KO at the TU tomorrow (Saturday, February 4th) at the Times Union Center in Albany

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Tomorrow (Saturday) night is “KO at the TU,” the first boxing event in over fifteen years at Albany’s Times Union Center (formerly the Pepsi Arena and Knickerbocker Arena).

I’ll be covering the event for the Knick Ledger, so keep an eye there and follow @KevinMarshall for live tweets.

From the official site:

Event Details

Boxing returns to the Times Union Center for the 1st time in nearly 15 years!

 

IBA WORLD TITLE BOUT

Heavyweights—Ten Rounds

Joe “The Future” Hanks, 18-0 (12KO’s) vs. Rafael Pedro, 21-9-1 (15KO’s)

WBO INTERCONTINENTAL WORLD TITLE BOUT    

Bantamweights—Ten Rounds

Sahib Usarov, 17-0 (6KO’s) vs. Yan Barthelemy, 12-2 (4KO’s)

Super Middleweights—Eight Rounds

Jason Escalera, 12-0 (11KO’s) vs. Marcus Brooks, 7-8 (3KO’s)

Junior Welterweights—Six Rounds

Darnell Jiles, 8-2-1 (3KO’s) vs. Bryan Abraham, 5-10-2 (5KO’s)

Junior Middleweights—Four Rounds

Kevin Rooney Jr, 2-1 (1KO) vs. Stanley Harvey, 1-1 (1KO)

Other matches are still being determined. Card subject to change.

Why Dana White is right to decline Jon Jones’s offer to fight a Top 10 Heavyweight

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Jon Jones was on the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani and revealed that he offered to jump to Heavyweight for a Superfight against a top 10 fighter in late 2012, sort of like what they did a couple years back when Anderson Silva moved up to Light Heavyweight and destroyed James Irvin and Forrest Griffin in-between Middleweight title defenses.

As MMAFighting.com notes, Dana and Lorenzo weren’t thrilled with the idea:

“I actually asked Dana and Lorenzo, could I take a fight for the fans at the end of 2012,” Jones said. “I figured beating Henderson and Rashad, there would be a period where we’d figure out who I’m going to fight next, and during that period, at the end of 2012, I asked to fight a heavyweight — a Top 10 heavyweight.”

…
“Dana and Lorenzo didn’t think that was the best for me to do right now,” Jones said. “They wanted me to continue at the light heavyweight division.”

I drew the comparison between Silva and Jones only because thus far in his reign Jones has shown the same level of dominance against the best of his division in the same way Silva has for the past few years.

There are, however, some differences that need to be acknowledged. First, there’s the fact that there’s a big discrepancy between Middleweight and Light Heavyweight in terms of both drawing power and depth of talent. The Middleweight division has improved leaps and bounds from where it was four years ago, but despite having the best pound for pound fighter as its champion (or perhaps in part because of it) is still something of a journeyman’s division. There are a crop of what I would consider “natural” 185 fighters finally breaking through, but for years the division was occupied by guys moving up in weight because they’re too slow for 170 and others who couldn’t cut it at 205. Even today, the #2 and #3 fighters at that weight, Chael Sonnen and Michael Bisping, are examples of the latter.

So while Jon Jones has been dominant, he still has some contenders in a much deeper division. That said, as ridiculous as it may sound, he’s almost there. He’s beaten Bader, Rua, Jackson, and Machida in less than one calendar year. After he gets through Evans and Henderson (which I have a strong suspicion he will given his utter dominance of the other fighters), he’ll have cleaned out the top 10 of the Light Heavyweight division. Who will be left to contend? Phil Davis is a prospect, but showed last Saturday that he’s not quite there yet. The only other fighters who could even be considered top 10 – Thiago Silva and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira – are not likely to get in a position of title contention anytime soon (if ever again), let alone stand a chance against him.

The frequency with which Jon Jones has fought has made him an MVP for the promotion, but the UFC sort of shot themselves in the foot by overbooking him, because he’s run through every potential contender they’ve put in front of him and now they’re in a scenario where he likely won’t have any contenders after the Spring. Dominant champions are good for a spell, but their drawing power is severely diminished once the fans can no longer buy opponents as viable contenders. That’s why Brock Lensar was the UFC’s top draw: it wasn’t just because of his mainstream notoriety from pro wrestling, but also (and more importantly) because he was seen as a beatable monster and every challenge he faced held some degree of intrigue. With Jones, each successive title defense seems more and more like an inevitability, as it has with Anderson Silva and to a lesser extent Georges St-Pierre.

