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The Official MMA Thread (pg. 6)
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| ghille |
| lol, well we are kind of at war... were military..:D |
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| Boomer187 |
| quote: | Originally posted by ghille
lol, well we are kind of at war... were military..:D |
I thought they had a constiution finally approved over there so all the killing should stop right :wtf: |
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| ghille |
| sure they have a constitution approved, but why shouldn't we be able to defend ourselves?:D |
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| Boomer187 |
| quote: | Originally posted by ghille
sure they have a constitution approved, but why shouldn't we be able to defend ourselves?:D |
did you happen to see that old south park episode where they were hunting and they had to scream its coming right for us before they killed the animal....hehehe
how much longer do ya have out there? |
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| ghille |
| LOL!!! I love southpark, that is one of my favorite episodes, i always joke about that... I also always sing the what would bryan boytono do song, lol... this is my second year here, I have been here this time since january.. ouch..:crazy: |
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| DjConfessions |
| how many armbars did u put on the guy at the same time? |
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| ghille |
| well, we shot him, so no armbars...:D |
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| Zombie14 |
Taken from UFC.TV
11/02/2005
Frank Mir – Breaking the Silence
Okay…no fancy leads…no scene set-up…let’s cut to the chase.
Frank Mir, how’s the leg?
“It’s fine.”
With that simple response, as blunt as a forearm to the jaw, the career of the former UFC heavyweight champion can finally begin again. But can we get a little more elaboration on just what ‘fine’ entails?
“It’s rehabilitated, so now I’m just training like normal and basically waiting to get back into a fight,” said Mir last week from his home in Las Vegas. “You can spar, train, and lift weights and stuff, but I guess you’ve just got to see how it reacts when you go out and compete with top-level guys.”
Just the fact that the 25-year-old is seriously talking about fighting again is a miracle in itself. On September 16, 2004, being able to compete at the highest levels of mixed martial arts was the last thing on Mir’s mind after he was blindsided by a car while riding his motorcycle. Thrown at least 70 feet from his bike, Mir’s left femur broke, requiring four hours of surgery and forcing a titanium rod to be placed in his leg permanently.
He’s lucky to be alive.
”Oh yeah,” Mir admits. “Especially because I got hit in the one part of my body that’s larger – I always had strong legs.”
Of course, there’s a difference between living and just being alive. For Mir, that meant that as soon as he was able, the big question had to be asked of his doctor.
“Can I fight again?”
“Because it was a clean break, I was told that I could come back and still play ‘full contact sports’ – as the doctor said it,” said Mir. “I don’t think he realized the extent of it. (Laughs) But he got the point that I needed to be able to take a really hard shot from really crazy and stupid angles. That was what I asked him. ‘It’s not really normal angles that I’m gonna be getting hit at – it’s really crazy, tweaky angles, something really weird.’ He said, ‘well, as long as it wouldn’t have broken under normal conditions, it should be fine now.’ Basically, what the muscle side saved me from is that my leg would have shattered, broke in several pieces, and then they would have to piece it back together. There would be no chance in hell that I’d ever be able to take a shot there again. The fact that it was a clean break and they were able to put a rod right in between the bone saved it.”
So that was the good news, but Mir is not a weekend warrior. He wasn’t asking his doctor for the green light to shoot hoops on Saturday or play in a flag football league on Sunday. He wasn’t asking to do Tae-Bo at the local gym. He needed not only to compete in the most demanding full-contact sport in the world; he had to do it at the elite level. That wasn’t going to happen overnight, and the rehabilitation for such an injury was going to be long, painful, and tougher than any fight he had in his 8-1 mixed martial arts career.
“It made me an old man,” said Mir of the accident. “It gave me a taste of what it’s like to be older.”
And so the road to recovery began for a seemingly invincible young man forced to address his mortality. Needless to say, there are ups and downs on that journey.
“You go back and forth, and some days are better than others,” he admits. “I think anybody who’s had a major accident or major injury realizes that one day you’re full of hope and the next day you’re like ‘this sucks, this is too long of a road, I’m depressed.’”
