Rewind to WEC 53 in December.Anthony Pettis is a +170 underdog to then-WEC lightweight champion Ben Henderson going into their title fight. No one is picking the 24-year-old Roufusport prospect to walk out of Glendale, Ariz., with the belt, and most ar…
Rewind to WEC 53 in December.
Anthony Pettis is a +170 underdog to then-WEC lightweight champion Ben Henderson going into their title fight. No one is picking the 24-year-old Roufusport prospect to walk out of Glendale, Ariz., with the belt, and most are picking him to get finished inside of three rounds.
One kick off the cage later, and Pettis is one of the top lightweights in the world? How the hell did this happen?
I had the same reaction as everyone else when Pettis landed the ‘Showtime Kick’ off the cage, which was a gasp, my jaw hitting the floor, and a steady stream of expletives flowing from my mouth.
I’ll never forget where I was when I saw it, and it is still one of my favorite MMA moments. But aren’t we all overreacting a bit?
Guida is a genuine threat to the lightweight title at this point in his career. Since joining Greg Jackson’s camp in late 2009, Guida has gone 3-1 with three straight submission victories including a win over former Pride champion Takanori Gomi at UFC 125.
Somehow, Jackson has found a way to harness Guida’s relentless attack into a controlled chaos, making him not only much harder to hit, but turning his normally flawed striking into a some serious head movement and has him throwing punches and kicks from unpredictable angles.
While Pettis will still have the advantage on the feet, Guida’s chin is legendary and ‘The Carpenter’s’ constant pressure will make it tough for Pettis to get the room he needs to hit his flashy strikes.
Once the fight hits the ground, and it will, Pettis is in Guida’s world.
Guida has always had an overwhelming top game, but the knock on him was that he didn’t do enough to finish and left himself open to getting submitted because of it.
Not anymore.
Since joining Jackson’s camp, Guida has improved his submission game dramatically, and is constantly working to finish, forcing his opponents to focus on surviving rather than trying to win the fight. This will prevent Pettis from throwing up his tricky triangle choke that has won him so many fights.
Pettis is a tough fighter, and he could eventually be a UFC champion one day, but this weekend is Guida’s time to show he his no longer a gatekeeper at 155 and he’ll walk away with a unanimous-decision victory.
There is no arguing that Brock Lesnar is one of the most imposing forces to ever fight in the UFC.He has, however, had to battle just as hard outside the Octagon as he does in it.Rewind to a couple years ago when he was coming off of his victory over F…
There is no arguing that Brock Lesnar is one of the most imposing forces to ever fight in the UFC.
He has, however, had to battle just as hard outside the Octagon as he does in it.
Rewind to a couple years ago when he was coming off of his victory over Frank Mir at UFC 100. Lesnar was set to face new No. 1 contender Shane Carwin at UFC 106. In late October 2009, Lesnar withdrew from the fight, citing an undisclosed illness.
Lesnar claimed he had never been as sick as he was then, and the fight was rescheduled for early 2010.
It was later revealed that Lesnar was suffering from mononucleosis, and the rescheduled fight was scrapped. Lesnar was also suffering from a disease known as diverticulitis, an intestinal disease that Lesnar had surgery for in mid-November 2009.
Lesnar recovered, and in January 2010, he announced on ESPN’s SportsCenter that he was ready to return to the Octagon as early as that summer.
Carwin beat Mir for the interim heavyweight title and set up a fight with Lesnar that took place at UFC 116 in July 2010.
Lesnar beat Carwin via an arm-triangle choke in the second round and unified the belts.
This win showed that Lesnar could come back from almost anything and that he was still as dominant as he claimed to be.
He was, however, promptly defeated in his next title defense by Cain Velasquez at UFC 121 last October.
The news only became worse for Lesnar.
After coaching against Junior Dos Santos on the 13th season of The Ultimate Fighter, Lesnar had to pull out from the No. 1 contenders’ bout he had set up with Dos Santos for UFC 131 because of another bout with diverticulitis.
Lesnar had another surgery on May 27 and could return in 2012.
For a dominant champion, he has had his fair share of illness and setbacks, so the question I pose is this:
How long can Lesnar keep it up?
The surgeries, the battles and comebacks, fighting what seems to be once a year (he has had four fights since November 2008, in a world where a UFC champion should fight at least three times a year) … could Lesnar be at the end, or will he comeback stronger than ever?
I would love to say he won’t suffer and have another long layoff, but that’s up to Lesnar and how his body reacts.
I would like to finish this article by citing a quote from an interview Lesnar did with Yahoo Sports’ Kevin Iole in October. He talked about keeping private life separate from his professional life, but the quote that really spoke to me was at the end.
