Jon Jones vs. Shogun Rua was one of my favorite moments as a sports fan. I started getting into MMA fairly early into Jon's UFC career and he was the first fighter that really stood out. This was despite the first time I watched him fight he lost. Since the Vera fight he was my favorite fighter and I've rooted for him. I love how he fights and I even like his personality. The peak moment of my fandom was when Jon finally became the UFC Light Heavyweight champion. With the way that he demolished Shogun I realized that Jon had a legitimate shot of being the greatest LHW ever. The only person that can really beat Jon Jones was himself.

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In the immediate wake of UFC 145 there is another huge event in the Jones family household. The first round of NFL Draft starts on Thursday. Around the time of the NFL combine the first day of the draft wasn't really a concern for Chandler. Before it he was given a 2nd-3rd round grade. I was hoping he would last til the Falcons got there(no first round pick), but after the combine he performed well and was upgraded to an early-mid 2nd round pick. In the time between the combine and now that has all changed in a big way

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The closer this fight gets the more it feels like an event. This fight has taken the MMA world by storm and Zuffa has done a fantastic job of marketing it. I'm sure we're all familiar with the feel of an "event" versus just a fight. It's the same feel I always got before Brock Lesnar fights and before Mayweather or Pacquiao fights. This fight is getting tons of attention and much of the attention is going towards Jon Jones.

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Over the past few weeks I've noticed people falling in love with Rashad Evans. In some polls for this fight I've seen the voting split 60/40. Chuck Lidell and others have questioned Jon Jones being a 5:1 favorite. What really pushed me over the edge to make this fan post was watching the MMA Nuts fight prediction on Youtube. It absolutely shocked me that both guys picked Rashad to land another huge upset in Atlanta. Their reasoning seemed to come from Rashad being the "last hope" to beat Jon Jones. They mentioned reasons how Jon could lose, but forgot to consider how he could win. When rooting for an underdog this is natural(I generally root for 'dogs so I know that feel), but the line is what it is for a reason. After the break I'll explain some traps people are falling in and why you shouldn't follow that line of thinking

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From a blog he wrote:

After learning the name of my next opponent, I went away and watched one of his early fights, just to see who he was, but I haven't watched any of his others. The idea was to just familiarize myself with who he was, what he looked like and how he fought, and then that was enough. I don't feel the need to go through his entire career box set in order to gain an insight into what kind of threat he will try and present me with on April 21. I really don't care about anything else. My sole concern is to improve and work on my own skill-set and then use that to crush my opponent on the night.

Then:

I hold no fear of standing toe-to-toe with this guy. Also, he's the one who needs to worry about me, as I'm fairly certain I'll be better than he is in every single area of this fight. He's going to have to adjust to my style.

And closed with...

I'm not worried about him and I'm not worried about this fight. I feel like I'm at such a high level right now and my confidence is at an all-time high.


With that in mind, I don't visualize this fight with Che Mills going very long...

I like Rory and I seriously think he has a legitimate chance of being the UFC WW champion within the next 12-15 months. As a Jon Jones fan I am reticent to throw the "arrogant" tag on anyone, but these statements bother me. Something I really like about Jon Jones is he's a complete student of the game. In every fight build up he always talks about tendencies and stuff he saw on film or whatever. Rory is the exact opposite. He just assumes he'll be better than Che, just because he is.

The only time I've seen Mills fight was when he KO'd Chris Cope in 40 seconds in his UFC debut. Chances are he's over matched here, but I find it disturbing that Rory knows slightly more about Che than I do. I'm not knocking his confidence because I know that a fighter needs confidence to be successful. However it becomes a problem when a mindset goes from "I will win" to "I can't lose" because that is when it bleeds into arrogance and that can derail a great up and coming fighter. At least he's training, but I hope he takes this guy seriously. We've seen what can happen when a guy feels like he can't lose to an over-matched opponent.