But he kept working, helped by the support of his wife, his children (a second child was welcomed to the Mir family this fall), and the rest of his family, both locally and in the gym. He also got daily reality checks just by turning on the television.
“You have to sit there and go, ‘people have got it a lot worse than you do and they don’t snivel half as bad. Chill out,’” he said. “Everybody does that - they feel sorry for themselves at one moment or another and then you just have to catch yourself. I was watching the Science channel and they were talking about a guy who got his arm blown off in . He’s got a mechanical arm now and he’s just happy that he can lift up his baby and hold her. I’m sitting there looking at this guy and going ‘wow, and I’m depressed that I’ve got a metal rod in my leg? What the hell is my problem? I’d be embarrassed if this guy ever heard me talking.’”
Then, as the days, weeks, and months passed by, Mir got stronger – not only physically, but mentally. To him, that was an epiphany.
“When I got hit by the car and I realized how frail my body really is – and I’m a strong human being – it just reaffirmed the fact that skill is everything,” he said. “I’m not always going to be able to jump this high or run this fast – how am I going to be able to beat people if I don’t have this? If I’m weaker, if I’m tinier? Let’s say I go into a fight and I only have one hand – now what am I gonna do? So all it did was show me a glimpse of the future – you’re 25 now, but you’re not always gonna be, so what are you gonna do when we take this away from you? And it was taken away from me. ”
Once back in the gym, Mir began reconstructing his technique from the ground up, making up for his physical deficiencies with a hard to crack mental game.
“The first few times I went back to the gym, I’m walking around limping,” he remembers. “I was learning how to protect certain sides of my body, I couldn’t do certain moves because I was still healing, and I had to find a way to beat people.”
It wasn’t going to be with brute force or physical supremacy – not now at least.
“I see guys push their strength and push the physical side of their bodies and I look at them and say, ‘that’s not why we’re on top of the food chain,’” Mir continues. “They’re like ‘what do you mean?’”
He explains.
“An orangutan can rip your head off. You can get (noted strongman) Bill Kazmaier, and a 150-pound orangutan is gonna throw him around the gym. So all that strength and all that training, what good did it do? So why not accentuate what makes humans so dangerous? Your mind.”
That’s all well and good, but the next time you see Stephen Hawking in the cage, or want to show me some tapes of Albert Einstein locking in a guillotine choke back in the day, let me know. You’ve got to have the skill and athletic ability to back up the mental acumen and strength once the bell rings. But don’t worry, Mir’s got that covered.
“I actually just pushed my mind a step further where it kinda shot my skill level through the ceiling. I was like, ‘you know what? It’s all about skill.’ I don’t care what anybody wants to tell me about being bigger, stronger, faster. You could have cardio that can last three days – if I choke you out in 30 seconds it doesn’t matter how long your cardio lasts.”
‘Nuff said. In fact, armed with these realizations, Mir feels he may be even more dangerous when he returns than he was before the accident.
“In some ways, yeah,” he admits. “Just because I had to sit down and really evaluate what makes me beat everybody. Look at Tim Sylvia when I defeated him. The guy’s 6-8 and he’s knocking everybody out. When I went out there it was all just technique. That was the difference between the two of us. He’s strong, fast, he hits hard. What was the difference? His technique. He’s got a good camp, his cardio is always great, so it was technical supremacy. That’s one area that I always kinda knew, but it just reaffirmed it in the accident.”
“Everybody asks, ‘can you make it back?’” Mir continues. “After a while, I realized that as long as I can pass what the doctors consider physically enough to compete, that’s all I need my body to be to perform and to beat people, because the thing that they’re all missing is that they’re just trying to be bigger, stronger, faster. And that’s not a good thing to have in your confidence because when you walk in the ring and you’re about to fight a human being - I’ve done it, so I know what they’re thinking and what I’m thinking - you have to have something you have pure confidence in. I don’t think size, strength, and power can do that. What if you’re fighting a guy who’s bigger than you, stronger than you? What if you don’t feel that strong that day? What’s your confidence gonna derive from now? I know that my mind gives me the ability to go ‘well, I’ll figure it out.’ So when I walk into the ring, I don’t care what you put in front of me because I know that I’m gonna figure it out.”
