Month: August 2010

mma

MMA tournaments: How to, how not to

Posted on by Beau Dure

The UFC started with a simple concept — eight men, one tournament, one winner.

Since then, the “tournament” idea has remained but has been spread over more time. Japanese promotions have often held quarterfinals one night, then held semifinals and finals on the same night a couple of months later. Strikeforce will do the same with a women’s tournament Friday night (11 p.m. ET, Showtime).

Bellator, which opens its third season tonight (check with your local FSN affiliate) has opted for season-long tournaments over a couple of months. The UFC isn’t such a fan of the tournament concept, but that’s essentially what you get in The Ultimate Fighter.

Shine Fights has announced an old-school fight card next month in Fairfax, Va. Eight fighters — some notable — fighting up to three times during the night for a tournament title.

Several reasons why this is a tricky concept:

1. No time to promote. With The Ultimate Fighter, we know the fighters by the time they reach the final.

2. Logistics. Shuffling fighters in and out can be a challenge.

3. Fatigue and trivial injuries that can affect the outcomes. When one fighter has a brutal quarterfinal bout and the other sails through with ease, who do you suppose gets the win? And heaven forbid someone breaks a finger or gets a cut that would normally clear up in a couple of weeks but causes him to forfeit the next fight.

4. Serious injuries. Dr. Johnny Benjamin explains.

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track and field

Diamond League: The pen-penultimate meet

Posted on by Beau Dure

As with many track and field competitions, the Diamond League is coming to a conclusion that should be exciting but is a little odd.

Each event is contested seven times during the spring and summer. The finals in each event are split between the last two meets in Zurich and Brussels. In those meets, the points are doubled — 8 points for a win, 4 for second, 2 for third.

This weekend’s meet in London is two days (Friday/Saturday, hopefully on a working Universal Sports stream), and it has the penultimate gathering for each event. Except, for some reason, five — men’s 200, men’s 800, men’s 5,000, women’s 100 and women’s pole vault.

The full standings in PDF form are here under the link “Actual Standings.” The events to watch, admittedly from a provincial U.S. point of view:

MEN

100: The marquee sprint has been disappointing because of the injury wave among the Big Three of Usain Bolt (JAM), Tyson Gay (USA) and Asafa Powell (JAM). Bolt only ran twice, beating Powell in Paris and losing to Gay in Stockholm, before shutting things down for the season. Powell leads the Diamond Race with 10 points, winning two races, but he sat out in Stockholm. Powell, Richard Thompson (TRI, 7 pts) and Gay (4) are all scheduled to start. They’ll run two heats, so several more Americans are in the current field of 16.

400: Jeremy Wariner (USA, 16) is 4-for-4 and can clinch the Diamond title by beating Jermaine Gonzales (JAM, 8), who won in Wariner’s absence in Monaco.

110 hurdles: David Oliver (USA, 16) has dominated the event with four wins and should make his season title official here. Ryan Wilson (USA, 6) is second. Dayron Robles (CUB, 4) won in Oliver’s absence in Rome but will miss this one.

400 hurdles: Bershawn Jackson (USA, 16) has three wins and has twice finished second to Kerron Clement (USA, 10). Clement is out, so Jackson almost has this one sewn up.

Long jump: Dwight Phillips (USA, 12) has had a good season-long duel with Fabrice Lapierre (AUS, 11). Irving Saladino (PAN, 7) also is in the mix and upset Phillips in Eugene.

Shot put: Christian Cantwell (USA, 20) is the only male athlete with a perfect record. He has clinched the season title ahead of Dylan Armstrong (CAN, 6).

Javelin: Andreas Thorkildsen (NOR, 18) won the first four of the season but finally dropped one to Tero Pitkamaki (FIN, 8), leaving a mathematical chance that the Finn could catch him.

WOMEN

200: Allyson Felix (USA, 10) took control of the event with two straight wins after a loss to Veronica Campbell-Brown (JAM, 4). She’ll virtually clinch it here.

400: Felix (USA, 8) has two wins here as well, sharing the lead with Amantle Montsho (BOT). They’re both entered in London along with Shericka Williams (JAM, 5), Debbie Dunn (USA, 5) and everyone else.

