The Tuesday Leg Lock Report 04.15.08
Posted by Justin Thomas on 04.15.2008
The Tuesday Leg Lock comes back with a huge preview of UFC 83 and thoughts on YAMMA's debut show. Plus, news and opinions on future UFC matches, Anderson Silva's wishes, Strikeforce on NBC, Sylvia vs. Fedor, Bobby Lashley's future and more! We'll also have the debut of a new section. So don't forget to check out this week's edition!
Welcome to another edition of The Tuesday Leg Lock Report! There won't be any big news this time, but I'll preview the upcoming UFC 83 event and give my thoughts on YAMMA's debut show. Yes, I watched that show and it wasn't as bad as everyone says it is. This week's report will also feature the debut of "Readers thoughts"! So without further ado, let's start this week's Tuesday Leg Lock Report!
UFC 83 PREVIEW
Wow, it has been quite a long time since UFC 82… UFC 83 is this Saturday. Sadly, I'm not too excited about the event. Why? Basically, because none of my favorite fighters are going to fight. No PRIDE fighters, only UFC homegrown stars like Serra, GSP, Franklin, Danzig and Bisping. And my favorite division in the UFC is Light Heavyweight, but the event certainly isn't full of Light Heavyweights, is it? Anyways, I'll preview UFC 83. The main card only though, I'll leave the preliminary to my colleagues, so read their articles!
-Rich Franklin vs. Travis Lutter. This is our co-main event. However, the fight isn't very important. Franklin (22-3 MMA) was destroyed by Silva twice, Lutter (9-4 MMA) - once. I don't imagine Rich getting another title shot soon, certainly not in 2008. Same about Lutter, who looked like shit, when he failed to make weight and then got submitted by a striker, despite Travis himself specializing in BJJ. Franklin should be a big favorite here to win. He's a well rounded fighter and he defeated everyone in the middleweight division, not named Anderson Silva. Lutter won the TUF Middleweight tournament, but somehow, I don't see him winning against Franklin at all. Let's hope Rich wins and gets back on the winning track.
-Michael Bisping vs. Charles McCarthy. I'm sick of Michael Bisping (14-1 MMA). He's always fighting cans and two of his last fights were very boring. However, this is another example of why Dana White is a smart man. Bisping is their biggest draw in the UK, so they want him to look dominant. His performances against Hamill (4-1 MMA) and Evans (11-0-1 MMA) were bad though. MAYBE he will not be so bland in the middleweight division… McCarthy (10-4 MMA) is yet another TUF guy. Quite frankly, I don't care about this fight one bit, and it's difficult for me to hype it. While Bisping certainly isn't a top 10 fighter, in my opinion he's still a better fighter than McCarthy so Bisping should win. Right?
-Mac Danzig vs. Mark Bocek. TUF TUF TUF!!! UFC wants Mac (17-4-1 MMA) to gather some wins against not so strong competition and Bocek (5-1 MMA) is a Canadian aka the local guy. Danzig is more experienced and Bocek is 1-1 in the UFC. So this should end quickly. I don't think Bocek would stand a chance against pre-TUF6 Mac Danzig and now that our beloved vegan has improved a lot in the TUF house (crashing the house made him stronger), he has all the chances to win, by… rear naked choke? I wish that UFC would make Nate Diaz (9-2 MMA) vs. Mac Danzig fight. That would actually be interesting and could be a strong co-main event, because both fighters are popular.
-Nate Quarry vs. Kalib Starnes. Yes, just another bunch of TUF guys. Quarry (9-2 MMA) is on a comeback trail after losing to Franklin and then missing almost two years of competition due to various injuries. He is a good fighter, but has yet to prove himself against top competition. Kalib (8-2-1 MMA) is a Canadian and achieved his biggest victory by winning against Chris Leben (18-4 MMA), but his record in the UFC is 2-2. This seems to be just another random fight in the middleweight division. UFC doesn't want to give Okami (22-4 MMA) a title shot, because he's a boring fighter, but there's no one else. Perhaps Silva should just go on holiday and wait until someone climbs up the rankings. You know, in these situations I hate that UFC never has any tournaments. Marquardt, Herman, Bisping, Lutter, MacDonald, Franklin, Okami, Leben – you've got yourself a nice 8 man tournament and the winner would be the undisputed #1 contender. That's what I liked about PRIDE, and now DREAM. Anyways, if Quarry wins here, he might be a fight or two away from a title shot. A possible rematch against Franklin would be interesting. Starnes isn't that impressive and in my opinion, Quarry should take this.
