The first fight of the night shown was between Tyson Griffin and Marcus “Maximus” Aurelio. Perhaps Marcus should recheck Imdb.com and see that Marcus Aurelius and Maximus are two separate characters. One is an old man who is smothered in his sleep, the other is a Spanish General who cannot be beaten. Perhaps he should just keep his nickname for the old man.

Round one begins with Griffin (not to be confused with the headlining Griffin) gauging his distance with the clearly overreaching Aurelio. It takes a few moments for him to finally take the confidence in order to close the distance and begin his assault. Griffin begins with a shoot that ends in a take down that goes the way of full guard by Aurelio. If you have been watching the U.F.C. for any extended period of time you know the drill; takedown into full guard, and the clench-fest that ensues. However Griffin is known for his deadly guillotine chokes, so this was a dangerous position for Aurelio. Griffin continues to dominate the match through round two and three in an impressive display of wrestling training against a BJJ black belt. Aurelio wasn’t able to capitalize on his abilities from his jiu-jitsu because of Griffin’s impressive control over the wrestling game. At the end of round three with no knockout on either side, the judges scored in Griffin’s favor in a unanimous decision. Winner by decision, Tyson Griffin.

The second fight of the night was also the standout, bloodiest match of the evening between Josh Koscheck and Chris Lytle. Lytle was the obvious crowd favorite at the beginning, if not by the end of the match. From round one Lytle was the obvious aggressor, throwing hands and a few kicks for the entire match. Koscheck played a very defensive game, seemingly waiting for the opportune moment to strike (to quote Jack Sparrow). Round one ends with nothing substantial, but it isn’t until round two after Koscheck lands some heavy elbows that cut Lytle’s face wide open. It’s a series of two huge gashes above his right eye that, while on his back against the fence, Koscheck exploits to cause the blood to flow like a fountain pen. With this “pen,” Koscheck proceeds to paint the canvas with Lytle’s blood, creating a crescent pattern with the paintbrush that is Lytle’s head. At this point I was wondering if the official was able to even see the damage done to Lytle; having seen many fights been called due to much less blood loss (ie. the horrible match up that was Kimbo Slice vs. James Thompson). The round ended and the doctors patch up Lytle enough for him ton continue the third round, at which point he crowd is clearly in his favor. The official continued to stand them up towards the end of the match in order to keep the fight entertaining (go Yyves) where the round ended and they literally painting the arena red. The obvious winner, Josh Koscheck by judges decision.

The next fight went to Patrick Cote and Ricardo Almeida. I’ll save you the trouble of a long explanation and keep it simple. Cote, known for his stand up fighting and knockout power, was unable or unwilling to fight to the best of his ability. As a MMA practitioner myself, it was very frustrating to watch the match and watch someone not take advantage on dozens of openings that they teach you in month one of your training. Ricardo, who is a renowned jiu jitsu ace, was also unable or unwilling to best his opponent with his preferred skill set. The crowd booed as the opponents ended up in clench after clench, seemingly slow dancing with each other that climaxed at the matches end with both fighters raising their hands, and no fan base cheering for either one. Winner by split decision, Patrick Cote. On a side not, if Cote’s nickname is “Predator,” that personae must have been cloaked the entire time, because we didn’t see him at all.

And finally, a fight that leveled on excitement with The Dark Knight (for me), the main event; Rampage Jackson versus Forrest Griffin. The prediction board had Jackson favored to win 76% to 24% against Griffin, while the U.F.C. vote in standings had the match at an equal 50% each at one point. Round one started the way I’d hoped it would, with both contenders coming out swinging. Griffin landing some key outside leg kicks to Jackson’s lead leg that would prove beneficial in the latter rounds of the match. Jackson solidified round one by landing a huge uppercut that took Griffin to the ground. Round two, however, went exclusively to Griffin by way of complete domination after he took Jackson to the ground. Griffin smothered Jackson with his elbows and forearms which Jackson said later he was using to recover. Round three, however, could have gone either way, and after round four went to Jackson, and five to Forrest (neither of which utilizing anything but stick and move jabs, with Jackson showing that even with a damaged lead leg his hands are still quite deadly), the match could have gone either way at decision. At the end of one of the best five round championships I’ve ever had the pleasure of covering, Forrest Griffin was announced the winner by unanimous decision. However, although the crowd favorite, there was actually booing by the fans as Griffin gave his victory speech. It boggled Griffin, as well as this reporter to no end. Griffin wasn’t without class though, as when asked by the ever *cough* intelligible Joe Rogan if he was ever hurt he replied “I wasn’t ever really hurting…every f*cking punch he threw… hurt.” Described as the best moment of his life and words of praise to Jackson, Rampage responded with “What can I say, he just whooped my ass.” An impressive display of respect between two amazing Light Heavy Weight fighters.

- Eric

Wondering what is up with your prediction data? Read this!

Randy Couture’s biography

Randy Couture has been making MMA news in the octagon his whole career and more recently outside the octagon, as his dispute with the UFC has made him a bellwether for those who are unhappy with their fight contracts. In this episode of MMAPredictions Radio, we will learn all about the new book on Randy Couture’s life.

