Thursday, November 12 8:38 pm PT: I tried. I really did. When news of Quinton Jackson’s casting in the “A-Team” remake spread earlier in the fall, I attempted to reach out to original B.A. Baracus, Mr. T, for comment. (These are the things that get written down on my Post-its: “Call Mr. T.”)
Unfortunately, T’s listed management no longer represented him and didn’t know who did. Life went on. Now Fanhouse’s Ariel Hawani has blogged that he ran into T in Chicago over the weekend. Sickening.
Strangely, T came off as reflective and reserved. "I have much love for him," he said of Jackson. "I do. It's going to become a pressure thing because people are going to come up to him and say, 'Hey, you're not Mr. T.' They are going to try to get in his head just to meddle with him…I like his style, his toughness. He'll bring his own unique personality to that role.”
Good for Jackson, but he’d probably be better off with Dana White’s blessing than T’s. At any rate, onto Carl Weathers.
Thursday, November 12 1:04 pm PT: If it worked for Kazushi Sakuraba, it can work for Matt Hughes: after depressing the hell out of mid-1990s MMA fans by putting a stake in Royce Gracie’s heart, the onetime steamroller of the welterweight division may fight Renzo Gracie next. (This according to Heavy.com, FightersOnly.com, and the vague, teasing Twitter comments of both Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta.)
In making no sense at all, it actually makes perfect sense: both Gracie, 42, and Hughes -- who cannot contend at the Alves/St. Pierre level -- are unlikely to make a title run at this stage in their careers. This is a fight for a fight’s sake, and that’s something the UFC has been sorely lacking in recent years.
Thursday, November 12 10:40 am PT: Africa is rarely portrayed in media as anything other than a politically tumultuous continent with lions prepared to eat tourists right off the runway. (This is amusing, but untrue: it’s actually cheetahs.) African citizens enjoy their distractions the same as any other segment of the world, and MMA is rapidly becoming one of them.
Thursday, EFC Africa will host 12 bouts in Northgate, Johannesburg: one of two competing Americans is Gabe Casillas, who reportedly trains out of Wanderlei Silva’s Las Vegas gym. The venue, the Coca-Cola Dome, has previously been host to Elton John, 50 Cent, and the WWE. (You guess which one of these things doesn’t belong.) There’s even the requisite gaudy afterparty at Platinum. VIPs get in free.
The news follows word that Dubai could soon host events, the UFC’s journey into Germany, and increasing sanctioned violence in China and the UK. MMA will probably never be the biggest sport in the states, but the notion of it becoming the biggest sport in the world is looking less and less ridiculous.
Thursday, November 12 10:30 am PT: Being a reality television series producer can mean a handful of things: a certain percentage of dinner party guests are going to look at you like you have leprosy, for one. Two, you’re going to be elated when a subject utters the phrase, “There’s chickens in my car.”
Chickens, consumed en masse to feed the bodies of fighters, exacted some kind of circular revenge during Wednesday’s “Ultimate Fighter,” dropping feces into the rental car upholstery of Rashad Evans. This is the kind of thing responsible for MMA’s sensational growth during the middle part of this decade: the idea that we get emotionally invested in athletes’ lives before watching them get brutalized in a ring. And nothing resonates more than athletes chasing pooping chickens.
Not partaking in the aviary fun was Matt Mitrione, who was shown -- either via the magic of editing or simply his own hammy acting -- suffering the ill effects of having his head used as a bongo. Mitrione may or may not fight, which may or may not lead to Kimbo Slice returning, which may or may not cause me to care.
The man who beat Slice, Roy Nelson, earned an early holiday gift by beating Justin Wren via decision. It was the least impressive victory of the season to date, as Nelson finally behaved as he looks -- sluggish, out of shape, and ineffective. His coach was correct in wishing for a third round: Evans knows bulls--t when he smells it.
Thursday, November 12 5:27 am PT: The sand-encrusted United Arab Emirates (UAE), which probably exist in some minds as a kind of distant cousin to Tattooine, has some fairly significant aversions to American culture: censorship is not uncommon, evolution is a verboten discussion, and political officers prefer prison terms over bankruptcy for debtors. Visit and keep a very, very tight grip on your passport.
But, oh, how they love their sports. As detailed in this grand piece by ESPN’s Jim Caple, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has infused Dubai with multimillion horse racing tracks and golf courses while plying stars like Roger Federer and Tiger Woods into PR opportunities. By 2012, perhaps some of their citizens will be wearing giant cheese wedges on their heads.
It’s been nearly nine years since Randy Couture fought outside of the U.S.: perhaps the plane ride boredom forced him to make the very prizefighter error of thinking too far ahead.
“I would love a crack at [Lyoto] Machida,” he told Sherdog’s Greg Savage. “His style is very interesting, and nobody has seemed to have gotten a handle on him yet. Skillset-wise, it would be a great match-up.”
Couture approaches prizefighting like one of those giant, microscopically-fractured puzzles. He delights in figuring people out, and in that realm, there are few fighters more difficult than Machida, who represents the polar-bear-in-snow image in that analogy. But meeting Machida is conditional on beating Brandon Vera in Manchester Saturday, an order that might be hard to fill for a 46-year-old: Vera is the best Thai boxer Couture has faced in years, has better-than-average wrestling for the division, and probably won’t be as physically dysfunctional after a weight cut as Couture.
All of this may not matter if Vera’s will can be broken against the fence, but it was Couture who walked away after stumbling at the hand speed of Chuck Liddell in 2006. Vera is not Liddell, but at this stage of Couture’s career, he may not have to be. Fighting Machida will probably remain a hypothetical.
