MMA is comparable to Salma Hayek’s breasts. Every year it gets bigger, juicier and more fun to watch. However, unlike Ms. Hayek’s enormous twins, MMA is as real as it gets and in 2011 the sport reached many new milestones. From the UFC merg…
MMA is comparable to Salma Hayek’s breasts. Every year it gets bigger, juicier and more fun to watch.
However, unlike Ms. Hayek’s enormous twins, MMA is as real as it gets and in 2011 the sport reached many new milestones.
From the UFC merging with the WEC, buying rival promotion Strikeforce and signing a multi-year deal with FOX, there is no question that 2011 was the most successful year for the organization to date.
Simply put, the UFC dominated the year 2011 worse than Rosie O’Donnell dominated the city of Atlantis via drowning the city in chocolate fudge and losing it in her 600 pound stomach. Speaking of domination, this year certainly wasn’t short of impressive performances.
The stand-up aspect of MMA has always been a favorite among fans and 2011 featured some of the most exciting striking battles in the history of the sport. Let’s take a look at the 10 greatest strikers of 2011.
(This is where we’d normally make some sort of Geico Caveman reference, but those jokes, like the commercials, have been played out to the point of eye-gouging redundancy. So, uh…beauty and the beast?) Though they may not get your engine revving, a couple of sure-to-be-undercard bouts have been booked for the UFC’s debut on FUEL TV, […]
(This is where we’d normally make some sort of Geico Caveman reference, but those jokes, like the commercials, have been played out to the point of eye-gouging redundancy. So, uh…beauty and the beast?)
Though they may not get your engine revving, a couple of sure-to-be-undercard bouts have been booked for the UFC’s debut on FUEL TV, the first of which being a featherweight match-up between grappling wizards Jonathan Brookins and Rani Yahya. After lateral dropping his way through season 12 of The Ultimate Fighter, Brookins recently saw a four fight win streak snapped at the hands of featherweight contender Eric Koch in a three rounder reminiscent of Couture vs. Vera that saw Brookins unable to get Koch to the mat.
Yahya, on the other hand, is likely fighting for his future in the UFC. Just 1-3 in his past four, with the lone win coming against a struggling (and last minute replacement) Mike Brown, we last saw Yahya on the losing end of a unanimous decision to Jose Aldo‘s next challenger, Chad Mendes. Prior to the Brown win, Yahya was outclassed by Takeya Mizugaki in another decision at WEC 48 and TKO’ed by future flyweight champ Joseph Benavidez at WEC 45.
Elsewhere on the card, Aaron Simpson will be looking to improve on the three fight win streak he has quietly built up over the year when he faces Ronny Markes in the Brazilian’s sophomore octagon bout. “A Train” rebounded from the only losing streak of his career (a two-fighter to Chris Leben and Mark Munoz) with three straight unanimous decisions over Mario Miranda, Brad Tavares, and Eric Schafer at UFN 24, UFC 132, and UFC 136, respectively.
Fresh off his own unanimous decision victory over Karlos Vemola in his UFC debut at UFC Live 5, Markes will be looking to derail *snicker* the veteran Simpson, which would be no new task for Markes. In his last fight before being signed by the UFC, Markes outpointed former WEC middleweight champion Paulo Filho at an IFC event in April. A win over Filho may not be what it used to, but work with me on this one.
After the success of the UFC’s last trip to Brazil, they are returning again in January and bringing a stacked card filled with exciting strikers. It’s headlined by UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo.At UFC 134, 11 of 12 Brazilians walked away with v…
After the success of the UFC’s last trip to Brazil, they are returning again in January and bringing a stacked card filled with exciting strikers. It’s headlined by UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo.
At UFC 134, 11 of 12 Brazilians walked away with victories. Will they find that same type of success again?
Aldo will be taking on top contender Chad Mendes, who many consider to be his toughest test. In what could be Aldo’s last fight in the 145-pound weight class, he will have to make a statement in his home country.
In the co-main event, former UFC light heavyweight champion Vitor Belfort will face former welterweight contender Anthony Johnson.
Filed under: UFCJon Jones has just completed one of the greatest calendar years in MMA history. Georges St. Pierre is in the midst of the most disappointing year of his MMA career. As a result, Jones has leapfrogged St. Pierre on the latest list of the…
Jon Jones has just completed one of the greatest calendar years in MMA history. Georges St. Pierre is in the midst of the most disappointing year of his MMA career. As a result, Jones has leapfrogged St. Pierre on the latest list of the Top 10 pound-for-pound fighters in mixed martial arts.
