Full Strikeforce weigh in video highlights for 'Barnett vs Cormier' in San Jose
05/19/2012
The Strikeforce: Barnett vs. Cormier weigh-in event took place tonight (Fri., May 18, 2012) from the HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., where all 18 competitors tipped the scale to make their respective bouts official for tomorrow night’s mixed martial arts (MMA) event on Showtime.
It was a mostly uneventful affair, with main event participants Josh Barnett and Daniel Cormier coming in looking slim and trim for their heavyweight grand prix tournament final. Main card participants Gilbert Melendez, Josh Thomson, Rafael Cavalcante, Mike Kyle, Nah-Shon Burrell, and Chris Spang are all featured in the video above.
For complete Strikeforce: Barnett vs. Cormier weigh in results click here.
History in the Making: Daniel Cormier stakes claim to a top 10 ranking by dominating Antonio Silva
05/19/2012
The odds were not in Daniel Cormier’s favor.
Sure, he had been wrestling since high school but he had only made his professional mixed martial arts (MMA) debut less than two years prior to his Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix semifinal bout against Antonio Silva. This is the same Silva who was coming off an absolute trouncing over potential G.O.A.T. Fedor Emelianenko.
Cormier’s toughest test up to this point was a fight against Jeff Monson, a veteran heavyweight whose best days are definitely behind him. The former OIympian dominated his opponent over the course of three rounds in an impressive but altogether uninspiring affair.
Silva, meanwhile, was undefeated since 2007 aside from a decision loss to Fabricio Wedrum. Wins over Andrei Arlovski and Mike Kyle punctuated a three fight win streak along side the aforementioned technical knockout (TKO) over The Last Emperor.
Cormier wasn’t given much of a chance.
It’s a far different story going into tomorrow’s (May 19) Strikeforce: Barnett vs. Cormier event where he takes on Josh Barnett to — finally — crown the promotion’s heavyweight grand prix winner.
Despite Barnett’s experience, Cormier is seen by many as the favorite. Perhaps it’s because of how well he performed against Bigfoot.
Let’s take a closer look at that bout.
The Brazilian takes the center of the cage to start off the bout while the American is forced to stay on the outside and work his way in. Silva connects with a leg kick and catches the one Cormier throws in response. Bigfoot rushes his unbalanced opponent but fails to land anything solid before smothering Cormier along the cage.
The Olympian immediately shoves his opponent off and makes his way back to the center of Strikeforce’s hexagon. Seconds later, his right fist flies through the air as if it’s done this a million times before, betraying Cormier’s inexperience, and connects flush with Silva’s chin.
The massive Brazilian crumbles to the mat as the Cincinnati, OH crowd roars in approval. Cormier follows him to the canvas, standing over his opponent to deliver devastating ground and pound. Although staggered, Bigfoot recovers quickly enough to avoid more damage and the two heavyweights fight to a standstill, forcing the referee to restart the action on the feet.
Silva begins throwing one-two combinations out but none connect. Meanwhile, a sneaky jab from Cormier finds its home right on the Brazilians’ nose and he’s momentarily — but visibly — rocked by the punch. Cormier dodges another punch from Silva and answers back with a fast three-punch combination, the last strike of which again staggers Bigfoot.
Before our very eyes, a heavyweight star is being born.
The Brazilian eats a hook to the jaw and laughably attempts to take down the Olympic-level wrestler. Cormier easily stuffs the takedown and winds up on top of his opponent before allowing Silva back to his feet.
There, Silva lands a body kick on his smaller opponent, but his leg is caught by Cormier and Bigfoot is then tripped, ending up on the canvas for the third time in as many minutes. He spends some time chipping away at the Brazilians’s thighs until the referee once again restarts the bout.
Once the two heavyweights get back to their feet, Bigfoot is much more aggressive than he’s been so far in the bout. And it ends up costing him the fight.
He pressures Cormier along the cage, throwing punch after punch, none of which land. In fact, the wrestler smiles after the barrage, either out of disbelief none of the strikes landed or out of a bit of cockiness. Perhaps a bit of both.
Another body kick from Silva is caught and he throws a punch before spinning around to free his lower limb. When he is once again facing his opponent, however, Cormier is there to greet him with a combination of punches. They separate and the American lands a stiff jab and then a short hook before going inside with a vicious uppercut.
Silva’s knees immediately buckle and falls to the mat for the fourth and final time. Two hammerfists across his jaw are the cherries on top. The wrestler had outstruck the heavy-handed Brazilian and secured a date in the grand prix finals.
Cormier surprised everyone — except perhaps himself and his training partners — that night.
If he beats Barnett tomorrow, will it be as shocking?
