Spilled Bag of Ice and Patrick Guera are back to talk about UFC 145, Jon Jones, and also touch on the Alistair Overeem and PEDs in MMA issue. Throughout, be sure they make sure to complain about how much MMA fans complain about MMA. Hypocrisy or just straight up truth? You be the judge… but enjoy it either way!
Click here to listen to MMA Gospel Podcast # 2.
MMA Gospel Radio is back and reborn as a podcast with snarky Twitter “celebrity” Spilled Bag of Ice at the helm and MMA Gospel staff writer Patrick Guera by his side. The new show promises more in-depth discussions, more expert panels, and more fighter interviews than ever before from a fan’s viewpoint and with an insider’s perspective. First up on the slate, SBoI and Director Patrick look back at UFC 144 – the controversy, the KO’s, the comebacks, and the “Sexyama”. They also look ahead to UFC on FX’s main event and flyweight tournament.
Click here to listen to MMA Gospel Podcast Episode # 1.
Dominique “Fallen Angel” Robinson is the man. We’ve had him and his friend and training partner, fighter James “9 Knuckles” Chaney on the radio show and they were both awesome cats. I’ve kept in touch with them on Twitter and when I heard they’d be out here in Vegas for Dom’s fight with Anderson Silva’s student Paulo Bananada at Superior Cage Combat 4, I had to go. The rest of the card had some impressive names too – like UFC vets Kendall Grove vs. Jay Silva in the main event.
Anyway, the kind folks at SCC gave me a press pass, despite my frequent assertions that I’m not a journalist. Hey, I’m better than a journalist; I’m a social media juggernaut. In fact, to their immense credit, when I offhandedly suggested via Twitter that they give a ticket to my Twitter friend and ammy fighter Jeff Wright, they did! All he had to do was live tweet the event and keep me company… and buy me a beer. Those last two were my stipulations. And for the record, he only lived up to the first two. He still owes me a beer. Continue reading »
(Photo courtesy of DiazBrothers.com)
Way back in July of 2011, Chael Sonnen said he would do an interview with me but suggested that I might want to wait. Chael was doing a ton of media at the time so I took that rain check. Now with the exciting and unexpected news that Chael will be fighting Michael Bisping next Saturday at UFC on FOX 2, with his original opponent Mark Munoz out due to injury, I decided to cash in that rain check. I reminded Chael about it and told him that whenever he was free we’d do the interview. Later that day, Chael called me for a chat. Never let it be said that Chael isn’t a man of his word.
Some people watch The Ultimate Fighter purely for the fights and don’t like the reality TV element. These people tend to be party-pooping wet blankets who think that they’re too good for a little mindless voyeuristic entertainment. Either way, the stuffy “purists” were treated to almost two hours of nothing but fights on the Season 14 premiere of TUF on Wednesday. The fights were pretty solid – as to be expected from bantamweight and featherweight fighters. Continue reading »
First of all. I gotta say, I missed Joe Rogan. Kenny Florian does a fine job on “MMA Live” but for commentary he lacks Joe’s enthusiasm and humor that plays so well off Goldie’s… umm… Goldieisms. It’s hard to argue that Mike Goldberg isn’t the Goldiest.
In a prelim fight that was shown three times (well, it was only forty seconds long), Erick Silva caught Luis Ramos with a huge right hand that had Ramos not out cold but you could almost imagine the birds chirping and flying in a circle around his head. Then Silva jumped in and threw another thirty or so punches in about two seconds to finish it. Nice debut, kid. Continue reading »
It was a tough night for Tito Ortiz. The self-proclaimed “People’s Champion” wasn’t able to keep his Cinderella Man story going against Rashad Evans and Dennis Hallman’s twig and berries upstaged him. We’ll get to the Hallman “Junk-in-a-sling” look in a little bit. For now, let’s keep it on Tito and Rashad. I was rooting for Tito for the first time ever. I had to respect the man for pulling off what I and a lot of other people thought was impossible when it was do or die time in his fight with Ryan Bader. Now I have nothing against Rashad but the story line of a guy going from begging to keep his job to title contention in the course of a month would’ve been kinda awesome. Love Tito or hate him, you gotta admit that’s some good narrative. Tito’s hands looked impressive in his fight with Ryan Bader so I thought maybe the iron chin attached to that massive cranium might give him a shot of KOing Rashad – especially if Rashad backed straight up like he did against Lyoto Machida. Of course this was a long shot. And while Tito put on an impressive show, Rashad, not showing an ounce of cage rust, was on his game and, let’s face it, his game is better and more well-rounded than Tito’s. What’s next for Tito? I dunno. He needs a win or his victory over Bader will be seen as a lucky fluke – fair or not. But for now, I think Tito’s earned himself some time off. Besides, that knee looked like it hurt like a muhfuh. Continue reading »
Did you miss me? Well, dry your tears icemigos. I have returned. There was a rough few weeks with no MMA events – at least none that I was able to see. And now… now… I have three events to draw from. Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Henderson, Strikeforce Challengers: Voelker vs. Bowling III, and Bellator 47.
