A second straight week without a UFC event and I’m not sure if it’s all the food and drink I’ve been consuming, or if the lack of fights are making me delirious. Either way though, the MMA Depressed-us marches forward, filling the void that the UFC has left behind.
As always, we’re trying to watch the worst, most depressing, and singularly uneventful bouts we can, across the UFC, Strikeforce, PRIDE, and the WEC (with occasional jaunts into other promotions). This time, we may have failed, however. In a continuation of last week’s Fall From Greatness theme, we watched Johny Hendricks vs. Neil Magny, Mike Brown vs. Rani Yahya, and then Forrest Griffin vs. Rich Franklin. Griffin vs. Franklin was, indeed, not great. More a sloppy mess of obviously incompatibly sized and powered fighters, but Hendricks/Magny and Yahya/Brown were both pretty okay fights in a vacuum—especially if fans can forget just how closely removed both Brown & Hendricks were from being considered among the best in the world.
Anyway, if you’d like to watch along with us, and keep pace with our growing horror – that we might actually be having a decent time – then pull up each of the three fights on Fight Pass and hit play when Zane counts down. For viewers that don’t have Fight Pass, but do have the fights, they can join in by starting round 1 along with Connor’s prompt.
Be sure to follow Zane on twitter @TheZaneSimon, follow Connor, @BoxingBusch, follow Phil @EvilGregJackson, and follow @BloodyElbow for all the latest in MMA happenings. If you enjoyed our show, give us a shout out in the comments here on Bloody Elbow, or give us a “like”, share & subscribe over on one of our other BE Presents Channels: SoundCloud, YouTube, iTunes & Apple TV, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, TuneIn, OverCast, or Player FM – whichever one happens to be your listening platform of choice. While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to Bloody Elbow Presents; that way you’ll always be the first to get all of BE’s daily MMA offerings. For previous episodes of the show, check out our playlists on all of our BE Presents channels.
In 2018 Tatiana Suarez seemed unstoppable. The 5’ 5” strawweight fighting out of Rancho Cucamonga had blitzed her competition on the Ultimate Fighter Season 23, and was quickly racking up wins inside the Octagon. After running over Alexa Grasso, she swamped Carla Esparza—TKO-ing the former champion late in the third round. When she faced off against Nina Ansaroff in June of 2019, it seemed certain that a win would have her challenging for the title.
Six months later, Suarez is still undefeated, but a shot at the belt doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the immediate horizon. In part, that’s due to the lackluster performance she logged against Ansaroff. Even in victory, many fans felt that – had their bout gone 5 rounds – Ansaroff would have won it. What started as Suarez outlanding her opponent at a 5-to-1 clip, ended with both women trading blows equally—and Suarez appearing to get all the worst of it.
More important than an unimpressive win, however, Suarez went into the bout with an untreated neck injury. And it’s that injury that’s put her on the sidelines for the foreseeable future, as the rest of the division pushes forward without her.
In Suarez’s place, unheralded Weili Zhang got the title shot against Jessica Andrade at UFC Shenzhen—blasting the champion in just 42 seconds, to take the belt for herself. Now it appears former champ Joanna Jedrzejczyk is lined up for her own opportunity to reclaim the title sometime early next year. As for Tatiana, she’s just focused on making sure she heals up properly before she thinks about fighting again.
“Of course I want to get in there and fight,” Suarez said in a recent interview with The Score (transcript via MMA Junkie). “I just think it’s not very wise to jump in. With this type of injury, if I hurt it again?
“I just don’t want to re-aggravate it and start the healing process all over again. I think a lot of times people do that. They want to jump in there, and then they re-injure themselves. Then, instead of being out nine months or something, they’re out two years.”
Suarez says, to date, she’s had a cortisone shot and a stem cell injection—to repair nerve damage to her C4-C7 & T1 vertebrae. And Junkie reports that she’s hoping that an MRI shows the injury is healing on schedule, or she may have to consider surgery. But, even if everything goes perfectly to plan, Suarez says she’s not planning on diving back into the title picture right away.