Some of the questions Loretta answers in this interview:

• How did the idea of writing Randy’s biography come about? Did she approach him? Did he approach her?
• What does Loretta Hunt think makes Randy Randy?
• A lot of other fighters have put their personal stories in book format recently including Chuck Liddell, Matt Hughes, and most recently Tito Ortiz. Has she had a chance to look at those? Would she say her book with Randy follows the same mold as those?
• The book is published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment. Was getting this book published a tough sell? Do they have experience with this sort of thing?
• Did she learn anything that really surprised her about Randy in the course of writing this book?
• What was her favorite moment she shared with Randy when putting this book together?

Click here to listen to the 20 minute mp3!

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- Caleb

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Thanks for visiting MMAPredictions.com, where you can make predictions on the outcomes of mixed martial arts fights. If you’ve been around for much time on MMAPredictions, you probably know that - among other issues - the site has had problems in presenting the correct data after events, and sometimes goes offline and is unavailable after MMA events, which is exactly the time you’d think the information here would be of most interest.

MMAPredictions went live in June 2007 and I was hoping to post a note celebrating our one year anniversary this month. Unfortunately, the site was unreachable on its anniversary and I was not able to post such a note.

Basically the issues we’ve had here on the site over the past year continue to this day despite fixes and other repairs which shouldn’t have ever been necessary. I can no longer continue saying that “the site will be fixed soon” because I do not have faith anymore in our software developers to get the job done.

So moving forward, here’s what you can expect. You’re welcome to register on the site, and even make predictions on the fights. The site will accurately display on fight cards what percent of predictors picked each fighter. But the numbers in your personal profile and on each fight card’s Detailed Results page will be incorrect because the site is unable to complete the calculation routine and locks up and goes offline whenever it tries to do so.

I apologize to all our users and other visitors. I have tried all I can to ensure that this is a fun place for MMA fans.

If you’d like to reach out to me (maybe you’re a programmer looking for pro bono work? lol), you can do so by emailing Caleb_AT_ mmapredictions DOT com.

All the best,

- Caleb

Click here to listen to the 3 minute mp3!

This weekend MMA fans with HDNet will be able to watch Strikeforce: Melendez vs Thomson live from the HP Pavilion in San Jose, headlined by Josh Thomson against Cesar Gracie-lead Gilbert Melendez. The two were supposed to meet quite a while back but the fight had been delayed due to, among other things, an injury to Thomson’s shoulder.

Strikeforce has traditionally relied on local favorites Frank Shamrock and Cung Le to boost ticket sales among its fanbase in San Jose, and as neither of these MMA fighters appear on this card, this event is seen as an opportunity to develop fresh faces to its Northern California audience. Locals Gilbert Melendez, Bobby Southworth and Luke Stewart, all of whom fight this Friday, represent Strikeforce’s best bets at the moment in that regard.

Speaking of new talent, Raymond Daniels will be making his MMA debut on Friday. According to Strikeforce promotional materials, Daniels is “recognized as the number one Sport Karate fighter in the world, holds a 6th degree black belt in Kenpo and Shotokan Karate as well as a 5th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do”.

Daniels himself, a resident of Long Beach, California states:

“I’m going to give MMA fans something that they’ve never seen before. I want to become the greatest fighter of all time. Anybody that steps in front of me is just gonna be on my next highlight reel, an obstacle that’s standing in my path to greatness.”

The live HDNet telecast of the Strikeforce event will begin at 7:30 PM PST (10:30 PM EST). Preliminary fights begin at 6:30 PM.

UPDATE 10:22PM Pacific on Thursday evening: Drew Fickett has replaced Joe Riggs as Luke Stewart’s opponent. As always, you can keep up with updates to fight cards via our dedicated MMA Fight Card Updates thread in the forum!

- Caleb

Concerned about your prediction stats on MMAPredictions being off? Read this thread!

For some folks who may be new to MMAPredictions.com, I just wanted to take a quick moment to remind folks about our audio show, MMAPredictions Radio.

What can I hear on MMAPredictions Radio? What fighters have been on the show?

At this point, we have two basic types of show formats: fighter interviews (audio and sometimes video) and audio recaps of the post MMA event Breakdowns. Here are some of the names heard on the show.

• Randy Couture
• Kaitlin Young
• KJ Noons
• Jon “WarMachine” Koppenhaver

What’s the best way to listen to the show?

Subscribe to our show using

You can subscribe to the show in iTunes, which will automatically download our new shows for you. You definitely don’t need an iPod or iPhone to listen to the show though. You can listen directly in iTunes or even just click where indicated in each MMAPredictions Radio article to start the audio file!

As with everything on this site, if you have any suggestions about how we can make things like our radio show better, please let me know!

- Caleb

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Another unexpected outcome on the show was the ascension of Richmond, Virginia’s Amir Sadollah, who survived the rigors of the show and now finds himself competing for the title of The Ultimate Fighter and a long-term contract with the UFC tonight.

Sadollah entered The Ultimate Fighter with a record of no professional MMA fights. He was familiar to me however, as prior to moving out to San Diego I lived in Northern Virginia and would travel down to a very small MMA promotion called Combat Sports Challenge, where I saw Sadollah fight several times. I do not recall ever seeing him lose back then, which must have been back in 2005, including in his fight against a very tough amateur fighter from my own gym at the time (FightWorks).

In any case I thought I would share some old photos from those days of Amir Sadollah in a victory against an unknown amateur fighter. All photos are courtesy of Chris Curtis.

