There is a case to be made for several men as the greatest professional wrestler of all-time. Your grandfather might tell you about Buddy Rogers or Lou Thesz. Your dad can spin tails about the amazing Ric Flair and “Handsome Harley Race.” A vampire or …
There is a case to be made for several men as the greatest professional wrestler of all-time. Your grandfather might tell you about Buddy Rogers or Lou Thesz. Your dad can spin tails about the amazing Ric Flair and “Handsome Harley Race.” A vampire or the Highlander might even make an argument for Jim Londos or Frank Gotch.
But to me, the Rock stands alone at the top of the list. With apologies to Lex Luger, the “Great One” was the real total package.
What makes him the greatest of all-time? Read on, reminisce and enjoy.
Vadim Finkelstein is an interesting character.He’s best known as the manager of Fedor Emelianenko. This used to mean something, but these days it’s far less prestigious than it used to be. Not according to Finkelstein, however. This guy is still l…
Vadim Finkelstein is an interesting character.
He’s best known as the manager of Fedor Emelianenko. This used to mean something, but these days it’s far less prestigious than it used to be.
Not according to Finkelstein, however. This guy is still living in 2007. It’s as though Emelianenko’s losses never happened.
UFC President Dana White recently said that he has zero interest in signing Fedor…
VF: You need to know Dana. If he says he has no interest in signing Fedor, then in fact, he really wants to. He says one thing, and doing another. How can you not want a fighter who can bring millions? Any fight with Fedor could break all the rating records in the UFC.
The only time Emelianenko would’ve brought “millions” to the UFC would have been potential fights with Randy Couture and Brock Lesnar. But that was back before he lost three fights in a row, and his true value has significantly declined since those days.
Maybe you should make the first step?
VF: We are open for dialogue. It’s just that Dana White thinks that we will come to him, kneel down and say: “We are ready for any conditions to sign a contract.” Of course, this will never happen. Fedor deserves nothing but respect. But like I said, there’s still a high demand for Fedor. We are ready to have Fedor fighting in the UFC, it’s just that we need a normal offer. And the fact that White is always saying that offered us everything “on a silver platter” is a lie.
We’ll never know exactly what the UFC offered Fedor’s camp during those long-ago negotiations. It’ll be a game of he-said, she-said until the end of time.
What we do know, however, is that Finkelstein is still holding on to the notion that he can get some type of special contract from the UFC, even with Emelianenko suffering three losses. He’s no longer the fighter he once was. He’s no longer the minimal pay per view draw he once was.
Finkelstein says they need “a normal offer.” No, you don’t need a normal offer. If all they needed was a normal offer, we would’ve seen Emelianenko vs. Brock Lesnar at Cowboys Stadium several years ago, like the UFC wanted.
A “normal offer” is what every fighter in the UFC gets, and that’s not what Finkelstein is after. He’s still looking for co-promotion and other special treatment, and that’s never going to fly.
We’re never going to see Fedor Emelianenko in the UFC, and Vadim Finkelstein is to blame.
This article reflects the opinion of the author.
Steroid use can be a dangerous game of “Can you top this?” Pro wrestling fans will remember the 1980s, when the success of ludicrously ripped acts like the Road Warriors and Hulk Hogan convinced promoter…
This article reflects the opinion of the author.
Steroid use can be a dangerous game of “Can you top this?” Pro wrestling fans will remember the 1980s, when the success of ludicrously ripped acts like the Road Warriors and Hulk Hogan convinced promoters that swollen muscles were the key to monetary success. What followed were a ridiculous menagerie of overly muscled human action figures, wrestlers like Hercules Hernandez, who rewrote the book on human anatomy.
The result was tragic. Swollen hearts were an unfortunate byproduct of those swollen muscles. Wrestlers from that generation started dropping like flies. Most of our heroes, the wrestlers from that era we grew up on, like Rick Rude, Hawk and Curt Hennig, are dead and gone. No one who was a wrestling fan can possibly minimize the real danger in the drug’s misuse.
But testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is not the same thing as steroid abuse. It’s just not. If you don’t trust the doctors who prescribe it to millions of men, trust your eyeballs. The UFC’s top stars don’t look like bodybuilders. They have lean and functional physiques.
The pythons Hulk Hogan was so proud of? That’s a show muscle—the bicep is a muscle for people who want to look strong, not people who want to be strong. After all, its sole purpose is to lift up the lower part of your arm. That’s it. Functional strength is built in your back, thighs and butt. Not in your arms.
The purpose of testosterone therapy isn’t to build giant and jacked super warriors, complete with comic-book-style physiques and powerhouse punching prowess. TRT is designed to bring people, typically men in their 30s and above who have seen the amount of testosterone their bodies produce dip, back up to normal levels of testosterone.
It doesn’t give athletes an unfair advantage over their opponents. If properly managed by the state athletic commission, a fighter will never even take particularly large doses. In Nevada, for example, a fighter looking to get approval for TRT has to submit at least five different tests to the commission. That doesn’t leave much room for abuse (for more on the ins and outs of drug testing, please see Mike Chiappetta’s exhaustive article at MMA Fighting).
