Issue 082
December 2011
“We know it’s a sport, we know it’s real, the guys that are in it. None of this stuff’s made up but definitely the way they promote and the way it’s marketed it’s definitely entertainment. If I had to do it over again, I would have come out earlier in my career and been a better entertainer and worried more about that instead of just the athleticism and just the competitiveness.”
Cue an unshakeable mental picture of former UFC middleweight Matt Lindland employing Dennis Hallman’s blue-Speedo gimmick
“I think it’s always good when you leave people wanting more. I think that’s hard for most fighters to do, to find the right time to leave. Everybody fights for too long. I want to be somebody that didn’t do that.”
UFC veteran Chris Lytle provides a refreshing change of pace from an MMA warhorse
“I just had an argument with a friend because I said I didn’t fancy his mom, he got offended. Sorry I don’t want to shag your mom, mate!”
The absurd moments of Michael Bisping’s life, via Twitter. A daytime soap opera story line in the making
“There’s a lot of fans that aren’t educated and they don’t care to get educated, they’re stupid, man. Good fighters... when they lose, all of the sudden they’re cans. Look at Fedor. He went undefeated for how many years and all of the sudden he lost a few fights and he’s a can, he sucks. You know what I’m saying? C’mon, man.”
Strikeforce’s ‘King Mo’ readies himself for the Twitter backlash
“What a lot of these places do [in Brazil] is they hand out a few soccer balls and kids play soccer. You do the same thing. You build an Octagon, you give kids some equipment and you’ll have some world champions coming out of here.”
UFC president Dana White sows the seeds of a Brazilian MMA utopia primed to coexist alongside the country’s record five soccer World Cup trophies
“Let’s just say worst case scenario and he comes in and loses. Whatever place has your record it’s going to just say a loss. There isn’t an asterisk next to it saying, ‘Loss, but didn’t have two of his three cornermen, took the fight on three weeks’ notice.’ It just says loss.”
Manager Ed Soares on why Lyoto Machida was so careful about taking a last-minute fight against Rashad Evans
“I thought Werdum was chaotic and spastic in the ring. To an extent that helped him, making the fight so uncontrolled I think worked in his favor. He’s got a long way to go in terms of being a fighter out there. He showed how uncomfortable he can be in the ring.”
Josh Barnett, eloquent and restrained in his appraisal of fellow heavyweight Fabricio Werdum’s performance against Alistair Overeem in June
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