For those same reasons, I understand Dana’s refusal to let Jones fight a top ten heavyweight. That division is a mess as it is and they’ve lost Lesnar to retirement. The influx of Strikeforce Heavyweights is promising but lends to it an air of uncertainty, particularly with fighters like Josh Barnett and Allistair Overeem, both of whom the UFC is going to be booking with baited breath and hoping they don’t piss hot for a Commission drug test. Having a Light Heavyweight, even its champion, move up in weight for one or two fights and potentially sabotage another contender wouldn’t be good business. Anderson Silva fighting James Irvin and Forrest Griffin was one thing, because Irvin was never going to contend and Griffin by that time was all but done as a contender and just around for name value and the occasional superfight (see also: Franklin, Rich). Having Jones do the same would probably draw a good buyrate, but at the risk of bringing depth and legitimacy of an entire division into question.

Still, one has to ask: if/when the time comes where Jon Jones has beaten literally every single potential contender, what the Hell are they going to do with the guy?

The Japanese fight scene is all but dead, just so you know

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Zach Arnold is one of my favorite fight bloggers and the only guy out there I know who consistently has his pulse on the scene in Japan. Most others who claim to are over-eager fanboys who don’t even know what the kanji tattoo on their right shoulder blade means let alone know the language enough to follow the country’s sports periodicals.

In his latest post, Arnold discusses a litany of really shocking and sad topics, including but not limited to Satoshi Ishii receiving a cerebral edema at the hands of Fedor on New Year’s Eve that may have ended his career (if he knows what’s good for him), K-1′s being all but dead, and yet another financial scandal involving professional wrestlers and Yakuza money marks.

It also touches on how all these factors are making the UFC’s foray into the country (PREVIOUSLY: What’s the UFC thinking with its Japanese card?) a risky proposition:

UFC is not going to fill the vacuum that has been left behind by the carcasses of PRIDE & K-1 and that’s a real shame on a lot of levels. While there are plenty of smaller shows (like DEEP coming up at Tokyo Dome City Hall), the large-scale environment for a big Japanese show is toast right now. It’s terrible. The Japanese fight scene has had such a rich history of producing serious, mega-level events and to see what has happened is an utter disappointment. However, it’s been a disappointment that has been man-made by many crooks and egotistical bastards who became too clever for their own good. The major players made their beds and they have to lay in them. They just didn’t know that they were death beds.

Read more (FightOpinion.com)

UFC on Fox 2: fights let down fans while the network lets down its affiliates

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Well, so much for all that.

 

PREVIOUSLY: UFC on Fox 2 Preview

The second installment of the UFC on Fox delivered with some exciting fights, memorable finishes, and one of the better Lightweight fights of the past month between Evan Dunham and Nik Lentz.

Too bad all of that was in the preliminaries.

The reactions I read on Twitter spoke volumes and are the talking points for various websites this morning. What was the UFC thinking in putting this main card together? Why put so many grapplers on there? Isn’t that instant death for mainstream attraction?

My initial reaction was that the show was something of a disaster from a network broadcast standpoint. One follower on twitter asked if this could have gone any worse for the UFC. I semi-jokingly replied that all that was missing was a death in the ring, while another follower suggested that Maia could have just pulled guard for three rounds. He might as well have; I didn’t like what I’d seen of him and thought he’d have issues with Weidman, but I didn’t think his cardio would be that bad. It was a very rough start to what turned out to be a largely uneventful and taxing night for all but the most diehard fans.

Those who stuck through the plodding Maia/Weidman fight or missed it entirely were then subjected to a very underwhelming performance from Chael Sonnen, who got a Unanimous Decision win based on takedowns from Sonnen that went nowhere and did nothing to improve position. Bisping, to his credit and my surprise, was the better striker in the first two rounds and was actually more effective with his grappling defense and cage clinch. So much so, in fact, that he won it 29-28 on my scorecard. Sonnen’s excuse can and should be that Sonnen spent six weeks training for Mark Munoz, a different style of fighter. But to the mainstream fan who has to accept that this guy can somehow beat the best pound for pound fighter in the world, that’s a hard sell.

I thought and was hoping the main event would have gone better for Phil Davis, but Rashad Evans is just that good. My main concern about Evans and the reason I went with Davis is that he’s a bit undersized as a Light Heavyweight, but as I said before and I’ll resoundingly state again, it only makes what he’s able to do in there that much more impressive. As we expected he was able to outstrike Davis, but surprisingly he also outwrestled and overpowered a much larger former NCAA Division 1 champion. What others have been saying to me and the UFC’s matchmakers was proven true: Davis isn’t quite ready yet for that level of competition. Some guys just have to be brought along at a steady pace, and clearly jumping from fighting guys out of the top 10 to the #2 Light Heavyweight in the world was way too much to ask of “Mr. Wonderful.” On the flip side, I was impressed with his ability to hang in for all five rounds and felt he kept his composure despite what must have been a frustrating bout. It’s the type of fight that will only make him a better fighter.

