(If Taco Bell is looking for a fighter to sponsor, they may have found their man.)
There’s no getting around it, Roy Nelson is fat. He doesn’t just have a little extra padding. He isn’t chunky. The man’s got a body like a hastily packed duffel bag. Just looking at him, he seems like someone who’s face you might get all up into if he spilled his beer on you at a tractor pull. Of course, judging by some of his recent fights you’d probably end up face down in the parking lot, but that’s what you get for going to tractor pulls and causing trouble.
Nelson needed just under three minutes to stop Brad Imes at last night’s IFL event, retaining his heavyweight title after out-slugging the 6′7″ Imes. Nelson has yet to go beyond the first round in a title defense, begging the question, will the IFL have to go searching for more credible opponents to face “Big Country”? Imes was brought in as a last minute replacement for Brandon Lee Hinkle (who can also hardly be said to be credible), but as Nelson keeps knocking out the heavyweight ringers, the competition needs to improve before we know how good he really is.
Nelson said afterwards that he considers himself in the top five of the heavyweight division, and suggested that maybe if he quit fighting for a while he might finally break into some of those top ten lists. It seems to have worked for Ben Rothwell, who Nelson lost a narrow decision to a little over a year ago.
In other IFL action, Ryan Schultz outpointed a game Deividas Taurosevicius, who proved to be the anti-Kalib Starnes when he broke his foot in the first round and yet didn’t turn the fight into a track meet as a result. As a matter of fact, he kept coming forward, supplying offense, and, you know, fighting despite the injury. Imagine that.
Full results after the jump.
EDIT: Roy Nelson vs. Brad Imes video added (props MMA Scraps)
(Kenny Chesney, come get your motherfucking award, man.)
Quick, what awards show is Kimbo Slice least qualified to be a presenter at? Don’t think about it, just answer. If you said Country Music Awards, you are correct. You are also about to be totally baffled.
According to Si.com, Kimbo will be at the CMA’s to hand out an award to some terrified country singer who will no doubt be oscillating between joy at having won an award and confusion as to why Mr. T was the one to thrust it into his sweaty hands.
Now, I don’t watch that many awards shows, but don’t they usually have presenters who are a) somehow involved in that field, or b) mainstream celebrities who are recognizable to the people watching/attending the awards show?
Of course, this makes a certain kind of sense when you realize that the CMA’s are on CBS, and according to Gary Shaw, CBS loves Kimbo so much that they “put that eye right on [him].” Um, that would be the CBS eye logo that Shaw is referring to there.
And thinking of that eye logo as a disembodied force that looks upon future talent for the network, like some kind of omniscient spotlight from the heavens? Yeah, that’s a very disturbing image. Thanks, Gary.
It’s almost always a good thing to be the first woman to do something. That’s because usually, if a woman hasn’t done that thing yet, it means that it’s either really hard or men have been real jerks about it and kept women out like ten-year-olds with a clubhouse. Well, Brazilian Carina Damm just etched her name in the record books by becoming the first female MMA figher to test positive for steroids. That is not the clubhouse you want to be hanging out in. Not unless you love powerlifting and back acne.
Sherdog reported today that Damm tested positive for Nandrolone (that’s right, the same thing Sean Sherk tested positive for) after her April 3 victory over Sophie Bagherdai at Femme Fatale Fighting 4 in Los Angeles. This news comes at a particularly bad time for Damm, since she was recently signed to take on Debi Purcell on an Elite XC card on June 27. Purcell seemed annoyed, though not surprised by the news.
“It was obvious she was doing it [steroids], but I was just going to out-cardio and out-muscle her anyways. I’ve been lifting for my whole life, everyday for I don’t know how many years. People have accused me of doing steroids because I have muscles, which isn’t fair. But you can’t go have a normal body and two months later be huge.”
If you’re wondering whether Damm might be a victim of the faulty testing procedures that Sherk is considering suing the CSAC over…there’s something you should know. The “normal” level of Nandrolone in a person is 2 ng/mL. An athlete participating in “vigorous activity” can legally get away with 6 ng/mL. When Sherk tested positive, it was with 12 ng/mL in his system. Carina Damm tested at 37.9 ng/mL. Now that’s how you fail a steroid test, people.