Don’t put your head down and one arm up like that! It could get you triangl-…

…never mind.

Amir Sadollah’s hand is raised by Lloyd Irvin black belt and referee Mike Moses.

Good luck to all the fighters on tonight’s UFC card in Las Vegas, and good luck with your predictions here on MMAPredictions.com.

- Caleb

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Reis stated that his opponent has not been finalized but will likely be either Bao Quach or Mark Oshiro.

Reis was raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil but has resided in Philadelphia in recent years and trains at BJJ United. He obtained his black belt under Roberto Godoi.

A rematch between Scott Smith and Robbie Lawler has been officially announced by EliteXC for this event. In their first encounter, Lawler garnered 88% of predictors’ confidence here on MMAPredictions.com. However that encounter ended in a No Contest due to an accidental thumb to Smith’s eye, which ended the fight.

- Caleb

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Recent Events Begin to Paint Contrasting Colors

Recently, after EliteXC’s Return of the King, Nick Diaz appeared on the stage (and I emphasize stage) and blasted the recent victor, K.J. Noons, and his family in an apparent effort to promote their upcoming fight. What ensued made my stomach churn; Diaz’s provocations caused an uproar between the two families that exploded into a physical altercation that I was half expecting Jimmy from the Jerry Springer show to break up. Watching Noons’ father grabbing Diaz by the hair and conduct his own form of fighting was sickening.

Nick Diaz has come out saying that none of it was staged, that he was merely asked by producers to go out to the ring and promote their future fight. If you believe that then I have some cage-side seats to sell you for the Kimbo Slice/Jerry Lawler fight in August. This is the same group who use fireworks and dancing girls (see previous T.K.O.) to demonstrate the extreme nature that is their fighting atmosphere. Maybe Nick Diaz was right, maybe he really had no idea that he was walking into a Hatfield-McCoy type situation. In my mind’s eye, I can see an executive from CBS entertainment sitting in a large plush chair overlooking the events, stroking his long haired cat and slyly grinning to himself as a poster of Vince McMahon looms in the background. Okay, so maybe that’s a little dramatic, but it isn’t too far off from what the EliteXC is looking to become. I’m sure it was hard for Goldberg not to try and bounce off the cage and clothesline someone as they were running across the ring.

In the UFC, more specifically, The Ultimate Fighter, we see for the first time, a contestant kicked off the program after the show was over. Jesse Taylor, a fighter who looked promising going into the finals, was booted from broadcast following a drunken parade of poor behavior that is unbecoming of a professional fighter. In the video taken from what looks to be a hotel security camera, Taylor kicks out one of the windows of a limousine before running inside of the casino, wresting about with some of the other contestants, and hitting a slot machine. Forrest Griffin said it best after watching the video, “Alcohol is bad!” Dana White, who had a talk with the finalists before setting them loose in Las Vegas about proper conduct, kicked Mr. Taylor off of the show shortly after showing the video to the coaches.

I’ve been reading on the forums that some people have found this to be a case of punishment not fitting the crime. I couldn’t disagree more. Dana White is constantly fighting an uphill battle to keep a positive image (which has been discussed in this column more than once).

With groups like the EliteXC making a show of the sport, and the upcoming Affliction: Banned, which despite a decent fight card is having Megadeth perform at their event, the question becomes “what is the true face of Mixed Martial Arts on television right now?” (I, unlike my superior, and I use that term loosely, am not a huge Megadeth fan, sorry Caleb.) So, at the moment, I will continue to give my backing to the UFC and the WEC, despite the recent toy line…Mr. White. Winner by T.K.O.: the UFC and its subsidiaries.

- Eric

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This time around, the only fight we know will be on the card so far will be between Rashad Evans and Chuck Liddell. The two were originally supposed to clash at UFC 85 but Liddell suffered an unsightly hamstring tear that prevented the match up.

For the visual learners out there, we’ve updated the UFC Event Map, where you can track where the UFC has held shows throughout its history, and where its planned MMA events will be held.

View Larger Map

If you’re in that part of the country and haven’t been to a UFC event yet, you’re crazy if you don’t grab tickets for Liddel vs Evans now. The UFC has been selling out arenas it hasn’t been to before!

- Caleb

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I am aware that it’s been been unresponsive. By that I mean, “doesn’t appear in your web browser when you visit the site”. And I know that some of the calculations have been incorrect since UFC 85 on June 7th.

It turns out that our hosting company upgraded the operating system of our server a day or two before UFC 85. Ironically, the “upgrade” has caused some serious performance issues.

I have the guys who actually work on the inside of our website actively working on fixing things. They’re actually talking about moving all the calculations of fight events to a different hosting environment entirely. This will not affect the way you see or use the site at all. It will just make the site run better.

However that task is no quick fix and I have a feeling this weekend and the three fight cards that take place (DREAM 4, Adrenaline MMA, and EliteXC from Hawaii) will be a wash, in terms of being able to make your predictions and track them the way you normally would on the site.

So I hope you’ll forgive the inconvenience. I believe this change will bring us back to normal soon and MMAPredictions will not only be better able to manage the current processing needs, but the needs for a long, long time to come.

