UFC 111: A New Brand Of Fairy Tale

Depending on which trash talker one chooses to listen to, a completely different tale will evolve at the outcome of the two main match-ups occurring in UFC 111 on March 27 in New Jersey.

After making completely offensive death threats towards the uninvolved Brock Lesnar, Frank Mir now states that his fight for UFC 111 with Shane Carwin reminds him a lot of a potential contest with big Brock. The consequences of this being that he will defeat Shane no matter how the fight goes, standing or grappling. By beating Shane for the Interim Title, Mir will get the shot he is really questing for against Mr."I Am Now Healed and Healthy" Lesner himself.

Ah, another fairy tale!

As a grandmother I have become an expert at telling fairy tales. The best part is that as the narrator of the tale, I control the outcome of the story. Ah, the omnipotence of that role! Any moral that I wish to impart is at my complete discretion! How Lovely.

One of the nursery rhymes I used to relate to my kids and later their kids was a personal favorite: "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. . . ."

Fantasy would make horse owners of us all, which was the attraction of this rhyme to me as a horse loving little girl. Now though, the reality of having to save all my baby sitting earnings to: first purchase a horse, and then be able to afford to pay the board on a horse, is much more realistic, (although just as challenging in today's economic atmosphere).

So Frank Mir  speculating he is so well prepared to fight Brock, he will also be as prepared  for Carwin is what I would advise my kids is a lot of "wishful thinking." Which as everyone knows, is not necessarily going to become reality.

Although it is a relief, (I think), that Mir is no longer on a tangent about being the stroke of death to Brock Lesnar, I am not convinced that he is ready for the mature thinking of the intelligent and very successful engineer, Shane Carwin.

Though recently it has made little difference in the fighting careers of Joe "Daddy" Stevenson, Jon "Bones" Jones, or Brian Stamm, Shane was wise to go to Gregg Jackson's gym to train for his future in MMA.

Jackson, like Carwin, is a master planner in constructing a plan to engineer a fight. Mr. Mir certainly gives the impression of being several cuts above Brock's intelligence level, but I still believe he is a few notches lower than Shane Carwin.

Now there exists a whole contingent of MMA fans who will argue that the college that a fighter wrestled for and the NCAA division level of their school is greatly significant in determining their success in the MMA.

I do not tend to be a member of that contingency.

Wrestling for a junior college and going on to a college that does not rank in the top ten wrestling schools does not to me equal success anymore than the fact that Georges Bush went to a stellar institution of knowledge but was no where close to a great president.

(Yes there are those who will debate this eagerly, but to them I say, "raspberries!")

In this match up I would choose to bet on Shane Carwin because I have never been all that impressed with him and only once supported him due to a certain Nova Scotia-born writer who has an undue influence over me at times. (Stoker loves Mir).

The second tall tale teller would be Dan "the Outlaw" Hardy, who says that "people want change," and thinks this means that Georges St-Pierre should no longer be Welter Weight champion.

Well, I certainly would love to see a lot of changes in the UFC, however having GSP lose the WW championship is plainly not one of them!

A kinder gentler UFC with no death threatening and a more gentlemanly and martial arts centered-sportsmanship like, respectful behavior would be very welcome.

More and more it seems that Dana White is moving the UFC into the mold of WWE in its disgraceful hype-mentality and boastful, unsportsmanlike behavior. Crowds are booing and I lately heard that objects were thrown at Matt Serra in Montreal after his loss to Georges. In my mind, things like this belong in the unprofessional realm of professional wrestling and not anything that has the words "Martial arts," in the title.

Having a choice of spokes models for the sport of MMA, mine would be GSP, Anderson Silva, Gina Carano, not Brock Lesnar, BJ Penn or Frank Mir. I do not expect perfect composure under any or all circumstances, but brash and uncontrolled behavior as well as bad-mouthing an opponent have no place in the sport, in my humble and antiquated opinion.

Getting back to the tales aspect of my article, I think that only if something totally unforeseen happens, such as turnips becoming watches, will the Englishman defeat the French Canadian warrior in the cage on March 27.

And that is Grandma Dee's version of the story and I am sticking to it!