MMA warriors, get a hint from that “little Filipino” pugilist.

Manny Pacquiao, who has just cemented his slot to becoming one of the the greatest boxers in history, must be today’s most popular fighter.  What makes him so?  It’s not the number of fights he won, it’s not the number of championship belts he collects – it’s how he fights.

The thoroughness, the intensity, the power – the heart! Now, that’s what we’re talking about.

It’s the process. It’s how you do it.  It’s how you win.

I heard my little girl sing this song from whoever-she-is-montana-hanna.  It goes something like this:

“Ain’t about how fast I get there/Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side/It’s the climb.”

Yessir! It’s the climb.  It’s the experience you give the audience.  It’s the spectacle.

We don’t want to go see two “intelligent” fighters dancing around the octagon thinking the fight out, and whoever outhinks the other wins.  Leave that to chess players.  Otherwise, I’d rather watch my son play Kung Lao in Mortal Combat – it’s more exciting.

What is MMA?  It’s a bloody fight!  Remember when it was still in its heydays, when it was still an underground (legally banned) sport.  It’s a bloody brutal fight.

No, we’re not saying that MMA gladiators kill each other.  No, we’re not saying MMA warriors should all be brawn with no skill or intelligence.  Au contraire, we’d love our fighters bright, with style… heck, we’d love them fighting with flair and class.  Do that Silva, and MMA fans would multiply overnight like twitter users.

And only then would you see the day where you earn by the millions of dollars, PER FIGHT.

We have almost forgotten about that frustrating letdown on Silva’s performance during UFC 90 last year but the first 3 minutes of the main event of UFC 97 at the Bell Center in Canada just gave us an idea of how horribly boring and irritating things are going to be. It was all dancing and tentative strikes all the way till the end. Anderson Silva vs. Thales Leites was horribly frustrating we felt we waz wobbed.

Leites was like someone in heat that at the slightest chance, he flops on his back to the ground, legs raised to expose his bottom. It would have been okay if Silva would oblige, but no. He just stands there, hands akimbo, feasting his eyes on Leites’ exposed derriere. A lot of instances, Silva would bend over gingerly trying to touch his opponent’s splayed legs. It was such a bizarre sight.

And we thought it was the only time we’ll see Anderson Silva in a “ bizarro world” with that dismal performance against Cote in UFC 90 last October.

Now comes UFC 97…what? “Redemption”? Nothing was redeemed here. Silva just sank deeper into his “bizzaro world.” We felt robbed.

When someone whose reputation is being peddled as one of the world’s best MMA fighters; one who is not only a martial artist but maybe the finest artist inside the octagon; one with eight consecutive wins (the highest record in the history of MMA); one who is hitting accuracy rate is touted at an astounding 80% while the rest of MMA gladiators only have an average 35% hitting accuracy, you would always expect nothing less than an explosive display of skill and power. But no, we waz wobbed.

A couple of months back, we remember him through a translator saying, “What’s important to me is to step into the octagon and give the public and the world a good performance.” What good performance was he talking about?

After the fight, when asked by Joe Rogan how he felt about the crowd’s boos, he said, “unless you’re here inside the octagon, you wouldn’t know what’s happening,” or something to that effect. He also said, sometimes even though you want a good fight, things just don’t go your way – or something to that effect. But Silva, YOU are one of the world’s finest fighters. You are supposed to have a lot of techniques in your mojo to force an attack against Leites.

We understand you want to keep a standup fight but when Leites have repeatedly flopped his back to invite you on the mat repeatedly, and it was obvious that he would not do it with you otherwise than by rubbing body parts on the ground, you should have obliged. You trained specifically for this in Rio, right?

But you didn’t. We, the spectators who paid a total of $ 4.9 million on tickets, and the several other millions of fans around the world who watched this game on TV felt we waz wobbed.

Anderson Silva now has the impressive top record of 9 consecutive undefeated matches. This does not mean anything to the fans. Mixed martial arts is a spectator sports. The fans wouldn’t mind if a fighter wins or losses as much as they would mind a lousy performance. They watch to see a fight. Mixed martial arts is about the fight, the skills, the action, the drama. Who wins or losses is just the anti-climax of the event.

