WSOF 35 went down late Saturday and into Sunday morning live from the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, NY. Featuring a main card with three title fights, the event was capped by a heavyweight title showdown between former UFC heavyweight Shawn Jordan (19–7), and World Series of Fighting champ Blagoy Ivanonv 14–1 (1). The […]
WSOF 35 went down late Saturday and into Sunday morning live from the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, NY. Featuring a main card with three title fights, the event was capped by a heavyweight title showdown between former UFC heavyweight Shawn Jordan (19–7), and World Series of Fighting champ Blagoy Ivanonv 14–1 (1). The […]
Shawn Jordan has a shot at gold tonight (March 18). Jordan will compete for the World Series of Fighting (WSOF) heavyweight title against the champion Blagoy Ivanov. They’ll do battle inside the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, NY. The title bout will serve as WSOF 35’s main event. After his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) […]
Shawn Jordan has a shot at gold tonight (March 18). Jordan will compete for the World Series of Fighting (WSOF) heavyweight title against the champion Blagoy Ivanov. They’ll do battle inside the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, NY. The title bout will serve as WSOF 35’s main event. After his Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) […]
World Series of Fighting (WSOF) finally has a location for its event on March 18. Today (Feb. 3) the promotion announced that WSOF 35 will be held inside the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, NY. The heavyweight title bout between champion Blagoy Ivanov (14-1) and Shawn Jordan (19-7) remains as the event’s headliner. […]
World Series of Fighting (WSOF) finally has a location for its event on March 18. Today (Feb. 3) the promotion announced that WSOF 35 will be held inside the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, NY. The heavyweight title bout between champion Blagoy Ivanov (14-1) and Shawn Jordan (19-7) remains as the event’s headliner. […]
UFC heavyweight competitor Shawn Jordan is reportedly unhappy with the amount he is being paid by the UFC, and has once again expressed interest in fighting for Bellator MMA. Previously, Jo…
UFC heavyweight competitor Shawn Jordan is reportedly unhappy with the amount he is being paid by the UFC, and has once again expressed interest in fighting for Bellator MMA. Previously, Jordan had hoped to fight Fedor Emelianenko in December in Bellator.
After an abundance of trash talk, a pre-fight press conference brawl, asking pussies if they’re still there, technical breakdowns, and moving betting lines, Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier duked it out for five rounds in an early “Fight of the Year” candidate, which went exactly how most of us thought it would. The main card of UFC 182, however, was pretty putrid.
Our excitement was at an all-time high, which is rare nowadays when it comes to MMA in general. This truly felt like 2008 all over again, but sometimes, we rely on nostalgia to compare upcoming fight cards that may or may not be worth viewing live.
Nevertheless, Jones vs. Cormier lived up to the billing, as both light heavyweights engaged in a dogfight at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, NV., this past Saturday night.
After an abundance of trash talk, a pre-fight press conference brawl, asking pussies if they’re still there, technical breakdowns, and moving betting lines, Jon Jones and Daniel Cormier duked it out for five rounds in an early “Fight of the Year” candidate, which went exactly how most of us thought it would. The main card of UFC 182, however, was pretty putrid.
Our excitement was at an all-time high, which is rare nowadays when it comes to MMA in general. This truly felt like 2008 all over again, but sometimes, we rely on nostalgia to compare upcoming fight cards that may or may not be worth viewing live.
Nevertheless, Jones vs. Cormier lived up to the billing, as both light heavyweights engaged in a dogfight at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, NV., this past Saturday night.
Truth be told, their fight couldn’t have come any sooner to save the day. There was uncontrolled excitement running through our veins Saturday morning, but after the FOX Sports 1 and Fight Pass prelims concluded, we were better off rummaging through our Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box Edition and watching some of our favorite episodes.
The prelims were off to a raucous start, with Marion Reneau pummeling Alexis Dufresne in a unanimous decision win, and making the latter look like she came straight out of those So You Wanna Fight? events we used to see on our PPV listing (they must be at #341 by now…talk about real oversaturation). The highlight from that fight was Dufresne’s pathetic corner, who had too much pride to throw in the towel and actually made it seen like their fighter could have bounced back when she lost every second of that fight.
