(Take it easy, Todd, it’s not like you’re Anthony Johnson or somethin’.)
We’ll give the fellas behind Super Fight League this, aside from their overly-lavish-yet-somehow-clusterfucked-production, their motocross-sized ring, and their pants-shittingly terrible theme song, they manage to book some intriguing matchups every now and again. Considering how green of a promotion SFL is, we’d almost consider throwing our support behind them if they didn’t insist on cancelling out those interesting matchups with ones involving Bob Sapp or Bobby Lashley on every other card. But today, we can put another check in the “You have our attention” column for the Indian promotion, as it has been announced that former UFC slugger Todd Duffee and Heavyweight submission/anarchy specialist Jeff Monson have been booked to throw down in the headlining bout of SFL’s fourth event.
Okay, so it’s not a match that will likely make your butthole pucker with excitement, but it’s a huge step up from their last headliner, and that counts for something, right?
We last saw the “official” record holder for fastest UFC knockout in action at Super Fight League’s second event, where he successfully knocked the poop out of Neil Grove in just over 30 seconds, snapping a two fight skidmark in the process. In case you haven’t noticed, the overarching theme of this article is all things related to feces. Just go with it.
Monson, on the other hand, is coming off a first round submission via North-South choke over Denis Komkin at the same M-1 Global event that saw Fedor Emelianenko nearly retire Pedro Rizzo from the waking world before announcing his own retirement from the sport shortly thereafter. Perhaps the most interesting angle of this match is that Monson has never been truly KO’d before, unless you count that time his ex-girlfriend nearly knocked him out of MMA competition for a decade by leaking those photos of him desecrating the Washington State Capitol building. In fact, Monson hasn’t even been finished in over 5 years (a third round TKO loss to Pedro Rizzo back in September of 2007), so Duffee can really make a statement if he is able to put away a guy like “The Snowman” considering not even Daniel Cormier was able to do so.
Videos of both fighter’s most recent performances are after the jump.
(Take it easy, Todd, it’s not like you’re Anthony Johnson or somethin’.)
We’ll give the fellas behind Super Fight League this, aside from their overly-lavish-yet-somehow-clusterfucked-production, their motocross-sized ring, and their pants-shittingly terrible theme song, they manage to book some intriguing matchups every now and again. Considering how green of a promotion SFL is, we’d almost consider throwing our support behind them if they didn’t insist on cancelling out those interesting matchups with ones involving Bob Sapp or Bobby Lashley on every other card. But today, we can put another check in the “You have our attention” column for the Indian promotion, as it has been announced that former UFC slugger Todd Duffee and Heavyweight submission/anarchy specialist Jeff Monson have been booked to throw down in the headlining bout of SFL’s fourth event.
Okay, so it’s not a match that will likely make your butthole pucker with excitement, but it’s a huge step up from their last headliner, and that counts for something, right?
We last saw the “official” record holder for fastest UFC knockout in action at Super Fight League’s second event, where he successfully knocked the poop out of Neil Grove in just over 30 seconds, snapping a two-fight skidmark in the process. In case you haven’t noticed, the overarching theme of this article is all things related to feces. Just go with it.
Monson, on the other hand, is coming off a first round submission via North-South choke over Denis Komkin at the same M-1 Global event that saw Fedor Emelianenko nearly retire Pedro Rizzo from the waking world before announcing his own retirement from the sport shortly thereafter. Perhaps the most interesting angle of this match is that Monson has never been truly KO’d before, unless you count that time his ex-girlfriend nearly knocked him out of MMA competition for a decade by leaking those photos of him desecrating the Washington State Capitol building. In fact, Monson hasn’t even been finished in over 5 years (a third round TKO loss to Pedro Rizzo back in September of 2007), so Duffee can really make a statement if he is able to put away a guy like “The Snowman” considering not even Daniel Cormier was able to do so.
Videos of both fighter’s most recent performances are after below.
