– My cable company doesn’t have The Ultimate Fighter on demand. I had to wait to catch the Sunday rerun.
– Some guy from American Top Team is really good at climbing ropes.
– American Top Team finally picks Hayder Hassan to fight. They don’t mention the hand injury ruled him out of the last four.
– The Blackzilians pick Andrews Nakahara, who claims a world championship in Kyokushin karate. He is seen training on a beach. Then a 250-pound guy comes up to kick sand in his face, and Nakahara signs up for a Charles Atlas course.
– (The last sentence is fictional.)
– Hayder confronts Blackzilian Jason Jackson, saying Jackson has been spreading rumors that he’s a dirty fighter. It seems Hayder knocked out Jackson in 2013. Jackson at first plays down the “dirty fighter” thing, but says all he knows is that Hayder pulled his hair. Then Jackson says not to call him a bitch. Hayder doesn’t care to continue the discussion. In confessional, he says if he’s matched up with Jackson, he’ll just hit rewind and then play and beat him up again.
– We’ve established that Michael Graves was drinking a good bit. This time, he drank too much to wake up to roll out with the American Top Team van in the morning. The editors cleverly cut to shots of Graves looking very cozy in bed. When ATT leader Dan Lambert gets the news, he’s calm but unhappy. Will they kick him out of the house? Stay tuned.
– Oops — after the ad break, Graves shows up. The ATT guys don’t jump up and greet him like the prodigal son. “(Bleep) you, Graves” is heard from someone off camera.
– Both fighters make weight. Hayder smiles. Nakamura winks. Dana White, reporting from his bunker in a gym equipment warehouse, is intrigued with the striker-vs.-striker matchup. Jackson says Hayder only has an overhand and a hook, because no fighters ever add anything to their arsenals in more than 12 months of training.
– Hayder talks about his faith — he’s a Muslim who prays five times a day and feels totally at peace, which might be a surprise if you’ve been watching the show.
– Andrews is confident. That’s about all we hear. And it’s getting late in this episode, so we know it won’t be a three-rounder. Maybe not even a two-rounder.
– We go back to Hayder, who has all the good lines in this one. He says he’s going to get so close to Nakamura that the guy will know what he had for breakfast this morning. The Blackzilians, he says, just wrestle and hump you to kill time.
– Din Thomas! The TUF alum and ATT coach says Hayder has dynamite in his hands. Lambert reminds us that Hayder has never been to a decision.
– Fight time: They touch gloves. Nakamura tries several high kicks. Hayder just keeps walking him down. Then a little more than 40 seconds in, it’s left-RIGHT-LEFT. The combo bounces Nakamura off the cage and sends him down. Hayder pounces right away. The ref warns Nakamura to fight back, but it’s not happening. TKO in 48 seconds.
– Hayder jumps on the fence, says a few things that are bleeped, then bounces down and puts his finger to his lips to shush the Blackzilians.
– Blackzilians owner Glenn Robinson just shrugs. “It happens.”
– At the decision, Hayder again shows respect for Nakamura at least. They bow to each other, and Hayder raises Nakamura’s hand. It’s the first time Nakamura has been knocked out.
So now ATT gets home gym advantage at last. Robinson just feels bad for Nakamura.
“This season …” promo again tells us nothing about what’s coming up.
– “Creepy Steve” Montgomery botched his weight cut and had a terrifying seizure. The panic on his American Top Team teammates’ faces was one of the harshest moments of reality on this long-running reality show. He’s OK. And he seems like a great guy, saying he just wants to spread positive energy, either through fighting or smiling. Most people watching would probably love to buy him a beer.
– Carrington Banks, the Blackzilians’ choice to fight this week, also seems like a great guy. He spent a lot of his childhood in Georgia, so I’m biased. He describes himself as a “chill” guy outside the cage. In the cage, he’s … a boring wrestler.
– Sabah Homasi, the replacement for Montgomery, also seems like a decent fellow. I hate to see him lose.
– But lose he does, in a controversial decision. They split the first two rounds and went to a third. A lot of online commenters gave all three rounds to Sabah. But that might be wishful thinking and rooting for a striker over a wrestler. Banks did more with his cage-leaning than most of the fighters so far, landing a lot of good knees to the body and Sabah’s legs in the first round. Both guys threw messy strikes; Sabah actually fell on one of his own kick attempts.
– Dana White, who has been reporting much of this season from an unidentified location, was there this time. The inset camera picked him up a couple of times during the fight, just to remind us. He was very impressed with the atmosphere, with the Blackzilians clearly bringing a lot of guys who aren’t on the show into the gym to surround the cage. He was less impressed with the fight, particularly the third round.
– Absolutely nothing else happened. You’d think putting these two teams in the same swanky house would create some conflict, but we’ve seen very little of that.
Tune in next week, when … wait, they’re giving scenes from the season. At some point, Jason Jackson and Sabah are involved in some arguments — maybe the same one, maybe not.
A few observations on this week’s episode of the biggest fight series in South Florida since Kimbo beat Afropuff and Big Mac on the same day in the boat yard.
– The new theme song is as lame as it gets. The credits tell us nothing. No idea why they did this.
– Is American Top Team saving its best fighters for when the point values increase? But then the best fighters don’t get to fight twice. Are they just not that good?
– Was Valdir “Baby Monster” Araujo motivated by ATT’s Michael Graves stealing his wine?
– Does the house really have a spa and sauna — only on the Blackzilians’ side of the house?
– Where is Dana White filming all his cutaways? Is NORAD involved?
– Lots of cameos by TUF alumni: Rashad Evans (Blackzilians), Din Thomas (ATT), Robbie Lawler (ATT), Michael Johnson (Blackzilians).
– Will Florida refs ever break up the fight when it’s stalemated against the cage?