The days seem to roll slowly. Barely three weeks on the countdown and we’ll see how Anderson Silva’s trip to the Carnival paradise Rio de Janeiro turns out during the April 18 UFC 97 “Redemption” at the Bell Center in Montreal. Besides perhaps learning a couple of samba steps or looking for that Girl from Ipanema, or lounging at the Copacabana, “The Spider” actually hied off to Rio for an octane-fed top-level jiu-jitsu training with BJJ legends Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza and Andre Galvao.

Galvao studied and tries to imitate Leites’ fight style and uses this during Silva’s fight trainings.

While Silva (23-4-0) is known for his primary skills of Muay Thai and Brazilial Jiu-jitsu, his top-level jiu-jitsu training in Brazil speaks a lot about what he thinks about his BJJ skilled opponent in Thales Leites (14-1-0). “Thales is a new kids who’s just starting out, but he’s already proven that he deserves this opportunity,” Silva declared. “He’s a dangerous opponent, just like all the others I’ve faced. He has this opportunity to fight for the title because he impressed the promoters enough to get this chance.”

The 27-year-old Leites (14-1) has never been finished in 15 career fights and has enjoyed a relatively stealth rise up the middleweight ladder.

Other fighters that makes us want to time-travel to April 18 are Cheick Kongo (13-4-1) who will clash against Dutch kickboxing hero Antoni Hardonk. Former World Extreme Cagefighting light heavyweight champion Steve Cantwell (7-1) also highlights this card with a showdown with world-ranked Luis Arthur Cane.

Here are more reasons for the excitement:

Chuck Liddel vs. Mauricio “Shogun” Rua

Brian Stann vs. Krzysztof Soszynski
Cheick Kongo vs. Antoni Hardonk
Luis Arthur Cane vs. Steve Cantwell
Denis Kang vs. Xavier Foupa-Pokam
Jason MacDonald vs. Nate Quarry
Ed Herman vs. David Loiseau
Eliot Marshall vs. Mike Ciesnolevicz
Mark Bocek vs. David Bielkheden
T.J. Grant vs. Ryo Chonan
Sam Stout vs. Matt Wiman

On a side note, we just can’t help but wonder how the so-called previously unrecognized regulations of Regie des Alcools, des courses et des jeux (RACJ), the government agency that oversees combat sports in Quebec, would affect the over-all outcome of the fights. This so-called previously unrecognized regulations for the sport is the prohibition of elbow and knee strikes. The RACJ regulations, which were actually intended for “mixed boxing” in the 1990’s also asked referees to intervene whenever a fighter is knocked down. We hope this will not result to a watered-down scuffle at the octagon.

More reason for us to shiver in anticipation.

By:  Joe B. Skotzou

It is easy to get intrigued by Bobby Lashley. Three months into mixed martial arts and off he goes getting compared to one of the sports’ biggest crowd-drawers, Brock Lesnar. In a sense, simply because he comes from where Lesnar was, he gets to be talked about more compared to other newbies. Now, that’s what we call lucky.

Popularity could be a pain in the a*^@#.

When a newbie comes and gets to be talked about a lot, the general direction would mostly be for some MMA fans to try to put him down. “He’s a wrestler. He comes from that fake sport of fake actors.” Remember how Brock Lesnar was met with wryness? In a sense, one is guilty of being a loser until he proves it otherwise. In a sense, this disparagement makes it more difficult for a newbie to move around. It is easier to work yourself upwards when everyone’s looking somewhere else, than having pot shots thrown at you while you fight your way up.

MMA is still show business.

Whoever gets more attention –more media mileage, is one step ahead of the rest of the flock. Now, it is up to him to show the denizens within and outside the octagon that there is something worth talking about. And he has to show his mettle fast, lest his “promising newbie” status becomes just another flash in the pan. And the 6-foot one former EWC champion seems to be doing well at this.

First match passed with flying colors.

His debut exposure at the cage (MFA: There Will Be Blood) was explosive with that less-than-a-minute knock-out win over Joshua Franklin. Massively muscled like a raging bull, he charged like a lithe pit bull to pick up Franklin and slam him to the ground. Who said wrestlers are supposed to be slow? "I learned how to move with a faster pace of training when I was small, and I was able to keep going at that pace as I got bigger and kept growing,” Lashley said.