Moves like Jagger: Bellator 115 pound contender Jessica Aguilar interview exclusive with (Part one)
05/18/2012
Tomorrow night (May 18, 2012), Jessica Aguilar’s dream has an opportunity to come true.
That’s because Jag will be battling Megumi Fujii, a legend of women’s MMA and the current top-ranked 115 pound female fighter on the planet.
No slouch herself, Aguilar sports a 14-3 record and is the consensus number two-ranked strawweight. She’s been clamoring for a shot at the Japanese legend ever since before she was a participant in the Bellator season three women’s 115 pound tournament alongside Fujii.
Both ladies lost extremely controversial decisions at the hands of Zoila Gurgel, but have been unstoppable since. Aguilar has gone on to defeat the likes of Lisa Ellis and Carla Esparza under the Bellator banner in 2011 and has more than earned her shot to potentially be the top ranked women at 115 pounds.
Before she steps into the cage tomorrow night on the Bellator 69 main card, Aguilar spoke with MMAmania.com during a special guest appearance on The Verbal Submission where she talked about her in-fight decision-making process, her dream fight finally coming to fruition and even Dana White’s business-like opinion on women’s MMA in part one of this two-part interview.
Check it out:
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): Let’s get right to business. It’s fight week, you’re a few days until you’re stepping into the cage. What’s going through your head right now? Do you kind of get more moody or are you just as outgoing and happy as you always are?
Jessica Aguilar: It depends on how the weight cut is going. When the weight’s on track, it’s easy to be in a good mood. (laughs) Right now, everything is really nice. My weight is fine and I feel good and I’m really looking forward to this fight. It’s been a fight I’ve been wanting for a long time and I’m finally getting it so I couldn’t be in any better spirits right now.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): This is a fight you were talking about wanting even back in 2010 before the Bellator season three women’s 115 pound tournament. Now it’s finally happening so what do you feel with it being this close to fruition?
Jessica Aguilar: Well it’s all business. The mindset is that I’ve trained and I just feel like everything I’ve done in my whole career has been working up to this fight. It’s been a long road with a lot of training and I’m just so honored to be here fighting against somebody who’s really been an idol of mine so to have this opportunity now, I can’t even express how grateful I am to Bellator for making this happen.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): You mentioned how a bad weight cut can affect your mood heading into a fight. Now your last fight in Bellator against Lisa Ellis, I think I remember that was a bad weight cut. Did you have some issues then?
Jessica Aguilar: Yes, I hurt my foot in my previous fight so the training camp was tough. When you have a broken foot it’s tough to do cardio. I wasn’t having an ideal training camp for the Ellis-Ward fight so it was a tough cut. This time, it’s business as usual. I’ve never come in heavy other than that fight. I usually come in underweight but that was just extenuating circumstances and that will certainly never ever happen again.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): It’s been really nice to see the evolution of your striking game. I remember your first fight in Bellator, you took your opponent down and submitted her right away but since then, you’ve stood and traded with everybody. I know that you put in a lot of time working on it, but how far do you feel your striking has come and how confident are you on the feet now?
Jessica Aguilar: I feel like I’ve always had it in my back pocket and I really just never got a chance to use it because I always was so successful on the ground. I’m definitely very confident in my striking. This is the kind of sport when you have to be completely well-rounded and if you have any holes in your game, other people will capitalize on that. I spend a lot of time on the ground and a lot of time wrestling and doing all the things I need to do. You have to have the full package and my striking is something I’m proud of.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): With this fight being between the number one and number two 115-pounders, the winner will be the number one 115-pounder in the world but do you think the winner of this fight will have a claim to be best pound-for-pound female fighter?
Jessica Aguilar: That’s a tricky one because the pound-for-pound rankings right now, there’s a couple key players that aren’t in the rankings at the moment. It depends what you’re going by. Are you going by the quality of the victories or the records overall. If you look at Megumi’s record, 25-1, that’s ridiculous but they say if you beat number one, you should become number one. I think obviously for the 115 I’ll have that claim but for pound-for-pound, I don’t know. That’s tough. There’s a lot of really tough girls on there.
Brian Hemminger (MMAmania.com): In Megumi’s last fight under the Bellator banner, she fought Zoila Gurgel and she stood. It was surprising. I thought she won, but still it was surprising that she stood and traded with Zoila throughout the five round fight. Would you be surprised if she stood with you for the full three rounds?
Jessica Aguilar: No, I don’t think I’d be surprised. I think Megumi wanted to prove that she can stay there and trade and bang with someone that’s known for their striking. She had a point to prove and I do too. Everyone thinks I’m a ground fighter and of course I am a ground fighter, but I wanted to show people what I can do and I think Megumi felt the same way. Honestly, I would not be surprised at all and it will be very interesting to see what happens in there. Wherever it goes, I’m prepared.
