UFC 100 Preview
This is a great card. Usually the UFC saves their best cards for the end of the year, but UFC 100 certainly warranted a major stacked lineup of fights and they have one with their 3 main bouts. Some of the undercard fights look pretty swell too as Mark Coleman takes on Stephan Bonnar and Jon Fitch squares off against Paulo Thiago, who is fresh off a big win over Josh Koscheck. Fitch will be looking to avenge his teammate’s defeat, as the fellow American Kickboxing Academy student tangles with Thiago.
The main event pits Brock Lesnar up against Frank Mir. This is a very intriguing battle. Even though Lesnar is the champ, he’s a highly inexperienced fighter. He only has 4 bouts under his belt, and his striking and BJJ is still at a rudimentary level compared to seasoned competitors such as Frank Mir. All that being said when you have such power and athleticism, a gigantic beast of a human like Lesnar is very hard to deal with. Mir could once again catch Lesnar on the ground, or perhaps on the feet, but Lesnar’s excellent wrestling and tenacious ground and pound and aggressive style mixed with amazing power should guide him to victory in this tough to call battle.
When it comes to Georges St. Pierre against Thiago Alves, this is a very interesting fight. I feel Alves has the best style to beat Pierre–a great striker with a solid takedown defense. It’s a 25 minute fight and Alves will be very dangerous for every minute that is spent on the feet. We’ll have to go with Pierre in this fight because he can take down even the best at avoiding wrestling attacks, but Alves is a very dangerous threat.
Michael Bisping against Dan Henderson is a highly anticipated fight too. Both love to strike and are unafraid to go toe to toe with anyone. Henderson was willing to trade with the dangerous Anderson Silva, and is always excited to throwdown with the best of them. The advantage he has, as in most of his fights, is his wrestling. He can dictate where this fight goes. If he wants to strike he can strike, if he wants to take the fight to the mat he can do that too. If he’s in trouble on the feet he can go to plan B and secure a close round by taking to the mat and using ground and pound. That wrestling advantage allowed Hendo to secure a win over Rich Franklin as he was able to accumulate more points with the judges on route to a victory of Franklin.
Brock Lesnar: “Is Frank really hurt or is he just scared?”
“In my mind, is Frank really hurt or is he just scared? Because I think he understands the position I had him in the first fight, and I don’t think it’s going to change much in the second one, with a different outcome for sure”
I don’t know if he’s just ultra confident, doing a pro-wrasslin’ type bit as a side effect of being in the WWE for a long period of time, but it’s a bit out of line to for Brock Lesnar to question the character of Frank Mir. I respect Lesnar a lot for what he’s accomplished so quickly in the sport, but it’s quite disrespectful to imply your opponent, who is a former champion, and who defeated you once, is running scared and dodging you.
Maybe it’s just pre-fight talk, maybe Lesnar sniffs out fear that others perhaps cannot, or maybe Lesnar is so confident in himself that he believes that everyone is terrified to fight him. He even mentions in this interview that he was able to detect trepidation in Randy Couture’s eyes in press conferences prior when the two fighters fought.
In the end though Lesnar is the champ and he has backed up his talk–in just 3 fights in the UFC, 4 in MMA, he has won the heavyweight title. Until somebody knocks him off that pedestal and snags the belt from his waist, I guess he can say whatever he wants.
Arlovski, McCarthy, Mir, Noguera To Be Featured In Next Series of Round 5 MMA Figurines
Four MMA Legends Comprise Series 3 Collectible Figures Scheduled to Hit Shelves Throughout North America By April 2009
Mixed martial arts stars Andrei “The Pit Bull” Arlovski, “Big John” McCarthy, Frank Mir and Antonio Rodrigo “Minotauro” Nogueira will be featured in Round 5’s Series 3 of mixed martial arts collectible figures, it was announced today by Round 5 C.E.O. Barron Lau and President Damon Lau. Series 3 figures are projected to be available at retail outlets throughout North America and online at www.Round5MMA.com beginning in April.