– ATT’s Nathan Coy might have made the snappiest comeback in TUF history. ATT’s Steve Carl missed weight and needed to cut a bit, so he headed for the Blackzilian sauna. A couple of Blackzilians took issue, to which the incredulous Florida commission guy asked, “Um, you guys didn’t work this out in advance?” Blackzilian Tyrone Spong tried to kick Carl out, justifying it with a trite “In war, there are no rules.” Coy: “If there’s no rules, we’ll stand here and barricade the (bleep) sauna.” Gotcha there.
– If your corner tells you to punch … punch! Steve Carl didn’t, and ATT is down 75-0.
Coincidentally, after the Jon Jones news, I found this fun recap from Jones’ stint on TUF.
Back to this year: Hey, we have a new theme song! It’s … short. It tells us nothing.
The Blackzilians won the first fight. sending top prospect Kamaru Usman against the underconfident Michael Graves. Back in the house, seven hours after the fight (guess they’re fighting in the early afternoon), Graves is beating himself up worse than Usman did. His American Top Team-mates try to build him back up but sound frustrated with the process.
Hayder Hassan, the one last seen yelling at Usman about being “next,” moves on from trying to pick up Graves to trying to psych out Usman by telling him how much he respects him. Usman seems either bemused or amused. Maybe both. But Usman chats about it with his teammates in the van, so maybe it’s working? No, probably not.
Speaking of people who are psyched out, the American Top Team brain trust is trying to figure out who to pick next. Hassan really wants to fight, but, oops, he actually has a hand injury. They call in Uros Jurisic of Slovenia, a student/postman, to tell him he’s getting the nod. His English is a little stilted, and the conversation with the ATT guys sounds like Slim Pickens telling Mongo he’s going to go into town to shake things up in Blazing Saddles. Mongo only pawn in game of life.
Speaking of pawns, Dana White shows up to remind us that the matchups are literally like a chess match. You might end up with a striker-grappler matchup. That sounds more like bridge to me. I bid two Muay Thais.
And it sounds like they’re just picking the best, healthiest fighters, anyway. That makes sense — whoever fights now has a good chance of fighting twice, and the winners earn more points as the season goes on. In that sense, it’s more like backgammon.
The Blackzilians pick Luiz “Buscape” Firmino, a strong grappler they call “the flea” because he’s impossible to escape. He has been around a while, fighting in PRIDE and other Japanese promotions before beating UFC vets Tyson Griffin and Jacob Volkmann in the World Series of Fighting.
Meanwhile, back in the house, some people are training in the small gym in the house. And someone gets mad, yelling “Do the drill right!” before storming through a door. The door looks more solid than the ones frequently destroyed in the old TUF training complex in Vegas, and it survives in tact. It seems the dispute is between Usman and Jason Jackson, but they bury it quickly. That’s either foreshadowing or a dull day at the house.
The weigh-ins will be fun this year because the fighters will learn what we already know — who’s fighting whom. Neither Uros nor Buscape seems especially perturbed by the matchup, a change from last week’s edition with Graves going into a shell when he saw Usman.
ATT boss Dan Lambert decides to bring the heat, ridiculing Blackzilian owner Glenn Robinson for standing there behind his fighter looking tough. “A makeup artist would kick your ass,” Lambert said. Dana White, broadcasting from his undisclosed location, seems happy. The fighters all have a look that screams “whatever.”
White has also told us Uros wants to keep the fight standing. These days, does that ever work?
Uros, incidentally, is 22. He’s 4-0 but hasn’t fought anyone. Maybe Lambert should quit worrying about Robinson being a tough guy and figure out how to get some matchups he can win. The good news — Uros has three wins by submission.
Uros and the coaches meet to do some game-planning, which is something TUF should do more often. Hardcores will love it, but it’s also accessible for casual fans. It ends with a nice new slogan: “Unleash the Uros!” If he changed his name to “Fury,” we’d have the Washington Capitals’ third-period rallying cry.
Fight day. Robinson tells Buscape this is nothing. This is the warmup fight. This is the guy you beat up on your way to a big fight. The Blackzilians chant like it’s a soccer game, which irritates Lambert. What doesn’t irritate Lambert?
Unnamed ref with heavy accent gives the “two five-minute rounds” speech. Robinson reminds Buscape to keep his hands up. Then he comes out throwing a kick straight up the pike. Then he gets stunned from a left hook, but it gives him the perfect position for a takedown less than 20 seconds into the fight. Uros has his head locked up for a possible guillotine, but no. Buscape works his way to guard and lands several punches from one inch away while Uros tries again to lock in a guillotine. Or an armbar. Or whatever. He’s surprisingly effective at nullifying Buscape’s offense by threatening so many submissions. You’d think a guy with Buscape’s experience would keep his head and arm out of danger.
Yeah, it’s a grinding fight. With 1:40 left in the round, Lambert is left yelling the rallying cry of the defeated coach: “GET UP!”
Round 2: Uros tentatively steps out, then tries a kick. Then a spinning kick. Then a takedown. They clinch at the cage, and then Buscape takes down Uros in side control. Maybe I should just hit fast-forward. Nothing else is going to … hey, Uros escaped! And he looks mad! He throws some punches. Including a wild right that may have left the gym entirely and scraped the castle at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando before returning to the gym and hitting nothing. Buscape takes him down again. Lambert yells “Get up!” again. Buscape isn’t doing anything. Uros looks like he’s checking his watch. I’ll be happy to never see either of these men fight ever again.
Buscape wins the unanimous decision.
Third ad for the Women’s World Cup!
“Uros is definitely not experienced enough to be in with a guy like Buscape,” Robinson says, almost sympathetically.
“Well, that fight sucked,” Dana White says. Again. He complains about Uros not doing anything his corner said, and he complains about the ref letting Buscape lay and pray for two rounds.
Next week, we see that an ATT fighter turns up ¾ of a pound overweight, and the Blackzilians make a stink about letting him use their sauna.
By this point, the only thing we can say about these teams is this: A plague on both your houses. (Oh, right … they’re all staying in the same one. Good. That’ll save time.)
