Matt Serra hasn’t stepped into the cage in almost three years, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely officially 100% retired. Even now after a pretty serious medical issue, he’s still being a little wishy washy over hanging up his gloves:

“It’s hard to say it,” Serra told Newsday. “It’s like you can’t say it, even though it probably is true. I would love to put closure on my career with one last fight at the Garden, but at the same time, if that doesn’t happen, I definitely consider myself done. It’s hard to say the ‘R word.’ I might never say the ‘R word.’”
…
“I really think I’m walking away,” he said. “I’m going to be 39, I just had my rib taken out. I’m having my third kid. My schools are doing well. What am I doing, looking for another pay day? It’s not really for that. I mean, it doesn’t stink, but it’s not really for that. Am I still trying to hold on for the glory? Glory is a drug, dude. I’m telling you, that’s the problem. It really is. I know why guys can’t walk away. I absolutely get it.”

About that rib being taken out…

Serra couldn’t bend his arm. He couldn’t lift his hand to touch his neck. He got out of bed around 2 a.m. and drove to the emergency room at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola. Tests revealed two blood clots in his arm and another in his lungs.

“Then I got freaked out,” Serra said. “You don’t catch that [and] after the lung, that stops your heart or your brain. Then you’re done. I’m very fortunate to, basically, be here. Sounds kind of morbid. If I didn’t catch that — I was about to go to bed. I’m like, man, something’s not feeling right.”

Serra was put on blood thinners to address the clot in his lungs. He must now inject himself in the stomach with Lovenox, an anticoagulant, every day for the next three months.

The clots in his arm created a significant health issue as well. Serra’s collarbone and first rib were compressing a blood vessel and restricting blood flow, a condition known as thoracic outlet syndrome. Serra had the first rib on his left side removed in early May, a procedure performed by Dr. George Hines, chief of vascular surgery at Winthrop. Hines estimated that Winthrop does about six of these surgeries a year.

“It’s like taking out the floor of the whole area,” Hines said. “You remove the rib and everything drops into place.”

The procedure can take up to two hours to complete, and patients typically return home the following day.

“They had to cut me open through my armpit and cut through whatever they had to cut through and get my rib out,” Serra said. “It’s definitely strange and I’m feeling it in there.”

I wonder if that will give him more flexibility in jiu jitsu. The urban legends about Marilyn Manson’s rib removal and subsequent … improved limberness certainly implies so.

(pic by Scott Peterson for MMA Weekly)

Unlike those throwaway cards on free cable, Zuffa actually makes commercials and such for its PPV events.  Apropos, I invite you to enjoy the “Countdown to UFC 160″ show in three parts.  Above is “Act I: Finding Bigfoot”, in which we’re basically told there’s a good chance that Bigfoot Silva’s rematch against Cain Velasquez will somehow go differently than the first.  It’s not like they made this fight because Overeem shat the bed and there’s currently no better options for challengers.  No, nothing like that.

After the jump, “Act II: Have You Seen Mike Mark Hunt?”  He’s kinda fat, but godDAMN does he hit hard.

Continue reading →

Microsoft unveiled it’s new XBox One console and aside from a few creepy revelations like the device needing to connect to the internet once a day to stay operational and the device listening to you even when it’s off, there wasn’t a whole lot of mind blowing content. EA did show up and promise several launch games including the first UFC game since they bought the rights off THQ. No in game graphics, though – just that pre-rendered shit that has absolutely nothing to do with the final product. But hey! New UFC game at XBox One launch! That’s pretty neat.

After we learned that Boston Marathon Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev had trained with MMA fighters, I joked that half the Russians on Bellator’s roster would be getting a visit from the FBI. In retrospect, it’s not as funny of a joke any more:

A man being questioned in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings was shot and killed in Florida early Wednesday by an FBI agent from Boston when the agent “began to feel threatened,” ABC News confirmed.

Khusen Taramov said he and Ibragim Todashev were being questioned as part of the bombings by the FBI official and law enforcement officers in Orlando. Taramov said Todashev, 27, knew bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev because both were MMA fighters.

Taramov said they were interviewed nearly three hours, and at some point, “something went wrong,” and Todashev was killed.

“There was some sort of aggressive movement that led the FBI agent to believe he was under threat and he opened fire,” the law enforcement official told ABC News.
…
“When (Todashev) used to live in Boston, they used to hang out — not hang out — he knew him. They met a few times because (Todashev) was a MMA fighter and (Tsarnaev) was a boxer. They just knew each other. That’s it,” said Taramov.

That sounds pretty rotten to me … reminds me of the time UK police jumped an innocent man on the train and pumped his face full of bullets because they mistakenly thought he was part of the London train bombings. This is even worse though because the FBI had Todashev in their custody. When people start dying in situations like that, you really start to wonder what happened to your country.

*UPDATE* The Daily Mail’s version of the story includes many more details including the accusations that Todashev attacked the FBI agent with a knife and had confessed to committing a triple homocide in 2011. Also included in their article:

Taramiv says the FBI has been following him and Todashev since the bombings. He said that they were both being interviewed by agents late Monday before Todashev was killed. He claims his friend is innocent and that he has been targeted by authorities because he is a Muslim.

‘He was just a Muslim – that was his mistake, I guess,’ Taramiv, also a Muslim, told WESH. He said his friend is not an extremist and doesn’t believe he owned a gun. Shortly before the shooting, Todashev ‘had a bad feeling. He felt there’s going to be a set-up against him,’ Taramiv said.

Todashev gave him phone numbers for his mother and father late Monday just in case he got ‘locked up.’ ‘We had a feeling that a worse-case scenario, that something like [a shooting] is going to happen,’ Taramiv told the television station.

After appearing on the MMA Hour to hold out an olive branch to his former promotion, Josh Barnett has finally signed a new deal with the UFC:

USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) today confirmed with promotion officials that former UFC heavyweight champion Barnett has signed a new multi-fight deal with the promotion and is expected to make his return to the octagon later this year. An official announcement is expected soon.

Barnett is currently ranked No. 6 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie.com MMA rankings and was considered the world’s most-talented free-agent heavyweight. His return date and opponent have yet to be determined.

No word on what managed to get Josh and the UFC over their impasse, which many believed was caused by Barnett insisting on a PPV cut. Did Barnett drop that provision? Did the UFC offer it only in the case of a championship or headline fight? No one knows. My tinfoil theory? Josh is back as part of a deal setting up a Fedor Emelianenko run in the UFC. Do I have any evidence whatsoever for this? Other than Fedor’s manager showing up at UFC Sweden, nope. But that’s the great thing about tinfoil theories – they don’t need any proof past the slightest shade of insinuation.

(pic by Mark D Smith for USA Today)

So I was spending another evening with no pants on trawlin’ Sherdog and came across this interesting bit of 80s combat sports Canadiana from Halifax:

Allan Clarke and Chris Clarke were really big back in the day where I live. Back then where I am was the boxing capital of Canada and big shows always took place. I see Allan around sometimes, He lives fairly close and is in good shape. Heard a few weeks back he caught some kid trying to break into his shed and just one punched knocked him out cold. His brother Chris fought Dickie after this, seeking revenge for his brother he came up short to a decision loss. Chris I heard is hard on drugs and likes to show he still got it by starting shit with younger crowd downtown. Just thought I should show this too people. I never knew one of the most brutal kos i would see took place in my backyard lol. Enjoy

Come for the knockout, stay for the fine example of sportscaster mustache. And man, is the knockout brutal.