As you know, Dennis Hallman was cut from the UFC after missing weight for Friday’s UFC on FX 5 event. He missed weight by, like, a lot, but still received his show and win money from the UFC.
Quite interesting because the UFC don’t play like that with fighters repeatedly missing weight as Hallman has. Perhaps, we wondered, Hallman had some extenuating circumstances that contributed to his messing up and the UFC was doing what it could to be understanding.
According to the fighter, that’s exactly what happen.
In an interview with former UFC title challenger, television personality and no stranger to personal problems himself, Frank Trigg, Hallman says that he went through a psychological meltdown while cutting weight last week. The lightweight veteran says he’s currently going through an ugly custody dispute with his wife, who he claims is addicted to drugs.
Though he wasn’t in a healthy state to fight, Hallman says that he tried to make weight and fight to get money to cover legal costs to try and get custody of his daughter from his wife. Apparently Hallman was told by the UFC to move down to smaller promotions, make weight and pick up a few wins and then he would be brought back.
We don’t have a punch line for this. Whatever is going with Hallman and his family, its clearly sad and taking a toll on those involved.
We’re glad he got show and win money and we wish he and his family all the best.
Hallman’s video interview with Trigg after the jump.
As you know, Dennis Hallman was cut from the UFC after missing weight for Friday’s UFC on FX 5 event. He missed weight by, like, a lot, but still received his show and win money from the UFC.
Quite interesting because the UFC don’t play like that with fighters repeatedly missing weight as Hallman has. Perhaps, we wondered, Hallman had some extenuating circumstances that contributed to his messing up and the UFC was doing what it could to be understanding.
According to the fighter, that’s exactly what happen.
In an interview with former UFC title challenger, television personality and no stranger to personal problems himself, Frank Trigg, Hallman says that he went through a psychological meltdown while cutting weight last week. The lightweight veteran says he’s currently going through an ugly custody dispute with his wife, who he claims is addicted to drugs.
Though he wasn’t in a healthy state to fight, Hallman says that he tried to make weight and fight to get money to cover legal costs to try and get custody of his daughter from his wife. Apparently Hallman was told by the UFC to move down to smaller promotions, make weight and pick up a few wins and then he would be brought back.
We don’t have a punch line for this. Whatever is going with Hallman and his family, its clearly sad and taking a toll on those involved.
We’re glad he got show and win money and we wish he and his family all the best.
Hallman’s video interview with Trigg after the jump.
In his past three fights, longtime MMA veteran Dennis Hallman has made some startling (not to mention amateur) choices to say the least. After losing a bet to his friend that resulted in one of the most horrifying wardrobe malfunctions of all time against Brian Ebersole at UFC 133, Dennis showed up two and a half pounds overweight for his fight against John Makdessi at UFC 140 and was subsequently fined 20% of his purse. Luckily for him, he was able to pick up a win. Unfortunately for him, he apparently took nothing away from the close call, and showed up seven pounds overweight at yesterday’s weigh-ins. His scheduled opponent, Thiago Tavares, basically treated the situation with an “Are you serious, bro?” but was able to strike a deal with Hallman that if he could get down to only 3 pounds over the limit, the fight would be on.
Hallman was allegedly able to do so, but Tavares then asked him to cut an additional pound, at which point Hallman asked to be removed from the card and became the most recent UFC fighter to join the unemployment line.
(The ballsiest fighter to ever step foot in the octagon. *rimshot*)
In his past three fights, longtime MMA veteran Dennis Hallman has made some startling (not to mention amateur) choices to say the least. After losing a bet to his friend that resulted in one of the most horrifying wardrobe malfunctions of all time against Brian Ebersole at UFC 133, Dennis showed up two and a half pounds overweight for his fight against John Makdessi at UFC 140 and was subsequently fined 20% of his purse. Luckily for him, he was able to pick up a win. Unfortunately for him, he apparently took nothing away from the close call, and showed up seven pounds overweight at yesterday’s weigh-ins. His scheduled opponent, Thiago Tavares, basically treated the situation with an “Are you serious, bro?” but was able to strike a deal with Hallman that if he could get down to only 3 pounds over the limit, the fight would be on.
Hallman was allegedly able to do so, but Tavares then asked him to cut an additional pound, at which point Hallman asked to be removed from the card and became the most recent UFC fighter to join the unemployment line. And let’s not even get into the fact that we were so confident that he would beat Tavares that we put him in one of our surefire parlays, which is now TOTALLY RUINED. Being a sixteen year veteran of the sport, it became obvious that something was apparently not right in the Hallman household, and he relayed this message to both Dana White and MMAFighting earlier today:
They are cutting me. Dana [White] gave me my show and win pay to help me deal with the mountain in front of me. Now I have to go make weight a couple times on the regional circuit. I’ll be back to the UFC though, I always am.