Duffee vs. Grove (fight starts at the 4:25 mark)
Monson vs. Komkin
Super Fight League 4 is set to go down on September 8th in Bengaluru, India, and will also feature a clash between Olympic judoka gold medalist Satoshi Ishii and three time hot dog eating bronze medalist Jimmy Ambriz. So now you pretty much HAVE to watch this event.
(Thompson vs. Lashley. Come for the nut shots, stay for Phil Baroni’s childlike enthusiasm behind the mic. All praises be to IronForgesIron for the vids.)
You know, maybe it’s due to the fact that our expectations were so low, but other than a few hiccups along the way (one of which involved the most ridiculously over-the-top celebrations you will ever see), Super Fight League’s third event was actually a mildly entertaining affair. Who would’ve thought such a thing would be possible without the graceful presence of Bob Sapp? Although SFL’s production team still needs to get their shit together and stop cutting to random angles from halfway across the stadium, SFL 3 featured more than a fair share of exciting finishes, topped off by an at times groggy but overall solid main event clash between Bobby Lashley and James Thompson.
But before we get to the main event, lets talk about the very first fight of the night: a middleweight throwdown between Dream and Bellator veteran Zelg Galesic and former WEC light heavyweight champion Doug “The Rhino” Marshall, whose mere appearance on the card was enough to bring this “writer” back to the days of yore. Unfortunately for Marshall, the trip down memory lane was cut short by a beautiful flying knee that turned his lights off just 34 seconds into the fight. Nostalgia is a bitch, ain’t it?
That video, along with a video of the most insane post fight celebration in MMA history and more, awaits you after the jump.
(Thompson vs. Lashley. Come for the nut shots, stay for Phil Baroni‘s childlike enthusiasm behind the mic. All praises be to IronForgesIron for the vids.)
You know, maybe it’s due to the fact that our expectations were so low, but other than a few hiccups along the way (one of which involved the most ridiculously over-the-top celebrations you will ever see), Super Fight League’s third event was actually a mildly entertaining affair. Who would’ve thought such a thing would be possible without the graceful presence of Bob Sapp? Although SFL’s production team still needs to get their shit together and stop cutting to random angles from halfway across the stadium, SFL 3 featured more than a fair share of exciting finishes, topped off by an at times groggy but overall solid main event clash between Bobby Lashley and James Thompson.
But before we get to the main event, lets talk about the very first fight of the night: a middleweight throwdown between Dream and Bellator veteran Zelg Galesic and former WEC light heavyweight champion Doug “The Rhino” Marshall, whose mere appearance on the card was enough to bring this “writer” back to the days of yore. Unfortunately for Marshall, the trip down memory lane was cut short by a beautiful flying knee that turned his lights off just 34 seconds into the fight. Nostalgia is a bitch, ain’t it?
Galesic vs. Marshall
If one were to peruse over Trevor Prangley‘s Sherdog profile, they would more than likely file him under the category of “sacrificial lamb” when looking at his past few fights. After being brought in to test the effectiveness of Roger Gracie‘s ground game (as if there was anyone doubting it) at Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Cyborg, the South African rounded out his 2011 season with a pair of brutal KO losses to Tatsuya Mizuno (via pants-shitting knee to the body) and Hector Lombard (via Hellstorm of unnecessary punches). Heading into the third round of his fight with Russian armbar specialist Baga Agaev, it looked as if Prangley would coast his way to his first victory since September of 2010. But the AKA product would not be content with a judges decision, and instead opted for a monster right hook that dropped Agaev like a sac of Kholodets. A few unnecessary follow up punches sealed the deal in what must have been a sigh of relief for Prangley, who improves to 24-9 with the victory. We’ve added a video of the third round below.
