Archive for July, 2007

Recognizing the dedicated grappling fan base worldwide, ProElite.com, the comprehensive and inclusive online community for mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters, fans and organizations, announced today a landmark partnership with Grapplers Quest. Under the terms of the five-year deal, ProElite.com will be the exclusive social networking sponsorship home to Grapplers Quest participants, events and products. Read the rest of this entry »

For The Ultimate Fighter® alumni Din Thomas (Season 4), Nate Diaz (Season 5 champ) Chris Leben (Season 1) and Mike Swick (Season 1), the Ultimate® Fight Night™ on Spike TV Wednesday, September 19 at 9:00pm ET/PT will provide a golden opportunity to showcase their talents in front of a nationally televised audience. Each fighter is facing a tough test with the winners moving up the UFC® ranks and another step closer to a title shot. The two-hour live fight card will take place live from The Pearl at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, NV. Read the rest of this entry »

UFC® Welterweight Champion Matt Serra and former UFC Welterweight Champion Matt Hughes will serve as coaches for Season 6 of Spike TV’s highly-rated series, “The Ultimate Fighter®,” premiering Wednesday, September 19 at 11:00pm ET/PT.

“The Ultimate Fighter: Team Serra vs. Team Hughes” features sixteen of the best up-and-coming mixed martial artists in the 170 lb. division from around the world. The two finalists will square off in a live finale in December, with the winner netting a six figure contract with the Ultimate Fighting Championship®, the premier mixed martial arts organization in the world. The series recently wrapped production in Las Vegas. Hughes and Serra will fight each other in a UFC pay-per-view event after the series finale in December. The series will assume its regular timeslot of Wednesdays at 10pm on September 26. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have seen Michael Moore’s scathing 1989 documentary Roger & Me, the environment in which Indiana’s David Love grew up will seem familiar. Before gaining notoriety as a mixed martial arts athlete, Love spent the early 1980′s roaming the bleak streets of Marion, Indiana. Much like the Flint, Michigan depicted in Moore’s film, Marion’s working class had been devastated by corporate America’s mass exodus south of the border. Read the rest of this entry »

The International Fight League (OTC.BB: IFLI), the world’s number one professional mixed martial arts league, announced that CytoSport’s “Muscle Milk” brand has joined as the latest IFL corporate partner. The partnership will include in-arena and television signage, a year-long promotional campaign and a national grassroots campaign involving IFL athletes and coaches. Selected IFL athletes will also wear a Muscle Milk patch on their shorts as part of the IFL athlete/partner patch program and appear in a Muscle Milk TV campaign. The partnership will kickoff at this week’s IFL semi-finals at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Read the rest of this entry »

Las Vegas, Nev. (USA) – With two World Extreme Cagefighting® titles on the line, the August 5th WEC™ card at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is already packed with world-class mixed martial arts excitement. Add four more evenly matched battles pitting a mix of established contenders and rising stars against each other, and you have a night to remember for all fight fans.

Today, the organization announced that WEC: Condit vs. Larson, headlined by the WEC Welterweight title bout between reigning Champion Carlos Condit and the No. 1 Contender Brock Larson, and the vacant WEC Middleweight battle Paulo Filho vs. Joe Doerksen, will now also feature featherweights Jeff Curran vs. Stephen Ledbetter, and lightweights Jamie Varner vs. Sherron Legget in the televised main card lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

SANTA YNEZ, Calif. (July 28, 2007) – In a scintillating finish to a thrilling, crowd-pleasing and exciting debut of ShoXC: Elite Challenger Series, KJ Noons bounced back to register an impressive third-round knockout over Edson Berto Friday on SHOWTIME.

In the co-feature of a live two-hour telecast that featured five competitive, evenly-matched fights between determined, well-conditioned athletes, Jaime Jara blasted out Jeremiah Metcalf in the third round to capture his fourth Gladiator championship belt.

EliteXC presented the event from the Chumash Casino. It aired on SHOWTIME at 11 p.m. ET/PT (delayed on the West Coast). Read the rest of this entry »

The Ultimate Fighting Championship® organization has launched the official site for UFC 74: RESPECT featuring the championship main event Couture vs. Gonzaga and the special feature Georges St-Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck live from Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Events Center Saturday, August 25. Having earned the respect of sports fans everywhere, both Couture and Gonzaga – the two best heavyweights in the UFC – will now face each other in one of the most highly anticipated title fights ever. The fully interactive 3-D Microsite http://74.ufc.com will go in-depth to tell you why.

