Archive for the ‘Worsties’ Category

Here are your 2008 Worsties winners!

Bad for the Sport Award: Standgate
Runner up: The Ultimate Fighter 8

I don’t think anyone is surprised that Standgate blew away all the other possible choices to easily clinch first place in the worst Worstie award you can win. But what surprised me is how far the Ultimate Fighter has fallen in people’s eyes. A guilty pleasure for many, the stuffier of us at least acknowledged that TUF has always been good for the sport’s growth and visibility. But after seeing what went down on the last season of TUF, that opinion seems to be changing. Rampage’s rampage came in third, and the ugly Justin Levens situation seems to be the thing everyone just wants to forget about … it barely got any votes at all.

Worst Fight: Kalib Starnes vs Nate Quarry
Runner up: Paulo Filho vs Chael Sonnen 2

Paulo Filho vs Chael Sonnen had a lot of advantages going in: it was the more recent debacle, it involved a title, and it was a total mess. But MMA fans have long memories when it comes to hating, and was there ever a fight that was more fun to hate than Kalib Starnes vs Nate Quarry? You don’t have any of the ugly baggage you have with the Filho situation … Kalib can’t blame his performance on a drug addiction or depression. He managed to destroy his career without the help of drugs. And that’s something to be proud of.

Dumbest Fighter: War Machine
Runner up: Tito Ortiz

I had pegged this one as a close competition between War Machine and Jesse Taylor. And while Mr Machine devastated the competition (don’t get used to hearing that), I was very surprised to find who ended up as number two: Tito Ortiz. I do wonder whether Tito surged ahead after his performance on the mic at Affliction’s second show … but regardless, 2008 featured enough bonehead moves to earn him distinction as our runner up! Jesse Taylor will have to live with coming in third, and even that was a struggle for him: he edged Kalib Starnes out by a mere 20 votes.

Most Overpaid Fighter: Kimbo Slice
Runner up: Tim Sylvia

No one in MMA had a greater talent to pay disparity than Kimbo Slice, so it is only fitting that he wins the award for most overpaid fighter. At 250k per fight plus a 500k payout in his loss to Seth Petruzelli, he’ll have lots of money for more terrible country music outfits. Coming in right behind Kimbo was Tim Sylvia, who made 800k to get starched by Fedor at Affliction’s first show. One thing I think a lot of people don’t realize: Affliction did us a favor! How long do you think it’ll be before Timmy is willing to drop his price down to something a promoter will actually pay???

Worst MMA Clothing Company: Jesus Didn’t Tap
Runner up: Affliction

I’m just shocked that Affliction didn’t win. I suppose we’ve had a few years to get used to the eye rape we experience whenever we see one of their shirts. Plus they keep giving us delicious mixed martial arts events. Way to buy our not-love-but-I-guess-not-extreme-hate-anymore, guys.

Worst Case of Missing Weight: Paulo Filho
Runner up: Jason Guida

Again, shocking results: Gina Carano and Nick Diaz both managed to stay out of the top slots. Voters punished Paulo Filho hardcore … I guess that just goes to show you that people expect more from their champions, even WEC champions. Beating out Gina for runner up is Jason Guida, a fighter who was only included because a single jackal remembered to nominate him. I suppose exposing your taint on cable television makes an impression!

Worst Steroid Suspension: Chris Leben
Runner up: Antonio Silva

Chris Leben gets the nod for his high profile steroid bust after headlining a UFC UK card. I think a lot of people were feeling especially vindictive because Leben had been claiming he was a new man. To find out that he had given up the sauce only to switch to the juice … that just made the transgression that much worse. Antonio Silva came in a far away second place, with his ‘possibly innocent but definitely dumb’ suspension where he used a supplement known for showing up as an illegal substance.

Worst Commission: California State Athletic Commission
Runner up: Ontario Athletics Commission

While Ontario gave the CSAC a run for it’s money, there’s no way you can lose when you’ve proven yourself to be this incompetent. Jake theorizes that while Ontario had that single huge issue of banning MMA, the CSAC had an endless list of fuckups while trying to regulate it. You can call Ontario motherfuckers and speculate on how incompetently they’d handle MMA, but the CSAC laid it all out there for us to see on a monthly basis. And ending the year with a sex scandal involving Ron Jeremy lookalike Armando Garcia? You know how to lock up a Worsties win, CSAC!

