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Pulver Victorious, Alexander Injures Al-Hassan at MMA Fight Pit: Genesis

Pulver vs. Wheeler, from last night’s Co-Main Event

Yesterday, you may have looked at the name of Houston Alexander’s opponent, Razak Al-Hassan, and thought “Where have I heard of him before?”. Spoiler alert: He’s the guy who got his arm snapped by Steve Cantwell at Fight for the Troops because tapping is for bitches. It probably won’t come as too much of a surprise to you to find out that he had another fight stopped by injury. It may surprise you to find out that this time, the injury that prevented him from continuing was a dislocated finger. You read that correctly, Urijah. Not to make any accusations of bitchassness, but how did the doctor even realize that Al-Hassan had dislocated his finger without someone telling him?

The stoppage to this fight was almost as odd as watching Junie Browning give up during the first round of his fight with Jacob Clark. Granted, you could argue that Junie Browning gave up on this fight well before yesterday’s weigh-ins. Junie Browning came out quickly, earning an early takedown and nearly submitting Jacob Clark with a twister. However, once the ref stood the fighters back up and Clark stuffed an attempted takedown, Junie Browning gave up. Browning allowed Clark to gain side control, and immediately tapped once Clark started throwing elbows. Given Browning’s loss coupled with the fact that he has to forfeit an undisclosed sum of money per pound over 155, there is a possibility that Browning essentially fought for free (or rather, whatever his sponsors paid him) last night.

Pulver vs. Wheeler, from last night’s Co-Main Event

In far less depressing news, Jens Pulver won in convincing fashion over former WEC bantamweight Coty “Ox” Wheeler. Jens looked solid in his bantamweight debut against one of the better non-UFC American bantamweights, earning a second round TKO. Jens seems to be making a permanent move to 135, which appears pretty smart after last night’s performance. Check out the video, and let us know what you think in the comments section.

Full results, courtesy of ProMMANow.com:

Houston Alexander def. Razak Al-Hassan by TKO (injury) Rd 2 (5:00)
Jens Pulver def. Coty “Ox” Wheeler by TKO (punches) Rd 2 (1:59)
Tyler East def. Prince McLean by TKO (punches & elbows) Rd 1 (1:33)
Jamie Yager def. Willie Parks by submission (guillotine choke) Rd 2 (:21)
Diana Rael def. Angelica Chavez by split decision (28-29, 29-28, 29-28) Rd 3 (5:00)
Jacob Clark def. Junie Browning by submission (elbows) Rd 1 (4:18)

Jens Pulver Beats Coty Wheeler at MMA Fight Pit: Genesis

Filed under: NewsJens Pulver, the former UFC lightweight champion who has spent the last few years looking like a washed-up fighter who’s hanging on too long, finally earned a victory over a legitimate opponent on Saturday night.

Pulver beat Coty Whee…

Filed under: News

Jens Pulver, the former UFC lightweight champion who has spent the last few years looking like a washed-up fighter who’s hanging on too long, finally earned a victory over a legitimate opponent on Saturday night.

Pulver beat Coty Wheeler by second-round technical knockout at the MMA Fight Pit: Genesis event in Albuquerque. For Pulver, it was just his third win in his last 10 fights, and although he didn’t look great inside the cage, it was nice for fans of Pulver to see him win at all: After Pulver exited the WEC on a five-fight losing streak last year, some people thought they’d never see him win a fight again.

The fight itself was a strange one, marked by Pulver hurting Wheeler on the feet but failing to follow up. Pulver knocked Wheeler down with a big left hand in the first round and appeared to have Wheeler hurting and in big trouble, but Pulver was hesitant to engage on the ground and risk getting submitted, and so he let Wheeler up, and Wheeler was able to survive the round. In the second round it happened again: Pulver knocked Wheeler down and just stood there, as if he was expecting the referee to stop the fight even though Wheeler wasn’t out.

However, after Wheeler got up Pulver continued hurting him on the feet, and eventually after he knocked Wheeler down again, the referee stepped in to stop the fight and hand Pulver the TKO victory.

MMA Fight Pit announcer Jason Chambers said after Pulver’s victory that it “could be the rebirth of Jens Pulver.” That, however, is overly optimistic: At age 36, Pulver is past the point where he’s going to have a rebirth.

But at least Pulver got a win. For Pulver, that represents progress.

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MMA Fight Pit: Genesis Results

Filed under: ResultsMMA Fighting has MMA Fight Pit: Genesis results live for the pay-per-view event that is taking place at “The Pit” in Albuquerque, N.M.

In the main event, Houston Alexander squares off against Razak Al-Hassan, while former UFC champ…

Filed under: Results

MMA Fighting has MMA Fight Pit: Genesis results live for the pay-per-view event that is taking place at “The Pit” in Albuquerque, N.M.

