Just moments ago from the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the weigh-ins were held for UFC 130, which goes down live Saturday evening. Unlike UFC 129, all the participants were on-point with their weight.Below are all the weigh-in results.Light heavyweight bout…
Just moments ago from the MGM Grand Garden Arena, the weigh-ins were held for UFC 130, which goes down live Saturday evening. Unlike UFC 129, all the participants were on-point with their weight.
Filed under: UFC, NewsLAS VEGAS – The near-lovefest that has become UFC 130 came to a partial stop Friday at the official event weigh-ins at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Main event fighters Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Matt Hamill each weighed in at …
LAS VEGAS – The near-lovefest that has become UFC 130 came to a partial stop Friday at the official event weigh-ins at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Main event fighters Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Matt Hamill each weighed in at 205 pounds for their bout, then engaged in the afternoon’s most intense staredown. It was a stark contrast to Wednesday’s press conference, where the two shared a couple light moments on stage even before their staredown photo op.
When the fight was booked, Jackson was vocal about not having much interest in the fight. But after Hamill said he planned to break the former light heavyweight champion’s will, Jackson took a new level of motivation. And Wednesday’s cordiality went out the window Friday in favor of a forehead-to-forehead showcase, Hamill’s hands up and Jackson’s at his sides.
Hamill told emcee Joe Rogan that the fight against Jackson will be the most important fight of his career.
“This is the biggest opportunity for me to help my career,” Hamill said. “I know from Day One he didn’t want to fight me, but I promise you one thing – it’s going to be a good fight.”
Jackson, who doesn’t have a knockout win since his UFC 92 victory over Wanderlei Silva, promised fans he’s looking for a finish against Hamill, and that Hamill’s comments about breaking his will got him amped up.
“It motivated me to train extra hard,” Jackson said. “I was already training hard ’cause it’s been a while since I knocked anyone out. But I’m ready to put on a show for you guys and get a knockout.”
Co-main event heavyweights Frank Mir and Roy Nelson, though, continued to be almost playful about their fight. The two Las Vegas residents, who share many mutual friends and sometimes train together, each weighed in at 260 pounds, and fought back smiles as they squared off.
Making his return to the UFC after an absence of four and a half years, Jorge Santiago, who most recently was Sengoku’s middleweight champion, weighed in at 185 on the nose for his middleweight fight with military hero Brian Stann. Stann was 186 on a Memorial Day weekend card that he has said will be emotional for him as a veteran. That bout opens Saturday’s pay-per-view.
And despite trouble making weight in the past, Thiago Alves weighed in at 170 pounds for his welterweight bout against Rick Story, who was also 170 and brings a five-fight winning streak into the event.
UFC 130 airs live on pay-per-view at 9 p.m. Eastern on Saturday and is preceded by a pair of fights on Spike TV at 8 p.m. In addition, three preliminary card fights will air on Facebook at 6:20 p.m.
The official weigh-in results are below:
Main Card
Quinton Jackson (205) vs. Matt Hamill (205)
Frank Mir (260) vs. Roy Nelson (260)
Stefan Struve (255) vs. Travis Browne (247)
Thiago Alves (170) vs. Rick Story (170)
Brian Stann (186) vs. Jorge Santiago (185) Spike TV Prelims
Miguel Torres (135.5) vs. Demetrious Johnson (135.5)
Kendall Grove (185) vs. Tim Boetsch (186) Facebook Prelims
Gleison Tibau (155) vs. Rafaello Oliveira (155)
Michael McDonald (136) vs. Chris Cariaso (135)
Renan Barão (135) vs. Cole Escovedo (135)
In this episode of his UFC 130 vlog, Dana spends some time with his son, attends the UFC Fighter Summit and gears up for this weekend’s event.
If you don’t have time to watch it or your boss is a tight ass who banned YouTube in your workplace, the key points in a nutshell are after the jump.
(Video courtesy of YouTube/UFC)
In this episode of his UFC 130 vlog, Dana spends some time with his son, attends the UFC Fighter Summit and gears up for this weekend’s event.
If you don’t have time to watch it or your boss is a tight ass who banned YouTube in your workplace, the key points in a nutshell are as follows:
• Jon Jones is rooting for fellow white boy Matt Hamill over Quinton Jackson, but says Rampage will probably win.
• Jones also picks Frank Mir to knock out Roy Nelson with a high kick or to win by decision. Later in the show we get to hear Jones tell the boss that he doesn’t require surgery and that he could be back in action by the fall.
• Jones and White will be in a Bud Light commercial being released soon.
• Evan Dunham stops by to drop some F-bombs in front of Dana’s son, (Dana Jr) and talks about his foot injury and upcoming wedding.
• We get to witness the moment Josh Barnett and Dana take the infamous photo of the two of them that made the rounds two weeks ago with their arms around each other, to which Barnett remarked, “No one ever thought they’d see that again.”
