MMA's Top 10 fighters are ready to fight , spring 2010 !?

The past few months in the mixed martial arts world have seemed frantic, as most of the biggest-name fighters have been out of action for a variety of reasons. But the opening months of 2010 could be looked back upon as the calm before the storm. The first weekend of March begins an eight-week period where almost every top fighter in the sport will compete, as they return from injuries, contract disputes and even movie sets.




Over an eight-week period between March 6 and May 1, as many as nine of the top 10 in the current Yahoo! Sports pound-for-pound rankings are scheduled to compete and the summer brings the return to the spotlight of superstars Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz.



Highlights of how the spring and early summer are shaping up:



March 6: World Extreme Cagefighting bantamweight champion Brian Bowles (No. 8 pound-for-pound) and the man he won the title from, Miguel Angel Torres (No. 9), face separate opponents at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, on a WEC event promoted in conjunction with the annual Arnold Fitness Expo. Bowles defends against Dominick Cruz, while Torres faces Joseph Benavidez, likely leading to a showdown of the winners.



March 27: UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre (No. 2) returns to action after eight-and-a-half months from a torn abductor muscle to face Dan Hardy in the main event of the show in Newark, N.J., that includes the Mir vs. Carwin fight. What is significant about this date is that it is the night before World Wrestling Entertainment’s annual WrestleMania, meaning it will be a weekend battle of what would likely be two of the biggest pay-per-view events of the year, assuming boxing can’t pick up the pieces and put together Manny Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather later in the year.



April 10: UFC lightweight champion B.J. Penn (No. 4), the only UFC champion who remained healthy during the second half of 2009, defends his title against Frankie Edgar. The front-runner location for this card is Abu Dhabi, but backup locations including Dublin and Manchester and Newcastle, England, are in discussion if the Abu Dhabi deal isn’t finalized. Middleweight champion Anderson Silva (No. 1) may also return from surgery to remove bone chips in his elbow to face Vitor Belfort. The latter fight is not official for April 10 but has been the date under discussion.



April 17: Fedor Emelianenko (No. 3) returns from hand surgery on a CBS show. The date has not been officially announced, but the promotion has told fighters involved the event will be held on this date. He would face, most likely, Fabricio Werdum on the same show that Dan Henderson (No. 10) challenges Strikeforce middleweight champion Jake Shields. This would be Henderson’s first fight in more than nine months, between his contract expiring with UFC and the two sides talks of a new deal falling apart, and Henderson signing with Strikeforce. No location has been announced for the show.



May 1: Lyoto Machida (No. 5) and Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (No. 7) have a rematch in Montreal after the most disputed decision of 2009, when Machida retained his UFC light heavyweight title on Oct. 24 in Los Angeles. The six months break between fights happened because Machida had surgery on his left hand. The show also features a grudge match coming off Season 10 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” with former light heavyweight champions Quinton “Rampage” Jackson vs. Rashad Evans.



Jackson will be returning after a 14-month layoff caused by the filming of “The Ultimate Fighter” and then shooting the role of B.A. Baracus in “The A-Team” movie. The winner of that match is likely to be next in line for a title shot, and the grudge match nature of Jackson vs. Evans combined with the heated title rematch puts this show as the front-runner for the biggest pay-per-view event of the early part of the year.



The lone top 10 pound-for-pounder not fighting during that window is WEC featherweight champion Jose Aldo Jr. (No. 6), who will be defending against former champion Urijah Faber in what will likely be promoted as the biggest featherweight match in MMA history. At last word, WEC was trying to secure a pay-per-view date for the match, which conceivably could come as early as April or May.



Another major return on the books is Chuck Liddell, who at 40 is still probably one of the three most popular fighters in the sport. Liddell, who was on the fall season of “Dancing with the Stars,” will be seen as a coach, with longtime rival Tito Ortiz, during Season 11 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” which debuts March 31 and airs through June. Liddell hasn’t fought since an April first-round knockout loss to Rua, which at the time looked to be his final fight. The Liddell vs. Ortiz match, a rematch of a 2006 match which is still one of the three biggest pay-per-view events in MMA history, will take place at the end of the season.



Lesnar’s return still a question



Of the sport’s biggest players, the only two major question marks as to when they will fight next are UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar and the most popular women’s star, Gina Carano.



Lesnar remains on the sidelines after a series of health complications. UFC president Dana White, at the request of Lesnar, has refused to talk about his biggest drawing card’s health situation since Lesnar got an update from his doctor Jan. 5. Lesnar suffered an attack of diverticulitis, essentially a perforated intestine, in November after two months of various health issues.



White had noted before the appointment that if Lesnar needed major surgery on his intestines, a strong possibility, it would put him out of action for more than a year, perhaps end his career and force him to vacate his championship. If he didn’t need surgery, he would likely fight much sooner.



