Issue 040
August 2008
Lorenzo to go 100% UFC
There were rumours for weeks as to what Dana White’s big announcement was going to be. As June came to a close, speculation intensified, and a number of items cropped up in the news. First, Dana announced that the UFC signed a deal with toy makers Jakks that will see action figures of your favourite MMA fighters hitting shelves in 2009 (for real) that had people asking “Is this is it? Is this the big announcement?” It wasn’t, and at one point the announcement was expected to be that the UFC were expecting the state of New York to legalise MMA. There was only one problem – they voted against it.
Things stated to seem a little sour, and fans and observers alike were muted in their reaction to the real big announcement. Lorenzo Fertitta, one half of the casino-owner brothers who were persuaded by Dana White back in 2000 to buy the UFC, has decided to step away from all-things gambling to focus primarily on pushing the UFC forward.
“We’ve seen this explosive growth of the UFC, and particularly the opportunity we now have internationally, so we felt like it was time for me to come aboard and help the team grow and expand,” Fertitta stated. “My brother Frank has always been in the same meetings and been running the same businesses, and we felt it was time to kind of divide and conquer. He’s gonna focus 100 percent on Station Casinos and I’m gonna focus 100 percent of my time on the UFC.”
“I haven’t been able to contribute 100 percent of my time, energy, effort and focus to it, and that’s really what this affords me to do. There’s so much to achieve, especially when you talk about worldwide global growth. I’ve always been a believer that this was going to be the biggest sport on the planet,” said Fertitta. “That’s what our goal is and that’s where we’re taking it.”
Roger Huerta: “Welterweight next”
Ladies’ favourite Roger Huerta has said that he will be moving up in weight to 170lbs “before the end of this year or early next year”. Believe it or not, the Mexican-American, who recently completed filming a movie based on the popular video game Tekken, plans to capture the title in that division as part of his goal to become “the best in the world”.
There are a few things about Huerta’s statement that cause concern. Firstly, the winner of his upcoming fight with Kenny Florian has been promised a guaranteed title shot at BJ Penn. And of course, what about current welterweight champ Georges St Pierre? According to Huerta, GSP is eyeing up a move to middleweight in around the same timeframe. With Anderson Silva moving up to light heavyweight, what next? Is Urijah Faber going to challenge Fedor?
Monson calls out Kimbo
Heavyweight grappling stand-out has caused a bit of controversy by challenging Kimbo Slice via YouTube. The tattooed anarchist fighter has stepped away from his usual quiet man approach by videoing himself calling out the former bare-knuckle boxer and Internet sensation. Monson is 2-2 in his last four fights, most recently losing to Josh Barnett in Japan, and obviously desperate for a bit of exposure in his home country. Whether Gary Shaw will pick up the challenge remains to be seen – there has been no word from EliteXC just yet.
DREAM Lightweight Grand Prix
If you’re having trouble keeping up with DREAM events, don’t worry, we’re here to help. DREAM have been firing out the events left right and centre –their latest event DREAM.4 saw the competitors for the middleweight Grand Prix decided, and while this was happening Japanese fans were voting online for the actual matches to take place in the upcoming lightweight Grand Prix.
Japanese super-grapplers Shinya Aoki and Caol Uno will go at it in one bracket, while Philadelphian Eddie Alvarez will fight ground and pound machine Tatsuya Kawajiri on July 21st, 2008 in Osaka. The semi-finals and finals will all take place on the same night, so expect to see a new champion crowned.
Also on the card will be the return of one of the world’s top pound-for-pound fighters, Norifumi ‘Kid’ Yamamoto. Kid takes on American Joseph Benavidez in a 63kg fight, while Judo Olympian Yoshihiro Akiyama will return against an as-yet undecided opponent.
UFC’s head-to-head with Affliction: Anderson Silva vs Megadeth
They say all’s fair in love and war, but that could apply to what goes on in the MMA world too. The UFC, obviously unwilling to simply let fashion brand Affliction walk into the fight promoting business, hastily put together an Ultimate Fight Night event, scheduled for exactly the same night as the Affliction pay per view. UFC’s show is free, naturally.
Bringing out the big guns, the UFC needed some star power to try and combat Affliction’s main event of Fedor vs Tim Sylvia -– and one phone call later, they had none other than Anderson Silva ready to go. The real kicker is that this isn’t a middleweight fight – Silva will be taking on James Irvin in a light heavyweight contest more liable to be an execution than a fight.
Affliction, busting out their connections in the music business, went ahead and announced that they would be featuring 80’s heavy metal rock gods Megadeth – yes, the long-haired rockers will play tracks between fights.
In this sometime savage business actions are unintentionally comic, and this particular game of one-upmanship has so far proved to be highly entertaining.
Silva vs Irvin: how and why
Initial reactions to ‘The Spider’ moving up in weight were a mixture of incredulous disbelief and scorn – but Silva walks around at about 212lb, and nobody in the middleweight division currently has a rightful claim at a title shot (although the winner of Almeida-Cote has been promised a pop at the champ). A move to light heavyweight may well just be a dalliance for Silva, who hasn’t intimated of any plans to make a permanent move up. Irvin is less gatekeeper and more patsy in this – he has a puncher’s chance, but anyone betting on the American to take this had best not put their house on it.
Trump buys into MMA
Owner of one of the proudest bouffant haircuts in the entire Western hemisphere, filthy rich Donald Trump has stuck some of his bags of cash into the upcoming Affliction: Banned event. Trump executive vice president and special counsel Michael D. Cohen said his boss has purchased a “significant” equity stake in Affliction Entertainment. Trump is the star of the US version of reality TV show The Apprentice, and last year Tito Ortiz appeared on the celebrity version of the show, progressing quite far and catching Trump’s attention. The two must have had a chinwag about the state of the sport and Trump, a fierce entrepreneur, obviously sees promise if he is willing to invest some of his billions of dollars into the start-up promotion. But then it’s not like he’s going to miss a couple of hundred grand here or there, is it?
