(Jorge Masvidal vs. Ryan Schulz; more videos here.)
From today’s Sengoku show at the Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo, Japan…
Middleweight GP 1st Round:
Yuki Sasaki def. Yuki Kondo via submission (rear-naked choke), round 2
Siyar Bahadurzada def. Evangelista Santos via TKO (injury), round 1
Jorge Santiago def. Logan Clark via submission (arm triangle choke), round 1
Kazuhiro Nakamura def. Paul Cahoon via unanimous decision
Lightweights:
Jorge Masvidal def. Ryan Schultz via TKO, round 1
Kiuma Kunioku def. Sol Kwon via unanimous decision
Heavyweights:
Muhammed Lawal def. Travis Wiuff via TKO, round 1
Light-Heavyweights:
Xande Ribeiro def. Takashi Sugiura via TKO, round 3
I can’t help it. It’s not UFC, most of the fighters might not be “top contenders” these days, and maybe it’s just a bit cheesy, but I am super excited about tonights YAMMA Pit Fighting debut. They’ve done a super job at making two “superfights” that I am anxious to see. I never thought I’d get to [...]
I know, I know: At this point it’s like “who fucking cares,” right? But for those of you who enjoy following the YAMMA saga on a schadenfreudic level, Mark Kerr has reportedly been taken off the suspended list in Connecticut, which allows the New Jersey Athletic Control Board to give him the go-ahead to compete at YAMMA’s debut card this Friday, in a “Master’s Superfight” against Oleg Taktarov. Well, assuming he passes final medical exams, that is — no foregone conclusion, considering how much abuse Kerr’s body has endured over the years, both inside and outside the cage. The YAMMA bout would come just two weeks after his last fight; Kerr defeated Chuck Huus by keylock submission at a CCCF event in Oklahoma on March 29th, bringing his career record to 15-6.
FiveOunces also reports that Ron Waterman has been submitted and approved (pending final medicals) as an alternate for YAMMA’s eight-man heavyweight tournament. If you want to see pictures of what the YAMMA pit will actually look like, click here. An empty kiddie-pool with a fence around it? Revolutionary.
(We may never get to witness this historic matchup.)
When we first reported that Gary Goodridge wouldn’t be able to fight Eric Esch at YAMMA 1 because he was focusing on his MFC fight against Eric Pele next month, his crew came out in full force to correct us; Big Daddy was up for it, and was ready to “KICK SOME UGLY ASS.”
Well, we had no idea that Goodridge had another fight booked to go down just two weeks before his scheduled appearance in YAMMA’s Death Bowl. Apparently, he fought Mu Bae Choi in Seoul last Sunday and was knocked out in the second round. (Video can be seen here.) Subsequently, the New Jersey Athletic Control Board informed FiveOuncesOfPain that Goodridge would not be approved for his YAMMA fight due to health and safety concerns.
And it gets better: Yesterday we passed along YAMMA’s official announcement that Mark Kerr will be filling in for Don Frye Patrick Smith against Oleg Taktarov in one of the event’s “Masters Superfights,” but the Kerr/Taktarov match hasn’t been approved either due to Kerr’s previous suspension in the state of Connecticut.
So, unless Bob Meyrowitz can successfully bribe the NJACB to allow Goodridge to fight on April 11th, both of YAMMA’s headlining superfights are now in limbo. Our suggestion to Bob Meyrowitz? Save yourself the headaches and do what Strikeforce did — make the two guys who lost their opponents fight each other. Butterbean vs. Oleg Taktarov isn’t a bad main event, in a county fair sort of way. Or, let Oleg slice his way through the eight-man heavyweight tournament and pull up Ricco Rodriguez to battle Butterbean in New Jersey’s own version of the Megaton. Look, your fighting surface is a freakin’ bowl — don’t act like your credibility is at risk.
YAMMA Pit Fighting just won’t give up. They’ve added former UFC champ and Celebrity Rehab star Ricco Rodriguez to their eight-man tournament, and they’ve also announced that Mark Kerr will take on Oleg Taktarov in a “Masters Superfight”. Exactly what Kerr and Taktarov are masters of is still unclear, though indications are that “Masters” is a kinder synonym for “old”.
But wait, it gets better. Details are emerging regarding the mysterious new surface upon which the fights will take place. The good news is, it’s every bit as ridiculous as we’d hoped:
The YPF surface, known as “The Yamma,” is an evolution of the traditional fighting structure and is designed to keep the fighting more explosive and continuous. In today’s MMA matches, fighters rush their opponents in the quest for a takedown, and the fight often ends up on the ground and pushed up against the fence. The action often stalls there, and must be stopped and moved back into the center of the ring. The Yamma’s design is specifically aimed at stopping this break in the action. The Yamma is a circular pit, shaped almost like a bowl, with a circular flat bottom that rises up around the edge. In this ring, if a fighter is pushed backwards towards the fence, he moves up the lip, gaining both a height and leverage advantage over his opponent. From this position, the fighter on the lip can use gravity and leverage to reverse his opponent, and take the fight back into the center without a break in the action.
If this is all a clever ruse by YAMMA founder Bob Meyrowitz to put on an event that is so strange and obviously ill-fated that people are too distracted to notice while he skips town with the fighters’ purses, then I think we can declare it a success. If the goal is anything else, then no.
Ignoring, for the moment, that “The YAMMA” sounds suspiciously like the surface in Chuck Norris’ World Combat League, I also have to doubt that it will work the way Meyrowitz thinks it will. The fact that he refers to fights that go to the ground and end up against the cage as ’stalling’ is troubling in itself. That makes me think that he is not a man with a real appreciation of MMA.
If you like fights that never go to the ground or end up against the cage, Mr. Meyrowitz, you should really check out boxing. I think you’ll love it.
But beyond that, haven’t we reached a point where we can effectively declare that the possible “surfaces” for MMA competition are settled? You can have a cage, preferably with eight sides and an even, flat floor, or you can have a ring. Meyrowitz says The YAMMA is “about the evolution of a sport”, but if the intent is to limit groundfighting, how can that be considered evolution? Does anyone out there believe that what’s holding MMA back is the lack of a big, sloped bowl for guys to fight in?
Apparently, yes, someone does. That someone is Bob Meyrowitz, and he seems pretty confident that your mind will be blown when you see Butterbean and Gary Goodridge square off inside The YAMMA. My question is, does it really count as “evolution” if the newly-evolved organism dies almost immediately?
Mark Kerr and Babalu interviewed in the video below.
The interviewer asks Babalu why he isn’t fighting in an up-and-coming organization instead of a larger organization. I was waiting for Babalu to say “because the UFC fired me.”