Second match was not without its share of excitement.

Lashley, without trying to, seems to have brought with him professional wrestling’s flair for drama. The pre-fight trash-talk he got from Jason Guida was a good example of how you stir interest to a match. And nothing is more media-frenzy friendly than two protagonists on the verge of slugging it out during a press-con.

"He played a lot of head games before the fight," Lashley said, referring to the trash-talk thrown on him by Guida. Lashley admitted that Guida “screwed with his head” when the latter said, "You've been faking this for how long? Tell'em, let'em know. How long's it been since you trained hard? How long has it been since you squared up against someone who's going to hit you on the chin and not pull a punch?"

Fortunately, he was able to keep his game for this fight. The former wrestling champion is now 2-0 to help appease the usual naysayers who oppose professional wrestlers dipping their toes in the now more popular world of mixed martial arts.

Indeed, Bobby Lashley is a promising add to the world of mixed martial arts. Let us not forget the new faces (and fat pockets) he brings to MMA: he’s got a large following that he brought with him from the (fake) world of wrestling. Remember, this is show business too.

MMA, like any other spectator sport, is all about putting them arses on chairs.

By Joe B. Skotzou

Welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre comes in as one the three best pound-for-pound fighter in polls, next only to heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko and middleweight champion Anderson Silva. B.J. Penn, on the other hand is a great lightweight who entered the octagon a lot lighter at 20 lbs, and smaller than the formidable St. Pierre, who is comfortable at 187 against Penn’s forced 168 pounds.

The “Prodigy,” who has been eyeing the much lucrative welterweight (more bigger-named fighters and bigger purses) has been neglecting his advantage in the lightweight division. The devastation he suffered from St. Pierre must have brought him back to his senses: get back to where he is king – the lightweight division.

While it can be said that B.J. Penn worked harder and trained himself like he never did before anywhere during his entire career, it was not enough to realize his dream of being the first dual-titled mixed martial arts warrior.

St. Pierre came more mentally prepared with his game plan. The first round was to tire him down, and the game was stopped by ref Herb Dean, the ringside physician and by Penn’s corner at the end of the fourth round. The devastation was so…devastating that Penn has to be rushed to the hospital later.

A slight controversy threatened to mar St. Pierre’s win when one of his cornermen rubbed Vaseline to his body (which fight officials corrected by having the slippery substance towelled off St. Pierre’s body). While it was obvious that the Vaseline-rubbing did not have any bearing on St. Pierre’s win, Dana White maintained it was wrong and said the cornerman involved (Phil Nurse) shouldn’t be allowed to corner another fighter again.

St. Pierre did not only come to this fight bigger and heavier (not a guarantee to a win) but he also came with a better game plan, “My strategy was that he has small shoulders, which is good for hand speed, so I went to make him carry my weight and cause his shoulders to tire,” said St. Pierre. “You’ll notice I didn’t rush him right away going for the takedown (his style in his last few matches),” he added. “The idea was to cause him to have to hop on one leg and get tired, and push off, having to carry my weight in the clinch. That was the idea in the first round…… I knew I broke him mentally after the first round.”

St. Pierre, who earned $420,000 in this fight (excluding his share for the pay-per-view earnings), could boast of being a part of one of the biggest pay-per-view draws in mixed martial arts at more than 900,000. To give you a better perspective, the December 2008 Oscar de la Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao tiff drew 1.25 million PPVs (tied-in with the Mike Tyson vs. Razor Ruddock battle in 1991). UFC president Dana White must be ecstatic. Gate sales went as high as $4.3 million.

True to form, Andrei Arlovski looked impressive with his boxing stance while Fedor Emelianenko seemed awkwardly out of balance most of the time. Like your next-door pudgy Russian fellow, Fedor is the last person you’d think as someone with a title as awesome as World Alliance of Mixed Martial Arts champion.

Judging from the boxing-like spectacle of the first couple of minutes of the first round of Affliction: Day of Reckoning, it was obvious that Arlovski was in control of the game. He looked imposing with his height advantage while Fedor seemed vulnerable with his head well-exposed and his firsts lowered as if unsure of what to do. Whether it is his way of assessing his opponent, or it is his way of making foes grow more daring and lose all caution, the “Last Emperor” succeeded in appearing to be like someone in trouble during the first minutes of most of his matches. And it works! Remember his bouts with Kazuyuki Fujita and Kevin Randleman?

