Genki Sudo and his WORLD ORDER band have slo-mo robot walked their way over to America for a new music video entitled IMPERIALISM (why do Japanese use SO MANY CAPS???). For those of you thinking their pop n lock thing has gotten a bit stale after several other music videos, this one will prove you wrong. They pull a bunch of new tricks and moves out for this one, all in front of a confused American crowd. Oh, and there’s Engrish too. So check it out!

(thanks to Asian MMA for the find!)

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I just didn’t know if we wanted to talk about that publicly. We weren’t stopping Pretorian from anything … um … Pretorian owes us a lot of money. Yeah. They haven’t paid. So that’s the story.

Dana is probably referring to the so-called ‘sponsorship tax’ that companies have to pay if they want to get their brand featured during UFC events. While anyone can sponsor a fighter, you need to pony up to the UFC if you want your logo appearing on clothing or banners etc during the broadcast. The fee is determined on a case by case basis and is apparently as high as six figures for some companies. How much it was for Pretorian, who knows. But if Dana White (a guy who plays 10k hands of blackjack on the reg) says it was ‘a lot of money’, you can imagine the number involved a lot of zeros.

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And then there was the main event of the night featuring Rashad Evans and Dan Henderson – a fight so close you might as well have called it a draw. The nature of judging means someone had to win and Rashad Evans ended up getting the nod, but let’s not pretend this legitimately advances him forward as a legitimate contender in the division. One could argue that just stalemating against a guy like Dan Henderson is an impressive feat on its own, and it does remind us that Rashad still has the ability to win against top five opponents. But the ability to dominate? Even Rashad admits he’s still working on that.

“There’s a lot of guys coming in new (at light heavyweight),” said Evans. “There’s a lot of guys that are pretty tough, so it doesn’t really matter who I fight next.”
…
“It’s hard for me to leave the 205 weight class. I would love to get a shot at Jon Jones again,” he stated. “I would love to get back to where I was and where I can be as far as being spectacular every single fight, but the landscaping has changed. It’s tough.

“I’m gonna have to make some adjustments to my game if I’m gonna be dominant.”

Those adjustments will have to come fast as Rashad may have just matchmaker’d himself into a very bad spot:

“Whoever the UFC puts against me, I’m there. I heard that Glover said he’d like to have a fight with the winner. I’m not calling anybody out, but whoever the UFC says will be a good fight, I’m not turning anybody down. I like the fight.”

I like that fight too, mainly because it puts the toughest challenge for Jon Jones directly in line for a title shot. And yeah, I’m not talking about Rashad Evans here.

The post Rashad Evans thinks a fight with Glover Teixeira sounds pretty good appeared first on Fightlinker.com.

“I want Roy Nelson in the UFC, we never said we don’t want him. If I didn’t want Roy in the UFC, I’d tell ya, he’d know it, everyone would know it. Roy and I don’t have to see eye to eye for him to fight here. Tito fought here for a long time and many other guys.”

“He doesn’t wanna talk about it publicly. So we won’t talk about it publicly. It’s not about making a deal. He had an offer a month and a half ago. Because someone is not telling the truth about something. I said, he said what we need to do, I said lets do it right fucking now, get everyone in a room and we’ll see who’s telling the truth and who’s not. He doesn’t wanna talk about it publicly and I’ve already said too much.”
…
“It’s not like we’re saying we’re not signing Roy Nelson, we hate him, we don’t want him here. We’re trying to come to a deal with Roy Nelson.”

But what kind of deal exactly? White shares an anecdote on past negotiations:

He was fighting under the Ultimate Fighter contract and he called Joe Silva and he said ‘Listen, I’m fighting tough guys here and I’m winning.” And Joe said “You’re right, we’re going to get rid of the Ultimate Fighter contract and give you another contract.” So Joe Silva offers him another deal for more money and Roy says “That’s not enough.” This was a while ago. And Joe says “Well this is my offer. I’ll rip up the old contract and give you this one.” “No.” Joe says “But it’s more money.” “I don’t care, it’s not what I want.” He fought under the fucking Ultimate Fighter contract instead of taking the new contract which was significantly more money. Because he wanted to stay on the Ultimate Fighter contract instead of taking the new deal.

