-- Bare-knuckle street fighter Kimbo Slice slapped a guillotine on Ray Mercer last weekend, but beating an overweight, old, washed-up boxer with no ground skills should not be the litmus test for future MMA success. In other words, stick Kimbo in there with any seasoned UFC or Pride heavyweight, and watch him get crushed.
-- Where’s Fedor? Pride’s heavyweight champ is rumored to not want to play UFC’s game (signing an exclusive contract), so where does that leave him? He fought once for BodogFight in April, submitting blown-up middleweight Matt Lindland.
On his Web site, Fedor talks about negotiations with UFC and how they threatened at one point to take away his Pride heavyweight belt. He also said a provision of his next contract will be that he can fight for MixFight in Russia in 2008. You think the UFC will allow it? Let’s see who blinks first. Some say Fedor’s a cyborg — cyborgs don’t blink.
-- In another fight from last weekend, Frank Shamrock, now known as “The Legend,” dispatched Phil Baroni with a rear-naked choke at the EliteXC/Strikeforce card in California.
Much respect to Shammy for a brilliant comeback to MMA, but I could have done without the unsportsmanlike conduct at the end. He chokes Baroni out, then, pushes and kicks the New York Bad Ass off of him. Was that really necessary?
-- A recent USAToday story said that the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (the story says its acronym is FILA, but that looks like IFAWS to me) has recognized grappling as a sport and will hold a world championship event on Sept. 7-9 in Turkey.
Since grappling is a major contributor to MMA, this is a good thing. It means more worldwide exposure and acceptance, and we’ll probably see a lot of MMA fighters get involved in this, like they have in Abu Dhabi and NAGA.
-- In an earlier post, I said MMA could stand to borrow a few marketing techniques from pro wrestling – and that’s about all it should borrow.
Now that the UFC has bought Pride, I could see a Raw-Smackdown-ECW situation here. Instead of raiding all of Pride’s talent to beef up the UFC to the point where it won’t be able to showcase it all, keep the two organizations relatively even, then have at least one annual co-promotional event — like WrestleMania — where you can have champion versus champion in various weight classes.
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