Arlovski must have bought Fedor’s “helpless” stance hook, line and sinker that he even got so cocky he made a blunder. The first couple of minutes were so good for Arlovski. His one-two combination punches saw Fedor’s head bobbing like a bouy in the sea everytime Arlovski makes a hit. He should have continued with that game plan until (who knows? Have some faith!) he lands tens of punches on that pudgy Russian head…until that pudgy Russian brain gets sore from all the shaking and bumping against that pudgy little skull of his.

But he didn’t. Poor Arlovski got overconfident and cocky he wanted to use his signature flair: the flying knee.

And one freakin punch from Fedor was all it took and it’s over.

Funny thing is: we could not help but mention that with this knockout punch, the Seth Petruzelli lucky punch that put Kimbo Slice to oblivion comes to mind.

Remember when Kimbo was getting Petruzelli cornered and the latter was trying keep Kimbo at bay with his foot with his right fist flailing while the other hand on the cage to keep his balance? And then Kimbo fell!

Fedor was cornered, Arlovski got reckless and went with his flying knee. Fedor’s overhand right seemed to have a mind of its own and found its mark. The next thing you see is Arlovski face down on the mat while Fedor confirms his being a bad-ass.

Here’s what Arlovski has to say, “I let myself down and I let my trainers down. They gave me a game plan and I don’t know why I didn’t follow the game plan and threw the flying knee.”

MMA Weekly just can’t help noticing that, judging from this year’s top 10 American Pay-Per-View Rates as published by Yahoo! Sports, the young mixed martial arts industry is fast catching up with its elder brother, professional boxing’s popularity.

See for yourself:

1. Boxing: Oscar De La Hoya vs. Manny Pacquiao, Dec. 6,.

The “Dream Match” was a much talked about event where pundits cried, “Mismatch!” The fight turned out to be less than what it was expected to bed. Legendary Oscar De la Hoya came up the ring like an old stiff retiree who was hugely overwhelmed by the Pinoy Pride Manny Pacquiao from round 1. Freddie Roach was right on the money when he said the Pretty Boy doesn’t stand a chance that he could even pull the trigger against his Filipino ward. It turns out, De la Hoya came to battle leaving his pistol at home. It was a mismatch alright. De la Hoya was no match against the much smaller Mexican Destroyer.

Views: 1,250,000

2. UFC: Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Couture, Nov. 15.

It showed that the Ivan Drago vs. Rocky Balboa story is only possible in Hollywood scripts. The older battle-scar riddled Couture just didn’t make it against the much younger and bigger MMA newbie.

Views: 1,010,000

3. Wrestling: WrestleMania, Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Paul “Big Show” Wight, March 30.

No shame here. What a man does for $20 million. Floyd Mayweather, Jr. isn’t called “Money” for nothing.

Views: 670,000

4. UFC: Georges St. Pierre vs. Jon Fitch/Lesnar vs. Heath Herring, Aug. 9.

This also earned St.-Pierre and Jon Fitch additional $60,000 each for the Fight of the Night award; Demian Maia and Rob Emerson also earned an additional $60,000 each for bagging the “Submission of the Night” award and “Knockout of the Night” award respectively.

Views: 625,000

5. UFC: Lesnar vs. Frank Mir, Feb. 2.

What can we say? Lesnar has been a crowd-drawer since he started with MMA.

Views: 600,000

The other top-rating shows were:

6. UFC: Quinton Jackson vs. Forrest Griffin, July 5 with 540,000 views;

7. UFC: St. Pierre vs. Matt Serra, April 19, 530,000

8. Boxing: Felix Trinidad vs. Roy Jones Jr., Jan. 19, 500,000

9. UFC: Chuck Liddell vs. Rashad Evans, Sept. 6, 480,000

10. UFC: B.J. Penn vs. Sean Sherk/Tito Ortiz vs. Lyoto Machida, May 24, 475,000

MMA Weekly says Mixed Martial Arts as a mainstream sport has finally arrived!

And they say boxing is dead….

Not quite.