On July 3, 2010, Brock Lesnar defeated Shane Carwin to unify the UFC heavyweight belt, completing Lesnar’s comeback from diverticulitis. As compiled by Dave Meltzer, the authority on such matters, the pay-per-view buyrate for that event was more than 1 million — the sixth time that had happened in UFC history, the third involving Lesnar.
That has happened only once since then.
The champions as of that date:
Heavyweight: Lesnar
Light heavyweight: Mauricio “Shogun” Rua
Middleweight: Anderson Silva
Welterweight: Georges St. Pierre
Lightweight: Frankie Edgar
Edgar had recently upset BJ Penn for the lightweight belt, then showed later in the year that it wasn’t such a shock, defending the belt in a rematch. Rua had beaten Lyoto Machida — ending the much-hyped “Machida era” after less than a year — but would soon give way to Jon Jones, who held the belt until … Tuesday, when the UFC stripped him in the wake of a hit-and-run investigation in Albuquerque.
Today’s champions:
Heavyweight: Nominally Cain Velasquez, who beat Lesnar and traded it back and forth with Junior dos Santos in an engaging trilogy. But he hasn’t fought since October 2013. The interim champion is Fabricio Werdum.
Light heavyweight: Vacant until Anthony Johnson fights Daniel Cormier next month.
Middleweight: Chris Weidman, who pulled a Frankie Edgar by shocking a longtime champion (Anderson Silva) and doing it again.
Welterweight: Robbie Lawler
Lightweight: Rafael dos Anjos
Featherweight: Jose Aldo
Bantamweight: TJ Dillashaw
Flyweight: Demetrious Johnson
Women’s bantamweight: Ronda Rousey. Perhaps you’ve heard of her.
Women’s strawweight: Joanna Jedrzejczyk
Rousey is easily the champion with the biggest media exposure, gaining a Mike Tyson-style rep for fast finishes while appearing in action filns and making the talk show and magazine rounds like Jennifer Aniston. She has just recently established herself as a pay-per-view draw.
The lighter weight classes have been difficult sells. Aldo needs a compelling opponent. Dillashaw knocked off Renan Barao, someone the UFC had been trying to push without much success. “Mighty Mouse” Johnson has attracted a legion of hardcore bloggers trying to point out his brilliant technique, and his literal last-second armbar win in his last bout should give the UFC a highlight to tout, but casual buyers just aren’t biting. Jedrzejczyk didn’t do UFC marketing any favors — the company held an entire season of The Ultimate Fighter with the alleged 16 best women’s strawweights and crowned tournament winner Carla Esparza its first champion in the weight class, only to see the little-known Polish fighter dismantle Esparza in her first defense.
But the real problems are in those higher weight classes, where the UFC has to market people it pushed away not too long ago:
– Werdum was let go after a disappointing run in the UFC. While beating the invincible Fedor Emelianenko outside the UFC is a nice calling card, he then lost to Alistair Overeem. Since he first joined the UFC in 2007, he is 2-3 against other heavyweights in the UFC’s top 10.
– Anthony Johnson, until recently, was best known as a welterweight and a middleweight who could neither make weight nor beat top guys. His first UFC stint included losses to Rich Clementi, Josh Koscheck and Vitor Belfort. (We’re not counting the “loss” to Kevin Burns, a referee’s error that Johnson remedied in the rematch.) The UFC cast him out, and he pulled a stunning win at heavyweight over Andrei Arlovski before returning to the UFC as a light heavyweight. He fought off Phil Davis, pounded the ancient Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and shocked Alexander Gustafsson to earn a title fight against Jones.
– Lawler spent years in the MMA wilderness, getting cut from the UFC after a loss at UFC 50 in 2004. He fought what might have been the two best bouts in EliteXC’s brief history, both against Scott Smith. Then he compiled a 3-5 record in Strikeforce. In his return to the UFC, he moved to welterweight, with the only loss in seven fights being a narrow decision loss to Johny Hendricks that he avenged in December.
Cormier, an Olympic wrestler and a World Championship medalist, has long-term star potential. Weidman might — he did draw more than 1M PPV buys for his rematch against Silva, and no one who saw that can doubt his legitimacy.
Perhaps the lesson to take from this is that the UFC shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss fighters outside its own ranks. Fans can be excused for thinking, “Wait, was Werdum part of that tournament you said was crap?”
But outside of that, I don’t see many lessons here for the UFC. They’ve done what they can to build up Weidman, Cormier and company. They’ve been unlucky with injuries to Velasquez and former bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz, who had an entertaining rivalry with icon Urijah Faber. Then several of their best fighters and biggest stars have either been beaten (Silva, Benson Henderson, Anthony Pettis, Barao) or drifted into limbo (St. Pierre, Jones).
So these years are a test of the UFC’s staying power, and for the most part, they’re passing. Just don’t expect any Lesnar numbers any time soon.
How do you keep The Ultimate Fighter fresh after 10 years? Give the UFC credit for trying.
In 2011, they used it to introduce their bantamweight and featherweight divisions. T.J. Dillashaw has gone on to do pretty well for himself, and John Dodson isn’t bad, either.
In 2012, they tried a live season. They decided it didn’t work, so they backed away.
Then — women! First as coaches and half the cast as Ronda Rousey yelled at Miesha Tate for a while. Then as the whole cast last season, with the winner getting the belt. (And, sadly, not successfully defending it.)
This season, things are totally new. Yes, you’ve seen it from the ads — they’re staying in a house that will be underwater when the ice caps melt.
(Disclaimer: Reading the preceding paragraph may be illegal in Florida and North Carolina.)
But this season has a few other novelties:
1. They’re in Miami, not Las Vegas.
2. It’s a matchup of existing teams, not something contrived through a draft. These are rival gyms in South Florida. The fighters are all from those gyms. The fights will be in the gyms. After a coin flip for the first fight, the winner gets home gym for the next fight.