Worst Referee: Dan Miragliotta
Runner up: Steve Mazzagatti

Big Tan Dan wins handily for worst referee, beating out all the other contestants several times over. Steve Mazzagatti was a distant second place, but these two guys managed to pull about 80% of the total votes.

Worst Announcer: Bill Goldberg
Runner up: Scott Ferrall

Don’t worry, Frank Trigg. You came in fifth. There’s simply no way anyone can compete with knuckleheads like Bill Goldberg and Scott Ferrall. Goldberg was so offensively bad during his run at EliteXC that we can only hope we’ll never be exposed to him again. Funny enough, we figured the same thing about Ferrall after YAMMA went the way of the dodo … but then he ended up at Affliction 2, possibly earning himself a shot at this Worsties category for 2009!

Worst Arrest: Joe Son
Runner up: Quinton Jackson

How bad does your arrest have to be that the only thing which beats it is a high profile gang rape? That’s how bad Rampage’s arrest was according to our voters. I kinda wonder if Joe Son wasn’t such a comical figure in MMA history, would he have still won? Regardless, Rampage gets spared the indignity of winning a Worstie this year. Still, getting more votes than people involved in forcible sodomy … not good.

Biggest Dickhead Promoter: Jared Shaw
Runner up: Gary Shaw

Not that big of a surprise here to see the Shaws topping the list for most hated promoters. The two ate up an astronomical amount of the votes, leaving Todd Beard as a very very very distant third place. That’s Todd Beard, the guy who punches pregnant chicks in the belly and defrauds the elderly. Congrats to the Shaws for being that hated. Now let us never speak of them again.

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The Low Blow Episode 89: Your Worsties Winners

Here we go, folks! It’s time to announce the winners of this year’s Fightlinker Worsties! We had over 50,000 votes, making this one of the bigger MMA awards thingies out there, I guess. I want to thank everyone who took the time to vote and tell us who you think sucked. The winners will be receiving a special Certificate of Suckitude which we will be mailing out this week.

So without further ado, here’s a special Low Blow revealing the winners:

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW HERE

Or listen via this streamy thing below. An official post will be made later today with winners.

 

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The Worsties: Vote on all categories!

Due to some problems with certain polls closing early and some other site fuckups, we have expanded the voting time for the first annual Worsties. You have until Saturday January 31st at 11:59PM to register your votes. Over 40,000 votes have already piled in from jackals around the world, which I suppose makes these things a Pretty Big Deal. Don’t miss this opportunity to let your scorn be known! Winners will be announced on Monday!

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The Worsties: Bad for the Sport voting

Here we go, the final Worstie category. This one is the special Bad for the Sport category, ‘celebrating’ the absolute worst MMA-related incidents of the year. Your nominees:

Standgate
This scandal is like an onion with many layers. On the day that Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock were set to headline EliteXC’s third network TV event, Shamrock found out how much more money Kimbo was being paid and demanded a last second raise. EliteXC management refused, and Ken took his frustrations out by performing a few grappling drills. Unfortunately, during the drills Ken took a headbutt to the face which opened a cut under his eye that forced him out of competition.

Scrambling to find a replacement, EliteXC pulled undercard fighter and former Ultimate Fighter contestant Seth Petruzelli up and inserted him into the main event where he dispatched Slice in just under 15 seconds. If that wasn’t bad enough, then Petruzelli went onto a radio show the next day and implied that EliteXC management had paid him extra to keep the fight off the ground.

This sparked off a firestorm of controversy, with everyone from Dana White to ESPN to the Florida athletic commission getting involved and passing judgement. While a preliminary investigation into the matter from the commission cleared EliteXC of any wrong doing, the scandal and continued suspicions resulted in a proposed buyout of the promotion by it’s television parters to fall apart. Two weeks later EliteXC’s parent company closed it’s doors and ceased operations.

Rampage’s Rampage
A week after losing a razor thin decision (and his title) to Forrest Griffin, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson made good on his nickname by barrelling across town in his custom-built monster truck. During his rampage he swerved back and forth through traffic, sideswiping several vehicles and leading the police on a lengthy chase before finally stopping the vehicle and being arrested.

Upon posting bail for the fighter, friends and family immediately knew that something was up with the former champ. Over concerns for his mental health and safety, they called police again, who took Jackson to a mental facility for observation. It was later revealed that Jackson had not slept for several days and had suffered a psychotic break where he thought he was a god. Rampage is now facing a criminal trial and potential civil suits from the people who’s vehicles he struck during the incident.

