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
The big news is that Batista is the new World Champion after defeating Chris Jericho as Stone Cold Steve Austin was voted in as special guest referee. That’s an unnecessary title change, but oh well.
HHH wrestled Jeff Hardy, even though they tried hard to influence the fans to make it a three way with Koslov. HHH pinned Hardy again in the middle of the ring.
E:60 did a nice feature on Brock Lesnar and he commented on why he left WWE, and also got up in a huff when the interviewer was going to start talking about steroids.
Also in the piece are Brett Hart, Bill Goldberg, and Dave Meltzer.
I was alerted yesterday by our own Big D that in addition to the Raw Heavyweight Championship Scramble match, according to the Smackdown spoilers (don’t worry, I won’t spoil the actual matches), we will have another scramble for the other championship belt. What?
You don’t have to look very far back to when WWE did something similarly. Let’s go back to February of this year. They had a great idea for a yearly stipulation that made sense. John Cena won the Royal Rumble and because of that win was scheduled for the Wrestlemania title shot. The question always becomes, “What happens with the other title?” They had an awesome solution. Put six of your top guys in the Elimination Chamber match, and the winner would get the other title shot. You could do that every year at No Way Out and you have two special pay per views back to back with the first being the Royal Rumble.
Of course, they screwed it up. Cena decided to take his title shot at No Way Out even though he said the only reason he came back to win the Royal Rumble was because he wanted to main event Wrestlemania. And thus, instead of only doing one Elimination Chamber match at No Way Out, they did two. Imagine if at last week’s pay per view, in addition to the Undertaker and Edge Hell In A Cell match, they decided that John Cena and Dave Batista would be decided in similar fashion. Stupid right?
He had a great plan. He was going to fight three times this year and end his career with a bang. He was going to fight a tune up bout in the spring to get him ready for his rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr., who beat him in 2007. It was the biggest money fight of all time, and though the second fight more than likely wouldn’t have done the same business, it would’ve been the biggest fight of this year. And then, in December, he was set to end his career with one more fight, possibly in his home town.
Part one of the plan went to fruition. De La Hoya beat Steve Forbes in May to set up his fight with Mayweather. But Mayweather Jr. decided to retire instead of take the fight.
(According to Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer there were early talks for both De La Hoya and Mayweather Jr. to be involved in this year’s Wrestlemania to help sell their fight for later this year. Obviously, De La Hoya wasn’t involved in Wrestlemaina, but Mayweather Jr. was.)
I used to do a post once or twice a week at my old site in which I posted links and recapped news stories. I’m bringing it back. The column was MMA only, but because our new site focuses on MMA, boxing, and pro wrestling, so will this column.
News and notes from around the MMA world …
- The UFC Fight Night payouts were just a we bit less than the Affliction payouts. Yes, it said that Tim Sylvia made nearly $800,000 for 36 seconds of work.
Phil Baroni was on a Cage Rage show last night and beat Scott Jansen by knockout. It was vicious.
Jansen is out cold and Baroni goes over to see how he is and someone headbutts Baroni out of the blue. The knockout comes right before the 4 minute mark and the headbutt comes at about the 4:44 mark. Dave Meltzer says it was Scott’s brother Dean.
The big news is that Batista is the new World Champion after defeating Chris Jericho as Stone Cold Steve Austin was voted in as special guest referee. That’s an unnecessary title change, but oh well.
