UFC 110: Want List

* Middleweights: Wanderlei Silva vs. Michael Bisping
* Heavyweights: Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Cain Velasquez




* Light Heavyweights: Elvis Sinosic vs. Chris Haseman
* Heavyweights: Mirko Cro Cop vs. Ben Rothwell -





* Light Heavyweights: James Te Huna vs. Igor Pokrajac
* Middleweights: CB Dollaway vs. Goran Reljic
* Welterweights: Chris Lytle vs. Brian Foster - Typical art-less Lytle Swingfest. I think this fight wins the Golden Gurgel Award for the Night.
* Light Heavyweights: Stephan Bonnar vs. Krzysztof Soszynski - The Epitome of Do. Not. Want. Mid-Card Dross.
* Light Heavyweights: Keith Jardine vs. Ryan Bader - No chin vs No cardio
* Lightweights: Joe Stevenson vs. George Sotiropoulos - Grapple, Grapple, Grapple, Grapple, Grapple

Joe Warren Looking to Stay Busy in '10 With Bellator, Dream

Larry Vollmer of the Lohud Journal had a chance to sit down with featherweight contender Joe Warren. Warren mad a lot of noise on the featherweight scene last year with his involvment in the 2009 Dream Featherweight Grand Prix. Warren was able to pick up wins against the WEC veteran and former 135lb champ Chase Beebe, and follow that up with a decision win over Japanese legend Kid Yamamoto.

With the new year came a new organization for Warren, as he signed with the upstart Bellator Fighting Championship. Warren expects to kickoff his year with his first fight being April 9th, in Miami at the hard Rock for Bellator. Between his Dream and Bellator deals, Warren looks to stay extremely busy this year:

Q: How many fights do you have left in DREAM?
A: I am going to have 3 more fights this year. Which I could have more, but we signed a three fight deal. I am hoping to fight 4 times for Bellator this year also.

The 4 fights for Bellator would presumably include his sweeping his way to the tourney title at 145 and then facing off with Season 1 winner Joe Soto. With that heavy a schedule, Warren is going to need a lot of luck, insofar as injuries, as it will only take a broken hand here or bad cut cut there to throw a monkey wrench into the best laid of plans. Bellator was extremely lucky with the initial season tourneys and hopefully that will follow through to season two and Warren specifically.


Another interesting piece of info from the article centered on Warren's participation or lack there of in the End of the year card for Dream. Warren had expected to participate in the big New Year's Dynamite card for Dream but those plans got derailed by the Dream vs Sengoku concept that took place:

A: They pretty much told me I was fighting, so we were training real hard. You got to understand that in Japan, it’s pretty much entertainment. The fighting, the MMA over there is entertainment for them. So it is on prime time television and there are big numbers, lots of fans. I think what happens over there is the TV time is sold to like the major network over there and the network picks the fighters. I don’t know if DREAM has a lot of say in that. I think I was going to fight Kid [Kid Yamamoto] again, and I don’t think Kid wanted to fight me, which is probably a smart idea for him. And they pulled back and decided to do that DREAM Sengoku. That sucked. I was ready to rock and roll. Whatever. I got some training in.

The Gaijin fighters in both Sengoku and Dream seemed to be the losers in the Sengoku vs Dream scenario that played itself out. Fellow Bellator signee Dan Hornbuckle has also expressed dissatisfaction with being shuffled off the end of the year card for Sengoku, with a proposed bout with Takimoto for the Sengoku 170lb belt going by the wayside as a casualty to the inter-promotional feud concept.

In another interview, Warren also spoke with 411Mania.com about his desire to avenge his loss to Bibiano Fernandes:

Q: Is Bibiano on your radar and how badly do you want a rematch with him?

Joe Warren: It's the only thing on my radar right now. He's got the belt that I want and I'm already trying to make sure who ever wins between Hansen and him, I get that fight.

Jeffrey Harris: There seems to be some tension between the two of you, have you worked that out?

Joe Warren: He's scared of me because I'm going to beat the shit out of him and he knows it. He got lucky. He got lucky and he caught me and he taught me that a veteran like him could catch a rookie like me and I made a bad mistake. And it won't happen again. The reason he lost his shit after he beat me was because he couldn't believe he won. I was in his head. I was taunting him a little bit at the weigh-ins. I was in his head. So when he did pull that off, he couldn't believe it. He won a great tournament. I won't take anything away from him. To win a championship like that, you got to be a badass. He can take that belt. He can keep one of them. I'll take the other one.

