After reading the title of this article you are either laughing at how stupid you think I am, or nodding in agreement. B.J. Penn is known for two things, some of the best B.J.J in the game and gassing early. If only he had the heart of a Forrest Griffin he could be unstoppable. Penn is very beatable and Stevenson is a very viable opponent that can take it to him. These two men possess some of the best grappling that will be seen in the UFC. Penn is of course the better in that department, but I think Penn needs to watch out in this fight. You may think I am crazy, but I believe this for two main reasons; Penn gases early and Stevenson will be in great fighting shape. I also feel that Penn is overlooking Stevenson.

As far as being in shape, sure B.J. is in shape. He is in the type of shape that you need to ride a wave in Hawaii bro, but not the type of shape top step into a 5 round war with Joe Stevenson. Joe Stevenson is the second best conditioned fighter in this division. Turned out number one had some help (Sherk, if you live under a rock). If this fight does go past the normal 3 rounds Penn could be in deep trouble. Stevenson has decent hands, and Penn’s will be dropping. When his hands drop, he could be on his back looking at the lights. Another way his conditioning can hurt him, is to allow Stevenson to take him down, into a ground and pound situation. Either way if this fight goes deep, it could spell trouble for the greatest B.J.J artist in American History.

The main reason B.J. is getting beat tomorrow is because he is overlooking a great fighter in Joe Stevenson. Recently Penn has been on record in interviews that he is interested in fighting GSP. He is also interested in fighting Matt Hughes. Not one time in any of the prefight interviews or even the weigh-ins did Penn seem focused, or concerned about the gentleman that he is about to meet in battle. If he is over-looking Joe, then he could be in for a world of hurt! Joe Stevenson is 33-7, and has beat Melvin Guillard, Luke Cummo, and Kurt Pellegrino. Granted, that is not the likes of Matt Hughes, GSP, and Jens Pulver, but it is respectable competition. Joe Stevenson can fight, and will have nothing to lose to the former champion. If Penn overestimates Stevenson, it could bite him in his Hawaiian butt.

Yes, Penn will be the outright favorite, and probably should beat Stevenson very handedly, but that doesn’t mean he is unbeatable. B.J. Penn has just a few flaws in his game, but those are major ones. Especially since I feel he has no heart. Tomorrows fight will be a battle. It has the makings of one of the best grappling matches in the history of the UFC! The crowd will be pumped up, and the winner will be crowned interim champion for the 155 pound weight division. If B.J. did not train to fight 5 rounds, or if he is overlooking his opponent he could be in serious trouble, and we could have a Joe Stevenson versus Sean Sherk unification bout in the future.

In his own words, of course. On tonight’s episode of Inside MMA, newly crowned IFL heavyweight champion Roy Nelson was given the opportunity to talk about his feelings on being at the top of the division. While Nelson came off as a respectful and thoughtful fighter, his feelings about where he stood in the Top 10 of the heavyweight division in the world was a bit skewed. Asked where he personally thought he stood in division, Nelson replied that he could hang with the Top 5. These fighters included recently resigned UFC heavyweight champion Randy Couture and past champion Tim Sylvia. Yikes.

Although Roy Nelson is nothing to scoff at considering he did hold his own in a fighting promotion during the past year, he hasn’t fought top caliber. Looking at his 11-2 record shows wins over mostly IFL fighters, not UFC or Pride talent. Yet. While Nelson certainly has a chance in challenging some of the more well known heavyweights, he has a little further to go to get to the top of the heavyweight division. To be honest, Roy Nelson might make the Top 20 if I was feeling generous. Top 5? Not quite yet. Sorry Roy.

Will Cung Le finally get some respect? His upcoming bout with aging MMA star Frank Shamrock should give the young and undefeated San Shou fighter some credibility - if he can hold his own.

The adopted Shamrock, Frank, has certainly defeated some of the biggest names in MMA - in the 1990’s. These names include Jeremy Horn, Tito Ortiz, and Masakatsu Funaki. However, Shamrock hasn’t fought much as of late. After his disqualification loss to Renzo Gracie back in February of 2007, the submission fighter returned to face Phil Baroni. Shamrock defeated Baroni via rear naked choke in the second round. Incidentally, Cung Le was on the same fight card with a victory of Tony Fryklund and began immediately talking about his next fight - with Shamrock. But is this really a balanced fight? Le and Shamrock are nearly the same age, but while Le has only five MMA fights, Shamrock has over 30.

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Two heavyweight fights? The two biggest fights on the card are the big guys? The guys who have been boring the UFC crowds as of late? Is this a good idea, Mr. UFC Matchmaker 2000; Joe Silva? Sorry for the game of 20 (or four) questions, but I’m a little worried that the UFC isn’t properly planning for positive crowd reaction during the next big event in the states. For the first time since UFC 75, there won’t even be a planned televised lightweight bout unless a main card fight is cut short. This may not be such a bad thing, however.