Earlier today Jon Jones announced that he was being sponsored by the UFC during UFC 145. As many of you know he was with K-Swiss/Form Athletics, but Form died so it seems that he became a "free agent." According to Front Row Brian it is a pretty major deal for the young fighter. Jon Jones is getting paid "up to" $1 million and he has an instant op out clause if Nike, Reebok, Adidas, or Under Armor come knocking. Jon Jones isn't the only fighter that the UFC is sponsoring, Alistair Overeem and Frank Mir are also supposed to wear UFC apparel at UFC 146. I understand why the UFC is doing this(to sell t-shirts), but it's a huge conflict of interest.

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UFC 146 is a full heavyweight card and got the fancy "The Heavyweights" tag line. For UFC 145 most people are focusing on solely the main event and are complaining about the depth of this card. However, this card isn't without a theme itself. For UFC 145 three of the six main card fights feature a fighter who would qualify as a phenom. Phenoms are different from prospects because they have a very high degree of understanding despite their youth and/or inexperience. Prospects may eventually reach their potential as a contender, but legitimate phenoms have a legitimate shot of being champions. They are guys who just seem "special." These fighters are Jon Jones, Rory MacDonald, and Michael McDonald. As such I thought I'd break them down a bit and see where them in the future in order from main event down

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Jones April 10, 2012, part two (via PricklyPairStudios)

The question comes in at 6 minutes in. Here is an edited transcript of the response and question:

Interviewer - [W]ould you consider challenging Junior dos Santos?

Jones - *long pause* It's hard to even say because of two factors. First it would be disrespectful of me to just look past Rashad... You know honestly, it is something that I would totally entertain, but at the same time I have so much respect for Junior Dos Santos. He's such a cool dude... If it was someone else I'd definitely go for it.

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I had the same reaction that most fans had when I learned that Overeem failed his drug test. I wasn't pissed that he "deceived me", I was(am) pissed that the fight was off. We had the two best strikers in the division battling it out for the title in addition to a full HW card. When it turned out that Overeem actually had tiger blood that great card started crumbling in front of all our eyes. In Dana's first response to this news he said he was "beyond pissed" and that is because this is deeper than one card.

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A week ago the NFL had its yearly Scouting Combine. My first love with sports is football so I was anticipating this event to see if there are any people I think the Falcons should draft that will lead us to the Superbowl. The Falcons have no first round pick this year, but need help on the offensive and defensive lines. Some draft sites have us possibly looking at Chandler Jones, who is the brother of Jon Jones. So he became of dual interest to me. I was already interested to see how he'd do, but now he may end up on my team also.

Jon Jones' athletic ability has been seen as one of his strong points since he entered the UFC. I was curious to how athletic he is. Now Chandler Jones isn't Jon Jones(Chandler is 266 vs. Jon's 225), but they are similar in build and Chandler is basically the upcoming "uber Jones" that will be terrorizing the HW division in about 3 years. So how Chandler performed here then I would extrapolate it on to his big(but smaller) brother.

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Answer: Who cares?

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After UFC 144 many people were shocked that Anthony Pettis seems to have skipped over the Diaz/Miller winner as the #1 contender. Going into the fight I assumed that if they both won that Pettis would get the next shot. What surprises me is the animosity that has seemed to come with this decision. Many people are questioning the logic behind giving a guy who is 2-1 in the UFC with wins over Stephens and Lauzon. My response to that is simply, "who cares?"

Lets say you end up running into your celebrity crush somewhere(for me its Keri Hilson) and by some act of God(or Flying Spaghetti Monster) she is flirting with you. Do you question how your 7/10 ass could deserve someone that is a 10/10? Of course not, you just hope you don't screw anything up. Unlike my probable failings with Keri, the UFC isn't screwing this up and is making a smart decision to give Anthony Pettis the title shot

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At 10PM I was sleepy as hell. I've been up since about 5:20AM and my eyes were heavy. I felt like I did when I'm watching Dream cards in the middle of the night and I usually don't make it to the end of those. However ~4 hours later I'm amped as hell waiting for the pre-fight press conference. This main card had everything I, as an MMA fan, could want in a card.

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If a great card happens and no one sees it does it make any noise?

