Tag: Site News

That’s right, we’ve collected enough tickets from the arcade to pick a few choice items for you our readers.

This weekend, in celebration of the UFC’s return to Japan, we want to give one lucky winner a free copy of the UFC Encyclopedia, which contains details on the history of the organization, comprehensive coverage of over 300 fighters plus over 170 event results, plus more. We’ve also gotten our hands on a copy of the PRIDE 31: Unbreakable and PRIDE: Critical Countdown Absolute DVD’s, so we’ll be handing those out also to a few other lucky winners.

We’ll be giving these away through our Facebook.com/TheMMANews account. You can enter the contest Friday night after the UFC 144 weigh-ins, just look for the Facebook post with the contest details that evening.

For those fans who signed up to win free stuff through this site, don’t worry we haven’t forgotten about you either. We’ve got a few more PRIDE DVD’s as well as another copy of the UFC Encyclopedia for you too. Those will be drawn at a later date though, I need to earn a few more tickets playing “Whack-a-Mole” first.

So good luck and thanks everyone for visiting our website!

That’s right, we’ve collected enough tickets from the arcade to pick a few choice items for you our readers.

This weekend, in celebration of the UFC’s return to Japan, we want to give one lucky winner a free copy of the UFC Encyclopedia, which contains details on the history of the organization, comprehensive coverage of over 300 fighters plus over 170 event results, plus more. We’ve also gotten our hands on a copy of the PRIDE 31: Unbreakable and PRIDE: Critical Countdown Absolute DVD’s, so we’ll be handing those out also to a few other lucky winners.

We’ll be giving these away through our Facebook.com/TheMMANews account. You can enter the contest Friday night after the UFC 144 weigh-ins, just look for the Facebook post with the contest details that evening.

For those fans who signed up to win free stuff through this site, don’t worry we haven’t forgotten about you either. We’ve got a few more PRIDE DVD’s as well as another copy of the UFC Encyclopedia for you too. Those will be drawn at a later date though, I need to earn a few more tickets playing “Whack-a-Mole” first.

So good luck and thanks everyone for visiting our website!

The MMA News is always looking to stay up to date with the latest mixed martial arts stories from around the world, and that means that the site has to stay up to date also.

TheMMANews.com has updated our Privacy Policy page, and added a Terms & Conditions page that we’d like you to read over.

We haven’t changed our Privacy Policy page, instead we’ve simply updated some of our outdated information, as well as adding information that was missing, such as the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act noting that TheMMANews.com site is not intended for the use of children under the age of 13.

Previously, we did not possess a Terms & Conditions page, but have rectified that today by adding a page to reflect the use of TheMMANews.com website.

If you have questions, or have found a mistake in the wording or spelling, please let us know by posting a comment under this post, so that we may update/correct the pages in order to better serve you our readers.

As I mentioned last week, that the number of posts would be decrease because I was headed off to Toronto to take in the UFC Fan Expo and the UFC 129 event. I had hoped to write one post for each of the four days I was there but things just didn’t work out that way.

My trip began last Wednesday night with a two hour delay into the city, finally reaching my hotel after midnight. The only consolation was the view of the Rogers Centre from my hotel room, just one block away.

My wife was a long on the trip with me, she is a big Lyoto Machida fan and did not want to be left behind on a trip like this one. So a short nights sleep and were off doing what women do best, shop.

We were in downtown Toronto and well within walking distance of everything. Unfortunately, when you think of Canada as a cold place, it lived up to those preconceptions as three out of the four days there were cold and rainy.

During my time walking around the downtown area, it was evident that the city had embraced the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Almost every pub or bar, had posters for UFC 129 in their windows telling people it was the place to be to watch the Saturday’s pay-per-view. Street lights carried banners for the event throughout downtown, and I even saw a large image of Georges St-Pierre crushing several posters with a side kick, all done up at a construction site advertising the event.

It was easy to identify the “locals” from those visiting the city for the UFC event, as many of those living in Toronto wore suits working in the cities financial district. So it was easy to identify mma fans who wore their love for the sport proudly by sporting jeans and various mma t-shirts.