3. To keep up the team-vs-team aspect, this isn’t a tournament. Teams are fighting for points — 25 points for each of the first four fights, 50 for each of the next four, 100 for the last. Fighters can fight once, twice, three times, or none. You have to fight twice to fight in the finale. (They don’t mention the criteria for an overall winner.) And the gym with the most points gets paid.
Oh, and the owners don’t like each other.
Dan Lambert runs American Top Team, which has been around forever and has 45,787 professional fighters, including 17,786 in the UFC. That includes Robbie Lawler, who has completed the improbable rise from middling Elite XC/Strikeforce fighter to UFC champion.
Glenn Robinson used to train with ATT, but he says Dan banned him after he helped some fighters work through … some stuff. Or something. They’re not specific. But Robinson and those fighters struck out on their own. And in a bit of good timing, Rashad Evans bolted from Greg Jackson’s gym and figured South Florida was a trade up from New Mexico.
The best early zinger, from ATT: “Glenn’s just a fat guy who makes tools.” (Thanks to commenters at Bloody Elbow, I know now it’s because he owns a big-time tool company, which may explain the opulent house he shows off later.)
So the only recognizable part of this season is the TUF house, which looks even more opulent than ever, occupying one of those little points out into the water that’ll be worth a lot of money until the next storm hits.
Each team’s arrival in the house looks like this:
The curious thing: Why just one weight class? Does each gym really have eight quality welterweights? I guess they think so.
We get a really quick intro to all the fighters. The standout name is “Creepy Steve” from ATT. The standout resume goes to ATT’s Steve Carl, the former World Series of Fighting champion. (Yes, they mentioned another promotion on the show, though not on the official site’s bio pages.)
We also get a trip over to Glenn Robinson’s dazzling house, where the Blackzilians watch teammate Anthony Johnson’s stunning demolition of Alexander Gustafsson. If you watched the lead-in program, you know that the UFC producers named Gustafsson’s close loss to Jon Jones the best UFC fight … um, ever, apparently. So Johnson’s win was a very big deal.
Over to the ATT gym, where they talk about their strategy for picking fighters. It’s sensible — if you want people to fight more than once, you’d better get them in that first fight early rather than trying to have them go twice with little rest in between in the last few weeks.
And they pick their first fighter: Michael Graves, who describes his style as “wrestling, but all over the place.” If you watched Bull Durham, you know that’s not a compliment. But he doesn’t care about that — he has a fiancee who’s expecting.
Back at the house, conflict has already arisen in the most obvious place — the kitchen. The ATT guys say the Blackzilians are writing their names on all the food, including stuff they didn’t order. Looks like they’re still making a nice meal, though. How did all these fighters turn into such good cooks? I know journalists in their 30s who can barely handle Lean Cuisine.
Speaking of journalism, the Blackzilians’ complex has office space that looks like something big newspapers built before the business model crashed. They do a quick video conference with their guys in Sweden before picking Kamaru Usman for the first fight. Bloody Elbow likes this guy.
Usman is shown praying at the fighters’ house before we get his back story — born and raised (until age 8) in Nigeria, pursued Olympic wrestling career in Colorado Springs (not mentioned: he won the 2010 NCAA Division 2 championship), switched to MMA under Evans’ tutelage, has a daughter.
And we get one of my big TUF Pet Peeves: The guy who says he’s fighting for his family’s financial stability. You want financial stability? Work at a bank. Work at Starbucks and get your degree in the process. If you’re a UFC veteran who continues to fight because you’re actually getting a payoff, OK — then you’re fighting for your family’s long-term financial stability. When you’re on The Ultimate Fighter? You’re chasing a dream. Like me when I ditch this whole writing thing and start my prog-rock trio.
Obligatory beach and water shots, then over to the weigh-in. This is the first time the fighters will know who they’re fighting. Game plan? What game plan?
Anonymous Florida commission guy (that’s right, we’re not in Nevada any more) runs the weigh-in with remarkable formality. Both guys weigh in at 170. They face off, sort of — Graves is looking at the floor.
This is a 90-minute episode, so we get Robbie Lawler on camera along with the usual training cliches. Did you know a lot of fighting is mental? (Funny, I did well on the SAT — can I beat Jon Jones?)
Quick trip back to the house — damn, what are they making in the kitchen? Can we make this a cooking show instead?
I still don’t know much about Graves. He was born three months before I graduated from college. I’m not sure whether to call his hair a mullet.
Usman oozes confidence. He says he scouted everyone on their team. Graves is talented at controlling distance, he says, but that’s against lesser opposition.
Dana White loves the atmosphere, which is strange when you consider that he isn’t there to do the “two five-minute rounds, then sudden victory” speech. He leaves that to our unnamed ref.
Round 1: Usman does the spider crawl across the cage to start, and he soon gets Graves down by the cage. Graves does a decent job of getting up and eventually out. He lands a glancing head kick, and Usman again goes for the takedown. Graves has blood on his cheek somehow, but he gets up again and gets stuck clinch-fighting. Usman gets the underhooks, but Graves powers out and fires a strong knee. His punches, though, lack conviction. With a minute left, Usman lands a solid punch to the face and another takedown, though Graves again bounces right back up. I hate to give the round to someone just because he got a couple of takedowns and did nothing with them, but Graves didn’t do enough to win it. 10-9 Usman
Round 2: Graves is picking up the tempo on the feet, flinging a couple of kicks and punches. Usman gets the clinch against the cage. Ah, my favorite part of MMA — the pointless clinch against the cage where the clincher occasionally tries to land a knee from two inches away to show that he’s busy. Graves gets out, Usman shoots again, Graves gets briefly on top, and … they clinch again. Usman gets him down briefly and very briefly gets on Graves’ back. They break again, and Graves tries a half-hearted spinning back kick.
You get the picture. It’s another one of these fights with a wrestler who has no other discernible skills facing a guy who can’t get his striking game going.
