First and foremost, I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and hope you all will spend the day with friends and family enjoying yourselves.
It’s been a long, strange, exciting year for mixed martial arts and in the spirit of giving, I’d like to give out a few MMA-related gifts for Christmas. This is going to be a long post, because I have a lot of gifts to give out, so stay with me:
- To Roger Huerta I give a month long vacation to a time share in the Caribbean. Roger fought five times in the UFC in 2007 and came out on top in each fight. Two of those fights were absolute wars against Leonard Garcia and Clay Guida and it’s impressive that Huerta was able to get his mind and body in the zone and battle in the cage nearly every two months.
- To Tim Sylvia I give a nice pair of Work Suspenders by Dickies
. I know it must be tough for the 6′ 8″ heavyweight to keep his pants up without the UFC belt around his waist. Sylvia wore the belt constantly and it must be hard for him to not trip over his sagging pants.
- To Travis Lutter I give a Omron HBF-400 Body Fat Monitor and Scale
. Lutter won The Ultimate Fighter: The Comeback in November of 2006 and had nearly 3 months to prepare for the title shot he earned against Anderson Silva. Apparently, Lutter spent those 3 months eating donuts and drinking milkshakes because he failed to make weight for his title fight by nearly 2 pounds. If he had a better scale, maybe things would have been different.
- To Nick Diaz I give a license to the California Medical Marijuana Program and a big box of organic chocolates. Nick just wants to smoke some blunts and crack some heads… what’s wrong with that?
- To Evan Tanner I give some good Mojo Bars
and karma so he can finally complete his comeback to professional MMA and keep away the demons he has been fighting for the past few years.
- To Rich Franklin I give a Nose Guard
for the next time he has to fight Anderson Silva or any other Muay Thai practitioner for that matter.
- To Randy Couture I give a “Get Out of a Contract Early” card. This is much like the “Get out of jail free” card in Monopoly except it will allow Randy to get out his UFC contract before October 2008 so he can have a shot at fighting Fedor while he is still active and in top form.
- To Fedor Emelianenko I give a copy of Pride FC
for the PlayStation 2
. At least the video game would probably give Fedor some more competition than the guys he seems to be interested in fighting recently.
- To Royce Gracie, Sean Sherk, Hermes Franca, Phil Baroni, Stephan Bonnar, and all the others who tested positive for banned substances this year, I give The Original Whizzinator
. At least it would give them a better shot of beating the drug tests and they can keep taking their horse steroids without fear of being suspended.
- To Tito Ortiz I give a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. Clearly all Tito is interested in anymore is whoring himself out to the media to get his name in the public eye. His upcoming appearance on “Celebrity Apprentice” only further solidifies the fact that Tito would rather sell some Punishment Athletic shirts than he would work to bring his aging MMA game up-to-date. Sure the Celebrity Apprentice gig is for charity, but, you have to admit, I still have a point.
- To Josh Barnett I give just a little love. It seems the heavyweight can’t get any lately as he hasn’t been able to sign on with any promotion yet. For one of the top 3 heavyweights in the world, you’d think someone would show a little love to the big guy and add him to their roster.
- To Tara LaRosa I give a quick shot against Gina Carano. Now that LaRosa has signed with EliteXC, Carano finally has someone to challenge her. And, hey, once Tara beats Gina, not only will she have handed Carano her first loss, but she will also have beaten an American Gladiator.
- To Phil Baroni I give a rematch with Frank Shamrock. Their first fight was a battle that lived up to the hype and I think the results might be different the second time around.
- To Frank Shamrock I give a fight against Frank Trigg. This fight would be a battle between the two biggest ego’s in MMA today and would be an excellent middleweight battle as well.
- To the IFL and EliteXC I give some loyal fans and investors with deep pockets. The UFC needs some serious competition to keep everyone honest and, as MMA fans, we need as many good fights as we can get.
- To Zach Arnold I give a decent writing gig for a large media outlet. Zach is one of the best MMA journalists in the game today and he deserves a shot at writing for one of the “big boys.” Without Zach’s writing, the whole Japanese fight scene might fail to exist here in the states.
- To PATRICK I give a new keyboard with no CAPS LOCK key. Maybe 2008 will be the year Patrick learns that ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME MAKES IT HARD TO READ HIS COMMENTS.
- To RJ St. Croix I give a huge mansion in the great white north for him to kick back and relax with his wife and kids. A place just big enough to make him lazy so I can beat his Guitar Hero high scores sometime in 2008.
- To BVRasp I give the entire KRS-One discography.
- To MMAKansas I give the following book: Shogun And Ninja - Secrets Of Chute Boxe, The Ultimate Fighting System Blending Muay Thai Striking And Jiu-Jitsu Groundfighting For Mixed Martial Arts
. Even though the Rua’s have moved on from Chute Boxe, we know that MMAKansas still holds them near and dear to his heart.
- To Richard I give that MMA HQ t-shirt that you never got. Sorry about that.
- To Dennis I give a pair of autographed Chuck Liddell shorts. May you wear them in peace wherever you are Dennis… we all miss you.
