“Damn it, you can listen to Triple F Life later! We need someone to pay attention to this card!” – Abraham Lincoln
Earlier this week, we asked a very simple question: Is it possible that the UFC is over-saturating its market? Perhaps the UFC’s quest to become as mainstream as, say, the NBA, is causing it to stretch its events a little thin on known names and marketable fights. Ironically, this means that it may be possible that the UFC’s attempts to draw in new fans may be repelling them.
Well, the UFC appears to have issued a pretty clear answer to this discussion.
The UFC will make its first appearance in Nottingham, England- and its first appearance in England since UFC 138- with UFC on Fuel TV 5 on September 29th. The main event? Stefan Struve vs. Stipe Miocic.
“Damn it, you can listen to Triple F Life later! We need someone to pay attention to this card!” – Abraham Lincoln
Earlier this week, we asked a very simple question: Is it possible that the UFC is over-saturating its market? Perhaps the UFC’s quest to become as mainstream as, say, the NBA, is causing it to stretch its events a little thin on known names and marketable fights. Ironically, this means that it may be possible that the UFC’s attempts to draw in new fans may be repelling them.
Well, the UFC appears to have issued a pretty clear answer to this discussion.
The UFC will make its first appearance in Nottingham, England- and its first appearance in England since UFC 138- with UFC on Fuel TV 5 on September 29th. The main event? Stefan Struve vs. Stipe Miocic.
This doesn’t mean that we necessarily expect this card to be boring. The main card of UFC on FX 3 was also light on star power, yet produced an exceptional night of fights. Also, considering that the two heavyweights have a combined fourteen fights in the UFC with only two of them going the distance, it looks like it’ll be a pretty fun scrap. But is a bout to determine which promising prospect deserves a step up in competition really main event material?
Fans in England will buy tickets to this event regardless of who is headlining, because the UFC still rarely holds live events there. But will fans in North America tune in to watch this card? For that matter, will you? Give us your two cents in the comments section.
MMA fighters aren’t exactly known for their fashion sense. So it should come as little surprise that most MMA t-shirt companies produce some pretty questionable designs. The rampant abuse of foil print, skulls, chains, tribal designs and nautical stars among most MMA t-shirts is bad enough on its own; even worse when you consider that they sell for thirty bucks a pop.
Which I guess makes it all the worse when a fighter makes his way to the cage covered in an “athletic fit” Old-English mess. Not only is the shirt revolting, but it’s going to sell for an outlandish sum of money, and be worn by every overweight Texas Roadhouse chef, milquetoast tech support geek and muscle-bound frat boy.
Perhaps the reason that we’ve never attempted an “Ugliest Walkout Shirts” post is because ranking these train wrecks is like ranking, well, actual train wrecks. No matter what order you place them in, you’re a total scumbag for attempting to rank a tragedy from most to least depressing. And besides, you’re clearly wrong about which one belongs at number three. For that reason, these will not be ranked, per se, but rather categorized. How you feel these shirts fall into place is up to you.
MMA fighters aren’t exactly known for their fashion sense. So it should come as little surprise that most MMA t-shirt companies produce some pretty questionable designs. The rampant abuse of foil print, skulls, chains, tribal designs and nautical stars among most MMA t-shirts is bad enough on its own; even worse when you consider that they sell for thirty bucks a pop.
Which I guess makes it all the worse when a fighter makes his way to the cage covered in an “athletic fit” Old-English mess. Not only is the shirt revolting, but it’s going to sell for an outlandish sum of money, and be worn by every overweight Texas Roadhouse chef, milquetoast tech support geek and muscle-bound frat boy.
Perhaps the reason that we’ve never attempted an “Ugliest Walkout Shirts” post is because ranking these train wrecks is like ranking, well, actual train wrecks. No matter what order you place them in, you’re a total scumbag for attempting to rank a tragedy from most to least depressing. And besides, you’re clearly wrong about which one belongs at number three. For that reason, these will not be ranked, per se, but rather categorized. How you feel these shirts fall into place is up to you.
Don’t worry, this won’t be the only Tapout shirt to make this list. The company that is responsible for more ILS than Muscle Beach has produced some downright disgusting t-shirts. We’ve said it before: Tapout has become the new Vuarnet or No Fear.
Taking the cake though has to be Ryan Bader’s UFC 119 walkout. I didn’t think it was possible to dislike anything related to ”Citizenship in a Republic“. I stand corrected.
