Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Nov. 30. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer. You love mixed martial arts. No, you hate mixed martial arts. It's the hottest, rawest, awesomest sport going, a video game come to life, the main cause of boxing's death spiral. No, it's legalized assault and battery, an affront to civilization, the Church of the Lowest Common Denominator. As mixed martial arts -- and the UFC in particular -- continue to grow, it also continues to polarize. And both sides are, of course, entitled to their opinion.
UFC 106 may not have turned in the blockbuster heavyweight clash that it originally promised, but the UFC dug deep into its roster and made the best of a difficult situation in Las Vegas on Saturday night. The result was entertaining, if not earth-shattering, and there are a few lessons we can take with us as we leave the Mandalay Bay and head out into that glittering desert night:
SI.com's Josh Gross offers all his insights from UFC 106.
Hardships surrounding Zuffa's promotion of UFC 106 have shone a bright light on two important facts as Saturday's pay-per-view looms from the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
Anthony Johnson wasn't pleased with how things went at UFC 104 in October. The welterweight showed up six pounds heavy at the pre-fight weigh-in, clocking in at 176 pounds for his bout with Yoshiyuki Yoshida. It not only made him look undisciplined, it also hurt his wallet; he had to forfeit a percentage of his purse and it likely cost him the $60,000 knockout-of-the-night bonus. Rarely have a few extra pounds been so expensive.
When Zuffa traveled to the United Kingdom in 2007, the organization was intent on pushing the UFC brand into the furthest reaches of the country. Dana White famously said every sheepherder on every rolling hill will know of the UFC by the time the event was over.
All the success, attention and money that came his way during his first two years in the UFC, it might have been too much, too soon for Brandon Vera. And he'll admit it.
As mixed martial arts gears up for a hectic November, here are five questions worth asking before Thanksgiving rolls around.
If you were willing to commit yourself to it, Saturday evening turned Sunday morning and live mixed martial arts engulfed your time like an inappropriate Michael Schiavello analogy.
They say you have to clearly beat the champion if you want to take his belt. Mauricio "Shogun" Rua seemed to have done just that at UFC 104 on Saturday night, but the mere fact that UFC light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida was still conscious at the end was apparently enough for the judges to give him the victory.
Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Nov. 30. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer. You love mixed martial arts. No, you hate mixed martial arts. It's the hottest, rawest, awesomest sport going, a video game come to life, the main cause of boxing's death spiral. No, it's legalized assault and battery, an affront to civilization, the Church of the Lowest Common Denominator. As mixed martial arts -- and the UFC in particular -- continue to grow, it also continues to polarize. And both sides are, of course, entitled to their opinion.
UFC 106 may not have turned in the blockbuster heavyweight clash that it originally promised, but the UFC dug deep into its roster and made the best of a difficult situation in Las Vegas on Saturday night. The result was entertaining, if not earth-shattering, and there are a few lessons we can take with us as we leave the Mandalay Bay and head out into that glittering desert night:
SI.com's Josh Gross offers all his insights from UFC 106.
Hardships surrounding Zuffa's promotion of UFC 106 have shone a bright light on two important facts as Saturday's pay-per-view looms from the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.
Anthony Johnson wasn't pleased with how things went at UFC 104 in October. The welterweight showed up six pounds heavy at the pre-fight weigh-in, clocking in at 176 pounds for his bout with Yoshiyuki Yoshida. It not only made him look undisciplined, it also hurt his wallet; he had to forfeit a percentage of his purse and it likely cost him the $60,000 knockout-of-the-night bonus. Rarely have a few extra pounds been so expensive.
When Zuffa traveled to the United Kingdom in 2007, the organization was intent on pushing the UFC brand into the furthest reaches of the country. Dana White famously said every sheepherder on every rolling hill will know of the UFC by the time the event was over.
All the success, attention and money that came his way during his first two years in the UFC, it might have been too much, too soon for Brandon Vera. And he'll admit it.
As mixed martial arts gears up for a hectic November, here are five questions worth asking before Thanksgiving rolls around.
If you were willing to commit yourself to it, Saturday evening turned Sunday morning and live mixed martial arts engulfed your time like an inappropriate Michael Schiavello analogy.