Now let’s get to the oddest moment of the night, which involved 11-8 Kultar “The Black Mamba” Gill and 1-3 Quinton Arendse. The fight itself, which can be seen here, lasted just under a minute and saw Gill stuff a takedown, secure a trip takedown of his own, and promptly pound his opponent’s head into dust. The fact that these men appeared to be in two entirely different weight classes may have had some determining factor in the fight itself, but it didn’t help that Gill had apparently ingested an entire bottle of Mickey Rooney’s Crazy Pills before stepping into the cage. When interviewed by Phil Baroni in the aftermath of the fight, Gill proceeded to take the mic, deliver a lengthy post-fight call to arms, smash said mic, sprint around the outside of the ring, and smash a camera he managed to pry away from a ringside cameraman. Hopefully the paltry $2,000 Knockout of the Night award he received will be enough to cover the damages, but probably not.
In the night’s main event, muscle-bound freakazoid and former/current(?) WWE superstar Bobby Lashley squared off against an unknown British prospect by the name of James Thompson. Perhaps you’ve heard of him on Twitter, Myspace, or some other form of these “social” networks, no? In either case, the first round started off in rather entertaining fashion, with Lashley unleashing some nice combinations and securing a couple takedowns to boot. A low knee by Thompson would temporarily halt the action with just under a minute to go, and Lashley would take full advantage of the allotted time. Whether or not he was truly recovering from the low blow or simply catching a breather is yet to be determined, but we’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Baroni would not be so kind in the third frame when another low blow by Thompson caused yet another lengthy delay. “Suck it up,” Baroni remarked, which might have been a bit of strategic advice for Lashley’s testicles more than anything else.
The second and third rounds were fought primarily from the clinch, as Lashley’s hands began to drop lower and lower with each passing minute, an unfortunate side effect of combining Popeye’s muscles with Bluto’s gas tank. As Baroni and friends pointed out from ringside, it seemed that Lashley’s tendency to resort back to his wrestling roots, even when he had Thompson rocked, that could have cost him a TKO victory. But despite what we were being told about Thompson and Lashley’s “incredible” cardio, both men were clearly zonked by the third frame, resorting to clinch work and the occasional combination to round things out. Thompson’s octagon (or rather, circle) control and aggression seemed to be enough to warrant a victory in the judges eyes, earning him his first two-fight win streak since December of 2005. Lashley, on the other hand, falls to 7-2 as a professional.
Full results from SFL 3 are below:
James Thompson def. Bobby Lashley by Unanimous Decision (29-28,29-28,29-28)
Joanne Calderwood def. Lena Ovchynnikova by Unanimous Decision (30-26,30-26,30-26)
Anup Kumar def. Chatmongkhon Simma by TKO (punches) at 4:55 of Round 1
Kultar Gill def. Quinton Arendse by KO (punches) at :51 of Round 1
Trevor Prangley defeats Baga Agaev by TKO (punches) at 2:03 of Round 3
Lakwinder Sekhon def. Vladimir Biandov by TKO at 5:00 of Round 2
Gurdarshan Mangat def. Si Cong Liu by Submission (Rear Naked Choke) at 2:37 of Round 2 Zelg Galesic def. Doug Marshall by KO (flying knee) at :34 of Round 1
(As with the Mona Lisa’s eyes, Thompson’s ear seems to just follow you around the room, doesn’t it?)
Indian upstart promotion Super Fight League recently announced the pairing of James Thompson and former WWE star Bobby Lashley as the main event of its third card, which will also feature Trevor Prangley, Doug Marshall, and Zelg Galesic in action.
This is the point where we stop discussing the matchups at hand and get to the news you really need to know: Super Fight League is crashing and burning like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Josh Barnett couldn’t melt a plastic cup with his urine fast enough to destroy SFL, which is beginning to look like it will be but a distant memory by the end of the fiscal year. Despite the fact that viewership is free to anyone with a computer, internet access, and the ability to spell Youtube, SFL already seems to be on wobblier legs than River Phoenix outside The Viper Room (too soon?).
And it’s pretty clear why.
