The Patrick Cote-Ricardo Almeida bout could turn out to be one hell of a fight when all is said and done at UFC 86. It’s a timely matchup because it helps to slim down the list of serious contenders in the middleweight division, and both guys are at a point where they can’t afford to lose. Plus, I love a good contest of accents.
Check out Cote’s plans for a sprawl-and-brawl victory above. Almeida is after the jump. He might not be the last guy left in MMA who refers to his desire to go out and “represent jiu-jitsu”, but he’s definitely part of a dying breed.
You may think that typing out a sentence about what a no-talent mama’s boy some fighter is has no real effect on anything, but Joe Stevenson begs to differ. In a recent interview with MMA Rated he admitted to scouring the internet in the past to read what people were saying about him:
In (the) rankings, you know, I don’t really check the Internet too much, I stay off of it because when I first started, I remember the headache that I would get from watching people say, ‘oh yeah, this that and the other’ and, I mean, emotionally it does hurt you. You’re like, ‘wait a minute! You jerk!’ You know, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a 13-year-old kid with acne or if it’s a 27-year-old guy that thinks he can do it or someone that’s really legit and has an opinion. It still hurts, words hurt.
As our Cage Potato comments pie chart revealed, the internet is a place for all the negative/racist/sexist/nonsense things people can’t say in polite company, so it’s probably best for Stevenson not to take it to heart. Of course, by writing that I’ve probably opened the door for some thirteen-year-old kid with acne to call me a Stevenson nuthugger while perhaps also questioning my sexual preference.
Also in the interview, Stevenson looks back on his loss to B.J. Penn, especially the now infamous moment where Penn licked his blood off his own gloves.
JS: I didn’t see it. I didn’t see that until after the fight and watching it on the videotape. I was pissed off for a minute, it was like, ‘oh you jerk!’ It’s cool though, I mean we all pass a blood test [laughs] so I guess it’s OK.
AH: When you saw him do that on the tape, did you feel insulted in any way?
JS: I was more emotionally pissed off that I lost at that time, so I didn’t really care about anything. Then after when I saw it, yeah, I freaked out for a second and it was like, ‘dude!’ My father-in-law is Hawaiian and my wife is Hawaiian and he was like, ‘he’s a savage,’ and I was like, ‘fair enough.’
Maybe I’m missing something, but was Stevenson’s father-in-law saying that Hawaiians are generally savages, or just Penn? And is it okay for him to say it since he’s Hawaiian? I’m not so sure that the whole ‘he’s a savage’ argument would make me feel better in that situation, but I guess you have to take what you can get.
As for the most awkwardly touching moment in the interview, there’s this:
AH: Do you still harp on the loss to Penn?
JS: Well, this is a funny story: I got my hair done, you know, I got it lined up and stuff, and the dude had cut the scar because it hadn’t healed all the way. It totally was bleeding again, and I saw that and that kind of perturbed me.
Perturbed is an interesting word choice there. It might mean he was annoyed, or it might mean he had some disturbing flashbacks. Guess we’ll never know.
By request, and courtesy of HDNet Fights, here’s the MFC 15 match between UFC vet Pete Spratt and top MFC welterweight contender Ryan Ford (who was slated to fight Drew Fickett for MFC’s vacant welterweight title this month before everything turned to shit). Ford gets rocked near the end of the first round, but answers back by nailing Spratt a good five seconds after the round ends — no point deducted by Herb Dean there, but you’d better believe he takes a point later for shorts-pulling. The still-undefeated Ford mobs the muddled Spratt in the second frame, and eventually secures the flying rear-naked choke. Freakin’ Fickett…him and Ford would have been good together.
Some victories in the ongoing battle to convince ignorant states that MMA is truly The Greatest Sport on Earth. First, Tennessee has passed legislation calling for the sanctioning of mixed martial arts. Memphis native Quinton Jackson and UFC VP Marc Ratner can share much of the credit, as they both met with lawmakers to sing MMA’s praises. Governor Phil Bredesen will put the legislation into effect today, and Tennessee plans to create a state athletic commission to regulate the sport. Said Ratner:
“[O]nce the new Tennessee Athletic Commission is formed and has all the rules in place, we will be looking at Tennessee as a state to host a fight. We believe that with their beautiful arenas and diehard fan base, Memphis or Nashville would be great hosts for a UFC event.”
