UFC Betting Sites – The Best MMA Online Bookies
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The dust has settled for me and UFC 131 was a large success in Vancouver over the past seven days. When I touched down on the beautiful place I called home for five or so years in my college days the city was a buzz with Stanley Cup fever. It was there…
The dust has settled for me and UFC 131 was a large success in Vancouver over the past seven days. When I touched down on the beautiful place I called home for five or so years in my college days the city was a buzz with Stanley Cup fever. It was there in the air […]
UFC 131 Aftermath: JDS Boxing, Stout Class and Eating UFC Crow
(If triathlons allowed you to punch other racers, and the participants got paid millions of dollars to do it, well, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Props: CombatLifestyle.com)
Despite that totally official press release claiming that Jeff Lacy had already signed for the fight, Strikeforce welterweight champion Nick Diaz will not be facing Lacy in a boxing match. In fact, Diaz will be sticking to the sport that he seemingly can’t stand — and it’s becoming very obvious what’s convincing him to stay.
According to a new press release, Diaz will continue pursuing his MMA career instead of professional boxing, “as it has been deemed that it be in Nick’s best interest to focus on his primary combat sport and profession…an opportunity arose for Nick to make a different sort of history in his primary field of fighting.”
(If triathlons allowed you to punch other racers, and the participants got paid millions of dollars to do it, well, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Props: CombatLifestyle.com)
Despite that totally official press release claiming that Jeff Lacy had already signed for the fight, Strikeforce welterweight champion Nick Diaz will not be facing Lacy in a boxing match. In fact, Diaz will be sticking to the sport that he seemingly can’t stand — and it’s becoming very obvious what’s convincing him to stay.
According to a new press release, Diaz will continue pursuing his MMA career instead of professional boxing, “as it has been deemed that it be in Nick’s best interest to focus on his primary combat sport and profession…an opportunity arose for Nick to make a different sort of history in his primary field of fighting.”
Diaz’s coach Cesar Gracie previously made it known that “unless GSP is offered up as a sacrifice [by the UFC], Nick will fight Lacy.” At the time, Gracie/Diaz’s well-publicized interest in a new boxing career was interpreted by many to be a leveraging strategy, to convince the UFC to step in and offer Diaz a welterweight title shot against Georges St. Pierre. If that’s the case, it worked like a charm. Still, Gracie wants everybody to know that the boxing thing wasn’t just a ruse. From the press release, again:
“There are some people that have said we were just posturing to go into professional boxing and they don’t understand that this thing is something we had been working on since 2009. It wasn’t just out of nowhere but at this point in time, there’s a certain chance that comes along once in a very long while and it only makes sense to stick to MMA as of right now. Nick’s been working really hard to get to this point in his MMA career and it wouldn’t make sense for us to make that transition into boxing right now. If this were a couple months ago or if certain fights had played out differently, we’d definitely be ready to go into boxing, but that’s not how it played out. Don Chargin is a great boxing promoter and he understood our dilemma completely and I thank him for that.”
Chargin added:
“Nick is a good kid and a very exciting fighter. Right now he has an opportunity of a lifetime as it pertains to his MMA career. While I don’t doubt that Nick and his team were serious about taking the big step into boxing, it only makes sense for him to finish what he started and see how far he can go in MMA before he does anything in boxing…I’ve had a long promotional career filled with numerous big events dating back the 1960s. Taking Nick Diaz into boxing would have undoubtedly been a big one but this is Nick’s career and his legacy as a MMA fighter needs to be solidified now. I wish him all the luck going forward and know that Zuffa will have itself one very exciting fighter for many years to come.”
Rumor has it that the fight between Nick Diaz and Georges St. Pierre will be announced sometime this week. GSP is already a hypothetical 4-1 favorite against his next challenger.
In a related story, former welterweight/junior middleweight boxing champion Ricardo Mayorga is trying to get a piece of that sweet boxing vs. MMA action the only way he knows how — by calling everybody the Spanish words for “faggot” and “whore.” Mayorga, who was scheduled to fight Din Thomas last May in a Shine Fights MMA bout that imploded in spectacular fashion at the last minute, has been blasting folks on Twitter lately. Here a representative sample, via MiddleEasy:
Also? “@bjpenndotcom after I KO you, I will put a hawaiin dress on u fatty and make u do hula hula dance- remember Im a real fighter puto.” Follow this man right now.
Weeks ago, ESPN.com reported that the long awaited-boxing bout between WBA Heavyweight (200+ lbs.) Champion David Haye and IBF/IBO/WBO/The Ring Magazine’s Heavyweight Champion Wladimir Klitschko finally landed on a set date and venue. The H…
Weeks ago, ESPN.com reported that the long awaited-boxing bout between WBA Heavyweight (200+ lbs.) Champion David Haye and IBF/IBO/WBO/The Ring Magazine’s Heavyweight Champion Wladimir Klitschko finally landed on a set date and venue. The Heavyweight bout—arguably the first Heavyweight bout in years that any non-religious follower of Boxing has given a damn about—takes place on […]
The UFC 132 Fight Card and the Pros & Cons of Sharing July 2nd with HBO Boxing
Weeks ago, ESPN.com reported that the long awaited-boxing bout between WBA Heavyweight (200+ lbs.) Champion David Haye and IBF/IBO/WBO/The Ring Magazine’s Heavyweight Champion Wladimir Klitschko finally landed on a set date and venue. The H…
Weeks ago, ESPN.com reported that the long awaited-boxing bout between WBA Heavyweight (200+ lbs.) Champion David Haye and IBF/IBO/WBO/The Ring Magazine’s Heavyweight Champion Wladimir Klitschko finally landed on a set date and venue. The Heavyweight bout—arguably the first Heavyweight bout in years that any non-religious follower of Boxing has given a damn about—takes place on […]
The UFC 132 Fight Card and the Pros & Cons of Sharing July 2nd with HBO Boxing
(Yes, at this point they are in fact just fucking with us.)
