Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, NewsMore than a year since his last time out in the Octagon, Tom Lawlor is finally healthy and ready to return at Saturday’s UFC 139. Waiting across the way from him when he walks into the middle of the HP Pavi…
More than a year since his last time out in the Octagon, Tom Lawlor is finally healthy and ready to return at Saturday’s UFC 139. Waiting across the way from him when he walks into the middle of the HP Pavilion will be Chris Weidman, a fast-rising prospect who is unbeaten and has won both of his bouts since signing with the UFC earlier this year.
For Lawlor, the matchup came as no surprise. Before Weidman was ever in the UFC, he made Lawlor’s radar after defeating his friend James Brasco in a submission grappling match at 2009. With Weidman in the nascent stages of his MMA career at the time, it was a clear stretch he was going to be a player on the world middleweight scene.
Just six fights into his career, Weidman will be at a disadvantage from an experience standpoint. With Lawlor having more time under his belt, he thinks that’s the advantage that will send him to victory.
“He’s impressive, but kind of like me, he’s still pretty young in his career,” Lawlor said on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “I have double the amount of fights he does. He only has six fights. So there’s a lot of things he hasn’t experienced and I think I’m going to be able to exploit some of that.”
Weidman is a former two-time collegiate wrestling All-American, and has landed six of his nine takedown attempts fighting in the UFC. Many feel that advantage gives Weidman the edge going into the fight.
In training for this bout, Lawlor traveled to Temecula, California to work for the last several weeks with Team Quest, a camp renowned for its wrestlers. While Lawlor says that wasn’t the sole reason for his work on the west coast, it will certainly come as a benefit.
“This isn’t a wrestling match,” he said. “This is a fight, or I’ll turn it into a fight. If it was a wrestling match, my money would be on him. But it’s not a wrestling match, it’s a fight … If I was a betting man, I would bet on myself.”
For Lawlor, his performance usually starts at the weigh-ins, where he’s notorious for his appearances, usually coming out dressed as a character from MMA’s past. Among his recent stage entries were Dan Severn, Harold Howard and the “Just Bleed” guy from UFC 1.
With 13 months to ponder his next time in front of the audience, Lawlor has something planned for UFC 139, and it’s something big.
“Unless they stop me right before I go out there, it’s going to be really good,” he said. “It might top all the past things that I’ve done and that’s saying a lot. I get a lot comments on the Dan Severn thing, I get a lot of comments from real hardcore fans on the ‘Just Bleed’ guy. But I really think this will take the cake. It’s going to set a new standard for weigh-ins.”
Filed under: UFC, MMA Fighting Exclusive, NewsThe UFC 139 preliminary fights on Spike have been reshuffled, with a bantamweight bout pitting Michael McDonald against Alex Soto moved into the two-fight showcase.
The UFC 139 preliminary fights on Spike have been reshuffled, with a bantamweight bout pitting Michael McDonald against Alex Soto moved into the two-fight showcase.
It had been previously reported that a middleweight encounter between Chris Weidman and Tom Lawlor would be included, but on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour, Lawlor said that information was incorrect, and a Spike representative confirmed to MMA Fighting that the fight would not be aired.
No reason was given for the change on the one-hour telecast, which is also set to feature Ryan Bader against Jason Brilz.
McDonald is considered to be one of the bantamweight division’s top prospects. Just 20 years old, he’s already competed 14 times as a pro, holding a 13-1 record. He’s 3-0 under the Zuffa banner, most recently defeating Chris Cariaso in a split decision back at UFC 130. Soto, meanwhile, will be making his major MMA debut. He’s 6-0-1 in his carer.
The Bader-Brilz bout features two fighters in need of a win, as both come into the event on two-fight losing streaks.
Meanwhile, Weidman vs. Lawlor will air live on Facebook.com.
UFC 139 will emanate from the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California with a main event of Dan Henderson vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua. The five-round main card will air on pay-per-view.
