card—and their company soon after—when Josh Barnett was denied license to fight Fedor Emelianenko. As a new company with little experience in dealing with the problems that can plague a fight promotion at each and every stage, they simply fell apart.
Dana Whiteenjoyed this to no end and used it as proof positive that all other organizations were so woefully out of their depth compared to the UFC that there really wasn’t any competition at all.
Back then, the notion of having to cancel an entire card because one fighter fell out was the sure sign of amateur hands at work. MMA is for the big boys, and the big boys expect the unexpected and plan accordingly; that’s why there are such things as co-headliner bouts.
And yet here we are, mourning the loss of a card that never was, and if Dana White has anything to say about it, we will be pointing our fingers at Jon Jones and Greg Jackson, crying “They did it! This was their decision!” for years to come.
And that is nothing but bunk.
Dana White and co. do a pretty incredible job on a daily basis with the UFC, putting out quality cards that also have many fights with clear divisional ramifications, but for UFC 151, they dropped the ball.
This was not a great card built from the ground up. It was a passable card built around one man, and when that happens, all eggs are in one basket, and that is never wise. When the main event fell through (as they do from time to time), the lack of depth the card suffered could no longer be denied, so instead it was canceled and the blame game began in earnest.
It is totally unwise and unfair to put the fate of an entire card upon the shoulders of one man. Main event fighters fall off cards all the time, and if anyone should know that, it’s Dana White. Yet they went ahead and did it anyway, and when Dan Henderson got injured, Jones was placed in a no-win situation.
The truth is, none of the fault of a cancelled card belongs to Jones or his coach, Greg Jackson, as neither man is in charge of the UFC and they don’t put the fights together or run the machine that delivers the finished product to the fans on fight night.
The fate of an entire card should never have been based on the decision of Jones in the first place, but because it was, it shows that White and everyone else at Zuffa didn’t put a lot of forethought into things, which is a clear bungle when you consider one of White’s sayings about his job is, “Something goes wrong every single day.”
For a man who seems to expect the worst and claims that being able to deal with adverse situations is one of the reasons why he’s the best man for the job, he let this one situation come up and slap him right in the face. Now he’s casting the blame on Jones and Jackson, proving all his detractors right by showing that he is more than happy to throw one of his own under the bus if it allows him to deflect harsh criticism, and make no mistake about it, UFC 151 failed due to the hubris of White.
But that’s not going to stop him from spinning this any way he can in order to make one of his rising stars look simply horrible.
“Good for you Jon Jones; you’re rich and you’ve got some money. You don’t need to take this fight, but there are a bunch of guys on the undercard that this is how they feed their family. This is how they make their living,” stated White, as reported by MMAweekly.com.
“This is one of those disgusting decisions that doesn’t just effect you. You just affected 16 other people’s lives. I don’t think this is a decision that is going to make Jon Jones popular with the fans, sponsors, cable distributors, television network executives, or other fighters.”
Of course, when spun like this, Jones and Jackson sound spoiled and almost cruel, which is exactly as White wanted it. But he and the rest of Zuffa have been in this business for a long while, and they know what can go wrong; any company who’s been millions in the hole only to post a profit after years of effort knows just how badly things can go wrong.
The UFC is now a huge corporation that has enough rainy-day money in the bank to eat many such disappointing nights while making sure their fighters get paid. When they were still young in their ownership of the company, they had to deal with a horrid show in UFC 33 where all the fights went the distance, and in turn, the fans who ordered the PPV didn’t get to see the last three rounds of the main event title fight.
Many people were disappointed and many wanted their money back. Zuffa didn’t fold and the UFC didn’t collapse because White and the Fertitta brothers are good business men who know the value of saving money for the bad times.
And because of that, it is hard to believe that Zuffa would decide against paying the fighters who were scheduled to fight on the UFC 151 undercard: after all, they have shown that they are happy to give out many thousands of dollars in bonuses to fighters who they felt got screwed by bad judging, such as Nam Phan, who was given a win bonus in his first bout against Leonard Garcia, even though the judges awarded the victory to Garcia and not Phan.
In fact, for the same amount of money they hand out for one fight-of-the-night bonus, nearly all the undercard fighters (the ones that Jones is apparently stealing food from, not to mention their families) could have been paid by Zuffa, which would be the right thing.
But in this case, they decided that their point would be better illustrated by leading the voices of many in a Zuffa penned sing-a-long and to the end of inflaming the passions behind those voices, they appear (for now) to have decided not to pay out any money (under the guise that either they don’t have it, or can’t afford to do it, etc.), content to point their fingers at Jones and Jackson.
And what’s a shame is that so many people are buying it.
When looking at a circus like this, it’s hard to remember who’s responsible for what job, because so many voices are screaming and so many accusations being hurled.
