Check out the gallery from Cut Throat MMA in Illinois. Thanks to Mallory Mejia for the pictures.
Jul 312010
Jul 282010
I sat back with excitement as the video started to play. My review copy of HDNet’s “The Voice Vs. Mayhem Miller” had begun and the anticipation of watching these two over the top characters go toe to toe had come to a head. Michael “The Voice” Schiavello is a play by play broadcaster for combat sports around the world. He is well known for his exuberant style and one-liners that only he could truly pull off. Jason “Mayhem” Miller is a mixed martial artist known for his always entertaining ring entrances, his animated personality, and for being the host of MTV’s “Bully Beatdown”. How could anyone not be excited to see what happens when these two men square off one on one in front of the cameras?
Jul 272010
Last week I spent some time with UFC Light Heavyweight Phil Davis. We discussed the lack of respect the ground game gets from fans. In part two, I share some suggestions the fans have given to stifle ground fighters and Phil takes the questions head-on. Continue reading »
Jul 272010
Jeremy Hefner uses a front headlock to control Tim Savenok in an exciting three-round fight at Cut Throat MMA (Photo: Mallory Mejia)
On Friday, July 23 2010, staff photographer Mallory Mejia and I attended a local show put on by the Naperville, IL-based amateur promotion Cut Throat MMA for the first edition of MMA Gospel’s new “Amateur Spotlight” series. Owned and produced by Mike Davis, the Cut Throat MMA production provides a professional atmosphere and efficiently run show that is well worth the time and money for both the fan and the fighter. The initial response to Cut Throat with local training camps was a mixed bag with a handful complaining of mismatches and last minute fight switching and even accusations of billing pros as amateurs, but neither I nor the close to 1,000 spectators in attendance witnessed any evidence of this at the Holiday Inn Select in Naperville that Friday night. In fact, the matches were remarkably well-balanced, especially for an amateur event where limited video and the great variances in the effectiveness of the innumerable camps’ training programs make it difficult for promoters to truly gauge where a fighter’s talent level really is. Throughout the entire 12-fight card there were only two bouts where the promoter could come under scrutiny for questionable fight booking. It is important to note, however, that the fighters who were on the receiving end of those mismatches admitted that they not only were fully informed of their opponents’ skill levels and training, but had also been provided with video of prior fights. Upon viewing the fights, it became evident that the responsibility of the mismatchings fell upon the shoulders of the fighter’s manager/coaches, not the promotion itself. But we’ll discuss that later; for now, let’s take a look now at what MOMMIE has to say. Continue reading »
Jul 242010
July 30 on HDNet “The Voice VS” is back. This time with a friend of MMA Gospel, Jason “Mayhem” Miller. A sneak peak from “THE VOICE vs MAYHEM MILLER”. Here Mayhem talks about the fighter he most dislikes and wants to “beat up”, NICK DIAZ.
Also on THE VOICE vs MAYHEM MILLER:
- A truly “unique” discussion of the Strikeforce Brawl
- Mayhem talks celebrity status and bedding women
- A funny game with some intriguing answers
- Bully Beatdown talk
- UFC vs Strikeforce vs DREAM
- Fantasy match ups including Chael Sonnen and Anderson Silva
and more!
Jul 232010
The staff here at MMA Gospel noticed a disturbing trend in MMA media. Amateur fighters, the fighters who need exposure the most, are the least covered athletes in MMA. In fact, most sites tell their writers that amateurs are off limits and even when attending a pro/am event, they are only allowed to cover the professional fighters. We decided to not only cover amateur events, but to dedicate an entire series to local shows and amateur fights. I will personally be covering the Chicagoland area and possibly a few promotions in the southeast, starting with the Naperville, IL based Cutthroat MMA production. The main goals of this series are to provide exposure for amateur fighters that may otherwise not garner any attention from larger organizations for several years of competition and, perhaps more importantly, provide amateur fighters with an easy resource to find out which small shows are the ones to fight for and which shows are the ones to avoid. Continue reading »
Jul 222010
The main event of the evening for UFC on Versus: Jones vs. Matyushenko on August 1, 2010 in San Diego will be an old guard vs. new guard affair between the functionally undefeated light heavyweight monster “Bones” Jon Jones (10-1) and dark ages UFC title challenger “The Janitor” Vladimir Matyushenko. The first of these two men is well known even to the casual fan for his blistering athleticism, brutal wrestling, and abusive use of high risk spinning strikes, and has stopped all but two of his opponents with notable stoppages of “Irish” Jake O’Brien (13-3) and “The Truth” Brandon Vera (11-5). Jones also has a controversial disqualification loss to “The Hammer” Matt Hamill (8-2) who he dominated with a brutal wrestling and ground-n-pound assault that lasted over two minutes before the referee called the fight with no warning due to 12-6 elbows that were thrown well after most observers agree the believe the fight should have been stopped and drew criticism even from Hamill. The second man, Vladimir, is a world class Belarusian wrestler who amassed a 10-1 record of his own before facing then UFC light heavyweight champion “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” Tito Ortiz (15-7-1) in what is now a fight the UFC would like everyone to forget and has since become the only IFL light heavyweight champ and quietly built a 4-1 UFC record since the debacle. This is another bizarre Twilight Zone bout on the card where one fighter is facing a distorted version of himself. The difference here is that Mark Munoz (6-1) is fighting a more experienced version of himself in “Thunder” Yushin Okami (24-5), thus the less experienced man is facing his future, and Jones is facing the flip side of his own coin in Vladimir, thus we have an aggressive, evolved Greco-roman wrestler facing the old world Greco-roman prototype built around turning every fight into a wrestling match. Continue reading »
Jul 222010
Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock post-fight
Let’s all get together for MMA story time:
In the beginning, four men sat in the locker room of a Japanese pro-wrestling show contemplating the validity of Japanese shoot fighting’s oldest principle: nobody will ever pay to see real fights; they come for entertainment, not reality. A year later, on September 21, 1993, they formed a promotion to test this principle. The result was an organization where the best kick boxers, catch wrestlers, and shoot fighters of the day would meet in a bout that followed the rules of worked shoot fighting but an actual combative competition. They called it Pancrase Hybrid Wrestling. The four men were Masakatsu Funaki (39-12-1), Minoru Suzuki (27-20-1), Yusuke Fuke (16-29-3), and “The World’s Most Dangerous Man” Ken Shamrock (27-14-2). This was the birth of what we call mixed martial arts today. Three months later, just four days after competing in the third Pancrase show, Ken Shamrock became arguably the biggest star of the first UFC. Despite a loss in the semi-finals to Royce Gracie the fans were drawn to the chiseled features and movie star persona of “The Worlds Most Dangerous Man.” This is just a small piece of the history of the man who was arguably the most important fighter in history of MMA. Continue reading »
Jul 222010
Coalition Fight Music put this track together for MMA Gospel Radio. Here you will find the full track which will be edited to use at the start of the show and for the end of the show. They make specific tracks for fighters as well as promotions. More information can be found here Coalition Fight
Jul 212010
Nothing better than combining a devastating fighter with one of the best movies ever made. So today I offer you the Alistair Overeem tribute video combined with the classic ultraviolence flick “A Clockwork Orange” Enjoy!!