I’m having some personal issues at home. I’m not fit to fight. I told Dana [White] what my issues were. He understands family matters, and he was cool with me not fighting.
Interesting that Hallman received both his show and win money whereas Tavares only received his show money, but the fact that it’s basically severance pay for the time being makes it far more understandable.
Hallman also told MMAFighting that he was apparently only two pounds over the weight at the day of the weigh-ins, but passed out and received intravenous fluids which brought him back up to seven pounds over.
Fresh off a win over Makdessi and holding a professional record of 51-14, Hallman first debuted in the UFC way back at UFC 29, where he would score his second victory over Matt Hughes via first round submission, becoming the only fighter to ever do so. Hallman also holds notable UFC wins over Bellator muay Thai machine Ben Saunders and Karo Parisyan.
We would like to wish Dennis all the best in his future, and sincerely hope that he is able to overcome whatever personal issues he is currently facing.
We’ve added a video of Hallman’s first victory over Hughes, which went down at EC 21 in Wisconsin in 1998, below.
Pictured: Their approximate reactions to finding out “garbage-ass” was a real phrase.
One week ago, Ben published an article voicing concerns over how weak UFC 151’s main card was. But it was cool, because Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson was going to be such an awesome fight. Two days ago, Jones vs. Henderson was scrapped and UFC 151 was canceled. [Ed. note: Damn, two days? Feels like we’ve been covering this forever.] Even though most of us acknowledged that the cancellation of the event was at least partially due to the garbage-assness of pretty much the entire card, we were too busy talking about Jon Jones ducking Chael Sonnen/Sonnen attempting to troll his way into an immediate title shot (depending on which side of the fence you’re on) to really delve into the issue. But now that the UFC has started to transplant the canceled UFC 151 fights to other cards, it’s time to take a closer look at that issue for a moment.
The bouts from UFC 151 are quickly being rescheduled for different cards, with UFC on FX 5 taking a significant chunk of them. As we covered in yesterday’s link dump, UFC 151’s planned co-main event, Jake Ellenberger vs. Jay Hieron, will now be the co-main event of UFC On FX 5. This won’t be the only fight from UFC 151’s main card that will now be padding UFC on FX 5 – Dennis Hallman vs. Thiago Tavares, Danny Castillo vs. Michael Johnson and Shane Roller vs. Jacob Volkmann will be moved to this card as well. UFC on Fuel TV 6 will now be featuring fights between bantamweights Takeya Mizugaki and Jeff Hougland and flyweights John Lineker and Yasuhiro Urushitani, while Kyle Noke and Charlie Brenneman will do the man dance on the undercard of UFC 152.
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s worth mentioning that absolutely none of these fights – three of which were on the pay-per-view portion of UFC 151, mind you – have made it to the main card of an upcoming pay-per-view. Now I understand that financially, most fighters who were expecting a paycheck on September 1 simply can’t afford to wait until November’s UFC 154 to fight again. But that’s not the issue: The issue is that the UFC could afford to move pay-per-view quality fights *makes this hand gesture* to free television in the first place.
Pictured: Their approximate reactions to finding out “garbage-ass” was a real phrase.
One week ago, Ben published an article voicing concerns over how weak UFC 151′s main card was. But it was cool, because Jon Jones vs. Dan Henderson was going to be such an awesome fight. Two days ago, Jones vs. Henderson was scrapped and UFC 151 was canceled. [Ed. note: Damn, two days? Feels like we’ve been covering this forever.] Even though most of us acknowledged that the cancellation of the event was at least partially due to the garbage-assness of pretty much the entire card, we were too busy talking about Jon Jones ducking Chael Sonnen/Sonnen attempting to troll his way into an immediate title shot (depending on which side of the fence you’re on) to really delve into the issue. But now that the UFC has started to transplant the canceled UFC 151 fights to other cards, it’s time to take a closer look at that issue for a moment.
The bouts from UFC 151 are quickly being rescheduled for different cards, with UFC on FX 5 taking a significant chunk of them. As we covered in yesterday’s link dump, UFC 151′s planned co-main event, Jake Ellenberger vs. Jay Hieron, will now be the co-main event of UFC On FX 5. This won’t be the only fight from UFC 151′s main card that will now be padding UFC on FX 5 – Dennis Hallman vs. Thiago Tavares, Danny Castillo vs. Michael Johnson and Shane Roller vs. Jacob Volkmann will be moved to this card as well. UFC on Fuel TV 6 will now be featuring fights between bantamweights Takeya Mizugaki and Jeff Hougland and flyweights John Lineker and Yasuhiro Urushitani, while Kyle Noke and Charlie Brenneman will do the man dance on the undercard of UFC 152.