After Omari Akhmedov and Evan Dunham returned to winning ways over Mats Nilsson and Rodrigo Damm, respectively, Shawn Jordan scored another highlight-reel knockout over the debuting Jared Cannonier. Then, Team Alpha Male witnessed some ups and downs, as rising prospect Cody Garbrandt scored a stoppage victory over Marcus Brimage with 10 seconds left in the round.
Although the happiness was short-lived, as Paul Felder, taking the fight on short notice, blasted Danny Castillo with a spinning back forearm that sent “Last Call” into the Himalayas. If Garbrandt was seen as one of the starlets of the under card, the undefeated lightweight stole his thunder minutes later, and even walked out of Las Vegas $50,000 richer. The downside is with the sheer volume of athletes competing inside the Octagon these days, it’s impossible for bar bros to remember their names come Monday morning.
The main card was supposed to be off to bang, since Hector Lombard was going to smother the returning Josh Burkman in seconds. However, the former WSOF welterweight title challenger hung in there, hands down and guns blazing, stepping up to “Showeather” and looked good early. Lombard eventually cracked Burkman enough times to convince us the scrap was a lot more lopsided than we initially thought, earning the unanimous decision victory and disappointing UFC President Dana White in the process, since he thought the winner should have tried harder to finish.
Then, it all went miserably downhill from there. You know, there are plenty of things to do on a Saturday night when staying in. MMA fans have sacrificed hitting the club or having a meaningful social life outside of the bubble, and that’s okay. But watching the next three fights (all involving popular fighters like Donald Cerrone, Nate Marquardt, and according to Fightland, the next Prime Minister of Japan, flyweight Kyoji Horiguchi), over the NFL wildcard playoff between the Steelers vs. the Ravens, Saturday Night Live, a black market copy of Birdman, or Louie on Netflix was an absurd decision. I’m not saying the main card of UFC 182 wins The 2015 Potato Award for Greatest-Hype Deflation, but it’s definitely worth consideration.
The main event was a straight-up dogfight, and even looked like a street fight at times. The battle was highly competitive for the first three rounds, as “Bones” was off to a flashy start, throwing strikes from every angle with every limb. It was the back-and-forth scuffle we hoped it would be, thanks to “D.C.” staying in Jones’ face and willing to close the distance, or better yet, nullify the champion’s reach advantage in the clinch. If the first round went to Jones, then it was fair to award Cormier the second.
The tide turned when Jones, who swore he could take down Cormier and presumably started this mess, took the Olympic wrestler down at will, and stuffed his adversary’s attempts, too. From that moment on, it seemed as if Cormier let the fight slip past him, with AKA’s Javier Mendez and Bob Cook yelling in his face while he sat on the stool before the fifth frame.
The challenger didn’t do much to finish the fight in the final round like he needed to, and instead, went for the takedown because of pride issues. He scored somewhat of a toss, and grappled with the champion when he should have separated and swung for the fences. As the fight concluded, Jones, who had given “D.C.” the crotch chop seconds after the final horn, blasted his adversary in his post-fight interview and told fans to return their “Break Bones” t-shirts. Finally, “Bones” embraced the heel persona, and did as good as Shawn Michaels did on The Barber Shop.
A while back, UFC announcer Bruce Buffer compared Jones to Muhammad Ali. Considering Jones was prepping for the Ryan Bader fight at UFC 126, and hadn’t even won his coveted 205-pound strap yet, some knew the comparison would eventually come to fruition, while others chose not to believe it. Ironically, leading up to this contest, there was a lot of talk as Jones being Ali, and Cormier serving as his Joe Frazier, even though “Bones” thought Alexander Gustafsson better suited the part.
However which way the media wants to spin it, Jones isn’t Ali, and quite frankly, he’s something even greater in the sport of MMA. Nobody talks the same way as they did when referring to Anderson Silva and Fedor Emilianenko, and with Georges St-Pierre absent from the whole scenario, Jones truly is the greatest fighter on planet earth right now, and maybe the greatest ever. It’s not like the main event was as close as Jones’ scrap against “The Mauler” at UFC 165.
When it comes to “Gus,” if the Swede beats Anthony Johnson later this month at UFC on FOX 14, he’s obviously next. But the division is so thin that “Rumble” would earn his spot against Jones if he pulls off the upset against the former title challenger.