"YAMMA PIT FIGHTING 1" THOUGHTS
-Alexys Oleynik vs. Sherman Pendergarst. Alexys (7-4 MMA) is dangerously similar to Andrew "Test" Martin. Well I'm talking about his face, not physique. It appears, that the ring announcer is drunk. I hate these wacky introductions and it makes you appreciate Bruce Buffer. Alexys looks a little scared. The fight was boring with nothing going on up until Alexys submitted Pendergarst (10-9 MMA). So much for no stalling. The danger zone or whatever they call it is useless. Now the guy on the bottom can't even use the fence to stand up which means even more stalling. Bah.
-Tony Sylvester vs. Chris Tuscherer. Dan Miragliota is awesome. I mute the sound when the ring announcer is speaking. This was actually not a bad fight. Chris (13-1 MMA) couldn't keep Tony (10-2 MMA) down, but he had Tony's back for most of the fight and landed some nice shots and that was enough to win the decision. Chris seems to be gased already. Oh well. The tournament is always about who gases first...
-Marcelo Pereira vs. Travis Wiuff. Classic wrestler vs. BJJ fighter. Well, I hope this won't be as boring as Gracie vs. Severn. At least there are time limits this time. Ok so this was not as boring as Gracie vs. Severn, but not an exciting fight by any means. Wiuff (52-11 MMA) just took Pereira (0-1 MMA) down and unleashed some punches from the guard, which didn't really hurt Marcelo, but it was enough to win a decision.
-George Bush vs. Ricco Rodriguez. The President is here! Or not. Ricco (28-9 MMA) controls the fight with takedowns. He used his weight well here. If I was Ricco, I wouldn't waste my energy trying to suplex George (5-1 MMA). Anyways, Rodriguez wins it, even if he wasn't very active in the fight. Well, really, no one is active in this damned event.
-Oleg Taktarov vs. Mark Kerr. The long awaited Superfight! Let's hope these "Masters" will be more active than the youngsters in the tournament. This will be two rounds. Kerr (15-7 MMA) looks out of shape. This was surprisingly quick. Mark took Oleg (16-5-2 MMA) down and pretty much dominated until Oleg applied a kneebar out of nowhere! Anyways, these two didn't look good at all and perhaps it's time for them to retire. Oleg says he wants to fight in the tournament, even if he looks to be completely gassed after only a minute of fighting.
-Alexys Oleynik vs. Chris Tuscherer. Alexys is just standing in place like a zombie. Scary! Chris does a takedown and dominates with short punches from the guard. I'm getting sick of this event already. Wrestlers are dominating like this was 1996. They just use their weight to take down opponent and hold him on his back until the round ends. Pathetic. I'm just glad these fights are one round only.
-Travis Wiuff vs. Ricco Rodriguez. Please... save me. This is a battle of who takes down who. The one who gets the takedown wins. Always like that. Travis took Ricco down and automatically wins the fight. Ricco tried some submission, but never even got close to submitting Travis... How boring.
-Patrick Smith vs. Butterbean. OK, so this should be more exciting, finally some strikers. Will Masters save this damned show? WE WANT ACTION! And yes this was quite good. Eric (10-6-1 MMA) was too slow to do anything, but Pat (15-13 MMA) landed some solid shots and when Butterbean fell we all knew the fight was over. Butterbean taps and this is a candidate for FOTN, even if it was so short. Csonka rated this as the worst fight ever, but just because Eric was fat. Well if his opponent would also be as fat as him, then that would've been bad. Now, the fat guy got pounded out and I have no problems with that.
-Travis Wiuff vs. Chris Tuscherer. The finals. 3 rounds. Who is gonna takedown who. I'm so not excited for this fight. Wiuff takes down Tuscherer. Of course Travis does nothing there. But we also saw some striking in the first round as Travis caught Chris with some good shots and one of them busted open Chris. So a slow start, but the ending of the round was quite exciting. Unfortunately, instead of capitalizing and hurting Chris even more in round 2, Travis decides to play safe and take it down to the ground again. The ref stands them up, but no one is aggressive. They just throw a few punches here and there, rarely hitting. Maybe they're too tired now... I guess Travis takes this round too because of the takedown. In the 3rd round Travis also takes down Chris, but later it's Chris who finally executes a takedown, but couldn't keep Travis on the bottom. When they were on their feet, Tuscherer was actually looking good and at least he was trying to win the fight with some punches that connected. He takes round 3, but a little too late and Wiuff should win this tournament... Travis says that he broke his hand in the 1st round so that's why he wasn't aggressive later in the fight.