“This Sunday marks the ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The way America looked at itself was altered immensely on that date, and a decade later the world is a very different place. Memories of panic and uncertainty are still present, but the urge to keep moving forward is even stronger. In remembrance of this anniversary, TheFightNerd.com, has released an exclusive short-film that commemorates this event alongside the New York MMA community. ‘A Fighting Spirit’ is a video memoir that interviews members of the NY martial arts community and discusses where they were when the Towers collapsed, how they have coped, and how New York and America have grown stronger.
Directed by Kahleem Poole-Tejada (director of the full-length documentary ‘New York MMA’) and produced by Matthew Kaplowitz (Editor-in-Chief of TheFightNerd.com) in association with Ranger Up, the film takes viewers around a tour of downtown Manhattan and provides a glimpse inside several of New York City’s top MMA gyms. It features many NY-based fighters, such as Renzo Gracie, Chris Weidman, Pete ‘Drago’ Sell, and Vitor ‘Shaolin’ Ribeiro, as well as Stephen Koepfer of NY Combat Sambo, Mark Yehia of ‘Elite Plus MMA,’ Rob Constance of ‘The Renzo Gracie Academy’ and President of the ‘Ultimate Absolute’ grappling tournament, and Emilio Novoa, President of ADCC North America. Also appearing is UFC middleweight fighter Jorge Rivera, as well as Strikeforce middleweight Tim Kennedy, who adds the voices of members of the U.S. Armed Forces to this emotional piece.”
As a New York resident since August 2002, the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 has put me in a reflective mood all week. Maybe you feel the same. If you have any recollections or tributes to share from that day, please leave them in the comments section. Here, I’ll start…
“This Sunday marks the ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The way America looked at itself was altered immensely on that date, and a decade later the world is a very different place. Memories of panic and uncertainty are still present, but the urge to keep moving forward is even stronger. In remembrance of this anniversary, TheFightNerd.com, has released an exclusive short-film that commemorates this event alongside the New York MMA community. ‘A Fighting Spirit’ is a video memoir that interviews members of the NY martial arts community and discusses where they were when the Towers collapsed, how they have coped, and how New York and America have grown stronger.
Directed by Kahleem Poole-Tejada (director of the full-length documentary ‘New York MMA’) and produced by Matthew Kaplowitz (Editor-in-Chief of TheFightNerd.com) in association with Ranger Up, the film takes viewers around a tour of downtown Manhattan and provides a glimpse inside several of New York City’s top MMA gyms. It features many NY-based fighters, such as Renzo Gracie, Chris Weidman, Pete ‘Drago’ Sell, and Vitor ‘Shaolin’ Ribeiro, as well as Stephen Koepfer of NY Combat Sambo, Mark Yehia of ‘Elite Plus MMA,’ Rob Constance of ‘The Renzo Gracie Academy’ and President of the ‘Ultimate Absolute’ grappling tournament, and Emilio Novoa, President of ADCC North America. Also appearing is UFC middleweight fighter Jorge Rivera, as well as Strikeforce middleweight Tim Kennedy, who adds the voices of members of the U.S. Armed Forces to this emotional piece.”
As a New York resident since August 2002, the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 has put me in a reflective mood all week. Maybe you feel the same. If you have any recollections or tributes to share from that day, please leave them in the comments section. Here, I’ll start…
The summer of 2001 is when I first fell in love with New York City. I came here for a two-month internship doing grunt-work for a dearly departed men’s magazine called Stuff. At the time, some of the editors on the payroll included Seth Kelly (who’s now the editor-in-chief of UFC Magazine), Laura Gilbert (who now runs UFC.com), Jon Small (who later moved to Break Media and hired me to launch CagePotato.com in 2007), and Greg Gutfeld (then the magazine’s editor-in-chief, now the wacky host of Red Eye). I’d never been around such a talented collection of smart, funny motherfuckers in my life. I think the majority of my days were spent transcribing interviews, but still, it was a dream job.
