By now everyone has seen that top UFC star and reigning 145-pound UFC Champion “The Notorious” Conor McGregor has gotten the pro wrestling world riled up with his recent comments during the official media call (listen here) for his upcoming rematch aga…
By now everyone has seen that top UFC star and reigning 145-pound UFC Champion “The Notorious” Conor McGregor has gotten the pro wrestling world riled up with his recent comments during the official media call (listen here) for his upcoming rematch against Nate Diaz in the main event of this month’s UFC 202 pay-per-view.
McGregor spoke about Brock Lesnar’s failed UFC drug tests for his UFC 200 fight against Mark Hunt. “The Notorious” one gave “The Beast Incarnate” credit for stepping into the Octagon, but pointed out his belief that he was “juiced up to his eyeballs.”
McGregor wouldn’t give his opinion on former WWE Superstar turned UFC hopeful CM Punk (Phil Brooks), noting that he hasn’t seen him fight yet, but did take aim at the entire WWE roster. According to McGregor, for the most part, everyone in WWE are “f*cking p*ssies.”
On Sunday, afternoon, McGregor took to his official Twitter page, where he apologized to the WWE fans, noting he never meant to disrespect them. Of course, he followed that up by saying, “What I meant to say was that I’d slap the head off your entire roster. And twice on Sunday’s.”
Two more WWE talents have spoken out about McGregor’s comments, as WWE Hall Of Famer “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair and up-and-coming prospect Tommaso Ciampa were the latest to chime in with a response for the UFC mega-star.
Coming from a guy who built a career copying my persona, I expected the type of class we get from Ronda or Anderson. pic.twitter.com/iVoC0Xva5g
UFC featherweight Conor McGregor may have another fight to worry about instead of his UFC 202 contest against Nate Diaz, and it’s with the entire World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) locker room. In a recent media conference call for UFC 202, McGregor was asked if he would ever consider a career in the industry of professional
UFC featherweight Conor McGregor may have another fight to worry about instead of his UFC 202 contest against Nate Diaz, and it’s with the entire World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) locker room.
In a recent media conference call for UFC 202, McGregor was asked if he would ever consider a career in the industry of professional wrestling, and had this to say:
“For the most part, those WWE guys are p*ssies, to be honest,” McGregor said. “They’re messed up p*ssies, if you ask me. Fair play to Brock [Lesnar], he got in and fought, but at the end of the day he was juiced up to the f*cking eye balls, so how can I respect that? And then what’s the other guy? The other guy hasn’t fought yet, so I don’t know about him yet.”
“There’s some dons in that wrestling game,” McGregor said. “The McMahons, they’re dons. Triple H is a don. The Rock is a don. But the rest of them are p*ssies.”
“I haven’t really thought of that to be honest,” he said. “Again, that’s a little more show business. This is the fight business.”
McGregor would take a lot of heat from WWE fans following his comments, and took to Twitter to apologize in his own special way:
I didn't mean no disrespect to the @wwe fans. What I meant to say was that I'd slap the head off your entire roster. And twice on Sunday's.
Mixed martial arts, the velvet painting of the sports world, is coated with a sheen of the ridiculous. Like its artistic counterpart, it’s something you’re likely to see at a country fair. It’s gaudy and awful and you can’t look away.
But the colors po…
Mixed martial arts, the velvet painting of the sports world, is coated with a sheen of the ridiculous. Like its artistic counterpart, it’s something you’re likely to see at a country fair. It’s gaudy and awful and you can’t look away.
But the colors pop like nothing else, and honestly, who doesn’t love the athletic equivalent of dogs playing poker now and then?
Everything about it is lurid and over the top. Vladimir Putin, a cartoon of a man, is a fan for God’s sake. The violence is absurd, eight limbs competing to bludgeon, choke and twist. The fighters are a cornucopia of tattooed glory, men with a decided lack of father figures and/or aptitude for more prestigious and lucrative sports.
Even the authority figures, Dana White in the UFC and Bjorn Rebney in Bellator, are living caricatures of an aging bro and sleazy car salesman, respectively. In this sport, the company president can lie with a straight face and then turn around and direct an expletive-ridden tweet at a fan or reporter. And no one will blink.