Let’s start from the top. What’s up with Fedor? Sure, anyone can get knocked out by Dan Henderson but before that Fedor was swinging wildly. Yes, Fedor is known to try and finish a fight when he has someone hurt but there was an almost desperate recklessness in Fedor’s attempt to finish – not the precision timing that KO’d Andrei Arlovski in mid-air. Continue reading »
UFC 131: Dos Santos vs. Carwin
Michihiro Omigawa vs. Darren Elkins really, what can you say? Not only did the judges rob Omigawa with a Unanimous Decision nod for Elkins. One of these crackheads scored it 30-27. That’s like scoring the first round of Edgar/Maynard II 10-9 for Frankie Edgar. How do people that fuck up that bad still have jobs? Continue reading »
Dear Dana White,
I like to consider myself an intellectual. Not in a pretentious way but more in the sense that I don’t think being smart or educated is something to be ashamed of or mocked. Early on in high school I was picked on by a couple of jocks. By in large most of them, like most of everyone else didn’t really notice my existence but a couple of jock douchebags decided to pick on me and my indifference to sports became a seething hatred for meathead jocks. Granted, it was unfair of me to judge a whole group of people, namely athletes, by the actions of a couple of assholes but when you’re fifteen you’re generally not blessed with a philosophical and objective perspective. Even to this day, despite being intellectually evolved and more open-minded, that knee-jerk prejudice against jocks is still there. I make a distinction here between “jocks” and athletes, which doesn’t erase my prejudice, just makes it more selective.
When I first became aware of MMA I didn’t know it was MMA. I, like a lot of people saw it for how it was marketed at the time, as a brutal, no rules, barbaric bloodsport. Unfortunately, this angle repulsed me. It seemed to be everything I hated: dumb, meathead, uber-agro jock dicks that thought bashing someone’s face in and sending them to the hospital was cool. If they didn’t market it like that, I likely would’ve become a big fan of Royce Gracie – this little Brazilian beating much bigger and stronger guys with technique, with brains. I would’ve eaten that shit up at the time, if I had known and understood more about the sport; if it was marketed as mixed martial arts and not “No-Rules Cage Fighting”. It was your doing with The Ultimate Fighter that showed me that this was a real sport with athletes who trained. Martial artists rather than blood-thirsty barbarians. Not to say it’s not violent and primal and occasionally brutal and not to deny the visceral appeal of that element but it’s also a lot more. And we also got to see that most fighters weren’t typical jocks. They’re athletes but most of them had to be a little bit nuts to want to do this for a living. Continue reading »
I’m gonna keep this brief because it’s a holiday and there’s not a lot to say about UFC 130. Except I want $25 off for the lack of a Frankie Edgar/Gray Maynard rubber match.
I picked Travis “Hash” Browne over Stefan “Topple” Struve and Rick “Based on a True” Story over Thiago “Get A More Original Nickname” Alves but then I thought I shouldn’t have two upset picks and changed my pick to Stefan “Timber!” Struve. Damn it! Story is tough and honestly I think Alves is overrated – not that he’s not a great fighter but I don’t think he’s top five. Continue reading »
First off I want to congratulate Sergio aka @iTzPrimo on Twitter who won the #1 Icemigo award. What’s the #1 Icemigo award? It’s some shit I invented just for Primo because that mofo RTs all my shit and comments on this column all the time. What did Primo win? Well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise for him but it’s either totally awesome or he’s totally getting KOS’d!! Or Maybe a little of both. Ha ha! See, I reward my loyal Icemigos. I’ve spent *$40,000 out of my own pocket giving away shit to people since I started the Spilled Bag of Ice Twitter account way back in February of 2010. As for my enemies, *I’ve smashed their faces and crushed their souls. I’ve kidnapped their pets, made them love me and trained them to attack their former owners on sight…their children, too.
(*claims may be somewhat exaggerated for dramatic effect) Continue reading »
Last week the UFC held their “Fighter Summit” where they invited all of the Zuffa fighters to come to Las Vegas and learn about such topics as head injuries, social media, taxes, information about their new insurance coverage, and so on. Continue reading »
So, my Twitter homeboy and friend of the site, Dan “Dannyboy” Downes fought a tune-up fight outside the UFC this Friday. Regarding his opponent, I’m not gonna give this chump any more press by mentioning his name but he has a name that sounds like a supplement you’d get at GNC. Anyway, before this fight I was curious if this dude had a Twitter account. We all know Dannyboy is the tweet zen master so I was curious if this guy had a Twitter and would mention anything about the fight. Well, he did mention it… he also seemed to have no idea how to use Twitter. Seems he had some sort of weird beef with Jens Pulver and kept calling Jens out -but not by using the @Jens_Pulver that would allow Jens to see it but rather just tweeting and, I guess, hoping that one of his dozen or so followers would pass it on. What a goof! Continue reading »