Fight Game Blog

On F4WOnline/Wrestling Observer today, it was posted that the UFC and Jon Fitch have come to a settlement.

Here is a direct quote from the report.

Jon Fitch spoke with Lorenzo Fertitta today and agreed to sign the merchandising contract. He is back in UFC and will fight Jan. 31 against Akihiro Gono as scheduled.

Christian Wellisch has also been reinstated. He had agreed to sign the merchandising contract but was fired as part of the blow-up between Dana White and Zinkin Entertainment, his management company. Right now things are being negotiated regarding the other fighters affected but those aren’t settled yet.

Also on the site, Dave Meltzer said that it wasn’t only the video game issue, but more so an issue between DeWayne Zinkin and Dana White.

The videogame issue was part of it, but these have been problems simmering for many years, long before most of the fighters in question were even in the UFC.

Shane Prim says that John Polakowski is legally insane. He’s John “The Hugger”.

George Roop says that even though John is nice, he’s going in there with bad intentions and is going to make him bleed. He hurt his hand sparring. Mir says he hyper extended his finger at the knuckle. He can’t make a fist.

Someone stole the marshmallows from John’s box of Lucky Charms and he’s no longer John “The Hugger”. He’s pissed.

Mir says Roop’s hand is a dead fish. Dana White says John “The Hugger” is goofy, but he can go toe to toe. Mir says it should be an easy win for Roop, but because of that hand, the fight is harder.

Big Nog likes Roop and plays around with him.

John Polakowski vs. George Roop

Roop had the upper hand for more than half the round, but “The Hugger” got on top with about 1:30 left in the round. But Roop was doing just as much from the bottom as John was.

John was throwing the better punches and seemed to have hurt Roop in the second. Then Roop took over and controlled him for the rest of the round and then got his back, but couldn’t get the choke in.

Winner: George Roop by way of unanimous decision

Dana White says bad judging killed the fight because “The Hugger” won the second round.

Junie blew up again because the guys were messing with him and throwing eggs at him while he was at the pool. Not sure why it was even necessary to show it.

They are picking the semi-final matches.

The semi-finals are:

Ryan Bader vs. Eliot Marshall

Philipe Nover vs. George Roop

Krzysztof Soszynski vs. Vinny Magalhaes

Junie Browning vs. Efrain Escudero

Next week, we get two fights and they are the first on the list.

Big news late tonight.

Jon Fitch has been cut
According to Dave Meltzer, Jon Fitch and Christian Wellisch were cut today for not signing UFC’s merchandising agreement. Both fighters were advised not to sign the agreement by Duane Zinkin and Bob Cook of Zinkin Entertainment. Zinkin Entertainment also represents Cain Velasquez and Josh Koschek, who also haven’t signed the agreement according to the article. Mike Swick reportedly signed the agreement and is not in danger.

In smaller news, though Fedor’s people probably want you to think it’s big news.

Fedor welcomes “superfight” with Brock Lesnar
It’s a fight that will never happen as long as UFC is the big game in town, but Fedor’s people have called out Brock Lesnar even though they don’t think that at this point, Lesnar could get out of the first round against Fedor. It’s not really news because the UFC would never agree to M-1’s demands, which include co-promotion between the UFC, M-1, and Affliction according to MMA Junkie.

The bargaining power is completely with the UFC and not with Fedor and M-1. They are the number one MMA company even without Fedor. Fedor’s people seem to be trying to bait the UFC by stating that he’s still the number one pound for pound, even though the UFC claims that Anderson Silva is. At the end of the day, unless Fedor is a free agent and can negotiate with the UFC again, this is a fight that won’t happen.

I think we are all in agreement that UFC 91 was a phenomenal show and one of the best UFC shows of all time. It had everything you could ever want on a MMA card.

Let’s get to the feedback.

Big D

Show overall rating: Thumbs WAY UP

Best Fight: Jeremy Stephens vs. Rafael Dos Anjos
Worst Fight: Mark Bocek vs. Alvin Robinson

One of the best UFC Cards EVER. Top to bottom I was never bored. We saw all types of styles. We saw great standup, we saw great ground fighting. It was a great card TOP TO BOTTOM. There were NO bad fights at all, and even the one that went the distance had a handful of beautiful standup combinations and trading. This was PERFECT MMA, and I’m so happy that so many new fans were exposed to good MMA. Long live the UFC.

Alan

Show overall rating: Thumbs Up

Best Fight: Jorge Gurgel vs. Aaron Riley
Worst Fight: Mark Bocek vs. Alvin Robinson

Awesome show all around.

Duan

Show overall rating: Thumbs Up

Best Fight: Jorge Gurgel vs. Aaron Riley
Worst Fight: Mark Bocek vs. Alvin Robinson

Best UFC card in quite a while. This was one of those shows which turned out far better in execution than it looked on paper. Great night of fights from beginning to end rounded off with a historic Main event.

This show also did a great job of establishing new contenders.
I’m one of Kenny Florian’s biggest doubters, but even I couldn’t begrudge him a title shot after how he handled Stevenson. Gonzaga looked like a monster again; one more big win and he should be right back in the title race. And Damian Maia looks like a legitimate threat to anyone in the 185 pound division.