The UFC has already announced a Frank Mir vs. Shane Carwin match on the March 27 show at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., for the interim heavyweight championship. If Lesnar is going to fight in the next six months, the winner of this match would be the obvious choice in opponent, in what would likely be one of the most successful pay-per-view matches in company history.



While not discussing specifics of his health, one of Lesnar’s coaches, Greg Nelson, has said Lesnar would definitely return to fighting faster than people expect.



“Brock Lesnar is definitely coming back to fight,” said Nelson on in the Internet show MMA Live. “He’s just kinda coming up slowly, training, getting his body ready, and being smart with his recovery. He’s been going into the doctor and making sure everything is going well and he’ll make sure to go in for a couple of more tests to make sure he’s 100 percent ready to train when he starts up.”




Marty Morgan, who heads Lesnar’s camp and has worked with him dating back to college at the University of Minnesota, also said this past week that Lesnar would fight again but wouldn’t give a timetable as to when.



It is possible Lesnar could come out of his troubles healthier, because the disorder would force changes in his diet. Lesnar was never a stickler for what he ate, since he was notable for being a hard trainer dating back to college and could get away with eating what he wanted.



Lesnar has lost weight and hasn’t trained seriously since an episode that hospitalized him for two weeks. But if the remnants of the disease don’t allow him to regain the level of size and strength he had in the past, he would be in trouble because there is no major fighter in the sport so reliant on pure power and the ability to physically manhandle their opponents through wrestling than Lesnar. As a heavyweight who competes at around 280 pounds, Lesnar’s size, strength and wrestling ability allowed him to beat Randy Couture for the heavyweight title in only his fourth professional fight, and then stop former champion Mir in his fifth.



As for Carano, Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker said that the woman who put women’s MMA on the map, who is currently shooting the lead role in the Steven Soderbergh movie, “Knockout,” will likely return during the second quarter of the year.

watch strikeforces title fight Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos vs Gina Carano . & highlights from the biggest womens MMA Night ever !

When Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos was introduced to American fans on CBS one year ago, with the idea of creating an ultimate opponent for Gina Carano, the Brazilian was given the moniker “The Baddest Woman South of the Equator.”
After Santos finished Carano to become the first Strikeforce women’s lightweight champion (145 pounds) in the biggest women’s MMA fight ever in North America, her “Baddest Woman” title no longer needs any geographic boundaries. From D Meltzer
In the aftermath of Santos’ first-round victory, one question asked for months seems to have been answered with an exclamation point.
Strikeforce’s card at the HP Pavilion, headlined by Carano-Santos, drew 13,524 fans, one of the largest non-UFC crowds in the history of the sport. There was little doubt the crowd came to see Carano, who came across as a star at the level of a fighter like Georges St. Pierre or Chuck Liddell. The notion that people weren’t interested in seeing women fight was clearly put to rest.
But the result raises another question: Where will the women’s sport wind up when its top fighter is a non-English speaking Brazilian who looks like she’s right off the pages of Flex Magazine instead of an American like Carano, who finished No. 16 in Maxim’s list of hottest women on the planet?
Santos won’t be able to draw Carano’s level of attention on her own, but she has star power of her own to make another gigantic match with the right opponent. The question is, who will be that opponent?
In this one, Santos’ relentless approach paid dividends. Her fast pace seemed to tire Carano, particularly as the first round passed the three-minute mark. Both women had been fighting three-minute rounds before this fight, but this one was scheduled for five rounds of five minutes.
The match went back-and-forth early, with Carano even getting on top a few times and achieving mount position. At that point Carano stood up, and it looked like it may have been a tactical error because Santos had the edge in firepower when standing.
Santos took over late in the round and with the clock ticking down, she was pounding on Carano. In a somewhat controversial decision, referee Josh Rosenthal stopped the match with less than a tick left in the round, and until Santos celebrated by jumping on the top of the cage, much of the crowd thought it was the end of the round as opposed to the end of the fight.
The stoppage would not have been controversial if there were 20 seconds left in the fight. Clearly, a stoppage based on the pounding Carano had taken, under most circumstances, wouldn’t have even been an issue. The only issue is that there was one second left in the round, and at that point perhaps Carano should have at least been given the opportunity to use her one-minute rest period before the start of the second round.
Either way, Carano’s star should not dim because of the loss. History has shown that MMA fans recognize everyone can and does lose. Every major drawing card in the sport has lost at one time or another.
Still, it was an historic night for women’s MMA, with an atmosphere equivalent to the biggest men’s fights in history. Santos (8-1) was clearly the villain to the crowd in the MMA version of a Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova-type rivalry. Through an interpreter, she admitted sheltering herself in training. She didn’t feel pressure and wasn’t concerned about the hype of the match, while Carano was in the eye of the promotional hurricane as the star of the event.
“I never felt I was in danger,” said Santos, particularly when Carano had her in full mount. “I took a lot of jiu-jitsu and was comfortable on the ground. I went for a heel hook and leg lock.”
Carano (7-1) was unavailable for comment after the match. At times she tried to work a clinch game, similar to her trainer, Randy Couture, but she wasn’t able to make it work.
“The clinch game, you can’t learn it in one or two months,” said Santos.
So where does it go from here? Strikeforce promoter Scott Coker noted that his next major woman’s promotion would likely be Japanese-style tournaments, with one at 135 pounds and another at 145 pounds, perhaps as early as the end of this year. Coker spent years as the American promoter for K-1, the leading kickboxing group in Japan, which uses a tournament format for its major shows.
“We’ll start with eight fighters,” said Coker. “The winners would go to a second show, where we’ll have the semifinals and finals. The winner of the tournament would become the top contender for Cyborg.” Coker, when asked if Carano would be put in such a tournament, said he’d have to discuss it with her people.
The Strikeforce promoter is usually calm and cool under the worst of circumstances, and the weeks leading up to the show featured plenty of them, as several matches had to be rearranged for various reasons. But he thought he had a nightmare scenario on his hands the night before the show.
At about 9:30 p.m. on Friday night, on a show where every major match but the main event fell apart, Coker got a phone call from the Santos camp. They were apologetic, saying that they had no idea beforehand, but that when the commission was testing Santos, they found out that she was pregnant and the fight was off.

