Hijinks Inc.

Tag: MMA

  • The MMA Minute – Strikeforce Houston: King Mo vs. Feijao

    Strikeforce 27 is coming up tomorrow, also known as Strikeforce Houston: King Mo vs. Feijao, and it brings us 2 championship fights. See, fledgling organizations need to put on really big shows to be a draw because the mainstream fans just don’t recognize many of their fighters like they do with the UFC. However, Strikeforce is the only real competition to the UFC, so they have to do their best to grab whatever talent happens to be available.

    Regardless, anytime you get to see 2 championship fights, it’s a good card. Here’s what we’ve got:

    Main Card

    For the picks, I’m going to go with the undefeated Lawal to retain his belt in the Light Heavyweight Championship. The Middleweight Championship is actually a fight for the vacant Middleweight belt, which was vacated by Jake Shields when he left Strikeforce to join the UFC, I’ll take Souza in that fight. As for the last two, they aren’t flashy, but they could be interesting; I’ll take Noons over Gurgel and the former WWE wrestler Lashley over Griggs.

  • The MMA Minute – WEC 50 Aftermath

    Hey kids, sorry for the delay on posting these. I haven’t actually been able to watch these fights yet, it’s been a crazy week and I just didn’t have the time. But the show must go on! So, rather than breaking down the fights on my own, I’ll point you to Sherdog’s outstanding coverage, and thank you for stopping by! Here’s the results along with how I fared on the night.

    Main card

    • Bantamweight bout: United States Scott Jorgensen vs. England Brad Pickett – Jorgensen defeated Pickett via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27).
    • Featherweight bout: United States Cub Swanson vs. United States Chad Mendes – Mendes defeated Swanson via unanimous decision (30-27, 29-28, 29-28).
    • Lightweight bout: United States Shane Roller vs. United States Anthony Pettis – Pettis defeated Roller via submission (triangle choke) at 4:51 of round 3.

    The Palaszewski/Micklewright fight was added late, I didn’t make a pick for that fight. I went 2-2 on the rest of the card, picking Jorgenson over Pickett and siding with Cruz to retain the championship. For an admitted non-expert on all things WEC… not to shabby!

  • The MMA Minute – WEC 50: Cruz vs. Benavidez 2

    Ahh, the joys of World Extreme Cagefighting, or the WEC as regular people call it. It’s the sister organization of the UFC, focusing on the smaller weight divisions, Lightweight (155 lbs), Featherweight (145 lbs), and Bantamweight (135 lbs). It’s so much fun watching these fights because these guys literally throw each other all over the place. Tomorrow night they hold their 50th event which will air on Versus the biggest (and only) draw being the Bantamweight title fight. This was supposed to be the debut of WEC poster boy Urijah Faber at his new weight class, but he had to pull out recently due to a knee injury. I have to confess, again, I haven’t watched quite as much WEC as I have other organizations, so some of these predictions are a bit off the cuff, or based on only 1 or 2 fights I’ve seen, you’ve been warned.

    Main card

    Before my picks, I’d like to do a quick review. Over the course of the last two months I’ve gone 2-2 in Strikeforce, 4-5 in UFC, and these are my first picks of a WEC card. 6-7? Those are very pedestrian numbers. Take out possibly the biggest upset in MMA history and a card littered with picks from a rooting interest instead of purely picks by the book and those numbers would be a bit better, but that’s just a hollow excuse, I promise to do better. So here’s your picks. I like Cruz to keep his belt, Roller over Pettis, Swanson over Mendes, and Jorgensen over Pickett. Keep your fingers crossed boys and girls.

  • The MMA Minute – Major MMA Organizations (non-UFC)

    After a busy week in the MMA world (2 events in 1 week!) we resume our series reviewing the history of MMA and it’s major organizations. To this point, we’ve had a 2 part series on the history of MMA (click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2), and followed that up with another 2 part series detailing the history of the UFC (click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2). I could break down all the other mainstream organizations and draw this out, but I’ve decided instead to just cover them all with a few quick blurbs in this single post, hope you don’t mind.

    We have 3 organizations left to cover: Pride, which was purchased and absorbed by the UFC, WEC, which is owned and operated by UFC, and Strikeforce, which is really the only realistic competition to the UFC. Of course, nobody knows for sure unless they were to square off, but many believe that outside of a handful of fighters, many in the Strikeforce organization aren’t quite up to par of what the UFC offers. But competition will bring out the best, so it’s all good for the fans.

    We’ll cover the history of these 3 organizations after the jump. (more…)

  • The MMA Minute – UFC 117 Aftermath

    On paper, this was a fantastic night of fights. Looking back at it, it more than delivered on all the anticipation, plus some. Here’s your recaps.

    Quick Recaps

    “We discussed yesterday about how annoying Sonnen had gotten with all of his trash talking. But… he totally dominated Silva for the entire fight. This wasn’t catching the guy in a mistake like Werdum over Fedor, Sonnen used his strengths to exploit Silva’s weaknesses and completely dominated him for the entire fight. I’ve never seen Silva go after someone like he did tonight, in beginning of the 1st and 2nd round he really attacked Sonnen instead of feeling him out for 3-4 minutes, but in the end Silva’s cocky fighting style finally caught up with him in this fight, and Sonnen backed up all of his trash talking with a very dominating performance.”

    …that was what I HAD written up before the miraculous finish by Silva. What an amazing fight! I can’t even put into words how unbelievable that finish was considering how the fight had gone. That’s why Silva is the best fighter in the world.

    All 3 rounds went as almost every Jon Fitch fight goes, Fitch trades some punches, gets a hold of the opposing fighter, takes them to the ground and goes to work. It’s not exciting, but it’s incredibly impressive. Now he’s next in line to get GSP or his own teammate, Josh Koscheck, fighting for the title.

    Guida was high octane energy the entire fight, like usual. Rafael dos Anjos posed his greatest threats whenever the fight was on the ground, continually trying to lock in the omaplata. Guida got dos Anjos up against the cage and got him to tap due to the broken jaw.

    • Welterweight bout: United States Matt Hughes vs. Brazil Ricardo Almeida – Hughes wins by technical submission (anaconda choke) at 3:15 of the 1st round.

    Hughes has looked really good in the last couple fights. I wasn’t sure he had anything left in the tank, but he’s really put together a few good performances in a row. This is his first fight after being inducted into the UFC hall of fame, and he knocked Almeida down with a strong punch, and then pounced on him to get the submission.

    I’m not sure I’ve seen a first round when more punches were thrown to knock the opponents head off… by both fighters! Roy Nelson spent most of the fight trying to defend the furious attacks from dos Santos, but quite a few got through. At one point, dos Santos front kicked Nelson straight to the jaw. Nelson took a lot of abuse, but just kept coming. I really didn’t think much of Nelson before this fight, but anybody that can take that much abuse and keep on coming forward, deserves some respect.

    I finally got back on the right track with my picks, going a perfect 5-0 on the main card thanks to the amazing finale comeback by Silva. This was the best night of fights I’ve seen in a very long time. Our next MMA event is WEC 50 on the 18th.