The Ultimate Fighter 8
It’s interesting that a show whose success is credited with saving the UFC and making it the powerhouse it is today can now appear as a candidate for the Bad For The Sport award. But that’s the case as the reality show continues to slide downwards in quality and integrity. The biggest complaint from recent seasons of the show has been the lack of prospects featured, but while latest seasons of The Ultimate Fighter has fixed that particular problem, it’s got issues of it’s own.

Junie Browning is the posterchild for unsportsmanlike conduct and the UFC has been under heavy fire for not removing him from the show after throwing glass at another contestant and attacking several others while drunk. After narrowly avoiding being kicked off by Dana White, Junie continued to cause controversy by jumping into the octagon after a fight to challenge the winner. It is still early in the season and it is still unclear what Junie will do next.

But season eight of The Ultimate Fighter has more problems than Junie. A prank war in the house quickly escalated from frozen underwear to fighters urinating on eachother’s pillows and boobytrapping food with more urine and semen. Again, it is unknown how far this will continue to escalate, as one fighter has already claimed he is planning to use feces in his retaliation.

Justin Levens Murder/Suicide
Things weren’t going so hot for Justin Levens. His MMA career had hit skid row, with 8 of his last 10 fights being losses. To add insult to injury, a fight in July for Affliction was cancelled last second due to a bungled TV schedule. That didn’t stop the CSAC from testing Levens’ urine sample, which popped positive for the painkiller oxymorphone at a rate 10 times higher than the legal limit. The CSAC suspended him for 6 months and fined him $1000.

What may have been the last straw for Levens was an impending court date the following week where he and his wife were on trial for aggravated assault. This stemmed from an incident where a man owed Levens’ wife $200 but could only give her $80. According to the alleged victim, Levens punched and kicked the shit out of him until his wife told him it was enough.

Whatever drove Levens over the edge, no one knows. All people know for sure is that on December 11th Justin Levens and his wife Sara McLean-Levens were found dead in their apartment, Sara with a gunshot wound to the chest and Justin with a gunshot wound to the head. While the official verdict has not come out, all signs at this moment point to the fact that this was a murder-suicide perpetrated by Levens.

Honorable Mentions: You could reason that Evan Tanner dying belongs here, as I would definitely consider his loss to be bad for the sport and the worst thing to happen all year. But the Worsties are all about spite and disdain, and we feel that Evan deserves neither. While that might be favoritism or whatever, we don’t care. Run your own asshole awards if you want to, and put him in there. We’ll pass.

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The Worsties: Worst Drug Suspension

MMA is a competitive sport, and in the words of Tito Ortiz “if you ain’t cheating, you’re not trying.” This Worstie is to single out the worst incident where a fighter decided to use drugs to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors. Your nominees:

Carina Damm - Nandrolone @ Fatal Femmes Fighting
Carina has the distinction of being the first female fighter to test positive for steroids … specifically, Nandrolone. She hit 37.9 ng/ml after her win against Sophie Bagherdai at Fatal Femmes Fighting 4. The legal limit is 2 ng/ml. Damm denies the charges but did not contest them. She was suspended by the CSAC for one year and fined $2500.

James Irvin - Methadone @ UFC: Silva vs Irvin
As if losing to Anderson Silva in 61 seconds wasn’t bad enough, James Irvin followed it up by testing positive for methadone and oxymorphone. Methadone is best known as a drug that helps ween addicts off heroin. Oxymorphone is kinda like morphine, but 5 times stronger. Irvin claimed the painkillers were for a broken foot and was suspended by the NSAC for 9 months.

Chris Leben - Stanozolol @ UFC 89
Chris sure went through a lot to fight Michael Bisping. First he goes to jail to deal with an outstanding warrant so he can fight in the UK, and then he ends up testing positive after his unanimous decision loss to Bisping. His drug of choice was the anabolic steroid Stanozolol. Because the UK has no commissions, the UFC handled the testing and suspensions themselves and shelved Leben for 9 months and fined him an undisclosed amount. Chris admitted his guilt and promised to spread the word to kids that “Steroids are bad.”