Then suddenly, with 1:40 left, Graves dodges a takedown attack and takes Usman’s back. Usman stands with Graves draped on his back. Graves grits his teeth, going hard for the rear naked choke, but he can’t get the arm under the chin. Graves is on the verge of sliding off Usman’s back when Usman flings him off instead, landing in half-guard and dropping a couple of elbows. “GET UP, MIKEY!” yells an ATT member.
The coaches think we’re going to a third round. It’s 11:21, so it’ll be a brief one if we go.
And we’re not. It’s a majority decision for Usman. ATT is pissed that Usman got the second round, but one submission attempt isn’t going to overcome a whole lot of positional dominance.
The highlights show Graves’ early kick to the face was pretty powerful. But that was it.
An ATT guy starts yelling at Usman that he’s next. Usman comes over to yell back at him. Pity we didn’t know who it was.
Over to Dana White. He is not impressed. At all. He says neither guy fought like he wanted to win. Each guy was trying to do just enough to get the decision.
And that’s the curious problem with so many recent seasons of this show. I don’t get it, either. A spectacular loss on TUF will do more to get you in the UFC’s good graces than a grinding win. But that’s easier said than done.
We get a name for the guy who called out Usman — he’s Hayder. That would be Hayder Hassan, whose bio tells us he has a degree from Florida State.
Glenn Robinson is amused in the locker room. “‘I’m next?’ What do you mean — you’re next to lose?” Oooooh … snappy comeback.
We go straight to TUF Talk, where Karyn Bryant asks Usman what he thinks of Dana’s dissing. Usman says he’s a big fight fan, so he’s used to hearing that. Well, I’m inspired.
TUF Talk has more topics lined up on the right — “Hayder challenges Usman,” “Breaking down Usman” and “G. Robinson calls out Lambert’s ex.” Yeah, I think I’ll go to bed.
Think “bare-knuckle fighting,” and you’re likely to think one of two things:
1. Sheer brutality.
2. Men with handsome mustaches standing upright or leaning backwards for 864 rounds as they occasionally try to hit each other.
(Yes, that’s the legendary John L. Sullivan,the first (or maybe the third) true heavyweight champion and certainly the last to win the title in a bare-knuckle bout.)
Bare-knuckle fighting briefly came back into existence in the wild and lawless days of early mixed martial arts. In Japan’s Pancrase promotion, fighters went without gloves but couldn’t punch each other in the face with closed fists. The UFC had no gloves aside from the one glove worn by boxer Art Jimmerson.
Why would Jimmerson wear one glove? He had a boxing career to consider, and gloves protect hands. (Why he omitted the other glove is a matter of some debate — maybe so the ref could see him tap out, maybe so he’d have one hand free to have some chance of fending off grappler Royce Gracie. It didn’t work.)
But remember that phrase: “Gloves protect hands.” Sure, they also limit cuts that form quite easily when raw knuckle meets face — watch Kimbo Slice’s backyard and boatyard scraps, and you’ll see a lot of unfortunate people with faces badly torn by Kimbo’s massive fists. But the main purpose of gloves is to keep hands from shattering on skulls.
So is bare-knuckle boxing set to make a comeback? Apparently, to some extent. And they’re going down the same route as the UFC in its early days — recruiting Ken Shamrock.
MMA fans are cringing at the idea of the long-declining, much-battered Shamrock taking another fight. He also was never really known as a puncher, winning most of his fights by submission.
What’s most interesting about this fight is that is brings more people into a mostly underground world. Shamrock’s opponent is James Quinn McDonagh, subject of the gritty documentary Knuckle. The critically acclaimed film followed Irish “traveler” families with disputes that have gone back generations, with bare-knuckle fights barely providing a moderately safe outlet for the hostilities.
Across the Irish Sea, bare-knuckle boxing is making a legitimate comeback. VICE looked into the subject and did a compelling mini-documentary.
That said, the credentials of “Machine Gun” seem a little murky. And while MMA attracts elite athletes, 50-year-old Shamrock will have to suffice for this old-school fight sport.
UFC fighters may have several legitimate points about how they’re treated. The lawsuit against the UFC will, at best, force a stronger discussion of those issues and maybe even a few changes. But it’s going to be really difficult to get an outright court victory.
You’ll find a lot of good analysis on this suit — economist/antitrust guy Paul Gift at Bloody Elbow, Dave Meltzer at MMA Fighting (read especially from the Bellator reference onward to the end), sports law specialist Michael McCann warning in SI of the worst-case scenario of “unraveling” the UFC, a 90-minute chat with Luke Thomas, and Josh Gross with a few details I haven’t seen explored elsewhere along with the embedded lawsuit document itself. And generally, you should keep up with Bloody Elbow, where Brent Brookhouse and John Nash broke the story.
I’m going to come at it from this angle: Precedent, including the MLS players lawsuit against the league in the 1990s, tells us the antitrust argument will fall on one key word: “market.”
What’s the market for mixed martial arts fighters? Does the UFC have unfair control of it?
The MLS players lawsuit (covered in my book) failed to prove that MLS had unfair control of the soccer market. The suit is often portrayed as a challenge to the league’s “single-entity” structure, but the verdict and appellate court decision left several “single-entity” questions unanswered. The specific words from the appellate court, addressing a part of the suit the jury didn’t consider: “(T)he single-entity problem need not be answered definitively in this case.”
The suit unraveled when MLS convinced the jurors (and the appellate judges agreed) that soccer players could go elsewhere — Europe, Latin America, the A-League (which, like the current NASL, could occasionally pay an MLS fringe player more than he would make on an MLS bench), or even indoor soccer.
Cung Le et al will tie themselves in a knot trying to define the market. Here’s Gift’s take:
We haven’t heard from the UFC yet, but the fighters have already revealed their interest in a small geographic market by claiming “the relevant geographic market for both the Relevant Input Market and Relevant Output Market is limited to the United States and, in the alternative, North America.”
Legally interesting, practically absurd. (The fighters, not Gift.) The UFC would not have the clout it has today without signing the best fighters in the world. It’s almost as much of a Brazilian company as it is an American company these days.
