Fresh off a one-sided beatdown of Max Holloway at UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen, it appears as if Irish phenom Conor McGregor has his next fight lined up already. Despite suffering a minor LCL sprain midway through the second round of his eventual unanimous decision victory, McGregor’s camp has insisted that the Irishman is fine and that he would prefer to fight on the UFC’s year end card, UFC 168: Silva vs. Weidman II. His coach, John Kavanagh, then proceeded to call out TUF 14 winner Diego Brandao, who in turn accepted the fight faster than Chael Sonnen on a sightseeing tour across Brazil. If “sights” were asses and “seeing” was kicking them, that is.
Brandao is also coming off a unanimous decision victory at the TD Garden, having bested Daniel Pineda on the Fight Night 26 undercard just two fights previous to McGregor’s aforementioned shellacking of Holloway. The victory improved “DB’s” record to 4-1 in the octagon, with three of those victories coming in his past three fights. It’s at this point that we should all probably start saying that McGregor is an overrated yadda yadda will be exposed yadda yadda you know the deal. CP Prediction: McGregor by cardio.
Fresh off a one-sided beatdown of Max Holloway at UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen, it appears as if Irish phenom Conor McGregor has his next fight lined up already. Despite suffering a minor LCL sprain midway through the second round of his eventual unanimous decision victory, McGregor’s camp has insisted that the Irishman is fine and that he would prefer to fight on the UFC’s year end card, UFC 168: Silva vs. Weidman II. His coach, John Kavanagh, then proceeded to call out TUF 14 winner Diego Brandao, who in turn accepted the fight faster than Chael Sonnen on a sightseeing tour across Brazil. If “sights” were asses and “seeing” was kicking them, that is.
Brandao is also coming off a unanimous decision victory at the TD Garden, having bested Daniel Pineda on the Fight Night 26 undercard just two fights previous to McGregor’s aforementioned shellacking of Holloway. The victory improved “DB’s” record to 4-1 in the octagon, with three of those victories coming in his past three fights. It’s at this point that we should all probably start saying that McGregor is an overrated yadda yadda will be exposed yadda yadda you know the deal. CP Prediction: McGregor by cardio.
In other fight booking news…
Do-or-Die Alert: British middleweight and member of a select group of fighters to score two end-of-the-night awards for a single performance, Tom Watson, has been booked to take on longtime UFC veteran Alessio Sakara at Fight Night 30 in October. On the heels of a suffocating decision loss to Thales Leites at UFC 163 and currently 1-2 in the UFC, Watson is in dire need of a win here. A loss to Sakara (who has dropped his past 3) would likely send the Brit back to BAMMA where he came from.
Cole Miller was confused. Near the end of the first round of his UFC Fight Night 26 featherweight fight against Manny Gamburyan this past Saturday, “The Anvil” was working for a double leg takedown against the cage on Miller when Cole defended and hit him with two elbows before the horn.
The elbows were ruled legal and they hurt Gamburyan. Bad.
So much so that the former title challenger slumped down to his knees in an apparent daze and could not immediately stand up and walk to his own corner. In fact, he was on his knees in Miller’s corner.
“I didn’t really get it,” Cole told CagePotato on Sunday. “I looked at [referee ] Yves Lavigne, he was looking at Manny. I was unsure if the fight was over or if time had expired. I was looking for the ref to give us an idea of whether there was finality in the fight, or if it was an illegal blow. Later, Yves told me was a legal blow and so does the video. But at the time, if it was illegal I was looking for him to say so, take a point, give me a warning, call the fight or something. It was a confusing situation. Yves told me to go to my corner but I told him, ‘I am in my corner.’ The way Manny was there on the ground in my corner, I couldn’t raise my hands, walk away and go to my corner or anything. They actually moved me and my corner to another area while he stayed there on the ground. Yves was pointing to a direction for me to go. I was thinking, ‘I’m in my corner. Someone needs to take him to his corner.’ Over a minute and twenty passed before they had the doctor even look at him.”
The break between rounds for fighters is a minute long. If a fighter cannot answer the start of the next round, they lose, normally. Examples of this have been seen throughout MMA, kickboxing and boxing history.
If you’re so beat up that you can’t answer the next round’s bell, you’re done. You’ve lost.
Cole Miller was confused. Near the end of the first round of his UFC Fight Night 26 featherweight fight against Manny Gamburyan this past Saturday, “The Anvil” was working for a double leg takedown against the cage on Miller when Cole defended and hit him with two elbows before the horn.
The elbows were ruled legal and they hurt Gamburyan. Bad.
So much so that the former title challenger slumped down to his knees in an apparent daze and could not immediately stand up and walk to his own corner. In fact, he was on his knees in Miller’s corner.
