Nick Diaz - Image: Showtime Sports

Why did Nick skip out on the testing? Because he knew he would fail. Nick has never kept his pot smoking a secret and has paid for it several times in his career. In 2007 he was suspended for six months after a post-even drug test revealed he was baked out of his mind during a fight. And another fight was called off in 2008 because he told the commission he smoked marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Once again, Nick Diaz’s camp isn’t trying to hide the fact that he’s been smoking pot. Their claim is that they had ‘an informal arrangement’ with the former head of the California State Athletic Commission where Nick’s medical marijuana card (related to Attention Deficit Disorder) allowed him to smoke. Unfortunately for Nick, the former head was forced out over a sex scandal and the new people in charge never got the memo.

So rather than submit his pee and risk another suspension, Diaz decided not to show for the tests. His pot smoking damages his career yet again, and Strikeforce loses one of their more popular stars for their big card this weekend.

Post from: EveryJoe

Nick Diaz Off Strikeforce Card Over Pot

Affliction Trilogy Poster - Image: Affliction Entertainment

“Finding an opponent for the No. 1 ranked MMA heavy weight champion in such a short period of time was a huge endeavor and I’m thrilled at the amount of fighters willing to take on this challenge. But in the end, we just didn’t have enough time to promote a new fight to our standards.”

This sucks, especially considering how excited everyone was getting over the potential replacements for Fedor. The MMA community was making a case for Brett Rogers to get a shot, which would be a Cinderalla tale for the ages. Not even a year ago, Rogers had to return to his job balancing tires at Sam’s Club because he couldn’t make ends meet as a fighter. A surprise win over Andrei Arlovski last month propelled him into everyone’s top ten lists and a fight with Fedor would have made for excellent movie fodder, win or lose.

On top of that, Vitor Belfort was said to have actually signed a bout agreement to face Fedor, but never heard back from the promotion to confirm the bout.

So why cancel the event? Well, Affliction has already taken pretty epic financial beatings from their past two events. And relying on all this drama to turn into ticket sales and PPV buys is a risky proposition, especially when you don’t know how the silent masses will react to a last second main event shift. Word is Affliction’s pay per view partner Showtime had a big say in the final decision to shut the event down. I have no idea how they’re affected exactly but I don’t think it’s foolish to think it all had to do with money … or the lack thereof.

No one has said if this is the end of the road for Affliction but people are already talking about how the company will spread it’s card out amongst other events to fulfill it’s contractual obligations. That doesn’t exactly make it sound like they’re gonna ask for a do over.

Post from: EveryJoe

Affliction Trilogy gets canceled

I’ll use Matt from Operacion Repo as an example again. Here’s a video of Matt in action:

As is the case in the video, Matt’s first reaction is almost always to wind up and push as hard as he can. (I know the show is staged but it’s still a good example.) The reason most big guys resort to pushing is to utilize their strength, which is strength. Aside from pushing, you can tell Matt isn’t very nimble or coordinated. So if someone throws a punch, he’s going to be confused and immediately try a headlock or some other strength based maneuver.  He’s also going to be off balance because of his need to throw his weight and muscle into what he does.

Bench press doesn’t make you a better fighter. Nor do curls. You need to train for fighting. What makes you dangerous is when you combine raw strength with fighting attributes such as speed, agility, precision, and skill. Brock Lesnar exemplifies all of these attributes except skill. Lesnar has a tremendous combination of athleticism and power that along with a wrestling background and developing MMA skills has led him to be world champion.

Many weight lifters and power lifters train their muscles to do only one thing: Lift.  So while there muscles grow and grow and eventually become huge, they lose mobility, quickness, coordination, and flexibility.  This leaves a lot of heavy lifters with a lot of pushing power but not much else.

Post from: EveryJoe

Why a Lot of Muscular Guys Are Bad Fighters

Image: Inside Fitness

In this edition, which is the August/September issue, there is a definite UFC theme. St-Pierre, who is from Canada, gives the fitness magazine an in-depth look at his training program that has allowed him to become a UFC star. There is also a lengthy interview with Greg Jackson, one of the most famous and successful UFC trainers.

Other information in this Inside Fitness issue is information about changing the Fat Map of your body and how that can tone and tighten your physique. A number of top selling nutrition bars are analyzed, as is CLA — the much talked about supplement that burns fat fast.