And Jones is No. 2 with a bullet: He’s getting awfully close to dethroning Anderson Silva as the top fighter in the sport, in any weight class. Considering that Jones is 12 years younger than Silva, it’s only a matter of time before Jones is recognized as the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
For now, I have Silva just ahead of Jones, and St. Pierre next. See how I rank the rest of the Top 10 fighters below.
Top 10 pound-for-pound fighters in MMA (Number in parentheses is the fighter’s rank in the last pound-for-pound list.)
1. Anderson Silva (1): The reckless style and killer instinct Jones has shown over the last couple years reminds me of the way Silva looked early in his UFC run. Silva is a little more cautious now, but his 14-0 record in the UFC leaves him a shade above Jones in my estimation.
2. Jon Jones (3): Jones’s 2011 is the best year anyone has ever had in the UFC. In other MMA promotions, the only fighters I can recall who have had comparable years to Jones in 2011 — in terms of staying active and earning quality wins over good opponents — were Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira in 2002 and Shogun Rua in 2005. Top-level fighters just don’t fight more than three times a year these days, and for Jones to go 4-0 and beat four high-quality opponents handily, all in one year, is something to celebrate.
3. Georges St. Pierre (2): St. Pierre hasn’t fought since April, and it will likely be late in 2012 before his surgically repaired ACL allows him to return to the Octagon. That’s a year and a half of his prime without a single fight. That’s a major disappointment for a great champion.
4. Frank Edgar (4): The lightweight champion of the world will finally get a new opponent when he faces Ben Henderson in February, after fighting only Gray Maynard in 2011 and only B.J. Penn in 2010. Edgar is the quickest fighter in the lightweight division and maybe the quickest in any division, and that should be a big edge against Henderson.
5. Jose Aldo (5): Aldo will defend the featherweight at home in Brazil when he faces Chad Mendes in January. Aldo has never fought a wrestler as good as Mendes before, but Mendes has never fought a striker as good as Aldo before.
6. Junior dos Santos (9): Dos Santos reached a big audience when he took the heavyweight title from Cain Velasquez on Fox. He’ll have a huge fight in 2012 against the winner of the upcoming Brock Lesnar-Alistair Overeem bout.
7. Dominick Cruz (6): Cruz and Uirjah Faber will coach against each other on the upcoming season of The Ultimate Fighter and then meet in the cage for the third (and, presumably) final time in the summer of 2012. Cruz hasn’t really caught on with MMA fans yet, but being featured every week on FX will introduce him to a new audience.
8. Dan Henderson (NR): Two things we need to remember when ranking Henderson on a pound-for-pound list: One is that he’s the only elite light heavyweight who has also had success fighting at middleweight. The other is that one of Henderson’s recent wins was over a heavyweight, Fedor Emelianenko. Henderson’s ability to transcend weight classes earns him a spot on the pound-for-pound list.
9. Joseph Benavidez (NR): I’ve been saying for years that Benavidez would be the best flyweight in the world if he fought in a promotion that had flyweights, and the UFC’s decision to launch the 125-pound class with a four-man tournament will be Benavidez’s opportunity to prove that. Benavidez is 15-2 in his MMA career, with both losses coming to Cruz, despite fighting a weight class too high. He’ll take on the reigning Shooto 123-pound champion Yasuhiro Urushitani in March.
10. Rashad Evans (NR): With one more win, against Phil Davis in January, Evans may finally get his chance to fight Jones. As great as Evans is, that’s a fight hardly anyone will pick him to win.
Filed under: UFCUFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo appeared in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, where he’ll defend his title against Chad Mendes at UFC 142 next month. That fight will take place at the HSBC Arena, where the UFC played before a capacity cro…
UFC featherweight champion Jose Aldo appeared in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday, where he’ll defend his title against Chad Mendes at UFC 142 next month. That fight will take place at the HSBC Arena, where the UFC played before a capacity crowd in August. But Aldo is hoping to fight in a much bigger Brazilian venue in the future.
“I hope one day to be able to fight in a football stadium,” Aldo said.
That opportunity may come soon: UFC President Dana White said that while he’s in Brazil this week he’ll be looking at stadiums, and there are indications that ticket demand remains very strong in Brazil. One Brazilian reporter pressed White on Tuesday about why so many fans were left disappointed in August when they couldn’t get tickets. (White’s advice: Get online immediately tickets go on sale Wednesday.)