Email me anytime using our Contact form,

- Caleb

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Update on the update (Sunday June 15th, 7:34PM Pacific): The site has indeed been bouncing on- and offline- a few times since I first posted this note. I have to travel for my day job tomorrow and Tuesday so I may be a tad slower in answering emails during this time. If anything changes I will let you know as soon as possible. Thanks for hanging in there!

So I return from a quick business trip today from San Francisco (no, not for this site! It’s called a day job!) and am in need of some dinner. I head down the street for a San Diego treat: a California burrito (carne asada, cheese, avocado, and hash brown potatoes inside!). As I sit down to eat, I pick up a copy of San Diego Citybeat and what do I see advertised? A advertisement for the upcoming Affliction: Banned event, which takes place in Anaheim, California on July 19th.

And stapled on Fedor Emelianenko’s head (of all places):

SPECIAL PERFORMANCE BY MEGADETH!

I almost choked on my burrito.

I was one of the biggest Megadeth fans in the world in high school. So I can appreciate Megadeth more than most people. However I know the general consensus among MMA fans was that they did not want to see Busta Rhymes at CBS EliteXC Saturday Night Fights. There is a decent chance that Megadeth’s presence at the Affliction: Banned event will not be well-received as well.

But who knows. If you are interested in seeing Megadeth play, or seeing the fights at Affliction: Banned, tickets are still on sale. Definitely check it out if you love both.

- Caleb

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Just a quick note to say that we are very aware of the issues with the calculations here on MMAPredictions since last weekend’s UFC 85: Bedlam. I know that many of our predictors are seeing that they correctly predicted 0% of the card, despite correctly predicting the outcome of more fights than that.

It turns out that the operating system our server runs on was upgraded last week by our hosting company. The upgrade has had some unintended consequences for sure, like not allowing the server the necessary memory to perform all the calculations needed to generate predictions results for MMA events.

The processing demands on the server are actually pretty heavy when an event passes. The server must calculate averages of all predictors, update the static images that are found in the user badges, update the overall site average of all events since the site’s inception, generate new graphs for user accuracies found in user profiles, talk with Google Maps to generate the maps found on the card’s Detailed Results page, and so on. It’s no small amount of work.

And I know it doesn’t make sense that an upgrade to the OS has actually hurt us. But we live in a wacky world.

Not only have calculations been affected but the site has been available and then unavailable since then too. Good stuff.

So please bear with us. I am really hoping to have everything fixed as soon as possible, and really praying we have it ready for this weekend’s Adrenaline card.

Stay tuned to the front page of the site here for updates, okay?

- Caleb

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Have you missed an episode of Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter this season and want to watch one of the earlier fights? Are you looking for something interesting to watch on your iPod on that lousy public transit while you commute to work?

Check out The Ultimate Fighter on iTunes! Episodes are $1.99 each and run just under 42 minutes.

This season has been coached by Rampage Jackson and Forrest Griffin, who will fight for the light heavyweight belt at UFC 86 in Las Vegas on July 5th.

Only three fights have yet to take place on the show (fights in the octagon, that is). The semifinal fights remaining this season:

• Jesse Taylor will take on Tim Credeur.
• Amir Sadollah will face CB Dolloway.

I would like to see Amir Sadollah do well, as he’s a good guy from Virginia, where I lived most of my life. After that I’ll say Jesse Taylor would be my favorite but only because I’ve seen him fight here in San Diego at Total Combat.

- Caleb

Don’t miss any MMAPredictions news! Receive postings by email!

Okay, so UFC 85 is behind us and boy was it a doozy. All we can say is “upset upset upset upset”. In fact in 8 of the 11 fights, the fighter predicted to win by all our users here on MMAPredictions lost.

Here is a snapshot of how our predictors performed here on MMAPredictions.com for the event overall, which you can see by going to the card’s detailed results page.

• 526 MMAPredictions users predicted on the card.
• The average of all our users’ prediction accuracies for the card’s 11 fights on MMAPredictions was 26.7% making this card way less predictable than most MMA events. On average we can expect about half of a fight card to be correctly predicted by our users on this site.
• No one predicted all of the eleven fights correctly, but perennially good MMA predictor JonnyBoy deserves special mention for getting 81% of the card’s fights correct!

Average percent of card correctly predicted: 27%

Most easily-predicted fight outcome: Ninety-two percent of our predictors knew Michael Bisping would defeat Jason Day, which he did in the first round by TKO.

Most surprising fight outcome: Kevin Burns, who we interviewed on MMAPredictions Radio just the other day, defeated Roan Carneiro by triangle choke in the second round. Only 14 % of our predictors thought he would win. Maybe those were the people who listened to his interview!

- Caleb

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On Saturday evening the UFC will bring us UFC 85: Bedlam live from the O2 Arena in London.

This event was originally intended to be headlined by a fight between Rashad Evans and Chuck Liddell, but after the Iceman’s leg suffered an unsightly muscle tear, Matt Hughes stepped up to fight and a contest was arranged for him with hungry Brazilian fighter Thiago Alves.

This is surely the biggest opportunity of Alves’s career. The American Top Team fighter is 7-2 in his UFC appearances and will be looking to usurp the Iowan wrestler’s position in the top of the 170-pound division.

UFC British posterboy Michael Bisping is of course a centerpiece of the action. Bisping has been a part of almost every show the UFC has staged in England since its recent return to the UK at UFC 70: Nations Collide. He will put his 15-1 record up against Canada’s Jason Day, whose most recent victory was over Alan Belcher at UFC 83 in April.

