Join us at ~12:15 AM EST: (WEC video stream after the jump)
$10,000 fight-night bonuses:
- Fight of the Night: Jamie Varner vs. Donald Cerrone
- Submission of the Night: Miguel Torres
- Knockout of the Night: George Roop
Attendance: 5,100
Chan Sung Jung has been sent to the hospital for observation.
The third episode of "The Ultimate Fighter 12: Team GSP vs. Team Koscheck" scored a 1.3 household rating and 1.8 million viewers.
Manny Gamburyan is not happy about his underdog status.
And you might be surprised by who "Showtime" beat out to get on the show:
"The WEC recommended a couple fighters to MTV, had a couple guys send in tapes, and they chose me out of I think four other guys. I know Urijah Faber was one of them, I forget who else ... Jenks said my show was one of the best they did. They followed me for about 12 days. One of my closest friends, Pat Barry, and I were talking about the show and what wold happen if I got knocked out in the WEC and then it aired on MTV. Luckily it didn't end up that way. I haven't had a better knockout than that my whole career. It couldn't have gone better."
Newly-named WEC lightweight title contender Anthony Pettis has had a pretty good week. A couple days after being told he'd be challenging Ben Henderson for 155-pound gold, more than two million people tuned in to MTV's "World of Jenks," a show that documented the lead up to his fight with Danny Castillo at WEC 47. "Showtime" told Larry Pepe on Pro MMA Radio that he actually got the nod over WEC poster boy Urijah Faber to be filmed. Thoughts on the show? Despite the incorrect spelling of Pat Berry, er, Barry, did you enjoy it? Any newfound Pettis fans out there?
"I think that there are fighters and there are round winners; people that go out there to win rounds. We only got 15 minutes so I guess (the Cesar Gracie team) we got to figure out a way to win these rounds too, just like how (the round winners) are doing."
"No opinion. That's not a surprise. Not that (Chael Sonnen) was on steroids; but all these guys are on steroids. So you can't be surprised when somebody pops up on steroids, you know. You should be surprised when people aren't on steroids."
"(Sponsors) are a big help. A lot of fighters are underpaid. (Sponsors) help us put food on the table and clothes on our backs, so sponsors are great."
UFC Fighter Nate Diaz Interview at Warrior Fight Store
Former Bellator featherweight champion Joe Soto is the latest fighter to suffer a severe eye injury as the likely result of active competition.
Former Bellator featherweight champion Joe Soto is the latest fighter to suffer a severe eye injury as the likely result of active competition.
The UFC 119 pay-per-view event took in a live gate of $1,588,163 on September 25 from the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana, according to official figures released today by the Indiana Gaming Commission per MMA Weekly.
The final attendance of 15,811 was a result of 13,783 tickets sold and 2,028 comped tickets. These numbers equate to an average ticket price of $115.23.
UFC 119 will likely be remembered as one of the promotion's least entertaining shows due to the lackluster main event between Frank Mir and Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic, a fight that saw Mir KO the Croatian with just a minute left in the final frame after the two heavyweights fought to a virtual stalemate prior to the finish.
For a complete recap of UFC 119: "Mir vs. Cro Cop" results, click here and here.
Daniel Herbertson talks about Megumi Fujii's attempt to do what's never been done in MMA:
Miguel Torres won 20 fights before he faltered. Satoko Shinashi and Jason Black both managed to win 21 fights before suffering their first losses. On Sept. 30 at Bellator 31, Megumi Fujii will attempt to be the first person in MMA to ever go 22-0.
In her attempt to take the record, Fujii will face submission specialist Lisa Ward in a rematch of their controversial 2007 bout.
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"My loss to Megumi should have been a no contest," said Ward in an interview with Bellator.com. "The fight was stopped because the referee thought I tapped and admitted he never actually saw it. I'm not sure what he was thinking, but I was defending properly and was in no danger of submitting. Megumi is a great competitor, but in this fight, I'm going to play my game, and deliver her the first loss in her career."
Tony Loiseleur has an incredible piece about Fuji and the cultural hurdles faced by women fighters in Japan's conservative culture:
However, a more particular kind of bias has impeded women's MMA in Japan and made it difficult for women to pursue prizefighting. It is a combination of history, social tendency and resistance to change that makes women's MMA a niche sport. Despite some casual notions that women's MMA is both accepted and flourishing in Japan, women's opportunities to make a career of professional MMA both domestically and abroad have been slim to none.
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Watch a women's MMA fight in Japan, and the paternalistic compromises are clear: shortened fights, some are three three-minute rounds while most are two five-minute rounds; awkward, oversized gloves; over-officious referees who are quick "save" women from harm before submissions are fully applied or when strikes are not even landing. Ground-and-pound -- an essential element of MMA -- is almost entirely verboten, save for a few marquee bouts.