Justin Levens - Oxymorphone   @ Affliction Banned
While Justin Levens’ fight ended up being removed from Affliction’s first card because of time constraints, the CSAC went ahead and processed his test anyways. The results? He tested positive for the painkiller oxymorphone to the tune of 10,141 ng/ml. The legal limit is 120 ng/ml. So to say he was slightly over is a bit of an understatement. Levens was suspended for 6 months and fined $1000. Later in the year he would end up killing himself and his wife in an apparent murder / suicide.

Alexandre Nogueira - Boldenone @ WEC 34
WEC featherweight Alexandre Nogueira tested positive for the anabolic steroid boldenone after his loss to Jose Aldo on June 1st. What’s most interesting about this case is Nogueira’s excuse: he claims he injested the steroid by eating tainted goat meat from a restaurant that slaughters the animal right in front of you. The CSAC suspended him for 12 months and fined him $2500.

Antonio Silva - Boldenone @ EliteXC Unfinished Business
After defeating Justin Eilers for the EliteXC heavyweight belt, Antonio Silva tested positive for the anabolic steroid boldenone. Silva claimed that it was a false positive caused by a supplement he used which is known to show up as boldenone. He also claimed that his acromealgy prevented him from using steroids because they might kill him. The CSAC didn’t buy it, and Silva was suspended for a year and fined $2500. That didn’t stop him from shrugging off the suspension and fighting in Japan anyways.

Honorable mentions: Tim Credeur narrowly avoided getting suspended for Adderrall, an attention defecit disorder drug, at the TUF7 finale. Joe Riggs and Nick Diaz were both removed from cards due to painkillers and weed respectively, but were not suspended. And Edwin Dewees tested positive for Nandrolone but who cares about him?

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The Worsties: Biggest Dickhead Promoter voting

We struggled a little bit to decide what to call this category. ‘Worst promoter’ didn’t quite do it because we wanted to recognize the fact that you can throw a good event and still be a total dick. So from there we decided that the award would be for ‘Biggest Dickhead Promoter’. This way, you voters can ignore rational thought and brush aside business acumen. Vote with your heart … who do you just fucking hate? The nominees are:

Todd Beard
Most people didn’t even know who Todd Beard was until a week before he ended up resigning from Affliction Entertainment in disgrace. This guy’s big coming out party was when he showed up on the Farrell show one night and raging like a maniac about the UFC, Dana White, Lorenzo Fertitta, and Randy Couture. This was followed up by Kim Couture filing a restraining order against him for threatening her when she asked about the financials for their joint-owned XTreme Couture clothing label. Last but not least it then came out that Beard was an alcoholic, spent time in jail for defrauding the elderly, and once punched a pregnant woman in the stomach. For real.

Bob Meyrowitz
Once considered the wise grandpappy of the UFC, Bob Meyrowitz decided to give promoting mixed martial arts another go in 2008 with his ill-fated YAMMA promotion. Not content to follow the status quo, Meyrowitz announced that he was going to change the sport forever with a revolutionary new fighting structure and an oldschool 8 man heavyweight tournament. But then the structure turned out to be a cage with a raised outer lip and the tournament fights were only 5 minutes a piece. This resulted in all the fights going to decision and half the fighters tripping on the lip. Instead of being a revolution, the night was a total embarrassment.

Gary Shaw
Dana White always warned people about the ’snakes’ that ruined boxing, but I don’t think anyone actually expected one of them to get his hands on a full fledged promotion. From day one Gary Shaw showed himself to be a man who had no idea what MMA was all about, and even as he started to get the gist of things he decided he was gonna do it his way anyways. Oddball weight classes, freakshow fighters, corrupt matchmaking, you name it, Gary was involved. No one in MMA like him, not even his fellow ProElite members who ended up forcing him out of his job halfway through the year. Oh, and he also hoisted his moron son on us.

Jared Shaw
Where do we start? Jared Shaw is a no talent ass clown who was handed his job as vice-president of EliteXC by his fat shithead dad Gary. Yep, that pretty much sums him up.

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Dana White
Ya know, Dana seems like he’s a really nice guy … unless you piss him off. Then, the gloves are off and he won’t stop until you’ve been annihilated. Victims of Dana’s anger aren’t hard to find … he’s shat on Fedor, Barnett, Lindland, and more. But what’s a bit of vitriol in an interview compared to the hell he’s put Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz through? Or the freeze-out he subjected Andrei Arlovski and now Roger Huerta with? Still, no one gets the shit end of the stick more than promotions that irk him … Dana worked tirelessly to ensure that the IFL, EliteXC, and Affliction all had less than a snowball’s chance in hell of making it.

