Frank Mir: I MADE A MISTAKE I LET A SMALLER GUY THAT KNOCKS PEOPLE OUT PUNCH ME I NEED TO GET SMALLER NOW TO WIN IN THE REMATCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Full UFC 111 results are below.
Pay-Per-View Bouts
Georges St-Pierre def. Dan Hardy by unanimous decision (live blog)
Shane Carwin def. Frank Mir via first-round TKO (live blog)
Kurt Pellegrino def. Fabricio Camoes by submission (rear-naked choke) (live blog)
Jon Fitch def. Ben Saunders by unanimous decision (live blog)
Jim Miller def. Mark Bocek by unanimous decision (live blog)
Preliminary Bouts
Nate Diaz def. Rory Markham via TKO (punches) - Round 1, 2:47 (live blog)
Ricardo Almeida def. Matt Brown via submission (rear-naked choke) - Round 1, 3:30 (live blog)
Rousimar Palhares def. Tomasz Drwal via submission (heel hook) - Round 1, 0:45 (live blog)
Jared Hamman def. Rodney Wallace via unanimous decision (29-28, 29-28, 29-28) (live blog)
Matt Riddle def. Greg Soto via DQ (illegal upkick) -- Round 3, 1:30 (live blog)
Matthew Riddle d. Greg Soto via DQ
After Riddle won the first two rounds, but in the third, Soto kicked Riddle with an up kick while Riddle was down which is an illegal blow. The doctor stopped the match, because the side of Riddle's face swelled up to Elephant Man proportions.
Jared Hamann d. Rodney Wallace via decision
Boring fight, with the show off to a sluggish start with a DQ and this fight. All three judges scored it 29-28 for for Hamann. All three judges gave Wallace the first round.
Rousimar Palhares d. Tomasz Drwal via submission to a heel hook
It looked like Drwal slipped throwing a kick about a minute into the first round and Palhares slapped on the heel hook immediately. Drwal tapped right away, but Palhares kept it on even after the ref tried to pry him off. Another spot that makes the sport look bad. Palhares apologized after the match.
Ricardo Almeida d. Matt Brown via submission to a triangle
Brown just danced around and didn't seem to want to do anything, as we get another boring fight. Almeida trapped him in a body triangle in the second round, got the choke and Brown tapped out.
Nate Diaz d. Rory Markham via ref stoppage
Midway through the first round, Diaz started connecting with punches. Markham got knocked down by a knee and Diaz just wailed away on him until the ref stopped it. Diaz looked like a star here, because Markham outweighed him by 30 pounds.
Jim Miller d. Mark Bocek via decision
This fight could have gone either way. A great back-and-forth fight. All three judges scored it 29-28 for Miller.
Jon Fitch d. Ben Saunders via decision
Wow, this may have been the most boring fight of the year. They both should try out for Dancing with the Stars. Yawn. All three judges scored it 30-27 for Fitch.
Kurt Pellgrino d. Fabricio Comoes via submission to a choke
In the second round, Pellegrino took Comoes down and got him in a choke. Comoes tapped.
Shane Carwin d. Frank Mir for the Interim heavyweight title
Carwin forced Mir against the cage midway through round one and just unloaded on him with punches. It was just vicious. Mir went down and Carwin didn't let up. The ref had to stop it before someone got killed. And guess who comes to the cage? Brock Lesnar. Lesnar takes the microphone and says that Carwin is wearing a phony belt and that his (Lesnar's) belt was the real title belt. Carwin actually agreed with him. It's on for July 3.
Georges St-Pierre d. Dan Hardy via unanimous decision
every day when Dan Hardy goes to the gym, he sees proof that the odds, in most places hovering around 8-1 against him capturing the Ultimate Fighting Championship welterweight title, are not as great as they seem.
Hardy faces Georges St. Pierre, arguably the most complete MMA fighter on the planet, on Saturday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. It’s the headline event of UFC 111, which is expected to be the biggest MMA event in several months.