But you have to wonder what happens after that. Jones sticking around to face his old foes would get tiresome, and maybe even pointless. Some are under the impression that “Bones” should move to heavyweight after his next fight, which would be the right call. If Jones was announced to face Cain Velasquez in four months from now, I’ll go out on a limb and say not only could he win the heavyweight title, he could even be favored. It’s all speculation at this point, yet this athlete is just too special, being 27 years old and already beating the division’s most dangerous fighters. We can say that he may not have even entered his prime yet, but we can also agree he’s wiped out everyone he’s had to in order to be called the greatest, with not much else to prove.
Apart from a lackluster PPV card, UFC 182’s main event was the perfect way to start off 2015, even though problems will continue to persist, like domestic abuse cases being thrown out the window, drug testing woes, odd MMA debuts, PPV price increases and the other nonsense we have to put up with. Apart from the cool Fight Pass library news, some other stuff has been getting us mildly intrigued, like Bellator in it to win it, Brock Lesnar’s rumored return, and the potential superfight involving Ariel Helwani vs. Front Row Brian at Cowboys Stadium (now the AT&T Stadium), stemming from their continued fight announcement rivalry.
Let’s not hold our hopes high for a groundbreaking year. We’re just praying it’s better than the last.
Don’t let the “A” in MMA fool you, mixed martial arts fighters are *not* artists…at least, not in the traditional sense of the term. Look no further than the hilariously atrocious inkwork that so often adorns their bodies for proof of this. Between the non-tribal tribal arm bands, the last name tramp stamps, and the ill-advised branding attempts, MMA fighters (and their fans — see above) sport some of the worst tattoos you’ll ever see outside of a prison cell. But who has the worst tattoo of them all? The CagePotato Roundtable investigates…
Matt Horwich‘s musical pencil is like something out of a nightmare. It’s a bunch of unrelated visual signifiers held together by an inscrutable logic, and the only thing being conveyed is dread. You wake up sweating after seeing this thing, and you tell your wife, “Shit, I had that dream about my stepfather again, but this time he was a pencil,” and she looks at you, trying to feign sympathy, but the apparition simply can’t be verbalized. Words will never do it justice, because it’s so much more than just “pencil, musical notes, angry face,” it’s what the pencil represents. That goddamned abusive drunk piece of shit, who hated himself because he couldn’t write songs like Neil Diamond, so he took it out on you and your mom. That face. You could put it on a cantaloupe, a hammer, the front of a steamboat, and it would still be him.
Look, I get it, Matt Horwich is eccentric. His concept of reality is not the same as yours. I’m trying to avoid judgment here, but I just can’t relate to the sort of mind that would put this on his body. It’s awful. A worn-down pencil with a ragged eraser. A face devoid of most human characteristics. And three notes — whole note, half note, quarter note! — flying upwards. It’s not a singing pencil. It’s a scowling pencil with musical notation ejecting from the end that is responsible for deletion, not creation. It’s a contradiction, and it’s unsettling. The pencil seems to be straining to get these notes out, and for what? To express that the artistic process is torture? Does the pencil wish it was a violin instead? Does Matt Horwich even remember getting this tattoo, or did it just kind of appear one day? You’re seeing it too, right? The pencil with the face? I’m not crazy, am I?
(And this debate is ALLLLLLLL OVVVERRRRR!!!)
Don’t let the “A” in MMA fool you, mixed martial arts fighters are *not* artists…at least, not in the traditional sense of the term. Look no further than the hilariously atrocious inkwork that so often adorns their bodies for proof of this. Between the non-tribal tribal arm bands, the last name tramp stamps, and the ill-advised branding attempts, MMA fighters (and their fans — see above) sport some of the worst tattoos you’ll ever see outside of a prison cell. But who has the worst tattoo of them all? The CagePotato Roundtable investigates…
Matt Horwich‘s musical pencil is like something out of a nightmare. It’s a bunch of unrelated visual signifiers held together by an inscrutable logic, and the only thing being conveyed is dread. You wake up sweating after seeing this thing, and you tell your wife, “Shit, I had that dream about my stepfather again, but this time he was a pencil,” and she looks at you, trying to feign sympathy, but the apparition simply can’t be verbalized. Words will never do it justice, because it’s so much more than just “pencil, musical notes, angry face,” it’s what the pencil represents. That goddamned abusive drunk piece of shit, who hated himself because he couldn’t write songs like Neil Diamond, so he took it out on you and your mom. That face. You could put it on a cantaloupe, a hammer, the front of a steamboat, and it would still be him.