“I came from nothing, and, at any moment, you can go back to having nothing.” said Lesnar.
With the recent announcement of the GSP vs. Nick Diaz superfight, the MMA world has been set ablaze. Media and fans are jumping on every social site and outlet to share their thoughts on one of the biggest welterweight showdowns in MMA history. What ma…
With the recent announcement of the GSP vs. Nick Diaz superfight, the MMA world has been set ablaze. Media and fans are jumping on every social site and outlet to share their thoughts on one of the biggest welterweight showdowns in MMA history.
What makes this a superfight is defined simply by the two men who will face each other. On one side, you have Georges St. Pierre, UFC Welterweight Champion and one of the pound-for-pound best fighters in MMA. On the other you have Diaz, Strikeforce Welterweight Champion and one of the top welterweights in the world.
GSP has dominated his division in the UFC, and Diaz is the last opponent to truly define him as one of, if not the best, welterweights of all time.
Diaz has won his past 10 fights in a row, and he has successfully been the only person to hold the Strikeforce welterweight title. Diaz has defended the belt three times since its inception.
Now he comes for GSP’s title.
Diaz is a fighter not afraid to exchange with his opponent. He pushes forward and does not let the pace slow down. This is one of the biggest reasons why this could be a very interesting fight.
Diaz has attained 25 career wins in MMA. Impressive, but overshadowed by the fact that 21 of those wins were finishes. Diaz has shown that his striking is effective and has led to many TKOs or his pedigree. But his dominant strength comes on the ground.
His jiu-jitsu, under the study of Cesar Gracie, is at a very high level. This makes him dangerous on the ground as well as standing up.
This matters because it makes him a more well-rounded opponent for GSP, who has fought high-level wrestlers or strikers in the past. But in October, fans will see GSP being tested in all areas.
The main criticism that follows the Canadian champion is that he does not finish his fights. Some say he fights safe, while others say he just either doesn’t have the ability or get the chance. Now he faces off against an opponent who finishes his fights and has very few wins by decision. It is very much a battle of opposites being pitted against one another. UFC vs. Strikeforce, decision winner vs. finisher, Canada vs. USA.
But the fact that Diaz likes to push so much may lead to an opportunity for GSP. Instead of sitting back and avoiding GSP’s takedowns, Diaz may very well come at him and try to be the aggressor. This could give GSP the chance to grasp a finish that fans and critics alike have been clamoring for. For media relations, GSP needs a finish. Diaz could be the perfect candidate.
But not to sell the Strikeforce champion short. Iron sharpens iron, as they say, and Diaz is in no short supply. Training with the likes of his brother Nate Diaz, Gilbert Melendez, and Jake Shields does nothing but improve his own abilities. With training partner Shields having been GSP’s most recent opponent, Shields may be able to shed some light and provide helpful tactics for Nick’s match against the UFC champ.
With his own desire to please the fans and continue his legacy, GSP may very well step into the Octagon in October with a different mindset. He could see it as an opportunity to silence the media or, conversely, to permanently define himself in the welterweight division of MMA.
Come October, we will all find out.
Who do you think will win and why? (Make you predictions here: Include winner, method, which round and why you think so!)
With news that Shaquille O’Neal has announced his retirement on the social media tool Tout, there are many questions being asked, and much to discuss.Where does Shaq fit into the pantheon of basketball greats?Why did Shaq have to announce his retiremen…
With news that Shaquille O’Neal has announced his retirement on the social media tool Tout, there are many questions being asked, and much to discuss.
Where does Shaq fit into the pantheon of basketball greats?
Why did Shaq have to announce his retirement right before the NBA Finals?
Why are some sites saying Shaq tweeted his retirement while others are saying he retired via Tout?
What the heck is Tout?
All these questions and more will get their fair share of play over the next few days.
As an only casual basketball fan, my concern is more toward the future: When is Shaq going to fight in the UFC?
Shaq has long been a UFC fan, and friend of UFC president Dana White.
More than just a fan, Shaq has been training striking and grappling for years and has in the past joked about fighting the likes of Chuck Liddell, Hong Man Choi and even recent UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar.
He’s even an unlockable character in the video game UFC: Undisputed.
Although O’Neil is retiring from basketball at least partially due to lingering injuries, it seems likely to me that Shaq takes at least one MMA fight.
The most likely candidate for O’Neal would be Korean kickboxer Hong Man Choi, a 7’2″ giant best known for beating up a sad looking Jose Canseco and getting arm-barred by Fedor Emelianenko.
While a fight between Shaq and Choi would be nothing more than a freak show, it’s hard to ignore the appeal of it being a HUGE freak show.