While not elevating smacktalk to ethereal form ala Chael Sonnen, Warren is adding some spice and letting the showdown with Fernandes do a slow simmer. If Warren is able to sweep through the Bellator GP unscathed, he just may get his wish with a rematch in late summer against Fernandes. A possible roadblock could be Joachim Hansen, who will be facing off against Bibiano for the Dream FW title. Be it Hansen or Fernandes, Warren facing either fighter looks to be a great match-up.

Chan Sung Jung AKA The Korean Zombie is still learning this kickboxing thing

One of the gems of the Sengoku FW GP was the introduction to the masses of Korean fighter Chan Sung Jung. Jung is better known by the moniker given to him for his ability to keep walking through his opponents assault, The Korean Zombie. Jung has been on a bit of a break from MMA, and he has taken to the opportunity to work on his kickboxing skills by participating in the Euro based Kickboxing promotion. It's Showtime.

Love the intro music him:



Zombie faced off against Muay Thai practitioner Pajonsuk in a battle of contrasting styles. The bout ended on a DQ because Zombie delivered an illegal strike on Pajonsuk. The spinning backfist, while legal in K-1, is forbidden under the rules of It's Showtime. Regardless of the DQ, I'd love to see Zombi take a few more swings at the kickboxing thing to sharpen his stand-up for his MMA game. Check out video of the fight below.

Bisping Off for Oz, Hoping to beat Jetlag, Weather Storm

Michael Bisping has been doing a blog for The Telegraph leading up to his UFC 110 showdown with Wanderlei Silva in the UFC's debut Down Under. Bisping notes how arriving in Australia early will help him avoid a case of performance killing jetlag:

I believe I am getting into Australia a lot earlier than my opponent Wanderlei Silva. Wanderlei is very experienced, and has fought in Japan many times so is used to fighting in different time zones, but I think he’s making a mistake in not getting to Australia earlier than next weekend.

Jet-lag is a serious issue for any athlete. I know Aussie boxer Kostya Tszyu struggled when he did the reverse trip to fight Ricky Hatton five years ago and there have been American UFC fighters who have really suffered with the time change when they fight in the UK.

The last thing I wanted to do was fight someone as dangerous as Wanderlei Silva while at the same time fighting my own fatigue.

When fighting overseas, jetlag is always an issue but not always one that is played up in the media narrative. Bisping will need to be mentally and physically sharp if he is going to use his technical boxing to keep Silva at bay and outpoint Wanderlei. Timing and quickness will be integral elements in this gameplan and getting to Australasia two weeks early assure that the best possible Bisping will be on display.

Bisping also sees surviving Wanderlei's initial blitkrieg as key:

I think the first 60-seconds of this fight could be some of the most difficult moments of my entire career, because I can see Wanderlei storming after me right at the horn.

Silva's opening salvo against Keith Jardine is a prinme example of the frantic pace that Wanderlei can impose on his opponent that ends the fight before it really gets a chance to begin. Being able to survive the initial onslaught and dictate the pace thereafter decide whether Bsiping can defeat the pride legend.

UFC's Marines Sponsorship Plays Role in TUF 11 Season

Viewers of last night's PPV as well as earlier UFC programming may have noticed the prevalence of commercial time for the Marines Corps. This new partnership will look to increase in the future, according to the Marine Corps Times, as the Corps will have a major role in the forthcoming season of The Ultimate Figher 11 featuring Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz:

Similar commercials, paid for out of the Corps’ advertising budget, will air during all 12 episodes of “The Ultimate Fighter,” a reality television series in which up-and-coming mixed martial arts fighters try to make names for themselves by battling one another in an elimination-style series of competitions. After the season finale, the lone fighter left standing wins a six-figure UFC contract that guarantees him multiple fights.

The show will air this spring on Spike TV and include one episode in which Marines, most likely MCMAP instructor-trainers from Quantico’s Martial Arts Center of Excellence, instruct the contestants and then go back to the fighters’ group house outside of Las Vegas to share “the longer Marine Corps story,” said Capt. Salvatore Nigro, the UFC partnership action officer at Recruiting Command.

Details are being worked out with the show’s producer, so it is not clear yet when the episode will air, Nigro said. Taping is expected to begin in Vegas in February, he said.

Seems like a hand in glove type situation for the two organizations, as the demographic sweet sport for the UFC also serves as the recruitment base for the Marines. The recent partnership was made possible throught the new found accpetance of the sport due to its' cleaned up image. In addition to sponsorship of TUF on Spike, there will also be ancillary content featured on the UFC.com website highlighting the Marines Corps.

UFC 109: Swick vs Thiago Thoughts

The Mike Swick vs Paulo Thiago fight provided a bit of clarity at welterweight and seems to have answered definitively questions that many held about the two fighters.