“I didn’t really get it,” Cole told CagePotato on Sunday. “I looked at [referee ] Yves Lavigne, he was looking at Manny. I was unsure if the fight was over or if time had expired. I was looking for the ref to give us an idea of whether there was finality in the fight, or if it was an illegal blow. Later, Yves told me was a legal blow and so does the video. But at the time, if it was illegal I was looking for him to say so, take a point, give me a warning, call the fight or something. It was a confusing situation. Yves told me to go to my corner but I told him, ‘I am in my corner.’ The way Manny was there on the ground in my corner, I couldn’t raise my hands, walk away and go to my corner or anything. They actually moved me and my corner to another area while he stayed there on the ground. Yves was pointing to a direction for me to go. I was thinking, ‘I’m in my corner. Someone needs to take him to his corner.’ Over a minute and twenty passed before they had the doctor even look at him.”
The break between rounds for fighters is a minute long. If a fighter cannot answer the start of the next round, they lose, normally. Examples of this have been seen throughout MMA, kickboxing and boxing history.
If you’re so beat up that you can’t answer the next round’s bell, you’re done. You’ve lost.
Gamburyan, of course, didn’t lose the fight. He was given far more time to recover than he was supposed to be allowed, and then he continued on for two more rounds. After three rounds, he was declared the winner by the judges, presumably on the basis of his repeated leg kicks, take downs and ground control.
In a post fight interview with MMA Fighting, Gamburyan acknowledged that “maybe” the fight should have been stopped after the first round, though he disagrees with Miller that the strikes were legal. UFC President Dana White said that he scored the fight for Miller, who left Gamburyan’s face a cut, bloodied and swollen mess, but said that Cole essentially sabotaged himself by sticking around Manny after the first round and appearing to check on his condition. White told reporters after the event that Miller should have just gone to his corner.
“I was in my corner.” the irritated ATT fighter emphasizes. “I was in my corner. Where was I supposed to go? I hit him with legal blows and he couldn’t continue and couldn’t go to his corner. I was kind of propping him up so he wouldn’t fall on my leg. I couldn’t walk off to get instruction, we were already there in my corner.”
That confusion and officiating mishandling aside, Miller feels that he won the fight a second time, or deserved to. “I don’t really know how they score things in Massachusetts,” he says.
“I don’t know if they score things differently for MMA or what. The effective grappling part definitely went to Manny because of his takedowns. I wasn’t able to do anything about that, he had all takedowns but I had all the striking and did all the damage. I cut him twice. He’s a tough dude, to his credit. He earned every bit of it. I hit him with knees, punches and kicks so hats off to him. I just think they made the wrong call. I was trying to finish my opponent the whole fight.”
Cole and Manny were friendly before the fight, knowing one another since they spent six weeks training together on the fifth season of The Ultimate Fighter on Jens Pulver’s team. With such a bitter taste in his mouth about this fight Cole insists that he still doesn’t harbor any negative feelings against Gamburyan.
“Manny didn’t do anything wrong. He fought the way he knows how and I fought the way I know how,” he says.
“He didn’t get the judges to call his name. He’s good and he fought well. I was just throwing those knees to take his head off. I’m not going to bug him for getting the decision.”
Cole says he doesn’t count this fight as a loss and, although he’d be willing to rematch Gamburyan, he isn’t calling for a re-do. “I’ve never wanted a rematch with anybody,” Cole maintains.
“A fight is a fight. If the UFC wants to make that happen, I’ll rematch anybody. But, I don’t want a rematch. For what? I fought the kind of fight I fight and he fought the way he fights. The judges made the wrong call, that’s it. There is no need for a rematch.”
(That awkward moment when you realize you jumped ship way, way too soon.)
I imagine that after receiving the ratings numbers for Fight Night 26: Shogun vs. Sonnen this morning, Dana White calmly asked everyone to get the fuck out of his office, closed the door, threw on some Rage and did the following…
It would be hard to blame him if he did, because early figures for the UFC’s debut on the FOX Sports 1 network are nothing short of astounding. According to a press release sent out this morning, Saturday’s main card at the TD Garden averaged over 1.7 million viewers, shattering the UFC’s previous FUEL ratings like they were Corey Hill’s leg:
FOX Sports 1, driven by UFC FIGHT NIGHT: SHOGUN VS. SONNEN, posted an average audience of 1.71 million viewers in prime time (8:00-11:00 PM ET), a more than 10-fold increase compared to that which SPEED, FOX Soccer and FUEL TV combined to deliver on the comparable night a year ago (141,000). Among younger demographics the comparisons are even more significant. FOX Sports 1 viewership was over 25 times greater than SPEED/FOX Soccer/FUEL TV among both Adults 18-49 and Men 18-49, and 40 times greater among Adults 18-34 and M18-34.