Honorable Mentions: Mark Pavelich for the whole Drew Fickett thing and a similar interaction with Gary Goodridge, Bill Santiago from the AFL for signing up a bunch of people and never doing shit, and Jay Larkin for calling ground fighting gay (and the Hex).

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The Worsties: Worst Case of Missing Weight voting

Fighters are paid to do two things: show up on weight and fight. How well they do these things depend on training and diet and a thousand other things, but when you boil things down to the base, that’s all they have to do. Make weight. Fight. The end. But some fighters can’t even seem to do this. This award goes to the fighter that has fucked up making weight the worst.

Thiago Alves @ UFC 85
Everyone’s always talking about how huge Thiago Alves is. He tells people that he walks around above 200 pounds, and from his appearance that’s not too far fetched of a fact. That extra size gives him a big advantage in the cage, so it sucks pretty hard when he doesn’t make weight. At UFC 85 he came into his 170 pound fight at 174 pounds. His excuse was an ankle injury which prevented him from putting in the cardio he needed to cut. That injury didn’t stop him from absolutely trouncing Matt Hughes during their fight. This also wasn’t the first time he’s had weight troubles … he was suspended for using a diuretic to make weight in the past.

Gina Carano @ EliteXC: Primetime
Gina has about the shittiest track record in the history of MMA when it comes to making weight. The absurd thing about all this is EliteXC created a new weight class specifically for her, yet she still never seems to hit it. In this case, she came into her 140 pound limit fight at 144.5 pounds. Gina blamed her American Gladiators schedule as the reason she wasn’t able to make weight. Kaitlin Young probably doubled her earnings off the money they took from Gina’s purse, but that didn’t keep her from having the snot beaten out of her.

Nick Diaz @ EliteXC: Return of the King
In the world of weight cutting, missing weight by 2 pounds is considered really bad. 4 is insane. So imagine everyone’s reaction when Nick Diaz showed up for his 160 pound fight against Muhsin Corbbrey weighing 169 pounds! He followed this up by claiming it was from injesting salt water while swimming in Hawaii. Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhh. I’m sure it had nothing to do with Nick fighting at 170 pounds a few weeks earlier in Japan.

Paulo Filho @ WEC 36
Everyone was wondering how Paulo Filho would fare after taking time off for depression and painkiller addiction. It turns out … not so well. He showed up for his 185 pound fight with Chael Sonnen at 192 pounds. He managed to get down to 189, but close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. Not title matches. Yep, Filho was the WEC middleweight champion and because he missed weight, Chael Sonnen didn’t win the belt after defeating him. If that’s not bad enough, Sonnen had promised his father on his deathbed that he would become the champion.

Jason Guida @ TUF 8
You’d think after watching TUF7, the fighters involved in TUF8 would know that they needed to show up on weight and ready to fight on day 1. Unfortunately, no one seemed to have informed Jason Guida of this fact. And so the first episode of the season featured Jason cutting to the point where cramps had him doubled up on the floor with his genitals and anus for all to see. The goal was to hit light heavyweight … 205 pounds, or 206 with the one pound gimme. He made it to 207 before NSAC head Keith Kizer stopped him out of fear for his health, effectively kicking him off the show.

Honorable Mentions: Tyra Parker at Strikeforce Payback came in 4 pounds over, because why act professional when you’re just a jobber?

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The Worsties: Worst MMA Clothing Company Voting

If there’s one terrible thing that MMA’s recent success has spawned, it’s the endless line of shitty clothing companies. Everyone with a few bucks and a cracked copy of photoshop has gotten into the game, and sadly enough it’s often the worst shirts that sell the most.

Now it’s time to speak out against aggro meathead couture (no, not that Couture). Vote for your most hated MMA clothing company right here.

Affliction

Cage Fighter

Hostility

Jesus Didn’t Tap

One More Round

Tapout

Warrior International

Honorable Mentions: Way way way too many to mention. We tried to keep this as a battle between the big dogs in the MMA clothing industry (and the Jesus Didn’t Tap guys because it’s so fucking retarded). So if you don’t see your company here, don’t think it’s because you don’t suck too. You’re just not on the same scale of suckitude as these guys.

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