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s worth mentioning that absolutely none of these fights – three of which were on the pay-per-view portion of UFC 151, mind you – have made it to the main card of an upcoming pay-per-view. Now I understand that financially, most fighters who were expecting a paycheck on September 1 simply can’t afford to wait until November’s UFC 154 to fight again. But that’s not the issue: The issue is that the UFC could afford to move pay-per-view quality fights *makes this hand gesture* to free television in the first place.
Dana White can point his fingers at Jon Jones and Greg Jackson and say “That’s the bad guy!” all he wants, but that certainly doesn’t make him the good guy in all of this. The fact that the UFC can give away bouts that they expected you to pay for without worrying about the revenue they’ll lose is essentially an admission that the bouts were never really worth your money in the first place. Essentially, it’s proof that, as we feared, over-saturation has reached its tipping point in the UFC and as a result, the main event of any given pay-per-view is the only fight worth paying for. Gone are the days when a fighter in the co-main event of a UFC pay-per-view was too big of a name for basic cable (Isn’t that right, Mike Russow?). It’s easy to make Jon Jones and Greg Jackson the scapegoats for the cancellation of UFC 151, but it’s nothing short of willful ignorance to continue to deny that over-saturation is a pandemic in the UFC.
With Jones vs. Belfort now headlining UFC 152 (151?), Dana White will more than likely use the “stacked” UFC 152 as “proof” that the UFC is still putting on stacked cards and that over-saturation is not an issue. On paper, he has a point; it’s hard to say that a card with two title fights isn’t a quality product. But let’s actually look at what we’re getting: A light-heavyweight title fight where the challenger earned the honor of fighting for a belt by simply being the first guy to say “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it,” a flyweight title fight that fans weren’t exactly excited for in the first place, and a middleweight scrap between two top-ten fighters who probably still won’t be getting a shot at Anderson Silva with a victory. Call me crazy, but I’m not seeing a stacked card here. I’m seeing a card that, up until Jon Jones was added on, was weaker than UFC 151.
I guess it would be pretty ironic of me to let the comments section fill up with complaints about how boxing died because champions were fighting unworthy challengers and the “one-fight cards” that ruined the sport. But to do that would be missing my own point, so instead I’ll propose a new rule: From now on, if you aren’t willing to complain with your wallet, you forfeit your right to complain with your keyboard. That should be enough to force the UFC to acknowledge over-saturation, and admission is the first step to recovery.
In 1993, the UFC made history by holding its first event at the old McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. Now, the UFC will celebrate its 150th numbered event (Technically not, but play along) with a return to The Mile-High City on August 11. Tickets for the event, which takes place at The Pepsi Center, will go on sale June 15.
Headlining the event will be a lightweight title fight between champion Benson Henderson and Frankie Edgar, who lost the title to Henderson by unanimous decision at UFC 144. It’s an odd time to announce this fight, as Dana White has been adamant about having Frankie Edgar drop to featherweight. Not to mention that just days ago, Edgar seemed to be teasing a fight with Jose Aldo.
But in a way, an immediate rematch for Edgar only seems fair, considering that Edgar had to give out two immediate rematches while he was the lightweight champion.
In 1993, the UFC made history by holding its first event at the old McNichols Sports Arena in Denver, Colorado. Now, the UFC will celebrate its 150th numbered event (Technically not, but play along) with a return to The Mile-High City on August 11. Tickets for the event, which takes place at The Pepsi Center, will go on sale June 15.
Headlining the event will be a lightweight title fight between champion Benson Henderson and Frankie Edgar, who lost the title to Henderson by unanimous decision at UFC 144. It’s an odd time to announce this fight, as Dana White has been adamant about having Frankie Edgar drop to featherweight. Not to mention that just days ago, Edgar seemed to be teasing a fight with Jose Aldo.
But in a way, an immediate rematch for Edgar only seems fair, considering that Edgar had to give out two immediate rematches while he was the lightweight champion.
Currently, there are two other fights announced for this card. There’s a lightweight bout between Thiago Tavares vs. Dennis Hallman and a depressing middleweight bout between Luiz Cane and Yushin Okami. Expect the latter to be a loser leaves town fight; Cane has lost three of his last four fights, and Okami has looked more gun-shy by the minute since losing to Anderson Silva at UFC 134. Okami has most recently fallen to Tim Boetsch at UFC 144.
