Bleacher Report - Articles by shoguncdn

The Truth Behind Lesnar and The UFC Negotiations

shoguncdn — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:40:47 -0400

Much has been made recently of Fedor's signing with Strikeforce. Many fans of the sport were disappointed that the iconic heavyweight did not sign with the UFC. Some fans have also voiced their opinion that Fedor is in fact running from competition.

In support of those claims numerous fans have pointed out that current UFC champion, Brock Lesnar, signed with the UFC because he wanted to fight the best. Until now this has simply been speculation. But recent recordings of the negotiations between Lesnar and the UFC have surfaced to bolster those claims.

They show that Lesnar's only motivation in signing with the UFC was so he could fight the best, unlike that coward Fedor who is somehow the number 1 heavyweight on every ranking site in the world.

Below is a transcript of those negotiations.

Dana: Brock we're looking forward to having you join the UFC.

Brock: Thanks Dana, I just want to fight the best.

Dana: That's great Brock, now about the money...

Brock: Doesn't matter Dana.

Dana: Huh?

Brock: I want to fight the best. That's my sole motivation. You have the best heavyweight right? I'll fight for food. Other people are offering me more money, but I just want to fight the best, the money is not a concern for me at all.

Dana: Ahhh, sure yeah, we got Mir. He's an animal, 3-2 since his motorcycle accident. And then we just got Nog, that guy was a Pride champion. Of course Randy is coming back. You got to be careful, he's 45 but his grandkids say he can still throw down. Then of course there's Heath Herring who is...uh...a big guy.

Brock: Sounds good. But wait weren't Nog and Herring beaten by some guy...I'm trying to remember his name...Feather, Frodo...um...Fedor?

Dana: Fedor is $%&^%^, that guy is %^^&^$$, screw him he's &^%^& and he **&^^^,!!!!!!!!! We don't need him, his &&^%^^ is so &**&***^%%!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brock: Wow I didn't know that, I thought he was the best. But if you say he's not then that's good enough for me, because you know, I only want to fight the best.

Dana: Well, ok listen, technically..and I mean technically Fedor is ranked #1 by everybody.

Brock: What do you mean technically?

Dana: I mean everyone but me ranks him #1.

Brock: But you don't think so?

Dana: No *coughyescough*

Brock: Sorry what?

Dana: Nothing.

Brock: Ok well if you don't think he's the best then that's good enough for me, because you know...

Dana: Right, you only want to fight the best.

Brock: Damn straight, nobody is going to say Brock Lesnar ducked anyone. Number 1 ranking, what a joke eh Dana?

Dana: Uh...yeah..haha.

Brock: Awesome, let's get it done. Listen in addition to the food why don't you pay me $400,000 a fight as well ok? Just some beer money. It's not important to me, I just want to fight the best, but I like beer.

Dana: Great.

Brock: Man I can't wait to fight the best. Tell me more about this Al Turk guy you got.

*The rest of the tape is garbled*

Post-Fight Interview with Rashad Evans

shoguncdn — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:39:59 -0400

The former champ was kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions after his loss to Lyoto Machida.

Q: Rashad, what did you think of Machida's 'elusive' style?

Rashad: Elusive? You know what weren't elusive? His feet. You know what else weren't elusive? His fists. Somebody should have clarified that for me before the fight. If he was elusive tonight I don't want to face the man when he decides to stop being elusive.

Q: A lot of people complain that they fall asleep when they watch Machida fight, what do you think about that?

Rashad: I can relate, I feel asleep during our fight. Ok, I was actually unconscious does that count?

Q: Did you think your head movement and speed helped you in the fight as many predicted?

Rashad: Yeah I think that by moving around a lot I got in a pretty good workout before he knocked me out. Otherwise it might have been a really short fight. So yeah I'm happy to get a little conditioning out of the fight.

Q: Some people thought that you were still trash talking right before he knocked you out, is this true?

Rashad: Absolutely not, I sleep with my mouth open that's all.

Q: Do you think forcing Machida to come to you helped to negate his counterpunching?

Rashad: Yes, it totally helped. He was so busy punching and kicking me first that he had no time to counterpunch, so that strategy was completely successful.

Q: People felt that you had the power advantage before the fight, do you agree?

Rashad: Yes, I definitely have the heavier hands. Too bad he wouldn't stand still and let me hit him, then I could have proved that to my fans. Plus the guy had to hit me what? Six or seven times in a row to knock me out? Weakling.

Q: Why didn't you take the fight to the ground?

Rashad: I did, I fell down after he punched me but he kept punching and kicking me when we got down there.

Q: Rashad, thank you and good luck in the future.

Rashad: No problem, hey do you know if Silva is going to be retiring at 185? Maybe I can lose a few pounds.

*All kidding aside, I acknowledge that Rashad was very gracious in defeat.

Machida Takes Out Evans In a Dominating Display

shoguncdn — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:36:53 -0400

In the beginning the UFC had a mission: To find out which style of martial arts would reign supreme. Since then the sport of MMA has developed but somewhere along the way the "Martial Arts" portion of the equation was sometimes lost.