Most give Hardy about the same chance of winning the title as they did his recent coach, Matt Serra, when Serra earned a title shot as a stipulation for winning a tournament on The Ultimate Fighter season four reality show.
But Serra is living proof of the axiom a punchers’ chance, or that on any given day in this sport, anything can happen. In the last five years, St. Pierre has physically dominated everyone he’s been in the cage with, a run unprecedented in the promotion’s history.
In his 12 wins in his last 13 fights, he won 31 of 33 rounds, including his current string of 19 straight, a UFC record.
But in the middle of some of the most talented fighters in the world, from Jon Fitch to Thiago Alves to Matt Hughes (twice) to Penn to Josh Koscheck, not even putting him in any danger, there was one loss.
On April 7, 2007, Serra, an 8-1 underdog, caught St. Pierre with a hard right behind the ear, and stayed on him, keeping St. Pierre from regaining his bearings before finishing him with punches on the ground in the first round.
“You can’t put muscles here (pointing to his face),” Hardy said during the “Primetime” series on Spike TV that is hyping the event. “And that’s all I’m aiming for…He can jump higher than me. He can lift trucks. It makes no difference to me. When I connect on his chin, he can lift all he wants… he’s still going down.”
But it’s easy to look at film of that one night and come up with the strategy of cracking St. Pierre with the perfect punch. It’s a lot harder to do it from your back, which is where every one of St. Pierre’s opponents since the Serra loss have spent the majority of the match.
Hardy has punching power, he’s 23-6 with one no contest, with 11 of those wins via knockout. But Alves was supposed to be almost impossible to take down and a better striker than St. Pierre, and once the match started, neither ended up being the case. B.J. Penn and Serra in the rematch talked a similar tone, to the point St. Pierre has talked of his opponents being like comedians who have run out of material.
Hardy himself thought Alves would do a lot better.
“I think the problem is Alves was so afraid of being taken down that he didn’t show his best stuff standing,” he said. “With me, I know that I’m going to be taken down at some point. And I’m not afraid of being on my back.”
“I have a lot of guys in England working on my takedown defense,” he said. “I have a guy in Los Angeles who was a Division I wrestler, a guy on the British Olympic team. It’s not because I’m fighting Georges, but it’s an area of my game I want to work on.
At the Serra Jiu Jitsu Academy on Long Island, one of the main aspects of Hardy’s training the past few weeks has been fighting from his back with training partners who are 200 pounds and more, bigger than St. Pierre, and working on ways to get back to his feet, figuring he’s got 25 minutes to connect with a punch.
Obviously that’s easier said than done. Serra himself had little luck getting back to his feet after being taken down in their rematch in Montreal. That aspect may be the key factor in the fight, whether he can get off his back on a regular basis. There is no guarantee Hardy wins if it becomes a striking battle, but his game plan is no secret, to try to make it as much of one as possible.
“Matt’s been in there twice with Georges, won one and lost one,” said Hardy. “Some of the mistakes he made in his second fight, he can relate to me so I don’t make those mistakes. My situation is the exact situation he was in in his first fight.”
“Not a lot of guys give Dan a chance,” said Serra. “I know what that feels like. I know what it’s like to prove people wrong. There are a lot of people you are going to give a big F.U. to when you win this fight.”
Hardy said he’s not mad about the odds makers and many fans giving him little respect, noting that it’s a conclusion you can come to when looking at the fight on paper.
“If I was looking at if from a fan perspective or a bettors’ perspective, that’s what it would look like,” he said. “When people doubt me, it gets me more excited for the fight. I think people are ready for a change in the division. I think people are more excited about what can happen in the division if I win the belt. I know a lot of people are doubting me, but that will change after the fight on the 27th.”
While St. Pierre has tried to paint a picture that it’s a martial artist, himself, against a brawler, and that once the fight starts, the difference in skill level will be obvious, Hardy, 27, is hardly a stranger to traditional martial arts.
Hardy started in taekwondo at the age of six. When he was 19, he ventured to northern China to train with Shaolin monks. For two months, his life consisted of all-day training at a level he said was the toughest thing he’s ever done in his life. It would be six days a week, and the seventh day he had no energy to do anything but rest. When he returned, he decided to become a fighter, and a traveler, noting after that experience he gained confidence to go places to learn, including frequent trips to the U.S., gaining a wide variety of training that has shaped him into the fighter he’s become.
A lot of people expected Hardy to play the villain role to hype the fight. Billed as “The Outlaw,” stemming from growing up in Nottingham, the home of Robin Hood, Hardy made his first impression almost as much with his mouth as his fists, particularly in building up a June 13, 2009, win over Marcus Davis, where he called Davis, who lives in Maine but is of Irish ancestry and had become a fixture on UFC shows in the U.K., a “fake Irishman.” Hardy never let up, and the talking may have gotten to Davis, who to this day still seems upset when Hardy’s name is mentioned.
But aside from remarks questioning St. Pierre’s chin, the same thing every opponent does since you can’t question is athletic ability, conditioning or wrestling game, Hardy has in recent weeks come across almost as a likeable Rocky Balboa.
He’s somewhat unknown as compared to most UFC main eventers. He’s being given little chance, but he’s trained hard his entire life for a title shot against a champion who will go down as an all-time great.
Hardy is coming off four straight UFC wins in the 19 months since he debuted at UFC 89 in Birmingham, U.K., with a close decision win over Akihiro Gono. He was quickly pushed by the UFC’s U.K. promotional office as a local star, both due to his color, his red Mohawk haircut and gift of gab, along with his knockout power. A quick knockout of Rory Markham was the match that established him as more than just hype. He got the title shot with an upset of Mike Swick on Nov. 14., in Manchester, U.K.
Hardy, whose fight Saturday will be his first in the U.S. in four years, outstruck Swick for three rounds, hurting him in the first. He was able to keep Swick from taking him down, and handily took the decision. But St. Pierre’s takedowns and ground control are at a different level.
The Prudential Center sold out for UFC 111 well in advance, and it will be the first UFC event that airs not only on pay-per-view, but also in 300 movie theaters across North America. It will almost assuredly be the biggest UFC pay-per-view event since December, when stars B.J. Penn and Frank Mir co-headlined UFC 107 and perhaps since August, with the loaded Penn-Ken Florian and Anderson Silva-Forrest Griffin double bill.yahoo.com
The UFC makes its debut on the Versus network Sunday with the kind of fight card that would normally leave a Ulysses S. Grant-sized dent in our wallets.
Hitting our optic nerves live from the 1stBank Center in Broomfield, Colo., the card is headlined by a light heavyweight bout starring Jon Jones and Brandon Vera that could be the launching pad for the next big thing at 205 pounds. Joining that quality chunk of violence is a heavyweight dust-up pitting rising star Junior dos Santos against the mega-hairy and mega-talented Gabriel Gonzaga.
All that and plenty more, so get down with another round of grown man prognostication served up with a side of pop-culture digression.
The Breakdown: The light heavyweight division’s ongoing generational mutation continues with New York-born wunderkind Jon Jones taking on the 32-year-old perpetual prospect Brandon Vera for a shot to join the new guard of the 205-pound class. Both men enter this fight in the unique position of coming off impressive losses, if such things exist.
Jones practically bench-pressed Matt Hamill all over the Octagon at “The Ultimate Finale 10” before being disqualified thanks to a preposterous rule against downward elbow strikes. Vera, on the other hand, managed to lose a decision to Randy Couture at UFC 105 despite turning Couture’s insides to mush. While Jones’ loss is a write-off, Vera lost his fight with Couture due to backwoods-caliber judging and also due to his own passivity in a sport that demands the aggression of a Polar Bear with chainsaws for paws.
In his first fight since joining the Tri-Star Gym, Jones outclassed Hamill. Aggression alone won’t beat Vera, but Jones has the wrestling to ground anything on two legs. And while Jones’ striking lacks the technical sheen apparent in Vera’s game, his timing and reach make it incredibly difficult to figure him out.
Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com
Brandon Vera (above left).
Fans might have expectations of Vera whipping off femur-smashing leg kicks and Jones’ hitting triple spinning back elbow combinations. The fact is, however, that this fight comes down to Jones’ wrestling and Vera’s ability, or lack thereof, to stay upright. It’s troubling how Vera simply allowed himself to get tied up in the clinch and seemed to have no escape plan against Couture. The same lack of strategy doomed him in bouts with Tim Sylvia and Keith Jardine, where his passivity and lack of in-fight adaptation only made matters worse.
Spend three rounds in the clinch with Jones and you’re going to land on your butt sooner or later. Considering the grown-man ground-and-pound Jones showed in his last bout, Vera’s solid grappling background and takedown defense just aren’t going to cut it. Whenever Vera has had to either defend quality takedowns or work off his back, his work-rate hits the floor faster than the NASDAQ. That is something he simply can’t afford against Jones.UFC 111: St-Pierre v. Hardy
The Bottom Line: Vera could certainly punish Jones’ legs given the opportunity, but Jones isn’t going to stand in front of him and turn this fight into a muay Thai seminar. It takes a certain taste for adversity to thrive inside the cage, and Vera doesn’t have it when it comes to stuffing takedowns and working the guard. The outcome will be another impressive “W” via unanimous decision for Jones.
A little more than three years ago, there was an unbeaten prospect making jaws drop in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
He was defeating bigger men, more experienced men, men he had no right being in the cage with, let alone defeating.
Coaches raved about him; promoters gloated. He seemed a sure bet for stardom.
Forty months later, Brandon Vera shows glimpses of becoming the star that everyone thought he would become. The man who decimated former heavyweight champion Frank Mir in just 69 seconds at UFC 65 still makes a move that causes jaws to drop.
He’s still considered an elite fighter. But he’s now 33 and trying to get off the roller-coaster that his career has become. In many ways, he’ll face a man who is what he was four years ago when he takes on highly touted prospect Jon “Bones” Jones on Sunday at Broomfield Coliseum in Broomfield, Colo., in a live fight card that will be televised on Versus.
Jones is the one being hailed as the UFC’s greatest prospect and a future champion. He’s the media darling now, the guy who admits he watches YouTube to pick up moves.
Vera chuckled at the mention of Jones’ name because he knows what comes with all the hype and all the attention.
“He’s regarded as this super-prospect and he’s just been blowing through guys,” Vera said. “It’s hard not to be impressed with what he shows you. He pulls off things you don’t see too many guys do.”
You get the sense, though, that Vera isn’t particularly concerned. He went through some traumatic times after defeating Mir – he had a nasty split with manager Mark Dion, he had a contract dispute with the UFC, he broke his hand in a fight with Tim Sylvia and he has gone just 3-4 in his last seven – but he’s never been more confident.
He’s coming off a controversial loss to Randy Couture at UFC 105 in November, but he says it almost felt like a win. Many of his peers approached him after that fight and told him how impressed they were that he not only went the distance with Couture, but also that he was forcing the issue.
It was a loss, but Vera hardly regards it as a negative.
“After fighting Randy, I’ve learned so much it’s like I skipped two grades,” Vera said.
He believes he’s the equal of the many elite talents in the UFC’s loaded light heavyweight division and promises a show when he meets Jones.
Both men are offensive fighters and both need the win, albeit for different reasons. Jones is 9-1, with his only loss by disqualification to Matt Hamill in December. It was a bout he was seconds away from winning before landing an illegal elbow and being disqualified.
A win over an elite fighter like Vera would send an unmistakable message to the rest of the division.
“If this kid beat me,” Vera said, sounding almost incredulous at even the possibility of a loss, “a lot of people will pay attention.”
Jones had beaten Andre Gusmao, Stephan Bonnar and Jake O’Brien before losing the bout to Hamill. Jones filed an official protest with the Nevada Athletic Commission, seeking to have the loss overturned, though he doesn’t seem particularly upset that it was denied.
He speaks of himself as if he’s undefeated and has the confidence of a guy who is not only unbeaten but also largely unchallenged.
He comes from an athletic family and his older brother, Arthur, is a defensive tackle from Syracuse who is expected to be a second- or third-round pick in the NFL draft next month. His younger brother, Chandler, is also a football player at Syracuse and is, Jon says, the best athlete in the family.
Jones has gotten plenty of attention from the first day he walked into a gym, but says he hasn’t let it distract him – and he’s not about to let it now.
“Fans or the media may think, ‘Oh, this is an easy fight’ or ‘That is an easy fight,’ but if you fight for a living, you know there’s no such thing as an easy fight,” Jones said. “So I just don’t pay attention to it. I know how hard I train and I know how much I push myself. I’ve never taken anyone lightly and I will never be affected by [the hype].
“Even before I started in the UFC, a lot of people were hyping me. I was in a small circuit in the Northeast and a lot of people were talking about me. It’s nice, but to tell you the truth, I’m so obsessed with getting better that I hardly notice it.”
Vera said much the same thing when he was unbeaten and coming off a devastating, almost jaw-dropping, win over Mir. Now, well into his 30s, he knows how difficult it is, not only to get to the top of the UFC but to stay there.
After he lost to Keith Jardine at UFC 89 in late 2008, his third loss in four fights, Vera asked his longtime jiu-jitsu coach Lloyd Irvin if he’d peaked.
Irvin responded by laughing heartily and telling him he wasn’t even close to his peak.
Vera was talking about himself, but he could have been speaking about either fighter.
“I’ve learned so much but I feel I have so much more to give,” Vera said. “That’s the exciting thing, because I don’t know how good I can really be. I’m still learning and getting more dangerous every day.
There was a time Chuck Liddell might have had the strongest chin in mixed martial arts. Hit him with a big shot and he’d grin maniacally and fire a power-packed punch of his own in return. Few men could take the blows Liddell could absorb and remain conscious, let alone upright.
And now, it seems, neither can Liddell.
The most popular fighter in the history of the Ultimate Fighting Championship has been knocked out in three of his last five bouts, including his last two, and was urged to retire by his close friend, UFC president Dana White, following a knockout loss to Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 97 in Montreal in April 2009.
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Chuck Liddell's performance has tapered off in his latest bouts but he's opting to return to the Octagon. (Jae C. Hong/AP Photo)
Liddell is not a man without options, and he doesn’t need to fight to make a living. He’s got plenty of money, and White has promised him a job for life. Yet, despite the warning signs, he’s opted to return to the cruelest sport.
He’ll appear as a coach in Season 11 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” which will debut March 31 on Spike TV, and then will fight bitter rival and opposing coach Tito Ortiz at UFC 115 on June 12 in Vancouver.
Fighters are unlike any other athletes alive and accept risks that few others would ever consider. There’s something inside of them that is different from the rest of us that makes them willing to put their bodies in harm’s way again and again.
Athletes in other sports who overstay their welcome simply suffer embarrassment. A pitcher who loses four or five miles off his fastball doesn’t leave the game with brain damage; he only suffers the indignity of a bad record and a bloated earned run average. But a fighter who has been repeatedly knocked out and comes back for more risks a lot more than just another defeat.
Liddell, 41, who has an accounting degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, is well aware of the risks any fighter accepts. Despite his recent losing skein, though, he insists he’s at no greater risk than he was when he was in his prime and the most-feared gunslinger in the UFC.
They all say that, of course.
Sometimes, they’re right, but overwhelmingly they are not. When they’re not, even in the best-case scenario, they wind up with something like pugilistic dementia.