As for Fox itself, I continue to have issues with its sports production. Red Cleatus fighting Blue Cleatus (I was hoping beyond hope we’d be spared the Fox Sports Bots) and Curt Menefee acting like the UFC was an alien race that just landed on our planet made me really miss Spike TV’s broadcasts.

My frustration could not match what the affiliates must have felt with that unnecessary overrun. To put it bluntly, Fox fucked them. They wanted to do an overrun to artificially jack up the rating, and did so by doing absolutely nothing the first quarter hour. When I say nothing I do mean nothing; Menefee talked to a charisma-less Randy Couture (great fighter, bad broadcaster) and a woefully unprepared Jon Jones about…well, nothing. They didn’t even show any pre-fight video packages until sixteen minutes into the broadcast. From a promotional standpoint, that’s inexcusably inept.

As a fan of fights, I wasn’t totally turned off. But I’m one of those diehards, and I’m also not as impatient when a fight goes to the ground as others are. Still, it was an overall frustrating broadcast, and someone needs to have a come to Jesus meeting, whether it’s Fox telling the UFC they need matchmaking that’s going to entice the casual fan or the UFC telling Fox it needs to hit the ground running and opt out of its usual bullshit pandering and bad habit of insisting professional athletes be broadcasters.


Video: hear the best live crowd for a UFC live event ever at UFC 142

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Those of you who follow me on Twitter most likely saw me rave about the UFC 142 fight card from Rio and the intensity the crowd gave that event. In the days following, I’d read and heard from people there that said the crowd must have been poorly mic’ed because the crowd noise was deafening at times.

They were right. As shown in this video, the crowd was very much a part of this fight from beginning to end. Check out their chanting and singing for Jose Aldo, which gave me chills. It makes that moment where he runs into the crowd even more special. What a moment.

 

That night, without even knowing that the crowd was even louder and more enthusiastic than I’d been lead to believe from the broadcast, I expressed the sentiment that Brazilian fans are quite possibly my favorite sports fans. This video just cemented that.

Picks for UFC on Fox 2

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UFC’s second show on the Fox Network is this Saturday, January 28th, headlined by Phil Davis and Rashad Evans in a (sorta) #1 contenders bout.

This one kind of got lost in the shuffle due to the fact that there’s been about 368 shows so far in 2012. Unlike the blink-and-you-miss-it first Fox special where Junior Dos Santos knocked out Cain Velasquez quicker than I could write this sentence, this time around we’re guaranteed two hours and at least three fights. That’s good news for fans who want to see more action and for the UFC, which will likely get a better rating throughout the course of the evening than they would if they were to just throw Evans and Davis on the air cold with no lead-in.

Although no titles are on the line, there are plenty of implications arising from the main card. If Rashad Evans defeats Phil Davis, he finally gets his shot at UFC Light Heavyweight champion Jon Jones. If Phil Davis wins, well, he gets a pat on the back and leapfrogs ahead of a lot of other contenders. I personally think Davis would give Jones a lot more trouble because of his size, but more on that later.

The other two fights on the main card will more or less determine the path of the middleweight division for the next year. Demian Maia was originally supposed to face Michael Bisping, with Chael Sonnen facing off against Mark Munoz. Unfortunately, Munoz had to have surgery to remove a ridiculous amount of bone and cartilage that was floating around in there (pics are here and fair warning, it’s pretty goddamn gross). As a result, Bisping got the call to move up to face Sonnen for the #1 contendership to the Middleweight championship. Replacing Bisping against Maia is up-and-comer Chris Weidman, and the winner of that fight will realistically be one fight away (Munoz) from a title shot.

Got all that? Good. Let’s do a few picks.

MY PARTIALLY EDUCATED GUESSES

Chris Weidman over Demian Maia (R2, sub) On paper this is a big, big step up in competition for Chris Weidman and marks the first time he’s even gotten a sniff at top ten competition, let alone a top five fighter like Maia. But I don’t like what I’ve seen of Maia lately. He may be a jiu-jitsu ace, but his recent outings have been largely unimpressive against the lower tier of the division and he hasn’t finished a fight in two years. Weidman is a strong grappler coming off two consecutive submission wins and has a five-inch reach advantage. I think Bisping was a much better fight for Maia, and I don’t like his chances here at all.