For Bisping’s fellow countryman Paul Taylor, his fight against Frenchman Jess Liaudin is probably a do-or-die situation. Taylor has lost his last two fights in the UFC and was likely retained just to keep some British talent on this event and draw more local interest. Liaudin, now training with Team Quest in Southern California, will also be looking for redemption after losing his last fight to Marcus Davis at UFC 80.

As always, the breakdown of our predictors’ opinions on the winners of this event will be displayed one hour before the fights begin in London. Not coincidentally, this marks the same time that predictions are closed.

UFC 85 is available on pay-per-view in North America and on Setanta Sports in the United Kingdom. As it takes place overseas, do not wait till the last minute to get your predictions logged here on MMAPredictions. The same goes for Sunday’s Sengoku III which takes place in Japan!

- Caleb

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I like to think that there are two kinds of MMA fans out there: The ones who enjoy an EliteXC event, and those who try everything not to go into a catatonic coma in between the actual Elite XC fights. What I am referring to is the showy, hammed up, urban themed, hip-hop, flashily lit, drawn-out, WWE styled walk outs that CBS Entertainment somehow deems crucial to a fighting arena.

For the MMA purist, this is torture. For anyone who has had any kind of fighting background (a serious fighting background, not just some bar brawls over who-spilled-whose Red Bull and vodka), watching these athletes come out dancing to the latest rap song or heavy metal tune is almost a slap in the face to martial arts. Yes, a good entrance is an entertaining way of introducing a fighter to the arena; something that sets the tone for who the fighter is, or just something to get him pumped up as he enters the arena. However, CBS Entertainment must think that the MMA crowd has the mind of a five-year old; enticing our minds with bright lights, fireworks, and loud music.

Kimbo Slice lays it on James Thompson at CBS EliteXC Saturday Night Fights. Photo courtesy EliteXC and Tom Casino.

Let’s take a look at what a well trained fight is. Having two competitors who’ve trained for months for a (max of) twenty five minutes in the ring together, both utilizing their preferred styles of combat, is a special happening that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Combat is one of, if not the oldest forms of interaction between mankind. Now that we’ve become civilized fighting is a sport, a way for two people to compete doing something they love. If it was a Spartan-sport there would be no cameras, just two men, a floor, and a cage.

However, since there are pockets to be filled one must appease the crowds and mass audiences that hold the means to fill these pockets. The UFC and the WEC do a very good job of balancing the two. The walk out is just the fighters taking the path from the back to the front, much like an NBA team does before a game. This pumps up the crowd and gets the fans eager to support their chosen player. The same goes for MMA. Then we move on to the dancing girls. Oh the dancing girls. If you are sitting at home or in the stands and watching the girls bump and shake every wiggly part of their body, and thinking to yourself “This is why I love this sport,” stop watching. Or, if you must continue to watch, please don’t go out and tell people that you’re a huge MMA fan. This is embarrassing for those of us who have a great love for the ideal of martial arts, not just a way to watch two guys pummel each other for 3-5 rounds. It seems as if the EliteXC panders to the latter crowd exclusively.

Those of you who watched the most recent EliteXC broadcast, you may have noticed that the championship bout was not the main event. Instead, EliteXC held their ratings trump card (a.k.a. – Kimbo Slice) until the end of the night. Was it worth the wait? Not even close. Watching Slice and James Thompson duke it out was not a far cry from Kimbo’s street fighting days. I don’t like reviewing the EliteXC for a reason, it would take too long for me to get anything out of the muck that goes around the actual fights. Therefore, I won’t get into why the fight was bad. Youtube it if you must.

All of these things seem to come down to one major point, one thing that puts the EliteXC at the bottom wrung of the MMA broadcasters: lack of respect for the sport. Instead of realizing what makes this sport stand alone from others, and using this to build a concrete arena for the viewers and practitioners, their mentality seems to be just make everything, bigger, louder, and more “extreme.” Winner by T.K.O.: all the other MMA broadcasters.

- Eric

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You are an MMA fan. We know that already. So we agree you like to learn about all the MMA fighters out there, right?

Well if you have a Gmail or other Google account, you should check out the MMA Fighter of the Day Google Gadget from MMAPredictions!

It will deliver a new, random MMA fighter every day to your iGoogle homepage. You’ll be exposed to MMA fighters you didn’t know about, and get a new MMA surprise every day when you log in. What better way to prepare for making MMA predictions right? Keep ahead!

If you need more detail, check out the 1m55s YouTube video above but you can also check it out in higher definition at this m4v file (iTunes or Quicktime required).

We think this is going to be a lot of fun. If you have MMA friends with Gmail accounts, let them know about it too!

- Caleb

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Kevin “The Fire” Burns

Today on MMAPredictions Radio we’ll speak with Kevin Burns, whose first exposure to combat sports came at the hands of his sister, who trained Tae Kwon Do. Burns received his black belt in TKD and now trains Brazilian jiu-jitsu. In August 2006 he went pro in mixed martial arts and has even racked up an 11 second victory over Josh Neer.

Click here to listen to the 8 minute mp3!

Subscribe to our show using

- Caleb

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Sacramento’s ARCO Arena played host to WEC Faber vs. Pulver (aka WEC 34) last night, with about half of the card being televised live on the Versus cable channel.