In the main event, Houston Alexander squares off against Razak Al-Hassan, while former UFC champion Jens Pulver takes on Coty Wheeler in the co-main event.

Check out the MMA Fight Pit: Genesis results below.

Main Card
Houston Alexander def. Razak Al-Hassan via TKO (doctor’s stoppage)
Jens Pulver def. Coty Wheeler via second-round TKO
Tyler East def. Prince McLean via first-round TKO (punches)
Jamie Yager def. Willie Parks via second-round submission (guillotine)
Diana Rael def. Angelica Chavez by split decision (29-28, 29-28, 28-29)
Jacob Clark def. Junie Browning via first-round submission (strikes)

Undercard
Ali Hanjani def. Sean Spencer via submission (triangle choke)
Jason Sampson def. Joshua Montoya via submission (armbar)
Conrad Padilla def. Guy Youell via unanimous decision
Rocky Ramirez def. Mark Lujan via submission (punches)

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MMA Fight Pit Promoters Dreaming Big With First Event, but Will It Pay Off?

If you’re a fight fan looking for a way to burn through some spare cash in August, you’ve got options. Between UFC 133 last weekend and UFC 134 later in the month, the committed MMA fan is likely to add a hundred bucks to the cable bill this month just…

But upstart promotion MMA Fight Pit is hoping you’ll consider adding an extra thirty dollars to that tally on Saturday night when it debuts with a card full of familiar names like Jens Pulver, Houston Alexander, Razak Al-Hassan, Jamie Yager, and Junie Browning.

All these men have two things in common: 1) they used to fight in the UFC, and 2) they don’t anymore. So how do you convince people to pay money to see them fight after the UFC has decided it can’t even use them on free cable TV fight cards anymore?

“I think people are looking for an alternative to UFC events these days as well, and I think this is a card, as a fan, that I want to see,” said Torry Crooks, one of the promoters behind Saturday night’s event in Albuquerque, N.M. “These are some of my heroes that are on this card. These are guys who have a chance of making their way back, or as we expand as a promotion, going on to bigger and better things with us.”

In other words, the one thing we know about these promoters is that they’re optimistic.

It’s a tough time to hit up fight fans for some cash. One week after UFC 133 and two weeks after Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson, MMA Fight Pit is squeezing in on a rare open Saturday night, but it’s also doing so just one day after a Strikeforce: Challengers card on Showtime and one day before a free UFC card on Versus. Even if it is available for twenty bucks less than a UFC pay-per-view, the main selling point is still fighters who the UFC decided it could do without.

That makes for a tricky little marketing tango. The main reason most fans know these names is because of UFC exposure, but now that the UFC is done exposing them, how much value remains?

The answer changes as you go down the card. Alexander still has the appeal of a slugger who’s long on power and short on defense. With Pulver, there’s the sense we’re seeing the final act in a great career, and whether it’s going to be a tragedy or a redemption story is still unclear. Browning brings little more than the allure of chaos, and after coming in more than seven pounds over the 155-pound limit for his bout, he seems poised to deliver.

Put them all together and you do have something resembling a draw, but is it the kind of draw fight fans are really going to pay $30 for?

A few probably will. Maybe they’ll be the independently wealthy types, or maybe just teenagers indiscriminately running up their parents’ cable bill with no thought to the consequences. But if the last few years worth of would-be competitors to the UFC have taught us anything, it’s that it’s hard enough to sell tickets with UFC castoffs, but almost impossible to do well on pay-per-view with them.

Then again, maybe it depends on how you measure success.

MMA Fight Pit promoter Crooks said he was encouraged by the early response from fans, who in his opinion, “either want to see these guys win or they’re controversial characters and they want to see them get beat up. Either way, it’s a fight they want to watch. We’re not as expensive as the UFC on pay-per-view, and I think people are hungry for an alternative.”

And who knows, maybe he’s right. It’s just hard to imagine that fans have thirty bucks worth of hunger in them for this particular alternative, and on this particular Saturday night.

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Vintage KO of the Day: Duane Ludwig vs. Jens Pulver

(Props: king981)

Since Sunday night’s UFC on Versus 5 broadcast will be led off by Duane Ludwig‘s welterweight battle with Amir Sadollah — we’ll be liveblogging the action starting at 9 p.m. ET, by the way — we figured we’d look back at one of Bang’s classic knockouts that you might not have seen before. On January 25th, 2003, Ludwig (8-2) faced off with former UFC lightweight champion Jens Pulver (14-2-1) in Montreal for UCC’s vacant lightweight title. After vacating his UFC title the previous year, Pulver had won his first two fights outside of the organization and was looking to pick up another scalp and another belt. It didn’t quite work out like that.