Although Dana White has said that he doesn’t like putting on freak show matches, James Toney’s fight against Randy Couture should tell us otherwise.
It seems to me like only a matter of time before Dana White and Shaquille O’Neal have a meeting to schedule The Diesel’s UFC debut.
The MMA world rejoiced today when UFC President Dana White broke the news that the long-awaited battle between UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre and Strikeforce Welterweight Champion Nick Diaz would finally be happening later this year at UFC…
The MMA world rejoiced today when UFC President Dana White broke the news that the long-awaited battle between UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre and Strikeforce Welterweight Champion Nick Diaz would finally be happening later this year at UFC 137.
But given that Diaz is perhaps Strikeforce’s most prominent champion, and he is now fighting in the UFC, could this fight be more than just a champion-versus-champion contest? Could it actually be the beginning of the end for the organization currently known as Strikeforce?
When White first broke the news that Zuffa had purchased Strikeforce, the MMA community began weighing the pros and cons of the situation. While Zuffa’s financial backing would help better promote the organization, many were skeptical that the lack of competition in the United States, or even throughout the world, could lead to a less exciting end product.
Though he understood the concerns that fans would undoubtedly have, the UFC President was adamant that things would not be changing.
“It will be business as usual,” he repeated numerous times.
Zuffa and the UFC stayed true to that word for months, but the looming possibility of an earth-shattering announcement kept fans on pins and needles. On Wednesday, that announcement was made loud and clear with the unveiling of the UFC 137 main event which will feature St-Pierre vs. Diaz.
Not only that, but we later found out that not only had Diaz signed on the dotted line to fight St-Pierre, but that he had also signed an eight-fight deal with Zuffa. This contract is a first in that it is not exclusive to either Strikeforce or the UFC, but rather Diaz can fight in either organization.
So, to be clear, the Strikeforce Welterweight Champion is not exclusive to Strikeforce.
It goes without saying that Diaz is the most interesting fight that St-Pierre has left within the division. In order to leave no questions behind about possible “ducked” opponents at welterweight if he does decide to move up in weight classes, St-Pierre needed this fight.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that this fight negatively affects the Strikeforce brand.
While Diaz is the king of the Strikeforce welterweight division, he is simply looked at as another challenger to Georges St-Pierre in the UFC. Sure, his title will be noted by the commentators and probably even a bit in the promotional videos that come out. But this fight is for the the title that fans care about—the UFC title.
It’s one thing to have an up-and-comer from Strikeforce come to the UFC and replace a fighter who had to pull out of a fight on short notice. But it’s a completely different thing to take the champion from Strikeforce and pit him as the challenger for a UFC title.
If that’s not saying, “Strikeforce is dead to us,” I don’t know what is.
While nothing has been announced yet, it seems almost inevitable that the UFC will continue to pull top-level talent from the Strikeforce roster over to UFC events while leaving the table scraps for Strikeforce to live off of. Does this remind you of anything? The WEC perhaps?
The WEC was unique in that it contained two divisions which were not featured in the UFC, the featherweight and bantamweight divisions. But once the UFC decided to add those divisions to its own programming, it simultaneously dropped the curtain on the WEC as a whole.
The only thing that Strikeforce has that is unique from the UFC in terms of fighting divisions is the women’s divisions. While some of us are entertained by these bad-ass ladies, there is still a huge population of the MMA community that has not—and likely never will—latch onto the idea that females can be entertaining in any sport, let alone a combat sport.
While Dana White has repeatedly stated that he has little-to-no interest in having the women’s divisions be a part of the UFC, it’s extremely hard to believe that the women’s divisions alone would keep Strikeforce from being eaten up by the UFC. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the female divisions will be an eventual casualty to the Zuffa purchase.
Like the WEC toward the end, Strikeforce had trouble establishing itself as its own brand in competition with the UFC. The term “Ultimate Fighting” remains very prominent in the casual fanbase and Strikeforce and the WEC simply have not been able to conquer that in order to establish fans of their own. Almost no one in the world is solely a Strikeforce fan. But a big chunk of fans are strictly UFC fans.
This simple, yet significant distinction is why there really is no reason for the UFC to keep the Strikeforce brand around. There just really isn’t anything compelling happening in Strikeforce that would keep fans interested past the end of 2011. The Heavyweight Grand Prix tournament has been successful in generating interest, but that should be completed by the end of the year.
After that, Strikeforce essentially becomes “UFC B-Squad” in terms of excitement level. It is at that point which we could see Dana White breaking news once again about the UFC and Strikeforce officially combining rosters, solely under the UFC name.
Whether or not this is the beginning of the end for Strikeforce remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain—this is not business as usual.