Speaking of clothing apparel, the number of people standing on corners selling Georges St-Pierre headbands was astounding. Everywhere you turned someone was hocking a headband for a price of $5.00 to $10.00. The quality varied widely, and I get the feeling ole George was not getting a piece of that action.

On Friday, the first day of the Expo, we got off to a slower start and didn’t get to the convention center till 0940.

If the UFC holds a second Expo/Event and you stay downtown, bring some comfortable shoes. It’s a 30 minute walk between the two and long lineups for the Expo.

Once at the Expo, we lined up to get our tickets and get in. It took about 25 minutes of snaking through lines to finally get inside of the expo proper. Once inside, I went directly to the Round 5 booth to grab one of the limited edition Georges St-Pierre figurines the company produced for the Expo.

Despite the smaller looking line, it still took over half-an-hour just to get to the booth, and fans were only allowed to grab three at a time. I wasn’t planning on getting in line for a second time. Round 5 did have their computer scanning system up as they were putting dots on peoples faces and then putting it into their system. Several media personalities, and a couple of the “Gold Ticket” winning fans had their faces scanned to have the likeness of their faces placed on the body of any action figure already produced.

A couple of the good things I learned about standing in line for so long at the expo. was getting to meet other fans like myself, and hearing their stories from the other Expos and events. The common theme was the Toronto Expo was the crazier of all the others put on.

Oh I did say “a couple of features” didn’t I? The other was almost getting run over by B.J. Penn and his security team as they escorted him to his booth. How many people can say that?

With my figurines in hand I ventured out to check the rest of the expo.

Many booths had fighters available for signings, from Frank Mir, Cain Velasquez, BJ Penn, Rashad Evans, Phil Davis, among others. It was neat to have fighters walk past you as they made their way to, or from signings. The lines were long, snaking back-and-forth throughout the Expo floor, and even “TUF 12″ winner Jonathan Brookins, a relative new face to the UFC, had throngs of fans lining up for his autograph.

So many recognizable companies had booths at the event like Hyabusa, TapouT, Revgear, Round 5, Jakks, and more that one got the feeling of a something big. It was a little disappointing though, if one wanted to standout from the rest of the Tapout/Affliction/Xtreme Couture crowd there was little there for you, like one finds at other expos for mixed martial arts. One standout was Stephan Bonnar’s “Trash Talkin’ Kids” brand of shirts, a cartoonish image of favorite fighters.

I didn’t pick up any t-shirts, but I did get a short-sleeve Revgear rashguard for $30 after negotiating the price.

Sadly, there wasn’t a lot of time to enjoy the expo on the first day, as the doors for the weigh-ins opened at 2PM and I wanted a good seat. Jumping in line at 1230PM, I was probably about 100th in line, but it didn’t take long for the numbers to swell into the thousands an hour later.

Security let fans in but were so busy they hardly had time to check UFC Fight Club memberships. Fans were let into a waiting area first before being let in, and there were quite a few impatient people wanting to get into the Ricoh Coliseum.

Fans piled in, and continued to do so right up until the weigh-ins themselves, filling up most of the seats in the hockey arena. It was great to see the “Super Seven” UFC champions on the stage, with Anderson Silva stealing the show by speaking English the whole time and joking with Joe Rogan and the other fighters.

Once that was complete and the weigh-ins kicked off, with the loudest cheers for Canadian fighters Mark Bocek, Jason MacDonald, Mark Hominick, and champ Georges St-Pierre.

The whole time at the Expo, or standing in line for the weigh-ins, there were always fans who were looking for tickets to Saturday’s event. It was nice to see so many who didn’t have tickets come out and show their support for the weigh-ins though.

Another walk back to the hotel room, a quick meal, and it was off to see announcer Joe Rogan at Massey Hall for his standup comedy show.

Having only seen a little of his standup act before, I had expected him to use more UFC references in his shows, refreshingly most of his humor did not reference the sport of mma. That isn’t to say he didn’t have a few good jokes, especially the one about former UFC champion Brock Lesnar. Rogan admitted a small fear of the fighter every time he was near him, feeling scared that there probably wasn’t anything he could do if Lesnar wanted to rape him. “Brock smash!”