About 12 seconds into the fight, Ludwig leveled Pulver with a massive right hand. Pulver managed to struggle to his feet, and Yves Lavigne broke the fighters after a brief clinch. From there it’s all Duane — a body shot, head kick, and a right-straight finisher that dropped Pulver and actually had him rolling out of the ring to avoid more damage. As the commentator puts it, “Jens Pulver might be ‘Little Evil’, but Duane Ludwig is a shepherd for the devil.” The dramatic victory earned Ludwig a shot in the UFC, where he out-pointed Genki Sudo in his debut at UFC 42.

(Props: king981)

About 12 seconds into the fight, Ludwig leveled Pulver with a massive right hand. Pulver managed to struggle to his feet, and Yves Lavigne broke the fighters after a brief clinch. From there it’s all Duane — a body shot, head kick, and a right-straight finisher that dropped Pulver and actually had him rolling out of the ring to avoid more damage. As the commentator puts it, ”Jens Pulver might be ‘Little Evil’, but Duane Ludwig is a shepherd for the devil.” The dramatic victory earned Ludwig a shot in the UFC, where he out-pointed Genki Sudo in his debut at UFC 42.

Jens Pulver Still Trying to Find a Way to Leave MMA With No Regrets

Yes, Jens Pulver is still at it. Twelve years and 40 fights after his debut at the Bas Rutten Invitational 2, the former UFC lightweight champ is still getting in the cage, still trying to find some peace amid the chaos.

The question many people ask …

The question many people ask the 36-year-old Pulver — and the question he’s been struggling with himself lately — is, why?

“It kind of dawned me a couple days ago,” he said Wednesday on a media conference call. “I thought I was doing it because it was fun, I love it, and that’s still part of it, but the reality is, I’m doing it now and giving it 100 percent the way I am…[because] when I walk away, I don’t want to walk away with any regrets. I don’t want to be 65, God willing, sitting in a chair on a deck in a rocking chair and wishing I would have gone out differently.”

In other words, he’s doing it so he can quit, but have it not feel so much quitting. He’s doing it so that he can feel good about how he’s doing, which in turn might allow him to feel good about stopping.

The only problem is, as long as a fighter feels good about how he’s doing, he isn’t likely to stop. He’ll probably just keep going, especially as long as he could use the money, which Pulver certainly could.

It makes you wonder what this happy ending for Pulver would look like at this point, and how he’d even know if he found it.

Things recently seemed like they were on the verge of turning around for him. After being dropped from the WEC following five straight losses and then adding a sixth on the small circuit, he won two in a row.

Sure, they weren’t big names or on big fight cards, but he got his hand raised again for the first time since 2007. Then he went to Kansas City for a fight in May and he lost again, this time via first round submission.

So much for that happy ending.

Now Pulver is back to take on former WEC bantamweight Coty Wheeler on a thirty-dollar pay-per-view card that’s littered with names fans used to know, but probably haven’t thought about all that much lately.

Houston Alexander. Junie Browning. Jamie Yager. And, of course, Jens Pulver, who’s still trying to figure out how to get back to the fighter he used to be.

“Ironically, I spend more time remembering,” Pulver said. “…I watch interviews of mine from way back, especially when I had more confidence. I’m sitting there going, man, I remember that guy.”

The difference, Pulver said, is that now he doesn’t take several months off between fights, which means he doesn’t have to spend the bulk of his training camp “getting the fat off.” Physically, he’s not worn down, he said, and mentally, he’s no longer so burned out.

“I go with these guys that are my weight, and I’m right there with them. The problem is just trying to turn it on in the cage. I’ve become what I almost despised most or what I put down the most when I was a world champion, which was the gym fighter.”

In training, he said, he’s taking it to his younger, faster sparring partners. The broke-down old man looks pretty good then.

“It’s when the lights come on and the face in front of me is different” that he loses some of that pop, Pulver said.

“The mental side is what’s gotten the oldest. The physical skills are still there. I’ve got no injuries. …The mental side of me kind of got old, got tired, and that’s what I’m trying to fix more than anything. I don’t know how to adjust to that, because it’s new to me.”

Maybe it would be easier to deal with if it were a physical decline. Maybe then he could write it off as a natural and unavoidable consequence of age. The fact that he remains convinced that his problems are more mental than physical probably isn’t helping him find the strength to walk away.

As he put it: “I’m using this time to prepare myself to walk out the door of MMA, and when I do, I don’t want to have any regrets. Basically, my major reason why I’m fighting right now is I’m out there to send myself off the right way.”

Of course, that assumes that there is a right way, or that there’s any peace at all to be found in the last throes of a fighter’s career. It also assumes that you find that peace first, before you decide to leave, rather than after, when you don’t have any other choice.

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