Man, it’s like the Shaw family doesn’t even check with each other anymore before they go to the media and just start saying stuff. Remember it was less than two weeks ago that Gary Shaw told us that his longtime crush object Kimbo Slice would probably not be entering the world of boxing after finding out “how hard it is to be a boxer.” Well, on Tuesday, not 15 days later, Jared Shaw – Shaw Trek the Next Generation, if you will – made an appearance on MMA Weekly radio and immediately started issuing “open challenges” on behalf of one Kevin Ferguson, professional boxer.
Specifically, Shaw invited NFL player Ray Edwards to meet Slice in a boxing match. Edwards, a defensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, will make his own professional boxing debut this Friday at a casino in the Gopher State, against an as-yet unnamed opponent. So that sounds just super. Shaw’s comments and some of Edwards’ own ridiculousness are after the jump …
(Yes, at this point they are in fact just fucking with us.)
Man, it’s like the Shaw family doesn’t even check with each other anymore before they go to the media and just start saying stuff. Remember it was less than two weeks ago that Gary Shaw told us that his longtime crush object Kimbo Slice would probably not be entering the world of boxing after finding out “how hard it is to be a boxer.” Well, on Tuesday, not 15 days later, Jared Shaw – Shaw Trek the Next Generation, if you will – made an appearance on MMA Weekly radio and immediately started issuing “open challenges” on behalf of one Kevin Ferguson, professional boxer.
Specifically, Shaw invited NFL player Ray Edwards to meet Slice in a boxing match. Edwards, a defensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, will make his own professional boxing debut this Friday at a casino in the Gopher State, against an as-yet unnamed opponent. So that sounds just super. Shaw’s comments and some of Edwards’ own ridiculousness are after the jump …
“That fight I will deliver,” Shaw declared. “If Ray Edwards wants to step up and fight Kimbo Slice I will deliver that to the public. There’s two guys that come from athletic backgrounds, that haven’t been in the ring that many times, so let’s see two big boys bang it out. If Ray Edwards thinks he’s a great boxer, then maybe he thinks he can go through Kevin Ferguson very quickly.”
You’ll remember that even before Gary Shaw pronounced Slice’s pugilistic career DOA earlier this month, we quoted the dude as far back as last Thanksgiving essentially sounding pretty disgusted with Kimbo’s work habits. At the time, the street brawler-turned-MMA-failure-turned … something-or-other had ditched training camp to head back to Miami for the holidays, and Shaw didn’t seem particularly hopeful that he’d return. As of a couple of weeks ago, it sounded like his fears had been confirmed.
Not so, says Jared Shaw, who told MMA Weekly that Slice just wanted to take some time off to film a movie, that he’s been staying in shape and that he still wants to fight. At least, J-Shaw thinks he still wants to fight.
“I’m always in contact with Kimbo and his camp, and they’re great,” Jared Shaw said. “Kimbo’s enjoying his life post a lot of training years. The first time out in boxing it just wasn’t the right timing, he had some aches, he wanted to go shoot a film, ‘The Scorpion King,’ and we just left it open ended. I have good feelings that Kimbo Slice still wants to make an impact in the fight game. However, he can define his own impact.”
That brings us to Edwards, who declared early on in the NFL lockout that he wasn’t going to “wait around” for the owners and the players’ union to figure out how to divvy up the billions. Instead, he decided to launch a fly-by-night fighting career. Because, you know, why wouldn’t you risk a potential seven-figure football contract by taking two-bit boxing matches in Podunk casinos in places like Hinckley, Minn?
That’s where Edwards will fight this weekend: The Grand Casino in Hinckley. Not exactly the MGM Grand, eh? Anyway, a couple of months ago Edwards went on ESPN TV and made a bunch of statements so crazy you might’ve thought he was trying to be an honorary member of the Shaw family, including but not limited to alleging his boxing trainers think he has the potential be the best heavyweight ever. Not just the best right now, mind you, not just the best in the comparatively shitty and shallow 2011 heavyweight division, but the best ever.
More recently, he told the Star Tribune newspaper that he’s inked a two-fight deal with the above mentioned casino and that he could fight again in June if the NFL’s labor dispute is still raging. That fight – if Jared Shaw has his way – could conceivably be against Slice.
First though, maybe Edwards should just find out who he’s fighting on Friday.
In the interest of full disclosure, this article originally appeared as my comment—now with revisions—to Todd Seyler’s article, Nick Diaz vs Jeff Lacy Purse Information for Boxing Event. Just like that, the boxing industry readily off…
In the interest of full disclosure, this article originally appeared as my comment—now with revisions—to Todd Seyler’s article, Nick Diaz vs Jeff Lacy Purse Information for Boxing Event. Just like that, the boxing industry readily offers equal money to Nick Diaz, in the amount he received from his last MMA title fight—a $175,000 fight purse. […]
Nick Diaz’s Boxing Adventurism and His Possible Crusade for All MMA Fighters