800: Alysia Johnson (USA, 8) has won the last two events to take the lead from Janeth Jepkosgei (KEN, 7). This is wide-open — 10 runners have points.

100 hurdles: Lolo Jones (USA, 13) is looking to bounce back from an upset loss in Stockholm. She leads Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (CAN, 10) and Sally Pearson (AUS, 4), who finished 2-1 in Stockholm.

400 hurdles: Lashinda Demus (USA, 12) won the first three, then stumbled in Monaco and isn’t entered here. Kaliese Spencer (JAM, 12) is.

High jump: Blanka Vlasic (CRO, 20) has edged Chaunte Howard-Lowe (USA, 10) in all five meets so far. Vlasic has all but clinched the title, but their competitions have been entertaining.

Long jump: Brittney Reese (USA, 10) won in Lausanne and Paris ahead of Naide Gomes (POR, 7) before both lost in Stockholm to Darya Klishina (RUS, 5).

Javelin: An American contender in a women’s throwing event? Kara Patterson (USA, 8) trails Barbora Spotakova (CZE, 12).

Other events:

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soccer

MLS player ratings: Aug. 11-15

Posted on by Beau Dure

Thanks to all for your contributions to Week 1 of the MLS player ratings project. As Lois Griffin once said about dinner, it was so much fun, we might as well do it again.

Let me know via comments, Twitter or Facebook if you’d like to handle one of the games below, then leave your ratings in the comments. Then tell all your friends to come over and check out your brilliant analysis. (Actually, I was quite impressed with all the contributions.)

All times ET

Wednesday
Philadelphia-Salt Lake, 7:30
New York-Toronto, 7:30

Saturday
Philadelphia-Colorado, 4 (TeleFutura)
New York-Los Angeles, 6 (FSC)
New England-Houston, 8
D.C. United-Dallas, 8
Salt Lake-Columbus, 9
San Jose-Kansas City, 10
Chivas USA-Seattle, 11

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mma

MMA: Not pro wrestling

Posted on by Beau Dure

Mixed martial arts has a few historical links to professional wrestling. The connection is stronger in Japan than in the USA, but it exists here. They’ve chased some of the same audiences, and a couple of people have existed in both worlds. Ken Shamrock went back and forth between the two. Brock Lesnar left pro wrestling behind to climb quickly to UFC heavyweight champion. We even have an overlap in journalism — Dave Meltzer, who dove aggressively behind the scenes with Wrestling Observer, is a very good MMA writer.

No one would want to drum Lesnar or Meltzer out of the sport, but MMA fans have every right to play up the differences between their sport and the scripted version. Luke Thomas minced few words on Twitter today (not that Twitter gives anyone much leeway to mince words) in talking about it: “I’m going to start swinging a machete if we keep pretending MMA is professional wrestling.”

Thomas, who hosts “MMA Nation” on WJFK and is the editor of great MMA blog Bloody Elbow, expounded in two more Tweets. Combining them: “The other issue that folks need to consider is the longer you pretend there is a cozy relationship btw MMA & pro wrestling, the longer you put off integration into the larger sporting audience. They will not accept it on those terms. And who can blame them?”

Thomas is a passionate defender of MMA as a sport and not just a spectacle, something Bloody Elbow’s critics in the fight world should remember. And he’s right.

In Japan, fans and the media may be more accepting of close links between the “fake” and “real” worlds. In the USA, that’ll go over as well as the “European carry-all” on the great old Seinfeld episode.

All of this is in the wake of UFC 117, which played out like a pro wrestling storyline, vividly spelled out at Watch Kalib Run. Chael Sonnen hyped the fight with ludicrous overstatement, dominated for most of the fight and then lost when Silva pulled a submission win out of nothing. That’s Sonnen playing the heel to Anderson Silva’s babyface.

It’s not a perfect analogy. Sonnen had a lot of fan support against Silva, whose popularity has suffered through some erratic performances.

But the differences between MMA and pro wrestling were more apparent in the rest of the card, which no one would script:

– Jon Fitch took a typically methodical win over Thiago Alves in the type of bout.

– Matt Hughes, a few years past his championship run, beat Ricardo Almeida with an improbable choke. (Maybe you’d script that one.)