“I did believe if I was healthy after my last fight, I could have potentially got the title shot. Because I wasn’t, that obviously passed. But the division is moving, so I’m not sitting here saying that I’m going to jump the line ahead of other people that I believe deserve to be fighting for the title. I know there’s a lot of girls gunning for the title. So whoever I need to beat, that’s fine. I’ll fight them. Then, onto the next one after that.”
After all, he’s done it before. Former long reigning welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre first walked away from fighting back in 2013, after a controversial split decision win over Johny Hendricks. And his time in MMA seemed entirely finished in the years that followed. He hosted a TV show about dinosaurs, had a notable role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and even championed an MMA unionization effort (briefly).
It was something of a shock when GSP ended his nearly four-year hiatus from competition to take on then-middleweight champion Michael Bisping at UFC 217. Fourteen minutes and twenty three seconds later, and St-Pierre added a second belt to his collection. He retired again soon afterward, and has been out of competition for over two years now. But could he come back again? Tristar head coach Firas Zahabi isn’t ruling it out—especially not if the fight is big enough.
“It has to be, in my opinion – I don’t want to talk for him – but I think the thing that’s going to motivate him is a megafight,” Zahabi said in a recent interview with Joe Rogan (transcript via MMA Fighting). “He doesn’t want to be champion again and fight every three-four months. That’s done. It’s not gonna happen no more. But one megafight. Invite him back for a megafight and see if you could entice him because he’s a competitor. He’s still training, he’s still ripped, shredded, fighting. He can do five rounds. Maybe he can’t do five rounds right away but he [only] needs a few weeks and then he’s doing five rounds. He’s close to being there. He can get in fight shape. He’s just a monster.”
As for what kind of ‘megafight’ would do the trick? Zahabi was quick to suggest lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, at a catchweight of 165 lbs. At the moment, however, Nurmagomedov has a bout in the works, to take on former interim lightweight champion Tony Ferguson at UFC 249, in Brooklyn, NY, on April 18th. And with GSP officially out of the USADA testing pool, any move toward a return to the Octagon would involve a lot more moving parts than just putting pen to paper on a bout agreement.
While skill and toughness form the backbone of a fighter’s ability in the cage, much of combat sports runs on confidence. In the heat of the moment, fighters have no time to think over options, puzzle out solutions, or second guess themselves. For most, their confidence in their ability to handle any situation, adjust on the fly, and make the right decision in a split second is key to their success.
Count title contender Dominick Reyes among the extremely confident then. ‘The Devastator’ is scheduled to take on light heavyweight all-time great Jon Jones in February of 2020, at UFC 247. Reyes is just twelve bouts into his pro-career (Jones had thirteen fights when he took on Mauricio ‘Shogun’ Rua), one that started in 2014. But, while he may not have a wealth of experience under his belt, he sounds ready to walk out of Houston with the belt around his waist.
“I look forward to the rematch,” Reyes told MMA Fighting. “I’m already planning the rematch in Cowboy Stadium. That’s already in the works.
“I already know what’s going to happen. I’m going to beat him, it’s not going to be enough. Perfect, let’s do it in Cowboy Stadium except this time it’s my pay-per-view.”
“It’s almost like I designed this. Everything I said was going to happen, happened,” Reyes added. “Everything I planned has happened. I know exactly what I need to be successful and now I’m doing it.”
Of course, those are all words that Jones has heard before. The Jackson-Wink talent stands with a nearly unblemished record of 25-1. That lone loss? A DQ in an otherwise one-sided ass kicking of Matt Hamill. Whether Reyes can turn positive thinking into action, remains to be seen.
UFC 247 takes place on February 8th, at the Toyota Center, in Houston, TX. The card is expected to be co-mained by a women’s flyweight title fight between Valentina Shevchenko and Katlyn Chookagian.
The UFC had been looking at creating an National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) certified list of supplements under which athletes “could get a much-reduced sanction,” if they tested positive for a tainted supplement that had been part of the list. However, the USADA website has recently announced a series of updates to UFC drug testing policy, and included in it is the creation of a list of “certified supplements” that will result in no sanction for athletes if they fail a drug test as a result of the use of one of those listed supplements.
