(Were you the country bumpkin that called me a Guido, or was it Hughes?)
It might be just me, but every time I see or even hear Matt Serra on camera, I expect him to have a trio of deli meats clenched in one fist and a bottle of Patron in the other. He exudes the Long Island Italian meathead stereotype more than any other professional fighter out there, and although I normally despise those people, I can’t help but laugh when he launches into his shtick. It’s kind of like how if you were to take Sofia Vergara’s voice and implant it into anyone else but her, the results would be gratingly annoying rather than hilarious and enthralling.
Whether you agree or not with the above statement will likely impact your excitement to learn that “The Terra” recently…hosted (?) a video blog for the UFC called Fight Camp Insider. And wouldn’t you know it, Serra managed to not only snag fellow wordsmith Chael Sonnen for an interview, he ended up spending the whole day with him. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.
Video and a recanting of the events after the jump.
(Were you the country bumpkin that called me a Guido, or was it Hughes?)
It might be just me, but every time I see or even hear Matt Serra on camera, I expect him to have a trio of deli meats clenched in one fist and a bottle of Patron in the other. He exudes the Long Island Italian meathead stereotype more than any other professional fighter out there, and although I normally despise those people, I can’t help but laugh when he launches into his shtick. It’s kind of like how if you were to take Sofia Vergara’s voice and implant it into anyone else but her, the results would be gratingly annoying rather than hilarious and enthralling.
Whether you agree or not with the above statement will likely impact your excitement to learn that “The Terra” recently…hosted (?) a video blog for the UFC called Fight Camp Insider. And wouldn’t you know it, Serra managed to not only snag fellow wordsmith Chael Sonnen for an interview, he ended up spending the whole day with him. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.
After a brief chat with Ray Longo and an assessment of how fat he’s gotten (answer: kind of), Serra embarks on a journey to a previously uncharted land known as Oregon to take a tour of Team Quest’s longtime training facility. And after a discussion of Sonnen’s pizzeria, its negative impact on his weight cut, and another fatness assessment (seriously, this episode is veering towards King of Queens territory in a hurry), Serra finally gets down to business. That business, is comparing Matt Longo’s attractiveness to that of Marlon Brando.
Simply put, these are the kind of interviews I live for. I don’t want to hear about how training camps are going, and what some guy’s gameplan is for his upcoming fight. That nonsense is whitewash at this point. We already know what everyone’s going say, even when it’s someone like Chael. I want to hear two men talk about pizza and The Godfather with metrosexual undertones. And on this front, Serra delivers in spades.
At this point, Serra is in need of slice, preferably topped with some nice gabagool, and heads over to Sonnen’s joint, known to the general public as Mean Street Pizzeria. He alludes that he is not unlike a ninja turtle in that he has an insatiable appetite for martial arts and pizza pie, which is perhaps the most accurate life assessment we have ever had the privilege of witnessing. No joke: a couple college buddies of mine from Long Island ran into Serra at a Chipotle in Huntington, where he proceeded to tell them that he once consumed a three man 36” pizza challenge by himself just down the street and stayed for cannolis afterward. All we’re saying is that Serra is less of a mixed martial artist and more of an ass-kicking philosopher. Like Kung Fu Panda.
He orders a straight slice of cheese to start. Fat joke. Martial arts. Consume pizza. The cycle repeats.
At eight and a half minutes in, Serra meets up with Chael at his place in the outskirts of town. “It’s in a nice neighborhood,” Serra remarks. You think that’s impressive? Tito Ortiz bought his own neighborhood. But what Tito Ortiz didn’t have, or at least failed to show us, was the awesome Whack-a-Mole style training device designed by Nexersys that Sonnen keeps in his house. You’ll have to see it for yourself, but it’s basically Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero for mixed martial arts fighters, and it just shot to the top of our wish lists. “If you could get this to hold a coffee, it would be Longo,” Serra jokes.
Sonnen also recounts his WEC 36 fight with Paulo Filho in which Filho both failed to make weight (changing the fight to a non-title bout in the process), and was apparently haunted by the ghosts of Xanax’s past. The good news: Filho ended up sending Sonnen the belt after he won the fight. The bad: The rest of Filho’s career.