The only thing more ridiculous than the fighters are the fans who battle an inferiority complex that may never quite disappear. Mixed martial arts is most certainly not serious business.
I lead with this just so you understand that I get it. While I recognize that the consequences can be all too serious, the sport itself is a constant comedy show. I don’t decry tomfoolery. I am all for it! You won’t see me crying crocodile tears about who “deserves” title shots or attempting to stifle fun voices on the fringe like Nick Diaz and Chael Sonnen.
But there has to be a line. Some subjects are simply too sacrosanct to be broached without some significant thought. And that’s why I demand, loudly and publicly, that UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey stop comparing herself and her posse to the iconic Four Horsemen.
Girls just want to have fun. I understand. And what’s not fun about pro wrestling, a fake version of mixed martial arts where the violence and the muscular bodies defy even our wildest imaginations? Pro wrestling is the best. Watch this delightfully deranged Ultimate Warrior video and see if you can stop yourself from smiling.
The Horsemen, however, are no laughing matter. In parts of the South, in the 1980s at least, they were all but a religion. You might, in fact, miss church on Sundays. It was known to happen. But no self-respecting Southerner would ever miss their wrestling fix.
For decades, it was a tradition we could count on. At 6:05 p.m. on Saturday night, a generation of young men could be found gathered around the boob tube. Powered by Jim Crockett Promotions and the mighty satellite in the sky that beamed Ted Turner’s channel 17 nationwide, wrestling ruled the airwaves.
And the Four Horsemen ruled wrestling.
Ric Flair was the leader. As the world heavyweight champion, it was his right and his place. Bleached blond, masculine yet flamboyant and never at a loss for words, he was the epitome of the cocky villain.
At his right hand stood Arn Anderson. A storyline cousin, he was the no-nonsense enforcer. You understood, implicitly, that he was a man who would sacrifice body, soul and even his own ambitions to keep Flair safe. A secondary title belt and a seat at the table were more than enough for “Double A.”
To the champion’s left was Tully Blanchard, the poor man’s Flair. Like “The Nature Boy,” Blanchard was a smooth, Scotch-drinking sophisticate. He wined and dined with the best of them. Rocked the sequin robes. Coveted. While Anderson was loyalty, you could practically see Blanchard’s gears turning. He didn’t want to be Flair’s protege forever. He wanted to be Flair.
The fourth man, in the beginning, was Ole Anderson. A gritty veteran with a gift for violence and gab in equal measure, Anderson and his brother Gene owned wrestling in the Carolinas and Georgia throughout the 1970s. Though he never quite fit in conceptually, he was a bridge to wrestling’s past, royalty if misplaced.
There had been factions in wrestling before the Horsemen. But to compare the Heenan Family to the Horsemen is to compare an Oldsmobile to a Ferrari.
In 1986, the Horsemen were now. Rocking Rolexes, barely buttoned Armani suits and Italian shoes, they were a small taste of luxury. They talked it and walked it, winning every title belt that mattered.
Women wanted them, and men wanted to be them.
They were bad guys but in name only. Wrestling, so long the domain of black and white, was changing. The Horsemen were the villains—but they were the bad guys that fans couldn’t help but love. Fans started coming to the matches dressed to the nines, their best suit a solid proxy for Flair’s finery.
Yes, they beat the living hell out of Dusty Rhodes, an overweight and overbearing older star hanging onto faded glory. They brutally assaulted the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, babyfaced pretty boys that your girlfriend likely thought about way too often.
Was that really a bad thing? Wasn’t there a small part of us that reveled in it all? That wanted to raise those four fingers and let out a long, soulful “Woooooo!”
Just thinking about the Four Horsemen makes me happy. I doubt I’m alone.
Which brings us, ever so slowly, to Rousey. The new queen of the UFC, she is one of the sport’s brightest stars. She combines unspeakable swagger with a killer instinct unlike any we’ve ever seen from a female fighter. Part Flair, part Anderson, she’s in the process of building a legend every bit as bright as her male peers.
Along the way, like many fighters, she’s found her lifemates on the mat. Marina Shafir is her longtime friend and training partner. Jessamyn Duke is her protege, a young fighter whom she adopted while filming The Ultimate Fighter and decided to keep. Shayna Baszler is the grizzled veteran, a catch-wrestling practitioner who was fighting before the spotlight shined bright.