To be fair to Dana White, I do not think he is a mean or evil man, or a cruel one. He is one of the most passionate supporters of his company and the sport, and would probably cut off his right hand Yakuza-style if he thought MMA needed it.
But none of those great virtues in a leader can change some basic facts: White is the fight promoter, not Jones or Jackson. It’s his job to make sure the UFC doesn’t get blindsided by situations like this, and this time he failed.
It might sound as if this is too harsh on White and Zuffa, but in reality that’s what White and the UFC are supposed to be able to do—deal with the unexpected—which rival companies like Affliction and others could not.
But White didn’t act like a promoter; in fact, he went the exact opposite direction and scrapped the whole show and hung the blame on one of their most active fighters of late—not to mention their brightest star—and all seemingly done in defense of wounded pride or slighted ego.
For the longest time now, nearly without fail, any shortcomings of White could be justly forgiven or overlooked because of how transparent and honest he is with the way he conducts business. His flaws are part of his charm, and he’s as uncompromising as the sport he’s championed relentlessly for the past ten years.
In the March 2012 issue of UFC magazine, White talked about fighters and protecting them from the many pitfalls of the fight game.
Q: Are you able to see a fighter for the first time and in a few seconds know, oh yeah, he’s got it?
White: You can. But this is a crazy business. You’ll see a guy who looks like he could be great. But all it takes is one little thing to spin his career off track. Bad Management. A girlfriend or wife terrorizing him behind the scenes. All kinds of personal problems. The cling-ons. The cling-ons are the lowest of the low. The crawl out from under the rocks when a guy becomes successful, and they’re f#@king everywhere.
Q: Is it part of your responsibility to suss out the cling-ons and help the fighters avoid them?
White: I try to.
White has been great to the fans and fighters and he’s been incredible for the sport because he loves it so much. He’s been tireless in the service of the UFC and MMA, and up until now, he’s never put his needs or wants before those of the sport.
All that changed for the first time when he decided to pass the buck and the blame to a man who honestly didn’t deserve it and in all probability didn’t see it coming. After all, the UFC had never cancelled a fight card in the entire history of the company.
Should Jones have handled things differently? I think so, but any time an opponent is switched at the last minute, the risks rise, and when you consider how different the game plans of Henderson and Chael Sonnen are, you see they are very different fighters.
Jones would have had everything to lose in that situation if he’d have taken a fight with Sonnen, and considering how often he’s been fighting over the past 18 months it’s perfectly understandable that he would want to give a fighter like Sonnen—who would be the best proven takedown artist Jones has ever faced—the attention he’s due, and that isn’t found inside of eight days.
Normally, I am a staunch advocate that fighters should be about the business of fighting and nothing else. If called to fight, they must say yes, without hesitation; that is their job, after all.
I personally think Jones should have taken any opponent put in front of him. But that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to put Jones on trial in the court of public opinion, especially when you’ve got the loudest microphone and can paint as villainous a picture of Jones as you want.
What’s true of Jones in guilt is equally true of White, if not more so. Jones is a fighter, and he should have fought, bottom line. But White is the promoter, and he should have found a way to keep the card alive, if for no other reason that seeing all the other fighters paid (which is his responsibility as their employer) or for the sake of keeping the UFC’s record of no cancelled shows a perfect one.
Now, White is attacking Jones, quite possibly to the long term detriment of his young career. He’s currently working on making Jones out to be a pariah, which seems far more damaging than anything a “cling-on” could do.
Jones is guilty of not taking the fight placed in front of him. What he’s not guilty of is cancelling the entire card, because that is not within his power.
As the UFC has continued to grow and put on more shows in more countries, we have seen a predictable increase of fights and fight cards that require reassembly, often times at the last minute. More shows beget more fighters training which begets more f…
As the UFC has continued to grow and put on more shows in more countries, we have seen a predictable increase of fights and fight cards that require reassembly, often times at the last minute.
More shows beget more fighters training which begets more fighters injured and so on, until you have men put into positions where they must make quick choices near the final hour.
And those decisions seem to be based on personal desire rather than the realities and immediacy of the situation.
Jon Jones will not fight Chael Sonnen on short notice and Lyoto Machida won’t fight Jones on short notice. Mauricio Shogun Rua won’t fight Jones on short notice, and he’s got what seems to him to be good reasons for not wanting to fight Glover Teixeira.
In short, there are a whole lot of fighters that feel that they must be their own best, fiercest advocates in the face of conditions that are less than ideal. They want to maximize their chances for victory and often times that does not go hand-in-hand with making quick decisions or taking risks with their current ranking.