After the tour, the crew heads back to Sonnen’s stomping grounds, where they come upon Yushin Okami mid-sparring, likely for his upcoming bout with Rousimar Palhares. Though at the time this was filmed, we imagine Okami was still expecting to face Luiz Cane, being that he is not attempting to free his ankle from a bench vice.
But even better than the pizza, even better than Okami, is the entrance of Mama Sonnen at the 12:52 mark. And believe it or not, she still holds Chael’s mouthpiece in between rounds, like a true mother should. Things conclude with an intense sparring session for Sonnen, who gets put through the ringer of Team Quest products before bidding Serra adieu.
I think it’s safe to say that Serra has found his future calling in the MMA biz. Half fighter interviews, half Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. Matter of fact, if Serra threw on a spiky blonde wig, a pair of backwards sunglasses, and a few more sweatbands, he could pass as Guy Fieri’s body double without anyone knowing the difference.
With tomorrow night’s UFC 145 main event slated as a 4-1 squash match, the CP gang is talking upsets for today’s installment of the CagePotato Roundtable. If you have a topic-suggestion for a future Roundtable column, please send it to [email protected], and share your own MMA-upset testimonials in the comments section…
While I normally disagree with that crazy fanboy (hey Sodak) explaining to me how Fedor is an intelligent machine, sent back in time to destroy craniums and assassinate Andrei Arlovski, I completely wrote off Werdum here. Like, no way a guy who hung out in Minotauro Nogueira’s guard for six days is going to get tapped by a dude who calls himself “Go Horse” and smiles like this, right? So yeah, I gave him no chance of pulling out a victory. I could be on tape somewhere saying that he had no chance, in an obnoxiously opinionated manner. I may also be credited with one of the worst predictions in CP history.
With tomorrow night’s UFC 145 main event slated as a 4-1 squash match, the CP gang is talking upsets for today’s installment of the CagePotato Roundtable. If you have a topic-suggestion for a future Roundtable column, please send it to [email protected], and share your own MMA-upset testimonials in the comments section…
While I normally disagree with that crazy fanboy (hey Sodak) explaining to me how Fedor is an intelligent machine, sent back in time to destroy craniums and assassinate Andrei Arlovski, I completely wrote off Werdum here. Like, no way a guy who hung out in Minotauro Nogueira’s guard for six days is going to get tapped by a dude who calls himself “Go Horse” and smiles like this, right? So yeah, I gave him no chance of pulling out a victory. I could be on tape somewhere saying that he had no chance, in an obnoxiously opinionated manner. I may also be credited with one of the worst predictions in CP history.
“Colemon, get the fuck over here, now!” It’s not every day that a phone call changes your little world, but it happens. It was 1995, I was in high school [yeah, I’m old], and though I didn’t know it yet, I was about to see something beautiful.
Upon entering my friend’s home I found him and another pal huddled in front of a paused TV-VCR combo, a half-naked giant frozen on the screen. “These two guys are about to fight. Who do you think is going to win?” The behemoth’s name, I would soon learn, was “Emmanuel Yarborough…Yarborough.” The placard held by the hooker circling the cage read “Sumo,” and I had no trouble believing it.
Though obviously in shape, the relatively tiny Keith Hackney inspired little confidence in me, tiger claw stance be damned, and so I chose the giant. Before hitting play, my friends, the lying bastards, confirmed that Yarborough did indeed beat the little guy into paste. Imagine my surprise when the fight ended two minutes (and one broken gate) later with Hackney clubbing the world’s largest professional athlete into submission.
I doubt there were any casinos taking action for that scrap, and on paper Hackney may have even had the advantage, but none of that mattered to a guy seeing those two stand side by side. There are far greater examples of an underdog getting the win in our sport’s history, but this one matters most to me. That one crazy fight was all it took — David beat Goliath, and I was hooked.
The point is, Chuck was more than a 2-1 favorite over Rashad coming into the fight. He appeared to be reborn with his fantastic win against Wanderlei Silva the previous December, and the general consensus was that Rashad wasn’t quite ready to face a legend. Before the fight, Rashad might have even agreed with that assessment.
