(Nick Thompson spices up the weigh-in, courtesy of Combat Lifestyle)
It’s another Saturday night of MMA, Potato Nation. We may not have Fedor or Anderson Silva this time around, but we have got Robbie Lawler and a can-do spirit, so we’re going to make the best of it. Like my grandfather used to say, when life gives you Nick Diaz and Thomas Denny, make lemonade. My grandfather may have been completely insane, but he was wise in his own special way.
Anyway, it’s free so we’re going to stop complaining and start writing. We’ll be liveblogging all the Elite XC on CBS action as it unfolds, so jump on board and let’s do this thing. Remember to hit refresh every so often to keep from getting left behind.
As you’ve probably noticed by now, we aren’t covering the Showtime portion of the card because, to be brutally honest with you, the place we’re watching the fights doesn’t get Showtime. So there it is. If you give a damn about those results anyway, here’s how they’re looking:
Drew Montgomery defeats Brandon Tarns via TKO (cut stoppage) at 4:22 of round 3.
Carl Seumanutafa defeats Mike Cook via KO (slam) at 1:22 of round 1.
Wilson Reis defeats Brian Caraway via unanimous decision.
Rafael Feijao defeats Travis Galbraith via TKO at 3:01 of round 1.
Antonio Silva defeats Justin Eilers via TKO at 0:19 of round 2.
Apparently the Shayna Baszler-Christiane “Cyborg” Santos bout just ended with a second round TKO by “Cyborg”. This vexes me since I was under the impression that it would be on the live CBS card, which doesn’t begin here for another half-hour. Now I’m just confused. Confused and sad.
Okay, so it’s on an hour later here for some reason. Turns out that living in the Mountain Time Zone has some drawbacks. Being an hour behind on the “live” CBS broadcast is one of them. Damn.
8:00 pm: …and we’re (not) live! CBS gets things going with a recap of Lawler-Smith I, which they say “could have been the fight of the year” if it hadn’t been stopped. I guess we’re just saying things without regard for whether they’re true. Why not? It’s only network TV.
8:04: Talking about Robbie Lawler, Mauro Ranallo uses the phrase “silent but violent”. Bet he’s proud of himself for thinking of that one. I’m simultaneously filled with disdain for Mauro and yet glad he’s around so I can enjoy hating him. Kind of like the way I feel about “The View”.
Shayna Baszler vs. Christiane “Cyborg” Santos
We get things rolling with our first Gina Carano plug of the night. That didn’t take long. Her ‘awww shucks’ smile riles up the Stockton crowd. “Cyborg” looks jacked as we transition into the Burger King “Rules of Combat”.
Cyborg comes right out gets the clinch on Baszler, but rather than succumb to the sheer aggression of the Brazilian Baszler gets her to the mat and looks for a kneebar. Cyborg is out, standing over Baszler and looking to land some big shots. Baszler gets her back to the mat and avoids taking too much damage. Cyborg tries some hammer fists from the guard as the three-minute round comes to an end. Strangely, knowing the outcome doesn’t inhibit by enjoyment of the fight.
Round two starts with Cyborg coming right after Baszler and hurts her with some hard right hands. Cyborg tosses her around like a child in the clinch, really using her strength advantage. Baszler looks a little overwhelmed and very tired. Cyborg drops her with a series of straight shots and Baszler goes down. It’s not over, though Cyborg thinks it is. She jumps atop the cage and initially won’t come back down to continue the fight. This is looking like a bit of a fiasco early on. Way to make MMA look amateurish. Cyborg finally comes back and finishes Baszler off in brutal fashion with a great left-right combo that puts Baszler down for good. And, of course, there’s Gina again.
8:24: Now we’re talking to Gina, wondering what might happen if she had “time to train”. Maybe she’d even make weight! I’m just playing. She’d still come in heavy.
Nick Thompson vs. Jake Shields
But first Frank Shamrock takes us through some MMA 101, throwing a dummy around. Oh, he’s just so smug about it, too. Talking about the cut on Shields’ face, Shamrock said he advised him to put Preparation H on it. “Gotta trust the legend,” says Shamrock. That’s himself he’s referring to as a legend. Classy.
Takedown right away from Shields, then easily into the mount. That’s not a good sign for “The Goat”. He scrambles trying to escape and Shields locks in a guillotine from the top position. Thompson taps. “The fight lasted as long as Brett Favre’s retirement!” shouts Ranallo. Now that’s how you force a current events reference into your broadcast. An angry twitch has started behind my right eye.