Thiago's victory erases any doubts that may have lingered from the Brazilian's out of the blue KO against Swick's AKA acolyte Josh Koschek. Thiago followed up his KO of Kos with a serviceable UD loss to Jon Fitch and win over Jacob Volkmann, but there was still doubt in my mind as to his bonafides. His impressive win and finish on Swick solidifies his status as an elite WW and puts him ahead of Dan Hardy in my own personal Top 10 of WW's. With the UFC WW picture having a paucity of fresh faces to feed GSP, Thiago's strong performances will at least alleviate that problem to some degree. If he avoids an Okami-like fate and gets a title shot, it will come with a better pedigree than Hardy, whose title shot owed more to timing than performance against quality opponents. Such a title shot may still be another fight away, with a fight against Kos, Daley or Alves being the plausible roadblocks on the road to GSP.


Swick's wins at WW were against a mid-tier level of competition, not providing a clear picture of his true claim to legitimacy at 170. His loss to Hardy called into question his status and Thiago's win over him closes the book at this point on his contenders status for GSP's belt. Swick's loss relegates him back down the WW picture and leaves one with the impression that his rise into Top 10 status was little more than a mirage of smoke and mirrors, a feat engineered more by matchmaking sleight of hand than performance against quality competition. Swick abdicated his middleweight status after a loss to Yushin Okami, and his back to back losses to Thaigo and Hardy leave him as a non factor at WW. Two losses to contenders and the inability to fight another two, his AKA teammates Fitch and Kos, will ice him out of the WW picture. Normally someone losing 2 in a row in the UFC would be worried about being cut, but Swick's 30 pieces of silver turn (Judas AKA-scariot?) during the AKA-Dana Videogame affair means he will have little fear of such an outcome. More likely he will be given a soft touch to build him back up. From there, where? I'm guessing a Chris Lytle, Marcus Davis type journeyman existence... stand and bang, headhunting for those KO or FOTN bonuses while neatly tucked away from title shot consideration.

New Insurance Options for MMA Fighters. Comprehensive Coverage Still Lacking

The Honolulu Star Bulletin has a piece on the local implications of a change in policy at the national level for insurer AFLAC when it comes to covering extreme sports like mixed martial arts:

Last month the world's largest supplemental insurance provider expanded its accident plan to include coverage for all types of extreme sports, from sky diving to mixed martial arts.

"Ten times out of ten, if you participate in any of these sports, you're uninsurable," said Dustin Dean Deniz, Aflac district sales coordinator for Honolulu. "We're the only company that will specifically insure these types of events."

The policy is not primary medical insurance.

Aflac would assist policyholders with everyday household expenditures and lost wages. For example, Aflac would pay $250 a day for hospital confinement. Throw in another $400 a day if the policyholder is admitted into an intensive care unit.

The expansion for extreme sports has hiked up policy rates by a small margin. For an individual policy, a policy used to cost $24.10 a month, but is now $26.52. For a couple, it was $32.30, and now is $35.36.

While this is a nice change and adds options for fighters insofar as a secondary coverage, there still remains a lack of a viable, affordable primary option for the vast majority of fighters. Those on the very high end of the curve make enough to cover the large premiums required of an MMA fighter, but that only covers a small few in the upper reaches of the UFC and Strikeforce. Coverage remains a problem for most all fighters in MMA's big leagues, and nearly all toiling at the sport's lower levels.

Coverage as a function of a promotional contract seems a far fetched thing at this point. Primary medical coverage for fighters was a calling card of the IFL during their run, but was one of the first things to be shed when Jay Larkin was brought in to cut costs during the twilight of the fight league. When queried on the topic, UFC head Dana White is apoplectic in his throwing out the question "Do you know how much it would cost to cover 200 ultimate fighters?", a question surely asked for rhetorical value, because there is never a forthcoming answer from Dana that would indicate that any serious attention has been paid to the issue.

Any help or guidance from the athletic commission end of things doesn't seem especially promising either. ABC head honcho Tim Lueckenhoff offered one of the better "let them eat cake" moments since Marie Antoinette when he gave this whopper to the LVRJ on the topic of catastrophic coverage of MMA fighters injured in licensed fights:

Lueckenhoff said he thinks boxers personally should carry some insurance.

"I realize many of them are poor, but since they are professionals and this is their job, so to speak, boxers should carry other types of medical insurance as you and I do," he said.

While quite the libertarian sentiment, Lueckenhoff's stance is one divorced from the everyday reality that fighters face when it comes to injuries and insurance coverage. Coverage under a group plan nder some kind of fighter's association would be one option to bring costs for coverage into manageable realms, the willingness of fighters to form such a group has been lacking to this point. In the meantime, the medical bills keep adding up......