Fighters are generally tough people, skilled athletes who in the course of training and competing must become used to taking punishment, gritting their teeth through pain and adversity, and pushing past the mental barriers that result from experiencing physical damage and pain.  But the question has been asked a couple of times recently: when is enough, enough?  Russ Anber, a commentator for the Canadian version of ESPN, commented on this issue with specific reference to this past weekend's Pacquiao-Cotto fight.  His contention: Cotto's corner failed in their duty "to assist, to offer advice and protect their fighter."  Here's an excerpt from his comments:

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via www.sherdog.com

So MMA Weekly has the low down on something I mentioned in the comments section of the Kim Couture/Meisha Tate article yesterday: Sarah Kaufman (8-0) has contacted Strikeforce with the offer to step in for Couture.  Kaufman, who trains at Zugec Ultimate Martial Arts in Victoria, BC, under Adam Zugec, was out of action for over a year.  After she defended her HCF title with a second round TKO of Molly Helsel in March of 2008, the HCF folded.  Kaufman was promptly signed by EliteXC, but that promotion, too, folded.  Kaufman then signed on with Palace Fighting Championships, but was delayed from fighting for lack of an opponent, until she finally stepped into the ring against Sara Schneider (who agreed to the fight after two previous fighters pulled out) on April 23.  Now, Kaufman may be set to fight again only three weeks after her latest victory.  From the article:

Sarah Kaufman on Thursday afternoon told MMAWeekly.com negotiations were underway to step in for Couture at the May 15 event.

Strikeforce officials and Kaufman's representatives have agreed to the match-up, and contract details are being ironed out, said Kaufman.

Kaufman, currently undefeated in MMA with eight professional wins, was one of the contracts acquired by Strikeforce in a purchase of ProElite assets last September. She made her first post-buyout appearance last week at Palace Fighting Championships: Best of Both Worlds 2, where she stopped Sara Schneider with strikes in the second round.

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Promoted from the FanPosts by Kid Nate.

First, the news (courtesy of MMA Mania):

Over the weekend, at the 4 Bears Casino and Lodge ("4 miles west of New Town, ND" - yeah, but where the heck is that?), an MMA card by the name of Beatdown 4 was held.  It featured UFC vets Branden Lee Hinkle, and everyone's favourite internet wordsmith, the immortal Drew Fickett.  Many would assume that fighters good enough to have danced on the big stage would mop the floor with regional guys; many would be wrong.

Hinkle, best known as the guy who beat up Sean Gannon at UFC 55 (and subsequently got demolished by Jeff Monson), actually appeared to be the underdog heading into his match.  His opponent, Chris Tuchscherer, came in as a 15-1 legitimate heavyweight.  His lone loss is unfortunately one that (a very few) people remember him from: he was decisioned by Travis Wiuff as part of the YAMMA debacle.  But that aside, Tuchscherer has some skill, is a big man and trains with the suddenly-relevant Minnesota Martial Arts Academy (MMAA).  He stopped this one in the 4th round, winning by TKO to run his record to 16-1 (6 subs, 6 T/KOs).

In the co-main event, Fickett, most recently in the news for dropping fights like flies and getting into giant pissing contests with promoters on the internet, dropped a decision to Nik Lentz, who also trains out of the MMAA, and who moved to 15-3 with the win.  More on this after the jump.

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Okay, enough with the griping about "bad matches".  Let's talk about the best.

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For some strange reason, I persist in reading mainstream sports sites, including Sports Illustrated.  Every once in a while, they do produce a good story.  Currently on the Sports Illustrated front page is an archived story about Evan Tanner.  This is a story which, I believe, appeared in print a while back but is up on the website for the first time.

There isn't much new here, but it's a good read.  There are some interesting and saddening connections to some of the other tragic events in MMA history, such as this tidbit:

In March 2006, in what would be his last fight for two years, Tanner won a first-round submission victory over Justin Levens (who, ironically, would die along with his girlfriend in November '08 in what is being investigated as a murder-suicide).

The author also pins down the specific purpose of Tanner's trip into the desert.  Apparently, he was in equal parts motivated by a woman and treasure (which many of us can probably relate to):

...Tanner was trolling MySpace for travel blogs when he stumbled across the musings of Sara Tuominen, an Arabic linguist from Washington State who works for the U.S. government as a translator Iraq and Afghanistan, among other countries, and blogged about her experiences in Saudi Arabia. From late June until Tanner's desert trip, their MySpace message correspondence ran longer than some novellas....