The crew of MMA Weekly News believes boxing has to thank Manny Pacquiao and his fighting heart.  Thanks to Freddie Roach for his grudge against Oscar de la Hoya and starting this crazy idea of pitting his smaller pitbull fighter against a legend.  Thanks to Bob Arum for riding on with this "crazy idea."  And special thanks to the Golden Boy for biting into this crazy idea of a "mismatch" in favor of the lure of the Benjamins offered by PPV.  It turns out to be a real mismatch — Golden Boy was no match for the world's number one pound-for-pound boxer in the world.

They say, mixed martial arts has taken over boxing as the most scientific game on the mat.  Manny Pacquiao proved them wrong.  Boxing's number one pound-for-pound fighter displayed a spectacular level of discipline and technicality in his game plan never before seen in his earlier fights.  Pacquiao has been known as a brawler, someone who doesn't mind getting hit while he delivers his bone-crunching blows.  This was not the case with his fight with De la Hoya.

With utmost agility and cunning, he controlled the fight from start to finish–never giving in to the temptation of pouring all his blows even when De la Hoya already looked so helpless.  You can clearly see that Pacquiao, while delivering his jabs and straights and upper cuts with surgical precision, never forgets about De la Hoya's lethal left hook.  He knew that one small window, one small lapse in his defense, and the Golden Boy's left hook could change the direction of the fight.

It was mostly hit and disappear to De la Hoya's left, rendering the Golden Boy's lethal weapon useless.  De la Hoya and his high-profile handlers must have prepared for Pacquiao's 1-2-3 combos which is characteristic of his being a brawler, and they got stood up on their ambush plan.  There were no Pacquiao flurry of punches on the early rounds, just surgical precision straights to the face of De la Hoya.  The Golden Boy could barely counter as the Pacman would disappear after each hit to the right, apparently De la Hoya's blind spot.

The brawler has turned into a precision fighter.  With Manny Pacquiao, the world can start looking at boxing with a better perspective.

We could not blame anyone for thinking that boxing is losing its appeal, what with allegations of corruption and with the diluting of the term "champ' with all these alphabet titles.  Manny Pacquiao simply brought back the heart, the gritting discipline, and the nobility of the sport back into the front page.

Proponents of mixed martial arts have more reason to be glad with this development.  The death of boxing could mean the waning of the public's interest in full-contact sports.  Boxing is MMA's elder cousin.  And whatever demise boxing would suffer could conversely affect mixed martial arts.  On the other hand, keeping boxing alive speaks so much about the future of mixed martial arts as a mainstream sport.

We were a bit saddened by Kimbo Slice’s demise.  OK, the guy just got his 15 minutes of fame, and like a shooting star, Kevin Ferguson shone so bright everyone wanted a piece of his ass—for different reasons.

Some wanted to fry him and expose who he really is: “a punk-who-beats-lame-punks-in-alleyways who thinks anyone, even a punk like him, can be a mixed martial artist.”   What were they thinking?  Everyone knows who he is!

On the other hand, some just love the appeal of his story—a Cinderella story.  And these people were not rooting for him for his skills (or the lack of it) in mixed martial arts.  They were rooting for the person—the underdog.  Everyone loves an underdog (or at least a lot of people do).  You will be surprised to know that even hardcore MMA fans (there were a large number of ‘em!) rooted for this internet sensation.

Kimbo Slice was a spice to the otherwise almost faceless warriors from these MMA stables.  Oh yes, we have the MMA big names but you will be totally dishonest with yourself if you’d deny that not a single one of the lot have grown as big as Kimbo’s in terms of popularity.

Kimbo Slice did to MMA what MMA warriors failed to do.

Kimbo Slice have increased the number of MMA fans in a matter of months when true-blue royal-blood warriors failed to do it in so many years.  Heck, MMA has just even barely risen from the underground image it has as a blood-sport of…well, blood-thirsty spectators.

The Fertitta brothers and Dana White may have done so much in the improvement of MMA as an industry but it took a cash-strapped Elite XC (with their poster boy Kimbo) to bring the sport to a broader fan base.

White has done a lot to bring where MMA is right now.  However, we suggest that he should reconsider his position about identifying MMA as more of a sport of ground games, and driving away those who prefer standup fighting to kick-boxing events.   Let’s face it, outside of those true-blue MMA fans, not many spectators  would relish the prospect of naked men hugging each other on the mat.