The Series 3 figurines follow successful launches of the first two series in April 2008 and November 2008, respectively, which featured eight MMA fan favorites. Randy Couture, Matt Hughes, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson and Tito Ortiz comprised Series 1 while Rich Franklin, Sean Sherk, Anderson Silva and Wanderlei Silva were released in Series 2.
“We are excited that four huge MMA standouts like Arlovski, McCarthy, Mir and Nogueira will be our partners in creating the next Series of Round 5 figurines,” said Damon Lau. “These are some of the biggest names in the sport today and we think fans will love to show their support of these great stars with a high-quality collectible on their desks.”
As in the earlier series, the four newest Round 5 stars maintain creative control of their likenesses, including the pose, facial design and shorts. Each will be instrumental in creating the final design and will benefit from a royalty agreement that gives them a considerable portion of the sale of their respective figurines.
Round 5 collectible figures may be purchased at leading retailers such as Toys ‘R’ Us, Champs Sports and FYE. Other retailers can be found at www.round5mma.com/wheretobuy.php.
Arlovski, the former UFC heavyweight champion, will next be competing in the highly-anticipated battle with Russian star Fedor Emelianenko on January 24 at the Affliction “Day of Reckoning” event in Anaheim, Calif. The Minsk, Belarus, native has a 14-5 career record, 10 of those by knockout. He has won five straight bouts, including all three of his 2008 fights.
McCarthy has been recognized as the pre-eminent MMA referee since the early days of the UFC. He has been in charge in more than 600 bouts worldwide and was one of the original authors of the MMA rules and regulations that are used today. His “larger than life” personality has also made him one of the most recognized and celebrated figures in the sport.
Mir is coming off the biggest win of his career, when he defeated Nogueira with a second-round TKO on Dec. 27 to win the UFC heavyweight title. He has persevered through devastating injuries, including a broken leg suffered in a motorcycle accident, to reach the pinnacle of the sport and looks forward to defending his crown. He earned additional attention as a coach in the recently concluded eighth season of “The Ultimate Fighter” television program on Spike TV.
Despite the loss to Mir, Nogueira remains one of the sport’s most legendary and popular athletes, particularly in his native Brazil. He first gained attention as one of the top stars in PRIDE and was also a coach in season 8 of “The Ultimate Fighter” opposite Mir. Of his 31 career victories – against just five defeats and one draw – 20 have come by submission.
Round 5 plans to release three additional series of athletes in 2009, one during each quarter. Athletes to be represented in those series are yet to be announced.
Frank Mir on defeating Nogueira
Photo: UFC.com
“I visualized winning the fight, but never by stoppage…I imagined knocking him down because I’ve seen what I’ve been doing in my standup. I just wanted to go out and win more rounds than him.”
“But I didn’t want to get overzealous and get caught. There are a whole lot of great fighters who have made that mistake against him. I just wanted to win the most rounds and come out the winner at the end.”
UFC 92 breakdown: Frank Mir vs Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira
Frank Mir was pretty humble when I got to talk to him a couple weeks back. He basically said that based on in ring experience Nogueira has the edge in wrestling and boxing over him. And mir also said that he isn’t as good a Jiu Jitsu player as Nog because the Brazilian has had a blackbelt longer than Mir.
That didn’t sound too confident, so I asked him where he gets his confidence from to win the fight and he basically said from his training. He knows what he’s capable of doing and has the potential to be the better striker and fighter in the cage, but he just has to transfer that into the Octagon December 27th.
That’s the toughest part, because Mir has had problems in the past with cardio and he doesn’t expect finish Nogueira. So if it goes into the championship rounds 4 and 5, can Mir last with Nogueira 25 minutes into a fight? We’ll see.
I gotta go with Nogueira in this one though. I think they kind of negate each other in the BJJ and wrestling, but Nog will have a boxing edge and an edge in durability. Nogueira taken some of the biggest poundings in the sport, was powerbombed by Bob Sapp, beat down for 10 minutes by Cro Cop, battered by Tim Sylvia for 2 plus rounds and still was able to beat all 3 of those guys. He can take a beating like no other and still win. And based on previous fights, his endurance will outlast Mir’s.