Ben Thapa: I wanted to ask you about the third round of the Ellis fight. You kind of came out and were throwing a bunch of overhands but then you seemed to come to and you started snapping jabs and that seemed to set off a great chain of events for you. What caused the shift from overhand, overhand, overhand to working the jab?
Jessica Aguilar: To tell the truth, in the heat of the battles, it’s hard to remember what clicked in my head at the moment but I can tell you that I have a fantastic corner and my coaches a lot of times, if they see something that’s missing or they see a hole or something that I need to capitalize on, I’ve got the benefit of American Top Team and the fantastic coaches that will tell me what to do. A lot of times, it’s just listening to your corner.
Sometimes your corner will say, Hey, throw some jabs! and you’ll start throwing jabs and turn it all around. It’s that eye outside of the cage that’s the big help and a lot times, it’s instinctual. You see something isn’t working and you try something else. I can’t honestly say that something went off in my head where I went, Oh, try this now. It’s probably a combination of the coaches and the instincts.
Gerry Rodriguez: What do you think about Dana White’s thoughts on women’s MMA as a whole?
Jessica Aguilar: I think that his problem is he’s a businessman. Obviously, he feels like, how’s he gonna put together a division if there’s no depth to it. There’s not enough females out there has been his take but now when you look at these cards like with Invicta and he sees that there’s depth out there with females and I really think that Ronda Rousey is sparking his interest. He sees something with her that he really likes and she’s done some promotional things and she’s gonna open up the doors for females to get into the UFC.
Again, I think Dana’s gonna look at it and say, Am I really gonna have enough females to put together competitive fights? We’ll see what happens but we’re at such an infancy stage of MMA for the females and I think if we’re having this conversation five years from now, we’ll definitely be seeing females on the big stage for MMA. There’s no doubt about it. The girls are coming out now and they’re training and it’s just a matter of time before there’s a ton of competitors out there. I’m excited to be a part of it.
You can follow Jessica Aguilar on Twitter @JagATT.
Stay tuned tomorrow for part two of our interview with Jessica Aguilar where she talks about Megumi Fujii’s legendary ground game, working with American Top Team coaches like Marcos Da Matta and punching people you like in the face as hard as you can.
To listen to our full interview with Jessica Aguilar, click here (audio starts at the 22:00 mark).
UFC Quick Quote: ‘Cain Velasquez is more of a multifaceted threat than champion Junior dos Santos’
05/18/2012
Cain Velasquez is more of a multifaceted threat. He can lull you into a striking match and take you down or he can punch you in the face if you’re worried about the take down. With Dos Santos, he basically concentrates on his best asset which is boxing but it’s hard to argue, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
– During today’s (May 17, 2012) UFC 146 pre-fight media call, Frank Mir proclaimed that Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez is much more of a multifaceted threat than his upcoming opponent, current Heavyweight champion, Junior dos Santos. Mir, who was originally set to compete opposite Velasquez on May 26, 2012, at UFC 146 in the co-main event, got the call to step up to the main event slot against Cigano in replacement of Alistair Overeem when Zuffa officials made the call to yank the embattled fighter from the event altogether following his testosterone debacle. Velasquez, a former NCAA Division-1 wrestler, has proven that his all-around mixed martial arts (MMA) game is quite well rounded indeed. With his superior grappling skills and unlimited cardio, Velasquez has compiled a 7-1 record in the UFC (9-1 overall). However, Brown Pride doesn’t solely rely on his wrestling mojo to get him by inside the Octagon, proving he can strike with the best of them and finish fights. In fact, of his nine victories, only one has gone to decision one with the rest of his wins coming by way of knockout or technical knockout. Not that Mir is completely downplaying Junior’s skills, on the contrary, the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt goes on to say that Cigano focuses on what has brought him success, and that is the power and speed of his boxing skill-set. Though dos Santos has yet had the opportunity to display his ground game because of his tendency to knockout folks on the feet, the heavyweight champion has stated in the past that he will surprise everyone should he ever be forced to play the ground game. Perhaps Mir, who is highly regarded as one of the, if not the best submission artist in the division, will force the Brazilian bomber to the mat, giving him his opportunity to show the world his jiu-jitsu game. What are the chances of that happening?
Pic: A very extensive (and shameless) photos gallery of Bellator ring girl Mercedes Terrell. Check…
05/17/2012
Pic: A very extensive (and shameless) photos gallery of Bellator ring girl Mercedes Terrell. Check out more right here.