– Clay Guida beat Rafael dos Anjos on an injury — a Guida punch injured dos Anjos’ jaw, and dos Anjos tapped out when he was caught in a hold that made the injury worse.

– Junior dos Santos beat up Roy Nelson in a matchup of contrasting builds.

UFC fight build-up is sometimes nasty. Lesnar and Frank Mir had some pointed exchanges, and Lesnar went way over the top in celebrating his win. But it’s generally a different vibe. Even Sonnen and Silva embraced after the fight, with Silva going out of his way to praise a fighter who had spent several months ridiculing him.

As a journalist who has come to love this sport, I’m with Luke. I can deal with pre-fight confidence-building boasts, but not with pro wrestling-style histrionics. I’d bet I’m not the only one.

Update: At Bloody Elbow, Kid Nate sums up one of the problems — the more MMA resembles pro wrestling, the more likely observers may think it’s predetermined.

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soccer

There is no “try” — Adu or not Adu

Posted on by Beau Dure

Anyone made that pun yet? I think we’re all racing now to make the last possible pun on Freddy Adu’s name.

The young American’s status is up in the air again after a trial with Switzerland’s FC Sion didn’t pan out. (Aside to headline writers: “Not signing” and “failed to impress” or not the same thing.)

Now we have a report that Adu is “close to signing” with the Los Angeles Galaxy. My background doesn’t give me much faith in anonymous reports — which works out well, because no one ever tells me anything — but World Soccer Reader has shown itself to be more sincere and reliable in its reporting than most. And it’s interesting that the mainstreamers who could easily throw cold water on such reports have not done so.

“Close to signing,” of course, is a nebulous term, and many things can derail a deal that seems close to happening. This isn’t the NBA, where teams are basically bidding against each other for free agents, and players are weighing only a couple of factors. This is international soccer and MLS, where the multiple parties must agree on transfer terms, contract terms, compensation for the team holding allocation rights, salary cap impact, etc., etc.

So while we wait to see if this deal comes to fruition, we can ask: Should Freddy Adu come back to MLS?

I say no. Here’s why:

Adu is the classic example of how the old media “build up, tear down” celebrity cycle has been accelerated and magnified in the Internet Age. Some people thought he was never that good. Some people legitimately bought the “new Pele” line, though no one in a position of authority was actually calling him that. Some people thought he was several years older than he said.

Let’s destroy all three of those arguments, in reverse order:

Continue reading →

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olympic sports

Beach volleyball hitting another ebb in USA?

Posted on by Beau Dure
Beijing beach volleyball venue
Hey, Beijing! Karch Kiraly cares not for your temporary "beach." (Photo taken at 2008 Games on my "eight venues in a day" tour.)

The AVP Tour never has it easy. Beach volleyball still draws snickers over the revealing attire (as if track and field athletes wear three-piece suits). Alien vs. Predator stole its initials. And it’s a sponsor-driven sport subject to the whims of the economy.

This summer, the AVP is hitting another difficult stretch, just as it did in the late ’90s. Two weeks ago, players were told the rest of the season wasn’t guaranteed. The tour is trying to nail down a deal with new investors, but it hasn’t come through just yet. Next weekend’s scheduled stop in San Francisco has been pushed back to September.

And in a development longtime soccer fans will find all too familiar, the tour has some sort of competition in the Corona Light Wide Open. Be warned if you click that link — you’ll need to go through a clumsy sign-in screen to assert that you’re at least 21.

Beach legend Karch Kiraly is involved with the Corona event, and he doesn’t mince words about what the AVP and the FIVB, which organizes the international tour and Olympic play, are doing wrong. He must not be interested in TV, touting sideout scoring (points awarded only when you’re serving) over rally scoring (every point counts). That’s a sure way to make matches last eons, wrecking any semblance of a schedule and thereby irritating would-be broadcasters. His blog says the action in Chicago will have a women’s final that “should go off about 3 p.m. Sunday, with the men’s final after that.”

He’s also upset that the game is played on a smaller court than it was in his day, and most curiously, he scoffs at the idea of playing away from natural beaches. (Frankly, from my vast experience diving into sand for truly awesome digs in my early 20s, I prefer doing so without scraping the hell out of my arms on seashells, but maybe that’s just me. You have to level the sand and groom it, anyway, so what’s the difference?)