In MMA, fighters can sign with smaller MMA promoters like Bellator or international promoters like One FC. The soccer marketplace is similar — players can sign with the NASL or hundreds of soccer leagues around the world. And that argument killed the player suit. Ridge Mahoney’s Soccer America summary: “Once the jurors decided both a global market existed and other domestic entities could compete with MLS for players, the players’ case collapsed. No further deliberations were necessary since the jurors had determined the monopoly alleged by the players did not exist.”
Note that the UFC lawsuit isn’t strictly a monopoly lawsuit. It introduces the word “monopsony,” which is more or less the inverse. The fighters aren’t really UFC employees. They’re contractors, and the UFC bids for their services. The UFC is in many senses a buyer, not a seller.
And the key to the case is not necessarily whether the UFC controls the marketplace. At Bloody Elbow, former FTC antitrust lawyer David Dudley puts it like this:
Outside the merger context, the question or market power is considered alongside the particular conduct at issue. The worse the conduct, the less evidence is necessary to establish market power. Conversely, the more benign the conduct, the greater the necessary showing of market power.
That’s good news for the fighters in a way: Everything the UFC does wrong in its contracts is fair game. The fighters wouldn’t have much of a case if the UFC was treating fighters well, even if it controlled 99% of the marketplace. (Of course, they probably wouldn’t be suing in the first place if that were true.)
But it’s bad news in the sense that, as Gift says, the UFC isn’t doing anything wrong by simply beating the competition. The allegations on pages 47-50 of the lawsuit look weak. The UFC didn’t “force” Affliction out of the fight promotion business; Affliction overpaid for fighters and was unsustainable. Near the end of the suit, when the plaintiffs seek “injunctive relief barring Defendant from engaging in the anticompetitive scheme alleged herin,” we need to ask, “How?” Quit holding fights the same night as Bellator fights?
Here’s another problem: What would MMA look like without the UFC?
In the MLS lawsuit, players were unable to convince district judge George O’Toole that someone else would’ve formed a Division I soccer league operating at anything comparable to MLS level if MLS hadn’t done it. In other words, MLS essentially created the market. To argue that MLS monopolized the U.S. Division I soccer market is a bit like me inventing some sort of palatable peanut butter wine and then monopolizing the peanut butter wine market.
In the MLS suit, the players brought out some sports economists to make dubiously specific claims that having multiple Division I leagues in the USA would have sent player salaries skyrocketing. That led to one of my favorite Paul Gardner quotes:
For an entire session, this totally fictitious exercise dragged on, as the good Professor Zimbalist revealed charts and calculations to ‘prove’ what must have happened had a whole series of improbable conditions existed. They never did exist.
That “whole series of improbable conditions” would include having two leagues in a spending war with each other that were somehow not splitting the previously nonexistent (since the NASL died) Division I soccer market. With MLS bleeding red ink and nearly going out of business in 2001-02 (just after the initial lawsuit verdict but before the appellate ruling) even with the power of a “monopoly,” those conditions were beyond improbable. They were impossible.
And in sports, monopolies (or monopsonies) aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Would the World Cup be the World Cup if we had two competing organizations, with Germany winning one and Brazil winning another? As much as everyone with half a brain and a payola-free bank account wishes FIFA would see the light on basic ethics, no one wants a world with a disputed world soccer champion. No one wants to see Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki on separate tennis tours.
With the demise of PRIDE and other organizations, few people would dispute that the UFC’s champions are generally the best in the world. That’s a good thing.
So what happens next?
After the players lost the lawsuit against MLS, they formed a union, and they have collectively bargained since then. (They’re doing so right now, trying to race against the expiration of the current CBA to get the next season started on time.) Fighters may need to form an association rather than a union — I’m hazy on the details, frankly — but perhaps we could see an end result like that.
As Luke Thomas says, “Keep in mind what success actually means.” Baseball player Curt Flood lost before the Supreme Court, but the cause of free agency was ultimately successful.
In the UFC’s case, their position as the top promotion in the world isn’t cast in stone. It’s impossible to imagine someone challenging Major League Baseball’s supremacy at this point. It’s not impossible to imagine top fighters opting for Bellator or some other promotion instead of the UFC.
So the UFC needs to think about “success” as well. Winning in court won’t be enough. They’ll need to “win” in the sense of continuing to have the goodwill of fighters and fans that recognize it as the top promotion in the world. And the UFC has done a few things that don’t look good in the all-important court of public opinion:
Imposing a Reebok sponsorship on its fighters on top of harsh restrictions on sponsors that have helped fighters in the past.
As alleged in the suit (the UFC may argue differently), sponsors may either be exclusive to the UFC or banned from the UFC.
“Ancillary rights” clauses giving the UFC rights to likenesses in perpetuity.
Starting fighter pay: $6,000 to show, $6,000 to win? That’s not much. And fighters often have to pay training expenses out of that money.
And even if you’re a fringe UFC fighter with only two bouts in a given year, you can’t go taking a bout on someone else’s fight card.
To date, the UFC has been tone-deaf in reacting to fighters’ concerns. A “tepid piece on fighter pay,” to quote the ubiquitous Luke Thomas, on ESPN’s Outside the Lines drew a hysterical response from the UFC.
That approach can’t fly any more. The fighters may not be able to win in court. But if the UFC doesn’t recognize their leverage, everybody loses.
Let’s get this straight: Women’s MMA is fantastic.
Women’s fights are often the highlights of a typical fight card, especially when they’re sandwiched in between a couple of wrestling stalemates with one dude leaning against the other up against the cage. And the athletes are compelling.
Don’t believe me? Let Tommy Toe Hold sing the profane praises of all-women’s organization Invicta.
The Ultimate Fighter 20: A Champion Will Be Crowned
Yes, a champion will indeed be crowned. This is a unique season of The Ultimate Fighter — the UFC is adding a new weight class, and most of the fighters they’ve signed were in the TUF house. Instead of letting coaches pick matchups to benefit their teams (even as Dana White insists this isn’t a team sport), the UFC seeded the bracket to increase the odds of getting the top two to the final.
