What a bizarre night. If, like me, you can’t quite make sense of what you saw last night, the video above gives you another chance to sort through it all. What does it say when Bruce Buffer provides more intensity than the main event?
Bonus awards for UFC 90 were $65,000 a piece and it played out like this:
Fight of the Night: Sean Sherk and Tyson Griffin
Submission of the Night: Spencer Fisher
KO of the Night: Junior Dos Santos
Awarding bonuses this time around must have felt like a strange process. There were only two submissions (Thales Leites’ choke of McFedries was not impressive enough somehow) and one knockout, and picking a fight of the night had to be a lot like picking a favorite Arena League football team. Apparently 15,359 people showed up to be disappointed by the most unsatisfying UFC in recent memory, with a live gate totaling $2.85 million.
Dos Santos’ vicious knockout of Werdum is after the jump, along with the so-called fight of the night and more.
Dana White is downright pissed off. He’s so mad at EliteXC in this video, one camera angle is insufficient for capturing his rage. He lays into EliteXC for the Seth Petruzelli “knockout bonus” scandal and suggests that Jeremy Lappen and the Shaws should look into the kickboxing business if they want to keep fights off the ground so badly. I couldn’t agree more.
For his part, EliteXC Head of Operations Jeremy Lappen changes his story yet again in a talk with AOL Fanhouse. First, Lappen told Si.com that Petruzelli was offered a knockout bonus, but the company doesn’t offer submission bonuses. Then he told ESPN.com that Petruzelli was offered a KO bonus, a submission bonus, and a fight of the night bonus. Now he says both stories misquoted him:
“They’re both wrong,” Lappen said. “We have given submission bonuses in the past but they’re not as common as knockout bonuses. If the question is, ‘Have we ever given submission bonuses?’ The answer is yes. But we give knockout bonuses more often. We gave Seth a knockout bonus before the fight started. That was part of the deal.”
Hold up, you gave him a knockout bonus before the fight started? As in, before he had knocked anyone out? Goddammit Lappen, I sure as hell hope you were “misquoted” yet again. At the very least I hope it’s just poor phrasing on your part and what you meant to say was you told of him of a potential knockout bonus before the fight. But either way, it’s still bullshit. You offered him an incentive to win a fight in a very specific manner, not an incentive to simply finish the fight.
Not to mention, this is the third time you’ve changed your story. Nobody gets misquoted this often. Not unless they keep changing their story so often that they can’t keep all the versions straight in their own mind.
(Just another day in the organization for Jared Shaw.)
The Kimbo Slice fairy tale is over now. At least it ought to be. The “street certified” brawler got himself knocked out in fourteen seconds by a guy who calls himself a “part-time fighter.” A guy who isn’t in the same weight class and isn’t thought of as anything more than a mediocre also-ran in the weight class he normally calls home. To call this a worst case scenario for Elite XC is putting it too mildly. This is an absolute disaster. Which means, of course, that they will now try to convince us that it is not.
Announcer Mauro Ranallo got that ball rolling almost immediately after the fight by suggesting that this should be considered a “mulligan” for Kimbo, since he didn’t plan on fighting Petruzelli. Do we dare mention that Petruzelli also didn’t plan on fighting Kimbo, a heavyweight, in the main event? Apparently not. Instead we start playing up the predictable Rocky Balboa angle, forgetting for the moment that Rocky fought Apollo Creed, the world champion. Unlike Kimbo, the fictional Apollo was both style and substance, and he didn’t go down to a tentative jab.
This is the point where Elite XC makes excuses for Kimbo and tells us that a star is born in Petruzelli. Just watch Jared Shaw working from this script in his interview with Ariel Helwani and see if you don’t find yourself feeling a little sorry for him. His cringe-worthy performance includes transparent lies such as, “it’s just another day in the organization,” and “(Pertruzelli) is a very promotable guy; everybody in this sport is promotable,” and my personal favorite, “we’re gathering all our other nuts.”
This, from the same guy who could be seen having a total meltdown at cageside while Kimbo was getting pounded out on live network TV.
The person who seemed least bothered by last night’s events was Kimbo Slice himself. He hyped his after-party in the post-fight interview and showed up forty-five minutes late to the press conference, where he interrupted Elite XC Head of Operations Jeremy Lappen and made a very brief statement, laughing about his swollen eye, and then disappeared again.
“I think Kimbo’s a huge star. Again he’s been thrust onto the scene. People are interested in watching him. And I think people will continue to be interested in watching him. …He showed heart. And stepped up on an hour notice and backed up anyone, anyplace, anytime.”
It’s interesting that Lappen uses the passive voice there. Kimbo has “been thrust onto the scene.” That’s true. Lappen conveniently ignores who did the thrusting, though.
As for the “anyone, anytime” rhetoric, it flies in the face of rumors that Elite XC had to sweeten the financial pot just to get a reluctant Kimbo to accept the fight against the 205-pounder Petruzelli. The backstage CBS interview alone revealed a very unhappy fighter who exuded anything but confidence and enthusiasm before the fight.
