We learned this past week that Chael Sonnen is pretty epic at trolling, but let’s not forget that he’s also a pretty good lickspittle too. Remember his ode to Dana White right after Demian Maia insta-subbed him at UFC 95? And now he’s trying to score more points with the brass by shitting on Showtime:
“At the end of the day if you want to get to the top of the card in the UFC, you’ve got to fight tough guys. If you want to be a fighter and get in the cage and be a big deal at your local strip club, go to Showtime. If you want to fight real guys, this is the place to do it,” said Sonnen.
I wonder if Chael’s trainer Matt Lindland is still considered a big deal at the Jiggles club in Oregon after losing his last Strikeforce fight.
Here’s Chuck Liddell at an ugly shoe promo event sans mohawk but plus a surprising amount of white beard hair. He talks about hating Tito’s guts, title contention and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t make out over the endless sound of wind blowing. Nothing much there, I just wanted to point out the old man patches. Perhaps a Just For Men sponsorship is in his future.
*UPDATE* Looks like Chuck’s ugly shoe sponsorship will see him in a commercial with Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino from Jersey Shore.
“Ahhh this sucks!” indeed. I’m a little iffy on whether Nate couldn’t stuff those takedowns because he was going for the KO or because he couldn’t stuff those takedowns, period. Another year or so of training wrestling with GSP and the gang should fix that hole (if you can call it a ‘hole’ when you get outwrestled by an NCAA Division 1 and Olympic alternate wrestler).
Coleman made Couture’s night easy when, at the advice of his trainer Shawn Tompkins and the despite the fact it has never been his path to victory, he chose to stand and trade.
From the outset, Couture jabbed at Coleman (16-10) and snapped his head back with right hands. Coleman took the shots and moved back on uncertain legs. This was not the dominant man who mauled people en route to UFC and Pride championships.
Before the fight, Tompkins said Coleman’s performance would be a confident one. That for the first time in his career he walked into a fight knowing he was prepared and trained up. Shortly into the bout, Coleman carried the attitude of a confused athlete, one who was thinking instead of fighting.
Between the first and second round, Coleman looked up at Tompkins as the Canadian — who has a long resume of working with some of MMA’s best, including Couture and Dan Henderson — offered instructions on how to keep distance and how to fire off combinations. I’m fairly certain he would have loved if Tompkins told him to run out there and take a shot on a double-leg. If you’re going to go out, go out at what you do best.
There are some that say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I disagree … humans can learn new tricks no problem. I don’t know about learning an entirely new way of fighting though. Training Coleman for a few months in boxing and then sending him out to strike with Couture makes about as much sense as duct taping a car’s windows shut and trying to drive it underwater.
Ariel gets some garble from Tito Ortiz on why he talked shit to Mark Coleman. For those of you who missed it, here’s what Coleman’s manager said about Tito’s wife back in October:
“The only thing Coleman is afraid of when it comes to Tito is contracting swine flu from that dirty ass d-bag. We all know where he lays his head down at night. Tito wants to get personal with a legend? OK, let’s get personal – we can all go to our porn collections and watch what Tito sleeps with night after night.”
Straka: “This is the second stoppage for Frank Trigg in his return to the UFC. Is he in any danger?”
Dana: “Probably. Yeah, I would say so.”
Frank kinda reiterated in an interview with Ariel Helwani that “when he’s done fighting for the UFC” he’d move on to commentating. So I guess now we have to wait and see if the UFC officially cuts him (he’s been pronounced dead before), and if he sticks to that plan. Honestly I hope he doesn’t. If it’s a choice between Trigg talking and Trigg fighting, I’ll choose Trigg fighting. If there’s a viable third option like a punch in the junk or a root canal, I’d go for that. But between those first two, yeah: Trigg fighting.
After the jump: a Diego-level drunk Phil Baroni gives his thoughts on the fight.
I thought Tito Ortiz was doing Mark Coleman a backhanded favor on Saturday night by shit talking him right after Coleman was trounced by Randy Couture. After all, a fight with Tito is pretty much the only money fight for Coleman left in the UFC, and this had a lot of people wondering if that was now in the cards. But not only is Dana White not interested in that fight, it doesn’t sound like he’s interested in Coleman fighting for the UFC any more.
There is something to say about cutting a guy who just headlined your PPV card, but Dana White is right: Mark Coleman looked like total poop against Couture. Add to that the fact that the UFC’s light heavyweight division is no place for a 45 year old on his way down and you can’t even really justify throwing him another fight or two so he can make some more show money.
Dana did have enough heart to say the decision sucked and that Coleman “would always be a part of this organization”, whatever that means. Is a job with Zuffa in Mark’s future? Would Coleman even take one? Or will he return to Japan or something and try to squeeze a few more paychecks out of his career?