The UFC was most recently in Denver for UFC 135 last September, where Jon Jones made quick work of former light-heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, and numerous heavyweights demonstrated what high altitudes do to a fighter’s stamina. We imagine that there won’t be too many heavyweight bouts this time around.
We’ll keep you posted as more details become available.
TATAME.com is reporting that UFC lightweight Dennis Hallman has pulled out of his
upcoming bout with TUF 13 winner Tony Ferguson. While the details are still up in the air, it appears that Hallman has suffered an injury while training. Replacing him at UFC on FOX 3 will be Thiago Tavares.
Since winning The Ultimate Fighter 13, Tony Ferguson has gone 2-0 in the UFC. His most recent victory has been a unanimous decision over veteran Yves Edwards at the TUF 14 Finale in December. During the same time period, Thiago Tavares has also gone 2-0, with his victories coming against Spencer Fisher and Sam Stout. This bout will mark the first
time that Tavares has fought on American soil in over a year, as both of his previous fights have taken place in Rio de Janeiro at UFC 134 and UFC 142. His last fight in America saw him lose to Shane Roller by second round knockout at UFC on Versus 3: Sanchez vs. Kampmann last March.
UFC on FOX 3 will go down on May 5 at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The full fight card now looks like this:
TATAME.com is reporting that UFC lightweight Dennis Hallman has pulled out of his
upcoming bout with TUF 13 winner Tony Ferguson. While the details are still up in the air, it appears that Hallman has suffered an injury while training. Replacing him at UFC on FOX 3 will be Thiago Tavares.
Since winning The Ultimate Fighter 13, Tony Ferguson has gone 2-0 in the UFC. His most recent victory has been a unanimous decision over veteran Yves Edwards at the TUF 14 Finale in December. During the same time period, Thiago Tavares has also gone 2-0, with his victories coming against Spencer Fisher and Sam Stout. This bout will mark the first time that Tavares has fought on American soil in over a year, as both of his previous fights have taken place in Rio de Janeiro at UFC 134 and UFC 142. His last fight in America saw him lose to Shane Roller by second round knockout at UFC on Versus 3: Sanchez vs. Kampmann last March.
UFC on FOX 3 will go down on May 5 at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The full fight card now looks like this:
Tony Ferguson vs. Thiago Tavares
John Dodson vs. Darren Uyenoyama John Hathaway vs. Pascal Krauss
Louis Gaudinot vs. John Lineker Danny Castillo vs. John Cholish
Dennis Bermudez vs. Pablo Garza Nick Denis vs. Johnny Bedford Mike Massenzio vs. Karlos Vemola
The sixteenth of December in the year 2000 marked the last time the UFC made an appearance in the Land of the Rising Sun, and to celebrate, we’ve managed to pull some strings and dig up the entire pay-per-view event for your viewing pleasure. Because here at CP, we like to consider ourselves the cool step dads of the MMA blogosphere. Though we may not be around as much as we should, when we show up, you best believe we bring the nudie mags, cigarettes, and that funny smelling water that makes you all giggly and tired. Sure, your mom says it’s evil and thinks it killed your old dad, and sure, when you come to there’s change missing off the dresser, but at the end of the day, you’re just happy we brought you a gift, right?
The sixteenth of December in the year 2000 marked the last time the UFC made an appearance in the Land of the Rising Sun, and to celebrate, we’ve managed to pull some strings and dig up the entire pay-per-view event for your viewing pleasure. Because here at CP, we like to consider ourselves the cool step dads of the MMA blogosphere. Though we may not be around as much as we should, when we show up, you best believe we bring the nudie mags, cigarettes, and that funny smelling water that makes you all giggly and tired. Sure, your mom says it’s evil and thinks it killed your old dad, and sure, when you come to there’s change missing off the dresser, but at the end of the day, you’re just happy we brought you a gift, right?
Featuring Chuck Liddell vs. Jeff Monson, Dennis Hallman’s SECOND lightning quick submission win over Matt Hughes, a light heavyweight championship tilt between Pat Miletich and Kenichi Yamamoto, and a headlining middleweight championship bout between Tito Ortiz and Yuki Kondo, UFC 29 was nearly as stacked as UFC 144 looks to be, and delivered several exciting finishes from the Differ Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Japan.
UFC 29 also featured the UFC debut of Olympic silver medalist Matt Lindland, and according to its Wikipedia page, was the first event to play music in-between rounds. Why they decided to use anything but Onmyo-Za is beyond me. Anyway, check it out before it gets taken down.
One thing to watch for: At one point in the broadcast, Mike Goldberg refers to the Japanese ring girls as “title holders in their own right.” Not exactly sure what he meant by that, but the man sticks to his guns.
