SB Nation User Blog: VikingPhotography

UFC 95: London, February 21

VikingPhotography — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:40:51 -0000

Fronted by Chris Nelson. Terry Etim vs. Justin Buchholz is the only confirmed fight thus far.

Just hit my inbox about 40 minutes ago; the UFC will return to the O2 Arena in London on February 21. Fight Club presale starts on the 17th of this month, with tickets available to the public starting on the 21st.

I find it quite interesting that an event has been announced without so much as even one official match-up to anchor it. A ballsy move by the UFC, for sure - especially in this economic climate.

Anyone care to have a guess at who we'll se on the fight card?

UFC 89: Top 10 Shots

VikingPhotography — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:24:22 -0000

Fronted by Luke Thomas.

Having had time to review the 2200+ shots I took at UFC 89, here are my personal top ten favourites from the show. I hope you like looking over these as much as I enjoyed shooting them (which was quite a bit, despite all the challenges faced in order to get them!)

(the other 9 are in the body of the post)

It'll be a long wait for me until UFC 93 rolls around in Dublin in January.

UFC 89 Pre-Fight Press Conference: The Update

VikingPhotography — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:51:12 -0000

Fronted by Luke Thomas.

First off I have to say that I was so busy shooting today (see shot above) that I didn't get to field any of your questions directy - that being said, a lot of the journalists present put forward their own ones which broadly mirrored those that folk put in my last post.

The most memorable part for me was Chris Leben talking some (minor) smack by saying that he though Bisping was a 'scaredy-cat' fighter. He elaborated on this by stating that - in his view - it appears that Bisping's primary concern when fighting in the Octagon is to not get hit. This was a veiled insult that got Mike bristling a bit.

Another throwout comment was Chris saying "Nice suit" to Bisping; Mike had turned up looking crisp and sharp and Leben threw a few vocal jabs at him for doing so.

Answering another question, Leben said that his "wild days" are well behind him. The move to Hawaii has removed him from all his past influences and he was just glad to be in the UK giving the fans a fight that he's been looking forward to.

Brandon Vera considers this fight to be a re-birth of sorts. He said that he's now dedicated 100% to training as an athelete should be; he said that he "wasn't there" for his fight against Reese Andy and doesn't even think about it these days. He also had put his controversial loss to Werdum at UFC 85 behind him

Vera was very respectful to Jardine and said that he "hoped they would learn a lot about each other" in the ring before "one of us goes to sleep." Jardine mirrored Vera's respectful tone and said not one bad thing about his opponent..

Paul Kelly cited that the addition of Cheick Kongo and Quinton Jackson to the Wolfslair camp had injected fresh vigor to the training there - although they're a very informal lot and that there's a load of laughing and joking around too.

Marcus Davis was asked (in a roundabout way) whether he thought that having Kelly as an opponent was a step backwards, given that his last match-up was against Mike Swick. Davis pointed to the barnstorming brawl that Kelly had against Paul Taylor at UFC 80 and said "that's why I'm fighting him"

Davis cited that he's always been the "bad guy" wherever he's fought since his home state of Maine hasn't sanctioned MMA and , accordingly, he's always had to travel to fight and thus gone up against his fair share of hometown favourites.

Keith Jardine said that he thinks the LHW division is in a state of flux and will take about a year for the true 'top ten' ranking fighters to be established. He wouldn't be drawn on his hopes for a title shot, citing that "Forrest and Evans have to go at it first" (or words to that effect)

Marshall Zelaznik stated that the UFC event in Dublin was set to go on presale tomorrow (17th) and they're excited to be holding their first event outside of the UK. When asked about further expansion, he said that he was confident that by summer '09, the UFC would have put on a show in at least one other European city. Countries mentioned were Germany, Italy and even Finland.

The matter of a UFC event in the Phillipines was also mentioned, to which Brandon Vera said that this past week was the first time he'd heard word of it from anyone inside the UFC.

On a lighter note, Mask and Skyscrape from Tapout were present in the auditorium as well, shouting out to the guys on the podium and getting up to hijinks with Dana White and other folks.

Well that wraps up my (poor) report from the UFC 89 pre-fight press conference. I'm guessing I should at least get a dictaphone or voice recorder for future events. For now, I'm going to head out from and explore some of Birmingham.