The experience helped me decide two things that had already been in my mind: 1) I wanted to write for a living. And 2) I wanted to live in New York while I did it. It’s hard to match the exhilaration of being 20 years old and spending two months in a crazy-ass city with nobody watching you. On one of my first nights there, I walked 25 blocks to CBGB, just to see the place and pay my respects. Napalm Death and Isis were headlining a death-metal showcase. At one point, I got slammed so hard by a mosh-pitter that I fell onto the stage. It was awesome. Now CBGB is gone, and I feel like an old man.
After my crash course in the lad-mag biz, I went back to Ann Arbor to finish my last year at the University of Michigan. Just a week into classes, my roommate woke me up and told me that something really bad had happened, and I should come look at the TV. Like most people, it took me a long time to process what I was seeing. “Holy shit,” I said. “I was just there.” Over the next few days, I contacted everybody I’d met at Stuff, checking to see if they were all okay. They were, but they knew people, and they knew people who knew people, and it was all very fucked up.
Obviously, nothing like this had ever happened in my lifetime. My heart broke for the victims, and for the multitudes who had lost children, parents, spouses, and friends, and for those who kept searching for their missing loved ones, past the point of hope.
But it was inspiring watching some of the news coverage that followed in the subsequent weeks. The tragedy united New Yorkers in an unprecedented way, and it was clear that the city would heal and become “stronger at the broken places,” so to speak. It seemed to me that New Yorkers were keeping their heads while the rest of the country was freaking out, and that made an impression.
So I finished school, kicked around Ann Arbor for a couple months, then rented a U-Haul with my girlfriend at the time and rolled the dice. I had friends and family members advise against the move because they didn’t think New York was safe. And maybe they were right, but I was young and adventurous, and I had faith that this big, ferocious city would protect me.
In November, my wife and I will be leaving New York to move back to the Midwest and raise our first child. I’m already bracing for the homesickness. In nine years, this place has never let me down.
(The UFC is calling this ‘a potential Fight of the Night’)
A welterweight scrap between Martin Kampmann and Rick Story has been added to UFC 139, which is scheduled for November 19 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.
(The UFC is calling this ‘a potential Fight of the Night’)
A welterweight scrap between Martin Kampmann and Rick Story has been added to UFC 139, which is scheduled for November 19 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California.
0-2 in his last two outings after being on the wrong end of two razor-close decisions to Jake Shields at UFC 121 and Diego Sanchez at UFC Live: Sanchez vs. Kampmann, “Hitman” will be looking to get back into title contention and into the win column by decisively beating Story. He feels that he won both of his last two fights, which will likely motivate him not to leave things to the judges the next time.
“The Horror,” who is also coming off of a loss — his first since 2009, won’t be giving up a win easily. He was upset by late replacement Charlie Brenneman who stepped in for Story’s original opponent at UFC Live: Kongo vs. Barry, Nate Marquardt, who was denied a license for the June event in Pittsburgh due to elevated levels of testosterone. Prior to that Story, who replaced injured Anthony Johnson on the card against Marquardt, defeated former number one UFC welterweight contender Thiago Alves by unanimous decision at UFC 130 one month earlier.
The card will be headlined by a heavyweight title bout between champion Cain Velasquez and Junior dos Santos and will likely feature the return of Josh Koscheck who has been sidelined while rehabbing a broken orbital bone he suffered in his UFC 124 welterweight championship bout with Georges St-Pierre in December. Also on the card will be a bantamweight bout between Brian Bowles and Urijah Faber, a middleweight bout between Chris Weidman and Tom Lawlor and a lightweight bout between Gleison Tibau and Rafael dos Anjos.
———- UFC 139: Velasquez vs. Dos Santos
November 19, 2011
HP Pavilion
San Jose, California
Heavyweight Championship Bout
Cain Velasquez vs. Junior Dos Santos
Brian Bowles vs. Urijah Faber
Chris Weidman vs. Tom Lawlor
Gleison Tibau vs. Rafael dos Anjos
Martin Kampmann vs. Rick Story
(Since this sculpture seemed to be a major talking point…)
Minoru Suzuki was born 43 years ago.