Ugliest Affliction Shirt: Chris Leben‘s UFC 116 Walkout
Speaking of companies you’ll be seeing more than once, here’s our first Affliction eyesore. The only redeeming quality of this shirt is that the edges are already frayed, meaning it will fall apart much sooner than a normal t-shirt. Then again, if you’re the type of person who wears shirts like this, you probably won’t think that’s such a good thing.
Cain Velasquez is a proud Mexican-American with “Brown Pride” tattooed across his chest. I get how that means any shirt bearing his name is going to play off of his heritage. What I don’t get is why Dethrone wanted this shirt to look like the totally bitchin’ Myspace background of a fifteen year old from 2006.
Sorry Ace, but America’s colors are red, white and blue. And this shirt is hideous.
Ugliest Clusterfuck: Frank Mir’s UFC 107 Walkout
Put yourself in my position for a moment: I am expected to explain to someone with healthy eyesight- someone who is clearly capable of just looking at this mess- why this shirt is ugly. After two hours of trying to write something, I’ve decided that it’s probably for the best that I never look into a career as a guy who writes warning labels for coffee cups.
Ugliest Shirt to Never Be Worn: Aleksander Emelianenko’s “Affliction: Banned” Walkout
Most Half-Assed Shirt: James Toney’s UFC 118 Walkout
Judging by his performance at UFC 118, James Toney spent about twenty minutes studying the ground game leading up to his bout with UFC Hall-of-Famer Randy Couture. Judging by the image above, that’s roughly 5x longer than Twistd Apparel spent designing his walkout shirt. Besides, if you’re going to make something half-assed, at least make it realistic.
Hit that “next page” link for that other Emelianenko, the craziest shirt you’ll see all day, and some lifetime achievement awards for walkout shirt ineptitude…
Before we go any further, the answer is yes. That image is a real screenshot of Bob Sapp’s MMA record on both the English version of Wikipedia and its Italian counterpart, taken around 2:30 (CT) this afternoon. Those who follow MMA already know that Bob Sapp is nothing more than a joke and a disgrace, and with Wikipedia cracking down on UFC events that aren’t important enough to deserve their own pages, it should come as little surprise that yet another effortless loss from Bob Sapp has yet to be added to his fight record.
Friday night, Bob Sapp set out to mock our sport professional sports once again in Kazakhstan against Tölegen Akylbekov. Knowing that Bob Sapp was going to put up as much of a fight as The Brooklyn Brawler, Akylbekov decided that he was going to attempt to win The Bob Sapp Challenge™. For those uninitiated, the rules are simple: Rather than defeating Bob Sapp as quickly as possible, one must force Bob Sapp to actually put up something resembling a fight for as long as possible. Sounds easy enough…until you realize you’re attempting to make a guy who has tapped out to a double-leg takedown actually put up a fight.
Before we go any further, the answer is yes. That image is a real screenshot of Bob Sapp‘s MMA record on both the English version of Wikipedia and its Italian counterpart, taken around 2:30 (CT) this afternoon. Those who follow MMA already know that Bob Sapp is nothing more than a joke and a disgrace, and with Wikipedia cracking down on UFC events that aren’t important enough to deserve their own pages, it should come as little surprise that yet another effortless loss from Bob Sapp has yet to be added to his fight record.
Friday night, Bob Sapp set out to mock our sport professional sports once again in Kazakhstan against Tölegen Akylbekov. Knowing that Bob Sapp was going to put up as much of a fight as The Brooklyn Brawler, Akylbekov decided that he was going to attempt to win The Bob Sapp Challenge™. For those uninitiated, the rules are simple: Rather than defeating Bob Sapp as quickly as possible, one must force Bob Sapp to actually put up something resembling a fight for as long as possible. Sounds easy enough…until you realize you’re attempting to make a guy who has tapped out to a double-leg takedown actually put up a fight.
Once Tölegen Akylbekov got Bob Sapp to the ground, he threw some ground-and-pound that was so light that even Bob Sapp couldn’t tap out to it. Akylbekov has the right idea by standing up and backing away, but when Sapp refuses to stand back up, the Kazakhstan fighter threw some comically slow punches that would have made a real fighter do something other than turtle up and wait for the referee to stop the fight.
But it was all for nothing. Two minutes and twelve seconds into the video, we see the inevitable tapout from Bob Sapp due to hammerfists. Immediately after the Sappmission, the referee lands the most significant blow of the fight when he tackles Tölegen Akylbekov.
Okay, the bar for The Bob Sapp Challenge™ has been set at one minute, twenty four seconds. Your move, Jong Dae Kim.
For the last time, Joe: One of these guys is a fictional character and the other one has a shoulder injury.
