Cagewriter - UFC

  • Just when you thought Anderson Silva had a lock on the MMA comeback of the year for his win over Chael Sonnen, Joe Warren won the Bellator featherweight championship with an unbelievable comeback. 

    Returning Bellator champ Joe Soto dominated Warren in the first round, landing punch after punch. After all the shots that Warren took, there was no good reason for Warren to be standing. Soto taunted his Warren, moving his hands away from his face. Warren, a former world champion wrestler, couldn't get Soto to the ground. Warren tried for a spinning back kick, but after he slipped, Soto shook his finger at Warren.

    The tide changed in the second round, with Warren knocking Soto down with a big righ, following up with unanswered ground and pound, and then when they returned to their feet, Warren finished the fight off with a huge knee. The fight was stopped at 0:38 of the second round.

    The fight changed so quickly that Soto asked his corner, "What happened?" 

    "It was all about refocusing. You can't stop me. I'm the baddest man on the planet," Warren said.

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  • In an odd way, Roger Huerta is proving you don't need the UFC marketing machine to promote yourself to casual and non-MMA fans. The former UFC prospect is only 1-1 since leaving the promotion but has gotten plenty of national attention.

    The reason? It wasn't exactly part of some grand plan. At 2:15 a.m., Huerta happened to stumble upon what looked like a man hitting a woman outside an Austin bar in Texas. Huerta stepped in to beat the snot out of the unsuspecting dude, who was reported to have been a former University of Texas linebacker. According to TMZ's Harvey Levin, the Huerta fight video was one of the biggest stories of that week on the site. Considering that TMZ is normally dealing with the likes of Mel Gibson, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Justin Bieber, for anything concerning an MMA fighter to compete with that mix is pretty impressive. Huerta was invited to appear on TMZ's afternoon webcast and talked about the incident.

    "I approached the man and said, "You don't do that. You don't hit a woman," said Huerta. "The video doesn't show what happened next, but he said, '[Expletive] you. I'll knock any [expletive] out I want.' The tape also doesn't show that he swung at me two or three times right after that."

    "All you see is me bouncing up and down. He has already swung at me at that point. Then the guy takes off running. I chased him down and you saw what else happened ... I can't talk about what exactly happened because it's a legal matter. If the same thing occurred, I would do it all over again. I have no regrets."

    It's interesting to note that Huerta had to often restrain himself from going into too much detail. There are still plenty of legal hoops to jump through. Huerta says he do it again but you wonder if he'd like to erase the end of the brawl where he apparently got pretty vicious? The appearance actually makes you wonder who's handling his case. It's a little surprising that a lawyer would allow him to speak at all on this sort of platform. 

    These TMZ videos are unique. There's no real setup. Check out the beginning. It looks like Levin is ready to ask Huerta to beat up a faulty chair. 

    Quotes via Fightlinker

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  • UFC middleweight Alan Belcher was on a roll. After wins over Patrick Cote and Wilson Gouveia, he was training for a bout with Demian Maia when he had to pull out of the fight. He had a detached retina and had to undergo surgery in late July to have his eye corrected.

    Now, more than a month later, he is still having problems with his vision.

    According to his Twitter, Belcher again had to have surgery after experiencing blurry vision. His wife said that he is in pain, and that the next few weeks are important in seeing how his vision progresses. 

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  • For his beatdown of Gabe Ruediger, Joe Lauzon had special t-shirts made for his friends and family. Since he was fighting in his hometown of Boston for the first time since making the UFC, there was a large group of friends and family there, so the shirts were everywhere. They became so popular that Lauzon now is selling them on his site.

    The men's version is a plain green t-shirt while the women's is a green ringer, as seeon above. Both have the JL Shamrock, and "I love fighting like a fat kid loves cake." You can even request that the shirt is signed by Joe, all for $20

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  • When Dana White travels to England for UFC 120, he will stop in at Oxford University. He will speak to the members of the world-renowned Oxford Union debating society.

    "Anyone who knows anything about me knows I always speak my mind and am very passionate about what I do, and the Oxford Union was founded on exactly those principles," White said in a statement released by UFC. "I'm looking forward to meeting the students, and I know they have a reputation for asking tough questions and expecting straight answers from their guests. That's exactly what they'll get from me."

    Yes, the same place that hosted Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill and Robert Kennedy will now host the foul-mouthed chief of the UFC.

    White isn't afraid to speak up, a trait that has gotten him in trouble from time to time. But how will the Union members respond to White's tactics?

    Though they have been around since 1823, the members of the Oxford Union aren't all fuddy-duddies. A bar is part of their facilities. MMA has exploded in popularity in England, and the Oxford members likely have plenty of questions for White about the sport.