Meanwhile, the executive director of the Florida Athletic Commission told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that amateur mixed martial arts will also become fully sanctioned today in his state. Amateur MMA is already allowed in Florida (to some extent), but head strikes on the ground are prohibited. Now the ammys can ground-and-pound just like the pros. God bless America.
Just got home from spending the past 10 hrs. at the Delaware state Capitol building in Dover. I successfully fought the Ban on MMA in Delaware. Myself and some legislators were able to get the law re-written and passed through the house of representatives, it is now in the Senates hands. the “new” bill will call for state regulation of MMA in Delaware. This will, in the short term, put a moritorium on MMA in Delaware but will not ban the sport we all love.
Somebody over at Icon knows what they’re doing. This mini-documentary on Chris Leben promises to be not only entertaining, but also very well done and effective at driving up interest in his bout with Michael Bisping at UFC 89.
On a related note, am I the only one who thinks that body surfing next to cliffs with sharks in the water is a bad idea for a pro athlete? Imagine Leben getting hurt and then trying to explain that one to Dana White.
(Mike Ciesnolevicz covers his nipples for the sake of decency.)
All the talk about Drew Fickett’s MFC/Strikeforce debacle raises the issue of whether fighters should be free to take bouts that are close together but in different organizations. Of course, breach of contract is a separate issue, but Mike Ciesnolevicz recently tested his durability by fighting twice in one weekend, in two different weight classes and in two different states.
Initially, that sounds impressive. Ciesnolevicz must be a very tough bastard or a very poor bastard to agree to that. First he beat Andrew Force in Decatur, Ill. in the Courage Fighting Championship on Friday night, then went up to heavyweight to beat Matt Anderson in Extreme Challenge 100 in Iowa on Saturday.
But check out what Ciesnolevicz had to say about his strategy after Friday night:
“I was trying to throw no punches, because I didn’t want to hurt my hands for (Saturday’s fight). (Saturday) I can go all out.â€
Now, I don’t want to pick on Ciesnolevicz for doing something that few fighters would even attempt, but maybe he’s unwittingly hit upon the reason people don’t normally fight twice in two days. By saying he was saving himself for Saturday, when he could go all out, he’s essentially saying that the people who paid to see him fight on Friday got less than their money’s worth.
It’s not so much that you can’t have an exciting fight if one guy is trying not to throw punches. Ciesnolevicz won by submission, so he must have known what he was doing. It’s just that when fans pay for a ticket they expect to see each fighter giving it everything he’s got. Whether they’re skilled or not, that’s the baseline requirement that fans typically show up with.
If Ciesnolevicz was trying to “fight safe” as he put it, that means he wasn’t giving the fans what they had paid for. It’s not that this is necessarily wrong, it’s just not a good idea.
It illustrates one of the many reasons why fighters don’t usually attempt this and why promoters try to keep them from even thinking about it. There are just so many things that can go wrong, and even when it goes right it’s not a recipe for a great show.
With a potential win over Rashad how do close do you think you are to getting a title shot?
Chuck Liddell: After I beat Rashad I think I deserve the next title shot.
Would you every welcome a fight between yourself and [Anderson] Silva?
Sure, it could be a good fight but I think I’m too big for him. He’s a tough fighter and I have all the respect in the world for him but I think I’d be too much for him.
I know you’ve briefly talked about it before but would yourself ever entertain the thought of moving up in weight class?
Yeah, I have talked about that a bunch of times, when I get done with what I wanna do at light-heavyweight I’ll be looking to move up in the weight class.
If you could have an open weight fight with anyone in the world who would it be?
I’d really like to get a shot at Fedor; I think I match up well with him.
The Iceman faces Rashad Evans at UFC 88 (September 6th, Atlanta) and is “hoping to be close to 100%” by the time of the fight, following a hamstring injury which he’s still recovering from. All respect to Chuck, but beating Evans shouldn’t put him next in line for a title shot, with the UFC’s 205-pound division as crowded as it is — though an additional win over Mauricio Rua at the end of the year would certainly clinch it. The thought of Chuck at heavyweight is compelling, as is a potential light-heavyweight match with Anderson Silva (who probably wouldn’t be too small to deal with Liddell, no matter what he says). And is this the first time Liddell has mentioned an interest in fighting Fedor? And when he said that, did a silent alarm go off, alerting the UFC’s lawyers that they may soon have another “situation” on their hands?
