(That’s worth a little thumb ouchie. Photo courtesy of NBC Sports.)
- Thiago Alves proved himself worthy of a title shot with his victory over Josh Koscheck at UFC 90, but he didn’t get out unscathed. MMA Weekly reports that he suffered a dislocated thumb in the fight. It’s not a serious injury, and a spokesman from American Top Team said they expect him to be fine, but maybe it’s a good thing that he’ll be forced to wait out the GSP-B.J. Penn superfight before getting his shot at the welterweight strap.
- Patrick Cote, on the other hand, has a more serious injury situation. He suffered a torn meniscus in his right knee on Saturday and will have to undergo arthroscopic surgery next week. This will most likely sideline him for the next six to eight months, rendering prospects of a rematch with Anderson Silva just that much dimmer. By the time Cote is ready to fight again, Silva could have notched another two fights. Perhaps we’ll all be ready to put this one behind us by then.
- Finally, Fabricio Werdum says he was “surprised” by Junior Dos Santos, adding that it was the first time he had ever been knocked out and “it happened so fast.” Indeed it did. Werdum declined the chalk it up to a lucky punch, saying Dos Santos deserved it, and claimed the loss “won’t change anything” with regards to his pursuit of the UFC heavyweight title. Not sure how he means that, but he’s probably going to have to get back in there and notch another significant win if he wants a shot at the eventual heavyweight tournament winner.
This video of BJ Penn’s experience at UFC 87 (courtesy of BJPenn.com, via Yahoo!) confirms a few things that I’ve long suspected: 1) BJ Penn has more fun than I do, 2) Jesse Ventura (seen sitting stone-faced next to Penn at one point) does not, and 3) everyone in the world — including “Rampage” Jackson — thinks they do a good Hulk Hogan impression, but most of them are wrong.
Where things really start to get interesting here is when Penn enters the Octagon to confront Georges St. Pierre about their superfight. You can hear Dana White asking Penn to let GSP “have his moment here real quick,” and you can also hear the boos from the crowd when Penn steps up to the mic. No matter, Nick Swardson thinks he’s the best fighter in the world, and that’s enough for me.
Below, check out BJ hitting the town with Bruce Buffer, who declares Jon Fitch to be “a tough son of a bitch.” You gotta love the Buff.
Jon Fitch has a new blog entry up on UFC.com in which he discusses his training at AKA in preparation for the bout with Georges St. Pierre at UFC 87 next Saturday. Sounds like he’s none too pleased about all this GSP-B.J. Penn talk, as if it’s just a given that St. Pierre will walk though him en route to another meeting with “The Prodigy”:
Working like we do, when people are talking about how good certain fighters are, one of our first questions is, ‘who does he train with?’ That’s always a big question because I don’t care how good you are; if you don’t train with anybody at your level, you’re very limited in how good you can be and how good you actually are.
Outside of training, I’ve heard some talk over the last few weeks about BJ Penn moving up to 170 to fight GSP at the end of the year. Of course, they’ve forgotten that GSP has a fight with me first. But that just shows you where some people really are still in this sport and how they still have no idea what’s going on. There are a lot of so-called experts out there, but they know nothing about the sport. They’re spectators on the outside watching the sport through a telescope, and they think they’re on the inside and know everything, but they don’t. You can’t let that stuff bother you though. I think it’s funny and it’s just that little extra pleasure at the end of the day when you win and all those people are exposed.
Are we supposed to take this to mean that Fitch thinks GSP is generally overrated? We certainly hope not. Fitch’s win streak and overall skills make him deserving of the respect he’s getting, but so is GSP. Of all the strategic errors you could make when facing the welterweight champ, underestimating him really shouldn’t be one of them. Even if you are right behind him in the all-important Cage Potato Power Rankings.
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.
FIGHTERS INCLUDE BJ PENN, MICHAEL BISPING, URIJAH FABER, CARLOS CONDIT
Las Vegas, NV – In late June, the Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC®) organization and World Extreme Cagefighting® (WEC™) will send UFC and WEC superstars BJ Penn, Michael Bisping, Urijah Faber, and Carlos Condit across the globe to meet and greet the troops of the United States [...]
Sean Sherk, Anderson Silva, Rich Franklin and as Sean McManus revealed, possibly BJ Penn, will be the next wave of fighters to be forever immortalized in plastic.
I think it’s safe to say that Kimbo Slice would not be able to hang with the current top MMA heavyweights. Judging from his performance tonight, Kimbo has a long way to go, as he himself admitted. Luckily, Kimbo has Bas Rutten training him. Any of the top heavyweights such as Randy Couture, Fedor, Tim [...]
($225,000: Enough to buy a new pickup truck and a healthy white baby.)
Official salary and bonus numbers for UFC 84’s fighters have been released by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Here’s how the guys stacked up:
B.J. Penn: $250,000 ($125,000 to show, $125,000 to win) Wanderlei Silva: $225,000 ($150,000 to show*, $75,000 for Knockout of the Night) Tito Ortiz: $210,000 Lyoto Machida: $100,000 ($50,000 to show, $50,000 to win) Wilson Gouveia: $93,000 ($18,000 to show, $75,000 for Fight of the Night) Rousimar Palhares: $85,000 ($5,000 to show, $5,000 to win, $75,000 for Submission of the Night) Goran Reljic: $81,000 ($3,000 to show, $3,000 to win, $75,000 for Fight of the Night) Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou: $80,000 ($40,000 to show, $40,000 to win) Thiago Silva: $50,000 ($25,000 to show, $25,000 to win) Rich Clementi: $40,000 ($20,000 to show, $20,000 to win) Dong Hyun Kim: $40,000 ($20,000 to show, $20,000 to win) Sean Sherk: $35,000 Kazuhiro Nakamura: $20,000 Ivan Salaverry: $20,000 Shane Carwin: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 to win) Yoshiyuki Yoshida: $12,000 ($6,000 to show, $6,000 to win) Terry Etim: $10,000 Keith Jardine: $10,000 Christian Wellisch: $10,000 Jon Koppenhaver: $8,000 Antonio Mendes: $4,000 Jason Tan: $3,000 * Wanderlei Silva’s guaranteed $150,000 salary doesn’t depend on a win bonus.
Overpaid: Wilson Gouveia. Looking back on UFC 84 a year from now, is the two-round almost-war between Gouveia and Goran Reljic going to be remembered by anyone? Yes, Reljic’s relentless left head-kicks were pretty, but Gouveia should have eventually figured out that they were coming. (For us, the presence of Mirko Cro Cop in Reljic’s corner was the early tip-off.)
Underpaid: A lot of people — particularly Shane Carwin, whose Knockout of the Night bonus was robbed from him by Wanderlei Silva. The way I saw it, Carwin’s single-punch, mouthpiece-ejecting KO of Christian Wellisch was more deserving then Wandy’s slightly more prolonged ground-and-pound TKO of Jardine, and Carwin could probably use the money more. Other than that, what the fuck is up with the UFC’s newcomers making three, four, and six thousand dollars to show? Goddamned slave wages. The UFC made $3.7 million off of “Ill Will”’s gate; they could certainly afford to establish a minimum base salary of $10,000 for their fighters if they wanted to.