Your Thoughts ?

Watch live video Strikeforce Weigh-In Results: Gina Carano vs. Cris Cyborg

Isaiah Hill (156 lbs.) vs. Alex Trevino (156 lbs.)James Terry (169 lbs.) vs. Zac Bucia (170 lbs.)David Douglas (156 lbs.) vs. Justin Wilcox (154 lbs.)Scott Lighty (202 lbs.) vs. Mike Cook (205 lbs.)Mike Kyle (219 lbs.) vs. Fabricio Werdum (228 lbs.)Jay Hieron (169 lbs.) vs. Jesse Taylor (172 lbs.)Gilbert Melendez (155 lbs.) vs. Mitsuhiro Ishida (155 lbs.)Renato "Babalu" Sobral (201 lbs.) vs. Gegard Mousasi (204 lbs.)Gina Carano (143 lbs.) vs. Cris "Cyborg" (144.5 lbs.)

There are bigger matches this year than Saturday night’s Gina Carano vs. Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos bout that headlines Strikeforce’s card at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif.
But in some ways, none may be more important for shaping the future of the sport. As big as Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir was last month, or B.J. Penn vs. Georges St. Pierre was in January, neither were matches that were going to change the face of the sport of mixed martial arts. The sport, or at least the Ultimate Fighting Championship brand name, had already made it. This year’s megafights grew the sport, but the sport and brand would have been plenty healthy even had they never happened.