Why he matters: One of the co-founders of Pancrase — the pre-cursor to the UFC — Suzuki was of the best Japanese submission specialists of his era. He holds wins over Ken Shamrock, Vernon White, Matt Hume and Guy Mezger and Maurice Smith. A former Olympic alternate freestyle wrestler for Japan and former Japanese freestyle wrestling national champion, Suzuki retired from MMA competition in 2002 with a record of 27-20 to focus on professional wrestling, in which he is still active today.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/MrDartzero)
Many MMA luminaries from Bas Rutten and Ken Shamrock to Josh Barnett count Suzuki as one of THE best catch wrestlers the sport has ever known.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/scientificwrestling)
(Since this sculpture seemed to be a major talking point…)
Minoru Suzuki was born 43 years ago.
Why he matters: One of the co-founders of Pancrase — the pre-cursor to the UFC — Suzuki was of the best Japanese submission specialists of his era. He holds wins over Ken Shamrock, Vernon White, Matt Hume and Guy Mezger and Maurice Smith. A former Olympic alternate freestyle wrestler for Japan and former Japanese freestyle wrestling national champion, Suzuki retired from MMA competition in 2002 with a record of 27-20 to focus on professional wrestling, in which he is still active today.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/MrDartzero)
Many MMA luminaries from Bas Rutten and Ken Shamrock to Josh Barnett count Suzuki as one of THE best catch wrestlers the sport has ever known.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/scientificwrestling)
Kuniyoshi Hironaka was born 34 years ago.
Why he matters: Besides a win over Nick Diaz, and a stint as the Cage Force lightweight champion, Hironaka’s claim to fame could be that he is the fighter who created Shinya Aoki’s appetite for arm-breaking.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/dannykeat)
In a 2007 jiu-jitsu competition, Aoki caught Hironaka in an armbar, but his opponent refused to tap out. Although Aoki was much more sportsmanlike and reserved than he would be when he duplicated the feat against Mizuto Hirota at K-1 Dynamite! two years later, the incident seemed didn’t seem to bother “Tobikan Judan” in the least. Incidentally, the pair fought a year prior to the jiu-jitsu match under the Shooto banner, with Aoki winning via TKO due to cut.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/belfastbootboy)
Andrei Semenov was born 34 years ago.
Why he matters: Semenov is one of the best fighters who never really got a fair shake in the UFC. Had he been given one, he may have become a household name like Chuck Liddell or Tito Ortiz, rather than a fighter most non-hardcore MMA fans have never heard about.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/Damienhis)
His 30-9-2 record includes wins over Amar Suloev, Ricardo Almeida, Martin Kampmann and Martijn de Jong, as well as a pair of draws with Mike Pyle and Denis Kang. After winning his UFC debut against Almeida, he lost to Ivan Salaverry in his second (and last) fight in the Octagon and was dropped by Zuffa. Folowing a three-year hiatus from the sport, Semenov returned to competition in April of this year to beat Luigi Fioravanti at M-1 Chalenge in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Chris Weidman was born 27 years ago.
Why he matters: Being an undefeated fighter in MMA is like being a messageboard commenter with actual MMA credentials — it’s a rarity. A product of Matt Serra’s gym in New York, Weidman is 6-0 in the sport and 2-0 in his UFC career. He defeated veteran Alessio Sakara by unanimous decision at UFC Live 3: Sanchez vs. Kampmann in March and followed up that impressive performance three months later in Vancouver at UFC 131 with a first-round submission win over Jesse Bongfeldt.
Bellator 22 happened one year ago.
Why it mattered: Ben Askren won Bellator’s Season 2 Welterweight Tournament by defeating veteran Dan Hornbuckle by unanimous decision at the event. He would go on to win the Bellator strap from Lyman Good in his subsequent title shot at Bellator 33.