Gus Johnson congratulates Shields as the new Elite XC welterweight champ with all the enthusiasm of a man on his way to the dentist.
8:53: Kimbo shows up, naturally, wearing one of those Samuel L. Jackson hats and sunglasses indoors. Clearly, he is a celebrity now. “My life is no longer a secret,” says Kimbo. I don’t really know what that means.
Nick Diaz vs. Thomas Denny
They are loving Nick Diaz in Stockton, which is the whole point, I guess. But still. Diaz will never again enjoy this kind of broad popularity. We get as far as the pre-fight staredown before the sound is cut due to profanity. Nice.
Diaz looks a little slow to start on the feet, but eventually looks for a kimura on the mat. Denny escapes, but can’t do much with the position advantage. Diaz is looking for a single-leg before abandoning it for the clinch. Diaz is landing some punches on the feet, but they’re all arm punches and his defense is almost non-existent. A right hand on the ear stuns Denny briefly, then a couple of nice left hooks. Diaz is picking up the pace and Denny looks outclassed, though he’s hanging in there. Nevermind, know he’s down and Diaz is rocking him with some right hands as he gets back to his feet. They’re just brawling to end the round, and it is awesome.
Diaz rocks Denny again to start the round and then showboats a little to pump up the crowd. Diaz pouring it on and Denny is down. The camera angle makes it difficult to tell if it’s been stopped. No, it’s still going, with Diaz landing a few unnecessary shots. Looks like we’re no longer stopping fights too soon on CBS. The announcing team plays up Diaz as if he did something other than beat a guy who was a 6-1 underdog.
Diaz turns Gus Johnson’s interview attempt into a rambling shout out, answering zero questions before Johnson wrestles the mic away from him.
After seeing the “highlights” from the Silva-Eilers bout, I have to say it doesn’t seem like I missed a lot there. CBS follows it up with a great deal of backstory on Lawler and Smith.
Hey, there’s Anderson Silva. They’re not shying away from talking about the UFC, either. I have to question how smart that is, at once admitting that Silva is the best middleweight in the world and also having your own middleweight title fight that does not include him. Aren’t you essentially admitting there that your champion is not the best in the world at that weight class?
Robbie Lawler vs. Scott Smith
Ranallo starts us off with another pop culture reference, this time about Batman. Good leg kicks and combos from Smith early on. Lawler doesn’t look as aggressive as usual here in the early going. Head kick from Smith and Lawler pretends to be dazed. Just having some fun in there. They clinch against the cage and then separate to exchange kicks. The pace is still fairly slow. A few hard punches and a body kick from Lawler and Smith is not liking it one bit. He may have been hurt there, but Lawler doesn’t go after him right away. Smith comes back in the last thirty seconds and Lawler is backpedaling. He may have stole the round with that flurry. Smith seems to have the sense of urgency that Lawler lacks right now.
Smith lands some good elbows and Lawler is cut again, almost in the exact same spot. He comes back and puts Smith’s back against the cage and tees off with some big right hands. Lawler clinches and hurts Smith with some knees. Smith is down, Lawler attempts a couple of awkward kicks to his body before Herb Dean calls it. A bloody Lawler dances in the cage, still the Elite XC champ.
A good night of fights, all things considered. Even if I had to wait an hour longer than the rest of the country to see. Goddamn fascist Mountain Time. I’m out.
One thing I miss about the old days of MMA was the martial arts purists who claimed that kung fu/taekwondo/karate/other very specific martial art that they trained in was better than MMA, only they couldn’t prove it because their styles were too deadly/illegal/would make your heart explode inside your chest. Good thing this feud has erupted between Iron Ring’s “Maoshan” and Nick “The Goat” Thompson.
The above video is an answer to Thompson’s challenge. What I’d like us to focus on here is how lazily and predictably done it is. You find this out right away when they refer to Thompson as “The Bitch Goat”. Really? The guy gives you a head start by being nicknamed “The Goat” and the best thing you can think of is to add the word bitch?
I also wonder about Maoshan’s assertions that a) most MMA fighters are, like Thompson, hopelessly unskilled, and b) he can’t participate in the challenge match because he lives in the hood and doesn’t have $40,000.