Look, I get it, Matt Horwich is eccentric. His concept of reality is not the same as yours. I’m trying to avoid judgment here, but I just can’t relate to the sort of mind that would put this on his body. It’s awful. A worn-down pencil with a ragged eraser. A face devoid of most human characteristics. And three notes — whole note, half note, quarter note! — flying upwards. It’s not a singing pencil. It’s a scowling pencil with musical notation ejecting from the end that is responsible for deletion, not creation. It’s a contradiction, and it’s unsettling. The pencil seems to be straining to get these notes out, and for what? To express that the artistic process is torture? Does the pencil wish it was a violin instead? Does Matt Horwich even remember getting this tattoo, or did it just kind of appear one day? You’re seeing it too, right? The pencil with the face? I’m not crazy, am I?
Portraits are the improv comedy of the tattoo world. Combine a talented artist with a great subject and the right canvas, and, yeah, you have a pretty great piece of work that you can appreciate. Otherwise? It’s trash. All of it. It’s why we end up with things like Ronda Rousey looking like a puffy-faced Mermaid wearing UFC-braded Shooto pillow gloves.
Which brings us to Alan Belcher‘s Johnny Cash tattoo. Belcher soft-debuted this…thing…at UFC 93 against Denis Kang. Goldstein properly described it as “terrifying.” The UFC would be thrilled to have an afternoon PPV show from Ireland headlined by two aging veterans pulling in 350k buys in 2014, but this was 2009, a time when MMA was golden and Brock Lesnar its king. So, when Belcher fought Yoshihiro Akiyama at UFC 100, he introduced his monster to millions of people worldwide.
What can be said about Belcher’s tattoo that hasn’t already been said about pig-nosed Polish grandmothers who just caught their grandson masturbating to last year’s Sears Christmas catalog? Belcher nearly lost his career due to a detached retina in 2010, though I’ve always suspected that his eyes caught sight of his left arm in a storefront window and called it a day. Belcher’s currently in a St-Pierre retirement purgatory. We can only hope he’s made the proper modifications to turn his Johnny Cash into a My Cousin Vinny-era Joe Pesci.
Tribal markings. Olde English letters. Skulls, pit bulls and fleurs de lys. MMA fighters and generic, awful tattoos truly go hand in grenade-tatted hand. Yet despite the plethora of options I could have considered, one truly craptacular piece managed to immediately stand out in my mind when this topic was introduced: UFC heavyweightShawn Jordan’s chest piece.
This thing is practically a check-list for “tough white guy” tattoos. Nautical starz? Check. A Native American (because all Southern white people claim to be at least 1/8th Native American) with his arms menacingly crossed? Got it. A(n LSU) tiger? Of course. All with a tattered American flag waving defiantly in the background? Like you don’t know.
Shawn Jordan’s left pectoral of clichés would be bad enough if a decent artist actually worked on it, but the fact that it’s as poorly executed as it is really puts this thing over the top. Tattoo artists are fond of saying “Good tattoos aren’t cheap, and cheap tattoos aren’t good.” Judging by the quality of Jordan’s ink, I’m willing to bet that this piece set him back two cases of Natty Light and maybe, maybe an autographed LSU football. I’m on the fence about the football because I’d like to think that a ball autographed by the 2008 National Championship team would have at least earned the horrifically disproportionate Native American a six-pack that didn’t span the entire length of his torso.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the hick who scratched his way through Jordan’s chest piece actually considers himself a “talented” tattoo “artist.” Or if every time he sees Shawn Jordan in the cage, his chest swells with pride as he tells anyone who will listen that his “gun” is behind that eyesore. “I did that, right there! That’s professional work for half the price of one of them fangled tattoo parlors, and it’s just as good as what you’d get from a licensed shop!”
Years before Conor McGregor and his Cosby Sweater ink became the biggest star in UFC history, the main draw for the promotion was the Undisputed Heavyweight Champ Brock Lesnar who, coincidentally, sported the worst MMA tattoo ever. There is a plethora of ways to describe what Lesnar’s tat resembles but even though I am in my 30’s, my sense of humor leans more towards a kid in junior high. So I am just going to come right out and say it.