Aldo, who will be fighting back home in Brazil for the first time since he signed with Zuffa in 2008, said there will be some distractions associated with having family and friends around, but he said that won’t make a difference come fight time.
“I have to put all that out of my mind,” Aldo said.
Mendes thinks he has one key advantage in preparing for Aldo: He trains every day with Urijah Faber, who has faced Aldo before. “Having a teammate in Urijah Faber who’s already fought Jose is an advantage for me,” Mendes said. “We were able to sit down and put together a great game plan for this camp based on that. Urijah trains with me every day.”
Don’t get your hopes up for Anderson Silva vs. Jon Jones: White has said he views Silva and Jones as the two best pound-for-pound fighters in the world, but when a Brazilian reporter asked if that meant the two of them would fight each other, White said he doesn’t see either man taking on an opponent outside his own weight class any time soon. “Jon Jones has a couple of obligations. He has to fight the winner of Rashad Evans and Phil Davis,” White said. “Anderson Silva has been very reluctant to move up to 205 pounds. We’ll see. We always try to make the fights that people want to see. If people want it, we’ll try to make it.”
Anthony Johnson isn’t expecting to go back down to welterweight: Johnson, who is moving up to middleweight to face Vitor Belfort in the co-main event at UFC 142, said he’s putting all his focus on his new weight class. “Right now 170 isn’t in my mind at all,” Johnson said. “My mission is to conquer 185.”
Belfort thinks MMA can be bigger than soccer: “I remember when Dana White said UFC was going to become the No. 1 sport in the world,” Belfort said. “He wasn’t crazy when he said that.”
Brazilian fans want to see some non-Brazilian stars: Multiple members of the Brazilian media questioned White about why none of the promotion’s top North American stars are on this card. White said he has a lot of Brazilian fighters on the UFC roster who requested to fight in Brazil, and that didn’t leave much room for non-Brazilian fighters. “This is our second fight here and you have people who it’s always been their dream to fight here,” White said. “But yes, we will bring in talent from around the world. Georgest St. Pierre or whoever else it might be. We do realize people here want to see them too.”
Technique. It’s not even a big argument or a hard question to pose, that of how Mark Hominick is going to demolish the Korean Zombie, Chan Sung Jung. It’s about technique. Going into UFC 140 in Toronto, Hominick will be making his return to…
Technique.
It’s not even a big argument or a hard question to pose, that of how Mark Hominick is going to demolish the Korean Zombie, Chan Sung Jung.
It’s about technique.
Going into UFC 140 in Toronto, Hominick will be making his return to the cage for the first time since a spirited title tilt with featherweight kingpin Jose Aldo made him into a star. The soft-spoken Canadian became a cult hero that night, fighting through a vicious beating early to almost snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the final round. He never took a backward step the entire night.
A lot has changed for him since then. He’s had a daughter. His coach and good friend passed away. He’s been adjusting to being a bigger name in the sport.
He began pushing for a fight with Jung almost immediately after the Aldo loss, smartly identifying the Zombie as a target that has a name but doesn’t match up well with him. Perhaps on account of his performance against Aldo and his newfound fame, the UFC was apt to give him the fight he wanted.
The reason the fight works for Hominick is that he is a technical marvel when it comes to kickboxing. Watching him operate in the cage is poetry in motion, slick in-and-out movements that set up combinations that only the very best are able to counter.
Jung is not.
They call the man the Korean Zombie for a reason, as he plods forward like an extra on The Walking Dead, arms outstretched and fists flying. He stalks his opponents, often eating tremendous punishment in an effort to get inside and start throwing leather. He’s gotten more intelligent recently, but you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Jung is who he is.
So what the fight becomes is a lock to be exciting, and also a chance for Hominick to show he’s still relevant at 145 against a big name that shouldn’t be a great threat. As Jung shuffles forward, Hominick will blast him with combinations and then make distance before setting up to repeat the process.
It should truly be a clinic in breaking down an opponent with strikes, and The Machine will be the one administering the medicine.
So as these two men enter the cage to do battle, expect two things: fireworks, and Hominick to look good. He knew what he was doing when he asked for this fight, and Jung—as lovable as he is—will have trouble with the plucky Canuck.
Jon Jones
Technique.