Planet Tapout 1.8.08: Looking to the IFL in '08

Posted by Lotfi Sariahmed on 01.08.2008

With the year in MMA set to get underway next week, 411Mania's Lotfi Sariahmed takes a look at the 2008 IFL season in the latest edition of Planet Tapout! What are some of the things he's looking for as the IFL heads into a pivotal season? All that plus Miscellaneous Musings and more in the latest edition!

Welcome to the MMA column that likes the Jaguars but thinks the Patriots will beat them anyway. This is Planet Tapout on 411Mania.com and I am the man who didn't just watch American Gladiators for "Crush" Lotfi Sariahmed. No mailbag or comments really this week. It was really more some quaint back and forth between Ramon and Caleb (they both helped me out on last week's Boxing v. MMA in 2007 column). The week that was in MMA was a bit slow but don't let that stop you from writing. Send me an email or just leave a comment! At the bottom of the screen just click on post a comment and leave whatever thoughts you want. I'll address them in next week's column. But I like email too. You should know the address; at least I'd like to think so. It's [e-mail] . Now lets get to this week's edition shall we?

When saying this is a slower time in MMA it seems a bit ridiculous. There will be less than three weeks off for the UFC between UFC 79 and UFC 80. Once we hit UFC 80 on the 19th, there will be three UFC events alone in two weeks with a Fight Night and UFC 81 featuring Mir v. Lesnar. But I digress. This (relatively) slow time in MMA has left MMA writers and pundits alike to look back at 2007 and look ahead to 2008 to see what might be. This week Planet Tapout is taking the opportunity to look ahead at the season that will be with the International Fight League. 2008 is going to be an interesting league for CEO Kurt Otto, COO Jay Larkin and Co. The IFL has already made some big changes for this year with the new featherweight division, teams will turn into camps and camps from all over the globe have the opportunity to field some fighters and come into the IFL. Those are just some of the changes that the IFL has planned for its 2008 season. All the while there's still some discussion as to whether or not the IFL will even make it through the season. With that said, here are a few things I'm looking forward to/wondering about leading up to the 2008 IFL season…

1) Ben Rothwell
Unfortunately for the IFL, it was one of the bigger stories toward the end of the season. Rothwell, Jay Hieron and Mike Whitehead weren't competing in the IFL Grand Prix because of contract issues. A he said/he said battle went on between Kurt Otto and Monte Cox and in the end the biggest name the IFL has/had was out and might not be back. Otto has said he hopes to have Rothwell back in the IFL before the start of the '08 season but he's faced with a tough decision. If he goes back to the IFL, he'll be the guy in a division that's woefully barren. But the IFL might not match the offers he'll get from M-1 and the UFC. Of course M-1 has Fedor who you may or may not have known is the best mixed martial artist in the world. Then there's the UFC whose heavyweight division isn't amazing but there is some serious competition there for Big Ben. It's hard to see him going back to the IFL given what he could be offered. But, if Rothwell does end up going back, there's at least one more fight I'd like to see.


2) Ben Rothwell v. Roy Nelson
Rothwell is starting to show up on a few Top 10 lists among heavyweights and is on a 13-fight win streak. But his fight with Roy Nelson leaves some questions among pundits while leaving fans hoping for a rematch between the two fighters. It was the first time Rothwell had been taken to the third round of a bout in the IFL and one of only two times it happened while fighting in the IFL (Ricco Rodriguez also took him to the 3rd). His teammate John Gunderson couldn't praise Nelson's intelligence enough when it comes to MMA. After the first fight Rothwell said he had his worst day while Nelson had his best. A rematch would make that point clearer wouldn't it?


3) Establishing Stars the right way…
And I bring this up because of Chris Horodecki's loss to Ryan Schultz. How does one fighter make it all the way to a title fight without being tested on the ground? Because that's essentially what Horodecki did getting to the title fight with Schultz undefeated. After Schultz embarrassed him the way that he did it should be painfully obvious the IFL's poster boy has virtually no ground game. Part of becoming just as big/recognizable as the UFC is having the big name established stars and that only happens if they have good all-around games. Horodecki is a good striker and a poor ground technician. They'll rebuild him and Horodecki will turn out fine. He's still a good fighter. But with all the IFL has to deal with already, bringing your own fighters along should be the easy part.


4) Horodecki v. Palaszewski III



If you didn't see either of the first two fights you should go find them because they were a lot of fun to watch. A third fight between Horodecki and Palaszewski might not come until the end of the season, and that's fine. But after Horodecki's loss, I find the third bout between these two that much more interesting. Palaszewski trains primarily with Jeff Curran who can more than hold his own on the ground. After seeing Schultz rip Horodecki apart, Palaszewski may have found the opening he needs to finally get a win in this trilogy. As for Horodecki, if this third bout gets made soon enough, it could show that his loss to Schultz might have just been an off night.