Liddell landed more shots than Evans in the first round of the match, and most likely took it 10-9 on the judges scorecards. But heading into round 2, you could see Rashad’s confidence swell. He had settled in. He had tasted Chuck’s power, but hadn’t wilted. He kept an eye out for the infamous Chuck-face that Keith Jardine had described to him in training, and when he saw it coming, he hit the Iceman with the most savage overhand right I’d ever seen.
As I recall, I grabbed the arm of Jesse Holland from MMA Mania, and shouted “SANFORD AND SON! THAT MOTHERFUCKER IS DOING THE REDD FOXX FAKE-HEART-ATTACK-THING FROM FUCKING SANFORD AND SON!”
+1200. Heading into his UFC 63 fight with inaugural UFC lightweight champion Jens Pulver, Joe Lauzon was listed at +1200 by nearly all of the Vegas bookies. As the Etrade baby will tell you, those odds are the same as the likelihood of being mauled by a polar bear and a normal bear in the same day. But the man with possibly the worst nickname in MMA (next to Ron “H20” Waterman) managed to pull out the victory. And not only did Lauzon score the upset, he walked right through Pulver like he was the aforementioned Etrade baby.
This fight will always be a personal favorite of mine, if only because it is a prime example of the unpredictability of MMA. Pulver was making his return to the UFC for the first time since his classic title-defending war with B.J. Penn at UFC 35. Having gone 9-4 against names like Takanori Gomi, Hayato Sakurai, Duane Ludwig, and Cole Escovedo, the UFC was basically setting up one of their most marketable lightweights with an easy victory. When determining Pulver’s opponent, I imagine Joe Silva asked himself the following:
1. Does he look like your average Best Buy employee with just as impressive a physique? 2. Is his nickname derived from a pop star, kid’s cereal, or amusement park ride? 3. Is his record impressive enough at face value to sway the CSAC into allowing this massacre to be carried out?
He must have thought he hit the proverbial jackpot when he came across Joe freaking Lauzon. But Silva, having never seen Revenge of the Nerds or Dirty Dancing before, made a classic mistake; he put baby in a corner. Lauzon came out swinging like he was fighting for the right to visit Skywalker Ranch, following up a couple close knees that would have surely decapitated “Lil Eagle” with a left hook that nearly did. And in a mere 47 seconds, Pulver’s glorious UFC aspirations came crumbling down around him.
Perhaps even funnier than the fight itself would be the following season of The Ultimate Fighter, which featured Baby Jay and Jens as coaches, and none other than Joe “Excelsior” Lauzon as a participant. He wasn’t chosen by Pulver, go figure, but when he finally had his preliminary matchup on episode 6, he quickly proved that his win over Pulver was no fluke, rag-dolling Brian Geraghty for a little over a minute before sinking in a rear-naked choke victory.
When reviewing the fight in an interview afterward, I remember Pulver’s assessment like it was yesterday. “At least I didn’t lose to some bitch,” he said. Indeed you did not, Jens. Indeed you did not.
For me, the greatest upset in MMA history has nothing to do with a “lucky” haymaker or an improbable arm-bar. However, there was an invincible favorite and an underdog that had no chance in hell of coming out on top. The two combatants waged an unlikely war and when the dust settled, the undisputed champion was left bloodied and beaten. This fight didn’t last 15 minutes or five championship rounds. No, this fight had been raging since November 12, 1993. That was the date of UFC 1, and it was the very beginning of the moral majority claiming that MMA competition was not fit for human consumption. Whether for sport or for entertainment, “society” assessed that MMA was profane, and the judge, jury and executioner were coming. It was literally “us” versus “them,” and if you have found your way to www.cagepotato.com, you are part of “us.”
I already know that a lot of people who are reading this were in diapers or grade school in 1993, but I wasn’t. I am not one of these poseurs that will tell you I actually saw UFC 1 live but you can bet your bottom dollar that I did give my old man $25 to order UFC 2 on PPV. That is when I saw Pat Smith vs. Scott Morris in the opening televised bout and that shit changed my life. I have only used the “love at first sight” proverb with my wife and kids, but looking back now, those few seconds also fit the analogy. Yes, it was brutal and yes it was unorthodox but it was the modern day Coliseum for me from that point forward.