Heading into their first event, the India-based promotion showcased an emphasis on flare, throwing fancy promos and even their own theme song into the mix in an effort to spur interest in a sport that their country had yet to build the smallest of followings for. This was their first problem, a lack of awareness. Where Asian-based promotion OneFC has thrived thanks to both collaborative efforts with local promotions and a strong, preexisting fan base in the area they chose to promote within, Super Fight League’s co-chairmen, Raj Kundra and Sanjay Dutt, opted to rely on a combination of Bollywood celebrities and music industry execs to help promote a new sport that they themselves weren’t truly familiar with. In fact, many of the celebrities in attendance, and most of the 300,000 India-based Youtube viewers who managed to make the first card a slight success, where under the impression that MMA, and specifically SFL, consisted of over-the-top, WWE style antics and entertainment, largely due to how the promotion chose to well…promote themselves.
(As with the Mona Lisa’s eyes, Thompson’s ear seems to just follow you around the room, doesn’t it?)
Indian upstart promotion Super Fight League recently announced the pairing of James Thompson and former WWE star Bobby Lashley as the main event of its third card, which will also feature Trevor Prangley, Doug Marshall, and Zelg Galesic in action.
This is the point where we stop discussing the matchups at hand and get to the news you really need to know: Super Fight League is crashing and burning like nothing we’ve ever seen before. Josh Barnett couldn’t melt a plastic cup with his urine fast enough to destroy SFL, which is beginning to look like it will be but a distant memory by the end of the fiscal year. Despite the fact that viewership is free to anyone with a computer, internet access, and the ability to spell Youtube, SFL already seems to be on wobblier legs than River Phoenix outside The Viper Room (too soon?).
And it’s pretty clear why.
Heading into their first event, the India-based promotion showcased an emphasis on flare, throwing fancy promos and even their own theme song into the mix in an effort to spur interest in a sport that their country had yet to build the smallest of followings for. This was their first problem, a lack of awareness. Where Asian-based promotion OneFC has thrived thanks to both collaborative efforts with local promotions and a strong, preexisting fan base in the area they chose to promote within, Super Fight League’s co-chairmen, Raj Kundra and Sanjay Dutt, opted to rely on a combination of Bollywood celebrities and music industry execs to help promote a new sport that they themselves weren’t truly familiar with. In fact, many of the celebrities in attendance, and most of the 300,000 India-based Youtube viewers who managed to make the first card a slight success, where under the impression that MMA, and specifically SFL, consisted of over-the-top, WWE style antics and entertainment, largely due to how the promotion chose to well…promote themselves.
When treated to MMA on full display, many of those same celebrities have since declared that MMA should be banned in India, and you can’t blame them for being mislead by the bright lights and poor marketing. Take a look at SFL’s venue choices, for instance. The promotion’s first event was held at the Adheri Sports Complex in Mumbai, a massive indoor complex capable of holding up to 20,000 people. The costs to rent such a venue doesn’t offer a lot of wiggle room, financially speaking, especially for an upstart promotion in every sense of the word. But they sure do look cool, don’t they? According to Indian sources, SFL 1 only managed to pull in around 300 paying customers. Add to that the cost of the fighter’s salaries, and there is no way it didn’t end up in the red. But perhaps the most obvious argument that Super Fight League was truly a promotion favoring style over substance was the inclusion of Bob Sapp in it’s very first main event.
OneFC made the same mistake once, but you can be damn sure they won’t do it again. Sapp is a walking publicity stunt, a carnival act, and the easiest way to show the world that you haven’t the slightest clue what the sport you claim to be promoting is actually about, let alone who is watching it. To a lesser extent, the same can be said about Thompson. Though it is a given that a promotion can only acquire so many great fighters with their limited budgets, the money SFL spent on the aforementioned flash and flare could have easily been used to pull in guys like Hector Lombard, Mamed Khalidov, the recently UFC-released Jorge Santiago and other lesser known, but much more respected, mixed martial artists. The simple matter is, fans were outraged and angered by the obvious work that was Sapp/Thompson, and it showed with the second event’s complete failure to pull in viewers.