Liddell took eight months off without so much as hitting a mitt after his loss to Rua in order to allow his body to heal. He dearly loves to fight and kept a brutal pace, not only by fighting some of the world’s best punchers but also by sparring regularly in the gym. After he was blasted by Rua, he knew a long rest was in order.
“That’s one of the reasons I took some time off,” Liddell said. “It takes time to heal. I didn’t even hit the mitts until January, and I’ve only had a couple of light sparring sessions since then. One of the reasons I took some time off was because I thought I was being hurt by shots that don’t normally hurt me in the Shogun fight.
“That’s what prompted me to want to take a year off. I never thought about retiring. I still think I can beat people. I still think I can fight.”
In his defense, he’s faced some of the meanest men any man could face. He was knocked out by a shot from Quinton “Rampage” Jackson at UFC 71 that probably would have knocked down a wall.
He survived a three-round firefight with Wanderlei Silva and was knocked out in UFC 88 by a lightning-fast shot he did not see from Rashad Evans.
But when he was knocked out by Rua, White had seen enough and took the initiative at the post-fight news conference to announce Liddell’s retirement.
“He can still sell out shows and he can still sell pay-per-views, but he’s done,” White said that night. “He helped build this company and he helped build this sport, but he’s done. Even Michael Jordan turned 40, and he was done.”
Liddell didn’t come out definitively one way or another, but in the face of White’s unrelenting pressure to retire, Liddell said at the news conference, “It’s probably the end.”
The more he thought about it, though, the more he decided he could still compete. He simply could no longer keep up the pace he kept as a younger man. Liddell took the rest of 2009 off. He decided not to throw and, more significantly, not to take any more punches for the rest of the year.
Last month, on one of the final days of filming of TUF 11, he looked very physically fit, broad through the chest and shoulders with a flat stomach. But a ripped body has nothing to do with how well a fighter can take a punch.
Liddell, though, has no concern. He believes he’s done what he needs to do to protect himself and is convinced he’s still among the top 205-pounders in the world.
“I can still beat anybody in the world at my weight, so make of that what you will,” Liddell said. “The difference now is, there was a time when I didn’t think anybody could beat me. Now, it’s a slight shift. I don’t think there’s anybody I can’t beat.”
Ortiz, clearly, is one of those men. He’s already knocked Ortiz out twice and wasn’t interested in facing him a third time when White initially broached the subject.
“I didn’t want to give him the exposure,” Liddell said.
White, though, is as persuasive as he is strong-willed, and he convinced Liddell to take the spot as a coach on TUF and to fight Ortiz after the season ended. Liddell reluctantly agreed, but it wouldn’t be long before he’d be champing at the bit to get his hands on Ortiz again.
Especially after Ortiz told reporters at TUF 11 media day that Liddell is a recovering alcoholic and that White did an intervention to get him treatment.
“Thank God that Dana gave him an intervention, and he’s sober now,” Ortiz said. “He’s been sober since November, and he looks like a different person. It’s awesome. I’m proud of him, really proud of him. A lot of people can’t do that. I kind of went through that myself, but I looked in the mirror and I realized that wasn’t the life I wanted to lead. Liddell avoided rock bottom and a disastrous outcome.
“I’m proud he’s found sobriety. A lot of fighters, and a lot of people in general, don’t do that. They fall off the face of the earth, and sometimes they’ll find them in a hotel, dead, or behind a wheel, dead. Thank God Chuck isn’t one of those guys. Thank God he found sobriety, and I’m proud of him, very proud of him.”
Liddell denies he’s an alcoholic or that White did any sort of intervention. He conceded he likes to drink and said when he does, he frequently gets rip-roaring drunk. He said, however, he could start and stop when he wants.
White also denied doing any sort of intervention and chalked it up to “Tito being Tito.”
Liddell, though, was suddenly eager to fight Ortiz again.