So his mind is strong, the skills are still there, and the desire to compete is alive and well; but is Frank Mir physically ready to get back into the Octagon to try and regain his heavyweight title from Andrei Arlovski?
Frank Mir has a number of tattoos on his 6-3, 240 pound frame. One of them reads, “I’m a king without a crown.” The 25-year-old Las Vegan probably didn’t believe those words would turn prophetic when he got inked, and he definitely didn’t think so when he won the UFC heavyweight championship in June of 2004 with a victory over Tim Sylvia.
But today, Mir doesn’t have his belt, despite never having lost it in the Octagon.
It was really no surprise when the UFC removed the ‘interim’ status from new champion Andrei Arlovski’s crown in August, and it was a fair move, considering Mir has been sidelined over a year due to a broken leg suffered in a motorcycle accident. But you know how those things go, and egos can sometimes get bruised in such situations.
Mir doesn’t see it that way though, and he has no issue with Arlovski being the one and only UFC heavyweight king.
“No, not at all,” said Mir. “Arlovski’s out defending it. The way I look at it, the bigger the fish, the better the story.”
That ‘story’ is one mixed martial arts fans around the globe would love to see played out to its conclusion – Arlovski vs Mir for all the heavyweight marbles. But as the months drew out after Mir’s accident, it was one many believed would never happen. Then the whispers started, turned into shouts, and suddenly, Mir was reportedly gearing up for an October return.
“I was trying to come back as early as October, but between having a child and stuff, that kinda delayed things,” admits Mir. “There are too many issues – having a baby and coming back from an injury. There was too much on the plate to handle at one time. So I said, at this point, its better just to take some time off and not rush coming back too soon and then having an unwanted or unneeded loss that no one’s gonna understand as ‘he’s coming back from an injury on his first fight back.’ People tend to forget that stuff.”
Yes they do. So Mir, taking the wise course of action, decided to wait.
“I’ve already been out for over a year,” he said. “At this point, two months is not gonna make a difference, if it’s a difference of me feeling better compared to rushing back and getting into the ring. So in October, physically, I was capable of doing so, but it was just rushing to get things done, passing more medical exams, trying to sort out the personal life of having an additional baby in the house, and I was like, hmm, let’s just wait.”
Mir is scheduled to meet with the UFC brass later this month to discuss his future, and he expects to make his return to the Octagon in 2006. Of course, in the meantime, it’s a lot of training – mental and physical – to get back in fighting shape, and luckily, he feels that his broken left leg is almost perfect again.
“All it was was a bone break anyway, and by putting the titanium rod in it, it’s okay,” he said. “Every once in a while, where the incision was made, sometimes I’ll be sore. If anything, maybe I notice little details. Sometimes I don’t notice things until I can do them again – certain range of motion stuff I don’t realize I have until one day I’m doing it again. It’s like now I’ve made a 90% recuperation and it seems like the last 10% is going to be like baby steps because it’s just details.”
And yes, he’s tested the leg in a live sparring environment.
“I think more or less sometimes it’s psychological,” said Mir. “Sometimes I protect my leg just out of being used to it hurting, but now I’ve been kicked across the thigh, I’ve had people try to leglock me, and everything seems to be pretty much the same.”
So does Mir miss anything after all this time away from the sport?
“Just competing,” he said. “It gives you a reason for why you train and why you do things. Sometimes without the competition side of it I never noticed how much I give my life towards always getting ready to compete for something. So when you take that out of the equation, now it’s like, ‘what do you want to do today?’ I’m gonna lay around the house and watch TV.”
But with 2006 just around the corner, those days of grappling a TV remote are over. Now it’s time for Mir to start looking towards regaining his title – one that is now held by the imposing ‘Pitbull’, Arlovski. What does he see when he looks at the man holding his belt?