“Hands of Stone”? Yup, that sounds about right. (Pic: UFC.com)
There is so much to love about the UFC’s Fight Night Bonuses. Often times one of these rewards can double, triple, or even quadruple a fighter’s take home pay for the evening. They also serve as bounties for action, encouraging the knockouts, submissions, and exciting fights that we all enjoy. But I love them best for another reason altogether. They give Dana White the opportunity to do what he does best: wield his godlike power with impunity. That sword has two edges of course, one of which has cut us frequently, but when dolling out these bonuses we get to see the best of Dana White. There’s Dana the Vindictive, who snubbed Mir’s poor performance against Cro Cop by denying the night’s only KO a bonus; Dana the Fight Fan, who loves action packed bouts so much that sometimes he can’t bring himself to award only one “Fight of the Night” bonus; and Dana the Merciful, who sets right the grave injustices cast down from the judges table. It was this last Dana who reared his head last night, giving an “unofficial” bonus to Michihiro Omigawa, who lost a unanimous decision to Darren Elkins in the prelims. White felt that Omigawa clearly deserved the victory and awarded him his win bonus for his performance. This fight, particularly one judge scoring it 30-27 for Elkins, is sure to add more fuel to the firestorm that is MMA judging. And now, on to the $70k bonuses…
“Hands of Stone”? Yup, that sounds about right. (Pic: UFC.com)
There is so much to love about the UFC’s Fight Night Bonuses. Often times one of these rewards can double, triple, or even quadruple a fighter’s take home pay for the evening. They also serve as bounties for action, encouraging the knockouts, submissions, and exciting fights that we all enjoy. But I love them best for another reason altogether. They give Dana White the opportunity to do what he does best: wield his godlike power with impunity. That sword has two edges of course, one of which has cut us frequently, but when dolling out these bonuses we get to see the best of Dana White. There’s Dana the Vindictive, who snubbed Mir’s poor performance against Cro Cop by denying the night’s only KO a bonus; Dana the Fight Fan, who loves action packed bouts so much that sometimes he can’t bring himself to award only one “Fight of the Night” bonus; and Dana the Merciful, who sets right the grave injustices cast down from the judges table. It was this last Dana who reared his head last night, giving an “unofficial” bonus to Michihiro Omigawa, who lost a unanimous decision to Darren Elkins in the prelims. White felt that Omigawa clearly deserved the victory and awarded him his win bonus for his performance. This fight, particularly one judge scoring it 30-27 for Elkins, is sure to add more fuel to the firestorm that is MMA judging. And now, on to the $70k bonuses…
Knock Out of the Night: Sam Stout picked up some spending cash and a highlight clip for the ages with his first-round knock out of Yves Edwards. The end came with both men exchanging punches; Edwards connected first with a decent right hook, but Stout landed a big left to the jaw that folded Yves forwarded as he slowly careened to the canvas. No follow up was needed, as the Thug Jitsu master was out cold.
Submission of the Night: Matt Serra student Chris Weidman extended his record to a perfect 6-0 with his first round submission over Jesse Bongfeldt. Weidman looked fluid on the ground as he transitioned around Bongfeldt with great control, but the end would come via the rare standing guillotine with only six seconds left in the first round.
Fight of the Night: Dave Herman and Jon Olav Einemo paired up in a back-and-forth heavyweight tilt that saw both men in trouble on more than one occasion. Herman battered Einemo with knees to drop him late in the second round and draw the TKO stoppage. The five years spent at Golden Glory didn’t show in Einemo’s stand-up. It was good news for him, though, as he would have lost to Carwin much faster and not picked up the additional $70k.
More than a year since his last time out in the Octagon, Tom Lawlor is finally healthy and ready to return at Saturday’s UFC 139. Waiting across the way from him when he walks into the middle of the HP Pavilion will be Chris Weidman, a fast-rising prospect who is unbeaten and has won both of his bouts since signing with the UFC earlier this year. 
The UFC 139 preliminary fights on Spike have been reshuffled, with a bantamweight bout pitting 