I’m no economist, but I’d think that if I were a poor person who knew beyond all doubt that I was a better fighter than the losers making money as MMA fighters (except Rampage and Anderson Silva), I might do whatever it took to tone down my deadly killing moves just enough to make some cash as a fighter. Then again, I guess once your body is a killing machine, as this guy’s clearly is, there’s just no turning it off.
(Kazuo Misaki cracks Logan Clark a good one. Photo courtesy of Sherdog.)
Far less publicized or attended than their first two cards, Sengoku held its third event yesterday at a half-full Saitama Super Arena, marked by former PRIDE star Kazuyuki Fujita’s upset by YAMMA heavyweight champ Travis Wiuff (who is now riding a nine-fight win streak), as well as Kazuo Misaki and Nick “The Goat” Thompson coming away with victories, and MMA elder statesman Maurice Smith’s comeback bid hitting a painful speed bump at the hands of Hidehiko Yoshida. Full recap is at Japan MMA; quick results are below.
Hidehiko Yoshida def. Maurice Smith via submission (neck crank), 2:23 of round 1
Travis Wiuff def. Kazuyuki Fujita via KO, 1:24 of round 1
Kazuo Misaki def. Logan Clark via unanimous decision
Nick Thompson def. Michael Costa via submission (kimura), 4:13 of round 2
Sanae Kikuta def. Chris Rice via submission (armbar), 3:54 of round 1
Marcio Cruz def. Choi Mu Bae via submission (triangle choke), 4:37 of round 1
Rodrigo Damm def. Jorge Masvidal via TKO, 4:38 of round 2
Fabio Silva def. Kazuo Takahashi via KO, 0:24 of round 2
At the event, it was announced that Sengoku IV (August 24th) will mark the beginning of a lightweight GP, with the winner to face Takanori Gomi. Satoru Kitaoka, Eiji Mitsuoka, Kazunori Yokota, Duane Ludwig, and Rodrigo Damm have already been booked for the tourney.
Though he’s only thirty years old, Eric Nicholl calls the shots as matchmaker for BodogFIGHT’s Vancouver-based operation. It’s a job that demands his attention 24/7 — Nicholl has to juggle phone calls, e-mails, meetings, fighters’ demands, contracts, and a host of other details on a daily basis — but he makes it look easy. Fresh off of a well-deserved vacation, Eric took a moment to chat with us about matchmaking, Bodog’s much-jeered payouts, Matt Lindland’s gripe, and who his choice is to play him on the big screen.
CagePotato: How did you get the Bodog job? Eric Nicholl: It’s kind of a unique situation. The company that really does all the marketing and advertising is Riptown Media, and I had transitioned from operations about 3 ½ years ago into marketing/PR for BodogFIGHT. So I was basically the initial person that was going through doing the media interviews. And it kind of developed from there. With mixed martial arts, I’ve got seven years of kickboxing underneath my belt and I wrestled in high school. And I also attended university on a full football scholarship. Contact sports and hand-to-hand combat has always been a passion for me. Basically, BodogFIGHT totally evolved. I kind of got to come along with it. I got to work alongside some really key people in the industry, like Miguel Iturrate, our original matchmaker. I studied under him since the beginning of August, 2006.
Describe what you do, in a nutshell.
Not only do I focus on matchmaking, but I also look at fighter relations. I look at scouting, single fight, multi-fight contracts, purse negotiations. I look at sponsorship proposals. My day, I come in, I’ll fire up my computer and I’ll just scan through the list of guys getting a hold of my e-mail and they want to be fighters. ‘What do I have to do?’ I’ve kind of taken the approach that I’m going to reply to every single one of these guys. If they reply back, fantastic. If they actually fill out the bio stuff that I need, if they have some amateur fights, I want to see video of it. I want to see what their style is, how finely tuned their skills are. I want to see what they look like in a ring, on a canvas. I’d say out of about a hundred people that actually reply back to me, I’ll get five or six that will actually complete the bio form that I need from them. Once it gets to there, I’d say maybe two out of a hundred will actually make it to the cut, where I can say, “Okay, great, you’re an up-and-comer, I can match you against another up-and-comer and let’s see if you guys can make the cut.” It’s a swift process.
Tape is critical. Typically what I’ll do (everyday), I’ll catch up on my e-mail, I’ll go through the forums, all the message boards, all the sites, just to see what’s going on to stay up on all the news as I possibly can. If there’s nothing super important, typically I’ll have meetings — planning for different events, who we want to work with. The people we want to work with — the different organizations — is a key factor. It’s a small niche industry and I want to surround myself with the most positive people.