As much as the undefeated Carano downplays her role, the popularity of the women’s version of the sport was built on her back, and every big step along the way bears her footprints.
In 2007, when Showtime started airing MMA, a proposed women’s match was suggested for the debut show and was not well received by the company. Gary Shaw, who promoted Elite XC at the time, pushed hard for the fight, believing that Carano had that special “it” factor that separates the people who can simply fight well, from those who people want to see fight.
Showtime gave tentative approval, giving the women one chance to sink or swim. After Carano and Julie Kedzie tore down the house with an emotional performance on February 10, 2007, opposition faded.
When CBS got into the game last year, Carano was the second-most heavily promoted fighter they used, behind only Kimbo Slice. Her appeal is unquestioned. In her last fight, when she defeated Kelly Kobold by decision on CBS on Oct. 4, from the start of her match until the finish, the audience grew by 1,643,000 viewers. It was the biggest audience gain for any MMA fight in the U.S.
Saturday’s fight establishes a few firsts. It will be the first time a women’s match is the main event of a major televised MMA event. And they are not just main eventers, but they are carrying the show from a promotional standpoint.
If the card is successful, it will be impossible to deny the headliners the credit. If the show isn’t successful, it will establish a stigma for women’s MMA. Fans will watch Carano in droves as part of the card, but if the numbers are disappointing, the stigma will be that women fighters, are not strong headliners.
Thus far, signs are good. Promoter Scott Coker predicted between 10,000-12,000 fans live, which would be the company’s largest crowd on a show not headlined by Frank Shamrock.
The event also creates the first women’s champion in a stable national promotion, with the creation of a 145-pound title.
But the real question is whether this match represents the novelty of a pretty girl who was marketed well, or is it the foundation for women in MMA to break through in a way women in boxing, wrestling and kickboxing have never to truly able to achieve?
“I don’t have to be there for the sport to be successful,” said Carano. “I’m doing the best with this opportunity to represent the sport. I’m doing everything I can do. But the sport is awesome. It’ll make it by itself. They don’t need me for it to be successful. I’m being given the chance right now for a period of time, and there’ll be another person with the chance next.”
Women’s boxing seemed in a similar situation in the 90s, with Christy Martin in the Carano role. Martin got all the way to the cover of Sports Illustrated, but as Martin’s career faded, so did the popularity of women’s boxing.
It still exists, as women’s MMA will a decade from now, but right now women’s boxing is not a major part of the sport, there is no superstar, nor match that could headline a major event.
Whether Carano, 27, is the next Christy Martin or the female Royce Gracie as someone who builds the foundation of a lasting sport, her looks can’t carry her if she’s not a top level fighter. A win would answer any critics of her fighting ability, because Santos (7-1) is no joke. She’s a 9-to-5 favorite on the Vegas books, and has been the most impressive woman fighter on the big stage since her debut a year ago.
Santos is ultra-aggressive, and has overwhelmed opponents similar to a prime Wanderlei Silva, with a relentless style. It’s a style that has allowed her to almost instantly win over audiences that had never heard of her going in.
It makes for a great dynamic. Santos, 24, appears to have stepped off the pages of a women’s bodybuilding magazine. Carano could pass for a Maxim model, and in fact, just recently had a spread in that magazine.
In every arena where both have appeared, there has been an obvious crowd reaction of anticipation that only the biggest fights of any era have.
Both fighters have had issues making weight. In Santos’ last fight on April 11, she weighed in at 152 pounds, seven pounds over the limit. The fight before, she weighed 148, which was what the fight was contracted for.
Carano has missed weight twice in her seven fights, and on two other occasions, was borderline. But her weight issues were all at 140 pounds, and she has always come in under 145. A lot of women fighters, and their camps, have been upset at both women, with the idea they aren’t respecting the sport by not making weight, and the feeling neither has been truly punished for it because of their star power.
On Thursday, the California State Athletic Commission sent a memo out to all fighters, but obviously meant for Carano and Santos. They said there is only one opportunity to weigh in. No allowances will be made, so both fighters must make 145 pounds, or there will be no championship match. They will not permit cutting of weight after missing weight a first time.
There is another first for both women, and that is the time limit. Both are used to fighting three rounds of three minutes. This fight is scheduled for five rounds of five minutes. That’s what makes predicting the fight more difficult. It’s the equivalent of putting two of the best 400-meter runners on the track, and then betting on who is going to win at 800 meters.
“Five rounds is going to be difficult,” said Carano. “It’s 16 more minutes than I’m used to. But, I feel like it gives you a different mentality. At the beginning, I was like, `What did we ask for?’ But now, I’m happy with it and I think that (it) could help me out in the long run.”
Carano has a strong Muay Thai base, and the fight looks to be someone who tries to overwhelm someone with an all-out style against someone better technically. But can Carano stand up to the ferocity, or will Santos come in with less in trying to pace herself? If Carano isn’t overwhelmed, and Santos doesn’t change her style because of the extended time, the longer match could favor Carano.
In other matches of note, Gegard Mousasi (25-2-1), riding a 12-fight winning streak, arguably the most impressive non-UFC fighter of the past two years, makes his U.S. debut when he challenges Renato “Babalu” Sobral (35-8) for the Strikeforce light heavyweight title. Mousasi, born in Iran but living in Holland, figures to have a strong edge standing. Sobral is the better wrestler and needs to turn the fight into a grappling match to have his best chance. Mousasi, a major star in Japan, was the Dream middleweight champion, who vacated the title to move to light heavyweight, has never faced a wrestler of the caliber of Sobral, so this is a real test.
The interim lightweight title will be at stake as Gilbert Melendez (15-2) looks for revenge against Mitsuhiro Ishida (18-5-1). Melendez was unbeaten and one of the highest ranked lightweights in the world when Ishida outwrestled him on December 31, 2007, en route to a unanimous decision.
Ishida is a late replacement for lightweight champ Josh Thomson, who wasn’t cleared to fight due to his broken ankle suffered four months ago not being fully healed. Ishida’s style is based on fast-paced grappling and controlling his opponent, often winning decisions. Melendez is primarily a wrestler, known for his takedown defense and conditioning.
The other televised fight is a heavyweight encounter pitting Fabricio Werdum (11-4-1) against Mike Kyle (12-6-1). Werdum was scheduled to face Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem, who had suffered a hand injury fighting bouncers in a bar, which got infected and hadn’t fully healed. Werdum, with a win, would be in line for a bout with either Overeem or Fedor Emelianenko.

EliteXC: Heat - Weigh In ( Kimbo vs. Shamrock ) Gina Carano takes off Clothes for weigh in !!