Tag: MMA

Kamal Shalorus Credits Power to Life on the Farm

(photo credit: Dave Mandel / Sherdog.com)
The MMA gods have blessed us with a ton of fights this week, last night there was the Strikeforce show in L.A., tonight, Bellator’s welterweight tourney concludes, and then this weekend, the omnipresent Zuffa will grant us a UFC and WEC on Saturday and Sunday respectively. Sweet. Looks like re-painting the […]

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(photo credit: Dave Mandel / Sherdog.com)

The MMA gods have blessed us with a ton of fights this week, last night there was the Strikeforce show in L.A., tonight, Bellator’s welterweight tourney concludes, and then this weekend, the omnipresent Zuffa will grant us a UFC and WEC on Saturday and Sunday respectively. Sweet. Looks like re-painting the bomb shelter will have to wait a few days.

Sunday’s WEC, which will take place in Edmonton, Alberta, will be headlined with a lightweight tilt between former champ Jamie Varner and the undefeated Kamal Shalorus. It’s an interesting bout, as Varner needs a win to keep himself within striking distance of a rematch with the new champ Ben Henderson, while a win for Shalorus, might just get him a crack at the title. While Varner is pretty well known, Shalorus hasn’t been fighting on the big stage very long- things to know- he’s Iranian, he comes from an accomplished wrestling background, and, he’s as strong as an ox…(thanks to MMA Fighting for the quote).

“I know some athletes who developed their strength through technology,” Shalorus said in an interview with MMAFighting.com. “Not me. I got it working with my hands, working in the field all day, working with the animals. We had sheep, goats, horses — I’d have to build a barn for the animals, I’d have to work in the garden and then go chop down a tree, I’d have to go into the mountains to get something. It was a hard workout. I would often think to myself while I was working that this would also help me with my wrestling.”

Kamal, you just made Matt Hughes’day….

John Hackleman Devastated by Chuck Liddell’s Latest Loss

The MMA world continues to wait out any word from Chuck Liddell, as to whether or not the legendary fighter will finally call it quits, after getting KO’d once again, this time by Rich Franklin, at UFC 115. Of course, Dana White (once again) is saying Chuck’s time in the UFC is done, but as […]

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The MMA world continues to wait out any word from Chuck Liddell, as to whether or not the legendary fighter will finally call it quits, after getting KO’d once again, this time by Rich Franklin, at UFC 115. Of course, Dana White (once again) is saying Chuck’s time in the UFC is done, but as each day goes by with no word from Liddell, kind of makes you think as to what’s going on behind the scenes no?

It’s more than likely that Liddell’s received a thousand voice mails / texts/ emails asking what his next move is, and thus far, he’s not sharing (maybe he’ll respond to message by pigeon?). Well in an interesting interview by SI’s Josh Gross, with Liddell’s long time trainer John Hackleman (yes, the dude with glasses who’s always rocking the sleeveless shirt on TUF), he had this to say about his friend’s latest loss.

“You can’t make someone quit,” Hackleman said. “But definitely when I looked down at him in the cage, my stomach … it just didn’t feel good.”

“Looking down at him cut like that, broke my heart,” said the trainer, fighting off tears.

Hackleman also said in the interview that he thinks the former champ realizes he has nothing to prove, really doesn’t need to fight anymore (meaning dude’s filthy rich) and that he’ll probably hang up the gloves. Guess we’ll see. To check out Hackleman’s take on the situation, including how Chuck’s “”warrior mentality” took over at UFC 115, head here.

Robbie Lawler Admits to Relying on KO Power “Too Much”

If you didn’t have a chance to catch last night’s Strikeforce card in L.A., well, your life will continue, naturally, but it’s just a tad incomplete. Okay, maybe not as incomplete if you were to miss Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin, but still, you should do some rectifying pronto…The card had some damn entertaining fights […]

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If you didn’t have a chance to catch last night’s Strikeforce card in L.A., well, your life will continue, naturally, but it’s just a tad incomplete. Okay, maybe not as incomplete if you were to miss Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin, but still, you should do some rectifying pronto…The card had some damn entertaining fights and the main event tilt between Robbie Lawler and Renato “Babalu” Sobral certainly didn’t disappoint.

Now anyone that has followed the career of Lawler, knows that he’s pretty skilled at crumpling dudes into unconscious piles of humanity with just one punch. Lawler was getting brutalized by Melvin Manhoef in his last fight, until, well, see above. In his bout with Sobral last night, Lawler never managed to land one of his trademark punches, and afterwards,  the HIT Squad fighter conceded that perhaps he was looking for the home run shot too much (thanks to Sherdog for the quote).

“I thought I was going to knock him out — plain and simple,” said Lawler. “It was inevitable that (I was going to) put my hands on him and knock out him out and it just never happened… When you can knock people out, sometimes you rely on that a little too much, I think.”

Although Sobral’s face looked like it had been caught under a rugby scrum, the UFC vet landed plenty of kicks and punches to the body of Lawler and probably had the edge in cage control. In other words, if Lawler had scored more often, things would have been different. To read more of Lawler’s thoughts on the fight head here.

