Monday, August 31 7:47 pm PT: Tyron Woodley and Zach Light will meet in a welterweight contest on Sept. 25 for Strikeforce Challengers in Tulsa, Okla., the promotion announced Monday.
A two-time All-American at the University of Missouri, the undefeated Woodley submitted Sal Woods in the second round of their undercard bout on June 6 at Strikeforce “Lawler vs. Shields” in St. Louis, Mo.
Light, 35, a two-time All-American wrestler in high school and junior college, lost his last three bouts in 2008.
Monday, August 31 5:20 pm PT: A story worth your time: Felipe Martinez, 43 and twenty years retired from boxing, spends his time teaching stand-up to all comers in his backyard and garage in Lathrop, Calif.
Amateur or pro, tuition is free. "He won't accept any money," MMA fighter Dominique Robinson told the [i]Record[/]i’s Bob Highfill. "He never asks for anything. He doesn't like money." In other words, he is unlike anyone who has ever participated in boxing.
Upwards of 30 people show up to Martinez’s property to receive instruction: according to visitors, he pays attention to all of them. If you find combat sports to be a swamp of indefensible personalities, this is a nice counter-point.
Over a thousand fights and sixteen years in the books without anything more serious than a punctured lung: think the UFC can ever get a break? OregonLive.com writer John Canzano watched in abject horror Saturday as combat athletes got banged up (gasp!), spit blood (good Lord!), and appeared to be “wobbling.” (This never happens in golf!)
Disruption of one’s equilibrium, Canzano concluded, is a harbinger of death. (Lesson? Do not ever get on a merry-go-round. Unless you want to die.)
“Someone is going to die in the Octagon someday,” he wrote. “We're headed straight there, and anyone who saw the damaging blows to the brains on Saturday, including UFC head Dana White, can't ever say they didn't see it coming.”
I sincerely hope Canzano walks to work, because the mortality rate for driving is substantially worse than it is for a mixed martial arts contest.
Monday, August 31 1:40 am PT: Addressing media prior Saturday’s UFC 102 event, UFC President Dana White warned fans that five round non-title fights -- officially an option for events held in Nevada -- won’t be part of his promotion’s curriculum.
“I was saying [last week] I wish this was a five-round fight, Nogueira and Couture, and there's been other fights, too, that I've wished were five rounds," MMA Junkie quoted White as saying. "But I'm a purist, man. Title fights are five rounds. When you fight for the title, it's five rounds."
The mess that would be created by random five-round bouts without a title on the line would be unholy: if Nogueira-Couture went five rounds, but October’s Cain Velasquez-Ben Rothwell fight only three, that gives the former pair additional time to work and possibly alter the outcome. Since all four men are in pursuit of a heavyweight belt, why change the rules for two?
MMA has avoided suffering from a lack of uniformity: no reason to start now.
Monday, August 31 12:00 am PT: Only in the career of Randy Couture could a loss precede a contract renewal: according to Sherdog’s Loretta Hunt, Couture has signed a new six-fight contract that will keep him in the UFC fold until he’s back in diapers. More importantly, it puts him out of reach of Strikeforce, Japan, or whatever other insidious force threatens to take even .002% of the UFC’s market share.
Apparently, Couture’s performance Saturday against Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira -- a valiant effort that smothered any talk of retirement -- made Chuck Liddell agitated: according to Dana White’s post-fight press speech, Liddell texted him frequently during the show about returning to the cage.
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