The evening’s highlight was undeniably the encounter between Chicago-based Miguel Torres and Yoshiro Maeda. This clash of 135-pound titans saw each deliver and take serious damage, and even included a standoff on footlocks that had me on the edge of the seat. Torres opted not to use his free foot to help pry his attacked foot away, and instead used it to continue to deliver heel kicks to Maeda. Eventually while standing Maeda’s right eye took so much punishment due to Torres’ regular jabbing that the medical team deemed that the fight must be stopped, and Torres retained his featherweight title.

Here is a snapshot of how our predictors performed here on MMAPredictions.com for the event overall, which you can see by going to the card’s detailed results page.

• 407 MMAPredictions users predicted on the card.
• The average of all our users’ prediction accuracies for the card’s 11 fights on MMAPredictions was 43.6% making this card less predictable than most MMA events. On average we can expect about half of a fight card to be correctly predicted by our users on this site.
• No one predicted all of the eleven fights correctly, but MMAPredictions user mfd420 deserves special mention for being the only person to miss just one fight!

Average percent of card correctly predicted: 44%

Most easily-predicted fight outcome: Ninety-nine percent of MMAPredictions users knew that Rob McCullough would defeat Kenneth Alexander. I can only presume our predictors were not aware that Alexander actually had beaten McCullough in the past, but that’s pretty arcane trivia. In any case the fight itself was one of the least entertaining we have seen in a while. The other fights easily made up for this however.

Most surprising fight outcome: We have a tie! Just thirteen percent of our predictors had faith in both Will Ribeiro and Michael T. Brown. However both were able to come away with respective decision victories over Chase Beebe and Jeff Curran, two very respected fighters.

You know what I am about to say next: This weekend on MMAPredictions we have UFC 85: Bedlam on the way, so make sure you get your predictions in the system here. Also, we will have an audio interview posted here on the site tomorrow with Kevin Burns, a last minute replacement for Ryo Chonan and will make his UFC debut against Roan Carneiro this weekend!

- Caleb

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Just a few hours before WEC Faber vs. Pulver gets going in Sacramento, California this afternoon! Remember that the fight between Jens Pulver and Urijah Faber is for the WEC featherweight title!

You can catch the action this evening on the cable channel Versus at 6pm Pacific and 9pm Eastern LIVE.

- Caleb

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Well well well. The debut of mixed martial arts on network television. What did you think? Did that live up to the hype?

It’s hard to say. There are multiple angles we should examine the event from. Here are a few things that first come to my mind:

• Kimbo Slice actually was in a fight that lasted more than a handful of seconds. James Thompson did eventually provide a Kimbo win, much to EliteXC’s delight, but at least we saw Kimbo pushed a little harder than before.
• The dancers and Busta Rhymes were terrible. Is this what happens when CBS Entertainment puts on an event instead of CBS Sports?
• Announcing crew: Gus Johnson gets two big thumbs up. Great work with Frank Shamrock’s introduction to MMA at the beginning of the event. Mauro Ranallo was Mauro Ranallo and that’s okay.

Here is a snapshot of how our predictors performed here on MMAPredictions.com for the event overall, which you can see by going to the card’s detailed results page.

• 509 MMAPredictions users predicted on the card. That’s a pretty strong number, and in the range of those we see for most UFC events.
• The average of all our users’ prediction accuracies for the card’s 5 fights on MMAPredictions was 75.9% making these fights way more predictable than most MMA events. On average we can expect about half of a fight card to be correctly predicted by our users on this site, and rarely do they get more than 65% of a card’s fights correct. More on that below.

Most easily-predicted fight outcome: Ninety-four percent of MMAPredictions users knew that Brett Rogers would beat up Jon Murphy. Looking at Murphy before the fight began, he certainly didn’t seem to possess much confidence. I don’t know what soldiers’ faces looked like as they rushed the beach on Normandy knowing what lay before them, but I imagine many of them had the same look Murphy did: resigned.

Most surprising fight outcome: Well this is a first… we don’t have a most surprising fight of the night. In all four of the fights with a real outcome (the Lawler vs. Smith ending can’t really be included), the majority of our users correctly picked the winner of the fight. No upsets to see here folks, move along.

Here’s the trick: the event had five fights on the main card, which is not that many. Fewer fights means it’s easier to predict the card.

Then, the fight between Robbie Lawler and Scott Smith was ruled a no contest when a doctor ruled that Smith could not continue after receiving a thumb in the eye. So now we’re down to just four fights that were all correctly predicted by the majority of users. So we’re left with what seems to be a very predictable set of fights.

But is that what this card was about? Normally I hold promoters to a very high standard in that I believe fights should not be predictable. (Call me a purist but I feel MMA fights should include two evenly matched combatants.)

But tonight was about playing it safe, and having a successful debut. Or rather, a debut where nothing went wrong and the promoters could expect to return with another event. In that regard, EliteXC deserves a pat on the back for its first MMA event on network television.

Next up on MMAPredictions.com is the WEC Pulver vs. Faber in just a few hours. Get your picks in on this eleven-fight card!

- Caleb

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EliteXC on CBS takes place Saturday on the CBS Television Network (9 p.m.-11 p.m. ET/PT)! Get your predictions in here for the five main event fights in what some claim will make MMA history.

