Weekly MMA News Report- 5/17/09
We officially have less than a week before UFC 98 and the highly-anticipated Light Heavyweight Championship fight between the undefeated champion, Rashad Evans, and the undefeated challenger, Lyoto Machida. The week of a big UFC event is always full of news, so before we forge ahead, let’s look back at the last week or so and discuss some of the main stories of the last several days.
–Dana White was all over the media this past week, appearing on ESPN’s E:60, in the pages of ESPN The Magazine, and even showing up on Dr. Phil, of all places. It looks as if the talk of White taking a less visible approach to being the UFC president after the video blog controversy was quite exaggerated, huh? At this point, he seems to be more well-known and visible than ever, in fact.
My Take: The appearances were a mixed bag, with the E:60 piece (which can easily be found on YouTube or watched on the official E:60 website) having a few interesting tidbits along with the other stuff that you would expect, such as rehashing the Tito Ortiz conflict. The Dr. Phil appearance was hardly worth mentioning, as White, Kenny Florian and Forrest Griffin basically told some young punks who fight in high school classrooms and backyards that “underground fighting is bad, m’kay”. I sat through thirty minutes of Dr. Phail (spelling intended) for that? For better or for worse, Dana White will continue to be the face of the UFC, as well as MMA as a whole.
–White’s good buddy Chuck Liddell was also in the news last week, as he confirmed in an interview with MMA Madness that he has not officially retired yet, and does not intend to make a decision for awhile. “Right now, I couldn’t say that I’m not going to fight again,” Liddell said.
My Take: I’m just happy that Liddell has finally come out and had something to say on the subject, even though he hasn’t ended the speculation yet. As I’ve said all along, the decision should be his and his alone, as I don’t think it’s fair to say that he has no business fighting at this point. Losses to the likes of Rashad Evans and the newly reinvigorated Mauricio “Shogun” Rua do not mean that someone has no business in the cage. I think we’ll see Liddell fight at least one more time, although not until 2010.
–In news that should make fans of UFC title fights shudder, it appears to be certain that Quinton “Rampage” Jackson will coach the next season of The Ultimate Fighter, airing this fall. It would seem obvious, then, that the winner of the Evans-Machida fight will coach the opposite team, meaning we won’t see another light heavyweight title fight until December at best. The information came from Jackson’s teammate Tiki Ghosn, who mentioned that he will be the striking coach for Rampage’s team during an interview with TapouT Radio.
My Take: So, we have to wait about seven months to see the winner of Evans and Machida against Rampage? Wonderful. Apparently, this trend of holding up entire weight classes for half of a year so that the champion can coach a freaking reality show will continue indefinitely. That’s not great news for those that like to see title fights, of course. At this point, people are going to turn in to see The Ultimate Fighter no matter what. Why not throw non-title holders in there, instead? It’s not as if people won’t watch simply because a world champion isn’t coaching, so why hold up the titles for so long?
–There was plenty of MMA action going on, with several notable fighters in action over the past week. Bobby Lashley had what was easily his most impressive appearance to date as he quickly submitted Mike Cook at MFC 21. The little-known Omar de la Cruz TKO’ed former UFC champion Dave Menne at Bellator Fighting Championships 7, Vladimir Matyushenko defeated Jason Lambert in a bout between UFC veterans, and Kim Couture’s replacement, Sarah Kaufman defeated Miesha Tate. Also winning were Daniel Puder (who had his first fight in nearly two years) of WWE-pseudo fame and Tiki Ghosn, who hadn’t won an MMA bout since 2004.
My Take: Lashley will fight the infamous Bob Sapp very shortly. It will be interesting to see what Lashley does after the Sapp fight, which he should surely win. Matyushenko has been impressive in recent years, only losing to Antonio Rogerio Nogueira in the last six years. The win over Lambert is a quality one, as Lambert was widely considered to be a borderline top ten light heavyweight a while back, before his loss to Rashad Evans in the UFC.
–Jake Shields, who takes on Robbie Lawler on June 6th in Strikeforce, is thinking about fighting in both the welterweight and middleweight divisions. If he’s successful against Lawler, he would like to fight for the middleweight title and bounce back and forth between the two divisions.
My Take: Shields is a talented (if not always exciting) fighter, but he’ll have his hands full with Lawler. In fact, I think Lawler will win their fight, much to the approval of Joe “Diesel” Riggs, who wanted a piece of Shields before the Lawler fight was inked. I think a Riggs-Shields fight would be great, due to the trash talk and the amount of anger that Riggs has towards Shields alone.
by Jon Hartley for Fightmania.com
Tags: Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, Chuck Liddell, Dana White, Forrest Griffin, Jake Shields, Kenny Florian, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans, Robbie Lawler, Strikeforce, Tito Ortiz, UFC
