5oz’s of Fury: UFC 78, Griffin/Rampage, Brock Lesnar, and More!

Columns, News

There are things you may not realize about yourself until you look in from the outside. That said, after seeing Matt Serra on “The Ultimate Fighter,” I’ve come to realize that a lot of us on Long Island always seem to have a cup of coffee in our hands.

Anyway, this week we look forward to UFC 78: Validation, clue you in to whom the coaches on “Ultimate Fighter 7” might be, plus Brock Lesnar, Rachelle Leah, and Fedor Emelianenko vs. Anderson Silva?!?

UFC78: I know people crap on shows like this where there aren’t any “marquee” matches, but I personally enjoy the occasional show where there’s nothing but up-and-coming fighters and “Validation” has three or four fighters that I enjoy watching. I’ll take Rashad Evans over Michael Bisping, Houston Alexander over Thiago Silva, Karo Parisyan over Ryo Chonan, Frankie Edgar over Spencer Fisher, and Ed Herman over Joe Doerksen.

TUF7: The UFC will be holding open tryouts for season seven of “The Ultimate Fighter” a week from today…and they only want to see middleweight fighters (big surprise). You would probably assume that would mean middleweight coaches, but according to the fine folks at MMAJunkie.com names like Forrest Griffin, Rampage Jackson, Chuck Liddell and Wanderlei Silva are being mentioned as potential coaches. My money is on Griffin and Jackson, with a fight for the light-heavyweight title next summer.

Brock Lesnar: Brock Lesnar’s first fight in the UFC is set for February 2nd, and instead of giving him an easy fight, the UFC is giving him former heavyweight champion Frank Mir. I know Lesnar from wrestling and Mir is a little before my time, but everything I’m reading says it’s going to come down to who trains the hardest. I know that sounds like “duh, no shit Sherlock” but the criticism I’ve been reading is that Mir doesn’t always train as hard as he should. I doubt you have to worry about that with Lesnar.

Andrei Arlovski: Remember that guy? You know, popular fighter, former heavyweight champion, last seen in England back in April? The reason we haven’t seen him recently is because he only has one fight left on his contract, and Dana White just hates having his top fighters fighting unless he has them for a few more fights. But according to the Chicago Sun Times last week, Arlovski just wants to fight before his current deal is up in April, which his people want to negotiate for more money. What this all means is that, look for Arlovski to get offered a ludicrous amount of money to fight Fedor Emelianenko for M-1. Speaking of whom…

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Anderson Silva: There’s apparently some debate over who is really the pound-for-pound best fighter in MMA. Some are questioning Fedor’s dominance based on his not fighting in over a year and the lack of quality opponents for him to fight, while Silva is currently dominating everyone in his way. Never having seen Fedor fight and being an admitted Silva fan boy, I can’t really render an opinion. So I was wondering, what do you guys think?

Question of the Week
If you were choosing a MMA nickname for yourself, which Super Hero name would you use?

And now, after a one week hiatus, here’s Rachelle Leah…