Issue 102

June 2013

Come on… the next series of TUF, with both men and women in the same house? Really? Recipe for disaster. We are set for the most Big Brother-like series ever. Yet I have to confess, I really can’t wait. Is this MTV’s The Real World all over again? In that addictive, voyeuristic way you get obsessed with car crash television. 

Gareth A Davies

MMA and Boxing Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, London on whether TUF 18 may produce more than the next Ultimate Fighter

As Luke Barnatt, the UK middleweight and TUF 17 alumnus tweeted to me recently, are we facing potential here for a ‘#TUForgy’? I suspect not, but a TUF wedding, maybe. Or – much more likely, nine months after TUF 18 – we could be looking at the first TUF baby. And the funny thing is – were the child to be a boy or a girl – you can almost guarantee that the parents will call him/her ‘Dana.’ Enough said. I’ll have the series on auto record.

UFC’s SARA McMann likes her ‘caveman’

I sat down recently with UFC 135lb’er Sara McMann. Hand on heart, I was blown away by meeting another extraordinary woman who has entered mixed martial arts. She has endured triumph and terrible tragedy. 

Her brother, Jason, a wrestler, was murdered in 1999 at the age of 21. She explained how it had destroyed her parents. Then in 2004 the death of her first love, All-American wrestler Steven Blackford, in a car accident.

Happily, she found love again, with wrestling coach Trent Goodale. They have a daughter whom Sara dotes on. “She is the most important thing in my life. If I had to choose, at any point, between a sports career and my daughter, my baby wins hands down. Point blank,” she tells me.

Couple of highlights: The first female US Olympic silver medallist in freestyle wrestling (Athens 2004) admitted to being “a fighting hippy,” said she’d love to live in a yurt, and is so hell bent on athletic success that she sees the money as irrelevant. “Joe Silva could bring a lollipop in the Octagon afterwards and I really wouldn’t be bothered,” she says. 

Interesting, though, is McMann’s admission that, although she espouses power and strength in her sport, she’s traditional about relationships. “I need my man to be a caveman,” she says. “I’m quite old-fashioned like that.” Personally, I can’t wait for her to get started in the UFC.

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and marijuana

They are all at it: Matt Riddle, Nick Diaz and now ‘Bruce Leeroy’ Alex Caceres. Marijuana metabolites. Why do they do it? Is it something to do with rolling… are all jiu-jitsu players stoners?  

The marijuana plant contains delta 9-tetrahydrocannibol, or THC, which has both physical and psychological effects. Marijuana smoking is not good for anyone, say the health authorities. Heart rate increases, and the ability to perform endurance tests diminishes. It can also cause low blood pressure, or hypo-tension.

Concentration is hindered, it can cause a lack of motivation to perform exercise, say reports. Marijuana may affect perception and cause distortions “involving vision, sound, touch and time,” according to another report. But by the accounts of many jiu-jitsu practitioners, it eases mind and body, and movement.

IMMAF breaks French resistance

Heartening news from France. Professional MMA has long been banned in that country, and yet the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation has secured representation there, and has made some progress with politicians.

The Commission National de Mixed Martial Arts, the national federation representing MMA in France, and in existence since 2009, has joined the IMMAF.

In the last four years, the French commission has educated over 80 MMA teachers, giving them expertise in MMA training, along with health, safety and martial arts values.

CNMMA president and IMMAF board member Bertrand Amoussou explains: “The CNMMA has made progress in the political arena in the last year and we are confident that the IMMAF membership will encourage the political leaders as well as the French sports community to evaluate and welcome MMA in the near future.” 

The biggest issue, nonetheless, is campaigning within the Olympic disciplines, judo and taekwondo, and also kickboxing, sports which all have a strong lobby inside Olympic and sports administration circles within France.