After spending the majority of his time leading up to UFC 108 freaking out at the press and fans for shitting on the event, Dana was a lot more reserved for UFC 109, saying we’re spoiled because the card only sucks compared to other UFC events (I don’t really know what else we’re supposed to compare it to) and putting his estimate at a very reasonable 375,000 buys. Subtract the standard 30% pump Dana tends to add to all his numbers, and that’s European event weak.
But MMA Payout brings some signs that point towards the event not sucking as hardcore as UFC 108 did:
UFC 109 was thought by many to be a candidate for the UFC’s lowest PPV total of the year, but a great deal of the indicators we’re seeing suggest that it will likely garner a higher buyrate than UFC 108’s 300,000.
Interestingly, Spike scheduled the debut of Countdown to UFC 109 following last weekend’s UFC 107 replay that countered Strikeforce: Miami on Showtime. The Countdown capitalized on UFC 107’s massive lead-in to draw 881,000 viewers, which is the 2nd highest reported viewership for a Countdown show (4th highest when you include last year’s UFC 94 Primetime shows). Moreover, the reported gate revenue for the event was $2.27 million, which is generally correlated with a buyrate above the baseline of 300,000.
It will be interesting to hear what the real numbers end up being from Meltzer in a week or so. But for now, it’s worth adding the caveat that so far MMA Payout’s gate / countdown ratings formula has proven itself to be about as accurate as a dowsing rod and less accurate than an educated guess from an informed individual. Sure, they’re usually within 100,000 buys of the actual number. But when you’re dealing with a PPV number spread that usually sits somewhere between 300k and 700k buys, that’s about as accurate as throwing a bowling ball down the wrong lane.
After talking his way into a title shot, I suppose it should be no surprise that Chael Sonnen is now going to continue talking mindless retardo smack. Here he is at the UFC 109 post-even presser discussing who he’d rather face for the middleweight title (eeeeuuuugh), Vitor Belfort or Anderson Silva:
“I hope Anderson wins because I think Vitor is a lot tougher fighter. If I have to choose between the two, I’m going to take the low road and take the easier opponent leading to the championship. I really do mean it. Vitor Belfort, in truth, has really never lost a fight in the standup realm. The blueprint to beat Vitor is out there, but it’s not to stand up with him. I can’t wait for that fight but I am picking Vitor.”
Vitor Belfort, in truth, has actually lost a few fights in the standup realm, most notably to Randy Couture. But it wouldn’t really be a Chael Sonnen remark if it wasn’t factually incorrect. Maybe all this verbal bullshit is prep work for Chael’s entrance into politics. It seems nowadays that to be an American politician you have to be an idiot with very little grasp on reality, so Chael is already well on his way in that regard.
Unfortunately for Mike Swick, submission of the night money only goes to the guy who lands the sub. UFC 109 awards are out and here’s who made some extra bank:
Knockout of the Night: Matt Serra ousts Frank Trigg Submission of the Night: Paulo Thiago putting Mike Swick to sleep Fight of the Night: Chael Sonnen humps Nate Marquardt
I had a little conniption fit last night when I thought they had awarded the sub of the night to Randy Couture (I could have sworn that’s what they said at the end of the PPV) but fortunately Paulo Thiago gets that award plus the 60k that goes along with it. And most importantly, of course, my respect.
KO of the night going to Serra makes sense not just because his knockout was awesome, but because it was the only one of the night other than Joey Beltran’s pounding out of the latest Gracie disappointment. By the way, does the ‘Mexicutioner’ Beltran get a bonus for having the most awesome nickname in MMA?
As for Fight of the Night, while Marquardt vs Sonnen wasn’t exactly what I’d classify as a dynamic or exciting fight, it did have me freaking the fuck out the whole time. I went through all five steps of grief during the fight – denial (”There’s no way the entire fight will be like this!”), anger (”That cunt Sonnen! Argh!”), bargaining (”Okay, so he’s going to win … but no title shot, right?”), depression (”Chael Sonnen is going to get a fucking title shot”), and acceptance (”Anderson Silva will cave Sonnen’s face in, and that’s acceptable to me”). And let’s face it, it’s not like this fight robbed any other amazing fight of the award.
We discussed on the last Happy Hour which fight would win our own ‘Worst Fight of the Night’ awards and while I was correct in thinking Tuchscherer vs Hague would be a terrible gas-fest, it wasn’t enough to beat out the awfulness that was Demian Maia vs Dan Miller. It was like Dan Miller’s gameplan was “Don’t get taken down” and he hadn’t really thought too far past that. That’s all he did for the entire fight, turning what should have been an awesome back and forth scrap into a horrible defensive bore. Terrible.