I called it, you called it, that guy definitely didn’t call it and his buddy is still clamoring for a super-fight between Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre.Well, UFC president Dana White—I must sound like a broken vinyl copy of your favo…
I called it, you called it, that guy definitely didn’t call it and his buddy is still clamoring for a super-fight between Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre.
Well, UFC president Dana White—I must sound like a broken vinyl copy of your favorite 80’s hair band by now; love him or hate him, the bald boss man has struck a fan friendly medium when mixing business with MMA enthusiasts’ pleasures time and time again—has announced Georges St-Pierre vs. Nick Diaz for UFC 137.
This is the true super-fight many hardcore fans wanted to see after Diaz defended his Strikeforce welterweight strap against British slugger Paul Daley in a wildly epic struggle back in April.
Of course obstacles like contractual obligations could care less how bad we wanted to see the fight; Nick Diaz had certain professional baggage with Showtime that was interfering with any immediate plans to cross-promote between both Zuffa promotions, UFC and Strikeforce.
Furthermore, in recent interviews, “DW” had hinted at more than just his ruffled relationship with Showtime as a major thorn in the side of pitting fighters from both organizations together in the near future.
So as wild as the passionate fan’s imagination got after news broke that UFC bought Strikeforce, the honeymoon had waned and reality was setting in on how the co-existing landscape would look like for the next couple of years.
Matches like Cain Velasquez vs. Alistair Overeem, Fedor Emelianenko vs. anybody in the octagon, Gilbert Melendez vs. Frankie Edgar and GSP vs. Nick Diaz were becoming more of an unattainable pipedream for all of us fight nerds in the world.
At least, so everyone assumed. But now, just like that, Dana White has blessed us once again like the Santa Claus of MMA he is and has heeded the voices of the people, who have helped get him where he is today. I’m not trying to swing from Dana’s sack like an orangutan fanboy, but when he’s done good by the fans, I’ll be the first to trickle down praise.
Now that GSP is officially defending his title against Nick Diaz, champion vs. champion, it begs the questions, the analysis and stylistic input that is dying to be inked onto paper.
Let’s embrace the instant gratification and impatient ticks that modern society has prison-tattooed in our psyche for a moment to take a quick peek at how the two champs fair against each other.
At this point in GSP’s reign as the UFC’s 170-pound kingpin, people were starting to voice their concern for the lack of competitive challenges in the division, that the champ had very few tests left in his own weight division.
As a result, what makes this a sought after fight for fans is the fact that many believe Diaz is the last legitimate contender and threat to the French-Canadian superstar’s crown, regardless if the challenger was competing in a different promotion.
To be honest, no matter how great GSP’s challengers have been in the sport individually, collectively they were dismantled with relative ease come fight night—a playing factor in why the champ has become comfortable playing it safe…because he can.
Come on, nobody really thought GSP’s last three opponents, Dan Hardy through Jake Shields, were really his most dangerous. He’d love to tell you so, in order to stay modest, but nobody familiar with the sport was betting their child’s college fund on any of those challengers.
Nick Diaz is an extremely different type of fighter than Hardy, Koscheck, Shields or even St-Pierre, which makes him a real threat. Going into this championship fight, we can finally rest assured that GSP will be thoroughly challenged, if anything, which hasn’t happened in a long while. Some of us actually believe Diaz has a better chance of dethroning the champ than any previous contender.
If there is one characteristic that can sum up both Nick Diaz the person and Nick Diaz the fighter, it’s his insurmountable will to push forward and impose his dominant array of fighting spirit, toughness and technique.
He lives and breathes what he stands for as an athlete and competitor in mixed martial arts—an intoxicating attribute nurtured at Cesar Gracie’s camp in Stockton and executed by his teammate in the “Scrap Pack.”
Comparing the champs, Diaz’ approach to fighting is the polar opposite of GSP’s. Simply put, he has embraced the “fighting” aspect of MMA over the athleticism. Diaz’ ambivalence to the “game” or pure stubbornness has allowed him the mental dexterity to apply his technique to his brash aggression in matches.
When the bell rings in the octagon, Diaz will not be fazed by standing across from the mystical St-Pierre. He will not hold back in hopes of out pointing the champ either. Diaz is the type of fighter that lives and dies by his style, which has paid off more times than not.
In my humble opinion, Diaz embodies exactly what a fan should want in a true fighter and MMA champion.
It’s too early for me to predict Diaz for the win, but at least we will finally get to see St-Pierre pushed against the wall. We’ll get to witness a champion—who takes risks while still defending his title successfully in the most memorable ways—take it the UFC’s pound-for-pound welterweight.
Finally, a true test has come along for both champions.
Rewind to WEC 53 in December.