MMA LADY CHAMP CYBORG ABUSED
Dallas, TX– Having gone back and forth over this subject, there will now be an MMA column each and every Wednesday, this in addition to our weekend/event coverage. That being said, let’s get started. The World Extreme Cagefighting, (WEC) is the Triple AAA farm club of the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) that has fighters from bantamweight & 125 to middleweight at 185 lbs. They will return to Sacramento, CA on April 24 with Jose Aldo Jr. vs. drawing card Uriah Faber for the WEC featherweight (135) belt, while Ben Henderson-Donald Cerrone (WEC 145 belt) and Mike Brown-Manny Gamburan. Three great fights that I’d like to see LIVE. I think the Dana White and company (Zuffa Sports) that run both UFC & WEC, that their charging $44.95 on PPV is NOT even slightly cool! HEY, REMEMBER FREE TV? There is a darn good chance Strikeforce will go on that same date on free CBS TV. If that happens, the PPV #’s are doomed, if they aren’t already! SPEAKING OF STRIKEFORCE: Herschel Walker was blasted by UFC head Dana White in a Las Vegas radio interview. Saying Walker, who at 47 won his MMA debut a fortnight ago on Strikeforce Miami, an ex-NFL great who won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, to call him worse than a fraud was way over the line, even for the bombastic White. This is pure BS and jealousy for if Dana had Walker, he’d be saying what a great example Walker is seeing he donated his entire six figure purse to “Project Turnaround,” a Dallas, TX charity for street kids. The card, held in Sunrise, FL did 4,927 paid, 2000 in comps, and 1,100 in the luxury boxes for $317,000. According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, they only sold $8,000 in merchandise. Two things come to mind here 1) No real star power on the Strikeforce roster. 2) Horrid salespeople as that’s about $2 bucks a head. The UFC and WWE, they get about $35 bucks a head in merchandise sales…MMA LADY CHAMP ABUSED!GROAN TIME AS COUTURE TO GET TITLE BID: Randy Couture’s victory at UFC 109 over Mark Coleman, who at 45 wasn’t much of a barometer of sorts to determine what Randy has left, means he will get another title shot at either 205 (light heavy) or heavyweight (over 205). To see Couture face Brock Lesnar at heavyweight might bring us the first major MMA death, the same one that Dana White tried to attribute to Herschel Walker. MAS STRIKEFORCE: Cris Cyborg, who beat Gina Carano to within an inch of death last year, is clearly the best female MMA fighter in the world. She only got $35,000 for a tough fight on STRIKEFORCE MIAMI, man is she getting ripped off! Lyoto Machida, the 205 lb. champ is the likely target for the soon to be 47-year old, but that’ll be after the May card in Montreal in which Machida (16-0) must face Shogun Rua (22-4) who beat Lyoto in their first encounter but wuz robbed by judging that reminded you of boxing…WRESTLING NOTES: TNA Wrestling is moving to Monday nights on Spike TV at 9 PM ET to go toe to toe with Vince McMahon’s WWE…The signing of Hulk Hogan, not as a wrestler but a major player in the theme of the company along with Eric Bishoff is a plus for wrestling fans. Speaking of WWE, they just released 3.5 million of their video game “Smackdown vs. Raw 2010.” Although this is early, that puts them slightly ahead of the UFC’s video game which should surpass the WWE numbers by the end of the year.
Pedro Fernandez