- Last, but not least, I’d like to give all my MMA HQ loyal readers a big thank you for visiting the site day after day and helping make MMA HQ what it is. The site wouldn’t be anything without all the comments, articles, and story ideas that you all contribute and I’d like to personally thank you all. 2008 will mark the 4th year we have been covering MMA and each year proves better than the last. May we all enjoy a great 2008 and may MMA HQ continue to grow and expand just along side the great sport of mixed martial arts.
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@DOC
And God bless us everyone! lol had to…
lol thanks doc ill work on it….how bout u get me a clean hooker..lol u know im a horny young boy….lol
what about jason gatties? what does he get for christmas?
gatties gets a big lump of coal cuz he’s a scrooge!
And what am I?…chop liver?
@Amir
I couldn’t think of anything good for you or a few of the other guys so I had to leave you off. Sorry buddy.
thankx Doc! i dont know if you’ll ever beat me in Guitar Hero (you gotta play it on a setting other then easy at some point lol) but keep practicing theres nothing wrong with second best. to everyone, i hope you had a good Christmas or what ever you celebrate. and dont worry Amir chopped liver isnt that bad if that what your in to….. ewww lol. HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!!!!!
lol, good stuff. I 100% agree with the Zach comments.
That’s ok, I forgive you doc….anyways, so I read this article about Fedor and I pasted the details of the contract that the UFC apparently wanted, you guys should read the whole article but check this out:
WHY DIDN’T FEDOR SIGN WITH THE UFC?
To understand him is to recognize that given the circumstances, it was never a choice.
Hearing Fedor discuss the UFC negotiations and understanding his background and motivation, it is obvious that he was as likely to accept the UFC’s offer as he was to become a completely different man.
In particular Finkelchtein, Fedor’s manager, cited the harshness of the UFC’s terms and the organization’s inflexibility as two issues preventing an agreement. There were some specifics, such as the widely publicized clause that wouldn’t let Fedor compete in combat sambo and the UFC’s refusal to sign some of his Red Devil teammates.
“I never met Dana White, never spoke to him on the phone, never exchanged e-mails,” Fedor said. “However, I did read a lot on the Internet about what he said in regard to me and Vadim []. I also read e-mails that he sent to Vadim; all of his correspondence was very upsetting. The contract that we were presented with by the UFC was simply impossible, couldn’t be signed — I couldn’t leave. If I won, I had to fight eight times in two years. If I lost one fight, then the UFC had the right to rip up the contract. At the conclusion of the contract, if I am undefeated, then it automatically extends for an as yet unspecified period of time, though for the same compensation.
“Basically I can’t leave undefeated. I can’t give interviews, appear in films or advertising. I don’t have the right to do anything without the UFC’s agreement. I could do nothing without the OK from the UFC. I didn’t have the right to compete in combat sambo competition. It’s my national sport. It’s the Russian sport, which in his time our president competed in, and I no longer have the right to do so. There were many such clauses; the contract was 18 pages in length. It was written in such a way that I had absolutely no rights while the UFC could at any moment, if something didn’t suit them, tear up the agreement. We worked with lawyers who told us that it was patently impossible to sign such a document.”
im starting to think that its more the fertitas then dana…
ayyyyyy Merry Xmas guys! Funny stuff Doc hehe.. KRS is the man!
Anyone watching countdown to 79 tonight?? should be good to see what kind of shape the guys are in and what they have to say this close to the fight.
Nice article Amir, initially i thought that if the UFC wasnt willing to shell out the big bucks for Fedor, they might be spreading that money around and grab 4-5 other good fighters instead. Now it looks like theyre not even willing to do that, more likely theyre just going to focus on the TUF show and the TUF fighters. They could get 100 of those guys for 1 Fedor and they will each be more marketable to the UFC for the new fans especially considering Forrest and Jardines recent success.
What can you say.. it sucks, but on the plus side! we still got Hendo, crocop, Nog, Wandy and Shogun.. not too bad hehe..
Well, from what I understood of the article, maybe I didn’t include that part…Fedor’s management said that the UFC offer was the best one financially, but I guess the main issues that broke the deal were the prohibition of Sambo competition AND apparently they wanted him to fight 8 times in 2 years and they wanted all the exclusivity of his name and rights to break the contract, etc.
In my opinion, I can understand if your some no-name fighter and see the UFC as your best or only option, but when your the #1 fighter in the world, you shouldn’t have to sign your life away to a company that makes so many “additional” demands like this.
hope everyone had a merry christmas my computers in the shop but ill be back on more soon i hope
hurry up rich!!!!
gatties is such a *** o well… bv ..rj… how can you go against gsp… that dissapoints me
im not picking Hughes to win the fight. i was just betting on him because its the safest bet, he is a pretty big underdog even though he has a very good shot at winning. and as of today i changed my bet anyway, im betting everything i have ($320 lol) on Jordan Radev i think he has a better chance of beating Lister then Hughes beating St.Pierre and Radev is an even bigger underdog.