Do you interact with other organizations’ matchmakers a lot?
All the time. The bigger camps all around the world…Brazil, the UK…again, these are like promoters/matchmakers, they kind of do everything. I also work very tightly with our commissioner and that’s Jeff Osbourne. I don’t think his word is gospel, but I certainly have a tremendous amount of respect for what he has to say. There are different philosophies that I find amongst these other matchmakers — some people are sport purists, other people are all entertainment value. I find that the right mix of personality of someone that can see the value of the sport as a sport — because it is — but also the value of the sport as an entertainment outlet. At the end of the day, you need to have people watching the show.
What happens when, say, an injury or something leaves you without a fighter just days from an event? Where do you look for a replacement?
Again, that has a lot to do with networking. If someone goes down, I will rely on a local promoter that I’ve made contacts with. And there are certain groups in various regions that have guys who train very hard. A specific example is Eben Oroz — I called him when we did our TV shoot in Vancouver in August of this past summer and it was to fight “DJ.taiki” (Daiki Hata). On four days notice. Daiki is a phenomenal fighter, he’s world-renowned and he (Eben) took the fight last minute. And he stepped in and won a great fight and an incredible upset.
It’s really setting up your network as to who you draw from — and at the end of the day, depending on the level of the fighter, I have probably a thousand bios of fighters all set up by the weight class and I’ll look at them. If there’s a guy that maybe deserves a shot, that’s on the cusp, let’s get him in the ring, let’s give him a shot.
The hours you keep must be crazy.
I have my Blackberry. I work 24 hours a day, every day of the week. One of the reasons for that is I’ve got people in Russia, I have people in Brazil, the U.K., we have fighters in Australia, Japan, so my phone rings all hours of the day…and I’ll answer it.
(Peter Graham, doing his best Vanilla Ice at the “Sengoku” press conference.)
World Victory Road’s debut event, “Sengoku”, is slated for tomorrow at 2:30 in the morning (ET). Fight vids will start being available shortly after the show because they know we’re all too lazy to stay up - or get up - at 2:30 a.m. to tune in. The card is a solid start to WVR and as expected, Takanori Gomi and Josh Barnett are big favorites, as is Nick “The Goat” Thompson. Kazuyuki Fujita is also favored big over kickboxer Peter Graham, who is making his MMA debut. Graham, known in kickboxing for his “rolling thunder” cartwheel kick, said some shit about Fujita back at a December press conference for DYNAMITE!! 2007:
One minor surprise took place at the DYNAMITE!! press conference held at a hotel in Osaka. When the MC began taking questions from the reporters, all of sudden a man wearing a red T-shirt stood up. His name is Peter Graham, a K-1 fighter who was there as Nicolas Petas’ teammate. While all the reporters were stunned by this abrupt interruption Graham yelled, “Where is my opponent who was supposed to fight me tomorrow! Chicken!” The MC didn’t know what to do but the interpreter softened a bit and translated what this big man from Australia had just said. Then no one knew how to react to this sudden speech by Graham, so it was basically ignored for then the press conference continued.
Graham revealed after his outburst that Fujita was supposed to fight him at the DYNAMITE!! show, but refused the fight. The Vanilla Ice-doubling big man then decided to publicly embarrass Fujita. This all came out at the “Sengoku” press conference (go here for more pics) and the two fighters had to be separated. Word is Fujita wasn’t so much upset about the remarks Graham had made about him as he was for the kickboxer’s human race-embarrassing sense of fashion.
Video of cartwheel kick attempts by Graham is after the jump. Notice I said “attempts”.
Nick “The Goat Thompson” will face off in a rematch with Eddie Alvarez when Bodog Fight presents HooknShoot at the Evansville Coliseum in Evansville, Indianna on November 24th.
This news comes from a Bodog press release, a copy of which can be found here.
These two fought for the welterwight title back in April at Bodog Fight: Clash of the Nations. “The Goat” would score a second round TKO and claim the title and also add the only blemish to Alvarez’s MMA record.
Alvarez is ready to avenge this lone loss and also settle a feud that begun back in April, after some alleged comments made about Alvarez’ son by Thompson in a post fight drunken rant.
“Nick got drunk after our fight and said some things he shouldn’t have,” said Alvarez. “He made some remarks about my son, Eddie Jr., and I plan to make him pay.”.