Brock Lesnar’s ink looks like a giant penis and we all know it. Seriously, it looks like the tattoo artist took a picture of Ron Jeremy’s erect crank and then stuck a handle on the base of it. To make matters worse, there appears to be a small amount of red blood oozing from the top of the dick which makes it even more reprehensible and disturbing but at least we got the nickname Cock Chestner out of it, I guess.
There isn’t a whole lot more to elaborate on and I really struggled with how I was supposed to stretch this post into 3 paragraphs so it didn’t look like I gave a half-assed effort on this CP Roundtable submission. I thought I’d try to mix in as many amusing penis slang words (i.e. Foreskin Flute, Trouser Snake, Veinous Maximus, Tube Steak, Satan’s Clarinet, Clam Hammer, The Bone Ranger), but I didn’t think that would be a very mature thing to do. So with that being said, here’s 101 Big Dick Jokes.
Substance abuse, no-shows, and showing up when he shouldn’t have shown outlines what the Brazilian’s career has looked like the past couple of years, yet it’s not like his legend didn’t go out with a bang (technically, it’s still going).
Getting “the same thing Mike Tyson has on his face” just wasn’t enough for the former Pride and WEC veteran; he just had to ink his body with the worst possible eyesores known to man. It’s rather difficult to pick just one, but that’s the rule of the game.
Filho’s “Million Dollar Bulldog” is truly a work of art. Before entering his DREAM 10 bout against Melvin Manhoef, the MMA bubble was treated to the fighter’s new work, which is a bulldog centering a million dollar bill, and beneath that, two bulldogs seemingly about to trade fisticuffs. Now, maybe this was somewhat motivational for the troubled slugger, however, it just takes the cake in the worst way possible. It even came with a bonus “Reward Hunter” (pun not intended, but now, sort of) on his upper chest. It’s like having the best entrée in your life, followed by a meal that puts you in a delusional state where you’re content with your life coming to a close. Furthermore, it’s incredibly creative. To this day, nobody really knows what that is.
Honorable mention would have to be Filho’s forearm tattoo, “Placartoon Tattoo,” which is the shop that marked him, meaning it’s basically a glorified ad on Filho for the rest of his life. I really hope this guy strings a few wins together and makes it into the UFC. Then he could get a Harley Davidson tattoo on the other side of his face.
Look, we all know that art is subjective, and as a guy who sports several poorly-rendered and half-finished tattoos that could be considered terrible (tree of life, vegvisir, giant maze, etc.) by most people, I am always tread lightly when it comes to shitting on someones ink. Do I think that Alan Belcher has the single worst portrait of Johnny Cash known to man? Without a doubt. Do I think pasty white giants from Maine would be best to reconsider getting that “tribal” tattoo ripped right from an Affliction shirt? Of course. But as I’ve said before, we’ve all made mistakes in our youthful arrogance, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to start sounding like a hypocrite while knocking these (albeit atrocious) displays of artwork down a peg.
Instead, I’m choosing to focus on the tattoos that hint at more than just a mistake made during a drunken night out. I’m choosing to focus on the men behind the tattoos, or rather, the tattoos that say a lot more about their human canvas (as Dave Navarro would put it) than simply, “I want to look badass.” So for me, the worst tattoos in MMA is really a 4-way tie between Melvin Costa, Brandon Saling, Toni Valtonen, and Dustin Holyko.
You see, all four of these men are garbage — White Power, Neo-Nazi garbage. One of them’s also a convicted pedo. They all also happen to be MMA fighters. To their credit, all 4 of these men are very upfront about just how garbage they are, and would like you to know from the moment you lay eyes on them that, yes, you are looking at garbage. Two of them rock swastika tats, one rocks a Heil Hitler “88″ tattoo with SS lightning bolts, and the other simply has “White Power” inked on either arm. What, did you expect racism to embrace subtlety just because we’re living in Obama’s America?
Despite their…let’s call them “sketchy” pasts, some of these garbage men continue to have fights booked to this day, by promoters who I can only assume are also garbage. One of them even had a one-off fight for Strikeforce before that blew up in their face. The worst part? That fight (Brandon Saling vs. Roger Bowling) was pretty goddamn awesome, although hearing Mauro Ranallo, Pat Miletich, and Frank Shamrock praise Saling for being a “natural fighter” and “tough country boy” with “impeccable instincts” seems kinda messed up in retrospect.
