I think that every time I have gone to a fight I have had pretty amazing seats. Usually on the floor 3-10th row. Most people that sit there are educated about MMA and the UFC in general. So, I personally haven't seen a fight. If I did see one, I'm sure it would be ridiculously technical.

I think at the last UFC we went to, there was a fight in the nose bleed seats. But the cops ran up there pretty quickly.

I think Joe is actually a really good fighter. He trains with a great camp and is always interesting to watch. He is one of the people that I see making the transition into the UFC. I think Cung Le will eventually end up in the UFC as well.

Sidenote-I too am not thrilled about the upcoming card. But regardless of how bad a card is, I always get it. I just can't help myself.

WEC should be interesting tonight.

LOL ,you should try a double leg takedown on Shaq next time, then a little ground and pound.

So what do you all think of Rampage/Forrest? I like a bet on Rampage a ton, who are you guys on?

Le's already 36, not much time left to make the transition. But his fight vs. Shamrock was good.

probably betting rampage, but itll be one of the few times that Ill be pulling for the guy I bet against

Awesome


As much as I hate to say it, and as much as I wanted it to be wrong... "Kimbo would get killed if he fought a good heavyweight."

That being said, Kimbo got himself into the bad situations last night by dropping down on 2 guillotine attempts. If he stays standing he wins easily (as he dominated the standup), and we dont see him get exposed on the ground.

As much as I love Forrest the more I think about it I think Rampage is a good bet. Forrest is a stand up guy without 1 punch power. He relys on accumulation to win. I just think him standing in front of Rampage for 5 rounds will eventually get caught.

did anyone else think last night may have been a little rigged or was it just me. I mean the stoppage in the kimbo fight was absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention everytime that kimbo was eating elbows on the ground the referee either tried standing them up or just let kimbo eat them. At the end of the round, kimbo could barely find his feet and they didn't stop the fight there, but the second that his ear opened, they didn't even let him try to get the blood under control, not to mention, i've seen much bloodier wars before. I think Kimbo was winning that fight one way or another (only for ratings).

And i have a question that may seem odd......
what happens when fighters have to pee during a fight? I mean you can only take so many shots i'm sure at one point you'd have to go and it's not like they stop the fight for bathroom breaks.

I don't think that it was rigged and I believe people have made to much out of the damage done when Kimbo was on his back as I thought most of the elbows were glazing as opposed to direct contact. I think the stoppage was early but think that was more due to cersor concerns than anything else.

That being said I know that in other legitmate sports the referees are often made aware from management the out come that they would prefer. I think it's obvious Elite wants Kimbo to be the face of the company but I didn't see it as outright rigged as others seemed to.

I honestly have no clue whether or not the fight was rigged. I've said before that I don't trust the organization. But when a ref stands the fight back up when one person has side control, I get genuinely confused as to what's going on.

Agreed; that to me looked more questionable then the stoppage but then again everything about the entire event seemed very odd. To me it's not out of the realm of possibilities that the ref was simply clueless as that would be inline with most of the night.

Anyone know of a spot to watch tonight's card online? I'm at work aaaaaaagain ftl.

Ooooh, Guida/Danzig on the 87 card. That will be a good fight.

So, here's my thoughts on the EliteXC fights:

First off, I had "date night" with the wife last night so I set the Tivo for this. Luckily, I thought ahead and also Tivo'd the local news that was on afterwards......after watching both recordings, the last one ends about, oh, 2 minutes into the Kimbo fight! Luckily a quick check of mmashare.com, I found the whole fight and got to watch it.

The first 2 fights were basically what I expected...a couple quick, decent KO's. Nothing special, but not bad if some of the other fights delivered.

The chick fight was definately my favorite of the night. I'm still somewhat of a noob to the MMA world, and as someone who prodominately watches UFC fights, I had yet to see a female mma fight. I was pretty impressed w/ the skill level and toughness of both fighters. It's too bad they didn't let 'em go a 3rd round, but Kaitlyn (i think was her name) had a pretty wicked mouse building under that eye. Well done, ladies.

The Lawler/Smith fight I also enjoyed. There was one point in the fight I laughed pretty hard at. Lawler hit Smith with a pretty wicked/hard leg kick to the kidneys the sent Smith buckling backwards. Lawler didn't immediately run to attack him and gave him an "I don't think so" shake of the head. To me, he was tellling Smith that he wasn't gonna get lured in like Sell did for a big haymaker. The ending was too bad, but if Smith really did say twice that he couldn't see (which apparently he did, as he didn't dispute it in the post-fight interview) then I think they have to stop it. Hopefully the re-match is as good (minus the eye gouge).

