Tag Archive | "MMA Blogs"

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EliteXC Saturday Night Fights to lose Rappers/Dancers


According to Mauro Ranallo on Fight Network Radio. After guest, and editor of Bloody Elbow, Luke Thomas said he didn’t like the rappers, dancers, and fireworks, Ranallo responded with this:

Well I’ll give you a scoop right now…that is all going to be gone come July 26th. There definitely going to put more on the fights themselves for a variety of reasons. One is economical and the other the being the fact that the show went over its alloted time by 51 minutes

Ranallo went on to say that this event will be catered more towards the hardcore fan. We’ll see.

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Sam Caplan Silences the Critics


Since the blowup of MMA, the blogosphere of MMA news and opinion has grown significantly. This growth has exposed many of the hardcore MMA fans to an even larger influx of MMA newcomers (affectionally termed TUF Noobs on many forums) who seem to either request kicks to a downed opponent or a mass ban of “Ultimate Fighting” in the United States. So it’s nothing new to hear the so-called MMA elitist writers and commenters to go completely crazy over controversy or a difference of opinion. I experience that mentality often on the site, and although it doesn’t bother me the least bit if someone disagrees, it really makes me wonder if I should even continue giving readers the ability to comment on the articles written by people who are taking time out of their personal lives to provide some commentary on the sport of MMA. Sam Caplan is a great writer and this article is the reason why he does so well in the blogosphere world with his site, Five Ounces of Pain. Here’s what Caplan had to say about the internet fallout from the EliteXC event.

One thing that really disgusts me is when knuckleheads run to their keyboard and make serious accusations with absolutely no proof. If you’re not happy with something, go ahead and express your opinion. However, accusing someone of taking a dive or accepting a payoff when you have absolutely no proof — or even logic — to back you up is completely over the line. But hey, this is the Internet, where there is no line.

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Write What You Know


There have been a lot of comments made on this site, by myself and other writers here, about journalists in the new-media and in the mass media who write articles about the sport that are clearly ignorant and have no place being pushed as anything more than the spawn of egotistical, uninformed people who get too much attention.

The most recent piece of crap I’ve run into was published by Lee Russakoff of the Comcast Coalition for Idiotic Blogging.

Obviously, this piece was spewed out in response to a comment Kimbo made in his interview with ESPN magazine, another piece that should never have been released by a publication utterly confused by the whole point of the sport and what defines the legitimacy of a fighter. (that, though, is a rant for another day)

Russakoff’s piece is unsubstantiated and doesn’t even take note that, shockingly, there are precautions set in place by the athletic commissions or the fact that there are, in fact, athletic commissions.

In fact, the only point that Russakoff makes in his article is that he doesn’t know anything about the sport.

Realistically, if this article had been published ten years ago, during the dark ages of the sport, he would have had a point. The fact is, though, since the sport has become mainstream it has been observed by medical technicians and professionals and has been shown to be as safe as any sort of competition is possible, with lower risks than football or hockey.

If you are going to right a piece on an area you don’t know about, have the decency to inform yourself or go back to complaining about the price of coffee.

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The Forest from the Trees


Rampage vs. Griffin is going to draw a lot of buys on pay-per-view.

The internet fan base of mixed martial arts that reads blogs and news sites on a daily basis is going to hate the UFC’s Ultimate Fighter show no matter what.

These aren’t concrete facts, but they are most likely to be true if you read this article a year from now. I probably wouldn’t because it will fall under what most MMA posts end up being – dull highly opinionated talking points over matters that only a small concentrated percentage of the fan base care about. I mean, look at blogs these days. Blogs I do, in totality, respect even. Evan Tanner? My neighbor doesn’t care about Evan Tanner. It’s cool that you are such a fan that you care if Tanner makes it back to a certain level, or writes a MySpace note, but is he really worth debating about? How about the goofiness of DREAM of World Victory Road? Couldn’t we all just post on one site that everyone agrees to send new hardcore fans to a note reminding them that Japanese MMA and Pro Wrestling are closely related, less sports and more entertainment, and controlled by the mafia of that country? I mean, I’ve read this stuff for years and frankly I don’t care about any of these guys unless they’re fighting live on my TV with an issue that might make me want to pay for it if it’s not free.

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Posted in Opinion, The Ultimate FighterComments (8)

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MMA Opinion helps take VideosFight Down


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

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Throwing my Hand Up: Vol. 2


Recently I wrote the first installment of my pet peeves about the MMA online scene. It can be found here. Consider this exhibit B to my fighter-writer interview relationship rant.

My newest example is the way many writers jump like fanboys to the defense of fighters whenever the legal system or state athletic commissions make any move where in they just don’t understand the fight game.

I’ll preface this by saying that this particular legal situation is over and charges were dropped. Din Thomas has been cleared, his students no money being officially taken and one of his students being an EMT. But we did not have any of this information the day he was arrested. It’s not that the legal system was completely right in the arrest and charges of Din Thomas in Florida. The Athletic Commission of California certainly wasn’t perfect in handling the case of Sean Sherk. But these fighters were not being persecuted unfairly or randomly and there were reasons in both cases that the stories were at the very least in shades of grey. We do have laws in this country that supersede MMA. We do have rules put together by state commissions for a reason.