Now you have MMA in prime time TV (at least for three shows).

Kimbo Slice was a TV producer’s dream.

Kimbo Slice was a marketing gold find.  He was a marketer’s dream, offered in a silver platter, with all of his YouTube fans in tow.

Kimbo Slice was a marketing masterpiece that Elite XC, and CBS mishandled.

We’re not fooling anyone here.  Kimbo Slice  is a not a mixed martial arts fighter.  Anyone who thinks he was, we pity them.  Kimbo Slice was a marketing gimmick that brought that much-needed ingredient to a young and thriving MMA industry.

Even a marketing bit-player could tell you that an exciting sport such as mixed martial arts could not make it to the big time if it lacks an attraction.  Call it the “freak show” element, call it the Gina Carano appeal, you would need a package that anyone could visualize.  Heck, this is what World Wrestling Federation personalities used to succeed.  You have the Mr. T magic, you have the Undertaker, you have the most obnoxious personalities.  These “actors” became popular (as much as the body-slamming WWF was) not because of their wrestling skills but more because of their colourful (dark, ugly, or nice) personalities.

It’s all about the drama.

Hardcore MMA fans should continue talking about skills.  But we should not neglect talking about marketing the sport too.  We need it—even the gimmickry.

For anything to prosper, including MMA (which is still in its infancy) it should not be afraid of change.  That’s how entities turned out to be in their superior forms now—by evolving.

Those who refused have joined the dinosaurs.

Just a couple of days more and we will see what fate hangs for the second most popular Mix Martial Arts organization in the United States.  Elite XC fields Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano for its third and last live broadcast with CBS, and the network TV ratings games will determine the company’s perilous make-or-break situation as it broadcasts its fight over CBS from the BankAtlantic Center on October 4.

The Kimbo Slice and Gina Carano headliner is an obvious attempt to make a repeat of that first broadcast with CBS last May 31 (which also happened to be the first mixed martial arts fight to be aired on network television).  This move is quite the most obvious and the most expected from the suits of Elite XC and CBS (whoever is really running the show).  After all, the formula they used gave that card an astounding success in the ratings game with a 3.0 rating and 4.85 million viewers.

While that May 31 bout was hugely successful, a lot of feedbacks from hardcore MMA fans were largely negative.  They complained that the bout did give the new fans of MMA a wrong impression of what mixed martial arts is all about, they complained of too much fanfare and pizzazz on the show, and they complained about an MMA nobody, Kimbo Slice, being the headliner instead of some true-blue MMA warrior.  Elite XC and CBS must have been convinced by all these complaints that they fielded “true-blue” MMA fighters on their second telecast. 

It was a costly mistake. 

It turns out the “Biggest Fight in MMA” history works with a Hollywood formula: casting is number one.  You see, movie-goers wouldn’t be interested in watching a movie starred by our regular “true-blue” MMA gladiators. 

On the other hand, cast a show with someone like Kimbo Slice who is more of a celebrity both in and out of the mixed martial arts world.  While at it, throw in the beautiful Hollywoodish Gina Carano and you have a blockbuster.  All the showbiz elements are there: Kimbo Slice looks like a thug but a lot of people know him as a good person who’s just down on luck (at least before the MMA break), a good father of six kids who is given a shot at making it big in the MMA.  Sounds like a good movie characterization and plot to me.

Take Gina Carano, stand her beside Eva Mendez or Hillary Swank, and I’ll pick “my” Gina Carano any day of the week. 

 

Let’s face it, Elite XC is not like our UFC where real fighters get to be appreciated by “real” MMA fans.  Elite XC is doing mixed martial arts a favour by introducing the sport to a wider audience, not without some sacrifices.  You will know when more newbie MMA fans are present, when the crowd boos ground games and delights at fist fights.  Let’s just hope that the CBS telecast on October 4 (which we are sure would be a success) would be able to change Elite XC’s luck.

And Oh, by the way, it’s not me writing this blog.  It’s my Hollywood reporter alter-ego pinch-hitting for me.  The Dr. Jekyll to my Mr. Hyde.  Cheerio!