Just take a look at the fight videos of SFL 2. Sure, you will notice that the card is actually an improvement over its predecessor in terms of production and matchmaking, but you will also notice that there was no one in attendance. Reports have had claimed the number of attendees to be around 1/5th of the T-Box Mobile Arena’s 5000 seat capacity. Think that’s bad? It gets worse. Despite signing an exclusive deal with Youtube, SFL 2 only managed to scrounge up an abysmal 3,000 views. That’s a ninety-nine percent drop from their first event, folks. And who do they decide to let headline their third event? A couple more freak show fighters that are almost universally reviled by MMA fans. One can expect those paltry numbers to drop even further with marketing tactics like these.
At the end of the day, we could be wrong about the direction SFL heads, which we predict will be rapidly downward in a spiraling motion. In either case, it appears that SFL seems to be having the same problems that EliteXC had, forgoing an actual investment in the sport in favor of overblown production values, laughably commentary, and a lack of thrilling, or even remotely exciting matchups. And let’s not even get into the ridiculous size of that ring, which looks like they threw a tarp over a motocross track and said, “Fuck it.”
The way we see it, SFL has two options; continue doing what they’re doing and be left penniless, or start focusing on what really makes a MMA promotion, and the sport itself, successful. To quote August Burns Red:
Lucky for you rock bottom is in sight, Your wake up call is set for now, And the trail you have followed has come all the way to the end, I hope you survive the crash
(Minowaman vs. Shlemenko. Sorry Seth, this is what you get for taking the weekend off.)
At the minimum, last night’s Super Fight League 2 card was a small, albeit significant, improvement over the upstart promotion’s first card. The fact that Bob Sapp was not participating already ensured this. Yes, it was still riddled with the goofy, often laughably bad commentary of Phil Baroni and some other guy who I don’t really care to look up at the moment, but overall, it was able to deliver more action and dramatic finishes than this weekend’s Bellator card could account for, and considering it was free, who are we to complain? If only they could get rid of those awkward crowd shots.
But before we get to the most exciting finish, perhaps we could focus on the oddest one– Alexander Shlemenko’s first round TKO of Ikuhisa Minowa. Minowa continued his rough streak against recognizable-named opponents this morning, and it looks like he could be on the shelve for a little longer than usual this time around. For the first couple of minutes, the fight was vintage Shlemenko, featuring more spinning death attacks than a tornado in an axe factory. Minowa simply had no answer for “The Storm” on the feet, and was stalked around the cage until around the two minute mark, when Shlemenko was able to land a well timed knee to Minowa’s skull that sent him reeling backward.
Minowa seemed to be alright, reaching for a leg log in the moments afterward, but when Shlemenko was able to pull out from danger, Minowa suddenly curled up in the fetal position with an apparent rib injury. No word yet on exactly how bad he is hurt, but we’re going to guess that the injury was more, you know, real, than the quad injury that felled Sapp in his main event clash against James Thompson at SFL 1. The announcer not named Phil Baroni was kind enough to inform us that Shlemenko has now fought 13 times in the past two years. That is fucking insane. And speaking of insane, Shlemenko’s thirst for his well deserved rematch against Bellator middleweight champion Hector Lombard might just be driving him a bit loony. After defeating Minowa, Shlemenko gave what was perhaps the greatest post fighting interview of all time, calmly stating, “Hey India. Hector, I kill you.” If only Lombard could come to an agreement with the Bellator brass, perhaps we could watch these two throw down again.
The Duffee/Grove video, along with the full results are after the jump.
(Minowaman vs. Shlemenko. Sorry Seth, this is what you get for taking the weekend off.)