-Overall thoughts. This was an OK event. It had these "Masters" superfights which, I think, delivered. The tournament idea is nice, but the problem with it was that almost all the fighters were wrestlers with submission defense, but no offense. There were no good strikers and that means no KOs, no submissions, only boring decisions. By the way, PRIDE rules are still the best because the judges actually rate the effort to finish the fight. If that was the case here, Ricco would've certainly advanced to the finals and Travis wouldn't have won this fucking tournament by just laying on the ground. The YAMMA structure wasn't that bad. There wasn't anything revolutionary about it, but nothing wrong with it either. If the fights were more interesting, this would've been a good event, but the fighters simply did not deliver. The production was ok, but with little lightning and dead fans everything was kinda bland. I do not recommend this event and there are alot better shows out there FOR FREE. Rating: 5/10.
OTHER NEWS
Strikeforce on NBC debut show. I really liked it. They showed two exciting fights and I have nothing to complain about, I enjoyed it. But looking to the future, Strikeforce needs to transition this show to more of a preview/hype show for future events. Perhaps they're still working on the format. "Strikeforce on NBC" needs a host and no, Cung Le is not a good one. The commentators Lon McEachern and Ken Shamrock could be the hosts, break down the show. It's probably not wise to show two fights each week, because Strikeforce doesn't really have that many events and exciting, long fights. One bout per show would be enough. The rest airtime could be used to show highlights of a recent event or hype a future one. That would be smarter, in my opinion. Now, while I enjoyed the show, there was no purpose, just some random MMA fights thrown out there. They should just introduce new fans to Strikeforce and MMA. I hope they'll do that in the future.
Tim Sylvia vs. Fedor confirmed? There are also some rumors that event's card will feature such names as Rothwell (27-5 MMA), Arlovski (13-5 MMA) & Aleksander Emelianenko (13-3 MMA). Sylvia (24-4 MMA) says that he would be a bad matchup for Fedor (28-1 MMA), but I don't think that's the case. Emelianenko has good takedown skills, way better than Nogueira's and the Brazilian was able to take down Sylvia, so why couldn't Fedor? Sylvia has never been good on the ground and I believe he would get submitted quickly. I could very well be wrong, but in my opinion, Sylvia's best bet would be to survive the whole fight. I hope the fight will be confirmed, I'd like to see Emelianenko finally beat a Top 10 opponent. Maybe the long awaited bout against Couture will come later in the year…
UFC 86: Joe Stevenson vs. Gleison Tibau. Both of these fighters are coming of losses. Tibau (15-5 MMA) lost to Tyson Griffin (11-1 MMA) and Stevenson (28-8 MMA) lost the fight for UFC Lightweight Championship to BJ Penn (12-4-1 MMA). I see this more as a tune-up match for Stevenson after his loss. Tibau could certainly move up the lightweight division rankings by defeating Joe. The UFC Lightweight division is very deep and fighters desperately need to gather a lot of victories until they could dream about a title shot. If Stevenson wins here, a rematch against Josh Neer (21-6-1 MMA) would be fun.
UFC 86: Jared Rollins vs. Ben Saunders. Jared Rollins (5-4 MMA) was defeated in the 1st round of TUF6 tournament and also lost at TUF6 finale, but that fight was very exciting and a real FOTYC, so Dana decided to give him another chance. Saunders (5-0-2 MMA) was one of the better guys in TUF6. I think he'll win here and let's hope for an action filled fight!
Bobby Lashley is training for MMA. Good for him. Bobby has some amateur wrestling background so if he trains hard and takes MMA seriously, he could be a good fighter. I didn't like Lashley as a pro-wrestler, he didn't look like a monster at all, but was pushed to the moon. I'm just glad Bobby didn't sign with TNA. I guess ProElite is already looking forward to signing him. They would probably give him a couple of cans and if Bobby wins, a future main event against Kimbo (2-0 MMA) would be interesting. And can you smell the ratings? It's not likely that Lashley will go to UFC. They have already done it with Lesnar (1-1 MMA) and Brock is a bigger star than Lashley. In my opinion, it's very unlikely that we'll get to see Lashley vs. Lesnar. Maybe if both of them are very successful or very unsuccessful, but I can't say that I'd like to see the fight.