“I see a really good athlete,” said Mir. “The only advantage I have over Andrei Arlovski that I see distinctively is a mental edge that I don’t care how I win the fight. I don’t necessarily know if he feels the same way. I think sometimes a lot of young fighters get stuck in that thing where they say ‘I want to be considered a stand-up guy, so I’ll knock you out,” or ‘I want to be considered a submission artist so I have to get the armbar or the choke,’ or ‘I have to get the ground and pound and show that I’m a superior takedown artist.’ I don’t care. I’ve heard fighters go, ‘well, I got knocked out, but I stood here and I took it.’ I would look over at my wife, look at the ring and I’m like ‘did that guy just say that he lost, but he lost like a man?’ What the hell does that mean? I don’t understand that because it’s all warfare, and I just want to win. I’m not gonna go outside the rules; I’m still gonna be an honorable human being and say ‘these are the ground rules we settled upon. Anything within those ground rules, I’m gonna use.’ I’m not gonna go ahead and prove a point in the face of defeat, because all people remember a week later is, ‘man, did you get knocked out heroically.’ I remember when I knocked out Wes Sims, everybody was like ‘well, you couldn’t submit him.’ I really didn’t care. I was more like, ‘damn, I can’t submit this guy.’ I went after him with whatever I thought was best; I was in the middle of the ring, I looked up at the clock and said, ‘I’d better adapt. I can’t beat this guy this way.’”
“So sometimes I look at Andrei Arlovski right now, and just because of his ability to submit people, the fact that he’s trying to go out there and knock everybody out, it’s a good thing and a bad thing,” Mir continues. “He’s getting knockouts, so it’s a crowd-pleasing thing – everybody wants to see the knockouts. But if he’s going in the ring trying to win by a certain angle and I’m fighting him and I’m just trying to win at all costs, that’s a disadvantage to him.”
Just for a recap, especially for newer fans of the sport who haven’t seen Mir at his best, here’s his attitude in a nutshell: he approaches submissions like a prime Mike Tyson approached knockouts – he’s looking to finish the fight.
“Oh yeah, most definitely,” said Mir. “That’s the one thing that gives me a mental edge over a lot of opponents, especially sparring. Guys line up, they want to feel each other out. They get their range, they get their distance. I don’t really understand that. It’s still fighting. How are we gonna feel each other out? You’d better be doing that when you’re looking me in the eyes and we’re walking towards each other. As the battle engages you have to think and move on your feet. As an example, in boxing, guys go out there and they start throwing the jab and move around, and in the first two minutes, nothing’s really happening. I think that’s ridiculous. And the minute I engage and we’re within hand distance, I’m thinking about finishing you because the only way I can secure my own safety is if you’re unconscious on the ground. That’s just my mentality about it. The reason I think that I end up thrashing a lot of guys so soon is that most guys, when they start a fight off, they’re still getting over their fear. They want to almost feel you to feel that it’s okay that they’re in the fight. Once they get past that, now they can fight and they get rid of their jitters. I don’t have those jitters when I first start out. I go in there and boom, I’m trying to rip your head off. It’s not an anger thing, I’m just more of a surgeon. I’m not going to sit here and tap at the cancer, look around at it and feel it, talk to the nurse and get a cup of coffee. I’m here to do something, so let’s get it done.”
“They haven’t conquered their fear,” he continues. “They’re physical fighters and not mental fighters, so they have to get in there and you have to put them in a fight before they react. You have to almost fight them to get them into a fight zone. But if you let me get the first move off on you, action beats reaction. If you let me start on you, and you’re waiting to get into that zone, that killer freak mode, the fight’s over with and they’ve raised my hand before you’ve realized it.”
If at this point, you’re not clearing dates on your 2006 calendar for Arlovski-Mir, you’re following the wrong sport. But the question has to be asked; even after all this time, and with all the buzz about this fight swirling around, is Mir planning on returning to the Octagon to face Arlovski immediately, or will he take a tune-up or two to get back in the swing of competitive fighting?
“It depends on talking to the UFC and seeing what’s best for everybody,” he said. “If it’s better for the fans to have a build-up, it works for me. If it’s better just to jump right in there, in one aspect I’m like, ‘jeez, I’m not gonna waste three months of my time training and a payday on that guy. I want to fight Andrei Arlovski.’ That would get me out of bed. He’s an exciting fighter – I want to fight him.”