Baszler, a lifelong wrestling fan, has made WWE Raw a staple of their household.
“Since Shayna moved in, our group activity is that we sit down and watch Raw and all this stuff together,” Rousey told After Buzz TV. “It’s like our little family time…Shayna totally converted our whole house into a super pro wrestling house.“
Like all right-thinking people, they’ve gravitated toward the Horsemen. Nearly 30 years after they first came onto the scene, the power of the idea is still that strong.
It’s easy, in fact, to place their Horsemen analogues. Ronda—the blond, bombastic champion—is Flair. Marina, her rock, is Arn. Jessamyn, young and not quite ready to cede dominance to Ronda forever, is Tully. And Shayna is Ole, the holdover from a previous generation.
But just because you can make a comparison doesn’t mean you should. What made the Horsemen special was each man’s individual accomplishments and pedigree. It was a special conglomerate because they were all champions in their own right.
The women’s version has just one star—Rousey. The other women merely float in her orbit. Duke has yet to prove herself. Shafir hasn’t even made her professional debut. Baszler, a gutsy and valiant fighter, has never stepped up and proved herself to be a legitimate world-class competitor.
This isn’t the Four Horsemen. It’s Lady Flair and the Job Squad.
MMA and pro wrestling share a common heritage. In many ways they are mirror images of each other. It makes sense for concepts to float between them, the way Sonnen borrowed Superstar Billy Graham and unleashed him on an unsuspecting populace.
Graham, however, was an archetype. His patter, in turn, was borrowed from Muhammad Ali and Thunderbolt Patterson.
The Horsemen are bigger than that. They are a piece of Americana, among the greatest performance artists of their era. You cannot possibly recreate them. Should you try, you could never succeed.
Take something else from wrestling. Be silly. Mimic a match before training. Be the next NWO. Carry an oversized cell phone and call yourselves the Dangerous Alliance. But leave the Horsemen out of it. Some shoes are too big to fill.
Mixed martial arts, the velvet painting of the sports world, is coated with a sheen of the ridiculous. Like its artistic counterpart, it’s something you’re likely to see at a country fair. It’s gaudy and awful and you can’t look away.
But the colors po…
Mixed martial arts, the velvet painting of the sports world, is coated with a sheen of the ridiculous. Like its artistic counterpart, it’s something you’re likely to see at a country fair. It’s gaudy and awful and you can’t look away.
But the colors pop like nothing else, and honestly, who doesn’t love the athletic equivalent of dogs playing poker now and then?
Everything about it is lurid and over the top. Vladimir Putin, a cartoon of a man, is a fan for God’s sake. The violence is absurd, eight limbs competing to bludgeon, choke and twist. The fighters are a cornucopia of tattooed glory, men with a decided lack of father figures and/or aptitude for more prestigious and lucrative sports.
Even the authority figures, Dana White in the UFC and Bjorn Rebney in Bellator, are living caricatures of an aging bro and sleazy car salesman, respectively. In this sport, the company president can lie with a straight face and then turn around and direct an expletive-ridden tweet at a fan or reporter. And no one will blink.
The only thing more ridiculous than the fighters are the fans who battle an inferiority complex that may never quite disappear. Mixed martial arts is most certainly not serious business.
I lead with this just so you understand that I get it. While I recognize that the consequences can be all too serious, the sport itself is a constant comedy show. I don’t decry tomfoolery. I am all for it! You won’t see me crying crocodile tears about who “deserves” title shots or attempting to stifle fun voices on the fringe like Nick Diaz and Chael Sonnen.
But there has to be a line. Some subjects are simply too sacrosanct to be broached without some significant thought. And that’s why I demand, loudly and publicly, that UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey stop comparing herself and her posse to the iconic Four Horsemen.
Girls just want to have fun. I understand. And what’s not fun about pro wrestling, a fake version of mixed martial arts where the violence and the muscular bodies defy even our wildest imaginations? Pro wrestling is the best. Watch this delightfully deranged Ultimate Warrior video and see if you can stop yourself from smiling.