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In Defense of Dana


I’m really starting to feel a kinship to the Fightlinker. First of all, I like his gimmick name. That’s a name that kills a man in an alley, and though as an MMA enthusiast I abhor street fight behavior that isn’t done by Steven Segal on TBS, if Kimbo Slice can evolve, then Fightlinker can certainly devolve. I’ve also remembered that the linker is from the great white north, Canada. I have a soft spot for Ottawa. I even finished this week’s podcast, loved the humor this week, and found we agreed on fighter rankings.

Rankings are silly and arbitrary. Anyone can do them. They hold no real value. Unless you put men up against each other you won’t know, and booking matches is more of a feel thing. A guy “feels” top five. A match up with this guy “feels” appealing. One of my favorite pastimes is to listen to a Sherdog podcast and hear some obsessive fanboy caller from their forum hassle editor Josh Gross for ten minutes. I keep wishing that Gross would snap and tell the guy the rankings were put up just to get site traffic because people are marks for that nonsense, but he never does. One day that poor guy is gonna go postal, and you’ll all be left with his chubby buddy TJ. Oh well.

The point is me and Fightlinker, I’m realizing we got more in common then perverse humor. My problem now becomes he’s more productive on his site. I had notes for an article on paper, and he’s so quick I had to find out from Luke Thomas’ Bloody Elbow how smart Fightlinker was. The guy took a short paragraph to give an overview on several points I thought up, and all I could think to do was cross out a few of my notes, and write in, “Must Stop Fightlinker!” I pray I get stopped by the police and they find that cryptic message on me.

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The Internet Did What?: Dana and Randy Break Up


When a friend of mine called to tell me what Brian Knapp reported, I didn’t believe him. I found the link to the Fight Network and read it, just annoyed. I spent the rest of Thursday night annoyed, reading unhappy comments from other unhappy fans who were over-reacting, missing the story, or being equally as sad and dead on.

I went over to Zach Arnold’s FightOpinion Friday morning to get a handle on the damage. The usually smug Arnold (my favorite cynic to pick on this week) didn’t even know what to say. He let the bloggers, websites, and reports do it for him. And I saw shock, and sadness, and fans trying to rationalize answers. And I saw Adam Morgan’s column. “Dana White Fucked up, PERIOD.” Yep.

Usually I’m hard on hardcore fans of MMA. They tend to be very emotionally involved sports fans with no perspective on the business side. I often let Dana off the hook because I don’t think his little offenses are as big as his larger victories. Not this time. Not one bit. We all have a very big problem here.

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Couture Quits MMA to Pursue Acting


Update: It seems that Dana White has offered his best to Couture and hopes to see him back in the UFC if he decided to return from retirement.

Also, check out this audio show of Fight Network Radio where you can hear host Mauro Ranallo is joined by Lorretta Hunt and Sam Caplan to discuss the story they broke: Randy Couture quitting UFC.

Brian Knapp at The Fight Network is reporting that Randy Couture has decided to leave the UFC. It seems that Couture wanted a crack at Fedor and since the Russian heavyweight signed with M-1, “The Natural” decided to pursue his acting career instead.

“Randy’s contract was on a fight-by-fight basis, and that’s the way he said he was always going to take it – fight by fight,” said Matt Walker, Couture’s agent at The Gersh Agency. “His acting career is accelerating at an astronomical rate, and without the support he felt some of his peers were receiving in the fight business, this was the logical choice.”

This opens up a great opportunity for some of the UFC’s heavyweight fighters to grab the Heavyweight belt in world’s largest MMA organization. Only one question remains; who will fight for that title first?

Posted in UFCComments (0)

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Meltzer’s Move to Yahoo will change MMA Media


Often, during infamously long winded tirades, much like my unedited writing style, on Pro Wrestling message boards and personal phone calls, I’m accused by friends of caring more about the way Pro Wrestling is covered and encapsulated then I am about the product the average person watches on TV. The truth is, long ago I became much more interested in the behind the scenes human drama of promotions like (now defunct) WCW and WWE, and eventually, about how that information was dispersed by various sources.

The same has become true of my MMA consumption over the last half year, as this new sport’s media grows and gets a sense of itself and what the boundaries of fandom and journalistic integrity entail. As I have a quota of mentioning in each writing, MMA and Pro Wrestling converge and diverge on a daily basis, as they have since the early 1990s, and really long before (see Inoki, Antonio).

Dave Meltzer, he of the long winded rambling speak (our common bond), signed yesterday with Yahoo Sports for their MMA section. Meltzer, formerly of the LA Times and most recently FOX Sports.com, is the foremost journalist in Pro Wrestling. His newsletter is the bible of that genre, and the bridge between wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts. He’s been defending and explaining his position since 1993.

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Posted in MMA in Media, OpinionComments (3)

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