“I just didn’t want to give him the press, or give him the exposure from the show, for nothing,” Liddell said of Ortiz. “Dealing with him for 40-something days, I wasn’t really too excited about that either. I just don’t like the guy, and I really didn’t want to be bothered. I finally agreed and on the first day, he goes out and says I had to have an intervention and that I’m an alcoholic.
“The intervention, according to him, was in September. I didn’t stop drinking until late November when I started getting ready for the show. It’s one of those things, that as I’ve gotten older and older, I’ve taken longer to get ready for fights. I treat my body better and better now as I’ve gotten older. So what he says, it just isn’t true and didn’t fit in with anything close to what the facts are.”
Liddell says he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since he began training for the reality series and won’t until after he meets Ortiz in June. He’s going to come hard after Ortiz when the fight starts to make him pay for his comments.
“Coming into this, the only thing that worried me about fighting him was coming in with that attitude that, ‘Oh, I’ve already knocked this guy out twice,’ and treating it like a tune-up fight,” Liddell said. “But I was confident that somewhere within the span of the show, he would do or say something that would get me motivated to train the right way. And guess what? First week, he did. I was like, ‘Done and done.’ I’m ready to go after him. I’m going to train to bury him. I’m going to hurt him. I’m going to knock him out.
“I got him in the third and I got him in the second, now I’m going for the first. I want the hat trick.”
So Liddell soldiers on, believing he can reclaim his past glory. He believes he can get to the top in what is the deepest weight class in the UFC. If he gets the knockout against Ortiz, as he’s done twice before, he’ll almost certainly continue to fight. And he’s going to face increasingly better opposition the more he wins.
White tried to save Liddell from himself and force him to retire after UFC 97. But when Liddell insisted, White essentially threw his hands up in the air.
“I’m his friend, not his father,” White said plaintively.
Liddell insists he’ll walk away when he doesn’t believe he’s capable of competing. I don’t doubt his sincerity, but the fighters are usually the last to know when they’ve lost it.
Liddell doesn’t believe he has. For his sake, I sure hope he’s right.
The UFC announced during The Ultimate Finale the next step for dance star Chuck Liddell will be a return to a coaching position on The Ultimate Fighter, opposite rival Tito Ortiz.
If you thought Rampage and Rashad hated each other, these two might literally kill each other before taping closes on Season 11. I also don’t expect Chuck to consciously object to a bout with Ortiz
CBS will air its second Strikeforce event on April 17 from the Sommet Center in Nashville, Tenn., Sherdog.com has confirmed with the major broadcast network.
The network said it would likely announce its four-fight roster next week. However, at least one bout has been locked for the April 17 event, which will likely be followed up with a May 15 event in St. Louis, Mo., airing on Showtime.
Jake Shields will make his first title defense against Dan Henderson in a 185-pound championship bout. Henderson, a top-five ranked middleweight, left the UFC to sign a four-fight 16-month deal with Strikeforce last December.
Herschel Walker, who earned a third-round stoppage against Greg Nagy in his MMA debut at Strikeforce “Miami” on Jan. 30 in Sunrise, Fla., has been called to fight again on April 17, Sherdog.com has learned from multiple sources. The 47-year-old NFL veteran and 1982 Heisman Trophy winner garnered unprecedented media attention for the promotion and the sport in his debut bout.
Fedor Emelianenko, the world’s No. 1-ranked heavyweight, will not appear on the April card. Emelianenko’s proposed bout with Fabricio Werdum has been pushed to May. However, multiple sources are indicating that the stoic Russian could be absent from both events as his management attempts to re-tool terms of Emelianenko’s existing contract with Strikeforce.
Strikeforce “Fedor vs. Rogers” earned favorable ratings for CBS when it aired in its “Saturday Night Fights” slot on Nov. 7 from the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates, Ill.
The event reached 4.04 million homes to take the coveted Men 18-34 timeslot and peaked during the main event between Emelianenko and Rogers with 5.46 million viewers, making it the ninth most watched live fight in U.S. history.
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