They say you have to clearly beat the champion if you want to take his belt. Mauricio "Shogun" Rua seemed to have done just that at UFC 104 on Saturday night, but the mere fact that UFC light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida was still conscious at the end was apparently enough for the judges to give him the victory.
The UFC returns to Los Angeles this weekend for the first time in three years, and once again, MMA's top promotion reminds us that yesterday's greatness doesn't guarantee tomorrow's success.
Tito Ortiz has a game plan and he's sticking to it.
Before Fall's massive schedule kicks off a week from now in Los Angeles, mixed martial arts fans are looking ahead at what promises to be a compelling few months.
Tito Ortiz thought he was getting tune-up fight against an aging legend for his first trip back into the Octagon in more than a year. But after a torn MCL forced Mark Coleman out of their planned UFC 106 bout, Ortiz will now face a tough rematch against fellow former light heavyweight champ: Forrest Griffin. Suddenly, things just got a lot more competitive, and it's Ortiz who's the senior party in the proceedings.
Wednesday night's Ultimate Fighter elimination bout between Kimbo Slice and Roy Nelson might have been the most watched fight in the show's 10-season history on Spike TV. It also may have been among the most predictable.
It's all about turnover in mixed martial arts rankings. With aging fighters leaving the sport, established contenders pursuing options away from the cage and young challengers clawing their way to the top, job security reads like an oxymoron for the men atop SI.com's MMA rankings.
For the first time in a while, the Ultimate Fighting Championship has recaptured a bit of that underdog feel it once wore so well.
Having turned down a deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship last Wednesday, Fedor Emelianenko didn't wait long to find a new promotional partner in America. And this one comes with a significant television deal.
Relative to where mixed martial arts wallowed a decade ago, it's easy to say it has reached mainstream success in North America. Yet, thinking to where the nascent combat sport could stand a quarter century from now if one were to glean anything from the way boxing grew palatable to audiences after its formative years, MMA has plenty of room to mature.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship has penetrated the defenses of the mainstream with an assault that relies heavily on flash and glitz. UFC fights are flush with pulsating lights and market-tested music and celebrities du jour: Mandy Moore, 50 Cent, Paris Hilton. In between the 20 or so cards held each year, UFC fans troll forums and other online destinations -- that is, when they're not watching the reality show The Ultimate Fighter.
If last week's tussle between the Ultimate Fighting Championship and athletic regulators in Quebec meant anything at all it was this: for as far as mixed martial arts has come in terms of pop culture acceptance and revenues generated, the controversial-when-convenient sport continues to face serious, ignorant opposition on certain parts of the globe.
The Colorado Desert is seven million acres of scorched earth in the southeast corner of California, along the borders of Mexico and Arizona. Evan Tanner arrived there around noon on Sept. 3 after riding his motorcycle 200 miles east from his home in Oceanside. Ducking under the gnarled branches of ironwood trees, he turned off the road and into the mountains, up one of the many washes carved by flash floods. He found the spot he'd pinpointed days earlier using Google Earth and parked his bike on a starkly beautiful plateau above the wash. He set up a cot and folding canvas chair facing a sea of pebbly mounds dotted with creosote bushes, and then he put up his shelter, a beige nylon tarp held up by metal poles -- critical protection from the sun on a day the temperature reached 117°.
New details emerge after Levens and his wife are discovered dead in their bed
During the late 1990s, MMA was largely reviled in the U.S. Following years of controversy, negative press and attacks brought on by its own cannibalistic marketing, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, then promoted by Semaphore Entertainment Group, was forced off pay-per-view, hiding in obscure locales.
Rich Franklin used to spend his days teaching math to high school students. Today, he spends his evenings in an octagon-shaped cage grounding and pounding fighters into submission in front of thousands of screaming fans.
Boxing and mixed martial arts attract different audiences. In coming together Saturday, Golden Boy Promotions and Affliction Entertainment hope to fuse generations connected by little more than the love of a good fight.
These days, it's easy to be critical of The Ultimate Fighter.
It hardly seemed possible, but the upcoming lightweight clash between Kenny Florian and Roger Huerta at UFC 87 just got more interesting.
Tito Ortiz believes he is in line to become the highest paid MMA fighter in history when a "ground-breaking" deal between the free-agent fighter and Affliction is announced as early as Wednesday during a press conference for Affliction's next card, which will be held Oct. 11 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
With all due respect to Frank Mir, World Extreme Cagefighting champion Carlos Condit is not among the top two welterweights in mixed martial arts today.