And in a thin heavyweight division, it’s THE marquee matchup. How does Mir break down the big boys of MMA?
“In all combat sports, the heavyweight division’s always the lightest,” he admits. “If you look at boxing, to be a top ten heavyweight is not that remarkable of a feat. Welterweight? You’re a pretty tough guy. If you’re in the 140’s and you’re top ten in the world, you’re pretty tenacious. Even at the amateur level in wrestling, if you go to a collegiate wrestling match, the guys wrestling at 154, there’s 50 of them, all ready to eat each other alive to get that spot. Half the time the heavyweights are whoever just couldn’t make one weight class. (Laughs)”
You’re kind of killing the division where you were champion though, eh Frank?
“In one way it’s lack of competition, but why lie to everybody?” he said. “I’m not going to try to insult people’s intelligence if there’s a reason why the heavyweight division is the way it is. There are several factors that go into it – one, most big men aren’t the greatest athletes; two, most big guys don’t care about learning how to fight and putting in any time behind it; and then on top of that, I’m an exceptional athlete for a big guy.”
He explains.
“I’ve had issues in the past with being able to get into the gym because every time I do, I’ll go into the gym after taking two months off and they’ll be like ‘okay, spar this guy. He has a fight in two weeks – he’s ready.’ I go and spar the guy and kill him. I’m breathing heavy and ready to pass out between rounds and he still can’t land a punch. ‘What combo you want me to hit?’ ‘Hit this one then take him down.’ ‘Okay, I’m just gonna kimura you all day, see if you can stop it.’ The guy can’t stop it. All this guy has is size. Well, I’m not a small person myself, so once you nullify size, what do we have left? That’s why I think Andrei Arlovski does so well. He’s an exceptional athlete, and he’s technical. He doesn’t just go in there and impose his will on people physically. He’s out there landing technical shots that are attributed to skill.”
“Most heavyweights go into a gym and there are not that many heavyweights,” Mir continues. “A guy who weighs 250, he’s the only guy in the gym who weighs 250. So he gets to roll with guys who are 180 or spar with guys who are 200 pounds. Well, he can win the match by just laying on somebody, by being a fat guy, but that’s not gonna happen when you walk in the ring with somebody who’s your size – and now they’re skilled. So with me, when I’m in the gym and I roll with someone who’s 180, I don’t find it remarkable to beat you with my size. I want you to go, ‘Jesus, you’re faster than I am and I’m 180.’ That’s what I want to hear you say. Wow, a guy that’s 140 tells me ‘I can’t even feel your weight, you’re so slick.’ That’s what I want to hear. So when I hit someone who’s 250, they don’t even know what hit them.”
The sport of mixed martial arts has missed Frank Mir. But thankfully, the wait is almost over.
“I will be back in there,” he said. “It just depends, too, on how much can be put in front of me. People can only be judged against their competition. Now I have Andrei Arlovski, so it just depends on what comes of that and what else is out there. Basically, that’s my only limitation – what’s out there for me to go ahead and test myself against. If I have mediocre competition then I’m gonna have a mediocre career and be remembered that way. If I can have a lot of great fighters step up to the plate, I can do great things.” |
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| Zombie14 |
| personally, i would think arlovski would take frank mir apart |
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| Zombie14 |
-taken from UFC.TV
10/23/2005
"The Ultimate Fighter 2" Finale Live on Spike TV
DIEGO SANCHEZ READY TO BATTLE NICK DIAZ AS MAIN EVENT FOR UFC® AND SPIKE TV’S THE ULTIMATE FIGHTER™ SEASON 2 FINALE LIVE FROM LAS VEGAS SATURDAY, NOV. 5
Card Also Features The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 Star Kenny Florian vs Four-Time World Muay Thai Champion Kit Cope
Las Vegas, NV (Oct. 21, 2005) –When the bell rings for Diego “The Nightmare” Sanchez Saturday, Nov. 5, he vows to show Nick Diaz that he is a legitimate fighter and that his perfect 15-0 MMA record is as real as it gets. Diaz, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt training under Cesar Gracie, recently criticized Sanchez for being a TV star who has never fought any tough opponents. Sanchez is ready to take the battle against Diaz inside the Octagon™ as the featured main event for UFC® and Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter™ Season 2 Finale live in Las Vegas from the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Saturday, Nov. 5, 2005. Doors open at 3:30pm PT and the undercard action starts at 4:15pm PT.