The Horsemen, however, are no laughing matter. In parts of the South, in the 1980s at least, they were all but a religion. You might, in fact, miss church on Sundays. It was known to happen. But no self-respecting Southerner would ever miss their wrestling fix.
For decades, it was a tradition we could count on. At 6:05 p.m. on Saturday night, a generation of young men could be found gathered around the boob tube. Powered by Jim Crockett Promotions and the mighty satellite in the sky that beamed Ted Turner’s channel 17 nationwide, wrestling ruled the airwaves.
And the Four Horsemen ruled wrestling.
Ric Flair was the leader. As the world heavyweight champion, it was his right and his place. Bleached blond, masculine yet flamboyant and never at a loss for words, he was the epitome of the cocky villain.
At his right hand stood Arn Anderson. A storyline cousin, he was the no-nonsense enforcer. You understood, implicitly, that he was a man who would sacrifice body, soul and even his own ambitions to keep Flair safe. A secondary title belt and a seat at the table were more than enough for “Double A.”
To the champion’s left was Tully Blanchard, the poor man’s Flair. Like “The Nature Boy,” Blanchard was a smooth, Scotch-drinking sophisticate. He wined and dined with the best of them. Rocked the sequin robes. Coveted. While Anderson was loyalty, you could practically see Blanchard’s gears turning. He didn’t want to be Flair’s protege forever. He wanted to be Flair.
The fourth man, in the beginning, was Ole Anderson. A gritty veteran with a gift for violence and gab in equal measure, Anderson and his brother Gene owned wrestling in the Carolinas and Georgia throughout the 1970s. Though he never quite fit in conceptually, he was a bridge to wrestling’s past, royalty if misplaced.
There had been factions in wrestling before the Horsemen. But to compare the Heenan Family to the Horsemen is to compare an Oldsmobile to a Ferrari.
In 1986, the Horsemen were now. Rocking Rolexes, barely buttoned Armani suits and Italian shoes, they were a small taste of luxury. They talked it and walked it, winning every title belt that mattered.
Women wanted them, and men wanted to be them.
They were bad guys but in name only. Wrestling, so long the domain of black and white, was changing. The Horsemen were the villains—but they were the bad guys that fans couldn’t help but love. Fans started coming to the matches dressed to the nines, their best suit a solid proxy for Flair’s finery.
Yes, they beat the living hell out of Dusty Rhodes, an overweight and overbearing older star hanging onto faded glory. They brutally assaulted the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, babyfaced pretty boys that your girlfriend likely thought about way too often.
Was that really a bad thing? Wasn’t there a small part of us that reveled in it all? That wanted to raise those four fingers and let out a long, soulful “Woooooo!”
Just thinking about the Four Horsemen makes me happy. I doubt I’m alone.
Which brings us, ever so slowly, to Rousey. The new queen of the UFC, she is one of the sport’s brightest stars. She combines unspeakable swagger with a killer instinct unlike any we’ve ever seen from a female fighter. Part Flair, part Anderson, she’s in the process of building a legend every bit as bright as her male peers.
Along the way, like many fighters, she’s found her lifemates on the mat. Marina Shafir is her longtime friend and training partner. Jessamyn Duke is her protege, a young fighter whom she adopted while filming The Ultimate Fighter and decided to keep. Shayna Baszler is the grizzled veteran, a catch-wrestling practitioner who was fighting before the spotlight shined bright.
Baszler, a lifelong wrestling fan, has made WWE Raw a staple of their household.
“Since Shayna moved in, our group activity is that we sit down and watch Raw and all this stuff together,” Rousey told After Buzz TV. “It’s like our little family time…Shayna totally converted our whole house into a super pro wrestling house.“
Like all right-thinking people, they’ve gravitated toward the Horsemen. Nearly 30 years after they first came onto the scene, the power of the idea is still that strong.
It’s easy, in fact, to place their Horsemen analogues. Ronda—the blond, bombastic champion—is Flair. Marina, her rock, is Arn. Jessamyn, young and not quite ready to cede dominance to Ronda forever, is Tully. And Shayna is Ole, the holdover from a previous generation.
But just because you can make a comparison doesn’t mean you should. What made the Horsemen special was each man’s individual accomplishments and pedigree. It was a special conglomerate because they were all champions in their own right.