At the minimum, last night’s Super Fight League 2 card was a small, albeit significant, improvement over the upstart promotion’s first card. The fact that Bob Sapp was not participating already ensured this. Yes, it was still riddled with the goofy, often laughably bad commentary of Phil Baroni and some other guy who I don’t really care to look up at the moment, but overall, it was able to deliver more action and dramatic finishes than this weekend’s Bellator card could account for, and considering it was free, who are we to complain? If only they could get rid of those awkward crowd shots.
But before we get to the most exciting finish, perhaps we could focus on the oddest one– Alexander Shlemenko’s first round TKO of Ikuhisa Minowa. Minowa continued his rough streak against recognizable-named opponents this morning, and it looks like he could be on the shelve for a little longer than usual this time around. For the first couple of minutes, the fight was vintage Shlemenko, featuring more spinning death attacks than a tornado in an axe factory. Minowa simply had no answer for “The Storm” on the feet, and was stalked around the cage until around the two minute mark, when Shlemenko was able to land a well timed knee to Minowa’s skull that sent him reeling backward.
Minowa seemed to be alright, reaching for a leg log in the moments afterward, but when Shlemenko was able to pull out from danger, Minowa suddenly curled up in the fetal position with an apparent rib injury. No word yet on exactly how bad he is hurt, but we’re going to guess that the injury was more, you know, real, than the quad injury that felled Sapp in his main event clash against James Thompson at SFL 1. The announcer not named Phil Baroni was kind enough to inform us that Shlemenko has now fought 13 times in the past two years. That is fucking insane. And speaking of insane, Shlemenko’s thirst for his well deserved rematch against Bellator middleweight champion Hector Lombard might just be driving him a bit loony. After defeating Minowa, Shlemenko gave what was perhaps the greatest post fighting interview of all time, calmly stating, ”Hey India. Hector, I kill you.” If only Lombard could come to an agreement with the Bellator brass, perhaps we could watch these two throw down again.
Perhaps no fighter has fallen farther, faster, in the past couple years than Todd Duffee. We all know the story: After blistering Tim Hague in just six seconds in his UFC debut and subsequently landing on the pages of damn near every muscle fitness catalog on the market, Duffee’s hype train was derailed, as if by Lawrence of Arabia himself, at UFC 114, when Mike Russow scored one of the greatest comebacks of all time by knocking him out cold in the third round. Duffee was dropped by the UFC shortly thereafter for supposed attitude problems, and would get steamrolled by Alistair Overeem at K-1 Dynamite: Power of Courage on New Year’s Eve the following year. This morning marked the first time in nearly two years that we had seen Duffe in action, and it only took him thirty seconds to show us that the dude can still throw with some serious power, as he ran through UFC and Bellator veteran Neil Grove without breaking a sweat.
After a feeling out process that was too short to remember, a staple of Grove’s fights, Duffee landed a right hand so powerful that it apparently imploded the ringside announcers microphones upon impact. Seriously, that hook came from farther away than Jeremy Stephens’ home run uppercut of Rafael Dos Anjos, but there was simply nothing that Grove could do. A few follow up punches sealed the deal, and Duffee earned his third fastest paycheck to date. Well, fourth if you count the Overeem loss, but the money he made that night didn’t even cover the open heart chest surgery he had to undergo (no, not really), so we’ll call it even.
He might not be ready for another run in the UFC, but there’s no denying that Duffee’s speed and heavy-hands could prove to be the undoing of many a heavyweight if he manages to keep his own head on straight. Time will tell.
Check out the full results from SFL 2 below.
Todd Duffee defeats Neil Grove by KO, Round 1
Colleen Schneider defeats Cherie Buck by TKO, Round 2
Ricky Singh defeats Salika Senanayake by TKO, Round 1
Anup Kumar defeats Dilanga Rathnaveera by Submission, (Rear Naked Choke, Round 2) Alexander Shlemenko defeats Ikuhisa Minowa by TKO, Round 1
Bharat Khandare defeats Soro Ismael by TKO, Round 1
Pierre Daguzan defeats Chaitanya Gavali (29-28)
Ryan Healy defeats Paul Kelly (30-27)