• ‘Mayhem’ Miller thanks Dana for bringing him back to the fold.
• Vitor Belfort says he’s recovered from his KO he suffered against Anderson Silva, but says he was “scared for a few days” afterwards.
• Roy Nelson has lost some weight.
• Nelson and Mir are very friendly with each other.
• Although it was no “The Secret,” Rampage liked Hamill’s movie.
Filed under: UFC, NewsLAS VEGAS – A reasonably healthy diet is part and parcel to the lifestyles of most fighters. It’s something that just comes with the territory. Even Roy Nelson, as much as he jokes about cheeseburgers, likely has to concern himsel…
LAS VEGAS – A reasonably healthy diet is part and parcel to the lifestyles of most fighters. It’s something that just comes with the territory. Even Roy Nelson, as much as he jokes about cheeseburgers, likely has to concern himself with it from time to time.
But very few fighters fall into the vegetarian class, and even fewer heavyweights go that route. But that’s what Frank Mir did for a year before deciding it wasn’t working for him. Now on a Paleolithic, or “caveman,” diet, Mir said he’s bigger than he’s been in several fights – but more importantly, he’s leaner.
“I got on the scale on Monday at 272 – muscle weighs a lot,” said Mir, who fights fellow Las Vegan and sometimes training partner Nelson on Saturday at UFC 130. “Going off the vegan diet, I think, helped. There were some good approaches to it that I actually tried to do. … The dieting thing, I think you have to approach as intelligently as you can. First I started as a vegetarian. And for a whole year, I gave it a shot. And it kept my weight down. But honestly, my body fat wasn’t as low – I got a little bit softer. I was getting injured a lot more. I felt a lack of ‘umph.’ But I was very determined to try and be a healthier person.”
After researching the Paleo diet, which focuses on hunter-gatherer foods like lean meats and fish, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and cuts out the processed foods common in the Western diet, Mir decided it might be more in line with his nutritional needs as a fighter.
And then his wife, whom Mir joked at Wednesday’s press conference was the real boss, chimed in.
“My wife looked at (the Paleo diet) and said, ‘This is the Mediterranean Diet,’ Mir said prior to the press conference. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, pretty much.’ She said, ‘This is how we’ve been eating for like the last 10 years.’ Sometimes you’ve got to come full circle to appreciate where you are now.”
After Mir stopped with the vegan principle, he said the weight gain came quickly.
“I was four pounds shy of 300 pounds – I completely shot up,” the former UFC heavyweight champ told MMA Fighting. “But my strength felt incredible, and my wind actually didn’t feel that bad. The only thing I probably lost a little was footwork – ask a 300-pound guy to dance left and right … so I worked in the pocket a little for those couple months.”
But the weight gain hurt him in training, and it forced him to tighten up his core once again.
“I didn’t realize that now that I’ve thinned out my waistline again, my guard has returned to be pretty manacing again,” Mir said. “With the half-guard and guard, if you have a belly it’s hard to pull your knees up. I have very flexible legs, so I’m trying to put hooks in and work the omoplata and go off on the side, and all of a sudden I’ve got this belly that my thigh keeps hitting against. It hurt my style.
“But being a professional you realize if something’s in the way of you being a better fighter, it has to go – be it friend, family member, eating habits, sleeping regimen, if it doesn’t work to make me a better fighter then it has to go.”
Mir has combined the new diet with a new confidence in his wrestling game, as well.
“Six months ago, I couldn’t take my wife off her feet unless I threw some jewelry on the bed,” Mir joked, his wife Jennifer sitting at his side. “Other than that, my takedowns were horrible. When people are pushing me against the cage, in the past I was more susceptible to allowing it to happen because I had that jiu-jitsu mentality that I’m not going to grind back. Now I’m learning about head position and I like to grind back. If you’re going to push into me, you’re not pushing me backward. We’re going to go down right here.”
And the strength he believes he gave up when he went vegan has returned now that lean meats and other proteins are back in the mix – and now that he’s developing other skills in the gym at the same time.
“People are saying to me, ‘Oh, you’re so much stronger,’ ” Mir said. “But I think it’s that I’m finally using my strength. In the past, I would try to use as little strength as possible because strength will get you tired if you explode too many times. Well, get in shape.”
And that’s just what Mir believes he had to do. And he said if things go as planned against Nelson on Saturday night, people shouldn’t be too hard on his opponent.
“If anybody’s going to be on his case and feels that he has a bad performance on Saturday, they’ve just got to realize that he’s facing the best version of me that ever existed, that I ever thought could exist,” Mir said.
Mir fights Nelson in the co-main event of UFC 130 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday.
LAS VEGAS – The near-lovefest that has become 
LAS VEGAS – A reasonably healthy diet is part and parcel to the lifestyles of most fighters. It’s something that just comes with the territory. Even 