It was also wonderful to see Aaron Riley back in UFC, and he definitely earned his spot with a performance like that. Ending the broadcast with the Bocek vs. Robinson prelim made for something of an anticlimax; trying to follow on from the huge main event and the excellent Riley vs. Gurgle war just seemed impossible. Great show, none the less.

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Brock Lesnar talks with ESPN about his fight with Frank Mir standing to his right.

Dave Meltzer says it’s a changing of the guard.
Meltzer says that when Royce Gracie won the first UFC, it showed that size didn’t matter. Fifteen years later, Brock Lesnar shows that it does.

UFC gives out fight bonuses for UFC 91.
Knockout of the Night — Jeremy Stephens
Submission of the Night – Dustin Hazelett
Fight of the Night — Aaron Riley vs. Jorge Gurgel

Dana says they’re still waiting for the “right” TV deal at the post fight press conference.
He says the network deals are helping put some of these companies out of business because they are bad deals. He won’t let that happen.

Josh Gross wants to see Brock vs. Fedor.
Gross live blogged the main event and said he’d put Fedor as a 3-1 favorite.

This is the biggest UFC show of the year, and if you believe Dana White, the biggest UFC show of all time. I’m not so sure about that, but this is definitely the most interest I’ve had in a big time main event since probably Chuck Liddell vs. Rampage Jackson. And I might be more excited for this one.

Brock Lesnar punches Heath Herring

1. Demian Maia vs. Nate Quarry

It didn’t take long for Maia to get Quarry down. He got his back, put on a body triangle and eventually got the choke. Quarry never had a chance.

Winner: Demian Maia by way of 1st round submission

2. Gabriel Gonzaga vs. Josh Hendricks

Gonzaga just overpowered Hendricks in the clinch and was hitting him with knees. He knocked Hendricks down with a right hand and Hendricks just laid on the ground waiting for it to be stopped.

Winner: Gabriel Gonzaga by way of 1st round TKO.

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I really need to start watching this show on Wednesdays. It’s actually getting pretty good.

The preview says that a fighter gets knocked out in the house. Uh oh.

They recap the fight from last week and Team Nog chants, “Assassin Phillipe!”

Krzysztof Soszynski is in the last light heavyweight fight and his thumb is jacked.

Tom Lawlor and the just defeated Dave Kaplan are drinking and Kaplan is getting ripped. Kaplan says he’s never been knocked out. Shane says that Kaplan and Lawlor only brought speedos to the house because that’s all they wear. Shane talks exactly like BJ Penn.

Junie is all for the drinking because it takes the attention away from him. A drunken Kaplan begs Lawlor to hit him and he finally does and Kaplan just goes out. Kaplan says he wasn’t knocked out. But he really was. He couldn’t stand up straight. Kaplan says he wasn’t unconscious. He must watch the tape of himself.

Vinnie says Krzysztof has good stand up, but can’t stop takedowns. He faces Kyle Kingsbury in the fight. Team Nog pranks Krzysztof by putting any movable object in the house into his room. Dan Henderson comes in and train with Krzysztof, but it’s a short segment. They don’t really put him over like they put over Silva.

Krzysztof enjoys the prank, but his team doesn’t look like they’re going to help him clean up his room.

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The story out of the weigh ins is that Randy Couture came in at 220 pounds, which is lighter than what he originally said he would come in at.

Also, Brock Lesnar was very subdued.

I just visualize my hand being raised. That’s all I have to say. I’ll see Randy Couture and everybody else tomorrow night.

Thanks to MMA Junkie for the quote.

Here were the weigh in results.

Ryan Thomas (170) vs. Matt Brown (171)
Alvin Robinson (155) vs. Mark Bocek (155)
Jeremy Stephens (155) vs. Rafael Dos Anjos (155)
Jorge Gurgel (155) vs. Aaron Riley (156)

Live matches

Dustin Hazelett (170) vs. Tamdan McCrory (170)
Demian Maia (185) vs. Nate Quarry (185)
Gabriel Gonzaga (256) vs. Josh Hendricks (238)
Kenny Florian (156) vs. Joe Stevenson (156)
Randy Couture (220) vs. Brock Lesnar (265)

Weigh in results thanks to Figure Four/Wrestling Observer.

I polled my friends and family who are either very casual UFC fans or die hard fans like myself.

I simply asked them who they thought would win tomorrow’s super fight, and how.

Ten people responded to the poll and out of those ten, seven said Brock would win to only three for Randy.

Out of those seven, four thought Brock would by KO, while three thought he’d win by decision.

As for those who chose Randy, two thought he’d win the fight by submission in the second round, while one saw him winning a decision.

It definitely seems that the casual fans see Brock as a monster and Randy as an aging legend and that’s very true and also how the UFC is trying to position this fight. But it was interesting to me that of the three people who thought Randy was going to win, two thought that he’d submit Lesnar and very early. I’d be very surprised if Brock put himself in that position early in the fight. If Randy wins by submission, I think it’d be much later in the fight.

I wrote a preview yesterday where the writers of this blog and two guests made predictions and out of the six of us, four thought Randy would win. And that’s very different from the poll of my friends and family.

You can read the preview here.

I wrote a piece on Hard For The Yard today about the upcoming UFC Heavyweight Tournament which starts this Saturday with the Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Couture fight. The second match up is scheduled to be Antonio Rodrigo Nogueria vs. Frank Mir at UFC 92 with the winners of each match unifying the UFC heavyweight title.

Check it out on Hard For The Yard.