Jul 212010
UFC on Versus: Jones vs. Matyushenko has promised to bring us a ton of action back in the pack of the UFC’s light, welter, and light heavyweight divisions. Joining a stellar card of mid-tier UFC warriors are middleweights “Thunder” Yushin Okami (24-5) and “The Filipino Wrecking Machine” Mark Munoz (6-1). Both of these men are fighters who have proven themselves worthy of any middleweight athlete’s respect. Munoz has won three straight since his loss to “The Hammer” Matt Hamill (8-2) over a year ago, finishing two of his three opponents in a combined time of just over 10 minutes. Okami has gone 8-2 in the UFC with his only loses in the promotion coming at the hands of former champ “Ace” Rich Franklin (27-5) and current middleweight number one contender Chael Sonnen (24-10-1). Okami and Hamill both are strong wrestlers with powerful ground attacks, more than enough gas to keep up a hard pace from bell to bell, and a tendency to always seek the finish. This bout promises to be a wrestling fans dream come true, no lay and pray affair but an exciting ground fight with enough action to satisfy even the most KO hungry of the casual fans.
Jul 192010
“Mr. Wonderful” Phil Davis (5-0) is currently a hot prospect in the UFC’s Light-Heavyweight Division. When he isn’t trying to make his opponent a permanent sponsor on the mat, Phil is actually quite a nice guy who is never shy about making his feelings heard. He has kindly agreed to bless MMA Gospel with knowledge straight from the fighter’s mouth. In this week’s segment we discuss something close to Phil’s heart- and hot on the minds of fans- grappling.
Please note: This is not an interview, it is a conversation, you will hear me chime in whether you like it or not. Continue reading »
Jul 192010
I am sitting here scouring the internet looking for some of the best mixed martial arts (MMA) submissions ever pulled off and ran across a few great videos. Some of them had some highly debatable submissions included in them for the top ten until i ran across this video. Below you will find a video I have now watched multiple times due to the amazing fluidity of the submissions and just plain pure awesomeness. Enjoy and feel free to tell us what your top ten MMA subs of all time would be in the comments section.
Jul 162010
UFC on Versus: Jones vs. Matyushenko will take place August 1, 2010 at the San Diego Sports Arena in San Diego, CA. In addition to quality bouts between “The Fireball Kid” Takanori Gomi (27-8) and “Daddy” Joe Stevenson (31-10) and “Bones” Jon Jones (10-1) and “The Janitor” Vladimir Matyushenko (24-4), the UFC has given us an excellent welterweight pairing between up and coming bruiser “Doomsday” John Howard (14-4) and NCAA wrestling coach Jake Ellenberger (21-5). Howard enters UFC on Versus on the heels of a one punch KO of “Ninja” Daniel Roberts (10-1) with a perfect 4-0 record with the promotion. His opponent brings a 1-1 UFC record to the cage following a second round stoppage of Mike Pyle (19-6-1). This fight is interesting because it is a step beyond a classical striker vs. grappler pairing; these two men are complete athletic opposites. On one side is Ellenberger, a wrestler turned MMA fighter who battled his way into the UFC over the course of four and a half years and 24 fights and went straight to the deep end of the talent pool against “Natural Born Killer” Carlos Condit (25-5). On the other when have “Doomsday”, a solid submission guy with a brutal Thai-boxing game who made the UFC in just over three years at a much more casual pace, fighting only 14 times and has struggled to get a fight against a true competitor despite notching off four wins in a row with a Fight of the Night bonus on just his second appearance. This is definitely a much more even fight than it looks like on paper and the reward for the winner: a match against “Rumble” Anthony Johnson (8-3) or a member of the AKA roadblock trio. Continue reading »
Jul 162010
HDNet hit a homerun with mixed martial arts (MMA) fans when they premiered “The Voice Vs” featuring Michael “The Voice” Schiavello in a sit down with comedian and UFC color commentator and Joe Rogan. A network would be a fool not to listen to the fans and so “The Voice VS.” will continue with part two featuring Schiavello with Jason “Mayhem” Miller.