You can purchase Inside Fitness magazines all across Canada in stores such as Chapters, Safeway, 7-11, Shoppers Drug Mart and Walmart. You can also learn more about Inside Fitness at IFMMedia.com.

Post from: EveryJoe

UFC Star on Inside Fitness Cover

Gina Carano - Image: Zuma Press

Kit Cope is a kickboxer and mediocre MMA fighter who’s best known for an appearance on MTV’s True Life and a run in the WEC that ended with a positive test for steroids. Actually, that’s not really true. Kit is best known for being Gina Carano’s ex … they were actually engaged at one point.

Now don’t ask me why he did this, because I don’t have the answer. But he recently went on MMA Junkie radio and had a discussion about a Gina Carano sex tape, whether Gina Carano’s breasts are real or not, and how badly she’s gonna get her ass kicked (his words, not mine) if she keeps training with Randy Couture instead of where she used to train (in other words, with Kit).

All in all it’s an interesting display that hopefully teaches all the girls reading this to stop dating douches and give me a call instead. You can listen to the entire segment in the video below.

Post from: EveryJoe

Gina Carano’s Ex Talks About Sex Tape

Michael Bisping - Image: Zuma Press

There was controversy afterwards as Henderson gave the clearly unconscious Bisping an extra shot to the face before the referee could step in and officially stop the fight. It took a good half minute to minute for the British fighter to come around and when he did he had no idea what was going on. In his victory interview with Joe Rogan, Dan admitted he knew Bisping was out and the extra one was “just to shut him up a little bit.” So you can look at the amount of crap Bisping served Henderson up during their season of TUF and decide for yourself if it was kinda sorta justified or an all out dick move.

The knockout itself was extra impressive and earned Dan Henderson a $100,000 award from the UFC for KO of the night.

Post from: EveryJoe

UFC 100: Dan Henderson KOs Michael Bisping

UFC Ultimate 100 Greatest Fights - Image: UFC

Here’s the schedule to catch these shows on Spike:

Sunday July 5th / 9PM : Part 1
Monday July 6th / 9PM : Part 2
Tuesday July 7th / 9PM : Part 3
Wednesday July 8th / 9PM : Part 4
Saturday July 11th / 9PM : Part 5

If you want to save everything for Saturday, the UFC is showing all the parts from 5pm onwards that day, ending just in time for UFC 100 to start on Pay Per View. And don’t forget the Countdown show as well, which debuts on Tuesday at 10pm and replays Friday at midnight! Long story short, there’s a buttload of stuff for you to watch this week to get you in the mood for UFC numero 100.

Post from: EveryJoe

Ultimate 100 Greatest Fights debuts tonight

Bobby Lashley - Image: Zuma Press

Bob Sapp came into this fight at a relatively svelte 322 pounds – a big drop from his typical 375 pounds. Here I was hoping that this meant he was finally starting to take his training seriously but the story he told before the fight revolved around the embarrassment of sitting on a toilet and breaking it rather than any desire to seriously compete in mixed martial arts.

As for Bobby Lashley, Sapp is a nice recognizable name on his record … much better than the second biggest name, Jason Guida. Guida is the older brother of UFC fighter Clay Guida and is best known for his appearance on the Ultimate Fighter where he cramped up trying to cut weight and exposed his junk to the world while rolling around the floor in agony.

Speaking of TUF, earlier this year Lashley was considering breaking into the UFC via TUF but his management has decided to take it slow and let Lashley develop – a good idea in my opinion considering Lashley is still looking pretty one dimensional at the moment. I don’t expect him to be finishing guys with flying elbows off the top rope or anything, but thus far we haven’t seen much from the young prospect past some okay wrestling and not so okay ground and pound. Still, with his record standing at 4-0, he’s gotten off to a good start.

In other Ultimate Chaos results, Gilbert Yvel knocked Pedro Rizzo out in brutal fashion 2:10 into the first round, Chris Horodecki defeated William Sriyapai via rear naked choke at 4:02 of round 1, and Affliction promoter Tom “T-Shirt Guy” Atencio came back from some serious blows in the first round of his fight against Randy Hedderick to win in the second. Well, in between the second and third … Atencio beat on Hedderick in the second that the fighter refused to answer the third round bell. Din Thomas was also originally supposed to fight on the card, but missed weight by half a pound and before he realized it wasn’t okay had already started to rehydrate himself. Oops.