But before dismissing Kiraly as some beefier version of Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man, it’s worth checking out one point he raises: The AVP is charging admission and trying to be a “major” sport.

Perhaps the AVP is overreaching, but the beach volleyball horse long ago left the old-school California barn. It’s an international sport now.

So perhaps the real question should be how much professional beach volleyball one country can sustain.

Most international sports don’t have a U.S.-based tour featuring top U.S. players. Winter sports have World Cup circuits that may pass through the USA, but any other competition in the country is second-tier. USA Track and Field has a series of meets — some on the Diamond League list, some not. The ATP and WTA tennis tours spend a few weeks in the country.

Given that, it’s a bit of a miracle that the AVP has lasted this long as a full-fledged professional circuit. And still, only a handful of U.S. pros are making decent money. Many of those players are also doing double duty on the FIVB tour.

Coincidentally, U.S. players are having a rough week at the Grand Slam FIVB event this week in Stare Jablonski, Poland. No Americans made the quarterfinals in the women’s competition. Jen Kessy and April Ross didn’t advance from group play. Neither did Olympic champion Misty May-Treanor and Nicole Branagh. Things are a bit better on the men’s side, where top-seeded Phil Dalhausser-Todd Rogers have advanced along with Jake Gibb-Sean Rosenthal.

(Update: Seems a USA Volleyball registration error compounded problems for the U.S. players this week.)

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track and field

Diamond League: Gay, Pearson upset Bolt, Jones

Posted on by Beau Dure

The introductions were fantastic, sounding every bit like a UFC fight. But the odds favoring Usain Bolt against Tyson Gay at the DN Galan, a Diamond League meet Friday in Stockholm, were even greater than Anderson Silva’s odds against Chael Sonnen.

The delays were annoying. It took two tries just to get everyone set. But then it was a clean start, with Gay getting out slightly ahead of Bolt.

And he stayed there. Win and meet record 9.84 for Gay, just 0.02 off Bolt’s world lead.

Neither guy has been fully healthy this season, so there’s only so much we can read into this. It was a convincing margin — Gay at 9.84, Bolt at 9.97.

Asafa Powell was unable to run but maintained his Diamond League lead in absentia.

Other highlights included the typical impressive runs from Bershawn Jackson and Allyson Felix, along with an upset in the women’s 100 hurdles and a personal best from a U.S. distance contender. Full rundown (the Universal Sports broadcast had a technical hitch at the beginning, so I missed a couple of events):

Continue reading →

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mma, olympic sports, rugby, soccer, track and field

Friday Myriad: Bolt vs. Gay, Silva vs. Sonnen, DPs vs. DPs …

Posted on by Beau Dure

If you’re not a fan of American soccer leagues, this isn’t much of a weekend, though some European leagues (France, Netherlands, English Championship) kick off.

FRIDAY

2 p.m.: Track and field, Diamond League, Stockholm. Bolt vs. Gay. Great stuff. Universal Sports online

SATURDAY

3:35 a.m.: Rugby, Tri-Nations Cup, New Zealand vs. Australia. Travis’ preview will run in an hour or so. RugbyZone.com

3 p.m.: Harness racing, Hambletonian. We don’t cover much horse racing, but this is seriously the most interesting non-league item on USA TODAY’s listings. NBC

7 p.m.: Soccer, PDL championship. As with the W-League, this game is way too early because the players all need to scramble back to college. FSC

10 p.m.: Mixed martial arts, UFC 117, Anderson Silva-Chael Sonnen, Roy Nelson-Junior dos Santos, Jon Fitch-Thiago Alves. Good card. Previews at USA TODAY. Pay-per-view

SUNDAY

10 a.m.: Soccer, Community Shield, Chelsea-Manchester United. I tease Eurosnobs, sure, but of course I’m thrilled to see resumption of play in England. FSC

6 p.m.: Soccer, MLS, Dallas-Philadelphia. If you’re a Philly fan, stick around for the next game on FSC

8 p.m.: Soccer, WPS, Philadelphia-Boston. Alternately, you might have made the trip out to West Chester. Yeah, it’s a haul, but isn’t West Chester beautiful? FSC