Kimbo was exposed on Saturday night, sure. But he wasn’t exposed as anything other than what most of us already thought he was: an amateur fighter rushed into the spotlight by desperate, unscrupulous promoters. It was Elite XC who was truly exposed. They built their reputation on Kimbo’s curious brand of celebrity, and fate conspired to grind their cash cow into hamburger.
Their strategy was to only make fights that Kimbo could win, then shout his name from the rooftops when he did. Last night they got a lesson in the unpredictability of MMA. Now they’re left shouting excuses. They found out the hard way that you can only play the squash match shell game for so long before a former karate champ comes along and ruins it.
They can call it a mulligan for Kimbo and they can try and turn it into a big push for the very average Petruzelli. But the best thing they can do is learn from this catastrophe. Where they go from here, with respect to both Kimbo and Petruzelli, should tell us whether they have.
Phil Baroni’s first match as a welterweight was a resounding success, as the New York Badass dominated Scott Jansen to a first-round knockout victory at Cage Rage 27 last night in London. Unexpectedly, Baroni quickly got the fight to the ground, scoring a smooth double-leg takedown shortly after the bell and effortlessly controlling Jansen from the top. After an armlock attempt didn’t pan out, Baroni moved to full mount, but both men were quickly ordered to their feet by the ref. Baroni then reverted back to his bread and butter, turning out Jansen’s lights with a perfect right hook; Baroni returned after the stoppage to shake the hand of his still-sleeping opponent.
About thirty seconds later, Baroni made the mistake of going back again to check on Jansen, and one of Jansen’s cornermen responded by headbutting him — or “nutting” him, as the commentators colorfully put it. (”Wot’a dizgrace.”) The headbutter conveniently disappeared after the confrontation, while Baroni scored big-time respect points for not chasing him down and tearing his dumb ass apart. Video of the fight and post-fight assault is above; the questionable ref standup is at 3:36, the knockout punch is at 3:58, and the headbutt is at 4:45. Baroni competes next at Icon Sport: Hard Times (August 2, Honolulu), where he’ll face 3-5 Jesus Is Lord jobber Ron Verdadero.
In other action at Cage Rage 27, Neil Grove defeated Robert Berry in their rematch, stopping “Buzz” via strikes in the second round, while Mustapha Al Turk scored a first-round ground-and-pound TKO over James McSweeney to win the Cage Rage British heavyweight title. Full results are after the jump.
Phil Baroni def. Scott Jansen via KO, 3:18 of round 1
Neil Grove def. Robert Buzz Berry via TKO, 1:29 of round 2
Mustapha Al Turk def. James McSweeney via TKO, 2:06 of round 1
Tom Watson def. John Phillips via unanimous decision
Stav Economou def. Piotor Kusmierz via unanimous decision
Robbie Olivier def. Ashleigh Grimshaw via submission (rear-naked choke), 4:01 of round 2
Brad Pickett def. Cristian Binda via submission (guillotine choke), 2:52 of round 2
Aisling Daley def. Eva Lisko via submission (rear-naked choke), 1:18 of round 1
Jason Young def. Francis Heagney via unanimous decision
Wesley Brown def. Mark Brown via TKO, 0:31 of round 1
Jody Cottham def. Umidjon Mavlyanov via submission (guillotine choke), 3:16 of round 2
Dave Vangasse def. James Elson via submission (rear-naked choke), 3:43 of round 3
Recently dug up by MMA Scraps, here’s the video of a totally bald Brett Rogers winning the vacant EFX heavyweight championship in February ‘07 by knocking out Josh Melichar in 9 seconds. Whoever that announcer is, he’s giving Scott Ferrall a run for his money. (“Are you ready to crank it ahhhhhhhhh, BAY-BAYYYYY!”) Another, somewhat less impressive performance by “The Grim” is after the jump.
Well, one more of these and it’s a full-blown epidemic. At King of the Cage “Opposing Force” on May 15th — just one day before Shaun Parker and Tyler Bryan exchanged simultaneous knockout punches at LFC 25 — Anthony Lapsley and Aaron Wetherspoon’s match also ended with both guys getting their lights turned out. Near the beginning of the second round, Lapsley cranked Wetherspoon with a perfect right straight, but clashed heads with his opponent on the way in. As they both hit the mat, referee Herb “I’m Getting Too Old for This Shit” Dean patiently waited for somebody to get up. Despite the fact that the dazed Lapsley immediately started making the “no mas” hand signal, the fight was ruled a no-contest.
We’ll kick things off with Kiyoshi Tamura’s quick demolition of Masakatsu Funaki, which turned out to be the night’s only stoppage-by-strikes (action starts at the 1:17 mark). More vids after the jump; for a recap of the event, click here.
UPDATE: All the broken vids have been replaced…hopefully this batch will last a bit longer.