So these were the most accomplished fighters in that house for a long time. Namajunas made a mockery of her seed (seventh?!) by demolishing her opponents with wicked submissions. If I may repeat myself …
New MMA fans may not know which person has the advantage when a fight is on the ground. Hint: It's @rosenamajunas
Her opponent in the final was the top seed, Carla Esparza, who got through a few tough fights to get to this point. They also had seasoned veterans like Joanne Calderwood, Jessica Penne, Felice Herrig, Bec Rawlings and Aisling Daly.
And these people are interesting. The inexperienced but talented Angela Hill is an animator who took up Muay Thai. Alex Chambers has a physics and math degree. Calderwood is a wispy-sounding Scot with a wry sense of humor. Several of the fighters, including Namajunas, had a tough childhood. A couple of them are moms.
So what will people remember most about this season?
This Mean Girls shit happening on #TUF is really pissing me off.
It is reality TV, after all. Angela Magana may not have gone into the season intending to be this season’s Junie Browning or Jamie Yager (men who got a lot of attention for their antics in their TUF seasons), but she wound up on that path and likes where it led:
Magana uses her TUF castmate Emily Kagan as an example of the opposite.
“Nobody is gonna f—ing remember Emily,” Magana said. “I love Emily, but she has no charisma. She has no personality on TV. Even if she puts on a great fight, nobody remembers those people. The only people they’re going to remember is people who talk.”
One thing that didn’t help was TUF Talk, the Fox Sports 1 segment hosted by Karyn Bryant, who brings her own questionable decorum to the proceedings and made sure she highlights all the feuding.
The first women on The Ultimate Fighter had a little bit of these undercurrents, but what most people remember from that season is that Roxanne Modafferi might be the friendliest person on the planet.
But women’s MMA has this “Mean Girl” precedent … in the UFC. And how did that start? Ah, I remember asking a young Olympic athlete if she had thought about cashing in on her ability by going into …
Some of these antics are simply part of the sport. In the height of my UFC-covering days, I covered UFC 100. Dan Henderson knocked out designated bad guy Michael Bisping and followed up with a forearm to an unconscious opponent, for which he didn’t really apologize. Brock Lesnar beat Frank Mir, taunted Frank Mir, taunted a UFC sponsor, and made us all picture him having sex. It was foul.
And some of the drama on this TUF season was intriguing. Heather Clark was built up as the season’s villain, but it turned out some of the girls ganged up for no good reason. And who could really fault someone who vaguely resembles the truly awesome rock singer-songwriter Poe?
(Why do most streaming services play the toned-down version that erases all the guitars from the mix? This song rocks, people. Save the dance grooves for Haddaway.)
You could also make an argument either way on Randa Markos choosing to get her two training sessions a day even if the rest of the team wanted to split up to keep opponents apart. Esparza really didn’t help her image in that one.
In any case, the drama is done for the time being, and now we have a new class of interesting fighters in the UFC. And they have history beyond the show:
– Esparza has beaten Rawlings and Herrig (but finished neither).
– Torres beat Herrig and Namajunas (and Paige VanZant, who wasn’t able to go on TUF because she’s under 21 but was a smashing success in her UFC debut).
– Namajunas beat Emily Kagan and has one loss — to Torres, who lost a pair of close fights on the show.
– Penne beat Lisa Ellis and Magana.
– Herrig beat Clark and lost to Esparza and Torres.
– Ellis beat Daly and lost to Penne.
– Markos lost to Justine Kish, who was injured and unable to fight on the show or on this finale.
So do I have a few reservations on how women’s MMA is presented? A couple, sure. Will I be watching Friday night? Hell yeah.
My enthusiasm for this one was diminished ever so slightly when I saw a headline with more fights announced for the TUF finale. Obviously, the fighters with new matchups are the ones who lost in this episode. Note to self: Just stay up and watch this show live.
But we’ve got two fantastic matchups here. This could’ve been a viable Invicta pay-per-view main event and co-main event. We’re getting it free. Cheers.
The one I’ve been waiting to see for weeks, Rose Namajunas-Joanne Calderwood (winner faces and probably beats Randa Markos).
2. The cliques are:
The “Skrapettes,” named after coach Gilbert Melendez’s “Skrap Pack” but united here by losing early and hating Heather Clark. In order of hostility to others: Angela Magaña, Bec Rawlings, Angela Hill, Namajunas, Emily Kagan (unofficial member?)
The “Chumpettes,” the rest of Team Melendez (including Torres who went to Team Pettis). In order of hostility received: Heather Clark, Tecia Torres, Lisa Ellis
People Who Hate Randa Markos: Carla Esparza, Felice Herrig
People Who Seem to Get Along with Almost Everyone: Joanne Calderwood (but also Namajunas, Kagan, Penne and Kish, plus the next two)
More Withdrawn But Not Controversial: Aisling Daly, Alex Chambers
Controversial: Randa Markos
Remember all that for later.
So anyway … we first see Torres talking about upcoming opponent Esparza. Torres says she has a history with the current Invicta 115-pound champion. In her last fight, Torres beat Herrig, only to see Esparza walk in with the belt and immediately call her out. Awkward, but Torres respects Esparza as a well-rounded fighter. The Torres plan: Keep it standing.
Esparza says Torres is a tough opponent and someone she though could make the final. Esparza, who apparently has never seen The Ultimate Fighter in her life, thinks it’s unfair that Torres got a second chance in the bracket after losing. And there are no secrets here: Esparza wants to take Torres down. She likes wrestling.
We immediately skip ahead to Fight Day. Not much time for drama in the house when you’ve got two fights in an episode.
Tale of the tape: Each woman is 5’1”. Esparza has a more experience. Referee Herb Dean gives the long version of the “two five-minute rounds, then the inaccurately named sudden victory round” speech (where’s Dana White this season?), and we’re off.