Am I the only one thinking this may help Sean Sherk? A female fighter fails the test with three times the Nandrolone levels that he had, that makes you wonder what a positive test really looks like. Then again, it could just be because those Brazilians don’t do anything half-ass.
Good goddamn work, people: With over 150 entries, this week’s caption contest was our most popular ever, and so many of them were LOLworthy. I must say I was surprised by how many of you referenced Brad Pitt and Angelina Joile — I’m not judging, I was just a little taken aback, that’s all. Thanks again to Triumph United for making this possible. Now onto the honorable mentions…
MMA-hole: It was at that point that Fedor began to wonder…were his wife and Sakuraba more than just “friends”?
Brad: Fedor and Aleks stop by the Affliction sweat shop to thank the tailors.
Toner Breath: SPUTNIPS!! [Ed. note: I racked my brain trying to think of a good one-word pun for this picture. Toner Breath’s is kind of horrible, but I give him mad props for trying. And judging from the exclamation points, he was also pretty psyched that he thought of it.]
Mike: It’s cheaper than a graphing calculator.
Erick: “Phuk An’ Run is the little-known Chinese martial art of having a kid and making your opponent raise them.”
Kimbo’s Lice: “…The stars signify that I’ll never be brought to my knees. This spiderweb on my elbow signifies that I’ve committed murder in service to the brotherhood of thieves. The grim reaper and baby on my back…you know what, I probably shouldn’t be telling you kids all this.”
Dude, how slick is this? I didn’t care about Mike Whitehead until just now, when I learned that he enjoys head-butting through glass. They may have spelled “Lindland” wrong, but Josh Barnett’s classic throat-slashing thing and the voice of Michael Buffer more than make up for it. Whatever you’re selling, we’ll take two!
(Maybe the UFC can get this guy out of retirement.)
So, another thing that Dana White said during that conference call yesterday that was otherwise dominated by BJ Penn’s incredible trash-talk, was that Germany is next on the list of countries that the UFC is looking to expand into, followed by the Philippines and Australia. White also said “we’re starting to focus on doing something in Brazil…because there’s a lot of interesting economical things going on down there right now.”
Doing an event in Brazil has an obvious logic to it, given the history of the sport and the popularity it still enjoys there. But Germany? UFC 83’s incredibly positive reception in Montreal indicated that a popular local champion will get crowds fired up more than anything else — it was the missing element that recent UFC events held in the U.K. lacked, which may be why those cards weren’t nearly as successful. But UFC 75 and 80 were at least filled out with British scrappers who were somewhat recognizable. Off the top of your head, without using Google, how many Germany-based mixed martial artists could you name? I mean, I could probably name a couple guys that are German in the same way that Marcus Davis is Irish, but unless they want to re-brand Mac Danzig as “The Berlin Bad Boy,” it seems like it’ll be a hard sell, both for the local German audience, and the American fans watching at home who have to sit through a card stacked with Jerry Nobodies.
(Better lawyer up, California State Athletic Commission)
After Sean Sherk lost his appeal with the California State Athletic Commission he vowed that things weren’t over. At the time it sounded like one of those things you say to make yourself feel better, like when you get fired from a job and vow to come back and burn the place to the ground. You don’t really intend on doing it; you just don’t want someone else to think they’ve gotten the last word.
But apparently Sean Sherk is the kind of guy who makes that angry vow and doesn’t let it go. He told MMA Weekly recently that he is still considering legal action against the CSAC once he gets this whole reclaiming the lightweight title business behind him. You know, just tying up some loose ends.
“Right now, basically, I was cleared to fight, had a date in mind, had a goal in mind and so I just wanted to first off get this fight out of the way and get my career back on track,” said Sherk during a recent appearance on MMAWeekly Radio. “And there’s no statute of limitations as far as how long I have to do this thing by, so I’m still talking to my lawyer. We’re still working some stuff out, and after this fight, maybe that’s something that we can go back to.”
Not exactly sure what legal grounds Sherk has to go after the CSAC, or what he hopes to gain in the process, but if I were Sherk’s legal counsel I might advise him to let it go and move on. He has said repeatedly that he’ll never fight again in the state of California. If he sticks to that, won’t they have been punished enough?
“Big Country” KO’s Imes, Rubs Belly in Triumph
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