Well, that’s a slight oversimplification. I doubt he WANTED to stay on that amazing ‘six figure contract’ TUF winners are rewarded with (which works out to 15k/15k). He just felt that the raise he was being offered wasn’t enough considering he was fighting guys like Junior Dos Santos and Frank Mir on the PPV portion of UFC events. The post-TUF contract he did end up with had him earning 24k/24k, so you might agree that the UFC’s offers thus far haven’t exactly been generous.

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I posted up Josh Burkman’s rousing finish of Jon Fitch from WSOF3 this Saturday as the feel good finish of the day, but Dana White saw it as something more sinister: a potentially deadly fuck up by Steve Mazzagatti, par for the course when it came to that referee and by extension the Nevada commission that continues to employ him. Watch above as he spends 10 minutes of the 30 minute post-fight media scrum talking shit about them.

“It’s not corrupt when you talk about the Nevada State Athletic Commission,” White said. “It’s complete and total ego. Because I keep complaining, they’ll keep putting him (Mazzagatti) front and center. It’s disgusting. At what point do you realize this guy an incompetent fool. I wonder what’s going to happen if somebody gets seriously hurt in a Mazzagatti fight. They’ll say, `Anything can happen, it’s a combat sport.’ This guy is dangerous.”

And because the MMA media is very much a schoolyard where gossip travels from one side to another in the blink of an eye, we already have Keith Kizer’s response to Dana’s rant:

Kizer said he’s only talked to White a few times about Mazzagatti. “He’s usually praising him, including on season 15 of The Ultimate Fighter, he said to me that Steve’s doing a great job and I told him I’ll let Steve know,” said Kizer. “That was the last time I talked to Dana about Steve.”

“Dana’s a good guy,” said Kizer. “Very few people care about other people as much as Dana. But you’ve heard what he’s said about former fighters, former employees, even fighters in his organization. Even Jon Jones. He likes to put people down, whether rightly or wrongly. It’s an ego thing. We all have egos. I think it’s wrong when people lie and you can make your own conclusions on Dana.”

Oh man is that praise bit gonna cheese Dana’s goat. As for egos, yes Kizer is correct. They both have huge egos that often block them from being able to see shortcomings in the way they do things. After all, who needs someone else’s opinion when yours is always right? For Kizer this ego manifests itself in his inability to view NSAC judges or refs as anything but infallible.

Personally, I don’t see Steve Mazzagatti as a particularly bad referee. He fucks up about as much as Dan Miragliotta, Kate Winslow, Yves Lavigne, or Mario Yamasaki. The problem is when he does fuck up, nothing comes of it. The NSAC has a long and illustrious history of refusing to admit the mistakes of its officials, and also seem strangely resistant to change. And that to me is a bigger problem than a bad official, because without corrective oversight those officials just continue to bad all over our MMA.

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UFC 164 takes place Aug. 31, four weeks after Pettis’ planned UFC 163 bout with Aldo in Rio de Janeiro. For Pettis, such a rescheduling would mean a chance to fight in his hometown of Milwaukee, which is home to UFC 164.

“I can be 100 percent ready to fight Benson Henderson in Milwaukee,” Pettis claimed in a statement issued to FUEL TV’s post-UFC 161 show. “With all due respect to T.J. Grant, Milwaukee is my town, and the fight with Ben is the fight everyone has wanted for years.”

As usual, ‘with all due respect’ continues to be something you say immediately before disrespecting someone. And what else do you call it when you say “Yeah, that fight you’re in? No one wants to see it and I should get it instead.” I guarantee you there are several dozen people in Nova Scotia totally chuffed for Grant’s title shot. And beyond that, I doubt even the UFC would be evil enough to yank a title fight out from under someone after the poster has been designed.

Besides, Dana White doesn’t think Pettis will be healed up in time:

“He talked to a doctor, and the doctor said he’s out for a good six weeks and he needs a good [physical] therapist and he needs to get his knee back,” White continued. “That’s what our doctor said. He talked to a therapist in Milwaukee who told him three weeks. I could give a s— what the therapist in Milwaukee thinks – I’m listening to the doctor. And I’m going to fly him out to Las Vegas to see Dr. [Steven] Saunders, too, for a second opinion.”
…
“I’m in no hurry,” White said. “Nobody’s more bummed out about the Pettis [-Aldo] fight than me. I was talking to you guys about it Thursday. But I’m not going to put Pettis in there in three and a half weeks when it should take six weeks for his knee to heal.”