Gina Carano and Kaitlin Young, pictured above, will be the first female MMA fight that most people will ever have seen. (I’m not talking about you, hard core fans!). EliteXC is hoping that they can differentiate themselves by having a female division that fans talk about. What do you think? Will female MMA catch on?

The main event of the night is street fighting sensation Kimbo Slice, of YouTube fame. He will face James Thompson, of the United Kingdom. The question is, what if Kimbo loses? What does EliteXC do then? Is Thompson legitimate competition for Kimbo or is he more cannon fodder?

Remember, you can get a text message of the fight outcomes sent to you if you have predicted on the fights just for being a member of MMAPredictions. You can set that up in your user profile, found by clicking on your username in the upper right hand side of the site when you are logged in.

Also remember to always predict all the fights on the card or you run the risk of your predictions not counting!

Lastly, don’t forget we have a great set of fights on Sunday at WEC Faber vs Pulver. Might as well get your predictions made here on MMAPredictions all at once!

- Caleb

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Carano will play the role of “a deadly Russian assassin Natasha” and will not only be a live-action character in the game’s video sequences, but will also be a playable character.

Said Carano:

“The last year has been such a whirlwind for me, from everything that’s happening with EliteXC this weekend to American Gladiators and now with EA and Red Alert 3. Natasha is such a cool, powerful character, her actions definitely speak louder than her words which is something I definitely identify with. I can’t wait to see how everything turns out and I hope all of the gamers out there have a great time wreaking havoc as me.”

Click here to view a 90 second video trailer for Gina in the game. (iTunes required)

The fight between Gina Carano and Kaitlin Young will be the third fight televised on of the night on May 31st.

- Caleb

Don’t miss any MMAPredictions news! Receive postings by email!

WEC Faber vs. Pulver takes place this Sunday and will be televised at 9pm ET / 6pm PT LIVE on Versus! Of course the headlining fight will be the contest for the WEC Featherweight Championship and pits current WEC champ Urijah Faber against Jens Pulver.

This busy event has a total of eleven fights and includes WEC standouts Chase Beebe and Miguel Torres in separate fights. Make sure you enter your predictions here on MMAPredictions.com!

If you’re looking for more background to help you decide which fighters will come out on top, Versus has set up a great site full of content on the Faber vs. Pulver fight, which you can check out here!

- Caleb

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For all who watched UFC 84: Ill Will last Saturday you probably saw the headlining fight between B.J. Penn and Sean Sherk. An unusual boxing max between two renowned grapplers that ended with a victory for B.J. Penn over Sean Sherk right after the third round. The point under question now is: were B.J. Penn’s actions after the fight unsportsmanlike in a professional environment? Let’s take a look at the events leading up to the fight, to better help understand what could have happened.

Most of you know that the blood between the two fighters was anything but static before the fight. Sean Sherk previously lost his lightweight championship belt due to allegations of steroid use and felt that his belt still rightfully belonged to him, having not lost the belt in a fight but instead to a technicality. B.J. Penn was quite vocal after being presented with his prize, calling Mr. Sherk “dead” and adding plenty of statements about Sherk’s supposed steroid use. So obviously, when you place two people with different points of view in an arena where they use fists not words, there will be an emotional aspect to the conflict that will in evidently take its toll on the combatant’s actions. For the casual MMA fan this is what you want to see though. Drama, passion, tempers, combat, are all factors to an equation that equal a new gladiatorial coliseum, with the mob in tow.

On the flip-side, each fighter knowingly entered into a professional fighting arena, not an amateur fighting ring, not a back alley bar brawl, or a showy wrestling match. This is a professional sport now. At what point should the fighters take their ego out of the equations? At what point in their careers do they retain control over themselves and remember their responsibilities as a professional?

For the MMA purist, watching Penn’s display was probably frustrating. The man referred to as “The Prodigy,” and with good reason, let his feelings get the best of him and proceeded to try and smear a man’s face in the dirt after he’d already been knocked down. Yes it’s his trademark to lick the back of his gloves; like Wanderlei Silva’s wrist rolls or Keith Jardine’s odd mouth stretches, but to walk over to a man who just took a knee to the face and had all his hopes smashed for the night and wipe the sweat from his face is unprofessional.

In a street fight it might be okay. I’d even laugh and cheer for the guy who had the guts to perform such an act. At the UFC however, fighters should be expected to uphold a certain degree of honor. And although B.J. Penn collected himself afterwards and even invited Sherk to come train at his gym, it was the scene of Penn reaching past arena doctors, who were trying to make sure Sherk was alright, just so he could lick his blood/sweat that remains cemented in our minds. Winner by T.K.O.: unsportsmanlike conduct by B.J. Penn.

- Eric

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The match up between Baroni and Villasenor contributes to the overall tenor of the card, which is not expected to showcase much ground fighting. Both are sluggers: almost two-thirds of Baroni’s wins come by TKO, and Villasenor’s win column has not seen a submission victory since 2005.

Here are some of the barbs exchanged between the two on a recent conference call leading up to this Saturday:

Question: Joey, do you think you have the advantage in overall technique?

Villasenor: I think my overall game is improving daily. I have power with movement. It’s about executing. Overall, we all know that Baroni has stand‑up power, but I’m going to try to expose him with my movement. So, it’s just all about executing.

