Total Mma

Jonathan Snowden

Description

Since the beginning of time men have engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Over time, the fighting arts were watered down and replaced by a variety of limited ones, like karate, boxing and wrestling. In the modern age, this has created one important question: who is the toughest? Could a boxer beat a kung fu artist? Could a wrestler beat a karate practitioner? Thus the Ultimate Fighting Championship was born. This is the definitive history of the definitive fighting tournament.

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554903375
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

TOTAL MMA
Inside Ultimate Fighting
Jonathan Snowden
Copyright Jonathan Snowden, 2008
Published by ECW Press 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2 [e-mail] / 416.694.3348
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process - electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise - without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Snowden, Jonathan, 1975- Total MMA: inside ultimate fighting / Jonathan Snowden.
ISBN 978-1-55022-846-5.
1. Mixed martial arts. 2. Mixed martial arts - United States. I. Title.
GV1102.7.M59S66 2008 796.815 C2008-902430-3
Editor: Michael Holmes Typesetting: Gail Nina
This book is set in Minion and Akzidenz
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1 The Birth of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
2 The War of the Worlds
3 Fight Night
4 Hybrid Wrestling: Pancrase
5 The Lion s Den
6 The Tournament
7 The Great UFC PR Battle
8 Pride Arrives
9 Remodeling the UFC
10 Frank Shamrock and the Alliance
11 Gracie vs. Saku
12 Enter the Fertittas
13 The UFC Survives
14 MFS
15 Tito vs. the Lion s Den
16 Randy vs. Chuck
17 The Growth of Pride
18 The Ultimate Fighter
19 Post-TUF
20 Pride Before the Fall
21 TUF 3
22 Ortiz vs. Liddell
23 Bob Sapp
24 The Return of Captain America
25 Rampage
26 UFC Buys Pride
27 The Couture Controversy
28 Upsets
29 The Battle for Britain
30 Looking Forward
31 Challenges
Endnotes
Photo Sections
Photo Credits
Introduction
Three days after Christmas 2007 , thousands of fans were at the Mandalay Bay Event Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, to see the Ultimate Fighting Championship s top star, The Iceman Chuck Liddell, square off with the fearsome Axe Murderer Wanderlei Silva. The crowd was loud and boisterous as the competitors stripped down and got on a scale. That s right. These fans weren t there for the fight; they were there for the weigh-ins. It was a clear signal of just how far the sport had come.
Just ten years earlier, the UFC was lucky to draw a few thousand fans to backwater locations like Alabama and Mississippi. To make matters worse, it was banned from pay-per-view television nationwide. Even after the mega-rich Fertitta brothers bought the company in 2001 , the UFC had come close to going under. A fortuitous cable television show called The Ultimate Fighter had given the promotion a new lease on life.
Now the fledgling sport of MMA was being hailed as the next big thing. Almost every news medium that mattered covered the story of the sport s rise like a phoenix from extinction with various degrees of accuracy. The most important point was clear. MMA was hot and UFC 79 was proof positive. Not only did the UFC sell out the arena and draw a gate of almost $5 million, they sold more than a thousand additional tickets to see the fight on closed-circuit television.
I can t tell you the last time I was this excited for a fight, UFC President Dana White said. It was a fight he had traveled around the globe to set up in 2003 , entering Liddell in the Pride Middleweight Grand Prix, only to be bitterly disappointed when The Iceman fell to Quinton Rampage Jackson before getting a shot at Silva. Wanderlei had demolished Jackson in the finals, rankling White because it showed hard-core fans that the Japanese promotion, and not the UFC , had the toughest fighters in the world. White had been obsessed with putting the fight together ever since, even promoting it on UFC broadcasts before it had been signed.
Pride had been reluctant to allow Silva to appear in the UFC s famous Octagon. White settled that issue by buying the Japanese group. Now he could finally book his personal dream match. It didn t matter to fans or White that both fighters were coming off losses. This was more than just Liddell versus Silva. This was UFC versus Pride personified. Silva was definitely the face of that organization [Pride] and one of the most exciting fighters in the world, he said. He and Chuck have the exact same fighting style. Both are aggressive knockout artists, both come forward, and both try to finish fights with knockouts. I ve been trying to put this fight together for six years. Finally, here we are. I can t tell you how much this fight means to me. Seriously, I m shaking right now.