The Ultimate Fighter Season 2 Finale will also telecast live nationally on Spike TV starting at 9:00pm ET/PT.
Sanchez (15-0) 5’11”/170 lbs., fighting out of Albuquerque, NM, is a Gaidojutsu black belt who is known for his grappling and his aggressive style. He fought four extremely tough fighters, Alex Karalexis, Josh Rafferty, Josh Koscheck, and Kenny Florian, to become the first-ever middleweight winner of The Ultimate Fighter. He also submitted dangerous striker Brian Gassaway at UFC 54 (8/20/05) at 1:56 of the second round.
Diaz (11-3-0) 6’0”/170 lbs., fighting out of Stockton, CA, made a big impression in the UFC with a submission win over Jeremy Jackson and a knockout win over “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler. He also scored impressive first round TKOs of Drew Fickett and Pancrase fighter Koji Oishi. With a combination of excellent Jiu-Jitsu skills and potent striking, Diaz is considered to be one of the welterweight division’s fastest rising stars.
As a special attraction, The Ultimate Fighter Season 2 Finale also includes an exciting matchup between The Ultimate Fighter Season 1 star Kenny “KenFlo” Florian and four-time professional Muay Thai World Champion Kit “Havoc” Cope.
Florian (5-2) 5’10”/170 lbs., fighting out of Boston, MA, is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt who has won many grappling championships. He has also shown dangerous striking skills, including elbows, which he used to score stoppage wins over Chris Leben and Alex Karalexis in fights during The Ultimate Fighter Season 1.
Cope (2-2) 6’0”/170 lbs., fighting out of Las Vegas, NV, is a four-time professional Muay Thai World Champion and a Muay Thai World Bare Knuckle Champion. Having established himself as a world class kickboxer, Cope is out to defeat Florian and prove that he can also be a top level UFC competitor.
The Ultimate Fighter Season 2 Finale will also feature the fights between the heavyweight and middleweight finalists of the hit reality series, currently airing on Spike TV Mondays at 11:00pm ET/PT. The winners of each weight division will be awarded a six-figure contract with The Ultimate Fighting Championship® organization.
More fighters and bouts, including the middleweight and heavyweight finalists for The Ultimate Fighter Season 2, will be announced in the near future.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship
The Ultimate Fighting Championship® brand is the world’s leading professional mixed martial arts organization and offers the premier series of MMA sports events. Owned and operated by Zuffa, LLC, and headquartered in Las Vegas, Nev., UFC® fight programs feature six live pay-per-view events annually through cable and satellite providers. In addition to its U.S. distribution, UFC fight programs are distributed throughout the world including broadcast on WOWOW, Inc. in Japan, Globosat in Brazil and Bravo in the United Kingdom. Zuffa, LLC licenses the distribution of its fight show DVDs through Studioworks Entertainment, a Ventura Distribution company. For more information, or current UFC fight news, visit www.ufc.tv.
Ultimate Fighting Championship, Ultimate Fighting, UFC, The Ultimate Fighter, Submission, As Real As It Gets, The Octagon and the eight-sided cage design are registered trademarks, trademarks, trade dress or service marks owned exclusively by Zuffa, LLC in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks referenced herein may be the property of Zuffa, LLC or other respective owners.
Spike TV, the first network for men, is available in 88 million homes and is a division of MTV Networks
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okay, so my picks are: rashad evans, joe stevenson, and the diaz/sanchez fight im undecided |
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| Vlad |
| quote: | Originally posted by TylerM
personally, i would think arlovski would take frank mir apart |
I dont think there is anyone out there that can touch Arlovski right now. |
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| Zombie14 |
| especially when mir is coming off such a serious injury |
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