The women’s version has just one star—Rousey. The other women merely float in her orbit. Duke has yet to prove herself. Shafir hasn’t even made her professional debut. Baszler, a gutsy and valiant fighter, has never stepped up and proved herself to be a legitimate world-class competitor.
This isn’t the Four Horsemen. It’s Lady Flair and the Job Squad.
MMA and pro wrestling share a common heritage. In many ways they are mirror images of each other. It makes sense for concepts to float between them, the way Sonnen borrowed Superstar Billy Graham and unleashed him on an unsuspecting populace.
Graham, however, was an archetype. His patter, in turn, was borrowed from Muhammad Ali and Thunderbolt Patterson.
The Horsemen are bigger than that. They are a piece of Americana, among the greatest performance artists of their era. You cannot possibly recreate them. Should you try, you could never succeed.
Take something else from wrestling. Be silly. Mimic a match before training. Be the next NWO. Carry an oversized cell phone and call yourselves the Dangerous Alliance. But leave the Horsemen out of it. Some shoes are too big to fill.
Silver-tongued UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen is revolutionizing MMA with his outlandish antics, and for the better.What exactly is he doing?He’s guiding the UFC into a transitional era in its history; Sonnen is the harbinger of the most important trans…
Silver-tongued UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen is revolutionizing MMA with his outlandish antics, and for the better.
What exactly is he doing?
He’s guiding the UFC into a transitional era in its history; Sonnen is the harbinger of the most important transformation in the history of the company: Turning the UFC into a real WWE.
Now, before you write a scathing, vitriolic comment, hear me out.
Recently, Sonnen did an interview in which he proclaimed himself the real middleweight champion and even brought his own belt to the interview. He said similar words (and still brought the “real” belt) at the UFC on FOX 2 pre-fight press conference.
Approximately 20 years ago, famed professional wrestler Ric Flair appeared on WWE (then WWF) programming with his own belt (the NWA title) and proclaimed that he was the real world champion.
The similarities are obvious; Sonnen brilliantly took a page out of professional wrestling’s book and in doing so entertained the masses.
Throughout the UFC’s history, the marketing pendulum swung between the entertainment aspect and the sporting aspect to sell the brand.
In the early days, the focus was on entertainment and violence. When Zuffa took over, the emphasis shifted on athleticism and sport; the men were athletes and not brawlers.
Then, when The Ultimate Fighter debuted, the emphasis switched back to entertainment briefly before the show became passè and the athleticism of fighters like UFC welterweight Georges St.Pierre was emphasized.
However, athleticism doesn’t always sell.
The pay-per-view buy rates weren’t impressive in 2011; it appeared as though the UFC stagnated in that year.
Enter the deal with FOX. Surely this is guaranteed to increase the UFC’s growth, right?
Not necessarily.
People may know the UFC brand but only so many of those people care about the sport of MMA. If FOX had to sell a UFC event based off of a Jon Fitch highlight reel, could they do it?
No, because people watch sports to be entertained.
This is why Sonnen’s trash talking and over-the-top antics are inherently brilliant: He is entertaining the “unwashed” masses who don’t particularly appreciate the finer points of MMA whilst also appeasing the hardcore fans who know and love everything about the sport.
He is promising sports for the sports fans and entertainment for those who just want a show as well as something to discuss at the water cooler.
Through his brashness and verbal wit, he’s transforming MMA into real pro-wrestling, the UFC into the WWE of old.
This isn’t to be feared and hated by self-proclaimed “hardcore” fans of MMA.
By becoming a truly memorable personality and by doing so on FOX, Sonnen is beginning to change the landscape of the sport.
Fighters will see how he resurrected his career by embracing professional wrestling “promos” and begin to adopt them as well.
Thus, thanks to Chael Sonnen’s blending of professional wrestling and MMA, the UFC will rise up and become a part of American (and global) society for decades.
Prominent UFC fighters will become heroes like Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior.
The only difference will be that the fighting is real.
Mixed martial arts, the velvet painting of the sports world, is coated with a sheen of the ridiculous. Like its artistic counterpart, it’s something you’re likely to see at a country fair. It’s gaudy and awful and you can’t look away.