At this point, do we even need to update our most cursed MMA events of all time list to include UFC 149? Calling this card “injury plagued” is as brilliant of an observation as saying that airline food is typically not of high quality. For those of you who have lost track of the fighters who have pulled out of bouts on this card due to injury, allow me to quickly refresh your memory: Vitor Belfort, Thiago Silva, Thiago Alves, and Michael Bisping.
And now you can add UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo to that list as well.
For the last time, Joe: One of these guys is a fictional character and the other one has a shoulder injury.
At this point, do we even need to update our most cursed MMA events of all time list to include UFC 149? Calling this card “injury plagued” is as brilliant of an observation as saying that airline food is typically not of high quality. For those of you who have lost track of the fighters who have pulled out of bouts on this card due to injury, allow me to quickly refresh your memory: Vitor Belfort, Thiago Silva, Thiago Alves, and Michael Bisping.
And now you can add UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo to that list as well.
Yesterday it was announced that Jose Aldo has suffered an undisclosed injury, and has been forced out of his UFC 149 headlining bout against Erik Koch. Taking over the main event slot will be an interim bantamweight title fight between Urijah Faber and Renan Barao, initially set as the co-main event for UFC 148. And not that it matters, but that fight was made possible by an injury to Bantamweight Champion Dominick Cruz.
While Erik Koch’s title fight has obviously been postponed, it is uncertain whether or not Koch will remain on the card. Perhaps the UFC will have him fight “The Korean Zombie” for an interim title? Oh wait…never mind.
The seemingly inevitable rematch now has a date in place.
Immediately following UFC on FX 3, Dana White revealed his plan to have the heavyweight championship rematch headline UFC 152 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As of right now, a welterweight bout between BJ Penn and Rory MacDonald is also scheduled for the event.
The seemingly inevitable rematch now has a date in place.
Immediately following UFC on FX 3, Dana White revealed his plan to have the heavyweight championship rematch headline UFC 152 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As of right now, a welterweight bout between BJ Penn and Rory MacDonald is also scheduled for the event.
When the two first met at UFC on FOX, the fight was a relatively anticlimactic affair that saw Junior Dos Santos wreck Cain Velasquez one minute and four seconds into the first round. While most fans weren’t clamoring for an immediate rematch, it was obvious that the two young heavyweights would meet up again.
This became even more obvious after UFC 146, which saw both men dominate their opponents on their way to early stoppages. In the main event of the evening, champion Junior Dos Santos defended his title against Frank Mir with a spectacular second round TKO. Despite Frank Mir’s best efforts to get the fight to the ground, the only time he managed to get it there was when he was dropped by the heavy hands of Junior Dos Santos.
And as great as Dos Santos looked against Mir, Cain Velasquez looked even more dominant against Strikeforce veteran Antonio Silva. Silva was at no point in their fight a threat to the former champion, being taken down early and beaten to a pulp before the fight was mercifully stopped at 3:36 of the first round.
UFC 152 is expected to go down on September 22. We’ll keep you up to date as more fights get announced for this card.
The seemingly inevitable rematch now has a date in place.
Immediately following UFC on FX 3, Dana White revealed his plan to have the heavyweight championship rematch headline UFC 152 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As of right now, a welterweight bout between BJ Penn and Rory MacDonald is also scheduled for the event.
The seemingly inevitable rematch now has a date in place.
Immediately following UFC on FX 3, Dana White revealed his plan to have the heavyweight championship rematch headline UFC 152 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. As of right now, a welterweight bout between BJ Penn and Rory MacDonald is also scheduled for the event.
When the two first met at UFC on FOX, the fight was a relatively anticlimactic affair that saw Junior Dos Santos wreck Cain Velasquez one minute and four seconds into the first round. While most fans weren’t clamoring for an immediate rematch, it was obvious that the two young heavyweights would meet up again.
This became even more obvious after UFC 146, which saw both men dominate their opponents on their way to early stoppages. In the main event of the evening, champion Junior Dos Santos defended his title against Frank Mir with a spectacular second round TKO. Despite Frank Mir’s best efforts to get the fight to the ground, the only time he managed to get it there was when he was dropped by the heavy hands of Junior Dos Santos.
And as great as Dos Santos looked against Mir, Cain Velasquez looked even more dominant against Strikeforce veteran Antonio Silva. Silva was at no point in their fight a threat to the former champion, being taken down early and beaten to a pulp before the fight was mercifully stopped at 3:36 of the first round.
UFC 152 is expected to go down on September 22. We’ll keep you up to date as more fights get announced for this card.