Baroni: Basically to sum it up, Villasenor is going to run. He basically just said that he (will) bring his track shoes and chase me. He’s going to run. It doesn’t matter because in the cage you can run, but you can’t hide. I’m going to find you, I’m going to hit and everyone’s going to think about you.

Villasenor: You’re going to make me pay for your last two losses, right, Phil?

Baroni: Uh‑huh.

Question: Can you comment on the fact that Baroni said he is going to ice you?

Villasenor: (Laughing) That’s a good one. He’s going to ice me. I don’t care what Baroni says. We know him. He said he’s going to do this and that all the time. But he’s got to come through. I didn’t say I’m going to do this or that. I’m going go out there and perform my best and we’ll see what happens in the end.

Baroni: You are going to get knocked out, kid. Your best isn’t going to be big enough. The bottom line is this is my coming home party, and you’re the victim.

Villasenor: Your coming out party, Phil? You’ve been out for a while. You’ve been exposed for a while. I’ll just have to show everybody on national television and expose you, expose you at home, expose you in front of everybody. I’m excited to get the opportunity.

I respect you, man. I respect the power you’ve got. But it’s coming. It’s coming. You know it’s coming. I don’t need to talk trash. You know what’s coming. That’s all there is to it.

Baroni: I ain’t talking trash. I’m stating the facts, dude. I’m going to smash you and you’ll get hurt real bad. Be ready. Try your best. Your best is not going to be good enough, and we’ll send you back to Nashville.

Villasenor: You’re getting me even more excited for this. I’m pumped. This is just what I needed. I needed somebody to talk trash to me. This is the first time in 30 fights that I’ve had somebody treat me this way. Hey, thanks for the motivation.

Baroni: You’re welcome, buddy.

Make sure you get your picks in here on MMAPredictions! I probably do not have to tell you to keep an eye on CBS this Saturday, May 31 (9-11 p.m. ET/PT)!

- Caleb

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Joann of the MMA Girls

Click here to listen to the 7 minute mp3!

While in Las Vegas Joann interviewed Randy Couture, Jason Miller, and Gina Carano, and has a bunch of other stories to share, including how she got choked out by Marc Laimon!

Subscribe to our show using

- Caleb

Don’t miss any MMAPredictions news! Receive postings by email!

Okay it’s time to look at how our predictors on MMAPredictions.com predicted and performed on UFC 84: Ill Will. To me there were some pretty interesting facts revealed this time around that I did not expect.

I expected half of our predictors to think Sean Sherk was going to beat BJ Penn and half to say Penn would win, in the same way Anderson Silva and Dan Henderson each got half of our predictors’ votes for UFC 82. I was very wrong! Eighty-one percent knew BJ Penn would win!

Here is a snapshot of how our predictors performed here on MMAPredictions.com for the event overall, which you can see by going to the card’s detailed results page.

• 636 MMAPredictions users predicted on the card.
• The average of all our users’ prediction accuracies for the card’s 11 fights on MMAPredictions was 64.1% making these fights as a whole more predictable than most MMA events. Since MMAPredictions’ inception, the average prediction accuracy across all fight cards is 54.6%.

Most easily-predicted fight outcome: Ninety-eight percent of our predictors knew that Thiago Silva was going to remain undefeated after his encounter with Antonio Mendes. That is most likely due to Silva being undefeated and Mendes not being a familiar entity to UFC fans.

Most surprising fight outcome: Roger Gracie-trained Goran Reljic’s victory over Wilson Gouveia was only predicted by 23 percent of users here. This match actually turned out to be the UFC Fight of the Night and each combatant won $75,000 for putting on such an entertaining fight, according to MMAMania!

Next up on MMAPredictions.com is the CBS Elite XC Saturday Night Fights which takes place in Saturday on Saturday. This could indeed turn out to be the turning point it has been billed to be, with all the hype surrounding Kimbo Slice versus James Thompson and Gina Carano versus Kaitlin Young.

- Caleb

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By Eric Davidson

It’s always a pleasure to watch a lightweight title match. Especially when there are so many other great fights planned out over the course of the night. Everything from the rising Jon “War Machine” Koppenhaver to Wanderlei “The Axe Murderer” Silva; you couldn’t help but be excited for the endeavors of the combatants. Let’s begin the review of UFC 84:

The first fight shown of the night was between Thiago Silva and Antonio Mendes. The prediction chart had the fight in Silva’s favor 98% to 2%, a huge margin not often seen between two lesser known fighters. Mendes appeared to have control of the match in the first couple seconds, landing some high kicks that took Silva off balance and to the ground. The fighters brought themselves to their feet before Mendes’ poor attempt to roll out of the clench on the fence gave Silva a position advantage. After missing a hard right Silva capitalized on his position, and after a failed choke attempt followed by some quick hands Herb Dean called the fight. At first it appeared as if it was because of the attacks by Silva, and that Mendes was unable to defend himself. Yet upon closer review it was shown that Mendes actually tapped while on the ground, giving the victory to Thiago Silva two minutes and twenty four seconds into the round. Winner: Thiago Silva by tap-out.

Fight two was between the favored Tito Ortiz and the elusive Lyoto Machida. Although the crowd favorite, your predictions had Machida at a 64% chance to win over Ortiz’s 36%. It was obvious that both fighters were weary of each other’s