The Greatest MMA News Column 6.02.09: Weekend of Fights!

Posted by Dan Plunkett on 06.02.2009

In the latest edition of The Greatest MMA News Column, 411's Dan Plunkett takes a look at the exciting fights in store for this weekend, TUF 10 coaches, Shogun's title shot, a new Affliction 3 fight, ES Sport's foray into the MMA world, and another Dana White HUGE announcement!

There's a whole lotta fights this weekend, and we can't waste anymore time with introductions, lets get to it!


There's a WEC Show This Weekend?

Apparently, there is. The rematch for the WEC Featherweight Championship between Mike Brown and Urijah Faber will headline the show which should be much more anticipated than it is. It's not the fans fault that this event has largely been forgot about until this week, there has been very little hype on ZUFFA's part for "the WEC's greatest fight ever." Here is the WEC's most popular fighter, trying to regain the championship of a division he dominated from a guy that knocked him out in the first round. That should be a huge show, possibly their biggest ever, but no.

The WEC's biggest show ever took place a year ago. At WEC 34, Urijah Faber defended his WEC Featherweight Championship against former UFC Lightweight Champion Jens Pulver. ZUFFA promoted this fight all they could, there was even a UFC-esque countdown episode leading up to the fight. UFC 84, which took place a week before the event, was full of promotion for WEC 34, it made the WEC seem like an equal promotion to the UFC, and made Faber vs. Pulver a can't miss fight. UFC 98, the ZUFFA event preceding WEC 41, featured very little, if any (I could have missed it), promotion for Brown vs. Faber.

That promotion of WEC 34 turned out to be worth ZUFFA's while, as the show drew a 1.4 rating, averaged 1.54 million viewers, and brought in a $738,855 gate. Since that show, the highest rating the WEC drew was a .65, the highest average audience was 700,000, and the highest gate was $563,578. The .65 rating was drawn by Faber vs. Pulver II, and the highest gate was for the first meeting of Faber and Brown.

I have little doubt that WEC 41 will draw a higher rating than a .65, but it probably won't come close to the rating that WEC 34 drew. For any other event that would be fine since WEC 34 was a huge show, but this event could have done that well, if not better, had the show been promoted better.


Great Weekend of Fights

Not only is there a WEC event this weekend, but Strikeforce is back with a card with even better fights than last time. There are a total of 9 combined main card fights on the two cards, and the overwhelming majority of them should be very good fights. So let's talk about the fights!

We'll start off with Strikeforce, which goes down on Saturday from St. Louis, Missouri, and can be seen live on Showtime. The card starts off with the newlywed Kevin Randleman taking on Mike Whitehead. Randleman hasn't fought in a year, and he has only won 3 fights since 2004. Whitehead was on a nice win streak before losing to Babalu at Affliction: Banned. This is probably the fight on the card I'm looking forward to the least, but that isn't saying much at all since the rest of the card is so good. Expect the winner here to be in the light heavyweight title hunt.

The next fight see's Phil Baroni take on Joe Riggs in his toughest test since moving to welterweight. The only reason I want to see this fight is because I enjoy NYBA, and keep hoping he has another knockout like the Menne one. Riggs was going to take on Jake Shields, but Shields was moved to the main event, so the NYBA became his opponent. If Riggs wins convincingly, I could see him fighting Shields next since there has been a war of words between the two. The first two minutes should be good, if it goes past that mark there will be a drop-off in fight quality.

The next fight may very well become the fight of the year and is the fight I'm most looking forward to on the card. Nick Diaz returns from his destruction of Frank Shamrock to take on Scott Smith, who knocked out Benji Radach in a great fight. Beginning to end, this should be a great fight. I have nothing more to add.

Andrei Arlovski looks to get back on the winning side against Brett Rogers. This is a very interesting fight, we'll see Rogers tested in a big way, and we'll see how Arlovski rebounds from his devastating knockout loss to Fedor. I have a feeling Arlovski is going to destroy Rogers, which I wouldn't mind seeing since I just love watching Arlovski fight, I really like his movement. Rogers could land a big punch on Arlovski, who has been knocked out a number of times. I'm expecting fireworks.

The main event of the evening will be a catch-weight bout between former EliteXC Champions Robbie Lawler and Jake Shields. I am interested to see how well Shields performs here, because I wasn't very impressed with his win over Paul Daley in his last fight. The longer the fight is kept standing, the better for Lawler. I'm expecting a pretty good fight here, but I'm not as excited about this main event as I should be.