I realize that a heavyweight fight will need to headline at some point in time with the Couture walk off, but throwing a potential disaster of Frank Mir vs. Brock Lesnar under the headlining fight between Antonio Nogueira and Tim Sylvia could spell disaster. Or, in the case of UFC fans, B-O-O. After Big Nog’s near disastrous bout with Heath Herring, he’ll be up for a challenge against a 6′8″ Sylvia. I realize that Sylvia will most likely push to keep the fight up against the fence and try throw the punches and he pushes Nogueira away, hopefully the Brazilian will attempt to keep Sylvia engaged in some real fighting action, unlike the boring Brandon Vera fight.

Ex-WWE star Brock Lesnar looks to make his debut at fighting a real MMA fighter up against the skilled Frank Mir. This seems like an easy grab for Mir except for the fact that he hasn’t even started training yet. I know that said that Mir should have the upper hand in this fight in the past, but it looks like I might be eating my words on February 2nd.

Hopefully both fights can live up the little hype we have heard so far. On a side note, what is up with the UFC not hyping these events as much anymore? I’m not the only one asking as it has even affecting my desire to write about the events these days. Luckily, there is still some time for the UFC to fix this and think hard about the UFC 81 event itself.

Remember back when Sean Sherk defended his lightweight title against the up and coming slugger Hermes Franca? Remember how boring those five rounds were and how you wanted 25 minutes of your life back? Well, BJ Penn and Joe Stevenson are planning to go the full five rounds, but are hoping for a barn burner and not, as the future held for Sherk (suspended for steroid allegations), a slow burn.

Both fighters have been waiting for this fight and the talking has already begun. Sam Caplan at 5 Oz. of Pain has a couple videos where both men come off as intelligent fighters who mutually respect each other and the talent that they are both up against in this quest for the belt. MMA Mania thinks that this is the reason why nobody seems to care about this fight. I personally disagree, but this might be because I enjoy the technical Jiu-Jitsu fights just as much as the haymaker-laden fights like the Liddell/Silva bout at UFC 79 while many of the casual trash talking fans could get bored with the ground action.

Whatever happens, I am looking to see BJ Penn on top, but Joe Stevenson could easily make this fight his. No matter what happens, these two guys should show us that the lightweight division isn’t filled with Sherks or Franca’s. The rest of the card isn’t looking that great for the casual fans with Gabriel Gonzaga, barely heralded since his loss to Couture, up against Fabricio Werdum and a slew of other fights with little appeal to anyone aside from some of the hardcore fans. It’s a typical overseas card where smaller names will still appeal to a crowd that only sees UFC action every couple of months.

Back on December 6th, I wrote an article detailing Videosfight.net and their theft of online MMA blog content. I had noticed that the site was receiving trackbacks (people clicking links from other sites that pull up MMA Opinion articles) from one site in particular nearly every day. After simply opening one of the links, I saw that the site was taking works from many other MMA sites in the midst of what seemed like 20 Google Adsense advertisements. Obviously someone wanted to make some money off of our work.

The owner of the site, Jeff Hudson, was contacted via email. No response. I pleaded my case to Yahoo! after receiving word from a few other bloggers (Zach Arnold of FightOpinion and Kris of UFC Daily), but nothing happened. After talking back and forth with Kris, he mentioned contacting Google since Jeff Hudson and his site were violating the Google Adsense policy of stealing content and placing advertisements where they could be mistaken for literary content.

It looks like Google was able to do something to help us out. Although they haven’t yet contacted me in regards to the site being taken down, but Videosfight.net is no longer taking our content. If you look at one of the trackback links (the link for “Putting Fighters on a Pedastal is here) you can see that it has become another one of those bland “search” spam sites which just links MMA sites. The site was up and running last week and now it has been reduced garbage within a matter of days. Thanks Google and thanks to everyone for their support.

MMA Opinion and the MMA blogging community: 1 VideosFight.net: 0

A few days back their was brief mention that the Hero’s circuit would soon become extinct, while this is yet to be completely confirmed, reports have surfaced that this is in fact a close reality. “Dreams” as the new show is allegedly called with look to merge what some have dubbed “Zombie PRIDE” (Dream Stage Entertainment Crew) with K-1 Hero’s and create a sort of default MMA leader in Japan. If this is in fact true, than I guess it would be good in some regards because we may be able to see shows like “Yarennoka!!” more frequently and hopefully with the same talent pool.