The Kimbo/Thomson fight bored me. I wasn't really expecting a whole lot from Kimbo, but after hearing about how "weak the chin" of Thompson's was, I expected a 1st round KO, but Thompson's poor attempt at a ground game was still enough to prolong the fight. It reminded me of watching old Toughman contest fights, only with the occasional takedown/weak G&P. Kimbo's definately a long way away from even being considered a legit threat, and it's at least nice to hear him acknowledge that.

Overall I found the fights ok and the show itself terrible. The ring announcers 2 minute intros were terribly annoying. If they do any more of these, I'll probably Tivo the next one and pick through it to see if they've improved it. I'm got the Tivo set for tonights fight too. I've liked Little Evil over the years, so I'm rooting for him even though I'm not too confident in his chances.

Mirgliatta (sp?) has reffed a number of UFC events since the Newark card, but I'm unsure if he's still with the UFC. I don't think he's clueless, though, as he's been in the roation on at least three UFC cards.

I think it's more likely that CBS and EliteXC gave instructions to make sure the fights remained exciting to the fans uneducated in MMA, which means if someone's not getting hit alot, stand em up.

Go on...

I used to live across the road from an NHL ref and went to school with the daughter of another on more then one occasion I was told that while they weren't told directly that the head office wanted a certain team to win they were made aware of who management would "prefer" to see win. ie; in the playoffs. So I really wouldn't be surprised to find that being the case for an event like last night.

hmmm dbl post

and the triple

These are two scrappy little fuckers! Don't even know their names, but im sure everyone who reads this later will know to which fight I refer.

Miguel Torres and Yoshiro Maeda. Great fight so far.

jesus christ what a war in torres/maeda. love the double ankle lock. that was just a plain bad assed battle.

Torres is a monster. One of the best P4P fighters in the world, it's a shame they don't have more 135's for him to fight. Maeda was probably his best challenger and gave him a very good fight. That was just a great fight though and a great display of MMA. If this fight were shown yesterday on Elite XC's card, there'd be a lot more new MMA fans.

Miguel's also got the best guard in MMA imo. He shuts down your attack and strikes and sets up submissions from the bottom. He's the only fighter I have really seen with a guard like this, even other high level black belts are usually just setting up sweeps or submissions and being defensive, but Miguel is on the attack in his guard, he just locks up your arms and lands some fairly effective strikes.

that cop is hot

LOL the tale of the tape is a little off. No way Pulver only has a inch on Faber.

true story

exactly what i thought

What the hell is Pulver doin? Everytime he seems to gain any sort of edge he backs off.

So bitter that I couldn't find this on until after ten but the last couple fights by far made up for my disappointment last night.

had moderate expectations last night and high ones for tonight, and was not dissapointed either time.

Torres is easy to love.

What happened to Pulvers one-punch knockout power?
His chin impressed me though.

also, as an aside, makes me think even more of Penn, seeing how he dominated Pulver. To me, Penn is clearly the best P4P, when he is wanting to be.

I really liked the last two fight on WEC tonight.

I feel truly lucky to have watched that for free.

All four fighters showed a ton of heart and class.

I'm not mentioning the first two fights because I thought they were kind of bleh. But the last two were incredible.

I was surprised to see Faber's standup improved so much. He was using good feints, head movement and his strikes weren't as wide and wild as before. I think training with BJ some in Hawaii has really sharpened up his game. I was impressed with Jens' chin, I was expecting him to get iced after taking some of those shots, but he recovered well. His BJJ and takedown defense also looked much better, he stuffed a few of Urijah's takedowns and nullified his ground attack, which I was surprised he was able to do. He just didn't have the cardio to keep up with Faber's pace and that was the main difference in the fight.

for those of us who didn't see it, I gather Faber won?

Greenberg... nice


Awesome card I liked it a lot



[/showstopper post]

Elite XC / CBS would have stopped the Faber-Pulver Fight both on the Eye and the Nut Shot.. Great fights except the first was boring. Wonder whos next for Faber, and the outcome of his right hand looks like he hurt it during the fight.

50-45, 50-44, 50-44

It's already been said, but it's too bad tonight's fights/production wasn't put on in primetime cable instead of the debacle last night.

Rigged or not, I am certainly glad Kimbo won as I had a huge bet riding on him. He certainly was exposed for the street chump rep that he carries. Surprised Thompson was able to take that many punches and not go down. He has some jacked up eyes, but it looked like he was out on his feet just by looking at his eyes rolling around in his head. It might have been a premature stoppage, but that fight was not lasting another 20 seconds. I was really surprised they didn't stop it towards the end of the 2nd. If it was Kimbo delivering those elbows it would have been stopped for sure.

Anyone see the tap by Kimbo at the end of the 2nd round that one of the fighters was talking about at the press conference? Just read the little blurb on MMAjunkie.