Last night MMA fans who have access to Fuel TV or shady internet sties were treated to a fun UFC card. It had everything that you could want as a fan. It had a hot crowd, a bunch of finishes, an exciting main event, and some relevant fighters mixed in with some prospects. The lasting impresson of UFC on Fuel was show how badly the UFC has played the "Big Fox" cards.

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Go on UFC's facebook page

It is NOT available to Canadians from what I've seen

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Then click on the thing that mentions the Valentine's day present. After that just follow the instructions and boom you can watch a bunch of older fights. I just watched Silva vs. Franklin 1 and 2. I knew how they ended, but never saw those fights. I'm currently about to watch Evans vs. Machida. I think I saw it before, but my memory is hazy on it.

Oh and if you wanna see Jon Jones before he knew how to use his reach then watch is first fight in the UFC with Andre Gusmao. He got hit a lot and got hit hard a few times.

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone

Late last year my Aunt got the idea in her head that she could be a club promoter. She planned an event a few days for Christmas and from all the "research" she had done it was a can't miss way to make tons of money. She rented a very nice place(had a covered garage and everything), hired a DJ, bought $1500 in alcohol, and hired a cop for security. She also advertised it heavily for weeks and when the big night came no one showed up. She was expecting 200-300 people and ten percent of that came. The same thing happened with Zuffa tonight during their second foray on network television. Everything they could control they did a great job of, but the fighters didn't show up.

The UFC had everything going for them tonight. It was the Saturday night a week before the Superbowl so there are no big sporting events on. They also had relevant fights which were going to set up two of the biggest PPVs of the year. However instead of building immense amount of hype for those fights we ended up with two of the three worst fights on the entire card being on the main card. Outside of someone dying on live TV this was worst case scenario for them. This was Zuffa's StrikeForce: Nashville and at least that had a brawl to make it entertaining at the end.

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Before every weigh in Joe Rogan introduces UFC Matchmaker as the absolute best. Since the UFC has put on some spectacular fights over the years that prestige is well earned. Some people think his job isn't that hard, but I'm sure there is a subtle art in putting together fights between fighters who are evenly matched despite very different styles. With this new era for the UFC he will have to re-earn that acclaim. UFC on Fox had a "bad case scenario"(worse case would be one of those HW fights from UFC 135) where the heavyweight fight was a minute after an hour of talking. That wasn't really on him since JDS was the rightful challenger to the title and Dana White has said Fox wanted only one fight on the main card for whatever reason. However UFC on Fox 2 is all him and he's built a somewhat controversial card

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Hardcore MMA fans like to distinguish themselves from the stereotypical "casual" MMA fan. If you are on an MMA blog I'm sure you know the type, the Tapout wearing guy who is shouting "stand 'em up" or has his "just bleed" painted on his face. We're all better than that however. We watch for the art of combat, its not to watch people beat each other up, we tell our selves, it is for the odd beauty. However to enjoy MMA(or most combat sports) you need to enjoy the violence. No fighter shows how close we are to the meat head fan we all are than Cris 'Cyborg' Santos.

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On Saturday we were all treated to a series of brutal and memorable finishes. I remember prior to the card I saw someone's Tapology prediction that had every fight ending in stoppages in the first or second round. We agreed that we hoped his predictions were correct since it would be a memorable night. It seemed as though that guy was a soothsayer since the longest fight on the main card, besides the Ebersole-Patrick snoozer, was the main event. It wasn't even like the first round of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix where the finishes were because of some ridiculous miss matches.

However the last two finishes, despite them being spectacular, are marred in a degree of controversy because of the decisions of the losers. I don't know if it's something with high level BJJ guys, but I have heard some of them mention they weren't going to tap. A few months ago the fight with Conor Heun was given a lot of press because of the great BJJ was exhibited in it. Heun ended up having his elbow heavily damaged during an armbar, but did not tap. After the fight he said, "[there] is no reason to tap in MMA." I thought that mindset was stupid then and the backlash from UFC 140 shows why there is no honor in this.

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