Chael Sonnen over Michael Bisping (Unanimous Decision) Sonnen’s wrestling is going to be way too much for Bisping, who doesn’t have strong enough stand-up to end it on a TKO or good enough takedown defense to prevent it from going to the ground. He won’t embarrass himself like Jason “Mayhem” Miller did, but I do think he’s going to be exposed.

Phil Davis over Rashad Evans (submission, R3 )
As surprised as many will be by this pick, I’m just as surprised that the consensus is going with Rashad Evans. Rashad is talented but undersized at 205. It makes what he’s been able to do in that division that much more remarkable, but it also means he wouldn’t last outside of ninety seconds against the tall, lanky, and powerful Jones and I think it’s going to cost him here. Phil Davis is the strongest wrestler and biggest fighter Evans has ever faced. The last time he stepped in against someone as big as Davis was Thiago Silva. He gave Evans a lot of trouble, and I don’t think he’s nearly as talented, smart, or disciplined as Davis. It’s true that his chin is untested, but that doesn’t mean that Evans will land anything of note, let alone that it would drop him. The only doubt I have is when/if the bout heads into the fourth and fifth rounds. If Evans can hold on that long, he’ll presumably have the cardio advantage and have a chance to maybe get something done.

The rest of the card:
Lightweight bout: Evan Dunham vs. Nik Lentz
Heavyweight bout: Mike Russow vs. John-Olav Einemo
Featherweight bout: Cub Swanson vs. George Roop
Featherweight bout: Charles Oliveira vs. Eric Wisely
Lightweight bout: Michael Johnson vs. Shane Roller
Heavyweight bout: Joey Beltran vs. Lavar Johnson

Instant replay in MMA? Sure, why not.

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There’s been a renewed call for instant replay after Mario Yamasaki’s controversial decision to disqualify Erick Silva for what he thought were illegal strikes to the back of the head on his opponent Carlo Prater two weekends ago.

Referees in the sport encounter the same level of controversy and criticism that befalls their contemporaries in team sports (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL etcetera). To fans of MMA it can seem that our officials are more inept, but when taking into consideration the increased difficulty in making judgment calls in a combat sport and the fact that unlike in team sports there’s only one set of eyes on the action, I think it runs about even.

The problem is that those very same differences are why MMA referees need to be held to a higher standard.

Obviously there’s needs to be some clarification as to what constitutes a strike to the back of the head. But as Joe Rogan explained in a post on The Underground, the video footage and additional vantage point it provided clearly showed that all but one of the shots were legal strikes to the side of the head:

The people in the truck couldn’t believe it. I had to read it back to them because I thought it was a mistake, and when I leaned over to explain it to Goldie he couldn’t believe it either. I had to ask Mario about it. I didn’t know how he was going to respond, but I had to ask him.

Many viewed Rogan’s confrontation as unprofessional. I was a bit more sympathetic to Yamasaki than most other fans on Twitter and blogs seemed to be. I empathized with him as he saw the video, realized his error, and apologetically stated that he can only go by what he sees in the moment and make a judgment call based on that. What’s really unfortunate is that the whole thing could have been avoided if the UFC allowed instant replay.

Which it should. I oppose it in Major League Baseball because the games run too damn long as it is without the extra time that challenges and reviews would add. For that same reason, though, I think it should be allowed in MMA. The kind of actions that would necessitate Instant Replay are going to be those involving potential rule violations akin to what we saw two weeks ago; the type that end a fight well before its scheduled three or five rounds. Although it’s possible that the use of instant replay would delay or eat up unnecessary time on a card, it’s not very likely unless something happens late in the final round. Besides, the promotion and broadcast team already burn up time after the fight replaying and discussing it anyway.

I also don’t think it would necessarily undercut the authority of referees like Yamasaki, so long as there’s a limit as to what could be challenged. For instance, I don’t think that it would or should be used to dispute whether or not a referee should have called off a fight. However, in an instance like the Silva/Prater incident where Silva was disqualified for what Yamasaki perceived as a rules violation, it’s definitely warranted.

In short, if it’s used to dispute whether or not a blow was illegal or a rule was actually violated, instant replay would do nothing but benefit the sport. It will not address the issue of discrepancies in the interpretations of rules or the rules themselves, but it certainly won’t hurt.

 

Why it would be in Zuffa’s best interests to initiate random drug testing

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Just a week after Cris “Cyborg” Santos tested positive for stanazalol, Strikeforce has lost another headliner due to a failed drug test.

Earlier this week, the Nevada State Athletic Commission announced that Muhammad “King Mo” Lawal had tested positive for another anabolic steroid, drostanolone, the day of the January 7th event.