We've got nothing to lose. I liked that cartoon back in the day with the little dog with the 'U' on his chest. "Have no fear, Underdog is here." I think about that a lot.
Affliction did something special last weekend: It packed the Honda Center with almost 14,000 fans. The promotion also drew more than 100,000 pay-per-view buys, according to Vice President Tom Atencio. It created a big-event atmosphere and got the mixed martial arts world buzzing.
More and more, mixed martial arts -- not boxing -- has sports fans asking, "Did you see the fight?" But after July 19, such an inquiry could have double meaning.
After turning down a lucrative offer to fight in the Ultimate Fighting Championship last fall, Fedor Emelianenko has since changed the face of mixed martial arts' heavyweight division.
From reality TV star to UFC champion, Forrest Griffin's mixed martial arts ascendancy hit its highest mark Saturday in Las Vegas.
The Fall Out Boy musician shares his parenthood tips from The Expectant Father
LAS VEGAS -- All the training Quinton "Rampage" Jackson had put into his fight against Forrest Griffin was unraveling right before his eyes.
It's hard to believe more than three years have passed since Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar lit up televisions across America during the finale of the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter.
In the world of mixed martial arts, it seems it's not enough to have a good fight. For some reason, we want it to be personal. We want our fighters to hate each other. Or, at least, we want them to make us believe that they do.
Of the things that might work up a sweat this summer, simply flipping channels between mixed martial arts events may be one of them.
Mixed martial arts is in the business of overnight money-making -- raking in hundreds of millions in its opening years while many (ethically and legally) still push it away. And the biggest player behind the sport's chart-defying growth: the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
While celebrating Father's Day at a friend's barbecue in Redondo Beach, Calif., watching the sun descend in a pristine western sky, Ed Soares' phone lit up with a text message.
Today's mailbag offers a sample of reaction from Ultimate Fighting Championship 85 in London. From Matt Hughes and Thiago Alves, to some residual discussion about CBS and EliteXC -- here's what some SI.com readers had to say.
Marcus Davis knows what boxers think about mixed martial arts. He's been there. He was one of them.
Donald Trump has purchased a "significant" equity stake in Affliction Entertainment and inked former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight title-holder Andrei Arlovski, Trump executive vice president and special counsel Michael D. Cohen told SI.com on Wednesday.
NEW YORK -- June 2002. In just his sixth appearance as a professional mixed martial artist, Robbie Lawler, a 20-year-old who fancied himself the sport's Manassa Mauler, was cast in MMA's brightest spotlight: Fox Sports Net's free MMA telecast.
The classical music blasting over the phone as I waited on hold for a World Extreme Cagefighting conference call was a real disconnect.
With or without Tito Ortiz, the light-heavyweight division will remain The Ultimate Fighting Championship's marquee class. Though stars have emerged in each of the organization's five active weight categories, none have delivered bigger fights -- at the gate or on pay-per-view -- than the light heavies.
There's no getting around it: Wanderlei Silva needs a victory at UFC 84.
Spread over a full season, pressures associated with a contract year can be managed. But what about when everything an athlete has worked for boils down to one 15-minute stretch?
Jens Pulver's Ultimate Fighting Championship lightweight title defense against B.J. Penn in January of 2002 should have been the last time anyone questioned the idea of having 155-pounders headline a pay-per-view event.
Having quickly overcome Chuck Liddell's badly torn hamstring and the second lost main event for June 7 in London, the Ultimate Fighting Championship can sit back and await its next pay-per-view attraction, UFC 84, in Las Vegas, knowing it's booked solid back-to-back cards.
Mac Danzig has a problem. As far problems go, it's one of the better ones to have, but it's also not as simple as it seems. Almost out of nowhere, Danzig has become famous. He has a big-money contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. He has strangers coming up to him in the street. He has, all at once, the things that have eluded him for the past six years. It doesn't sound so bad, really.
One of the questions I'm often asked is this: When today's kids, who love the so-called Extreme Sports -- that's the X Games, like skateboarding -- grow up, won't that mean that traditional sports will tumble in popularity?