9 p.m.: Soccer, MLS, Chicago-New York. Counting something like five Designated Players who might be on the field at the same time, which would be a record. Let’s see — Ljungberg, Castillo, Henry, Angel, Marquez. Might not all be ready, though. We had Beckham-cam a couple of years ago when he was on the bench and thinking about coming in — will we see Marquez-cam? ESPN2

MORE MYRIAD

  • Full soccer listings at Soccer America: MLS, international friendlies, France, Mexico, Brazil.
  • Selected weekend listings at USA TODAY
  • ESPN3: Lots of tennis and lacrosse, plus Australian Rules football, Dutch soccer and the odd friendly.
  • Tennis Channel: Live and delayed coverage of ATP Washington, WTA San Diego.
  • Universal Sports: Volleyball, beach volleyball, USA Swimming.
  • More Olympic sports: Shooting World Championships continue (live TV).
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soccer

MLS in the Silverdome — raise the roof, y’all!

Posted on by Beau Dure

Josh Hakala has the story of an innovative idea to remove all the disadvantages of the Silverdome as an MLS venue in one swoop. It’s simple but brilliant: Put a roof at the top of the lower (edit: not upper, which makes no sense) deck, creating an enclosed space below — two of them, actually — for concerts, basketball, hockey, maybe even indoor soccer. Then remove the roof on top of the upper deck, and voila — it’s a 30K-ish soccer stadium.

Roof, gone. Capacity decreased to something reasonable. Without knowing the particulars, I’d have to think the width of the field wouldn’t be an issue, either, unless the Silverdome’s current upper deck juts out really far.

Sounds somewhat expensive, of course, so we’ll have to see if the capital is actually there. But at least they’re not trying to find a site from scratch like New England or D.C. United.

Could this sort of outside-the-box thinking help United?

Forget the political problems for a moment and consider this possibility: The Redskins return to the site now occupied by dilapidated RFK Stadium. No NFL team would move into a smallish, dated, crumbling facility, whatever its charms. So RFK would need to come down — preferably demolished rather than simply collapsing on its own — and a new stadium is needed.

Suppose that stadium had the following:

– A field that slides out, as in the Arizona Cardinals’ stadium and Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. You could actually roll a grass field on top of an artificial field if desired. You could have separate fields for soccer and football.

– A retractable roof between decks. Making a soccer stadium out of the upper deck, as in the Silverdome plan, might be tricky — I can’t imagine retractable roofing is designed to bear that much weight. But you could close the roof all the way for “indoor” events, or you could close it partway to make a nice soccer stadium out of the lower deck.

All we need to make it happen is a couple hundred million dollars and the agreement of several political bodies. At least the former would be less of a problem with the Redskins’ involvement.

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soccer

Panic at RFK: Olsen replaces Onalfo with D.C. United

Posted on by Beau Dure
Ben Olsen, thrown into the fire

Ben Olsen burst onto the MLS scene soon after the league launched, bringing a potent mix of skill and effort to a powerful D.C. United team. As injuries robbed him of some of his speed and likely ruined his chances of remaining in Europe, where he had impressed on loan with Nottingham Forest, he stuck with United and was a midfield general whenever healthy. He made it to the World Cup in 2006 with his experience and willingness to do anything for his team.

Along the way, he became one of the most popular athletes in Washington. Not on D.C. United — in D.C. He was always quotable and charitable. The fact that Nick Rimando and Jacqui Little asked him to officiate at their wedding should tell you what his teammates thought of him, and the fans who came up with elaborate displays for him felt the same way. (Fine, Red Bulls fans, go ahead and wretch, but I’m just telling you the reality here. Besides, if you’ve made peace with Richie Williams, surely you can forgive another United midfield irritant.)

Whether Olsen, only a few months removed from his playing days, is ready to take over as head coach of a dysfunctional D.C. United team is anyone’s guess. He will have one advantage over Curt Onalfo — everyone will be rooting for him.

But at D.C. United, the problems surely go a bit deeper than the head coach. Let’s look at a couple of years of incoming players (skipping minor developmental player moves), since 2007, when United won the Supporters Shield:

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