White may have been shaking, but Liddell wasn t fazed in the least. At the weigh-in, Liddell had made Silva wait for the customary stare-down while he slowly put his clothes back on. The sponsors logos so garishly displayed on that clothing, after all, helped pay his bills and would want to be in the money shot, sure to be broadcast nationwide on ESPN . The fiery Brazilian Silva didn t appreciate the delay (or Liddell s press conference promise to knock him out). He pulled his shirt off, and as the two stared into each other s eyes, he faked a head butt. Liddell didn t flinch, calmly taking a step back and flipping Silva the bird. The Axe Murderer lost control and went after Liddell. It looked like a professional wrestling pantomime, but it was completely real. In a moment, it demonstrated the UFC s appeal to the young male market. MMA combined the flash and bombast of professional wrestling with the gravitas and excitement of a real sporting event. In the WWE , that kind of tomfoolery would have been in the script. In the UFC , it just added intensity to what was already a much anticipated fight.
He got stupid at the weigh-in and any time someone does that, it just fires Chuck up even more, Liddell s trainer John Hackleman said. As soon as he did that, we went in the back and I was ten times more confident than I had been. You do that to Chuck, you re going to fire him up a lot more.
The fight was everything the hype had promised. It was years in the making, and fans got exactly what they expected: two powerful strikers exchanging punch after punch. After a slow start, the two began throwing bombs. For once, it was Liddell with the straighter punches, using his reach to land blows when the Brazilian s looping punches were coming up short. Two warriors who love to bang and knock people out went toe-to-toe and showed tons of heart, White said. It was one of the best fights I ve ever seen.
Although Silva landed plenty of counter shots when Liddell uncharacteristically came forward, Liddell punished him with precision punching. Silva was in trouble in every round, back to the cage and swinging wildly just to get some room to breathe. Liddell was known for his knockout power, but Silva took punches flush on the chin and survived where others might have fallen.
He did a great job to keep fighting. He didn t want to give up, Liddell said. There were a couple of times he could have covered up in the corner and the ref probably would have stopped it. But he came out slugging. It was a fun fight.
Liddell s unanimous-decision win capped off an amazing year for the UFC . The company had turned the corner. Once banned from pay-per-view, this show would bring in more than 600 , 000 households paying $39 . 95 for the pleasure of watching Liddell get back on track. The sport was a regular feature on local and cable news, and made the cover of Sports Illustrated, the ultimate sign of mainstream sports acceptance. It had come a long way since a skinny young Brazilian, too frail to actually participate, watched a Japanese judo master teach his brothers the basics of ground fighting.
1 THE BIRTH OF BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU
Rio de Janeiro is known as A Cidade Maravilhosa, the marvelous city. It s a tropical paradise, with some of the world s most beautiful beaches. Millions of tourists visit every year, drinking chope from a Botequim and having a good time in their Speedos or string bikinis. But Rio is also one of the world s most dangerous cities. Today the violence often leads to murder, but in the 1980 s scores were settled with fists. And the most dangerous gang in Rio was the Gracies, a family with an obsession for proving its toughness that extended through the generations.
The toughest of them all was Rickson Gracie, a muscular street fighter with a hair-trigger temper and an unquenchable thirst for violence. For years the Gracies had been defending the honor of the family in rings, dojos, nightclubs, and in the streets. In 1988 , Rickson was continuing the family tradition and gave beach goers a shock when he and a passel of his students, family, and friends descended on noted tough guy Hugo Duarte at Praia do Pepe beach.
When our group arrived at the beach, Rickson was there with a group of more than 50 guys, future Gracie conqueror Eugenio Tadeu said. 1
Duarte offered to shake hands with Rickson, who would have none of it. Rickson Gracie was there to prove a point and slapped Duarte in the face with an open palm - the ultimate insult, and for years an act that necessitated a duel to the death.
Before Rickson moved to the United States, he heard Hugo Duarte wanted to fight him, that Denilson Maia wanted to fight him, and Rickson went to the beach one day and fought that fight where he slapped Hugo, Royler Gracie said. Rickson said, Let s go, and Hugo said, Dude, I m not ready. So Rickson slapped him across the face and said, Now you have to, so they had it out. On the beach, Renzo [Gracie] and Eugenio also had an altercation, but the crowd split it up. 2
Duarte would get off lightly. Surrounded by jeering jiu-jitsu students kicking sand and taunting, Duarte was videotaped being pummeled by Rickson.
I tried to help Hugo, making a circle and not allowing jiu-jitsu people to attack him, throwing sand in his eyes like they were doing, Tadeu said. It was not fair. They were planning to get us in this trap for a long time.
The tape would be edited to make it appear Rickson dominated the fight: Duarte s knees to Rickson s body were removed,