Shortly thereafter, just like many of “us”, Senator John McCain saw a video-tape (pretty sure it wasn’t BETA-MAX) of a UFC event. He was outraged and he did his best to get MMA banned. The UFC was late-night news fodder and got kicked around like Jared Jones in the comment section of CP. McCain even said, “UFC is a brutal exhibition of machismo with no place in the modern world. It’s gory, and bloodthirsty and no better than watching a car wreck as it happens. It brings out the worst in its audience and should be banned for encouraging violence.”
Little did McCain know that he was doing all of “us” a great favor by enlightening the masses about the “human cock-fighting.” I will admit that the “open-weight and no-holds-barred” approach was pretty much . . . . . how do I put this . . . . . HUMAN FUCKING COCK-FIGHTING, but without McCain’s involvement there would never have been the Unified Rules of MMA that were adopted in 2000. The “them” intended to eradicate the sport but instead, they launched “us” towards respectability.
A lot has happened since the first “sanctioned” UFC took place back on November 17, 2000. And the biggest Johnny Cash middle finger came on August 18, 2011, when the UFC signed a multi-year contract with FOX. I felt vindicated knowing that I was a supporter all along and the irony was so fitting. The same channel that I can watch a potentially fatal car crash happen during a NASCAR race live on network television is the same channel I can now watch supreme athletes test themselves in the modern day Coliseum.
I was going to write about how Randy Couture vs. Tim Sylvia was the upset that wasn’t, and therefore my favorite.
But since we’ve pissed off enough people this week, I’ll work on getting back in Gus Johnson‘s good graces and agree that Kimbo Slice vs. Seth Petruzelli was, in fact, the greatest upset in MMA history. Yep. No punchline to be made here.
Filed under: UFCIt probably tells us something that UFC president Dana White knew he hated ESPN’s Outside the Lines segment on fighter pay well before he saw it. One gets the sense that he hated the topic more than the source or the approach, and the U…
It probably tells us something that UFC president Dana White knew he hated ESPN’s Outside the Lines segment on fighter pay well before he saw it. One gets the sense that he hated the topic more than the source or the approach, and the UFC’s heavy-handed response to the story only confirms that this is a conversation the UFC would probably rather stop before it starts.
ESPN tells us that many UFC fighters are practically despondent about their pay, even if it can’t name any of them or produce any meaningful, verifiable financial figures that make the case. The piece questions Lorenzo Fertitta’s claim that the UFC pays somewhere “in the neighborhood” of half its revenue to fighters, as most major sports leagues do, but it can’t disprove it. And when ESPN’s John Barr says he’s spoken with “more than 20 current, former, and potential UFC fighters,” the savvy viewer is right to stop and ask just what he means by “potential” UFC fighters, and how many of the former fighters are guys like Ken Shamrock, who is the only fighter quoted in the piece, and who is, shall we say, not the most reliable or unbiased of sources on the topic.
In response, the UFC crafted a clever little piece of propaganda featuring interviews with fighters Forrest Griffin, Chuck Liddell, and Matt Serra, all of whom have nothing but positive things to say about how the UFC compensates its fighters. Shocking right? And here I thought that when the UFC showed up at Griffin’s house with a camera he’d have used the opportunity to unload on his employers with one bitter complaint after another. And who could have guessed that Liddell, who was given a cushy, do-nothing corporate gig with the UFC once his fighting days were finished, would be so supportive? Never saw that one coming, I tell you.
The UFC loves to tout its post-fight bonuses, all that off-the-books money that it gives away out of sheer generosity and appreciation, and it does so again in its video rebuttal. It’s true that the UFC literally gives away money that it doesn’t have to. I’ve talked to dozens of fighters who have told me stories of White writing them a check that they didn’t earn, contractually speaking. I’ve also talked to fighters who thought they went out of their way to hype a fight or put on a great show, only to have the UFC pat them on the back and send them on their way without the extra monetary appreciation they were expecting.