Considering how quickly the sport is growing, one would be hard to argue with the philosophy that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Even the slightest misstep can see a fighter slip in the rankings and from there, a title shot can go from being but a step away to a question to be answered sometime in the coming year…or the next.
Just ask Anthony Pettis, who was been waiting a long time for a title shot that keeps being handed to everyone but him, and Pettis holds a victory over the current champion thanks to one of the greatest kicks in MMA history.
But a close decision loss to clay Guida has placed him in a kind of Limbo that has him never very far from any title conversation, yet never confirmed as the next in line.
Such are the numerous hazards a fighter needs to navigate in order to keep his head above water and his face fresh in the public’s mind. But amid all the pondering, the conferring with coaches and managers and the calculating of risk versus reward, the only fight that’s really being fought is in favor of caution in the face of uncertainty.
All the while, the true fights, the ones that matter, are being lost in the minutia of last minute negotiations that seem to be put into motion toward the end of disarming bombs that must go off sooner or later.
In other words, a fighter has to be ready to fight any and all opponents sooner or later, so why not sooner?
It is, of course, natural for a fighter and his camp to want the ideal conditions and situation for each and every fight they choose to engage in. They are risking much in the way of stature and standing every time they step into the cage.
But isn’t that what it’s all about?
Aren’t the combative sports about men being so skilled and capable that they can impose a kind of order out of the chaos of combat, and in doing so establish themselves as the best? Isn’t each fight a story about two men having such faith in their skills and abilities that they freely embrace the risk of bodily harm and loss of divisional standing for the greater reward of advancement and eventually a title?
If that is indeed what it is about, then no fighter should pick and choose who he fights, lest an entire sport see the beginnings of a decline where fighters declare their greatness with one breath while refusing to fight those who pose a threat to their claims with the other.
This is the current state of affairs in boxing: fighters declaring how great they are and padding their records with the sole aim of making enough noise that they get a mega-payday fight with the best of their division or the sport. It seems less and less about who’s the greatest and more about who can gather unto themselves the greatest amount of money.
And all the while, many of the boxing matches fans want to see never come to light, because as Sugar Ray Leonard so aptly said, today’s fighters aren’t interested in bragging rights anymore. This is what happens when fighters picking their own fights becomes the norm instead of the exception.
These days in the MMA, there are no straight lines to the title. Unless you are incredibly marketable and possess the skills and power that put you so far above your closest peers that you look like an astronaut to their ant, odds are you are going to have to fight just about any fight that comes your way, just so you can keep your name in every current divisional conversation, and so you can stay sharp.
But in the end, the philosophy needed to become a champion need not be as complicated as the recent Jon Jones fiasco makes it seem.
Once a fighter becomes champion, in essence the decision making process that goes into deciding who you fight and who you don’t ceases to exist: you are the champion, and thus you fight anyone they put in front of you, at any time, bar none.
Simple and easy.
So, how does that philosophy—one a champion should constantly employ—help one become the champ in the first place?
Because anyone who fights for a living should love it more than anything else, and if you love what you do, then you want to do it all the time, circumstances be damned. People love watching anyone do what they love, because they do it with inspiration.
Fighters have a lot of decisions to make, but the one decision they shouldn’t be burdened with is who they should fight next. The UFC has Joe Silva and the fans who decide that, and that is how it should be.
The men who compete in the UFC are professional combatants, blessed with the ability to get to do what they love for a living. They control how hard they train and who they train with, and the rest is a great deal of faith: faith in their trainers and camps and faith that they really are as good as they think they are.
As a rule of thumb, most fighters think they can beat anyone on any given day, because of their faith in themselves and those who train them. If that really is the case—and God knows it should be, because there are much easier ways to make a living than getting punched in the face—then fighting isn’t a matter of negotiation or risk vs. reward, it’s more an affirmative statement of faith.
And nothing shows you have faith in yourself more than fighting anyone placed in front of you, at any time.
After a highly anticipated rematch with Chael Sonnen at UFC 148, it appears as if Anderson Silva will not be stepping back into the cage to defend the middleweight title until sometime in 2013. This means he will have only fought one time in 2012, and …
After a highly anticipated rematch with Chael Sonnen at UFC 148, it appears as if Anderson Silva will not be stepping back into the cage to defend the middleweight title until sometime in 2013.
This means he will have only fought one time in 2012, and that simply won’t do.
Of course, Silva has legions of fans who will say that he is so good that he’s earned the right to not only pick who he fights, but to fight as infrequently as he chooses. In fact, they just won’t say it; they’ll shout it from the rooftops.
It is true that a fighter can sit on the sidelines for as long as they want if there are injury concerns or other outside factors that postpone a fight; maybe the only real opponent of any worth and market value is injured and they want to keep themselves available for that big fight, as is the case for Carlos Condit.
