First off, I’d like to greet all of our readers all the best in the New Year, as 2012 looks to be an exciting one for mixed martial arts fans.
As I sat thinking about writing something about the past year, which so many other sites have already done, I felt this would be a great chance to get the jump on everyone and write about the upcoming year.
Fans of mixed martial arts have a lot to look forward too in the coming year with the rise in popularity of the sport around the world, the emergence of promotions like ONE Fighting Championship and ProElite, the new broadcast deal between the UFC and FOX plus much, much more.
So as a fan of mma, and in no particular order, here is a list of the things I feel all fans of the sport should be excited for in 2012.
UFC on FOX
The broadcast deal between FOX and the UFC kicked off last night at midnight with FUEL TV’s 24-hour marathon of nothing but Ultimate Fighting Championship coverage. Fans of the promotion will have access to more live shows, pre-and-post fight coverage, special programming, plus much more than was ever provided on Spike TV.
Speaking of Spike, they plan on countering a lot of the FOX, FUEL TV, and FX programming with their own shows. Expect a lot of video from 2011 as Spike still possesses the rights to last years content. Picture and picture will be a plus for anyone watching TV on nights with live UFC events.
Big Title Fights In The UFC
With the UFC hype machine backing every title fight how could anyone not get excited? Fans, though, should be excited as were set to see Jose Aldo defend his title against Chad Mendes, then we’ve got probably two of the best lightweights going at it in Japan as Frankie Edgar takes on former WEC champ Ben Henderson. Then fans have the upcoming four-man flyweight tournament to crown the first UFC 125-lbs champion. The smaller fighters always bring exciting matches so this is a no-brainer. And finally, with Alistair Overeem’s first round win over Brock Lesnar, we get to see ‘The Demolition’ man put his K-1 striking against UFC heavyweight champ Junior dos Santos sometime this summer (I’m expecting due to JDS recovery time from surgery).
Consolidation Of Heavyweights In The UFC
With Strikeforce dissolving it’s heavyweight division, the UFC get’s a big boost as I felt all we had to look forward to were rematches among the few fighters at the top. Now the UFC will see some of the world’s top remaining heavyweights added to it’s division which will make for more exciting matchups and storylines.
One of the best storylines is the conclusion of the Heavyweight Grand Prix Tournament as finalists Daniel Cormier and Josh Barnett get set to meet this March. The winner is supposed to have one more fight under Strikeforce against a “top opponent” before making the jump to the UFC. Can you say number one contender bout? I expect the date for this fight to correspond with the JDS vs. Overeem match.
Bellator Fighting Championships
In my eyes, Bellator just gets better and better with each season. I wasn’t a fan of their “Super Fights”, pitting their champions in non-title bouts versus mid-grade opponents. They finally learned their lesson when light heavyweight champ Christian M’Pumbu was the first to lose with the promotion vowing instead to increase the number of tournaments. That’s a win for everyone, a champion needs to face champion level competition and I find the prospect of more tournament fights very exciting.
As well, with Spike TV all but televising Bellator events on their network, the production value and hype for the Chicago based promotion will improve as well.
To name one fighter from Bellator I’m excited to see back in the cage, is season five welterweight tournament winner Douglas ‘The Phenom’ Lima. The Atlanta based fighter is one of the top 170-lbs fighters battling outside of the Octagon and I look forward to his upcoming title fight with Ben Askren for the Bellator belt this coming Spring.
The Emergence Of ONE FC & Pro Elite
Okay, well the emergence of ONE Fighting Championship.
It’s nice to see ProElite return to the mma stage but they have a ways to go before they reach the national level of legitimacy and are more on par with promotions such as Titan Fighting Championships, Shark Fights, or the Maximum Fighting Championship. But hey, they are trying and an exciting knockout can come from anywhere, as well free fights on TV (HDNet) is always a plus.
ONE FC CEO Victor Cui is planning on making 2012 his promotions breakout year with several events planned across Asia which includes an upcoming co-promoted event with DREAM this coming March. This is very good news for mma fans, as I have always felt DREAM focused too much on fighters out of Japan and Korea, ONE FC is set to showcase fighters throughout all of South Asia. A perfect example is Filipino fighter Eduard Folayang (check out this scouting report on him) who is 10-1 and put in an great fight in ONE FC’s first show. If you don’t think the island country can produce great fighters think Manny Pacquiao.
I’ know that I could go on to talk about individual fighters such as Jon Jones continual dominance at 205 lbs, the number of Tomato Cans that Fedor Emelianenko will crush in the coming year, those diamonds in the rough who will emerge as the next great in their weight class (Jimy Hettes performance against Nam Phan at this Friday’s UFC 141 event certainly classifies as someone who could be the next “best thing”), the new deal to keep Strikeforce on SHOWTIME, plus a lot more.
But I’ve rambled on long enough.
Needless to say, 2012 is a much anticipated year for myself and it should be for you too.