Without limitation of other evidentiary methods, an Athlete shall bear No Fault or Negligence in an individual case where the Athlete, by Clear and Convincing evidence, demonstrates that the cause of the Adverse Analytical Finding was due to a (i) Contaminated Product or (ii) Certified Supplement. In such a case, there will be no Anti-Doping Policy Violation based on the Adverse Analytical Finding and the Athlete will not be permitted to compete in a Bout until, based on follow-up testing, the Prohibited Substance is no longer present in the Athlete’s Samples (or below the applicable Decision Concentration Level for such Prohibited Substance, if any) or no appreciable performance advantage is obtained from the presence of the substance.
In a nut shell, if fighters are found to have ingested PED’s from either a certified supplement or unknowingly from a contaminated product (food or beverage—not a non-certified supplement), they won’t be punished. However, they will not be allowed to compete until the substance has passed from their system.
Section 10.6.4.1 (h/t @dimspace) of the updated USADA guidelines also notes that in the case of non-performance enhancing substance use (narcotics, etc.) sanctions can be waved, based on the athletes “participation in a rehabilitation program.”
Additionally, the UFC has removed the section of their guidelines giving them the option to fine athletes for failing drug tests. It’s not something they’ve used to date (at least not to my knowledge), however fines are often levied by athletic commissions against fighters who fail drug tests or run afoul of other regulatory infractions.
Hopefully all of these changes will result in a more fair and equitable environment for UFC fighters going forward. To date, several fighters have already lost months, and even years, of their professional careers due to failed drug tests resulting from tainted supplement use. Hopefully the creation of an official UFC & USADA approved list of supplements will at least help prevent future fighters from falling afoul of this same problem.
While the class action lawsuit brought against the UFC for their alleged monopsony control of the MMA landscape looks to be nowhere near ending, one notable legal battle facing the promotion seems to be over. ZUFFA LLC has successfully had the lawsuit brought against them by former heavyweight top contender Mark Hunt dismissed. Sports economist and former Bloody Elbow contributor Paul Gift tweeted out the Nevada District Court’s ruling on Friday, November 22nd.
In the original lawsuit, the ‘Super Samoan’ claimed that the UFC had conspired with Lesnar, to keep the WWE superstar’s PED use under wraps until after his UFC 200 bout against Hunt. That assertion largely centered around the fact that the UFC granted Lesnar an exemption from the otherwise required four-month drug testing window, ahead of his return to competition on the 2016 fight card. After defeating Hunt, USADA reported that Lesnar had failed drug tests leading up to, and on the day of the fight. Lesnar’s victory was later overturned to a ‘no contest.’
Not about to head quietly into legal defeat, Hunt posted the court ruling on Saturday – to his Instagram account – along with a pointed message for the UFC.
“I tried to make things even on the battlefield of Mma,” Hunt wrote, “but again the cheating company @danawhite@ufc with all its billions they ripped everyone off win again someone will die against a steroid using cheater and your shit rip off company will be at fault @ufc I hope all u fuckers burn filthy dog cunnnniesss u can go and get fuuuuuaaaaaarrrkkkkeddd Uwonthisbattlebutthewarwillcontinue #aliactmotherfuckers I am not the first to sue this rip off company and sure as hell wont be the last to sue the @ufc u can’t keep ripping fighters off and run monopoly on the market someone’s going to put u motherfuckers down @danawhite@ufc”
The New Zealand born former K-1 Grand Prix champion last fought in December of 2018, dropping a unanimous decision to Justin Willis in Adelaide, Australia. The bout was reportedly the last on his UFC contract. While Hunt has been rumored in connection to several fighting promotions over the last year, no definite return to competition has been reported.
Tito Ortiz has a fight on his hands. He’s taking on former WWE champion Albert Del Rio in the Combate Americas cage on December 7th in Hidalgo, TX. Ahead of the bout, however, Ortiz sat down with DirecTV’s Rich Eisen Show to talk about his past fighting career and its many memorable rivalries. Ortiz spoke about his “toughest” opponent (Randy Couture), and the man he most enjoyed talking smack about (Ken Shamrock).