Keep in mind Pettis still wanted to fight at UFC 163 against Aldo with the meniscus tear, so his opinion on being capable or not is slightly suspect.

The post Anthony Pettis wants to steal TJ Grant’s title shot appeared first on Fightlinker.com.

In a way that’s good … the fans want more Pat Barry! But at a certain point you have to start worrying about the amount of damage Barry has taken over the course of his career. Getting regularly knocked out in the UFC heavyweight division can’t be good for your brain, and last night’s display wasn’t helped by local ref Jerin Valel’s glacier slow stoppage. Barry ate 17 unanswered shots to the noggin before Valel stepped in and called the fight. This isn’t one of those ‘Pat Barry needs to retire!’ posts, but I’m starting to get a little concerned about all the head trauma he’s taking.

Speaking of head trauma, how about that Roy Nelson. Dana White awarded him a dubious record during the post fight press conference: Most significant strikes absorbed without getting knocked out (437). That’s over his entire UFC career, although I wouldn’t blame you if you misunderstood and thought that’s how many times Stipe Miocic drilled him in the skull. When Roy Nelson wins, he wins big. But when he comes up against someone with the wherewithal to circle away from his big dumb hooks and uppercuts, he hits a brick wall. And then we’re treated to the other side of the Roy Nelson spectacle: watching him get the shit beaten out of him for three rounds.

There were maulings at the hands of Junior Dos Santos and Fabricio Werdum and now Stipe Miocic makes three – this last one being all the more concerning since Miocic was an unranked heavyweight whose last fight was a loss to Stefan freakin’ Struve. There’s no shame in taking a beating from the cream of the heavyweight crop, and perhaps Miocic has finally put everything together and this was his big coming out party. But you can only take the kind of beatings Roy Nelson has taken so many times. Getting knocked out is one of those weird evolutionary survival things that is supposed to keep you from taking way too many blows to the head. By my count, Nelson should have been knocked out at least 6 times last night. I don’t know whether to be impressed by his new UFC record, or kinda horrified.

(just two of many exchanges where Nelson’s head gets used for target practice)

The post UFC 161 Brain Damage Report appeared first on Fightlinker.com.

(wait, that doesn’t seem quite right…)

After missing an event due to technical malfucktion, the Fightlinker chat is back this week for all your blabbity blah needs. Things kick off with the facebook prelims at 7PM featuring…

• Yves Jabouin vs. Dustin Pague
• Mitch Clarke vs. John Maguire

Then onto FX at 8PM for…

• Roland Delorme vs. Edwin Figueroa
• Sean Pierson vs. Kenny Robertson
• James Krause vs. Sam Stout
• Jake Shields vs. Tyron Woodley

And onto the PPV at 10PM

• Pat Barry vs. Shawn Jordan
• Alexis Davis vs. Rosi Sexton
• Ryan Jimmo vs. Igor Pokrajac
• Stipe Miocic vs. Roy Nelson
• Rashad Evans vs. Dan Henderson

So come and join in on the fun! We use a pretty awesome oldschool IRC style chat so you can party like it’s 1999.

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Pettis’ coach Duke Roufus told MMAFighting.com on Friday that Pettis “popped his knee” while training in Brazil this week. Pettis was in Brazil to promote his UFC 163 title fight against Jose Aldo.

When he flew back to Milwaukee, Pettis was still complaining about the knee, so he went to get MRI. That confirmed his worst fears: Torn meniscus. Four-to-six weeks of rehab needed.

As a result, Dana White announced on Friday that Aldo will now defend his title against Chan Sung Jung on Aug. 3.

Roufus said Pettis “begged” White to keep him on the card. He tried to convince his coach that he only needed three serious weeks to train for the fight, but the UFC didn’t want to take that risk, for Pettis’ sake.

“[The UFC] said, ‘No, you got to be healthy,’” Roufus said. “I’m glad they’re looking out for his best interests, too.”

That goes against most peoples’ expectations of how the UFC behaves in situations like this – I was expecting a more Alexander Gustafsson reaction. But ya can’t do a 360 degree backflip kick off the cage with a torn meniscus, and I think the UFC sees this match up as one of those rare superfights that will actually deliver the goods and perhaps take the sport to the next level. Why rush it? What’s a few more months to see a legit superfight? Everything will be fine.

Unless the Korean Zombie has anything to say about it, that is.

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