(That awkward moment when you realize you jumped ship way, way too soon.)
I imagine that after receiving the ratings numbers for Fight Night 26: Shogun vs. Sonnen this morning, Dana White calmly asked everyone to get the fuck out of his office, closed the door, threw on some Rage and did the following…
It would be hard to blame him if he did, because early figures for the UFC’s debut on the FOX Sports 1 network are nothing short of astounding. According to a press release sent out this morning, Saturday’s main card at the TD Garden averaged over 1.7 million viewers, shattering the UFC’s previous FUEL ratings like they were Corey Hill’s leg:
FOX Sports 1, driven by UFC FIGHT NIGHT: SHOGUN VS. SONNEN, posted an average audience of 1.71 million viewers in prime time (8:00-11:00 PM ET), a more than 10-fold increase compared to that which SPEED, FOX Soccer and FUEL TV combined to deliver on the comparable night a year ago (141,000). Among younger demographics the comparisons are even more significant. FOX Sports 1 viewership was over 25 times greater than SPEED/FOX Soccer/FUEL TV among both Adults 18-49 and Men 18-49, and 40 times greater among Adults 18-34 and M18-34.
40 TIMES GREATER?! On a network I still can’t find with a remote, a TV guide and a homeless guy I dragged off the streets to watch the fights with me?
But wait, MORE NUMBERS:
FOX Sports 1 averaged a 1.33 household rating last night in prime time, and ratings were particularly strong among younger demographics. Remarkably, FOX Sports 1 out-rated all four major broadcast networks among Adults 18-49, Adults 18-34, Men 18-49, and Men 18-34 based on impressions within each demo.
UFC FIGHT NIGHT: SHOGUN VS. SONNEN was the most socially-active English-language show in all of television yesterday, with 46,520 commenters, producing 124,635 Tweets, based on the number of commenters not Tweets. For the entire day, FOX Sports 1 was the third-most socially active English-language network (52,209), as ranked by number of unique commenters after NFL Network (116,253 unique commenters) and FOX Broadcast (104,365).
So you’re saying that if you actually put a decent fight card together, fans will tune into said card even if it’s on a previously unheard of channel? QUICK, SOMEONE ALERT LORENZO OF THIS DISCOVERY FORTHWITH.
It’s safe to say that the UFC knocked this one out of the park and is off to a great start on the FS1 network. Perhaps most telling of all was this email sent from White to Dave “The Doom and Gloom F*ckstick” Meltzer that we obtained (hacked in and stole) from his Blackberry:
Dearest Dave,
1.71 MILLION. 1.33 RATING.
F*ck you, you no-longer-working-at-Yahoo piece of sh*t. – DW
Lets hope the UFC can boast similar numbers with their second event, Condit vs. Kampmann II, which goes down from Indianapolis, Indiana on the 28th. Based on the card alone, we’re going to make the wild prediction that they won’t.
(White, seen here liking the idea of that thing we just told you about.)
Ahh, the Dana White post-fight media scrum, where fighters big and small are heralded for their gutsy performances inside the octagon or (rightfully) raked over the coals for the game of pattycake they played earlier in the evening. Tis truly the UFC’s answer to a “performance review.” Indeed. And for the reporters brave enough to withstand this gauntlet of guffaws, this marathon of misinformation? Surely the treasure that is insider info lies in store.
Take this potential nugget of knowledge, for instance, which was dropped by DW during the aforementioned Fight Night 26 media scrum over the weekend. When Matt Brown defeated Mike Pyle by murder as I predicted he would, “the media” jumped on the idea of a potential slugfest between Brown and Robbie Lawler next. Palms got sweaty, pants got tighter — you know the deal. His Whiteness was quick to shoot the matchup down, however, commenting that “he liked” the idea of Lawler instead facing perennial contender and collector of human flesh masks Rory MacDonald next, although he had no location or date for the potential fight in mind.
Lawler is coming off back-to-back KO’s of Josh Koscheck and Bobby Voelker, whereas MacDonald was last seen eeking out a unanimous decision in a snoozer over Jake Ellenberger at UFC on FOX 8, his fifth straight in the UFC. Do you like this fight, Potato Nation, or will MacDonald’s wrestling pedigree spell the end to Lawler’s dynamite second run in the UFC?
(White, seen here liking the idea of that thing we just told you about.)
Ahh, the Dana White post-fight media scrum, where fighters big and small are heralded for their gutsy performances inside the octagon or (rightfully) raked over the coals for the game of pattycake they played earlier in the evening. Tis truly the UFC’s answer to a “performance review.” Indeed. And for the reporters brave enough to withstand this gauntlet of guffaws, this marathon of misinformation? Surely the treasure that is insider info lies in store.