That’s what makes critiques of the procedure so baffling. Take Fight Opinion’s Zach Arnold, an outspoken opponent of TRT, even if the fighter is under a doctor’s care and carefully scrutinized by the state:
The media frenzy towards the UFC if a fighter, on a UFC-regulated show, cripples or kills another fighter while using testosterone will be voluminous. Let’s not go down this path in combat sports. Clean up the mess now before someone pays a permanent price. Once a major incident happens, the stain will be hard to erase and the damage will be done.
This is where Zach and I need to part ways. The men and women who compete in the cage do so with the knowledge that things could go badly, very badly, at any moment. That’s what makes them so admirable—they understand the risks, accept them and enter that cage despite them.
So far, the sport has been lucky enough never to have a death inside the UFC’s Octagon. Even serious injuries have been few and far between. If it happens, and boxing’s tragic history tells us it inevitably will, it won’t be because an older fighter has increased his energy level with TRT. It will be because the sport is inherently and unavoidably dangerous.
It’s no secret that Jason “Mayhem” Miller came dangerously close to being fired after his poor effort against Michael Bisping in December. I was the camera operator when Dana White told Heavy’s Megan Olivi that he wasn’t sure if Miller would get anothe…
It’s no secret that Jason “Mayhem” Miller came dangerously close to being fired after his poor effort against Michael Bisping in December. I was the camera operator when Dana White told Heavy’s Megan Olivi that he wasn’t sure if Miller would get another chance in the company.
It was apparent to us, standing there in White’s suite at the Palms Casino Resort, that Miller was on the cusp of losing his job after one fight back in the company and a great season of The Ultimate Fighter.
Thankfully, Miller has been given a reprieve. But he’ll still find his back up against the wall when he faces C.B. Dolloway at UFC 146. A loss by either man will likely send them packing from the company. According to Miller, who appeared last night on Spike TV’s MMA Uncensored Live, the UFC won’t even need to fire him if he loses to Dolloway. He’ll quit.
I’m on my own chopping block. If I lose to him, I’m quitting. I don’t even deserve to be in there. There’s not an easy fight in the UFC. He doesn’t deserve to be in there with me, and I’ll prove it. I’ll prove it in under a round, because…I tend to get tired in the second round. We’re both in a similar spot in our career I guess. We’re both on the chopping block. That’s fine. I’m really happy with that.
It’d be quite unfortunate to see Miller released from the UFC after just two fights. But if he puts on the kind of stinker performance he did against Bisping, it would be warranted.
The fact that the bantamweight bout between Miguel Torres and Michael McDonald was ever included on the preliminary card at UFC 145 is ridiculous.Yes, I understand the reasoning behind it. The UFC wants strong fights on their FX telecast. They want bou…
The fact that the bantamweight bout between Miguel Torres and Michael McDonald was ever included on the preliminary card at UFC 145 is ridiculous.
Yes, I understand the reasoning behind it. The UFC wants strong fights on their FX telecast. They want bouts that will entice the fans to order the pay-per-view event, and so they have historically loaded up that show with great fights. It’s a good business deal.
But Torres vs. McDonald is an exception, not the rule. It’s a fight with real title implications. The winner of this fight is either going to get an immediate title shot (if it’s Torres) or find himself very close to it (if it’s McDonald).
On top of that, it’s a fight featuring the crafty veteran against the kid who many believe could be the future of his division.
Basically, it’s a hell of a fight, and I obviously support the UFC’s decision to move Torres vs. McDonald to the UFC 145 pay-per-view, which will now feature six fights instead of the usual five.
“Fighting on Pay-Per-View is special to me,” said Torres. “I would watch the big boxing cards with my father as a kid, and my father would well up with pride and emotion when guys like Julio Cesar Chavez fought. I’d never seen my father show so much emotion and I am proud to become an extension of that great Mexican fighting legacy in the UFC.”
Moving this card to the pay per view was the right call. It should’ve been one of the featured attractions from the very beginning, but I’ll take what I can get.
A fight between Dan Hardy and Nick Diaz seems like something that would be considered way off in the distance, at least in 2012. Diaz is serving a suspension, and even if he is magically able to get that suspension reduced at his hearing next mont…
A fight between Dan Hardy and Nick Diaz seems like something that would be considered way off in the distance, at least in 2012.
Diaz is serving a suspension, and even if he is magically able to get that suspension reduced at his hearing next month, he’ll still be fighting guys near the top of the division.
Hardy is not one of those guys at the top of the division. He’s lost four in a row, and his next fight—against Duane Ludwig at UFC 146 in May—will be his first bout since 2008 to appear on the preliminary portion of the broadcast. Hardy would need to string together four or more wins in order to even reach Diaz’s territory.
I would love to fight him, I’m a huge fan of his. He’s a very entertaining guy and he comes to fight and nobody really does that anymore. I respect that and by all means I would trade some punches with him.
I believe Hardy when he says he’d stand and trade punches with Diaz, mostly because he’s like that. It’s his opponents who promise to do the same—like Anthony Johnson did a year ago this week—and then wrestle him to death. You can’t fault them for the strategy, because it’s a winning one, but it’s still a disappointment.
Nick Diaz vs. Dan Hardy would be all kinds of awesome.
