So the UFC is going to make UFC 72 a PPV and not free on Spike... With such a great card, who can blame them? Rich Franklin vs. Yushin Okami Forrest Griffin vs. Hector Ramirez[1] Tyson Griffin vs. Clay Guida[3] Jason MacDonald vs. Rory Singer[3] Scott Smith vs. Ed Herman[4] If you haven't noticed, I think paying $40 for this card it just stupid....in fact paying $10 is ridiculous. In other news, IBF Welterweight Champion Kermit Cintron(27-1) has accepted Dana's challenge since Floyd won't... He apparently has a good college wrestling background, so he likely has a much better chance than Floyd would... Will be interesting to see/hear Dana's comments
Interesting, huh? I find that I think of other adjectives in reference to Dana White's comments on just about anything...
Choi possibly out of "Dynamite" Source According to Yahoo Sports, Hong Man Choi was denied a fight licence.
Yup...pretty big blow to FEG especially since the CSAC has state that FEG hasn't even gotten a license for the event yet and as of a few days ago only 3 of their fighters had been approved to fight. A big rumor has Shogun coming to the UFC especially with Dana saying he has a "big announcement" at UFC 71....rumor has him fighting at the so far poor UFC 72 Another big piece of news is the report that multiple Pride fighters are filing a class action suit against Pride Source
I forgot to mention the UFC is getting a lot of press lately, it is on the front page of Sports Illustrated and Chuck is on the front page of ESPN The Magazine with Couture coming up on the cover of a future Sports Illustrated. Then you have Chuck appearing on Jim Rome Is Burning, UFC being discussed on Around the Horn and PTI all show it in a fairly good light...For the foreigners those are pretty highly rated daily tv shows on ESPN. Then you have UFC 71 weigh ins being shown live on ESPN News... A ton of great press this week
The Pride LWGP that was rescheduled for July has either been put back again or cancelled indefinitely according to Fightopinion The Fertitas seem to be hell bent on wrecking their new acquisition
To be fair, it's probably a matter of changing up how business is done. I doubt they invested that much just to run it into the ground...that'd be pretty stupid and they'd be giving up the Asian market to K-1 altogether.
The latest news has Marcus "Maximus" Aurelio signing with the UFC... It really appears like the UFC is taking all the Pride fighters they want and leaving Pride as a skeleton.
I've already said it, but... So yeah, RIP PRIDE Fighting Championships 1997-2007. You will be missed.
the fertittas are making a huge mistake by stripping PRIDE to the bone. i think it actually sells more to have the rivalrly between the 2 organizations, with the world series fight every year. it seems like they've given up on the world series event they've been so excited to share. is it really that hard to have PRIDE run the same way it used to be?
Being a pro-wrestling fan, stuff like this makes it easy to draw the analogy to when Vince McMahon bought out WCW. Originally there was some talk of keeping the two companies separate, but very few of WCW's "big stars" were brought over at the beggining, and then they kept burrying the guys they had. After a few short weeks, nobody took the WCW faction seriously. Looks like the same thing is happening to Pride. Pride, as a company, has very few of their top guys, the faces of Pride, still with the company. While I wouldn't mind a tallent exchange, I don't agree with putting all your tallented eggs in one North American basket.
This isn't a talent exchange so much as the UFC taking what they want and leaving the remains of Pride to die.
I think Dana White said something along the lines of PRIDE being a mess and not worth the effort to reconstruct. Also, there are a lot of contract disputes with the fighters.
Riiiight... which is why I said I'd be in favor of one, and not of what's currently happening. It's almost akin to piracy.
HUGE NEWS... Royce Gracie tested positive for Nandrolone(steroid) and has been suspended until May 30, 2008. Source Morton also tested positive for a very high T/E ratio, the standard is 6 and he tested for 83.9(just a tad high there) Source
Either the UFC aren't quite sure what date April Fools Day is, or they've created the most pointless fight ever The Fight Network is reporting that at UFC75 in London, Mike Bisping will be fighting Ken Shamrock. There really is no upside to this fight for Bisping: he wins, he beat up a past-it legend who got destroyed by Tito three times and came out of retirement for a paycheque, he loses, he's screwed. Maybe the UFC want Bisping to have an easier fight in the UK than he did last time against Elvis Sinosec
No idea what the UFC is thinking but in that fight, I give the edge to Shamrock. In other news, Fedor is rumored to be close to signing with the sticking point being Combat Sambo. He wants to be able to do it in Russia, the UFC says no. Source is Beatdown(Sherdog)