But if there have been highlight rivalries, there must have been lowlights too? A fighter Ortiz just really didn’t like at all? There was, and his name is Chael Sonnen.
“Chael Sonnen. That guy he just . . . I dislike that man,” Ortiz said (transcript via MMA Fighting). “He’s just something else. Some who talks and talks and talks and has never done anything in this sport besides talk. That’s what he does for a living. He should’ve stayed to that and I guess he is staying to it [since] he’s retired now.
“He said some very personal things about me and I’m a very emotional man, I’m a very loyal man, and when you talk about a person’s family I take it to heart. It’s my blood and I kind of let him have it a little bit. If people go on YouTube and watch Tito Ortiz Uncaged, he said a couple things about me and was talking about me putting on my championship belt and I had to let him have it, full bore. It wasn’t just a little, it was full bore. I put him out for who he really was and he never said another word about me.”
If it’s hard to imagine Chael Sonnen ever staying silent about a former foe, Ortiz is no exception to the rule. In fact, Sonnen even had a response to this interview, posting on Twitter, “You’ve got a ‘fight’ coming up in, like, 3 weeks & you’re STILL talkin’ about ME???” Sonnen wrote, adding that Ortiz should “Just admit you tapped, get it off your conscience.”
‘The American Gangster’ has long claimed that Ortiz “verbally tapped” during their bout, and that that was why he let go of his guillotine submission and was submitted himself shortly afterward.
“He verbally tapped, and I never said anything about it,” Sonnen said on a 2017 episode of his podcast You’re Welcome! (transcript via MMA Fighting). “And the reason was, he quit the sport five seconds later. He quit the sport five seconds after I tapped and he quit the sport a minute and five seconds after he tapped. There was no rematch. There was nothing to build and no reason to tell the real story.”
Of course, Ortiz’s retirement lasted only a few months, with him returning to the cage for a trilogy bout with longtime UFC rival Chuck Liddell in November of 2018. Ortiz’s bout against Del Rio will be his first since beating Liddell last year. However, Ortiz recently told Bloody Elbow that he signed a three-fight two-year contract with Combate Americas. So fans can most likely expect to see him in the cage at least a couple more times.
For two genres that focus on different cultures, largely different historical time periods, and wildly different societal constructs, the samurai film and the western seem inexorably linked.
To provide clarity as to just how little these periods in human history crossed over, readers need look no further than two films I love to compare and contrast, Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film Silence (based on the same text as Masahiro Shinoda’s 1971 picture of the same name) and Robert Eggers’ 2015 film, The VVitch. Outside the eerily similar ways both films grapple with faith, they’re both set in the middle of the 17th century. But while America was in the midst of its puritan settlement phase, Japan was already a shogunate in the early stages of the Edo Period (which lasted 250 years).
By the time the Tokugawa Shogunate came to an end in 1868, our modern vision of what was the ‘American West’ had only really just developed. So it’s all the more fascinating that films focused on these two eras would find a wealth of common ground. Or have such similar evolution in their style and tone—all perhaps the result of one grand crossover masterpiece.
At the center of this cross cultural blending sits Akira Kurosawa, and three of his most famous samurai works: The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro. Released in 1954, The Seven Samurai (later made into the American western The Magnificent Seven) is very much a classic samurai film in structure. Sprawling and methodically paced, the film crafts a narrative of complex political, class, and societal conflicts that create the circumstances by which samurai are led into battle. It’s a structure mirrored in films like The Loyal 47 Ronin, or the Eiichi Kudo movies 13 Assassins & 11 Samurai.
And while Kurosawa may never have entirely abandoned the narrative structures of those more traditional stories, it’s clear that Yojimbo presents a new direction for the samurai film to follow. In his 1961 movie, starring Toshiro Mifune, the samurai has been successfully recast. No longer the knight – or otherwise noble member of a warrior caste – he has become, instead, a wild, outcast swordsman. The film, and Mifune’s portrayal can easily be seen as a riff on movies like Shane and High Noon. However, interestingly, Kurosawa actually credited Dashiell Hammett’s political noir The Glass Key as a principal influence on the story.