Loiseleur makes a strong case that the sexism that is holding back the growth of women's MMA in Japan is a hold over from the sexist conventions of pro wrestling:
Though its message differed, women's pro wrestling (in Japan) was a similar social project in being demonstrative of femininity. Its heroines and villainesses were archetypal caricatures of pro- and anti-womanhood. The "faces" fit the heteronormative understanding of what the Japanese perceived to be properly feminine -- young, nubile and morally pure -- while the "heels" were aberrations of that model -- physically imposing, butch and aggressive.
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It was not until the 1970s when teenage wrestlers-stroke-pop singers like the 16-year-old "Mach" Fumiake Watanabe and the similarly young Jackie Sato-Maki Ueda tag-team "Beauty Pair" became crossover, mainstream celebrities that women's pro wrestling gained any kind of traction. Promoters further continued to ensure that proper gender roles were adhered to: until the 1990s, women's pro wrestling in Japan maintained a mandatory retirement age of 26, out of consideration for future marriage and family-raising.Japan's longstanding ties to the pseudo-sport thus made it impossible to disentangle MMA from its pro wrestling roots. In speaking with promoters of today's most prominent Japanese women's MMA promotions -- Deep, Valkyrie and Jewels -- all admit that this connection to professional wrestling and the social conventions it supported is what has kept women's MMA from growing over the past decade.
He also documents Fujii's rebellion from those confining strictures:
Fujii is the exception. She is one of the few women in Japanese MMA that has leveraged her successes against promoters in an attempt to conduct her career in a manner that largely reflects men's MMA careers. She is personally fueled by the notion that MMA is a global sport, actively seeks to face her best contemporaries and feels she deserves to be paid for it.
Since her MMA debut in 2004, Fujii has steadfastly campaigned for women to fight under full MMA rules, so much so that she has occasionally brought about the ire of promoters for whom she fought. In her July 2009 bout against Saori Ishioka, Jewels' staff had to keep the fact that the fight would be contested under full MMA rules a secret from event advisor and Deep promoter Shigeru Saeki, a staunch opponent of ground-and-pound in women's MMA.
Bellator's heavyweight tournament may have been a lay and pray fest featuring more lard than a Crisco factory, but their women's tournament has featured nothing but great action so far.
We'll be live blogging Fujii vs Ward and the rest of the Bellator 31 card here at Bloody Elbow, but for most of you FSN's disinterest in showing MMA live means that you might be able to watch WEC live and then immediately catch a replay of Bellator on FSN right after.
BROOMFIELD, Colo. - For much of Jamie Varner's professional career, he wore his heart on his shoulder.
According to WEC president Reed Harris, Thursday's stacked "WEC 51: Aldo vs. Gamburyan" card was almost a pay-per-view event.
A shot at the UFC middleweight championship is at stake on Saturday, November 13, (free on Spike TV via tape delay) as 185-pound contenders Nate 'The Great' Marquardt and Yushin Okami collide in Oberhausen to decide the division's next challenger. The middleweight pair headline UFC 122, when the Ultimate Fighting Championship organisation returns to Germany.Main card:
In the co-main event, hot-streaking middleweights Alessio Sakara and Jorge Rivera meet at the crossroads of their careers, the victor assured bigger opportunities in 2011.
"George is a monster with impressive wins over Kurt Pellegrino and Joe Stevenson. He has good boxing and REALLY slick Jiu-Jitsu. He uses a lot of rubber guard from the bottom and is absolutely relentless from the top with his passing. I think he is going to be bigger than me as well, as he was on The Ultimate Fighter at 170 before dropping down to 155. While I am sure I will be the underdog going into this one, I like how my skills match off with George’s. There has been talk about George getting a title shot in Australia if he wins his next fight, but I am going to throw a wrench in those plans. I’m the underdog, with an uphill battle coming and big plans for the other guy after he beats me… but I am good at ruining those kinds of plans. Getting some Deja Vu of the Jens Pulver fight camp already ... The UFC countdown show is coming out to film today… so you will hopefully get to see some of the stuff I have been doing."
Resurgent UFC Lightweight Joe Lauzon (via The Underground), fresh off a first round ass kicking over Gabe Ruediger in front of his Beantown Boys back at UFC 118, will be heading into his UFC 123 scrap against George Sotiropoulos on Nov. 20 in the suburbs of Detroit with bad intentions. Can the Aussie become 155-pound champ? Not if "J-Lau" can help it.
As with every major show, BloodyElbow.com will be here to bring you live results and commentary for WEC 51: Aldo vs. Gamburyan. The live blog will start with the beginning of the Versus broadcast (at 9 p.m. ET) so make sure to make Bloody Elbow your home for this event.
As always we have our one rule: NO SPOILERS! In the interest of not ruining anything from the undercard that may make the broadcast we ask that you do not discuss the results of the undercard in the comments until either the broadcast ends or the fight makes the air.
Scheduled for the broadcast:
Jose Aldo vs. Manny Gamburyan
Donald Cerrone vs. Jamie Varner
Miguel Torres vs. Charlie Valencia
Chan Sung Jung vs. George Roop
Leonard Garcia vs. Mark Hominick