Too often fights today resemble little more than your average back street brawl...behind a tattoo parlor. To be fair there are the exceptions to the rule, fighters like Georges St. Pierre and Anderson Silva, who do spend the time honing and studying their craft, resulting in a devastating combination of precision, power and speed.

After tonight we can definitively add Lyoto Machida to that list as he put on a clinic of true martial arts against a game, but ultimately outmatched Rashad Evans.

After a slow beginning to the fight, where the fighters took their time testing each other, Machida scored a knockdown in the first round with a nice body kick followed by a straight left. Evans recovered but was never able to mount any kind of attack.

Machida let his hands go in the second round. Displaying patient, yet persistent pressure, Machida knocked out Evans with a series of hard punches late in the second round, leaving the former champion unconscious in a heap against the octagon.

Despite the pre-fight predictions from some corners that Machida would not be able to handle Evans' speed, it was in fact Machida who looked quicker in the ring. The "Dragon" was able to strike first, often setting up his punches with a kick, and then dance out of the way leaving Evans swinging wildly at nothing but air. Perhaps "The Ghost" would be a better nickname for the Brazilian.

It was not only Machida's speed that was impressive, but also his precision. Some thought that Machida would not be able to hit Evans because of his footwork and head movement. At the end of the day Evans' movement just delayed the inevitable as Machida patiently stalked the champion from the opening bell and showed what an accurate striker he truly is, rarely missing with his hands or feet.

Machida probably surprised his own fans with his dominance, especially as he pursued Evans for much of the fight instead of his using his usual counter punching. Evans' camp seemed to believe that forcing Machida to be the pursuer would open him up to a counter attack. Instead all it seemed to do was allow Machida the time and space to pick his shots, which he did.

This performance should put to rest any protests about Machida being a boring fighter. While he has been described as "elusive" in the past, after tonight's demolition the more apt adjective for him would be "dangerous" or “scary” or simply “the champ”.

Odds and Ends:

Someone told Sherk he had an amazing stand up game... and he believed them.

Serra and Hughes seemed to forget they were supposed to hate each other as they tried to lull each other to sleep for 3 rounds.

At one point during the fight between Krzysztof Soszynski and Andre Gusmao, they had so many tattoos between them I couldn't tell which arm belonged to who.

Is Bad Writing Hurting Bleacher Report?

shoguncdn — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:45:23 -0400

I was introduced to Bleacher Report after doing a news search for an MMA article on Google news. The link lead me to a B/R article. I knew nothing of B/R before this and thought that it was just another sports news site. It was not until later that I understood how B/R worked and that the articles were in fact written by a (mostly) unpaid community of amateur writers.

A series of recent events has lead to me wondering though: Could the lack of enforced writing standards actually be hurting B/R?

When I first joined B/R I made a comment on an MMA article that garnered a rather crude response from someone I did not know. I found out that the person behind the response was actually a writer for the site and was curious who I had offended. It turns out this writer had written quite a few articles for B/R in its MMA section.

What was most surprising though was the quality of the articles. In short, they were terrible. There was no attention paid to grammar, punctuation, or even basic spelling. It was as if the author wrote some of the articles on his cell phone and then transferred them to B/R when he got home without any editing. Some of the sentences he wrote didn't even make sense. I began to think to myself that if I had seen these articles when I first came to Bleacher I would have immediately written the site off and never returned because of the low quality of the writing.

I understand that B/R is a place for fans to come together and write and talk about sports, but what effect does really bad writing have on the site? On the one hand you have a somewhat democratic system where everyone gets an equal chance to express their views and have articles published. This is an admirable feature of the site but, if that is all there is, how is B/R really any different from any kind of forum where poor writing is the norm and people simply spam the site with their opinions without regard to writing standards?

To me what sets B/R apart is that it has a measure of legitimacy where fans of the sport can come to read interesting, well written articles and not just the usual gibberish spewed on any number of sports forums. I believe the link to Google news gives the site a huge boost that other fan forums just don't have. Is B/R squandering that initial good will by allowing articles to be published that clearly do no meet any kind of minimal standards for writing? Is the casual fan, who is only looking for interesting articles to read and not looking to write for the site, going to be turned off if he/she comes across obviously bad writing?

Now before the comments about “you left out a comma” or “nice dangling participle” start, let me acknowledge that I am not talking about perfect writing or professional writing. I know the people here are not professionals (and neither am I) and that no one is getting paid to write. What I am talking about is a minimal standard of competence so that when that casual fan reads an article, that fan will be impressed enough to come back.

While writing this article I came across the Bleacher style guide. It appears Bleacher wants some kinds of standards when it comes to the writing on the site.The guide even goes so far as to talk about what kinds of hyphens to use and there is a spell check offered in the article creation software so there does appear to be some wish for standards .

The question of course becomes who enforces those standards? For that I have no answer as I do not have a good enough understanding of how the site works. At the present though it seems that anyone can write anything, regardless of the quality and have it posted on the site. To me this seems like it will only serve to dilute the quality of the articles on the site and does more harm than good.

Perhaps part of the problem is the ranking system which seems to encourage quantity over quality. The writer who wrote those bad articles seemed to be more concerned with getting as many articles published as possible which may have explained why he was not worried about good writing.

I am too new to the site to have any real answers, but the question remains.