News and notes from around the MMA world …

- Here’s video of the Randy Couture press conference.

- Denny Burkholder blogs both Couture’s press conference and Dana White’s press conference which went on at exactly the same time.

- Kevin Iole has thoughts on what Couture wants.

- UFC and Spike agree to work together until 2011.

- Dave Meltzer says that Dana White is banking on Brock Lesnar.

- Adam Swift has more on the UFC/Spike TV deal.

Talking Points

The big news was definitely the dueling press conferences yesterday. I don’t have much more to say than what the writer’s in the links I posted above said. There wasn’t really any “news”, other than the fact that the UFC and Spike TV agreed to continue working together.

I do have a fun story from last weekend that relates to a lot of things. Last Friday, I was at WrestleFanFest 2007, which was a wrestling and MMA convention. The promoters booked the famous Cow Palace in San Francisco, and promised tons of stars. On the wrestling side, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Goldberg were the headliners. And early on, they promised Nick Diaz would show for the MMA show (he didn’t), but at least Don Frye was there. To say that it was a mammoth failure is the understatement of the century. I only attended on Friday night, which wasn’t the MMA night, and there were maybe 250 people there maximum. I did get to see Tony Burton who played Duke in the Rocky movies, as well as the great Bud Bundy (David Faustino), who looks very old these days. Traci Bingham also asked me if I was taking her picture with my cell phone and sadly, I had to tell her I was sending a text message. Maybe I should’ve lied and told her I was taking her picture. I also chatted shortly with Mia St. John, the former Playboy Playmate and boxer, who was scheduled for her first MMA match on Saturday. It was canceled by the California State Athletic Commission and when I asked her about it, she said they didn’t think she had enough jiu-jitsu training under her belt.

The weekend turned out to be horrific. The promoters stiffed most of the talent, and Don Frye was actually sucker punched twice by Leland Chapman’s boxing coach. Who is Leland Chapman you ask? He’s the son of “Dog The Bounty Hunter”. The MMA show for Saturday was canceled for what seems to be a bunch of different reasons. On Bryan Alvarez’s Figure Four Daily radio show, Mike Lano, who was there the entire weekend and was supposed to be emergency PR, said that the show was canceled because they didn’t have enough booked fighters to fill out an entire fight card. It was also rumored that they didn’t have a legitimate cage to use.

I attended the wrestling show on Friday night, which was a showcase of a bunch of old wrestlers. I happened to sit next to Shannon Ritch’s wife and stepdaughter. Ritch is an old fighter who according to Sherdog, sports a 38-61 record. His wife, who was a very nice lady, said that Ritch and Don Frye were scheduled to announce the MMA show that was scheduled for Saturday. Ritch was involved in a pro wrestling battle royal (Ritch’s wife said that he’s done pro wrestling in Japan). When I saw that he was involved and that I didn’t even recognize anyone else in the battle royal other than Chavo Guerrero Sr., I asked his wife if he was scheduled to win. She said he was scheduled to be one of the last two people in the match. Not a pro wrestling fan, she didn’t really know what to expect and just pretty much laughed at the horrible theatrics. Ritch did win the match, by the way.

She mentioned that Ritch fought Brian Ebersole in San Francisco last year. In that match, Ritch had an injured back and tapped out in what the athletic commission saw as a work (read: fake), and decided to rule the match a no contest. She said that the California commission was too harsh and was ruining the sport in California. I didn’t really counter any of her arguments, because obviously, with her husband being involved, she’s going to have some kind of bias, and it’s definitely warranted if she believes it’s warranted. I also asked her how it was being the wife of a fighter, and she seemed used to the idea that her husband gets punched in the face for a living. But he’s been doing it so long, either she’s used to it, or he probably would’ve quit already. Definitely an odd night, but it was memorable.

Shannon “The Cannon” Ritch

If you want to contact me, click here.

Thanks for reading,

Garrett M. Gonzales
MMA.Consumerhelpweb.com

Technorati Profile

Labels: Bill Goldberg, Brock Lesnar, Dana White, Dave Meltzer, Don Frye, Mia St. John, Randy Couture, Shannon Ritch, Spike TV

Trackback URI | Comments RSS