Intelligent Questions Re: UFC 89 Only, Please!

VikingPhotography — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:02:13 -0000

Fronted by Luke Thomas.

Tomorrow I'll be flying down to Birmingham to start my coverage of UFC 89 for ESPN; the first part of this will be attending the pre-fight press conference. The principal attendees will be

Marshall Zelaznik (President of UK ops for the UFC)
Michael Bisping
Chris Leben
Brandon Vera
Keith Jardine
Marcus Davis
Paul Kelly

Now, if any of you have intelligent questions that you might like me to put to these guys, I'll see what I can do.

Bear in mind that I'm a photographer and will only ask questions if I have the time to do so. There's also a good chance that other reporters present may ask a similar question before I do in which case I won't repeat it.

Lastly, I don't have a dictaphone or voice recorder so I won't be able to offer up verbatim responses - so again, please do bear this in mind.

So Chris Leben has managed to trim down a bit; that's all well and good, 'cause you're looking at...

VikingPhotography — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:40:50 -0000

So Chris Leben has managed to trim down a bit; that's all well and good, 'cause you're looking at Michael Bisping as he was two weeks ago - right before he started the weight-cutting process that will end this coming Friday at the weigh-ins.

The shot above was taken after one of Bisping's workouts at the Wolfslair MMA academy; he'd spent some time sparring with Cheick Kongo, Quinton Jackson and a host of other fighters at the gym.

Shameless Self-Promotion Part III: UFC 88 Photos

VikingPhotography — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:43:01 -0000

Fronted by Luke Thomas.

Having kind of gotten over the jet-lag courtesy of my return flight from Atlanta, I've noticed that ESPN.com now has a gallery of my shots from UFC 88 up at this link.

I've also put up my own ten favourite shots on my flickr.com photostream; here's one of them to whet your appetite:

I'll be at UFC 89 in a few weeks time so expect action from that to be posted shortly thereafter. Hope you like the shots as much as I enjoyed taking them!

The late Evan Tanner, as photographed back in May ahead of an autograph signing session in the MGM...

VikingPhotography — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:40:00 -0000

The late Evan Tanner, as photographed back in May ahead of an autograph signing session in the MGM Grand Ballroom as part of the weigh-in day activities for UFC 84.

I was sorting through my out-takes from shooting UFC 86 for ESPN earlier today... basically...

VikingPhotography — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:06:06 -0000

I was sorting through my out-takes from shooting UFC 86 for ESPN earlier today... basically deleting all the B-grade shots to free up space on my hard drive. I came across this one and, with a little tweaking, it became more than usable.

What you're seeing is Chris Lytle getting up off the canvas at the end of the second round of his fight against Josh Koscheck; Kos opened up that nasty gash with some elbows whilst he had Lytle grounded.

Whilst it's not quite in the same league as my shot of Joe Stevenson, I think it still illustrates how much punishment MMA fighters endure and still have the determination to get into the next round

Good Morning From Las Vegas: UFC 86 Pre-Fight Presser

VikingPhotography — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:26:27 -0000

Fronted by Luke Thomas and hoping the author of this post updates his work when he gets a chance.

Opinions and observations now added; click through to view

It's a glorious, sunny day outside as I look north up the strip from my 29th floor room in the Mandalay Bay. My laptop reports the outside temperature as 34 Celsius - a touch warmer than the 16 Celsius that I'd be enduring back home in Scotland.

In just two hours, I'll be in down in the events centre taking photos for ESPN at the pre-fight press conference for UFC 86.

Attendees are Dana White, Quinton Jackson, Forrest Griffin, Patrick Cote, Josh Koscheck, Ricardo Almeida, Chris Lytle, Joe Stephenson and Tyson Griffin. There'll probably be a few other fighters from the card milling around in the room even if they're not on the roster for interviews.

Now as a photographer, I'm no journalist - but I'll do my best to write up any interesting comments or anecdotes from my viewpoint once the conference has wrapped.

Oh, and if there's any BE readers in the area, be sure to drop me a line.

UPDATE:

So the press conference wrapped about just over an hour ago but I got stuck behind waiting to get portraits of all the fighters... a bit like "pick a number and get in line" when there's so many journalists looking for one-on-one interviews.