Keith Jardine Planning to Use “Own Style” vs. Matt Hamill

It wasn’t too long ago that Keith Jardine was viewed by most as a legitimate contender in the light-heavyweight division. Now although his career hit a major hiccup courtesy Houston Alexander’s right hand in May, 2007, after Jardine speed bagged Forrest Griffin at UFC 66, the Greg Jackson fighter went on to beat Chuck Liddell […]

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It wasn’t too long ago that Keith Jardine was viewed by most as a legitimate contender in the light-heavyweight division. Now although his career hit a major hiccup courtesy Houston Alexander’s right hand in May, 2007, after Jardine speed bagged Forrest Griffin at UFC 66, the Greg Jackson fighter went on to beat Chuck Liddell by Split Decision at UFC 76. Lots of people were talking “Dean of Mean” for understandable reasons.

Since then, however, Jardine hasn’t had much success; aside from a decision win over Brandon Vera in October, 2008, the former TUF competitor has lost four out of five fights, three times by KO. So what the hell has gone wrong you may ask? Well, according to Jardine, his recent troubles may be due to the fact that he’s gotten away from the WTF? Hands down, chin tauntingly out approach, he used to employ (thanks to Sherdog.com for the quote).

“I don’t want to get too philosophical, but I went through a phase of really trying to polish up my boxing — keep my hands up all the time. Just being a real polished boxer, that’s not me,” he said. “But it’s good, I learned a lot of stuff. Now it’s about trying to bring that together with my own style… and just have fun and loosen up and relax a little bit.”

Not something you hear everyday…but, whatever works right? Of course on Saturday night, Jardine will square off with Matt Hamill, in a bout that could determine whether or not Jardine remains on the UFC roster. We’ll be watching. To bet on the fight head here.

Paulo Thiago Concedes Poor Performance at UFC 115

You may or may not have been surprised by many of the outcomes at last weekend’s UFC;  we’re fans of Chuck Liddell,  but let’s face it, if you were really super-duper-shocked to see him get knocked out again, well, we’re guessing you make an X with your arms anytime you do something cool…
One of the more surprising performances on […]

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You may or may not have been surprised by many of the outcomes at last weekend’s UFC;  we’re fans of Chuck Liddell,  but let’s face it, if you were really super-duper-shocked to see him get knocked out again, well, we’re guessing you make an X with your arms anytime you do something cool…

One of the more surprising performances on the card was Martin Kampmann’s UD win over Paulo Thiago, not necessarily because the Danish welterweight won, but how he won. Everyone should know that Kampmann’s no slouch on the ground, but really, to see him walk over a BJJ black belt like Thiago on the mat was pretty impressive no?

For Thiago, the loss was a definite setback, especially coming off his memorable ‘holy eff that was nice’ choke-out of Mike Swick in February. In a recent interview with the Brazilian publication Tatame, it sounds like Thiago is understandably disappointed with how things played out at UFC 115.

“I didn’t fought well at all, man. I couldn’t do it, I froze… I went forward on the beginning of the fight, but then I got stuck there. I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t play my game and he won”, said Thiago. “I couldn’t make my game plan… Maybe I could have done better, but I didn’t. Now I have to study this fight, try to see my mistakes, improve my mental state and make it up with myself”.

It will be interesting to see who the UFC matches up against Thiago next and how he performs. As far as Kampmann, he reportedly wants a bout with Dan Hardy. Yes, that would be most satisfactory indeed.

Report: Chael Sonnen Withdraws from Oregon State Senate Race

Any regular reader of MMA Fix knows that we’ve taken great steps (not really, as nothing we’ve ever done could be categorized as ‘’great’) to cover Chael Sonnen’s amazing gift for entertaining / infuriating gab. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s about to fight middleweight champ Anderson Silva, so naturally, that many more microphones […]

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Any regular reader of MMA Fix knows that we’ve taken great steps (not really, as nothing we’ve ever done could be categorized as ‘’great’) to cover Chael Sonnen’s amazing gift for entertaining / infuriating gab. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he’s about to fight middleweight champ Anderson Silva, so naturally, that many more microphones have been heading his way.

Now, like him or hate him, Sonnen has been involved in a wee bit of controversy lately, due to the fact that a writer from the Huffington Post, didn’t exactly care for a ‘tweet’’ that appeared on what was believed to be the wrestler’s Twitter account (calling the comments, which were directed at Silva’s manager Ed Soares, “racist and xenophobic”). Sonnen was running for the Oregon State Senate, and although there seems to be quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, the fighter and his campaign announced soon after that the Twitter account was a fake.

Well, Fight Magazine is reporting today that Sonnen has withdrawn from the senate race, and no, it apparently has nothing to do with ‘Tweetgate.’ According to the story, which includes a statement from Sonnen himself, he has dropped out of the race due to “a real estate case that requires a ruling. If the ruling is adverse, I would be disqualified from running for office until 2011” (In addition to ‘ultimate fighting’, Sonnen is also a real estate agent).

Huh. Well, as Sonnen also conceded, looks like he’ll have plenty of time to prepare for his August 7th throw down with Silva now. Should be a good one.