The current bonus system keeps fighters in a constant state of financial anticipation. They know the big money is out there somewhere, but unlike in most employer/employee relationships, it isn’t laid out in print anywhere exactly what they need to do to get their hands on it. In that sense, fighters are like a primitive tribe of people worshipping inscrutable gods. They keep putting different offerings on the altar, trying different dances to make it rain. Sometimes it rains, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some guys are thirstier than others. Some guys are better dancers.
One thing the ESPN piece and the UFC response have in common is a lack of detailed financial information. For a conversation entirely about money, there aren’t a lot of numbers being thrown around here. ESPN would probably blame the UFC for that, arguing that because it doesn’t release information about how much it makes and how much it pays out, we can’t really know whether Fertitta’s claims are accurate. That’s true, but as Fertitta points out, the UFC doesn’t have to release any of that information, and it’s definitely not going to invite a closer scrutiny of its books if it doesn’t have to. What company would?
But this argument gets us nowhere. ESPN says fighters want more money, which isn’t at all hard to believe. So do NFL and NBA players. The difference is how they go about getting it.
It’s easy to swat the UFC upside the head about fighter pay and ask why it isn’t sharing a bigger slice of the revenue pie with fighters, but it’s also naive. Why should the UFC be the lone company in this capitalist dogfight of ours to simply decide, out of sheer altruism, to give more and take less? If fighters are really unhappy with the deal they’re getting from the UFC, they need to do what athletes in every other major pro sport have done: form a union.
What would it take to form a fighter union? The same thing it takes in any industry: a willingness to stand together, and the participation of a few key people. If Georges St. Pierre, Jon Jones, and Anderson Silva banded together with a few of the lower-tier fighters, the UFC would have little choice but to recognize their union. If it didn’t — if it decided instead to cut its top three champions for daring to organize — it would bring such an avalanche of bad publicity down upon itself that it would wish it had signed a blank check instead. A mess like that could easily end in congressional hearings and a sponsor exodus, and no one at the UFC wants either.
Then again, what do GSP, Jones, and Silva need a union for? They’re doing fine as it is. They’re rich and well taken care of by the UFC, so why speak up and potentially cost themselves money? Why should they care what Octagon newbies are getting paid?
In other words, the people who are most capable of creating a union and addressing issues like fighter pay and general transparency are the people who need it least. It’s pointless to address these complaints to the UFC, which isn’t going to simply decide to give away more money just to keep reporters away. Instead, bring it up with GSP. Bring it up with Dan Henderson and Frankie Edgar. Ask them if they’re willing to do what’s necessary to secure a better future for the fighters of tomorrow, even if it means angering the UFC brass today.
That might be a harder sell in the fight business than it is among pro baseball or football players. Those guys are used to working together against a common foe, and maybe that makes it easier to unite them against greedy owners. MMA fighters, on the other hand, are more accustomed to a certain brand of self-reliance. They’re used to a world where there’s only one champ in each division, one man sitting at the head of the table and eating his fill for as long as he can hold on to the chair. They’re all certain that they’ll be that man some day, so none are eager to complain that he’s the only one getting a decent meal. You come into that world and tell them to unite in service of the fighters they either don’t know or don’t care about, and you might not get such a warm reception.
But this is how it’s gone in every pro sport. The NFL players of today might enjoy great salaries, solid pension plans, and health care for their later years when the bill for all they’ve done to their bodies comes due — all things that UFC fighters need and deserve — but they didn’t get it by waiting around for the owners to give it up voluntarily. It never works that way. Not in any business.
If fighters want to do something about their pay and their treatment in the UFC, it’s up to them to join together and make it happen. For that, they need powerful leaders who don’t need them. If those leaders decide it’s not worth it, that they’re doing just fine on their own, then at least we’ll have our answer. But asking the UFC when it’s going to fork over more money to fighters is like asking a CEO when he’s going to give himself a pay cut so factory workers can get a raise. Change won’t come on its own, via some self-imposed sense of fairness. It’s going to take a struggle, and that struggle is going to have to begin with the fighters.
