Guerrilla Journalism: This week in MMA
This week in MMA
Fedor remains second best: Today, when the average mixed martial arts fan thinks about the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s heavyweight division they can’t really see past the mountain of a man who loves to play the heel — Brock Lesnar.
More knowledgeable fans can recall memories of past champions like Randy Couture, Tim Syl-via and Andrei Arlovski, while the most historically inclined enthusiast harkens back to names like Dan Severn, Tank Abbott, Kimo and Ken Shamrock (back in the days before weight classes).
Lesnar’s brute strength and showman-like antics have absorbed most of the heavyweight spot-light and on Monday, M-1 and Strikeforce made sure he wouldn’t have to share any of it after announcing the signing of Fedor Emelianenko.
Emelianenko is widely considered to be the best heavyweight in the world, but with the UFC dominating the MMA landscape, he certainly won’t get the exposure Lesnar does.
That’s why Fedor — as he’s commonly known — will continue to be second best until he sits down with M-1, Strikeforce and UFC president Dana White to figure out a way to get him in the cage with Lesnar.
The Huntington Beach Bad Boy returns: After stepping away from the UFC be-cause of reported bad blood with White, Tito “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy” Ortiz has officially rejoined forces with the world’s top MMA brand.
Ortiz hasn’t fought in the UFC since losing to current Light Heavyweight champion Lyoto Ma-chida in May 2008. He was scheduled to fight on an Elite XC card last year before that organiza-tion folded, but White announced the former light heavyweight champ’s return Friday.
The 34-year-old is currently recovering from back surgery, but there are rumors that he could be back in the cage as early as Nov. or Dec. and his opponent may be UFC Hall of Famer Mark “The Hammer” Coleman.
UFC, WEC welcome newcomers: After the demise of Affliction thanks to Josh Bar-nett’s positive steroids test, a plethora of fighters suddenly found themselves without a contract.
The UFC and WEC didn’t miss a beat. Both brands capitalized on Affliction’s blunder by grab-bing up several big name fighters and getting them under contract.
The UFC’s greatest conquest was nabbing former UFC champion Vitor Belfort, who will head-line UFC 103 in Sept. against Rich “Ace” Franklin. They also signed Dan Lauzon, Ben Rothwell, Chase Gormley, Rafaello Oliveira and Paul Daley.
The WEC got into the act as well, signing Javier Vazquez, Mark Hominick and LC Davis.
Posted by Ron Counts at 09:31 PM. Filed under:
