Now that the Yankee Mutant Ninja Turtles have been eliminated from the World Cup, we can pretend to stop enjoying soccer and focus on the more traditional sports in America. Like MMA. Feder Emilianenko hadn’t lost a fight in ten years or thereabouts, so I guess he was due to just walk into an armbar against, if I can read the card here, Fabricio Werdum, who shocked the world Saturday after forcing the Russian polar bear to tap out. I don’t know if that’s really Fedor’s nickname, but I’m just gonna go with it.

Now there’s a lot of discussion about whether there will be a rematch, but really, I’m done with Fedor. He dodged the UFC and now he doesn’t have much equity to stand on. He’s ugly, uncharismatic, and technically boring. It’s like watching the Tonya Harding sex tape. Watch the full fight after the jump, provided it’s still on the net. Read the rest of this entry »

Following in the footsteps of Brock Lesnar and Bobby Lashley, former WWE champion Dave Batista claims that he has a contract in place to fight in the Mixed Martial Arts promotion Strikeforce. Unfortunately, the man known in the squared circle as The Animal is reportedly a little off on his facts, as Strikeforce reps told TMZ that there is no deal as of yet. First, they said, he will have to defeat three other wrestlers, climb to the top of a ladder in the center of the ring and retrieve a briefcase with his contract inside.

Batista left the WWE recently to pursue an acting career (his excellent work after the jump) as the 41-year old has made his financial security a top priority. Strikeforce CEO Scott Coker has been working on a deal with the gigantic freak monster that would supposedly guarantee him a decent payday for two Pay-Per-View matches. His first fight would presumably be against Lashley, also a former WWE champ and fellow brick sh*thouse. Lashley is currently 5-0 with Strikeforce, but is rehabilitating a knee injury, which I assume is from repeated blows with a trash can lid and/or baseball bat with barbed wire. But there are some hold-ups before the two sides reach an agreement.

Refuse to tag me in, Bleacher Report:

The first reported issue is money. Batista was one of the top earners in the WWE. At this point in his career and at his age, he knows he only has a short amount of time to compete in MMA and wants to earn as much as possible. The two sides are reportedly not close on money.

The second issue is scheduling. When Batista left the WWE two months ago, the reason given was to focus on his acting career. “The Animal” has had previous roles in films “Wrong Side of Town” and “Wapakman” starring Manny Pacquaio and Nicole Scherzinger. Batista apparently has television and film roles lined up for the next couple of months.

Among his upcoming roles are CSI: Tijuana Pharmacy and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here BEFORE I KILL MY WIFE AND KIDS. Batista joined the WWE in 2000 and made a fast impact because of his remarkable size and agility. In his early years, he made his mark as D-Von Dudley’s bodyguard and then by joining forces with HHH and Randy Orton in Evolution. He went on to win the WWE championship six times. And I know all of that while having actually seen a live female’s breast.

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Everyone seems to have an opinion about the event-ending “brawl” that took place at the latest Strikeforce event in Nashville over the weekend between Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Jake Shields. But was it relatively worse than the little scuffle between the Celtics and Heat in their first-round playoff game in Beantown yesterday? Is such a comparison even possible to make? Let’s pretend for a second that it is.

After Shields’ dispatching of Dan Henderson to defend his middleweight title, Miller approached him and smugly asked, “Where’s my rematch?” The comment touched off a brawl inside the hexagon that saw Miller getting punched and kicked from the bottom of a pile. This, in my opinion, is Brawling Done Right by people who are experts in the field of human incapacitation. But some MMA fans, who are well aware of their sport’s stepchild status on the national leisure landscape, didn’t see it that way. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

The punchy American is an 11-2 underdog going into his fight tonight against Fedor, but everyone seems to be wondering if Brett Rogers has any chance at all. To be fair, neither fighter seems to be getting his due of late, as Fedor Emelianenko has drawn the ire and disappointment of the MMA faithful since turning down UFC to fight for Strikeforce, generally considered to be the CFL of MMA. LOL…They’re even calling Fedor fat now.

If Rogers can get this fight out of the first round–and he seems to have the tools to do so–the grief will only mount for the pudgy Russian. His career choices aside, Fedor is widely considered to be the class of MMA, the fat white Rouskie whale that somebody will have to conquer to make his own name in the sport. It could happen tonight. Full rundown of the card here.

I love Gina Carano like an adopted Chinese teenage girl, but even I have to admit that she got her ass blasted last night. In Carano’s bout with Cris “Cyborg” Santos she caught a bunch of early shots to the face and never recovered. The fight was stopped with one minute SECOND left in the first round, after Carano was getting pounded against the cage like a drunken prom date. Watch the entire fight in the video above.

“I was ready for five rounds if necessary,” said Cyborg. With a title on the line, the fight was was slated for five, five minute rounds. “I felt at that point it was time to finish the fight. I started to harder but I didn’t know there was like five seconds away from the end of the round. I felt like Gina kind of closed her guard and turned around a little bit. That’s when I went for the stronger punches.” via.

Even in watching the weigh-in, the differences were clear. Santos–even in a zebra print bikini–looked like a fighter, where Carano sheepishly stepped on the scale and even laughed in embarrassment as her weight was announced aloud.

That said, I can seriously say that this is the greatest women’s sporting event ever. For one reason: it was a matchup we couldn’t wait to see. More than Annika vs. Carrie. More than Venus vs. Serena. And sure, 50 percent of that was probably dictated by Carano’s appearance, but in this age of lingerie football, lady golf escorts, and subsidized basketball, 50 percent is a fair place to be. But Carano didn’t just gain attention because she was hot, but because she was hot and she could kick your ass! But after Satrurday’s fight, the latter may come under contention.