Back in July of 2008, MMA fighter Rampage Jackson caused quite a bit of chaos in Newport Beach, CA when he went on a hit-and-run spree and evaded police. It’s a wonder they ever caught him, though, since the master of disguise was driving a truck with his picture and name plastered all over it.
Last week Jackson had his final day in court and was given 3 years of informal probation, set to expire on January 7, 2013.
The Santa Ana, Calif., judge dismissed Jackson’s felony evading police charge and upheld his conviction for misdemeanor reckless driving because he completed 200 hours of community service, submitted to random drug testing and underwent psychological counseling.
“I will never see that judge in a courtroom again,” Jackson told the Orange County Register after the hearing. “I don’t see myself doing anything crazy again… I want to be a positive role model.”–Fanhouse.com via MMAFighting.com
He basically used the temporary insanity defense citing lack of food and sleep deprivation as the culprit following his UFC 86 loss to Forrest Griffin. Since we all know how tough on crime the State of California is, I’m sure the 3 years of informal probation is really going to teach him a lesson. I mean, he already spent 200 hours picking up garbage and reading to children. I can’t believe he’s not rocking in a corner somewhere in perpetual fugue due to such a traumatic sentencing.
If you saw the main event for the Strikeforce Evolution telecast on Showtime last night, you enjoyed what might be one of the great MMA comebacks of the year, if not of all time. Vince from FilmDrunk saw Scott Smith, an alleged scrub that handed Cung Le and his feet of fury their first loss ever in MMA. Vince brings the poop.
Cung Le was absolutely destroying Scott Smith with crazy spinning back kicks and shit for three rounds — came close to getting stopped a couple times — and then with a minute left Smith lands a left hook and then pounds him out for the win. And this is like the third or fourth time Smith has won with a hail mary KO. He also made Strikeforce look stupid because they basically did for Cung Le what the UFC did for Kimbo — give him what they thought was an easy fight against a guy with no ground game. Oops.
The whole fight is after the jump. Skip to the 16-minute mark for the quick coup-de-grace, a left hook from Smith that’s literally so compact and quick that you’ll miss it the first time around. It’s just totally mind-numbing how dude just gets kicked for 12 minutes and then lands one punch to pull this thing out. My stepdad had a similar experience that he refers to as “his first marriage.” Not funny ha-ha. Just funny sad. Read the rest of this entry »
UFC seems to be facing an issue that’s been haunting the movie and recording industries for years. No, I don’t mean rampant homosexuality. Although if that were the case, at least we could see some fights in DC. Internet piracy actually has become a big concern for the mixed martial arts promotion, especially in the face of wobbly pay-per-view buys and the sudden illness of UFC heavyweight champ Brock Lesnar.
UFC chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta, who testified on behalf of the mixed martial arts league on Wednesday, told CNBC that live streaming to the Web is a major concern, but it’s also hard to deal with.
“These sites provide us with a tool to take live streams down,” Fertitta said. “But for our last fight, there were 160,000 streams going.” –Darren Rovell.
Lesnar, by the way, is out of the hospital and seems to be doing better, as far as bearded white guys behind a table are concerned. UFC plans to issue an interim heavyweight title while Lesnar recovers from diverticulitis. Why? In what other sport would they do this? The Steelers weren’t interim AFC champs when Tom Brady went down in Week 1. What would an interim championship belt look like? I think it’d look like a regular belt, affixed with a giant Post-It that reads “Back In 5 Minutes.”
Here’s a clip from UFC 107 over the weekend where B.J. Penn opens up a can of whoop-ass (and an amazingly large gash) onto the face of Diego Sanchez. That high kick happened in the fifth round of their main event bout, and you can see the referee beginning to step in at the end of the clip, whereafter Sanchez was put in front of a doctor. That doctor gave the easiest diagnosis of his life and determined that Diego could not continue. Sure you don’t want to test for lupus anyway, doc? Just to be safe? –Fightlinker. Thanks, Vince.
The seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that is UFC is finally slowing down. Recent returns for UFC 106, which aired November 21, indicate that only 330,000 people bought the pay-per-view. Compare that to the 1-million-plus that paid for UFC 105, which was a week earlier. Hmm, can’t imagine why people didn’t shell out $50 on back-to-back weekends, especially after UFC 105 featured Randy Couture and UFC 106 featured guys that I’ve never heard of. But the mixed martial arts outfit might have a bigger issue than overexposure–credibility.
Over 500,000 people paid $50 to watch a guy get robbed of a title and a win. Even worse, over 1 million people watched arguably the wrong guy win a fight on the judge’s scoring card again at UFC 105. Take recent fights on The Ultimate Fighter into equation, and you have a scenario where you are expecting people to pay $50 to watch fights that are coming down to bad decisions. More than exciting fights or star power, [C]redibility counts more than anything else when promoting your sport. The UFC has lost a ton of credibility recently and that is exactly why casual fans are passing on the UFC. –Eric Gargiulo, Camel Clutch Blog.
You also can’t look at the sudden drop without discussing the sudden withdrawal of Brock Lesnar, UFC’s heavyweight champ who was scheduled to fight on that card against Shane Carwin. Lesnar pulled out before undergoing minor surgery for some intestinal infection thing called diverticulitis.
Would people have dished out cash for that fight? Maybe. But the numbers don’t lie. MMA will have to navigate through These Trying Economic Times just like everyone else.
The peeps over at Fightlinker are putting on a little contest: design the worst possible mixed martial arts T-shirt possible. And really, if you’re terrible at art–as most MMA shirt designers seem to be–you’d seem to have a natural advantage for this sort of thing.
Here’s how it works: those with Photoshop or even just MS Paint skillz create the ugliest MMA shirt possible. You know the standard terrible conventions: skulls, eagles, bullets, eagle skulls that shoot bullets, wings, top hats, boobs, babes, blood and boners. That kind of thing.
The deets are over there, but the deadline seems to be December 15th. Are you going to submit a design? YES! YES! YES! YES! I don’t know when the hell people started saying “deets” instead of “details.” Yeah, I get it, we’re a busy society, but it’s just one freaking syllable. Come on, peeps. Read the rest of this entry »