Another fighter making the jump stateside is the 1st and only King of Pancrase for the 141 pound division, Yoshiro Maeda. Don’t be fooled by Maeda’s 2 appearances in PRIDE. He was originally riding a 14-0-1 record when he met Charles “Krazy Horse” Bennett and suffered a very violent knockout at Bushido 7. You also have to remember that PRIDE’s Lightweight Limit was 160 lbs., which is higher than Maeda is used to fighting at.

A fighter who might actually going back to Japan is the charismatic and always entertaining, Phil Baroni who recently commented on receiving offers from various promotions. Though it wasn’t clear if it was Hero’s or WVR, it would make more sense that WVR would try and contact him considering they are really trying to stock up their 183 lbs. division with the likes of SHOOTO 83 kg. World Champion Siyar Bahadurzada, Evangelista “Cyborg” Santos, and Makoto Takimoto. Also, don’t forget that it was recently found that they had also offered 2 PRIDE Grand Prix Champions fight. Those 2 fighters being Kazuo Misaki and Takanori Gomi.

For those not too familiar with WVR or World Victory Road here is something I posted a month ago talking about the details that have been released about WVR thus far.

I know I am late at jumping on the wagon for criticizing Fedor and his decision making process that has had him face, shall we say less than stellar competition on NYE and over the past two years. I know this “sport” is a business and grown men are going to make which ever decisions that will pocket them the most money and I cannot blame them for that. It’s when these figures like Fedor, who are our heroes, choose fights that don’t push them as athletes that we are disappointed with the outcome of their decisions.

Yes, I am a huge Fedor nuthugger. I own a Red Devil fight club shirt, as will as every single fight of his on DVD and I even have an odd coffee cup with his face on it I bought on EBay. I am amazed at his work ethic, his natural born talent and laid back way of ass kicking that has made him the best P4P fighter in the world. No one can question the example he has set, the history he created and potential that lays in his future. What we can argue is our own belief that there is something better for him than fighting Hong Man Choi and Zulu.

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With all the standard responsibilities and commitments of life during the last days of the year, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to find time to get to a computer and relay my thoughts to the people actually interested in what I have to say. To those people, I say I’m sorry for my lack of appearance on here and especially for my half of a K-1 Dynamite!! preview, which definitely should of been completed and didn’t get finished. School is getting crazy, but the good thing is that I’m FINALLY on my last required English class in college ever! and my Anthropology 101 class is pretty fun. Enough with all that stuff, let’s talk about a beautiful way year ended with Yarennoka!!

I think it’s incredibly apparent by now that I LOVE JAPANESE MMA and by elimination we could all easily say that PRIDE was Japanese MMA for a while, so this Yarennoka!! show did mean a lot to me. I don’t think that the incredibly “quick” PRIDE 34 show did PRIDE or the DSE crew any justice and was not the way they should’ve gone out. Thankfully, Yarennoka!! came along and maybe sent PRIDE away in peace. I say maybe because I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the last time we’ll see a show like this or at least hope that this isn’t the last one of these types of shows. Read the full story

Osaka Dome- There are few things that can compare with the spectacle that is K-1 Dynamite. It’s absurdly entertaining and just ridiculous enough, so that it’s still worthy of true fight fans. This year’s event held nothing back, and the Japanese public lapped it up. With hearty helpings of good match-ups and silly novelties, Fields 2007 K-1 Dynamite ended the year with a bang.

Leading up with card was fight-legend, Kazushi Sakuraba against Pancrase veteran, Masakatsu Funaki. Funaki hadn’t battled in the ring since his loss to Rickson Gracie six years ago, but seemed calm and focused as things went underway on New Year’s Eve. A roaring crowd of over 47,000 people shouted support for both fighters, despite Saku’s overwhelming reputation.

The bout began slowly with both fighters testing the proverbial waters. Funaki peppered Saku with a punch/combination, but Saku utilized his jab and shot, scoring the take-down. The two scrambled on the mat where Funaki attempted a knee-bar, but failed. Sakuraba returned to his feet (to the delight of the crowd) and leapt into one of his trademark stomps, but to no avail. Back on the ground, Sakuraba managed to control the side mount and succeeded in submitting Funaki with a kimura in the first round. Funaki was clearly outclassed, but it was no surprise considering his time spent away from the ring.

Japan’s bad boy, Yamamoto ‘Kid’ Norifumi, took on Jiu-Jitsu practitioner Rani Yahya. Yahya is known for his extremely effective ground-game, but Kid controlled the fight all the way through, and refused to let it go to the mat. In the first round Kid countered Yahya with a hook, and tried to go for a guillotine choke, but was thwarted. Yahya then tried for his own wild hook combination, but hit mostly air.

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