    Not only that, Churchill was known to drop a dirty word or two in his day. 

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  • MMA isn't for everyone. We know that. Too often when folks from the 50-plus demographic speak about the sport they complain about the violence and the blood. So it cames as no shocker that there was complaining from veteran writers like Bob Ryan and Dan Shaugnessy. But they took a different stance both pointing out that they didn't see what all the excitement was about.

    "In all honesty, I’m just telling the truth. The biggest revelation I got from spending that evening at the Garden was how astonishingly BOOOOORRING this thing is," Ryan said CSN's New England’s "Sports Tonight". "It is the most overrated … I do not remotely understand the appeal. There isn’t enough blood, there isn’t enough action."

    Ryan said the first fight on the pay-per-view between Marcus Davis and Nate Diaz was solid but he didn't enjoy the ground work in the later fights.

    "The fans don’t like the wrestling," said Ryan, who is now an expert after taking in one live MMA card.

    Ryan also knows how knowledgeable each of the 15,000-plus in attendance were.

    "There are a sophisticated few martial arts experts who appreciate when there is a well-executed martial arts move to create a submission, yes, that is not the majority, it’s a small minority," said Ryan.

    Apparently, Ryan spoke with lots of fans to find out what they enjoy.

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  • Would you look at that? Mark Coleman lost his belt to someone a third of his size. Check out the rest of the pictures from the UFC Fan Expo and then try writing a caption in the comments. Read on for winners of our last Create-a-Caption.

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  • Mark Hunt's back is against the wall. A veteran of kickboxing, he's a big fan favorite in Japanese MMA circles. But because he hasn't worked on his ground game, his one-dimensional style has led to a rough run lately in MMA. Hunt has lost five straight and hasn't won since 2006 yet he's making his UFC debut in September at UFC 119. Why? Dana White said Hunt's inclusion was part of the PRIDE purchase back in 2007. Good news for White is that Hunt isn't just going to take the money and run.

    He told Sherdog back in July that he felt like he'd wasted much of his career and hadn't taken his conditioning seriously. By the looks of the picture on the left Hunt (in the middle) has been working his butt off. He's routinely fought at around 290 pounds. Hunt is also down at American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Fl., one of the better grappling/jiu-jitsu gyms in the country.

    No one's saying James Toney could've beaten Randy Couture if he'd worked a little harder before UFC 118. But he could've at least given himself a shot to stay off the deck longer than 11 seconds had he not come in at a career-high 237 pounds. Clearly, Hunt has no interest in a producing a Toney-like performance.

    Former UFC fighter Jeff Monson is also in the photo (on the left). He looks a bit slimmer. Monson has been talking with Strikeforce about fighting for the promotion in October down at 205 pounds. 

    Tip via Fightlinker

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  • UFC heavyweight Pat Barry may have has lost his last bout by submission to Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic, but that doesn't mean he can't still kick your face off. He showed off his kicking prowess at the UFC Fan Expo in Boston this weekend, kicking the snot out of a punching machine at the Cage Potato booth.

    Like the guy at a carnival spending cash to impress his girlfriend, Barry could not walk away from the game. Kudos to Cage Potato for having such a fun game, but the music could have improved. Kelly Clarkson? Really?

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  • It might be time for Dana White to make Shaquille O'Neal the UFC's assistant director of fun. Of course, the department's head position will be manned by Chuck Liddell. With the amount of publicity Shaq brought the UFC before and after UFC 118, he's got to get something, right? O'Neal was all over the fan expo on Friday and gave the non-MMA media a savory story by saying he wanted to fight fellow giant Hong Man Choi.

    That would be a helluva "Shaq Vs." Or he could just go with three guys who are more Nate Robinson's range.

    "Check it out – next year for the last episode of 'Shaq Vs.,' I'll grapple with Joe Rogan first round, Lorenzo (Fertitta) second round and then Dana White in round three – in the cage, in the octagon, in Las Vegas," O'Neal said.

    White wants Shaq to concentrate on fighting and beating guys named Kobe, Lamar and Pau.

    "The only thing he needs to worry about is beating L.A." White said with a laugh.

    For the hardcores in attendance at the expo, Shaq spoke and stayed around for plenty of photos.

    He was also at the TD Garden during the event. White posted this great photo of himself and Glen "Big Baby" Davis. Big Baby's t-shirt is dynamite. He's clearly jacked up about the news that Octagon girl Arianny Celeste is going to grace the cover of November's Playboy

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Steve Cofield

Cagewriter is an MMA blog edited by Steve Cofield. Email him, and follow him on Twitter.

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