Zuffa, the parent company of the UFC, acquired Strikeforce last Summer. Despite having some big names attached to it, the promotion itself was never a big money maker. Even the most recent card, which featured some of its bigger names and a former UFC main-eventer, only garnered a $65,000 live gate. But the deal with Showtime made it valuable, as did the marquee talent it had under contract. King Mo was certainly one of those guys who the UFC was hoping would give the promotion some momentum to build on and keep the Showtime brass happy.

As with nearly every fighter who’s failed a drug test, Mo is denying any wrongdoing. I’m sure the “tainted supplement” defense might rear its ridiculous head. But the bottom line is that Mo’s failure underscores a very real problem in MMA in regards to not only PEDs but fighters’ seeming inability to effectively cycle and avoid a positive drug test.

The response from Zuffa has been to announce that all fighters must pass a drug test before they’re signed. It’s certainly a start, although hard to imagine someone failing that test with advanced knowledge. On the other hand, it’s not all that different from knowing ahead of time that there’s a good chance you’ll be tested the day of a fight.

Zuffa, for their own sake, needs to go one step further and initiate their own random drug testing. The last couple years has seen a rash of fighters failing drug tests or having issues related to PEDs with State Athletic Commissions, many of them marquee names. And unlike the NFL and other professional sports, the UFC can’t regulate and control that testing, which means that guys are going to get caught. It’s in Zuffa’s best interest financially, then, to cut it off at the pass and protect themselves from public embarrassment and the financial loss that results when main event fighters get popped and shelved for a six months, a year, or more.

Will it happen? I’m skeptical, but think it’s a possibility. In addition to PEDs, the UFC has also had a rash of injuries to main eventers that have postponed fights and jeopardized entire cards (their inability to put together a main event for March resulted in them outright cancelling an event in Montreal). Those injuries lead many fighters who need the money to turn to PEDs and painkillers to accelerate their recovery, which only feeds into the problem.

While most arguments for random drug testing center around fairness and fighter safety, the only one that will matter to a company like Zuffa is that it’s good business. Given the increased exposure from the deal with Fox and the money lost in the last two years due to drug test failures, I think you’ll see that argument gaining more traction.

 

Women boxers may be forced to wear skirts in the 2012 Olympics. Seriously.

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As a friend of mine who e-mailed me this morning stated, it’s as if we’re taking two steps forward and one step back.

The 2012 Games in London will be the introduction of women’s boxing to the Olympics, but they’ll likely have to wear skirts. The BBC reports that the AIBA will meet this July in Thailand to discuss the controversial policy, which is  so backwards I’m embarrassed that we’re even having the conversation let alone forcing women like Ireland’s Katie Taylor to don the attire:

At the European Championship, Ireland’s three-time world champion Katie Taylor told BBC Sport: “I won’t be wearing a mini-skirt. I don’t even wear mini-skirts on a night out, so I definitely won’t be wearing one in the ring.”

But there has been support from some boxers, such as MC Mary Kom of India: ”The tennis players wear skirts and the badminton players are wearing skirts so why don’t the boxers wear skirts?”

Comparing boxing with tennis and badminton? Really? That defense isn’t just Kom’s, but the line held by proponents of the skirts. If the idea is to create sex appeal, well, there’s not going to be much of that when they’re donning headgear while bruising and bloodying each other up in the ring.

Boxing writer and advocate Michael Rivest shared his thoughts this morning on his Boxing in the Capital Region blog for the Times Union.  It’s not not the first time he’s brought attention to the subject. A little over a year ago he interviewed AIBA President Dr. C.K. Wu of the AIBA about the policy of forcing women to wear skirts in the ring.

“I have heard many times, people say, ‘We can’t tell the difference between the men and the women,’ especially on TV, since they’re in the same uniforms and are wearing headgear,” Dr. Wu said. But couldn’t AIBA have listened to the women’s concerns made clear months earlier, that such a uniform would be unacceptable? And if a different uniform is necessary, couldn’t it be, say, longer shorts?

I don’t know where to even begin with this one. If Wu needs help identifying men from women, I can have a sit-down talk with him and a picture book. In all seriousness, though, body types go a long way. So does the ring announcer and television commentators. Beyond that stupidity, though, if I’m watching two women fighting and they’re at a level where because of the gear and skill level I can’t differentiate them from men of equal size? Great! That means they’re doing it right.

What an absurd policy.

 

Great sports moment (Video): Jose Aldo runs into the crowd at UFC 142

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I got chills watching this last Saturday. I’m told that the arena was actually not mic’d well, meaning that as thunderous as the reaction was on television, it did them no justice. Jose Aldo became a superstar overnight, and few deserve it more than him.

 

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