No matter the exact influences at play, the lone ronin in a rundown town – full of misfits and criminals – clearly echoed the all-too-common western narrative of the lone gunslinger, who must bring law to bear on the untamed frontier. And while the American western was dying fast, after its 1950s heyday, Yojimbo’s parallels in the genre quickly inspired a suddenly booming spaghetti western industry. Adapted into A Fistful of Dollars by Sergio Leone in 1964, Yojimbo‘s style fit right in to the cowboy archetype, making a massive star out of Clint Eastwood along the way.
And while more traditionally paced films didn’t exactly vanish, it also seems like it clearly changed the way that Samurai films were framed in Japan as well. Hideo Gosha started his career with a run of notable samurai dramas, including Three Outlaw Samurai, Sword of the Beast, and Samurai Wolf. All of them highlighting the idea of Samurai as dangerous loners, men who engaged in the fray of complex local politics as independent actors. Men whose loyalty was constantly in swing.
The climactic duel in Goyokin, with fitting Western setting.
By the time Gosha releases Goyokin in 1969, his touchstones appeared to have drifted away from Kurosawa somewhat. The film focuses on samurai Magobei Wakizaka (played by staple genre actor Tatsuya Nakadai). Once a member of a noble clan, he allowed a fishing village to be massacered in order to hide the theft of gold by a local lord. Now a ronin living in Edo, Magobei learns that the same lord is planning another theft of gold—one that will result in another slaughter of innocent lives. The film bridges that gap firmly, between classic samurai narrative and western influence. But it goes even a step beyond, drawing heavily on the very same spaghetti westerns that Yojimbo helped inspire. The score, the camera work, and many of the settings all feel more familiar to the kind of westerns Italy was churning out by the hundreds, rather than anything coming out of Hollywood at the time.
Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune face off in their notable western/samurai mashup Red Sun.
In the years that followed, the genre crossover seems almost too on-the-nose. Both the samurai film and the spaghetti western became increasingly pulp narratives over the 70s, with more focus on blood, sex, and action as studio codes dissolved and directors looked for ways to draw in audiences who had been flooded with similar works for the last two decades. That turn led both into a firmly cult status, and as viewers turned increasingly toward crime thrillers and big budget action films, the western and the samurai film faded out of popular production.
That’s made quality entries to either genre over the past few decades few and far between. Films like the Unforgiven & The Assassination of Jesse James, or The Twilight Samurai & Blade of the Immortal still continue to be produced, but they’re no longer buttressed by the massive wave of smaller, less notable works that create a consistent genre of film. At the very least, however, fans who find they’ve run out of westerns can take heart, that a deep dive into 60s & 70s samurai film will yield plenty of surprising hits.
It finally happened, after several years it looks like the UFC is trying to muscle us out of the bad fight watching business… At least, that’s what I have to assume after last week’s UFC Sao Paulo: Blachowicz vs. Jacare fight card. Any more, the UFC schedule is so packed that it seems a chance to watch bad fights on our own time rarely comes around anymore. So, enjoy it while it lasts, since who knows when we’ll get another chance!
Oh… wait, next week?… Okay, we’ll actually just be back next week.
This week’s show focuses on the careers of former great champions, and some of their most listless, un-fun late career losses. Notably Chuck Liddell, Renan Barao, and Tito Ortiz (we’ve already done a full BJ Penn epsiode). We’re starting out the show with Chuck Liddell vs. Keith Jardine from UFC 76, and following that up with Renan Barao vs. Andre Ewell from last year’s UFC Fight Night Sao Paulo, and wrapping it all up with Tito Ortiz vs. Matt Hamill from UFC 121. We thought about just doing Renan Barao’s last five bouts, but that seemed too grim, even for us.
As always, we’re watching each of these videos over on Fight Pass. If you’d like to follow along with us, just start the video at the beginning, along with Zane’s countdown. Or, if you’re watching them through some other means, Connor will do his best to tell you when round 1 starts, so you can sync up that way.