Or maybe they’ve got personal problems they need to deal with, or contractual disputes. Maybe they’re trying to decide if they are going to move up or down into another division.
All of these things are valid (to a degree) reasons for not fighting up to three times a year if their health permits.
But Silva simply wants to take some time off: an extended vacation to spend time with family and friends, and I honestly think that is a valid request.
So why say that Silva fighting just once in 2012 doesn’t cut it? Why make such a claim when it sounds so critical and negative?
Because he’s getting older, every single day, and no matter what anyone thinks, Father Time has a way of showing up out of the blue, totally uninvited, ready to pull up a chair at the table and eat all the good stuff without asking.
Silva is 37 years old, and contrary to popular belief, not everyone is Randy Couture or Dan Henderson. Silva is already eying retirement, and taking extended periods of time off during what are probably the last good years of your career is taking needless risks.
Of course, Silva has earned some time off. The man is the greatest champion the UFC has ever seen, and he had to train hard and fight hard to get every accolade he’s earned.
But if he needs a break this late in his career, maybe he should decide just how many more fights he wants, fight them and then retire and enjoy the sun for as long as he pleases.
Taking a break now, while there are still a few fights left that he’d like to take, is like a farmer taking the rest of the week off, fully intending to hit it hard come the following Monday morning. Sure, he’s earned it, but if a flood comes Sunday night, he’ll wish he’d gotten those crops out of the ground and off to market when he had the chance.
Silva’s already seen one flood in the form of Chael Sonnen, and the result was a crop of middleweight fighters who aren’t as afraid of Silva as they used to be.
Still, Silva is Silva, and that means he’s the best, bar none. But everyone get’s old, and Silva is no exception.
He had a relatively easy fight at UFC 148, and that makes it even easier to get the wrecking machine he rides into the cage into prime form for another fight before the close of 2012.
I hope he decides to fight again before the year is out, if for no other reason than to stay sharp. The history of the fight game is full of incredible fighters who, as time passed, began to fight less and less; eventually losing to fighters they probably would have rolled right over if they’d have stayed active.
It’s then, after the bitter sting of defeat, that they try and come back, throwing themselves against the wall time and again, watching their legacy crumble brick by brick, loss after loss.
Fedor Emelianenko is a good example of this. In his prime, when he was fighting three to four times a year, he was able to defend himself against the best submission artists in the game, pounding them into defeat while inside their guard.
Then the fights seemed to be fewer and fewer. After just one fight in 2008, Fedor was tested in the only fights he took in 2009: by Andrei Arlovski and then Brett Rogers—both men Fedor would have annihilated just two years earlier.
What saved him in both fights was not the sharpness of his skills, but the power in his fists, and power is always one of the last things to go.
Then, in 2010, Fedor tasted defeat for the first time in nearly a decade, thanks to Fabricio Werdum. As great as Werdum’s guard and submissions are, Fedor had seen that level of game before, in his fights with Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.
Silva has a chance to avoid all of those pitfalls and retire with an unblemished record in the UFC, but he’s got to make hay while the sun is shining.
The time of Anderson Silva is now, and he should be making the most of it. Fighting only once in 2012 is letting that time pass right by instead of making the most of it.
After a very long layoff due to injury, Georges St. Pierre will soon be stepping back into the cage to unify the UFC welterweight title belts and prove that he is still the undisputed champion of the world. Anytime a long period of inactivity finds a f…
After a very long layoff due to injury, Georges St. Pierre will soon be stepping back into the cage to unify the UFC welterweight title belts and prove that he is still the undisputed champion of the world.
Anytime a long period of inactivity finds a fighter, it usually doesn’t come alone. It brings the theory of ring rust: that adage found in the fight game that speaks to the idea that a dulling of the senses and a loss of timing is sure to come with any prolonged period of time a fighter spends out of the ring.
This, of course, is not set in stone. Rashad Evans confounded the notion when he returned to action after a long layoff against Tito Ortiz. Evans looked as if he hadn’t missed a step as he dismantled Ortiz, dominating every area the fight took place.
As he faces Carlos Condit in November, GSP will need to look every bit as sharp as Evans did, and more. Condit is in his prime and hungry to keep the title, where Ortiz was on the tail end of a career that had seen far more defeat than victory.
When GSP climbs back into active competition, it will have been 18 months since his last fight—a very long time for a fighter to sit on the sidelines in the sport of MMA.
So, what will we need to see from the champ when the cage door closes and Carlos Condit walks into striking range?
Back in early 2001, there were many big names in the world of professional boxing—Oscar de la Hoya, the up-and-coming Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lennox Lewis, Roy Jones Jr. and others—but one name kept on coming up, time and again, as the best new boxer out there: Zab Judah.