Missed the fights last night as I am out of town and my buddy doesn't have cable, but I can't wait to get home and catch them on DVR. Sounds like some entertainment.

Did anybody notice the similarities between Razor Rob's fight and Tito's last fight in the UFC ? Tito trains Razor and they both have a hard time fighting guys who back away and counterpunch. Makes for a boring fight.

Faber/Pulver= Awsome ! That kid is a phenom but I hate his new hair doo.

I'm not sure you can say that. Thompson took those shots in the first two rounds and didn't go out.

An entertaining disaster
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
12 hours, 25 minutes ago

Buzz Up PrintMore From Dan WetzelKimbo not the face of MMA May 29, 2008

Many long-time mixed martial arts fans think Saturday’s Kimbo Slice fight on CBS was fixed because, well, it looked exactly like what they think a fixed fight would look like.

Personally, I don’t think it was rigged, if only because it worked. Kimbo, the obvious beneficiary since the entire promotion hinges on his success, won. For Elite XC to purposely deliver this desirable result would display a level of competency not seen in any other part of its amateur hour production.

But that’s just me. In the days after the first ever network televised card, everyone seems to have an opinion.

It generally splits into two groups.

Moderate to hardcore fans saw it as an abomination of their sport; CBS and Elite XC combining to produce a circus act headlined by an overhyped Kimbo that set the perception of MMA back a decade.

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New and casual fans saw it as great entertainment, especially considering it was on late Saturday night where the expectations of programming aren’t real high, although some viewers undoubtedly were.

Both sides are correct; it’s simply a matter of perspective.

If you’re a fan of MMA, then what Elite XC trotted out as a main event was mostly an absurd exhibition. It’s like tuning in for the NBA Finals and finding the And 1 Mixtape Tour – only with announcers pretending Hot Sauce is a better player than Kobe Bryant.

This was entirely predictable. Any promotion that was going to use Kimbo Slice as its main event clearly cared nothing about the quality or growth of the sport. It was just grabbing cheap viewers. If that meant sending a mostly unskilled street fighting sensation against a guy who was such a tomato can he should have dressed in red, then so be it.

Of course, the tomato can, James “Colossus” Thompson, almost won. At least, until the fight got stopped, Kimbo was declared the winner and MMA message boards almost collapsed in fury.

But if you didn’t know, or care, then you didn’t know or care. This was better than reruns of “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

What the main event lacked in quality it made up for in entertainment, unintentional or not. Here are my four favorite absurdly hysterical moments of the Kimbo-Colossus fight.

4. When the fight was called, Colossus, the loser, tried to fight the ref for unfairly ending it. Kimbo, the winner, collapsed in exhaustion as many in the once pro-Kimbo crowd in Newark, N.J., turned on their guy. Not exactly a victory lap.

3. The CBS announcing crew’s endless hyperbole reaching its pinnacle when one of them compared Kimbo to Tiger Woods.

This would be applicable if Tiger had gained fame hitting trick shots in putt putt and then was invited to a second rate club championship which CBS was conned into televising. He then shot a final round 124, after which he was declared the winner anyway.

2. The judges. Kimbo spent most of the second round getting his skull hit and thanking the heavens that Colossus could only manage weak punches and elbows. Anyone else and this ends ugly. Even with Colossus, the fight could have been called (ha) in this undeniably terrible round for Kimbo.

Naturally, one of the “impartial judges” scored the round in his favor anyway. If this had gone to decision, is there any doubt at least one of the judges would have scored the three-round fight for Kimbo, five rounds to zero?

1. The Ear. What, you’ve seen an ear like that before? When everyone predicted this would be a freak show, no one thought the Colossus would take it to heart. His cauliflower ear was massive, this huge ball of blood and puss hanging off his head.

Ah, didn’t anyone think to mention he might want to drain that thing before Kimbo whacks him upside the head and makes it explode? Which, of course, happened.

Pre-fight, as the cameras zoomed in on that monstrosity everyone watching was horrified, fascinated or laughing uncontrollably. It was something out of a summer comedy; I kept expecting Verne Troyer to appear in the scene. CBS’s Gus Johnson declared it an “alien life form.”

This was the stuff that pained longtime fans. For the average person just looking for something to watch, though, this train wreck was wildly entertaining. At the very least, it was memorable. Not everyone is concerned about the integrity of cage fighting.

It’s worth repeating that Kimbo Slice isn’t the problem. He may have a long way to go to be even a good MMA fighter, but he is an easy-to-root-for American original. He shouldn’t apologize for suddenly having a chance to make a bunch of money.