Now we'll move forward 24 hours to WEC 41, which will start off Jens Pulver taking on Josh Grispi. Word out of Grispi's camp is that his hands are looking very good. Pulver has lost his last three fights and five of his last six, so this is really a must win for him. I expect Pulver to come out fighting for his career, and Grispi coming out and fighting to make his name. Color me excited for this one.

Donald Cerrone returns after putting on a very exciting fight in a losing effort to champion Jamie Varner. I don't know a lot about his opponent James Krause, but the majority of his wins are by submission, he's coming off a head kick knockout victory (always a plus), and is a replacement for Richard Crunkilton. What does this all mean? This means that this is the fight I'm least looking forward to on the card, but the WEC always seems to put on exciting fights, so I'm optimistic.

The co-main event of the evening features a battle where the winner (especially if it's Aldo), could very well get a title shot. I'm very excited to see Aldo fight again, and I'm interested to see how he does off of his back should he not knock his opponent Cub Swanson out immediately. Jose Aldo has yet to disappoint, and I don't think he will here.

The main event of the evening should be awesome. The first fight was quick, but it was awesome. I don't think Urijah will try anymore crazy Anderson Silva elbows against Mike Brown this time, but that won't take anything away from his. Standing up, this fight is sure to deliver. Faber has some good boxing along with very fast hands, while Brown has sick power in his punches and always swings for the fences. Both are very good in all areas of fighting, and I don't see how this turns out to be a bad fight.

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Better late than never to try and get fans hyped up for the fight!

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Shogun Gets Title Shot; Rampage and Evans to Coach TUF 10

Who saw that coming? After getting all excited to see Machida do wacky things on The Ultimate Fighter, Rampage instead chooses Rashad Evans to coach opposite him. As a result of that, Shogun Rua has been tapped to take on Lyoto Machida at UFC 104. Ultimately, I think Rampage unintentionally made the right decision here. The longer you have to prepare for Machida, the better. I think Rampage will need to get back to using his wrestling in order to increase his chance at beating Machida.

A fight between Rampage and Evans makes sense, due to the in cage confrontation between the two at UFC 96. I don't think Ramage is ducking Machida; he seems legitimately upset at Rashad, so why not fight him as soon as possible? Rampage is giving up a title shot to get his chance at Rashad, and that's not the first time Rampage wanted to put a title shot to the side. If you remember, after UFC 92 Rampage said he wanted to fight Forrest Griffin again before he got a shot at the title. It's an interesting decision from Rampage, but I guess the title is secondary to his personal grudges.

Don't say that Rashad


As for Shogun getting the title shot, you can't really complain about it. He's not the ideal candidate, but considering Rampage wanted Rashad, he was the best candidate. His win over Mark Coleman was extremely unimpressive, but he looked much better in his win over Liddell. I don't see Shogun winning this fight, unless 2005 Shogun comes out of hiding and puts on an amazing performance. It will be interesting to see where Shogun is left in the division should he lose to Machida, I guess a rematch with Griffin would be interesting, but if he loses that he could lose his job.


Babalu vs. Mousasi at Affliction: Trilogy

Since the Belfort-Mousasi fight fell apart quickly due to a disagreement over weight, Affliction tapped Babalu for the job of welcoming Mousasi to the company. I think this is an even more interesting fight, since Mousasi is moving up to light heavyweight anyway, Babalu is top 15 in that weight class, and I would have no idea which weight class to rank Mousasi at. Ever since winning the Dream Middleweight Grand Prix, Mousasi has had a lot of hype surrounding him, I think we'll see just how good Mousasi is in this fight.

He just keeps trying to get back to his seat…



EA Sports: MMA

Well here's an interesting news item. EA Sports has announced a new MMA game for 2010. There aren't any more facts to talk about, since that's pretty much all they revealed. I hope they include guys like Fedor, Arlovski, Barnett, Belfort, Mousasi, Babalu, Minotoro, Aoki, and many many many other fighters in the game. My biggest hope for this game is a realistic career mode, where you start out in small promotions and make your way up to the Dream's, Affliction's and such. The game play for the UFC game is so good that I don't know if this game's can match it, so all my faith is resting on the roster and career mode.


SPECULATION TIME!!

From the twitter of one Dana White:

Tomorrow start a big month for me. Fly to LA in the am for a HUGE meeting. Insane for UFC fans if we get this done and I start filmn tuf 10

My Guess: They will free "just bleed guy" for UFC 100.

Regardless of what the whatever it is turns out to be, Joe Silva will surely react like this:



That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, I hope you liked it, and be sure to come back next week!