The UFC 74 site is a multi-dimensional online UFC experience. When visitors log on, the UFC 74 trailer plays as it shows Couture and the man who KO’d “Cro Cop,” Gabriel Gonzaga. The main page features links to the top two bouts of the night with Couture vs. Gonzaga, and St-Pierre vs. Koscheck. You can navigate into each of these fights to find in-depth fight details, fight history, highlight reels of each fighters stand-up game and ground game, and interviews with each fighter. Read the rest of this entry »

ARLINGTON, Va. – Mixed martial arts champion Tito Ortiz, also known as “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy,” and Justin McCully, a member of Ortiz’ Team Punishment fight camp, will soon kick off their USO/Multi National Corps – Iraq entertainment tour with a trip to the Washington Metropolitan area. Ortiz and McCully will visit with wounded service members at both the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Following their visit, they will depart for the Persian Gulf to meet with service members and sign autographs. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Boxing Council has received a note containing that former Featherweight World Champion INJIN CHI had announced his retirement from professional boxing and his entrance to K1 in South Korea, in order to set himself up for MMA fights, fact that would indicate both, a piracy act and a direct action against professional boxing and against the World Boxing Council. The WBC invites the involved parts to clear up this situation, because if the news are officially confirmed. They will mean an intolerable direct intromission and an invitation for our organism to take strict defense measurements. Our President Dr. Jose Sulaiman Chagnon is directly communicating with the WBC Board of Governors and the South Korea Boxing Commission, to study the necessary measurements.

Las Vegas, NV (USA) – Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell is wasting no time returning to the Octagon™ to fight his way back to a title shot, and he has made his mission clear: he wants his title belt back. But standing in his way, with the power to stop the former UFC® 205-pound champion, is “The Dean of Mean” Keith Jardine, who awaits him for a light heavyweight main event showdown at UFC 76. As a special feature, former PRIDE FC phenomenon Mauricio “Shogun” Rua will enter the Octagon for the first time to take on Forrest Griffin in one of the two light heavyweight “knockout” fights of the night. The Ultimate Fighting Championship® organization presents UFC 76: KNOCKOUT, featuring Liddell vs. Jardine and Rua vs. Griffin, live from Honda Center in Anaheim Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

The individuals most responsible for bringing Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) to national premium television – Senior Vice President and General Manager, SHOWTIME Sports Programming Ken Hershman, ProElite CEO Doug DeLuca and EliteXC Live Events President Gary Shaw – were featured in a national media conference call to discuss the debut of SHOWTIME’s exciting, new prospect-oriented MMA show, ShoXC: Elite Challenger Series.

ShoXC will premiere Friday at 11 p.m. ET/PT (delayed on the West Coast) from Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, Calif. The two-hour telecast will feature up to five fights. Read the rest of this entry »

The main event will feature Edson Berto (11-3-1) of Orlando, Fla., against KJ Noons (3-1) of San Diego (155-pound match). In the co-feature, Aaron Wetherspoon of (5-2) of Irvine, Calif., will meet hometown champion Jeremiah Metcalf (5-2) of Santa Ynez in a King of the Cage/Gladiator Challenge welterweight championship unification match. .

In other fights, Jefferson “Tanque’’ Silva (3-1) faces Aaron Rosa (8-0) in a 170-pound match; Chris David (8-5-1) meets Scott Jorgenson (3-1) in a 135-pound bout; and Muhsin Corbbrey (4-2) opposes Lee Gibson in a 155-round contest. Read the rest of this entry »

By Christopher Roche - Commentary – Brand identity, international teams and championship rings are no longer exclusive to leagues such as Major League Baseball or the NBA. The International Fight League (IFL) is capitalizing on the worldwide hunger for warrior sports, and it is breaking new ground with every show that takes place. Like baseball and basketball, the IFL has teams outside of America, but unlike those two sports, the IFL has something that would make those sports somewhat jealous: an average of 90% attendance at their shows.

The first time I watched an MMA event was in the early 1990’s. One of the IFL’s current competitors used to brag about “an event with no rules”, and while I had little interest in men fighting in a cage for something less than sport, I was visiting someone’s house, and he ordered the event on pay-per-view. Since I am a lifelong boxing fan, I was disgusted with what I saw, and like many boxing fans, I turned my back on MMA, I thought for good. Read the rest of this entry »

LOS ANGELES (July 25, 2007) – After suffering a shocking defeat to “Krazy Horse’’ Charles Bennett in the first-ever Mixed Martial Arts fight shown on premium television (SHOWTIME), KJ Noons, of San Diego, Calif., was determined to return to action as quickly as possible. When Noons came back, four months later, however, it was not in a cage or a hexagon. It was in a ring – a boxing ring. Read the rest of this entry »