Post from: EveryJoe

Bobby Lashley Takes Out Bob Sapp

Tim Sylvia - Image: Ben Kevan

A fight with #1 heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko at Affliction’s first event earned Tim a phat 800,000 bucks but also an embarrassing 30 second loss. And now another nail has been put in the coffin of his career: this past weekend he lost an MMA fight to an Olympic gold medalist boxer. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, except this boxer won that medal around the same time the Berlin Wall fell. “Merciless” Ray Mercer is now 48 years old and a rotund 256 pounds. But that didn’t stop him from knocking Tim Sylvia out in 9 seconds.

Mercer had already been dismantled several times in kickboxing and MMA contests, most recently to Kimbo Slice, who choked him out in just over a minute. He wasn’t expected to have much of a chance, especially after the threat of criminal charges forced the bout to be changed from a boxing match to mixed martial arts fight at the last second. But win he did, and in spectacular fashion.

But wait! It gets worse! Tim Sylvia was set to fight on the upcoming Affliction card August 1st for another huge paycheck (we’ll talk about Affliction’s out of control salaries in another post), but was removed from the card last night due to medical concerns stemming from his defeat. To say this has been a bad week for Timmy would be an understatement. Not only has he damaged his reputation, but he’s cost himself one of the last big paychecks he’s liable to be making for a very long time.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tim Sylvia knocked out by 48 year old boxer

Former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Marcus Jones - Image: Zuma Press

Those debating how well Kimbo Slice will do on the Ultimate Fighter haven’t had much information to work with one way or the other. Without knowing who he’s going up against, how can you assume he’s going to fail or succeed? But now the full 16 heavyweight roster for the Ultimate Fighter 10 has been sniffed out, and rather than try to speculate on their skill level, I’m just going to order them from most intriguing to least:

• Kimbo Slice: Mr Youtube Sensation himself, Kimbo Slice took Dana White up on his challenge to get into the UFC via the Ultimate Fighter.
• Roy Nelson: Former IFL heavyweight champion the UFC refused to sign because he was too fat. Seriously.
• Wes Sims: Went 0-3 in the UFC a few years ago. Can never seem to beat anyone above regional level, and even then it’s often a toss up.
• Marcus Jones: NFL defensive end from 1996 to 2002. Training MMA since early 2007.
• Matt Mitrione: Former NFL player and MMA virgin. Trains with UFC fighter Jake ‘the Blanket’ O’Brien.
• Wes Shivers: NFL veteran and a late replacement for Rex Richards (who was also in the NFL … real invasion this season, huh?).
• Jim York: New Zealand fighter who shares a common opponent with Kimbo Slice in James Thompson. York managed to knock Thompson out in the first round.
• Justin Wren: A gigantic guy who has more wrestling trophies than most colleges do.
• Mike Wessel: Wessel made it into the UFC by accepting a fight on a week’s notice. He lost, but was given a spot on TUF as a consolation prize.
• Scott Junk: Another fighter who dropped the ball the first time the UFC gave him a try in 2007.
• Zak Jensen: Wrestler out of Minnesota, has a 7-3 record with losses to TUF alumni Brad Imes and Mike Whitehead.
• Darrill Schoonover: US Army veteran with a 10-0 pro and 5-0 amateur record.
• Brendan Schaub: Trains out of Greg Jackson’s gym and is a Shane Carwin sparring partner.
• Jon Madsen: Newb fighter out of Matt Hughes’ gym
• Tom Blackledge: 8-6 fighter out of Michael Bisping’s camp.
• Abe Wagner: Mystery man out of Nebraska with a 6-2 pro record

Fortunately for Kimbo, he doesn’t have to be the best out of the 16 … he just has to be better than the three fighters he’ll need to beat to make it to the TUF finale.

And just to get a few more TUF related tidbits out of the way so we can move on to other MMA related insanity, UFC president Dana White revealed in Germany that the Ultimate Fighter has been renewed through season 14 and another US versus UK season was on it’s way.

Post from: EveryJoe

Complete Ultimate Fighter 10 roster leaked