Ultimate Fighting Championship 82 is such a deep card that former rising welterweight stars Josh Koscheck and Diego Sanchez are both unscheduled to fight during the live portion of the pay-per-view telecast and may not make the broadcast at all.
While the most common topics leading up to Super Bowl XLII this weekend are the Patriots run for a perfect season and Tom Brady's ankle, the Ultimate Fighting Championship has its own questions to answer Saturday at UFC 81 in Las Vegas.
Ultimate Fighting Championship 80 featured six fights that ended by TKO or KO, one that ended by submission, and only two that went the distance. With a plethora of early stoppages, viewers were treated to an unheard-of eight fights during the UFC 80's pay-per-view telecast (with apologies to Sam Stout, whose unanimous decision victory over Per Eklund was deemed unworthy by the show's producers.)
As the Ultimate Fighting Championship looks to expand globally, President Dana White's first target is England. White is in England this week to preside over UFC 80, being held in Newcastle on Saturday.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship opens 2008 with its first pay-per-view card of the year coming just three weeks after UFC 79. The promotion takes its show to Newcastle, England, after the UFC held two events in the country last year. UFC 80 begins a very busy stretch for the UFC -- one that includes a UFC Fight Night the Wednesday after UFC 80 and UFC 81 just two weeks later.
The blood sport has soared in popularity. But now it's involved in an all-out battle with one of its biggest stars
The bridge had been dangling in the river for less than a week, but it had already become a macabre civic landmark, the Twin Cities' answer to Manhattan's Ground Zero. On a scorching day last August, Roger Huerta was piloting his Jeep Commander from downtown Minneapolis to the St. Paul YMCA, where he trains in mixed martial arts. He drove slowly as he crossed the Mississippi River, pointing out the remnants of the I-35W bridge, whose collapse had caused the deaths of 13 Minnesotans six days earlier. When Huerta saw a slab of folded highway bobbing in the water, his eyes widened, and he rested a hand on his beard. "Unbelievable," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "One second you're driving home from work, wondering what you're going to eat for dinner. Then wham! In the snap of a finger you're underwater."
Casual MMA fans would be surprised to know just how many promotions run MMA events worldwide. Here is a primer on the many mixed martial arts organizations that run fight cards.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship features one of its deepest cards in years on Saturday night in Sacramento. The aptly titled "Stacked" features two title fights, an important fight for one of the promotion's marquee attractions and the debut of one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time. Here is a look at what to expect at UFC 73.
For many years, there were two preeminent organizations in the world of mixed martial arts: The US-based Ultimate Fighting Championship and the Japan-based Pride Fighting Championships. That is no longer the case. Following a scandal over mob connections, Pride lost its lucrative Japanese television deal with Fuji TV in 2006. That put the promotion in financial peril, and earlier this year the UFC purchased Pride. With this development, many of Pride's elite fighters have dispersed to other organizations.
Every other week, SI.com's Todd Martin checks in with an MMA update.
Every other week, SI.com's Todd Martin checks in with a MMA update.
Saturday night was all right for fighting. But the pageantry for the 69th card in the Ultimate Fighting Championship's tough-and-rumble existence began much earlier that week. Long before the fighters unhinged the latch of the steel Octagon on April 7 and fought on a card titled UFC 69: Shootout, thousands of fans had converged on Houston, tribalists on a pilgrimage. The prefight weigh-ins drew massive crowds. The line for the fighters' autograph show wreathed the girth of the Toyota Center, the venue for UFC 69. The downtown bars and restaurants were overrun by fight fans.
LAS VEGAS -- Like it or not the Ultimate Fighting Championship has officially gone "mainstream." It's gracing magazine covers, popping up on television shows and putting a stranglehold on conversations among hipsters who know more about the inner workings of The Octagon than The Pentagon.
This would be a particularly awesome time for the Fertitta brothers to finally disagree. That's because the dispute resolution clause in their ownership contract of the Ultimate Fighting Championsh...
This would be a particularly awesome time for the Fertitta brothers to finally disagree. That's because the dispute resolution clause in their ownership contract of the Ultimate Fighting Championship states that "in order to resolve a Deadlock among the LLC Members, Frank and Lorenzo shall engage in a Sport Jiu-Jitsu match under the rules as set forth herein."
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