Anyways. Quinton was his usual comedic self and he took a few light verbal jabs at Forrest. Jackson stated that he'd seen the Griffin v Bonnar fight whilst still with Pride and had picked Bonnar as the winner... he muffled this jibe a little by stating he's no referee and that was just his opinion. Overall Jackson was very relaxed, affable and in good spirits.

By contrast, Forrest was a man of few words as ever. He did reference Quinton's remarks about his punching power, saying "I used to fight taekwondo, and you got penalised for hitting to hard... but I've been working on it.". Forrest looked a lot trimmer than I remember him being in Belfast during '72... but that could be a trick of the mind.

Before the presser they maintained a good distance from each other as they waited to go up on the podium, not even making eye contact. It was all smiles and handshakes between the two comedians during the face-off but there's no doubting that, come Saturday night, these two will go at it hammer and tongs; although the latest series of TUF was without much in the way of "fireworks" between these coaches there'll be bombs dropped in the Octagon.

Patrick Cote and Ricardo Almeida had nothing bad to say about each other, being very respectful at all times. Each praised the others skills and past performances. It's anyone's guess as to what will motivate these guys to a win but, as a father of two children, I'll go out on a limb and say that Almeida's desire to prove himself to his autistic son will provide an inner fuel that Cote might not have a match for.

Chris Lytle proved that he's not taking his fight with Josh Koscheck lightly; "Usually when they call me up asking me to fight, I say 'I'll do it!" even before they tell me who it is... I jump in at the first second. This time, when they said it was Josh, it took me about three seconds before I agreed."

Lytle obviously has that fighter's heart of being willing to go up against anyone at anytime - but he lit out of the press conference at lightning speed once the face-offs had been staged. He disappeared so fast that he could have a profitable sideline as a magic act here at the Mandalay. I don't think anyone got to put one-on-one questions to him; I can only guess that he wanted to get straight back to the business of pre-fight training.

Koscheck, by contrast, stuck around for every interview opportunity going... and there were a lot of folk waiting to do so. Nothing that he said during the open forum part of the press conference stuck in my mind so apologies that I can't share anything.

Lastly, Dana White stuck it out the longest. I overheard a few snippets of interviews.

"Look, if you have $800 million in funding and do it right, you should be around for a long, long time." - referencing the demise of the IFL through lack of business acumen.

"I guarantee you; in eight years time, this sport will be bigger than the fucking NFL. It transcends all boundaries." - grand visions for the sport of MMA

'Eighty-five percent of our guys went to college; I wouldn't dream of telling them how to act, what to say - they all have their own unique story" - referencing both Pride FC's penchant for 'packaging' fighters (Quinton as a hobo) and also the perennial boxing story of 'grew up in a rough neigborhood, without boxing I'd be dead or in jail' (Dana's words)

The one dissapointment was that Joe Stevenson and Gleison Tibau were trimmed from appearing at the eleventh hour; the reason given was that the UFC wanted to keep the primary focus on the three main fights. Taken in conjunction with the 'Countdown to 86' that aired recently, that makes sense - but I'm sure there were a few folk looking to talk to Joe about his comeback trail following UFC 80.

Well, that's all folks. The weather outside is now 42 Celsius and, as soon as I'm done filing all my shots I'm going to head out and soak up some of it. Pity the WiFi in my room is so S L O W.

See you at the weigh-in's tomorrow.

Shameless self-promotion: ESPN UFC 85 Gallery

VikingPhotography — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 15:55:28 -0000

Okay, so it's a bit of shameless self-promotion, but you can now view sixteen of my UFC 85 fight night photos over on ESPN.com - you'll see

A hungry Eddie Sanchez eating the glove of Antoni Hardonk
Paul Taylor testing Jess Liaudin's hearing... with his foot
Jason Lambert admiring the canvas with the help of Luis Cane
Matt Wiman being tied up in knots by Thiago Tavares
Thales Leites helping Nate Marquardt audition for the next Superman film
Mike Swick defusing an Irish Hand Grenade... airborne style
A Count who can turn Day into night in just over a minute
A nasty Pit Bull attack on an Illinois "farmboy"