As part of his growing interest in Sara, Tanner became engrossed in one of her hobbies: treasure hunting. He started researching the desert east of his new home outside San Diego and discovered the 19th-century legend of Peg Leg Smith's lost gold, nuggets strewn atop a desert butte. Tanner decided to make a series of trips into the desert -- the first alone, the next with Sara....

On his Spike blog, Tanner mentioned his planning for the adventure but claimed that his goals were not material. "I'll have to portray our adventure as spiritual in nature, to avoid being institutionalized," he told Sara.

I had never heard this angle before; Tanner's claim to be looking for "treasure" as he wrote it on his blog is common knowledge, but this bit is new.  It could just be the style, but it feels as if the author is cherry-picking particular evidence of Tanner's motivations to make the best possible story.  However, the fact remains that no one really knows what was going on in Tanner's head except Tanner.

It's an interesting article nonetheless, and I recommend a read.  It's still important to note that this is coverage of MMA in a mainstream publication which - despite dealing with a tragic event - paints the sport in an honest light.  The other fighters are shown as compassionate, thinking people, and fighting as a career is basically excused from any part in Tanner's death.  The last couple of paragraphs are some of the best, so maybe there is still hope that, somehow, Evan Tanner's life story ends well.

I feel like someone in a horror movie, who knows that the undead have shambled by, but are at a loss to explain how or why.  I suppose one could classify this as a "rumour", since I'm no more credible than any other anonymous poster on the internet.  But regardless, this is true to the best of my knowledge, and it's my hope that someone can help make sense of this.

Yesterday I was down at the gym, talking with our head trainer.  His second-in-charge is a pro fighter who had signed with Elite just prior to their going under.  Thankfully, she didn't get caught up in the ugly mess that is the contract situation around EXC at the moment, because she never actually fought for them and her contract wasn't set to become active until the first fight.  So, after sitting on the shelf for months, she finally agreed to another contract, this time with Palace Fighting.

This is where things get strange:  The day after she agreed to her new contract, someone from Elite called her manager to say that they had heard about her new contract, and they weren't happy.  Apparently, they think very highly of her and still want her to fight for them, and they won't make a stink about her taking one fight with another organization while she waits (how magnanimous of them), but they made the point of reminding her that she does have a contract with EXC.

How would they know about her new contract, when there hadn't been a press release?  What is with the none-too-subtle threats, considering that her contact with EXC isn't even a valid contract (and everyone is aware of it)?  Who was the person who actually made the call, and who do they think they are fooling?  The only theory that anyone has put forward on this situation that makes any sense (and I'm not a fan of it, though it could logically follow through) is that CBS has decided to take over EXC, and that all of this other nonsense was an effort to both buy time and lower what they would have to pay for the product.  In this theory, there are CBC staffers and contractors preparing infrastructure and keeping an eye on assets behind the scenes.  I think that's more than a little bit of a stretch, but I'm at a loss to explain this.

Thoughts?

Promoted to the front page from the FanPosts by Cannon Jacques.

Josh Gross over at Sports Illustrated is reporting that Randy Couture has turned down a fight with Nogueira for the first half of 2009 due to recent surgery on his elbow.  The problem?  Apparently, 16 cm (!!!) bone spurs:

A pair of abnormally large bone spurs were removed from The Natural's elbow on Thursday. While training for his failed UFC heavyweight title defense in November against Brock Lesnar, Couture aggravated the joint, which was mined for a pair of 16-centimeter spurs.

That's no small injury to rehab from, and as seems to be the comment associated with everything Couture does these days, age is not on his side.  Here's hoping he has a speedy (and full) recovery, especially since he seems to want the fight with Big Nog, eventually:

Asked if he desired a fight with the 32-year-old Nogueira, the longtime Pride heavyweight champion who was stopped for the first time in 38 fights by Frank Mir on Dec. 27, Couture answered simply: "yes."

I think the Randy-Nog fight is a natural, and one that the fans want to see.  Considering the staph infection and the beating he took at the hands of Frank Mir, I don't see Nog having much of a problem waiting until the summer of 2009 for the match-up...  though the fans may not find it quite as easy.

It is no secret that the UFC has been trying to “crack” the UK market for some time.  Anyone with a long enough memory will recall Ian “The Machine” Freeman, a native of Sunderland, completely annihilating Frank Mir in England back in 2002.  But there’s much more to the story of MMA in the UK than the UFC’s infrequent visits, which begs the question, what is the state of professional MMA in the UK?

 

 

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