Anderson Silva Still Interested in Boxing Roy Jones Jr. I thought this could happen. And this is not a good situation for Silva (21-4 MMA), for the UFC or for the fans. If Silva is not willing to fight any other UFC opponents, than UFC will accuse Silva of not following the contract and we'll have the same shit as with Couture (16-8 MMA) and it means:
1. No more Anderson Silva fights in the UFC.
2. No more Anderson Silva fights anywhere else.
3. Still no Anderson Silva vs. Roy Jones Jr.
Ok, I'm not sure if UFC can actually prohibit Silva to fight in a boxing match, but if that's the case, then I'll be very sad. I just hope that Anderson will be smart enough to fulfill his contract commitments and then seek a boxing match. Or Dana will be smart enough to let Silva go, which is actually not that smart and unlikely. But be prepared for the worst case scenario, folks… And then I'd hate the world. Why can't UFC have a dominant champion? I want to see the best fights possible and that means that UFC needs to collapse or buy the best fighters in the world. If Silva leaves, their Middleweight division will be dead, just like Heavyweight. If GSP and Quinton (28-6 MMA) win, will they want more freedom, more money? So I got a little off topic here, but situations like this make me angry.
TUF7 Finale: Evan Tanner vs. Kendall Grove. This is do or die for both guys. Grove (8-5 MMA) can't afford a 3rd straight loss and Tanner (32-7 MMA) can't afford to lose two straight after his comeback. We'll see if Evan has anything left in the tank or if he left his glorious days behind. Kendall is popular, but three straight losses mean that "you can't compete on the UFC level". It'll be interesting to see who has more heart and more passion for MMA. I'll be rooting for Tanner here…
READERS THOUGHTS
Last week I got some feedback! I could've replied in the comments section in last week's report, but I thought that more visitors will read the report than a comment. So here's what stronelis had to say about TUF.
ok seriously your the third guy i've read who bitched about the fighters destroying the house. Who the hell cares. What you are just sooo offended at destruction of property, who cares if its a nice house before it will be a nice house after. Don't bitch about them destroying shit bitch about how they are deprived of everything including music. Why can't they watch tv, why can't they bring music or video games. You can't take that many guys stick them in a house for a few months with nothing but a billiard table and swimming pool and expect them not to get bored. Especially when u consider most of these guys prolly have hardcore ADHD. And of course what is the one thing they are given... alcohol. The show is designed for them to freak out and rip shit apart so don't bitch at the fighters for it, its not their fault.
And the main point of this is – not to bitch at fighters for crashing the house. Well, I never did. I actually didn't accuse anyone, only said that I'll puke if I see fighters crashing the house again. Seriously, this is production's fault. I mean, can't they show anything more interesting. This was cool at first, but when I watched TUF6, I got so tired… They were showing fighters crashing the house like every second episode. At least there would be any point to it, now they're only crashing the house because it's fun. Hell, I'd do the same if I was there. But I just can't help it, it makes me sick. In the end of the last TUF7 episode they showed highlights of the 3rd episode and it looks like UFC production will show the same stuff again, so I'm not watching the episode, maybe I'll read a recap RIGHT HERE @ 411!
JC disagreed with my view of Kang's next opponent:
Gegard Mousasi is an easy opponent for Kang? I don't know about that....
Now that I look at Gegard's record – it's actually quite impressive. I've never heard of Mousasi before and really didn't look deeper into his career. This fighter won 7 fights in a row and only once he won by decision. Kang, however, is a Top 10 guy and a strong opponent for him would be another Top 10 fighter. So, yeah, I agree with JC, maybe I misused the word "easy" and should've said something like "Mousasi will be a good test for Kang". Thanks for the correction!
KSti wanted to correct me about Chuck Liddell's salary:
Chuck Liddell did not get 500k for his UFC 79 fight. He got quite a bit more.
500k was just his purse. He also gets money from PPV buys. Randy Couture and Dana White have both said that Chuck has the best contract and makes the most money in the UFC. Chuck gets excellent PPV buys and makes well over 1 million per fight.
You are right. However, when EliteXC offered Fedor a contract, reports stated that Emelianenko's base pay would be between $300,000 and $500,000. We don't know additional details, but maybe he'd have received additional bonuses and made about 1 million per fight. To my understanding, Fedor wanted his base pay to be $2 million dollars, excluding PPV purchase or other bonuses. So that's why I compared Chuck's half-million with Fedor's two millions, or, in other words, Chuck's base pay with Fedor's base pay.
BYE BYE!
And that wraps up the second edition of The Tuesday Leg Lock report. Thank you for reading and please leave some comments. See you all next week!
Don't undersell Anderson Silva's guard. He has now fought two elite wrestler-grapplers in Lutter and Marquardt and beat them both at their own game. Lutter was punished from the guard, Marquardt was sweeped and pounded out. Henderson did well on the ground but he ended up being submitted.
Don't get me wrong, Silva is known as a devastating striker but his BJJ black belt looks genuine to me.
Posted By: Mike Farrow (Registered) on April 15, 2008 at 05:26 AM