5) How will these new champs do?
On December 29th the IFL crowned five more champs to go along with its light heavyweight champ Vladimir Matyushenko. While Roy Nelson and Wagnney Fabiano were expected by many to take their belts, the other three fighters (to put it lightly) were not. You already know about Ryan Schultz' win over Chris Horodecki for the lightweight strap. Matt Horwich knocked out Benji Radach for the middleweight belt and Jay Hieron got the better of Delson Heleno to walk away with the welterweight title. So how long can the IFL's first titleholders keep their belts? Well with two title fights per card it might not be that long. If you read on you'll see I like one of these titleholders to keep his belt for a long time. As for the rest of the champs, its hard really proclaim anything given what happened at the Grand Prix Finals. Matt Horwich, Ryan Schultz and Jay Hieron could all be picked off just as easily as they picked their respective opponents off. Schultz is in a loaded division. Horwich is very up and down to begin with and Hieron doesn't have the strongest ground game. The title fights are something you should be paying attention to all season.


6) Can anyone challenge Wagnney Fabiano?
For those of you who missed it Fabiano is the IFL's featherweight champ after he beat LC Davis on the 29th. It was a bout that seemed to be put together just to have an extra belt but that's neither here nor there. Fabiano disposed of Davis and was the top seed in the lightweight Grand Prix tourney before moving down to featherweight. He's a fighter who, according to Otto, come fight time is 10-20 lbs. lighter than a lot of the other lightweights he's fighting. But he was still undefeated in the IFL being undersized at lightweight. Fabiano sat at the top of a loaded lightweight division and sits at the top of the featherweight division with the belt around his waist. The IFL rosters should be announced some time soon for this season and we'll be able to see who some of these other featherweights are that he'll face. If LC Davis was his biggest challenge, Fabiano will have the belt for a long time.


7) Can Jamal Patterson stay healthy?



You know about Andre Gusmao and what he did in the Team Finals against Mike Ciesnolevicz last year. But did you know he was the backup to Jamal Patterson? If you said no you're not alone because for as much talent as Patterson has, he only managed to fight twice in 2007. Patterson has two wins over the IFL's middleweight champ Matt Horwich. He's a skilled ground fighter coming out of Renzo Gracie's Academy and he's still relatively young in his MMA career with only five fights. He's a nice guy to talk to (having interviewed him and talked to him on another occasion) who has the personality to be a big name in the IFL. He could make a lot of noise in the light heavyweight division and potentially take that belt away from "The Janitor" as long as he can stay healthy.



8) Will any of these other camps take the IFL up on its offer?
You may not have paid much attention to this one point but it's an idea that could shake up the IFL's entire season. If any camp out there could field a team of fighters, there's no reason it couldn't compete in the IFL in '08. Think about what that could mean. Team Punishment in the IFL. An Xtreme Couture team, AKA, ATT and the list goes on. I'm a bit skeptical as to whether or not a team really COULD be put together, but in the mean time it'll be fun for IFL fans to speculate.


Miscellaneous Musings!
●Matt Serra's fans will look at Serra fighting Georges St. Pierre in Canada and view it as a slap in the face. How could the UFC disrespect Serra by having him go into hostile territory and defend his belt? To those people I would say, relax. Serra had nothing to lose in his first fight with GSP and should go into this next fight the same way. No one (emphasis on no one) outside of Serra's family and friends is picking him to win the rematch. Besides, the last time the UFC set up a title bout where the opponent was going into hostile territory (no pun intended) was UFC 77. Anderson Silva beat Rich Franklin for the second time there.

●Tito Ortiz v. Lyoto Machida is a win/win for the UFC. It's a great fight for the fans (even if they don't know it yet) and most importantly, it's a great fight for both fighters. But because Tito Ortiz is involved, I have my doubts as to whether this does go through. Machida apparently has already accepted the fight and now everyone is waiting on Ortiz. A win would make him relevant once again and maybe put him in line to face Forrest Griffin for the title in a rematch later on in the year. But I can't shake this feeling that Ortiz will blow up these plans somehow.

●So the next EliteXC event will have Kimbo v. Tank as the main event. Does the promotion ever want to be taken seriously?

●Lets not get all up in arms because HDNet Fights had to postpone its show on February 15th. It's promotion centers around Frank Trigg and "Mayhem" Miller. The hope was to have Trigg fight Miller as the main event of that show. Trigg can't do it so why have a show featuring Miller taking on random fighter "X?" No reason to worry just yet.

●A Cheick Kongo fight against Heath Herring is much better for Kongo compared to one with Justin McCully. For as much as Kongo fans must have loved the win over Cro Cop, lets not get any delusions of grandeur. He still has a mediocre ground game at best.

●The UFC 81 website is up with all the preview videos and the like (UFC 80 is up too don't worry. They didn't skip it). Am I the only one surprised by how loud and confrontational Brock Lesnar is coming off going into his first MMA fight? After watching the previews for that bout against Mir, I might have thought that Lesnar was the favorite going in.



That's it for this week on Planet Tapout! Make sure you don't forget about the mailbag and comments. Send me your thoughts, recipe ideas and otherwise. The email address is [e-mail] .

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Make sure you come back next Tuesday for another edition of Planet Tapout! This week in MMA serves as a warm-up to the big action next week with UFC 80. On the 12th we have a WCO even in California featuring Renato "Babalu" Sobral taking on Vernon White. Also tentatively scheduled to be on that card are Ricco Rodriguez, Mark Kerr, Mike Kyle, Cabbage Correira, Joe Riggs, David Loiseau and Tiki Ghosn.