It was quite the weekend in mixed martial arts action, wasn’t it?
Friday night brought plenty of flyweight action and judging ineptitude/controversy from the UFC on FX show in Australia. Saturday night saw the crowning of a new Strikeforce women’s bantamweight champion and the potential ascension of MMA‘s next big superstar, male or female included.
Let’s get to the first morning update of the week, shall we?
Miesha Tate’s Arm Isn’t Broken, Just Sore
Miesha Tate tells MMAFighting.com’s Ariel Helwani via text message that her severely mangled left arm isn’t broken, but that there might be some damage.
“I had X-Rays last night,” Tate told MMAFighting.com via text message. “No bones are broken, which I already knew. Other than that, I have to get an MRI to find out anything further.”
That Tate suffered zero broken bones in that arm is a bit of a shocker to those of us who actually saw what Ronda Rousey did on Saturday night. It was one of the nastier armbars in the history of the sport. The crazy thing? Tate brought it entirely on herself because of her refusal to tap once the armbar was obviously locked in.
Later today, I’ll have more on Tate’s decision to allow her arm to be injured rather than tap out. I’m far from done discussing this subject.
Dana White Fumes Over Johnson/McCall Controversy
One of the positive things coming from Friday’s controversial split-decision-turned-into-a-draw result in the Demetrious Johnson/Ian McCall bout was the fact that we’ll get to see Johnson and McCall step in the cage and go at it one more time. It was an awesome, action-packed fight and every MMA fan in the world will be glad to see it again.
Everyone but Dana White, that is. White told John Morgan from MMAjunkie.com that the result doesn’t help the UFC at all.
“There is nothing positive about that result,” White told MMAjunkie.com. “I would rather have ended it tonight. We had two badass fights that everybody loved that would have led into the title fight. That would have been best-case scenario.”
I see where White is coming from. The perfect result would’ve seen the two winners meet a few months down the line for the flyweight title.
But seeing Johnson and McCall roll it back one more time next month in Atlanta — White said that the rematch would likely take place at UFC 145 — isn’t such a bad thing. The winner of the rematch will have even more momentum going into the finals and a great performance might actually make some fans believe they have a real chance at beating Joseph Benavidez.
Ohio Athletic Commission To Launch Brandon Saling Investigation
The one black mark from an otherwise excellent weekend of fighting action was the inclusion of neo-Nazi sex offender Brandon Saling on Saturday’s Strikeforce preliminary card. As I relayed in a piece over the weekend, Zuffa was unaware of Saling’s past when they booked him on short notice to take on Roger Bowling. They simply needed a guy at Bowling’s weight who lived in Ohio and who would fight on extremely short notice, and Saling fit the bill.
Strikeforce figurehead Scott Coker told the media gathered at the post-fight press conference on Saturday night that the Ohio athletic commission would be launching an investigation into Saling’s past on Monday.
“We had no knowledge about that until someone brought it up to us this evening,” Coker said of Saling’s background. “It came to our attention during the course of the fights.”
Roy Nelson Says He’ll Go To 205…If You Like Him
Roy “Big Country” Nelson has slimmed down quite a bit over the past eight months, but he says he’ll go even smaller if he’s able to get 100,000 fans to “Like” his Facebook page over the next two weeks.
Bet is I will try to get to 205 if I can add 100k to Facebook.com/RoyNelsonUFC in two weeks. I love to win bets….fb.me/16yMoPVPm
I desperately want Nelson to win this bet, just so I can see him at the weight he should have been fighting at for the last ten years.
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