Take this potential nugget of knowledge, for instance, which was dropped by DW during the aforementioned Fight Night 26 media scrum over the weekend. When Matt Brown defeated Mike Pyle by murder as I predicted he would, “the media” jumped on the idea of a potential slugfest between Brown and Robbie Lawler next. Palms got sweaty, pants got tighter — you know the deal. His Whiteness was quick to shoot the matchup down, however, commenting that “he liked” the idea of Lawler instead facing perennial contender and collector of human flesh masks Rory MacDonald next, although he had no location or date for the potential fight in mind.
Lawler is coming off back-to-back KO’s of Josh Koscheck and Bobby Voelker, whereas MacDonald was last seen eeking out a unanimous decision in a snoozer over Jake Ellenberger at UFC on FOX 8, his fifth straight in the UFC. Do you like this fight, Potato Nation, or will MacDonald’s wrestling pedigree spell the end to Lawler’s dynamite second run in the UFC?
Featuring a lot of dudes with incredibly similar names, the weigh-ins for tomorrow’s UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen are going down from the TD Garden like five minutes ago, but luckily, CagePotato tech specialist George Maharis has hijacked the weigh-in stream and will now be broadcasting it exclusively through us, so get in here to check out all the results.
Featuring a lot of dudes with incredibly similar names, the weigh-ins for tomorrow’s UFC Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen are going down from the TD Garden like five minutes ago, but luckily, CagePotato tech specialist George Maharis has hijacked the weigh-in stream and will now be broadcasting it exclusively through us, so get in here to check out all the results.
Main Card:
Mauricio Rua (205) vs. Chael Sonnen (205)
Travis Browne (236) vs. Alistair Overeem (255.5)
Yuri Alcantara (136) vs. Urijah Faber (135.5)
Matt Brown (171) vs. Mike Pyle (170)
Uriah Hall (184) vs. John Howard (185)
Michael Johnson (156) vs. Joe Lauzon (156)
Preliminary Card:
Michael McDonald (135) vs. Brad Pickett (135.5)
Max Holloway (145) vs. Conor McGregor (146)
Mike Brown (145.5) vs. Steven Siler (145.5)
Diego Brandao (146) vs. Daniel Pineda (144.5)
Manny Gamburyan (145.5) vs. Cole Miller (146)
Cody Donovan (204) vs. Ovince St. Preux (205.5)
Ramsey Nijem (156) vs. James Vick (155)
Many of us assumed that Alistair Overeem would be the UFC Heavyweight champion by now. He did, after all, defeat P4P GOAT and future UFC HOFer Brock Lesnar in his promotional debut with a Diverticulitis Kick so powerful that it sent shockwaves throughout the MGM Grand and possibly the entire planet. Unfortunately, a poorly planned roid cycle, an ill-timed injury and a subsequent ass whooping at the hands of Antonio Silva at UFC 156 all but completely derailed the goliath’s title aspirations.
*lowers voice ten octaves* That is, until now.
The latest episode of the always spectacular The Reem, “Back to Basics,” depicts the former Strikeforce and DREAM heavyweight champion, well, getting back to basics. No longer a full-fledged Blackzilian (which we’re sure has nothing to do with the camp’s close proximity to the Biogenesis clinic), Overeem shifted his training camp back to Holland to focus on his upcoming fight with Travis Browne at Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen. Not to start overhyping Overeem again, but if the video that awaits you after the jump is any indication, we should probably start preparing ourselves for A NEW FUTURE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMP AWWWW YEAH SNAPINTOASLIMJIM!!1!
Many of us assumed that Alistair Overeem would be the UFC Heavyweight champion by now. He did, after all, defeat P4P GOAT and future UFC HOFer Brock Lesnar in his promotional debut with a Diverticulitis Kick so powerful that it sent shockwaves throughout the MGM Grand and possibly the entire planet. Unfortunately, a poorly planned roid cycle, an ill-timed injury and a subsequent ass whooping at the hands of Antonio Silva at UFC 156 all but completely derailed the goliath’s title aspirations.
*lowers voice ten octaves* That is, until now.
The latest episode of the always spectacular The Reem, “Back to Basics,” depicts the former Strikeforce and DREAM heavyweight champion, well, getting back to basics. No longer a full-fledged Blackzilian (which we’re sure has nothing to do with the camp’s close proximity to the Biogenesis clinic), Overeem shifted his training camp back to Holland to focus on his upcoming fight with Travis Browne at Fight Night: Shogun vs. Sonnen. Not to start overhyping Overeem again, but if the video that awaits you after the jump is any indication, we should probably start preparing ourselves for A NEW FUTURE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMP AWWWW YEAH SNAPINTOASLIMJIM!!1!