Filed under: MMA Media Watch, UFCUFC President Dana White promised before ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported on fighter pay that the UFC would release a video of Lorenzo Fertitta’s full, uncut interview with ESPN. But what the UFC actually posted online…
UFC President Dana White promised before ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported on fighter pay that the UFC would release a video of Lorenzo Fertitta’s full, uncut interview with ESPN. But what the UFC actually posted online on Monday was something more than that — it was a full-on rebuttal of the Outside the Lines report that featured not only Fertitta’s comments but also comments from White and some of the UFC’s fighters.
White introduced the UFC’s video by referring to the Outside the Lines report as a “piece of trash” and “one-sided.” And while Outside the Lines is generally well-respected for producing high-quality sports journalism, White also said he doesn’t respect the kind of journalism that ESPN does.
“They’re dirty, they lie, and they never really give you all the facts,” White said.
The UFC’s response makes the case that the pay scale in the UFC is better than the ESPN report would have had viewers believe, noting that many UFC fighters have become rich for what they did inside the Octagon. However, the Outside the Lines report didn’t dispute that — Outside the Lines acknowledged that the UFC’s best draws are doing well financially. Outside the Lines was more concerned with how much the entry-level fighters are making.
Where the UFC’s rebuttal report is lacking is in offering any specifics about how much money the low-tiered fighters are making. Fighters like Chuck Liddell, Forrest Griffin and Matt Serra are featured saying they’re satisfied with their pay, but those three guys are popular former champions. There still isn’t a lot of information available about how much entry-level fighters are making. Fertitta says specific payroll numbers are not something the UFC is interested in revealing.
“We’re not hiding anything from anybody, it’s just that we don’t publish it for everybody to see,” Fertitta says. “We’re not a public company. There’s no reason for us to do that.”
The strongest part of the UFC’s response comes at the very end, where Ken Shamrock is shown after his final UFC fight talking about how much money he made in the UFC. Shamrock was featured on ESPN talking about how fighters don’t get paid enough by the UFC, so that quote from Shamrock is a strong rebuttal.
But featuring Shamrock is something of a distraction from the real issue at hand. The issue isn’t whether well-known fighters like Shamrock are making good money, it’s whether the undercard fighters are making good money.
The UFC has also chosen not to release information about how much fighters are making from sources like sponsorships and pay-per-view bonuses. For some fighters, those sources of income represent more than what they make in their purses. But we don’t know for sure which fighters are getting those kinds of bonuses because the UFC has chosen to keep that information private.
Ultimately, Outside the Lines and the ESPN response offered two sides of a story. And neither side has told the whole story.
UPDATE: Later on Monday the UFC posted the entire 47-minute interview with Fertitta on YouTube. That video is below.
Anything can happen in a fight, even unexpected things that shock the MMA community so much that they instantly become part of MMA lore.There are many of these unanticipated, unpredictable, “crazy,” moments in mixed martial arts, and some of them don’t…
Anything can happen in a fight, even unexpected things that shock the MMA community so much that they instantly become part of MMA lore.
There are many of these unanticipated, unpredictable, “crazy,” moments in mixed martial arts, and some of them don’t even pertain to events that happened in the cage (or ring as it may be)!
So what are some of the craziest moments in the history of mixed martial arts? Read and find out!
Anything can happen in a fight, even unexpected things that shock the MMA community so much that they instantly become part of MMA lore.There are many of these unanticipated, unpredictable, “crazy,” moments in mixed martial arts, and some of them don’t…
Anything can happen in a fight, even unexpected things that shock the MMA community so much that they instantly become part of MMA lore.
There are many of these unanticipated, unpredictable, “crazy,” moments in mixed martial arts, and some of them don’t even pertain to events that happened in the cage (or ring as it may be)!
So what are some of the craziest moments in the history of mixed martial arts? Read and find out!
It probably tells us something that UFC president Dana White knew he hated 
UFC President Dana White promised before ESPN’s Outside the Lines reported on fighter pay that the UFC would release a video of Lorenzo Fertitta’s full, uncut interview with ESPN. But what the UFC actually posted online on Monday was something more than that — it was a full-on rebuttal of the Outside the Lines report that featured not only Fertitta’s comments but also comments from White and some of the UFC’s fighters.