If out of the blue the New York Yankees called and said you could have Alex Rodriguez’s third base position (and contract), you’d take it. Then you’d spend every waking minute at the batting cage and taking grounders, all while walking around scared senseless that this was going to end badly (except for your bank account) when they realized you aren’t a major league ball player.

That’s what Kimbo looked like in the run up to this one. He’s training as hard as he can, but he has to know the truth. Fedor Emelianenko, the best heavyweight in the world, would toy with him. Every heavyweight and light heavyweight in the UFC would beat him handily. Even some middleweights, such as Anderson Silva, despite giving up 50-plus pounds, would take him. It’s just a matter of MMA being a lot more than a street brawl. He’s on their turf now.

Colossus has now lost seven of his last nine fights and he wasn’t enough of a stiff to assure Kimbo victory. Kimbo is fun, but reality is reality.

Still, it wasn’t Kimbo saying he was Tiger Woods. It wasn’t Kimbo who showed up with a racquetball in his ear, or hired the dancing girls or choreographed the WWE introductions.

As frustrating as this was for many who love the sport, I don’t buy the argument that the card was a big negative for MMA. Yes its credibility was hurt with old media and some skeptics, but many potential fans were exposed to it for the first time.

Some of them will stick around and discover the upper reaches of the sport. If Sunday’s WEC card highlighted by the Jens Pulver-Urijah Faber epic had been on CBS, then the sport would have shot into the stratosphere overnight. The same is true for any UFC production or, most likely, next month’s promising Affliction event.

If new fans watch those, soon they too will realize what first introduced them to the sport was mostly just an entertaining joke.

Now, if only CBS could realize it. Not since someone decided to make a television show about the Geico Cavemen has a network been sold such a bill of goods.

CBS tried to claim it was wary of MMA because of its old perception as “human cockfighting.” That hasn’t been a reality in over a decade, though. Naturally, they contracted an organization that played on that very stereotype and, in turn, furthered it.

If CBS would dump Elite XC but stick with MMA – finding a more suitable promotion to televise – they’d find the good overnight ratings it produced could build into a juggernaut over time.

Not by providing minor league fights long on unintentional comedy that insult hardcore fans, but by trusting the sport on its own merits.

If we could get that fixed, there’d be no complaints.

"3. The CBS announcing crew’s endless hyperbole reaching its pinnacle when one of them compared Kimbo to Tiger Woods.

This would be applicable if Tiger had gained fame hitting trick shots in putt putt and then was invited to a second rate club championship which CBS was conned into televising. He then shot a final round 124, after which he was declared the winner anyway."

it wasn't staged at all. Neither of them are good enough to make a worked shoot look like that. Maybe if you put someone like Josh Barnett in with Sakuraba or Kiyoshi Tamura, then I'd be a bit more suspect on that, but not those guys



Rampage should win, but it will also be a good fight to showcase Forrest and how far he's come





amazing fight. That second round is one of the best rounds of MMA that I've seen

absolutely agree. I would pay 20 bucks just for a dvd of that fight and the main event. both were some of the best fighting I've ever seen. have to say I will be making a ton more effort to catch WEC fights from now on. love the featherweights and bantamweights.

that is the second time that I've seen him fight and he is crazy exciting. Even when he's in guard, he's constantly working all the angles and setting up submissions. I love that guy. I was puzzled by his constant two punch combos that led directly into a quick as he moved in. I would have liked to have seen him throw more 6 punch combos, but hey, what do I know? He's a stud. Damn I love watching a submission specialist. So exciting.

hilarious, I thought the same thing.

If they had Condit on that card, I would've bought it for $40 bucks. Faber and Torres don't disappoint. Too bad their comp will always be scarce.


Mir is good as well. Except for his spots of dead air, he does a great job of explaining the moves and how they can get in and out of them. I've learned a lot from watching/listening to him. One funny note, during that Grigsby/Munoz match, he was speechless with how bad Grigsby's JuJitsu was. Munoz left his arms so wide open while he was on top of that long fcker, I saw the damn opening for an easy armbar or triangle, and I'm an idiot. Mir just sounded frustrated and disappointed in the guy for missing it.

I had this DVR'd and just got around to watching this, holy shit that was an awesome fight.

you can tell by the board activity that the excitement for Saturday's card is just boiling over. I kind of hope that this card doesn't get too many buys. I would like to watch the fights, but they definitely aren't a must watch. I watched the preview show on Spike, but it ran over and I missed the bio on Vera. I hope he wins. Seems like he has the body type to cut to 205 if he wanted to. I don't know his weight, but he looks lean for a heavyweight

Yea hard to believe this ppv cost just as much as 84. This card has been cursed from the start. If the Bisbing Leben fight was still on I probally would have got it.

You live in Canada and don't have FTA ? Best $165 I ever spent.