Torres looks sharp on her feet and shrugs off a couple of Esparza’s takedown attempts. But Esparza hangs on to her ankle, and when Torres turns toward her to punch a few times, Esparza gets more of a grip. Esparza still struggles to get Torres down, but she’s able to control Torres’ body long enough to get in a few shots. They stand after a while, but Esparza shoots and gets a full-fledged takedown to set up some ground and pound until the horn sounds. Round 1 to Esparza.
Second round has a tentative start. Esparza shoots for a takedown from too far away. Then again. On the third try, she gets Torres’ ankle and lifts it like a really overbearing yoga teacher. Torres escapes, but it’s clear she’s going to have a hard time getting close enough to establish her striking game. Esparza finally gets both legs and gets Torres down. Torres gets to the cage and tries to walk her way up, but when she gets up, Esparza is on her back. Esparza lands a couple of knees to the head at awkward angles. But that’s the only offense anyone has in what’s otherwise a grappling stalemate.
Coaches say to prepare for a third round, but no. We have a decision.
Fight recap: Anthony Pettis is impressed that Torres managed to evade Esparza’s takedowns, but he knows Esparza wasn’t going to give up.
Decision: Majority decision (mild surprise, I would have said unanimous) to Esparza.
No bad blood anywhere. Torres and Esparza slapped hands at the final horn, Torres applauded the decision, and both fighters had kind words. The only drama: Esparza races to a bathroom to vomit. And she’s a little sad to be facing a friend in Jessica Penne.
Next up, perhaps the two most likable fighters on the show. Joanne Calderwood speaks in a soft, high-pitched Scottish lilt, like a character out of Scottish mythology, sometimes with a little smile. Rose Namajunas had a hardscrabble childhood and has grown into a tough fighter whose sense of humor is evident in videos with her boyfriend, former UFC heavyweight Pat Barry.
Calderwood has been training hard. Namajunas is thrilled to be facing good competition, saying it’s actually better to fight when your opponent knows what she’s doing. As we saw last time, Namajunas sometimes battles her nerves and has self-confidence issues leading up to a fight. Didn’t seem to bother her once she got in the cage last time.
Pettis, finally able to return to a fighter’s corner now that it’s not a battle of two fighters from his own team, says he’s going to hold back on instructions and just let JoJo do what she does best.
Then at last, it’s the fight I’ve wanted to see for weeks …
And in the early going, it doesn’t disappoint. Namajunas walks out and throws a kick. Calderwood immediately starts backing her down as they exchange punches, then gets through her defense for a takedown. Namajunas has her legs up near Calderwood’s neck, giving Calderwood something to think about before unleashing any strikes. Namajunas also lands some elbows from the bottom. Calderwood tries to improve her position, and Namjunas scrambles up. But Calderwood lands a nice knee that sends the off-balance Namajunas tumbling. Namajunas is quickly back to her feet and gets the better of a close-range exchange, then works Calderwood down to the mat. Calderwood stands and tosses Namajunas, who works for just about any submission known to grapplers, including an ankle lock that just looked nasty.
With a minute left in the round, Namajunas starts cranking on the arm of Calderwood, who grimaces as she’s forced to give up position to the tenacious Namajunas. The round ends with Namajunas on top, literally and figuratively.
Round 2, after Namajunas gets a very simple question in the corner: “Want to be a champion?” “Yes I do!”
Calderwood comes out aggressive again with a variety of kicks. She’s taller than Namajunas, and keeping her distance seems to be a good idea. But she also looks good in a clinch, landing a few knees and elbows. Through nearly 90 seconds, it’s Calderwood’s round, and Namajunas goes for a takedown to break the pressure. Calderwood counters and ends up on top.
But as we’ve already seen, Namajunas is really dangerous off her back. We hear “Watch the kimura” from a corner. She’s also working her legs up toward Calderwood’s neck again. The end comes suddenly — from the angle we’re shown, it’s hard to see what kind of grip Namajunas has on the arm or even Calderwood’s tap. Namajunas briefly yells in excitement, then immediately embraces Calderwood.
The fight recap shows how much damage Calderwood was inflicting before Namajunas fought back in the second round.
Calderwood is upset, being comforted by Irish fighter Daly in a bit of Celtic sympathy. She hopes it was a good fight. Oh yes, JoJo, it most certainly was.
Semifinal “announcement” formality:
– Esparza vs. Penne, and they’re all smiles at the staredown.
– Markos vs. Namajunas. Markos tries to look mean, but Namajunas seems pretty serene and tired after such a huge win.
Let’s be clear: If Namajunas faced Markos in a UFC fight with proper training time, Namajunas would win handily. But we’ll have to see how much of a toll the Calderwood fight took on Namajunas.
So let’s get to the finale fight card as announced so far:
– Tecia Torres vs. Angela Magaña. A little bit of hostility from the house, and probably a test to see if Torres — originally the third seed but beaten twice in three fights on the show — can live up to her hype. Magaña took Aisling Daly to the third round, so you can’t count her out.
– Joanne Calderwood vs. Seo Hee Ham. Interesting test for the excellent Calderwood against one of the top fighters from Asia.
– Felice Herrig vs. Lisa Ellis. Can’t remember any flareup between them in the house.
– Angela Hill vs. Emily Kagan. Might be fighting to keep a spot in the UFC.
– Aisling Daly vs. Alex Chambers. Curious one here. Chambers is practically the invisible fighter in the house. Daly has a pretty big rep.
– Bec Rawlings vs. Heather Clark. Well, Rawlings clearly doesn’t like Clark. The issue may be how Clark looks after healing her knee.
Justine Kish must not be fully healthy yet, so she’ll wait for her debut. Then we’ll surely have the losing semifinalists and the winning semifinalist.
I think Namajunas will be champion at some point. Whether she does it right away depends on how well she holds it together in the house after a really tough fight.
Duresport.com 