If you enjoyed our show, give us a shout out in the comments here on Bloody Elbow, or give us a “like”, share & subscribe over on one of our other BE Presents Channels: SoundCloud, YouTube, iTunes & Apple TV, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, TuneIn, OverCast, or Player FM – whichever one happens to be your listening platform of choice. While you’re there, don’t forget to subscribe to Bloody Elbow Presents; that way you’ll always be the first to get all of BE’s daily MMA offerings. For previous episodes of the show, check out our playlists on all of our BE Presents channels.
Something in the nature of Arthur Penn’s 1966 southern drama, The Chase, is fractured. It’s not just an idea born out of interviews or essays, watching the film quickly suggests it as well.
The opening credits, with figures running back and forth across a variety of projected landscapes, the classic Hollywood studio sets combined with wide open location shooting, and a narrative that skips often between scenes, setups and characters; they all seem to indicate too many voices at work. And yet somehow, it all works to the movie’s benefit
And while even the most finicky auteur director has collaborators and compromises forced upon them – whether by budget, location, or just the everyday fabric of reality – the magic of movie making is often in the ability to all those seem like a unified vision. That then makes The Chase somewhat unique, as both a gripping film, and one where the push and pull of various outside forces feels omnipresent.
In part, I appreciate the film’s constant movement, because tragedy has never been my comfort zone. And The Chase is every bit a tragic story. A sprawling work of fiction set in an imagined small town in south Texas. The movie’s core narrative is that of an escaped prisoner, Bubber Reeves (played by Robert Redford) and his seemingly fated homecoming.
Redford’s character, on the run, appears inexorably drawn back to the place where he is most likely to be caught—just as the community finds itself boiling over with racial and sexual tension. A small town looking for any potential outlet to release the frustrations of a world that doesn’t seem to operate the way anyone intended.
Reeves, running home on instinct, mimes shooting at geese.
Some of the residents fear Reeves, and what he might do. While others can’t wait for the chance to be reunited with him. And some just want to use him as a platform for power. A victim to be brutalized and brought down; one that nobody would stand up for. In the center of all this is Marlon Brando’s character, Sheriff Calder, who moves heaven and earth to stay dedicated to his philosophy of non-violence—even as the community he patrols descends into pandemonium.
The many moving parts and characters within them make for a story necessarily out of focus. Time is spent with Reeves as he runs through swamps and hops freight cars, with his unfaithful wife Anna (Jane Fonda) in her tumultuous love affair with the son of the town’s rich oil tycoon, and with a group of increasingly loud and violent party goers. If the picture was ever intended to be a Brando star vehicle, he’s often relegated to a passenger’s view of the action.
Bloodied and beaten, Brando arrives just in time to stop Reeves being killed.
Whether or not that’s by design is up for debate. However, it may be in part because the film was taken from Penn by producer Sam Spiegel, after filming, and cut without the director’s input. Penn has recounted in interviews how much of what he felt to be the best footage of Brando was left out of the final picture—and most notably, the ending was rearranged to put the emphasis on Anna and her relationships.
That end, where Fonda’s character learns that not just one, but both her lovers have died, clearly wasn’t intended to be a final shot, and gives the credit roll an all-too-hurried feel. But, it is the right ending. After all, the tragedy of The Chase is ultimately her tragedy, not Brando’s—who merely metaphorically saddles up and rides away.
Eventually, whether it’s screenwriter Lillian Hellman – who apparently struggled adapting Horton Foote’s play (Foote was brought back in to write the ending) – or Brando, who attracted an all-star cast that could command the screen along side him, or Penn & Spiegel battling over the best way to turn scenes and performances into narrative continuity, The Chase plays as a compromised vision.
But, it’s also the rare case where too many cooks may not have ruined the soup at all. A collaboration that results in something, if not more than the sum of its parts (the major players have all done bigger things), then still better than it likely had a right to be. A tragic melodrama that can be unpacked and appreciated in layers, if for nothing more than for all the ideas at play.
culturesink 