It was a great show, the humor was a bit crude for a few of the women in the crowd who didn’t like Rogan’s references to homosexuals, babies, and blowjobs. If you ever plan on going to one of his shows, come with an open mind and if you think anyone might take offense, leave them at home.

The day of the fight, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing someone sporting one of the GSP headbands or an Xtreme Couture shirt.

The Expo offered much the same, but it was some of the fighters attitudes to keep signing autographs for fans that really impressed me. After the official closing time of 5PM, fighters like B.J.Penn, Wanderlei Silva, and Phil Davis kept on signing autographs and taking pictures with fans despite Expo officials efforts to kick everyone out by shutting lights off. Penn in fact, was at his own booth on his time meeting fans, his mother was there also helping to sell t-shirts and to take photos of fans with he son.

I decided six hours at the Rogers Centre would be a little long parked in a plastic seat, so I decided to watch the Facebook prelims from my hotel room.

With those over, we headed to the stadium and our $50 seats up near the top of the seating chart. They were the only seats I could score on sale day, and I wasn’t going to be denied.

Once inside, the first impressive sight was the giant video screens placed all over the stadium. For 60ft screens the quality was excellent with no distortion that I could see.

Making my way up to our seats I expected the fighters in the Octagon to be something almost intangible, but I was able to makeout every punch and kick, as well as identify who was who. I had no problems picking out Nick Diaz as he entered the cage between rounds for his brother Nate’s fight with Rory MacDonald. The whole time I was split between watching the live action and the video screen.

The only issue I had with my seating was the amount of cigarette smoke floating around at the top of the stadium. Many fans lit up cigarettes, and marijuana during the event, filling the air with fumes. For me, it was something that took away from the experience, and not something I want to deal with again. After talking to others who sat in the lower bowl they told me they had no problems with second hand smoke.

The noise levels varied throughout the event, with many starting chants for their favorite fighter, or the collective “ah’s” as one fighter would almost land something. At those points, it never got really deafening to me but did pick up in volume for the last three fights of the event.

The loudest moment was right after Machida landed his knockout kick on Couture, fans immediately jumped to their feet screaming their approval. As “The Natural” made his last walk from the octagon, every fan, that I could see anyway, was on their feet cheering him into retirement. It made the moment something to remember for sure.

Now despite the popularity of St-Pierre, the most sustained cheers were for Canadian Mark Hominick, which got louder as he battled it out in the later rounds with Jose Aldo. His performance in the fifth had many on their feet willing him to finish. Rightfully, their bout earned the “Fight of the Night” bonus.

Fans were excited for the St-Pierre vs. Shields bout, but it didn’t seem to have the energy behind it like the Hominick bout did. Going into the fourth and fifth rounds the boo birds started to appear, but it never seemed to infect the entire crowd.

Leaving the stadium, the fans were still plenty excited from the event but lacked some of the rowdiness one sees at other sporting shows. Overall, everyone left happy including myself.

Overall, it was an excellent experience and one that could only be felt by being there. If the UFC holds another stadium event, and I’m sure they will, I’ll be headed out to that show too.

To everyone who visits The MMA News website, I just wanted to let you know that over the next few days that the number of posts we do everyday will diminish and I apologize for that.

The reason for the fewer number is because I am headed to Toronto for UFC 129 and will be busy taking in the event, as well as the UFC Expo. I’ve also got my hands on tickets to see Joe Rogan at Massy Hall in downtown TO on Friday night. http://web2.hahaha.com/joerogan//?q=joerogan/

I hope to pick up a few “Limited” items from the Expo and plan to offer them up to you, our readers, in a giveaway once I get home, just our way of thanking you for your continued support.

I’ll be Tweeting and posting pictures from the UFC Expo, the UFC 129 weigh-ins, Joe Rogan’s stand-up, and from my seats (which I did not pay a scalper for!) way, way, way up in the nosebleeds at the Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/themmanews

Enjoy the event everyone!